Earth is On Track For Catastrophic Warming, UN Warns (npr.org) 279
The planet is on track for catastrophic warming, but world leaders already have many options to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and protect people, according to a major new climate change report from the United Nations. NPR: The report was drafted by top climate scientists and reviewed by delegates from nearly 200 countries. The authors hope it will provide crucial guidance to politicians around the world ahead of negotiations later this year aimed at reining in climate change. The planet faces an increasingly dire situation, according to the report. Climate change is already disrupting daily life around the world. Extreme weather, including heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and hurricanes, is killing and displacing people worldwide, and causing massive economic damage. And the amount of carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere is still rising.
"Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health," the report states. "There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all." But there are many choices readily available to policymakers who want to address climate change, the report makes clear. Those choices include straightforward, immediate solutions such as quickly adopting renewable sources of electricity and clamping down on new oil and gas extraction. They are also more aspirational ones, such as investing in research that could one day allow technology to suck carbon dioxide out of the air. The authors of the report are not prescriptive. No solution is held up as the "right" one. [...] The report lays out sobering facts about the state of the Earth's climate. The planet is nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was in the late 1800s, and is on track to exceed 5 degrees Fahrenheit of warming by the end of the century, it warns.
"Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health," the report states. "There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all." But there are many choices readily available to policymakers who want to address climate change, the report makes clear. Those choices include straightforward, immediate solutions such as quickly adopting renewable sources of electricity and clamping down on new oil and gas extraction. They are also more aspirational ones, such as investing in research that could one day allow technology to suck carbon dioxide out of the air. The authors of the report are not prescriptive. No solution is held up as the "right" one. [...] The report lays out sobering facts about the state of the Earth's climate. The planet is nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was in the late 1800s, and is on track to exceed 5 degrees Fahrenheit of warming by the end of the century, it warns.
Already too late (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Already too late (Score:4, Informative)
> changing at a pace and to an extent that human life will not survive. At least that it what I've been told.
By who? Get better sources rather than random yahoo's. Almost no expert says *all* of humanity will be wiped out if we do nothing, only that life will get very unpleasant for the survivors, likely triggering nasty wars, as often happens when resources grow scarce for a population.
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likely triggering nasty wars, as often happens when resources grow scarce for a population
The concept of resource wars is mostly a myth. People arguing these things often do so by confusing and or justifying desire for self-enrichment and empire expansion with fighting for scraps. The problem is driven by a societies embrace of conquest as a valid means of growth rather than resource scarcity.
"Irreversible" [Re:Already too late] (Score:5, Informative)
This is why I hate climate journalism. While the headlines say "irreversable" and "catastrophic," the ACTUAL text of the articles say that there ISN'T any well defined "critical warming threshold". Here, for example, is the key part of the NYT Article [nytimes.com]:
Many scientists have pointed out that surpassing the 1.5 degree threshold will not mean humanity is doomed. But every fraction of a degree of additional warming is expected to increase the severity of dangers that people around the world face, such as water scarcity, malnutrition and deadly heat waves.
...“It’s not that if we go past 1.5 degrees everything is lost,” said Joeri Rogelj, director of research at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London. “But there’s clear evidence that 1.5 is better than 1.6, which is better than 1.7, and so on. The point is we need to do everything we can to keep warming as low as possible.”
We had until 2012 to solve this problem before it was irreversible. We had until 2017 to solve it until we crossed a boundary where it would feed on itself and we could no longer prevent it. Then we had until 2023 to solve it
None of these are true, although there is a half-truth in all of them. First, climate change is already irreversable (at least, over the next hundred years). It's not a question of "reversing" climate change, as noted above, it's a question of how much we will get. The longer we wait to deal with it, the more severe the effects will be.
or the world would be doomed and nothing could stop it.
No, sorry; the world will not be "doomed". There will be negative consequences, and the longer we wait, the more such consequences will occur, and the more severe they will be. But it's not "the world is doomed."
So, it's 2023, we have not solved it. We didn't meet the goals. Noting we do now can prevent the climate changing
True, we can't stop it changing. But the longer we wait to address it, the more it will change.
at a pace and to an extent that human life will not survive. At least that it what I've been told.
You are listening to idiots, No, humans are not going to go extinct due to climate change, and no real scientist is saying so. Repeating the text from the NYT article, "surpassing the 1.5 degree threshold will not mean humanity is doomed."
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Let's hope it's right.
Quite seriously, this species doesn't deserve a planet like this. Maybe whoever comes after us is taking better care of it.
Nuclear winter won't solve it [Re:It isn't we...] (Score:5, Informative)
... so a nuclear winter will counteract global warming quite nicely.
No.
First, the nuclear winter scenario is very speculative. It relies on bomb-initiated firestorms injecting ash into the stratosphere (merely tropospheric ash doesn't stay aloft long enough), and whether this would happen is very dependent on details such as exactly what the targets are, and how many bombs of what megatonnage are used, and even details like what season it is.
Second, though, nuclear winter is a temporary thing, lasting a year or at most two; carbon dioxide warming lasts a century or two. So, you may get a year of cooling, but after that the warming trend continues. The warming is then temporarily exacerbated, both from the CO2 injected by the firestorms, and by the fact that a lot of vegetation has died, and thus is no longer removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
Nuclear winter does not cancel greenhouse warming.
Yes there is. (Score:5, Informative)
There are several things that individuals can do to significantly reduce the level of pollution they cause, directly and indirectly. The problem is, people consider these things to be unreasonable, and hence refuse to do them. I am NOT arguing that they are reasonable, and I am NOT positing any moral duty to do any of this. I am ONLY presenting the facts: these things are possible and they would reduce pollution. Any "shoulds" or "shouldn'ts" that you read into this are sourced from your own values, not mine.
1. Go vegetarian. Factory farms are where most of our meat products come from (even if one tries to buy mostly from family farms), and they are some of the worst offenders when it comes to environmentally-harmful pollution. Refusing to give them your money will force them to scale back their business and pollute less.
2. Stop driving. Instead, work from home, bike to work, or at least take mass transit.
3. Stop flying. Airplane fuel is a terrible polluter, so nix those expensive vacations.
4. Live in a small house, condo, or apartment. The smaller your place, the less energy you use to heat it.
5. Don't breed. The carbon cost of children is through the roof.
So, there you go, things you absolutely can do to significantly reduce your harmful impact on the environment.
Citation needed [Re:Already too late] (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, we're mostly already dead. UN said in 1990s that if we didn't radically reverse global warming, most coastal regions would have been underwater by 2020.
The UN said no such thing.
Cite a source, or admit you're making shit up.
(You can start with the IPCC report from the 1990s [www.ipcc.ch], if you want a summary of the UN predictions from 33 years ago.)
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No, it does not say that "most coastal regions would have been underwater by 2020" (the statement for which I asked for a citation.) It says that we need to address global warming by 2000 or else at some unspecified time in the future (some) coastal regions will be flooded.
In the link you give, it's hard to figure out what the "Senior U.N. environmental official" (Brown) interviewed actually said, since most of the article is paraphrases, not actually quotes of things he said. The lead sentence of the arti
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When will the US call out China? (Score:3, Insightful)
When the UN calls China on the carpet for building 2 coal plants every month, maybe then I'll take them seriously.
Re:When will the US call out China? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two wrongs don't make a right. If everyone finds an excuse to do nothing, then nobody will do anything. US has been by far the biggest polluter per person for many decades. We have very little room to point fingers.
Re:When will the US call out China? (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't about 2 wrongs make a right, this is about a game most CS or Psych majors know about called prisoners dilemma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
China knows if they don't cooperate with environmental regulations they will win the economic game in the short term. They also know that in the long term if the rest of the world goes pollution free, they're still going to win since they've had all this time with economic advantages. In either case the rest of the world loses.
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China knows if they don't cooperate with environmental regulations they will win the economic game in the short term. They also know that in the long term if the rest of the world goes pollution free, they're still going to win since they've had all this time with economic advantages. In either case the rest of the world loses.
China is making quite a lot of progress internally in terms of energy mix and is a leading supplier of green energy technology to the rest of the world.
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Leading supplier of green energy tech... you mean strip mining for resources to turn into batteries and solar panels which will wear out in 20 years?
What energy mix is this anyway? Coal, nuclear and hydro at the 3 gorges dam? The one that displaced millions of people and destroyed parts of their own history now deep under water? The dam that will flood out 60m people down stream when it breaks?
Sounds great. I'd like to sign up!
Re:When will the US call out China? (Score:4, Insightful)
The UN report and China's actions don't have anything to do with each other.
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True. China doesn't care what the UN says unless it's a pro-China message.
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They do.
Will you?
China's nukes are cheaper than solar (Score:2)
Re:When will the US call out China? (Score:5, Interesting)
When the UN calls China on the carpet for building 2 coal plants every month, maybe then I'll take them seriously.
And this report does so, so perhaps you should take it seriously.
Check it out here https://www.ipcc.ch/report/six... [www.ipcc.ch]
China doesn't seem to care. (Score:2, Insightful)
2 new coal plants permitted every WEEK last year alone, with no signs of slowing down. If the US suddenly switched to every single vehicle on the road to electric this year China's increase in C02 would overtake the savings in under 2 years.
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Using the same logic, you shouldn't vote Republican because if you do, somebody else will vote Democrat and nullify your vote.
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Except approximately 50% vote republican and 50% vote democrat, while US GHG are about 15% of world total while China is about 30%, US has been decreasing, China has been increasing. So a better example would be why vote for Peace and Freedom Party.
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It has zero effect on what the big parties do. I still often vote third party anyway if I don't like the major candidates but not because I believe they give a shit.
Re:China doesn't seem to care. (Score:5, Informative)
"permitted" doesn't mean built.
"significant overcapacity in the sector, with more than half of coal-power firms already loss-making and with typical plants running at less than 50% of their capacity."
https://www.carbonbrief.org/an... [carbonbrief.org]
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As long as the USA per capita emissions is higher than the world average, the USA can't point finger at anyone, especially those like China with lower per capita emissions.
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Per capita is a dodge - a non-sequitur. The globe doesn't particularly care how people are distributed. It only cares about raw quantity. Per capita is what you bring up to muddy the waters. It's intellectual dishonesty.
Canada's emissions are 1.5% of the global amount. Oil sands are under 10% if that, or 0.15%. Canada could instantly return to complete, untapped wilderness, and it wouldn't move the needle at all. But it's an easy political target and deflection mechanism, and so the climate folks never ment
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Per capita is a dodge - a non-sequitur.
Turns out it isn't.
With our high emissions per capita, when we try to tell other nations "you need to reduce emissions," what they hear is "We don't want you to have what we have." And that's not an argument that gets them to stop.
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I didn't say it was an unsuccessful non-sequitur. It works admirably if your goal is to deflect the need for action.
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You'd be correct, if only there were 340M Chinese. Fortunately, there are 1.4B Chinese, and also 1.3B Indians who don't give a rats ass what the IPCC say.
That's a cop out (Score:4, Insightful)
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Ok so we stop buying stuff from China and improve the grid.
That makes climate change stop?
Yeah (Score:2)
But we won't, because of you. You'll keep telling yourself you're way smarter than me and setting fire to everything in your path.
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But we are smarter than you because we know you'll never convice any major company to repatriate their manufacturing. 1) you, the consumer, would not be able to afford their goods and 2) their manafacturing operations wouldn't be permitted under current EPA regulations. In other words, lose - lose. You can log off now.
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China doesn't much seem to care. But then again, few do. Not really. The US doesn't. California had the temerity to suggest that maybe vehicle economy mattered, and a large part of the country lost it's collective mind. And saying, "It wouldn't matter because, China..." is wonderfully self-fulfilling prophecy, and an easy way of walking away from the problem.
If you truly think nobody should bother if China doesn't align, then that's fine. I understand how you got there. But buckle up and brace yourself - it
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Won't change a thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
In general people will do shit until their collective ass is either on fire or under water.
Roughly 50% the world is barely surviving from day to day and thus can't or don't focus on the longer term. Another 25% think it's a grand scientific fraud. That leaves 25% willing to do something, but it's often token gestures and too little too late.
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> Most of the "climate friendly" policies would result in more strife, more people pushed to the brink.
Show your math.
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Fundamentally you are changing things to cover an "externality" rather than improving quality of life; there is no way to do this other than for costs to rise in the short-to-mid term. Decommissioning a functional power plant is one such example; you have the write-down cost of the existing plant, the cost to actually decommission it, and the cost of the new source of generation. Eventually that new source may be cheaper, but that won't be seen for a long time.
We have a fundamental problem with no slam-du
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> except that the math on the most common forms of reusable bags involve needing to use one for multiple years to offset the carbon footprint of the bag's manufacture
I'd like to see elaboration on this. Also, plant-fiber-based bags degrade quicker in the environment and don't leave plastic by-products in the soil. Such bags are a glorified tumble-weed.
> and there's still more than a little stigma about bringing branded bags into a direct competitor's store.
That's a silly social worry; get over it.
Re:Won't change a thing. (Score:4, Informative)
The idea behind banning plastic bags isn't that it will affect climate change, but that will reduce the amount of plastic rubbish and the amount of petrochemicals used to make them. And, I don't know where you live, but until recently, I lived in California and now live in Colorado, and I've never seen anybody objecting to my taking one market's bag into another.
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1. "Plastic rubbish" isn't inherently an issue. We are not running out of landfill space. That's not even a thing that can happen. Plastic rubbish is only an issue because we try to pretend it makes sense to recycle plastic, but it's not actually economical to do that domestically, so instead we palletize it and ship it to China where it sits on its pallets by a river which floods and washes the plastic into the sea. If we just buried the stuff instead of trying to pretend it makes sense to turn it into
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The landfill used around here had to get repermitted after the abandoned quarry it was filling got filled. It is now more accurately called a hill-topping dump. And if it continues to get repermitted it might end up as a ski resort. But it will end sometime in the not-too-distant future, in which case another will have to be started that will inevitably be farther away and cost more to transport and dump, if you can get t
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You need an incinerator.
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3. So-called 'single-use' plastic bags aren't actually single use. They get recycled by the user into bags for dogshit, or bin liners for the little trash can in the bathroom, or lunchbags. So great, you've banned people from shopping with single-use plastic bags, which means companies are still going to produce small HDPE bags for those purposes, and *those* become the single-use plastic bags instead. What has this helped?
Pretty much everyone I talk to says exactly the same thing. All that has changed is I now have to buy plastic bags for the cat litter and the kitchen trash where I used to use the ones I got for free from the grocery store. I would not be surprised if the plastic bag industry makes more profit now than they did before.
Of course many people today are not old enough to remember why we replaced paper with plastic to begin with, and it shows. Plastic is not only more re-useable, but it saves cutting down as
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The gas stove ban that got the usual red/blue pile-on earlier this year wasn't news to me; my state was floating it years ago...my state is eyeballing a ban on natural gas and requiring electric appliances, except that over half the electricity in my state is generated from...burning natural gas.
The goal of removing natural gas appliances is to get both current and future emissions down. Let's assume right now all electricity is generated from gas - that process is about 42% efficient. How efficient do you think a natural gas cooktop is? About 32% according to the EPA. Electric resistance cooktops are 75-80% efficient and induction is 85% efficient. So even factoring in cooktop and electricity generation efficiencies, you're already as efficient or better than the existing state. Heat pumps vs. fur
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The gas stove ban that got the usual red/blue pile-on earlier this year wasn't news to me; my state was floating it years ago...my state is eyeballing a ban on natural gas and requiring electric appliances, except that over half the electricity in my state is generated from...burning natural gas.
The goal of removing natural gas appliances is to get both current and future emissions down. Let's assume right now all electricity is generated from gas - that process is about 42% efficient. How efficient do you think a natural gas cooktop is? About 32% according to the EPA. Electric resistance cooktops are 75-80% efficient and induction is 85% efficient. So even factoring in cooktop and electricity generation efficiencies, you're already as efficient or better than the existing state.
I am curious how we're defining 'efficiency' in this context, because it . If we're defining it as 'energy that gets transmitted to the pot that then cooks your food', I'm a bit hard pressed to believe that over 2/3 of the heat of a gas stove ends up somewhere other than the cooking surface. Not saying there's no waste at all, just that 68% waste seems extraordinarily high. Now, it might be that the amount of gas that actually gets burned vs. the amount required to go into the system might be where the inef
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Or, you know, instead of complaining you could just use your own reusable bags which is a lot of the point of banning plastic and charging for paper. It's the way most of the world has always done it, it's not at all hard, and does actually reduce emissions as reusable bags only need to be made once. You would just have to get used to something new.
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Or, you know, instead of complaining you could just use your own reusable bags which is a lot of the point of banning plastic and charging for paper. It's the way most of the world has always done it, it's not at all hard, and does actually reduce emissions as reusable bags only need to be made once.
At this point I have enough reusable bags stuffed in a drawer I probably could start using them for the cat litter.
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That's why when I'm done unloading them I bring them right back out to the car as part of the process otherwise I'd be right there in the same boat, buying extra bags to "punish" myself for forgetting them :) . A couple decades as an adult of never thinking about what my groceries were going into at the store was hard to shake but I've found getting the bags back into the car first thing works for me at least.
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> then went to paper bags
That's because that isn't the complete solution... Replacing disposable plastic bags with something else that is disposable will result in a worse experience in almost all cases. That is because plastic bags are indeed the superior solution for disposable bags.
Getting also rid of the "disposable" part will result in a better experience than the replacement disposable paper bags.
Now, lets take on the "bag" part... Does it have to be a bag?
For instance the shopping net, like my gra
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"Bring your own reusable bags!" they say...except that the math on the most common forms of reusable bags involve needing to use one for multiple years to offset the carbon footprint of the bag's manufacture
I still use bags that are 10-15 years old, so what's your point?
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Grocery stores then went to paper bags, and we were sold this as a matter of being "better for the environment" and "reducing climate change". Well...shopping for food suddenly became a bigger pain in the ass. half the paper bags don't have handles, and the half that do involve a game of chicken, so I have to use a greater number of paper bags to avoid them breaking. It's pointless if it's raining though; once the bags get even the slightest bit wet, they don't hold together, and now I'm paying a dime a pop for them when I shop.
I'm really sorry to hear that. It must be awfully rough.
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What is asserted without evidence can as well be dismissed without evidence. Thank you for participating. NEXT!
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What's worse? Most of the "climate friendly" policies would result in more strife, more people pushed to the brink.
The opposite is the case.
Turns out, solar and wind are both distributed power systems that are great improvements over what large portions of the third world has, and are making radical improvements in the quality of life among the poorest of the world's poor.
Here in the developed world, we have a working electric grid, and we demand baseload power 24/7. Solar or wind has to replace existing infrastructure. In places where such infrastructure doesn't exist, and the government a thousand kilometers away d
Useless Nations (Score:2, Troll)
If the UN were a valid organization they would join Ukraine and fight China/Russia aggression. You got stuff I want! Give it to me or else!
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Ho hum (Score:2)
Ho hum, apocalypse now. Wake me when I'm dead.
None of these people believe their own bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
If any of these politicians believed global warming were as much of a threat as they claim then we would not have any more debate over nuclear power.
How much of a threat is nuclear power compared to global warming? It could mean another Chernobyl level nuclear power plant disaster? It seems to me that we could have a Chernobyl style event every year and it would still not equal the devastation that global warming would bring.
Nuclear power has a long history of being safe, reliable, abundant, and certainly low in CO2 emissions. Chernobyl is an outlier, that is why nobody can bring up any other event like it. Because it is such an outlier that it is so notable. That was one reactor out of hundreds, and a reactor build with shoddy materials, was poorly managed, minimal safety measures (largely because it was built to be "dual use" for making weapons), and was built in spite of people knowing it could blow up in their faces. Nobody builds reactors like them any more, and nobody is asking for reactors like them.
If someone wants to claim that renewable energy would be cheaper and faster then that just tells me we have already solved the problem. Nobody would be stupid enough to spend more money on fossil fuels or nuclear power if renewable energy can provide the energy we need. Renewable energy sources clearly cannot provide the energy we need because we see people spending money on fossil fuels and nuclear power plants. It's not like people don't know renewable energy exists, we get reminded of that every time global warming comes up.
These people don't believe their own bullshit. If they believed that global warming was a threat to human existence then they'd clear a path for nuclear power to replace coal and natural gas. Because they say "anything but THAT" then they are making nuclear power a greater threat than global warming, and where's the evidence that nuclear power is a threat?
What they want is "Meatloaf energy", they will do anything to stop global warming but they won't do THAT.
Re:None of these people believe their own bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
Renewable energy generation in the USA (21.5% in 2022) [eia.gov] has already overtaken both coal (19.5%) and nuclear power (18.2%) and it's accelerating. But natural gas (39.8%) is still increasing, unfortunately.
As people switch to electric cars with V2G chargers, nuclear will be supplemented if not replaced by virtual power plants [slashdot.org] in providing baseload power.
In the short term, we should keep existing nuclear reactors running until fossil fuel generation drops off the grid.
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Renewable energy generation in the USA (21.5% in 2022) has already overtaken both coal (19.5%) and nuclear power (18.2%) and it's accelerating. But natural gas (39.8%) is still increasing, unfortunately.
Percentages don't convey the necessary information. For example I can produce 400% more energy than I consume in a year with PV. This doesn't mean I'll have energy for heating in the winter or cooling in the summer. Requirements have to be evaluated holistically as a system.
As people switch to electric cars with V2G chargers, nuclear will be supplemented if not replaced by virtual power plants in providing baseload power.
There is no existing energy storage technology capable of feasibly addressing needs beyond short term buffering.
In the short term, we should keep existing nuclear reactors running until fossil fuel generation drops off the grid.
This is a supremely bad policy. Nuclear is critical to green future in order to minimize monetary and environmental cost
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All of your concerns are addressed by understanding that the wind is always blowing somewhere on the continent, you just have to build a transmission line to it.
Re:None of these people believe their own bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
All of your concerns are addressed by understanding that the wind is always blowing somewhere on the continent, you just have to build a transmission line to it.
Completely ignoring for now the fact that electric grids are not nearly that simple, you may also be surprised to hear that the same self styled "environmentalists" that oppose nuclear plants and oil pipelines also oppose transmission lines and lithium mines.
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Greta is pro-nuclear, so she's not an environmentalist who "oppose[s] nuclear plants [and] also oppose[s] transmission lines and lithium mines" as Kernel Kurtz claimed.
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Not because she objects to wind power or transmissions lines though. She was there because the turbines were built on indigenous land. The green revolution should not come at the expense of the powerless.
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In that list we can see that solar power is nearly a rounding error in the total, it is wind and hydro that is doing the work. We should use more onshore wind and hydro because they are low cost, low CO2, and low tech. Being low tech is important because it means we don't need expensive and complicated manufacturing to grow that industry.
It is not that unfortunate for natural gas to grow because that means less coal, and perhaps less petroleum, being burned. Coal and petroleum produce more CO2 per unit o
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Natural gas produces 50% less CO2 per unit of energy than coal, and 30% less than oil. We're not going to reach our targets with natural gas.
No, that's already taken care of. [www.virta.global]
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Natural gas produces 50% less CO2 per unit of energy than coal, and 30% less than oil. We're not going to reach our targets with natural gas.
Of course we aren't going to reach CO2 emission targets with natural gas replacing coal alone. It's been helpful though in getting closer to those goals, and improving air quality.
There was T. Boone Pickens speaking about his "Pickens' Plan" where we'd switch to using more natural gas while building out alternatives to fossil fuels. One hard part is transportation, we need the energy density of hydrocarbons to maintain our transportation. If we drill for more natural gas while we build nuclear power plan
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No, that's already taken care of.
Your link is a very long document, I don't know what I'm looking for.
I suspect the plan is that the system is "smart" and times the charging so the vehicle has a full charge at a scheduled time for people to leave for work/school/whatever, or at least enough to get there and back with some reserve. That's fine until there's something to upset the schedule, like an earthquake, hurricane, or other event that can come up unexpectedly to cut power and leave the car owner with a desire to go a long way out of D
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> Renewable energy generation in the USA (21.5% in 2022) [eia.gov] has already overtaken both coal (19.5%) and nuclear power (18.2%) and it's accelerating. But natural gas (39.8%) is still increasing, unfortunately.
It hasn't overtaken squat, it has been added on top of... Coal has been replaced by natural gas. (which is sort of good)
> In the short term, we should keep existing nuclear reactors running until fossil fuel generation drops off the grid.
Keep in mind that electricity is about 30% of total e
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If any of these politicians believed global warming were as much of a threat as they claim then we would not have any more debate over nuclear power.
And the politicians are doing so. The DOE budget for the Office of Nuclear Energy is 1.69 billion dollars.
Compare that to the solar energy budget: about 350 million.
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1.5% of all civilian electricity generating reactors have melted down. That's not a great track record, especially considering the cost of dealing with the ones that have.
In any case, you don't need to convince us. You need to convince investors, who look at the high cost of nuclear and the decades before they see a return on it, and aren't interested. Don't go running to the government for more subsidies either, you have more than had your fair share of those. Wind is now subsidy free in many places, so wh
numbers got us into this mess (Score:2)
and numbers can get us out.
this is why the blatant anti global warming propaganda is so dangerous.
people don't have to really believe it, they just need to have enough doubt that they don't do anything.
if 7 billion people take even a small amount of action now, and we can grow that action over time, then we can stall out the worst effects.
the oil propaganda machine, the professional right wing liars seek to create enough doubt to stave off action.
no conspiracy needed, they are just awful, horrible human bei
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You are now king. We must all do what you say.
Solve global warming.
What is your solution?
Next (Score:2)
Always is (Score:2)
the end of the world is like nuclear fission reactors: constantly ten years away
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fusion I mean. I am all fissed up
What will likely happen (Score:2)
The planet will force a new equilibrium upon us.
There is really no other end, we are dealing with an absurdly complex system with a _lot_ of inertia. It _will_ find a new equilibrium, no matter what we do. The closest simile I can think of is you have a mountain and you slowly erode its base. It will tolerate it until a point when it will violently change shape and _with absolute certainty_ bring itself to a new steady-state.
A subset of humanity will die. Societies will _change_ not by choice but by surviva
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And the planet will continue spinning as if nothing happened.
Just like in the old joke where two planets meet:
"Dude, you look horrible, what's wrong?"
"I have homo sapiens."
"Oh don't worry. It will pass."
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if we consider earth to be a 50 year old human, humanity has existed for roughly one day of its life.
Thanks (Score:2)
Well, at least something is progressing as predicted. What a relief in these uncertain times that there are at least a few things you can rely on.
Even if it's only humanity's inability to keep itself from destroying itself.
Too many Cries of Wolf! (Score:2)
1970's - don't use paper bags, the trees are dying?
2020s - the plastic bags which replaced the old paper bags are now even in fish instestines and in our own lungs. Good Job, Treehuggers!
1970's -- Global Warming will kill us all by 2000!
2000s -- Meh
1970's -- Ice Age Coming!
2020's -- meh
1970's -- No Oil by 2000!
2000's -- oil glut
And the litany of the Boy who cried Wolf continues...
Why should anyone believe the treehuggers? Wrong for half a century +... and still wrong today.
Maybe i'll be like a broken cloc
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Ask about dozen long-time farmers. A good many will tell you that *something* is changing from their youth memories of whether.
> no sea levels are rising
They are. [tallahassee.com]
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wow, 3.2 mm/year. we're all going to drown in an additional 12.6 inches of water in 2123.... I expect this is why you can't get flood insurance when you live in a flood plain.
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Erh... Sibiria will not do so well. Sibiria is a mostly very dry land and will likely turn from an ice desert to a sandy one, but little else will actually change.
Well, that and a lot of the methane stored in permafrost up there gets released to boost the temperature a bit more.
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To quote early Bill Cosby: "How long can you treat water?"
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What should we do?
You're king of the world. Let's hear your plan we all must follow.
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You don't have to. You can do whatever you want to your heart's content, and it won't make any difference at all. None. Zero.
Re:I'm old enough to remember the first Earth Day (Score:5, Insightful)
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If there were such a video, it would be all over youtube. You were watching some B-grade science fiction movie.
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Something tells me you haven't really been listening.
You mean taking it to heart? Why should he? As stated, the predictions have been BULLSHIT.
Show me one such prediction made by a bona fide climate scientist.
You can start here, with the first IPCC report: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/cli... [www.ipcc.ch]
Here is their prediction:
"a sea-level rise of about 0.3—0.5 m by 2050 and about 1 m by 2100, together with a rise in the temperature of the surface ocean layer of between 0.2 and 2.5C."
--source: ipcc_90_92_assessments_far_wg_II_spm.pdf page 1
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They were always wrong before, but this time they are right. Hahahahaha.
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You know that back then we actually DID do something about it, yes? We installed filters in our smokestacks, we banned CFCs, so yes, we were able to avert those disasters.
Of course, if you're this old, why bother pondering something that will likely only affect the planet after you're gone?
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Nah, we're all gunna live forever. This universe is a simulation, after all.
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"[...] there is [...] nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine; the people are fucked! Difference! The planet is fine! Compared to the people, The planet is doing great: been here four and a half billion years! Do you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years. 200 years versus four and a half billion. And we have the conce
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Yes, the earth was much warmer than it is today. Even warmer than it will become in the most pessimistic prognosis.
Granted, back then there were no humans on the planet, but if that's of no concern, well, there isn't really much to worry about.
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So, less people use more resources and create more pollution? Makes perfect sense. Yes, we are smart and capable, we are also coming up on some resource issues like fresh water.