No New Fossil Fuel Projects For Net-Zero: IEA (phys.org) 192
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: All future fossil fuel projects must be scrapped if the world is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and to stand any chance of limiting warming to 1.5C, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday. In a special report designed to inform negotiators at the crucial COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November, the IEA predicted a "sharp decline in fossil fuel demand" in the next three decades as well as a 2040 deadline for the global energy sector to achieve carbon neutrality. The Paris-based think tank called for a rapid and vast ramping up of renewable energy investment and capacity, which bring gains in development, wealth and human health.
IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said the roadmap outlined in the report showed that the path to global net-zero by 2050 was "narrow but still achievable." "The scale and speed of the efforts demanded by this critical and formidable goal -- our best chance of tackling climate change and limiting global warming to 1.5C -- make this perhaps the greatest challenge humankind has ever faced," he said. "Under the IEA's net-zero pathway, oil usage is projected to decline 75 percent and gas 55 percent by mid-century," the report notes. "It also said that all inefficient coal power plants needed to close by 2030 in order to achieve net-zero by 2050."
The IEA went on to say that around half of reductions by 2050 would be provided by "technologies that are currently only in demonstration or prototype phase," which include direct air capture and storage of CO2 from the atmosphere.
IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said the roadmap outlined in the report showed that the path to global net-zero by 2050 was "narrow but still achievable." "The scale and speed of the efforts demanded by this critical and formidable goal -- our best chance of tackling climate change and limiting global warming to 1.5C -- make this perhaps the greatest challenge humankind has ever faced," he said. "Under the IEA's net-zero pathway, oil usage is projected to decline 75 percent and gas 55 percent by mid-century," the report notes. "It also said that all inefficient coal power plants needed to close by 2030 in order to achieve net-zero by 2050."
The IEA went on to say that around half of reductions by 2050 would be provided by "technologies that are currently only in demonstration or prototype phase," which include direct air capture and storage of CO2 from the atmosphere.
and I kept seeing (Score:3, Funny)
IKEA
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Meanwhile, In Australia... (Score:3)
Coal and gas mining go brrrtt!
Re:Meanwhile, In Australia... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Australian Government just announced a new $AUD 600 million gas power plant. But nobody is surprised, because the liberal government doesn't care about the environment at all.
Re:Meanwhile, In Australia... (Score:5, Insightful)
For our international readers you should make sure to call them the Liberal (big L) government.
But even the Labour government only half cares about the environment now after mining groups helped swing them out of power after they introduced a carbon tax.
Maybe after our next massive bush fire opinions will change enough.
Re:Meanwhile, In Australia... (Score:5, Informative)
It's something we just have to endure. /s
Butt yeah, for those non-Aussies reading:
Liberal party—right of center extension of the fossil-fuel industry
National party—corruption factory
Labor party—left of center and slightly estranged extension of the fossil-fuel industry
There's others, but they're far more "what they say on the tin" parties.
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Until there is a VIABLE and readily available alternative to fossil fuels, we can't be turning the spigot off.
Shutting off what we have now without a viable and consistent and 24/7 reliable alternative just does not make sense.
That article mentioned that the technologies that will help us do this are still pretty much only on the drawing boards and ideation phases right now.
Call me when there are working prototypes and actual plans for deployment in parallel to the current structure
Re:Meanwhile, In Australia... (Score:4)
Ah, yes. The old debunked per capita bullshit. When they want to bash America they always trot this bullshit out. Make America look bad and China look good.
Sorry hoss. That crap was debunked around here long ago. The per capita bullshit is meaningless. The one that actually counts is the total over all emissions. The biggest over all emissions is China.
https://phys.org/news/2021-04-... [phys.org]
Total output is the numbers we must be concerned about.
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An alternate measure sometimes seen is "annual emissions divided by GDP". (Usually the denominator is Price Purchasing Power GDP, or PPP$). Here is an example plot from the World Bank [worldbank.org]. This measure gives some sense of the carbon intensity of a country's economy, and also a measure of that country's (economi
Per capita vs total? [Re:Meanwhile, In Australia.] (Score:3)
The per capita bullshit is meaningless. The one that actually counts is the total over all emissions. The biggest over all emissions is China.
And number two in the world is... the United States.
China wants to reach the United States' standard of living. You're proposing "let's tell them that they're not allowed to: the US doesn't have to reduce their per-capita emissions but China is only allowed 1/4 as much."
So, how do you propose to get China to say "sure, that sounds fair"?
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And number three is India. What you conventionally left out of your bullshit post is directions. China and India is going up while the United States is going down. Not only is China the number one polluter, they are the fastest rising one.
An it going to happen like this. China is going to continue to polite. Finally, the world will tell them to stop. At that point they will. Not like they have a choice no matter what standard of living they have.
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How do you plan to get them to agree that this is fair?
it doesn't matter if they agree or not. Their pollution is leading to a break down in the climate. They change or die. It's that simple.
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And renewables are better than either.
Re:Meanwhile, In Australia... (Score:4, Interesting)
Renewable power is intermittent power. Or, put another way, renewable power is unreliable power.
People talk about how if we only have grid scale storage, like batteries or pumped hydro, that renewable power can power our economy. They seem to forget that fuel is stored energy. We can mine the earth for "zero carbon" (in scare quotes because nothing is truly zero carbon) energy in uranium and thorium. If renewable energy is "zero carbon" energy then nuclear fission power must be "less than zero carbon" energy produces less carbon than any renewable energy source.
Our future energy will come from a mix of geothermal, onshore wind, hydro, and nuclear fission. Geothermal power is a reliable energy source as we can draw from it as we wish, the energy is stored in the heat deep in the planet. There is a limited rate we can draw from this as taking too much too quickly will cool the local rocks and render it useless. That's no different than hydro, another energy source with an inherent store of energy in water behind a dam. We can only draw from it based on the rainfall in the area that feeds the dam. We can pump water back up the hill to store energy from other sources, and because these are often very large reservoirs with little loss over time we can store energy on seasonal scales. Because hydroelectric dams can vary their power output quickly we can use them to assist in load following with energy sources that cannot vary output quickly. Those sources would be geothermal and nuclear fission.
Nuclear fission is a very reliable energy source. It is plentiful. It is safe, safer than anything else we've used for energy based on energy output to people that have died in producing that energy. Issues of radioactive waste or anything else people bring up in opposition are solved problems or a much smaller problem to address than those from other options. Nuclear fission will be a vital part of our future energy supply.
Wind power has no inherent energy store. Unlike hydroelectric power there's no side benefits like providing a store of drinking water and aiding in the transport of goods by canals and rivers. What wind power has though is simplicity. Wind power is low tech and draws directly from other industries. The generators used in a windmill are not all that different than the generators in a small hydro dam, or large industrial motors. The towers are not that different from those used to hold up power lines. The windmill blades not that different that airplane wings. This is a simple technology and therefore a low cost technology. Well, it's a simple technology when onshore. When offshore it becomes complicated, labor intensive, and too expensive to bother with. Far more expensive than reliable power from hydro, geothermal, and nuclear fission.
I read some idiot that claimed we could use nuclear fission power as backup for unreliable renewable energy. So, we invest billions of dollars in a nuclear power plant. A plant that has largely the same costs to operate whether is ti producing no power or a gigawatt of power. There is a fuel cost but that is so low it is lost in rounding errors. If we have large grid scale storage in batteries or pumped hydro, and reliable energy from nuclear power that only gets cheaper the more energy is drawn from it, then why would we bother with expensive and unreliable energy from offshore windmills and solar?
Grid scale storage isn't going to make unreliable, and very expensive, energy sources like offshore wind and solar viable. Grid scale storage will make nuclear power far cheaper as it brings load following capability to an exceedingly reliable energy source. The uranium and thorium is both a store of energy and an energy source. We can draw from this store largely as we wish, and schedule periods for refuel, repair, and refit when demand is low. These periods can be staggered, unlike solar power where all solar power goes down in a region all at once, and with considerable regularity.
Nuclear power isn't going
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I love the idea of nuclear fusion power, but that seems to always be 20 years away.
Fission power is not viable as a global energy source - there simply isn't enough of it, and the cost of disposing of the waste, including decommissioning old plants is just too great - not to mention the cleanup costs when accidents do happen.
So far there have been 2 really bad accidents, with the current number of reactors sitting around 440 in operation.
Studies have shown that there is basically a chance of a serious accid
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Sorry but you are either poorly informed or intentionally misguiding people.
Fission power is a nearly infinite source of energy (although not quite as much so as fusion) - HOWEVER, to be so you need to have breeder reactors - which also nicely deal with most of the issues of waste. The 'only' issue with breeder reactors are politics and proliferation. there is no issue with fuel, none at all.
Also , there have not bee 2 really bad accidents.
There has been one moderately bad one, and one with very little actu
Re: Meanwhile, In Australia... (Score:2)
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Also nuclear power cannot be used in many countries, because we don't trust them with it. They are going to want power as they develop so there needs to be a clean source of it that isn't nuclear, that doesn't have proliferation or safety issues.
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Studies have shown that there is basically a chance of a serious accident every once per 3704 reactor years. ie. if you have 370 reactors in operation, you can expect one every 10 years.
That's quite possibly true. It's also based on nuclear reactors built 30, 40, 50, and soon as much as 80 years ago. Even so nuclear power has proven safer than all other energy sources. Then comes new technology that is many orders of magnitude safer. You want to make the claim that nuclear power can only get more expensive and less safe? Then tell me why that would not apply to any other energy source? I'll have people argue that the nuclear power industry has a history of cutting corners on safety t
Re:Meanwhile, In Australia... (Score:4, Insightful)
What kind of a world would we be living in if we had given up on commercial aviation after the first two accidents? At today's passenger loads, an average accident of the once-a-year variety kills about 200 people, while a really bad accident (collision of two 747s) killed 583 people. The worst nuclear accident, meranwhile, killed 51.
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I read some idiot that claimed we could use nuclear fission power as backup for unreliable renewable energy. So, we invest billions of dollars in a nuclear power plant. A plant that has largely the same costs to operate whether is ti producing no power or a gigawatt of power. There is a fuel cost but that is so low it is lost in rounding errors.
So the more renewable power you have, the more expensive nuclear becomes. Seems hardly worth the bother. Just to make such an expensive option even more expensive.
If we have large grid scale storage in batteries or pumped hydro, and reliable energy from nuclear power that only gets cheaper the more energy is drawn from it, ...
If you have large grid scale storage, nuclear only gets less and less useful, and it also gets more and more expensive at the same time.
then why would we bother with expensive and unreliable energy from offshore windmills and solar?
The wind and solar will be much cheaper than nuclear. Whose price you already realized, goes higher and higher the less of it you need.
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So the more renewable power you have, the more expensive nuclear becomes. Seems hardly worth the bother. Just to make such an expensive option even more expensive.
You need to be more clear on the argument you are making. It reads like you are arguing that wind and solar are not worth bother with. That's my argument but your other comments contradict it, implying otherwise. You are possibly correct that as people build more renewable energy that nuclear power will become more expensive. That's why we should not build more renewable energy production than the grid can handle. I'll touch on this more below.
If you have large grid scale storage, nuclear only gets less and less useful, and it also gets more and more expensive at the same time.
Why would nuclear power get more expensive with more storag
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Why would nuclear power get more expensive with more storage? If more storage makes nuclear power more expensive then don't build so much storage.
Build less nukes.
Since they are already the most expensive option and only getting worse if we have the storage already.
Wind and solar will be cheaper than nuclear?
Yes they will be.
That they are already cheaper now is obvious and hardly worth mentioning.
It will only get worse for nukes when you have to idle them most of the time. You really didn't understand?
That's why nobody is advocating for building more nuclear power plants than we need.
We don't need any if we have storage...
Do you know what also gets more expensive the less it is used? Everything. If we overbuild wind and solar power then it gets expensive too.
Depending of the cost of the storage, not necessarily. It may end up being cheaper to overbuild than to build storage.
(You already mentioned economies o
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It will only get worse for nukes when you have to idle them most of the time. You really didn't understand?
No, I don't understand. Why would a utility choose to raise it's own operating costs by throttling down a nuclear power plant? Why would they have to if there is storage as a place to put that energy?
You are not making any sense. Grid storage is there to prevent this.
Depending of the cost of the storage, not necessarily. It may end up being cheaper to overbuild than to build storage.
That's right, it may be cheaper to throttle down the nuclear power plant than buy more storage, so why pick on nuclear power operating costs for throttling down? That would happen to wind and solar as well, would it not? Wind, solar, and n
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Renewable power sources are extremely predictable and reliable. Say you have a solar farm, you can predict output over the next hour with great accuracy, and reasonably well over a few days. You might want a small battery for some smoothing, just to cover things like clouds, but basically you have plenty of time to deal with any shortfall.
Australia also has excellent wind resources, some of the best in the world. The southern coastline lies in the roaring forties and many sites have average wind speeds abov
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Renewable power sources are extremely predictable and reliable. Say you have a solar farm, you can predict output over the next hour with great accuracy, and reasonably well over a few days. You might want a small battery for some smoothing, just to cover things like clouds, but basically you have plenty of time to deal with any shortfall.
Does the battery cover night time as well?
Re:Meanwhile, In Australia... (Score:4)
Natural Gas is a renewable. As any pig farmer that turns his pig shit in to methane for power. An that is just one example. There are dozens of sources that I can think of for natural gas that doesn't come from the ground. Taping local land files or some cows ass, come to mind.
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I am likely being annoyingly pedantic
You think? :)
I understand that cow farts are considered true natural gas as the industry thinks of it but considering where it comes from I'm gong to personally consider it natural gas :)
Okay no more fart jokes. I think basically we are on the same page on the ICE engine. It's been around for over a 100 years and its foolish to think that it's going to go away over night. As I've stated in another post, there is nothing wrong with the ICE. It's the fuels we have chosen to use for it. We replace g
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One can safely assume that Australian plants will be as clean and efficient as technologically possible, as would be the case in most 1st world nations. It is also safe to assume China will build them as cheaply as possible, with reducing emissions being the last thing on their minds.
The real problem with Nuclear Power (Score:3)
The real problem with nuclear power is it's supporters.
Those of us that understand nuclear power and the benefits that it brings just don't have the balls to stand up to the anti nuke kooks and tell them to fuck off. Until that happens, nuclear power really isn't going any where.
Trees (Score:4, Insightful)
"technologies that are currently only in demonstration or prototype phase," which include direct air capture and storage of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Pretty sure trees have been around for awhile. We do not need to do much of this if we simply pant an insane number of trees.
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Not even an insane number. About 200 per person. Trees aren't very expensive to plant, and hardy ones appropriate to their environment aren't very expensive to maintain.
Given the population growth rate, you've really counting on the marketing of "MIracle Gro", aren't you?
No, they're not expensive to plant. The hard part is convincing ignorant people that they take a while to grow. That price tag you're avoiding, is called time.
Re:Trees (Score:4)
Grass is even cheaper than trees and in the long run turns out to be a much better carbon sink than trees.
https://climatechange.ucdavis.... [ucdavis.edu]
Re:Trees won't even make a dent. (Score:5, Informative)
8 billion x 200 = 1.6 trillion
A mature forest has about 200 trees per hectare. So 8 billion hectares, or 80 million square kilometers would need to be new forest.
That is equal to twice the area of Eurasia. But Eurasia is tundra, desert, grassland, farmland, or already forested.
It is not possible to plant enough trees to make a difference.
There are good reasons to plant trees. "Solving global warming" is not one of them.
Here is a list of the actual solutions:
1. Stop consuming fossil fuels.
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Currently there are 3 trillion trees in the world. There were 5.6 trillion before humans cut down 1.6 trillion.
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So you're saying we need to plant 2.6 trillion trees. Just to get back to the 5.6 number.
And then plant another 1.6 trillion every year to offset the CO2 for that year.
Except CO2 isn't going down, it's still getting worse. So even more trees.
Where are you going to put all those trees?
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So you're saying we need to plant 2.6 trillion trees. Just to get back to the 5.6 number.
No, that's not what I said at all. I said that there were 5.6 trillion trees in the past before human civilization, and there are 3 trillion trees now, so there is obviously room for the 1.6 trillion trees I proposed as that would still be 1 trillion trees less than there were in the past.
And then plant another 1.6 trillion every year to offset the CO2 for that year.
No, I didn't say that either. I don't see how you think that logic follows unless you also kill 1.6 trillion trees every year.
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No, that's not what I said at all. I said that there were 5.6 trillion trees in the past before human civilization, and there are 3 trillion trees now, so there is obviously room for the 1.6 trillion trees I proposed as that would still be 1 trillion trees less than there were in the past.
We replaced those trillions of trees with cities and towns and farms and hydroelectric dams etc. You can't just assume we can replant them in the same places. Where are we going to put them?
Even getting back to the same number of trees as in the past won't set up an equilibrium.
We are outputting 40 Gtons more CO2 every year than we were back then.
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We also adapted a great deal of land to agriculture use that is now fallow because improved efficiencies mean we don't need it. There is actually a lot of room to plant more trees in the developed world.
HOWEVER as with most things its not that simple. Most of those fallow fields are covered in grass which is actually a pretty good sinker of carbon. So the net gain of converting them to forest in terms of carbon is not anywhere near 100% of the carbon a forest sinks per hectare.
BUT trees affect climate in wa
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Too many people use it as an excuse to do nothing else though. Thinking that planting a few trees will offset all the CO2 they are pumping out.
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And then plant another 1.6 trillion every year to offset the CO2 for that year.
No, I didn't say that either. I don't see how you think that logic follows unless you also kill 1.6 trillion trees every year.
Try following your own logic. You were the one using the metric of humans to justify the tree count.
Do you intend to start killing all the new humans instead, or do you also assume all the humans planting trees will keep them entertained and stop everyone from fucking? Just trying to solidify this plan of yours. The planet has increased in population by 50,000 humans in the last five hours. How long do those tree things take to grow again?
The devil, is in the details.
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Tress don't have to be 100% of the solution, just part of it. They bring other benefits too, like improving local air quality and encouraging other plants to grow in the area.
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But it's not going to solve climate change. Or really make all that much difference.
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And yet nothing you said there conflicts with the statement that you can't solve AGW with trees. And in fact, you can't. By all means, plant trees, they have benefits. But they can not and will not solve AGW, no matter how many you plant (out of the possible number.)
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... thought bubble ...
If we cut down more trees, but leave a bit so they grow back, and we don't burn any of the cut down trees, like we use them to build houses or make paper or furniture or whatever, does that not solve the problem of where to put the new trees? I believe some trees grow back. For the ones that don't, a heavy pruning should suffice.
Putting aside the terrifying ramifications for a minute, in theory, if we cut down another 2tn trees, but didn't burn the wood, wouldn't the regrowing trees
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Just nitpicking, but from billions to trillions is *3* orders of magnitude.
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Reminds me of the scene from Liar Liar where a client calls the main character looking for advice about an affair and he replies, "STOP FUCKING AROUND!"
I think anti-desertification thought combined with the right foliage, isn't well understood in the west. China literally might be the only country that really understands it. This however is in some ways better for the environment but anti-environmental because you are basically talking about terraforming an ecosystem into something completely new which mean
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Here is a list of the actual solutions:
1. Stop consuming fossil fuels.
What a brilliant observation. I'm glad you mentioned that because nobody in the world for all of the last 50 years or so since we discovered global warming as an issue has ever thought of that before.
Now, instead of listening to Captain Obvious on where the problem lies how about we listen to some scientists and engineers on how we can end our consumption of fossil fuels without destroying the economy and bringing death and misery to potentially billions of people. Those solutions will be getting energy f
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Don't limit your thinking to trees growing on land. There is a lot more room for carbon capture at sea using stimulated algal blooms in strategic places. There are tropical gyres in the Atlantic and Pacific where converging currents would keep nutrients concentrated enough to keep a bloom going for enough time to take a significant amount of carbon put of the air and water.
Trees, cement, and asphalt (Re:Trees) (Score:2)
Trees would play a part in carbon capture if only organizations like Greenpeace would allow people to cut them down.
Dr. Patrick Moore advocated for the use of trees as a means of carbon capture. He should know as he has a BS in forest biology and a PhD in ecology. In other words he was studying "climate science" before that term came into existence. He's been a critic of Greenpeace and other anti-scientific groups that claim to be protecting the planet.
Another advocate for carbon sequestration is Dr. Dar
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Pretty sure trees have been around for awhile. We do not need to do much of this if we simply pant an insane number of trees.
It's not simple and the number is insane because we literally can't plant trees fast enough to fix our spare CO2. You could do it with bamboo in pretty short order if you could plant the entire planet in it, and I'm just talking about the land masses here; it would only take about three successions. But you can't actually do that, so that fact is frankly irrelevant and I'm pointing it out only to point out just how hard the problem actually is.
It's not enough just to plant trees. You have to plant them wher
Yet, still no nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who isn't promoting nuclear when discussing global warming ( climate change ) isn't actually wanting to solve the problem; they're trying to sell you something.
It really is that simple at this point
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Look around at just the folks "helping" the problem. "Net" zero carbon? Ya right. We're all going to die. Earth was fun while it lasted.
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Good thing they were not all obsessed with the end of the world.
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For a culture built on apocalyptic stories, people sure as shit don't seem to understand the concept of an apocalypse which is that it's sudden downfall -- like maybe what happened to the Egyptians when by and large many of them were living a lot better and better for centuries with a rather continuous civilization lasting millenia...
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Earth has warmed 1.2C since pre-industrial times. And life for pretty much every human on earth is so mind-blowingly better now than in pre-industrial times it's not even worth comparing.
Think how much better we will all be with another 1.2C
But why not go for 2.4 or 4.8?
It's going to be a paradise when we can get it up to 12C warmer.
If I'm following your logic correctly...
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No. Nuclear can't be built fast enough (Score:4, Insightful)
We have to be on a trajectory to 50% emissions reductions within 9 years, and net-negative within about 30 years.
Solar, wind, geothermal, smart-grid, energy storage, HVDC transmission lines, electrify and hydrogen-ize the economy. Only way to go fast enough.
Solar and wind with smart grid and energy storage are the only ones that could get scaled up fast enough, given where they are now, technologically, regulatory, and price-wise.
And yes, smart grid + HVDC + energy storage are enough to stabilize wind + solar into baseload-handling. All it would need is the government-led incentive mandate to get 'er done, or a massive carbon tax to force it done.
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I pretty much agree with you except I think you under-estimate the matter of supply chain. I haven't looked at the stats in great detail but I think building all that will generate larger amounts of co2 in the near-term. Is this why you mention it needs to be 30 years and not 50, even though you say the matter is regulatory processes?
I also think the issue of out-sourcing is a problem. Even if one country follows this pattern but then uses another country for extraction of such raw materials and fabrication
Wrong (Re:No. Nuclear can't be built fast enough) (Score:3)
Nuclear power produces about 20% of the electricity in the USA and about 10% of all energy consumed in the USA. All renewable energy combined has a similar share of the market, about 20% of electricity and 10% of all energy. You want to claim it is impossible for nuclear power to grow but renewable energy can? Why is that? Oh, right, you say regulations.
Did you know that for the last 50 years the Democrat Party has held up nuclear power at every opportunity? Did you know that last August this same Demo
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Anyone promoting nuclear is trying to sell you something: nuclear. It's insanely expensive. We simply can't afford to rely on it to solve climate change, people just won't pay the price.
As we have seen the most effective way to reduce CO2 emissions is to make doing so the most economical option. As soon as wind power became the cheapest form of electricity generation the amount of investment shot up. It's got to the point in the UK where the cheapest electricity for the consumer is renewable, and people are
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It must be astroturfing, I just can't imagine that nerds get so worked up over nuclear power that they need to use their mod points to troll. The fact that the mods come in so consistently and quickly suggest that it's a network of sock-puppet accounts set up to try to influence debates like this one by troll modding early and promoting pro-nuke comments.
If anything it just shows how completely fucked the nuclear industry is, that they have to resort to this kind of thing.
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Yes yes, thats the obvious answer Ami.
Its not that you are wrong and others can see the truth, its a grand global conspiracy against what YOU believe in.
Note that most of the 'nuclear power will kill us all! run for the hills!' posts are anon, and perhaps you will see more of the truth.
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How does that explain modding down people pointing out that nuclear power is really expensive? Is pointing out the fact that nuclear is expensive trolling you somehow?
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I just can't imagine that nerds get so worked up over nuclear power that they need to use their mod points to troll.
Now that nerd is an accepted social persona there are dumb nerds. And nuclear is "cool" in that it is "like magic" and therefore people get personally invested in it. Personally I feel like PV Solar is at least as "cool" as nuclear, it's still particles hitting stuff and causing reactions that you can't see but can benefit from, but I guess it doesn't include the Godzilla factor so it's not as amazing.
I'm sure there is a certain amount of astroturfing, but there's also certainly some people who have been ta
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Wind, Solar and other renewable plants are much quicker to build than nuclear plants.
And you can build them one panel by one panel and one turbine by one turbine, while a nuclear plant can only be built in a big bang.
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while a nuclear plant can only be built in a big bang.
Right, because the small nuclear reactors the US Navy has been mass producing for its submarines, aircraft carriers, frigates, cruisers, and destroyers are all figments of my imagination.
Small modular reactors are not some technology we will only see in some far off future. It is a technology that has been well developed for warships over the last many decades. We can build a small modular reactor in a year or two. If we take this technology seriously, and I expect we will very soon, then we can mass pro
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The US navy reactors need weapon grade fuel and only last for a couple of decades.
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I don't think the navy making 1-2 reactors every year counts as mass production.
Re:Yet, still no nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as i think nuclear power is awesome, it's not a good fit here, and it's expensive. If someone comes up with a radical new reactor design that comes with a convenient on/off toggle, now that would be a true game changer.
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Both wind and solar are dependent on their location.
I still say we're misusing solar. You see these giant solar farms out there, but those aren't practical for general use or even in the long term. Instead solar should really be on every rooftop, with batteries on every property, connected to the grid. It's job should be to lessen the load on traditional generation methods where appropriate. So in the central valley, CA, that makes sense. We get....something like 300+ sunny days a year ( with more smok
Re: (Score:3)
Democrats heart nuclear (Re:Yet, still no nuclear) (Score:2)
sad fact about nuclear is that it's not a suitable complement to wind/solar.
Then we build more nuclear power and stop building wind and solar.
The USA is not going to abandon nuclear power. It's clean, safe, reliable, and the Democrats learned this last year. The Democrats held up nuclear power for 50 years but they flipped on that last August. The Democrats want more nuclear power, the Republicans wanted more nuclear power going back to the Nixon administration.
If someone comes up with a radical new reactor design that comes with a convenient on/off toggle, now that would be a true game changer.
Or, we stop the bullshit of putting money into unreliable energy so we don't have to turn nuclear power plants on and o
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Anyone who isn't promoting nuclear when discussing global warming ( climate change ) isn't actually wanting to solve the problem; they're trying to sell you something.
You have that 100% ass-backwards. PV Solar or wind + Battery is cheaper than nuclear per MWh. So if you really want to get maximum return for dollar spent on energy projects with minimum lifecycle emissions, and by the way without generating any nuclear waste that we still don't have a viable plan for handling, you spend it on solar or wind. You certainly don't spend it on nuclear, which uses the least concentrated thing we mine as fuel.
It really is that simple at this point
Simple is a great way to describe people who still believe the lies of
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As someone who doesn't understand the science behind climate change, I agree with your pessimism. I'm a pretty smart guy, but the science too convoluted to follow, meaning you have to rely on "the experts".
I don't trust "experts" at all, even before this past year.
That said, the question with regards to CC isn't whether reducing pollution is a good idea, but rather "at what cost". Because I don't understand the science OR trust the experts, I'm disinclined to commit to exorbitant expenses in order to "fig
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What are the benefits to nuclear if your stance isn't related ultimately in someway to climate?
I genuinely want to understand even though I disagree about the nature of climate change and experts. The largest benefits to nuclear are basically we don't release co2. So your argument is essentially based in the fact you accept co2 is harmful to life but not that climate change is a significant or real threat to humanity?
We need nuclear for many reasons. (Score:2)
The need for nuclear power goes beyond just lowering CO2 emissions. In fact even if someone could prove beyond any doubt that coal and petroleum are not causing problems with global warming then we'd still need nuclear power.
Nuclear power is safe, safer than any other energy source we have available to us. Because of this alone we should use nuclear fission power.
Nuclear power is plentiful and domestically sourced. No nation with access to the sea needs to worry about being denied vital fuel for powering
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And that's the sort of thing that makes people suspicious. Why are the goalposts always moving further away?
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From the top link: "55% — of teachers we surveyed said they do not cover climate change in their own classrooms or even talk to their students about it."
Teaching in schools is unlikely to give more than a soundbites version of the problem in most cases anyway.
Re:Yet, still no nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)
The major point is you need cheap electrons/energy to do that. The only way you get that is nuclear. This may seem counter-intuitive because by and large, most see nuclear as very expensive but that expense is relative to both policy and the level of usage (which is to say more time developing new forms of nuclear plants than actually building and using them).
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I agree that we have to keep nuclear power as a serious option, especially given the time it takes to build nuclear plants. I'm no expert, but it seems unlikely that we can meet our energy demand with no fossil or nuclear, but solely from renewables plus storage.
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I would like to see a good breakdown of the numbers but the cost of extraction, maintenance, replacement, and other tasks, I believe puts solar and wind power at a higher cost over the lifetime per gigawatt. I totally support these in the mix but reactors in general can be built up in a manner that puts all the costs I mention significantly and this doesn't even get into lifecycle questions of fissile material which with some new reactor designs can be partially recycled. As far as I know recycling in sola
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It makes more sense to use very cheap and abundant clean energy. Australia has some of the best wind resources in the world, so much that it could not only cover itself but export a lot too. It will require some adjustment such as more availability based pricing and dynamic usage, but much less cost than trying to start up a nuclear power industry.
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The major point is you need cheap electrons/energy to do that.
Okay.
The only way you get that is nuclear.
That is a complete falsehood. Either you are deliberately lying, or you don't know what you are talking about. Either way, solar and wind are both cheaper than nuclear, even when paired with battery storage. Nuclear is literally the most expensive way we have to make base load, which by the way, we don't actually need more of. Only total noobs think we do. What we need is more demand-based power that can be ramped up and down quickly, not nuclear which is the opposite of that.
most see nuclear as very expensive but that expense is relative to both policy and the level of usage (which is to say more time developing new forms of nuclear plants than actually building and using them).
Funny that, we keep hearin
Well that's the end of (Score:2)
... all that, then. Hope you all had a fun time because shit just got real.
Losing out (Score:2)
I predict that by 2050 the CO2 will have dropped by a mere 50% at a cost of several trillion dollars. The space we've ceded will have simply been taken up by developing countries whos
Excellent! We Can Stop Worrying About "If" then... (Score:4, Insightful)
...and start figuring out what to do about the impacts.
We missed the chance to apply an ounce of prevention. Now let's get busy on the pound of cure.
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Spoiler: the cure will involve massive and inevitable downgrade of standard of living for a huge portion of the global population.
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When I immigrated to USA in early 1990s from India, it was considered a great, very prestigious. Bachelors with H1B were hot and they had absolutely no trouble find brides, pretty ones, rich ones, with great family connections .... Then right in front of my eyes situation changed. My direct report, IIT graduate no less, stable job with good income had so much difficulty finding a bride. G
FTS (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, but AOL and WebTV can do whatever they want!? (Score:2)
What a blatant double-standard!
Who are they again? (Score:3)
You can check them out here [wikipedia.org].
And by the way, doesn't it bother you that everything is escalated to 'crisis' or 'emergency'? Climate, covid, poverty, obesity, child poverty, drug trafficking, human trafficking, humanitarian insert your preference
Since everything is a crisis/emergency then nothing is or alternatively, whatever you get convinced of is a crisis ... which doesn't make it an actual crisis.
Instead of this mad dash to freak out and leap in to alternative technologies, how about taking a breath and trying to focus on doing things more efficiently and less wastefully.
Because right now we're headed for the same old crisis but different. Like electric? When all the world is running on batteries, solar, and wind-farms tell me, what will the waste look like? No oil spills or wells, just strip mining for lithium, fields full of old wind-turbine blades, discarded solar panels ...
Zero chance of happening (Score:2)
At the same time, far lefties will continue fighting to stop nuke power plants.
From now on... (Score:2)
From now on you must cook using only cow dung.
funny assumptions (Score:2)
Relying on "technologies that are currently only in demonstration or prototype phase" might be a bit forward looking and optimistic?