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quote:In that quote he suggests that rainfall will increase in arid areas? How does that work? See Colorado, right about nowish. That's how it'll work.
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Sep 18, 2013 06:29
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WarpedNaba posted:What we need is to convince a philanthropist to invest in cleaner energy research. Imagine the traction you'd have with the hipster crowd if you managed to convince Steve Jobs to invest in Thorium instead of Homeopathic medicine. Had to deal with some people talking bullshit about climate change, the usual buzz words stuff. One guy told me "Extreme weather? Down in the Southeast we've been nice and getting good rain here.  " Also someone else told me about the classic, "If we are blaming humans for Global Warming, we might as well say that the Dinosaurs died because of SUVs  " My god I thought with sentience we would have better chance than the trilobites in surviving a mass extinction event, but nope. 
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Sep 18, 2013 06:48
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achillesforever6 posted:You'd think Gates or Buffett would be interested in that, but then again I may be wrong thinking that they are not shithead rich people. http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html He's partly funding TerraPower, a nuclear fission company, among other things. Buffett is leaving most of his money to the same foundation. This is also interesting:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbbq_KdPzjE There really is a lot of philanthropists investing in new nuclear and other technologies if you google around. satan!!! fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Sep 18, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 07:35
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QUILT_MONSTER_420 fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Nov 28, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 22:37
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So, how seriously should I take this article? It's... a little horrifying to say the least. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/09/17/1892241/hansen-climate-sensitivity-uninhabitable/ quote:...The key findings are Yeah...
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Sep 19, 2013 03:20
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Inglonias posted:So, how seriously should I take this article? It's... a little horrifying to say the least. The worst projections have always meant most of the planet becomes uninhabitable (for humans) + mass extinction. Take solace in the fact that climate models are incredibly complicated and no one model can accurately project an outcome without a shadow of a doubt. Do whatever you can to make a positive impact on your local environment and stay positive. Lamenting what you think may be inevitable doesn't help anyone, especially yourself.
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Sep 19, 2013 03:55
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Holy Calamity! posted:The worst projections have always meant most of the planet becomes uninhabitable (for humans) + mass extinction. Take solace in the fact that climate models are incredibly complicated and no one model can accurately project an outcome without a shadow of a doubt. Do whatever you can to make a positive impact on your local environment and stay positive. Lamenting what you think may be inevitable doesn't help anyone, especially yourself. Don't you think that discussing the fact that humans have the power to destroy all known macroscopic life is important? I think that globally humans were more conscious of our ability to become extinct in the 1970s but that we've taken steps backward since then.
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Sep 19, 2013 04:00
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Salt Fish posted:Don't you think that discussing the fact that humans have the power to destroy all known macroscopic life is important? I think that globally humans were more conscious of our ability to become extinct in the 1970s but that we've taken steps backward since then. Absolutely, I just think that most people on these forums (and reading this thread especially) are well aware of that fact. Many believe it's inevitable. Consumerism has a death grip on most of humanity and things aren't likely to change until we suffer constant cataclysmic losses as a result of climate change. So I should amend my answer to "Very seriously, but don't let it get to you too much!" It's not as if Hansen's a quack, but his projections aren't anything we haven't seen before, correct?
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Sep 19, 2013 04:08
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Salt Fish posted:Don't you think that discussing the fact that humans have the power to destroy all known macroscopic life is important? Not particularly - and I mean this in two contexts. The first is the broader "public" context: No one wants to read that article, and they probably won't, because the concept of this horrible apocalypse bearing down on their everyday life is not going to spur them to some kind of action nor move them towards a better lifestyle, precisely because it is apocalyptic. Time and again, fear as a framing mechanism ("You've got to do something or it's all over!") has proven to be a poor motivator. The mental function of disavowal will take over as soon as they step outside and see the green grass, birds singing, etc. The second is in the more narrow context of this thread: Is there anyone here who disagrees with the notion that climate change is a very serious problem that can and will have a direct impact on much of the life on Earth? Vermain fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Sep 19, 2013 |
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Sep 19, 2013 04:24
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Salt Fish posted:Don't you think that discussing the fact that humans have the power to destroy all known macroscopic life is important? I think that globally humans were more conscious of our ability to become extinct in the 1970s but that we've taken steps backward since then. To be fair, we don't have the power you're talking about unless you think we have the power to burn all existing fossil fuels (we don't) and beyond that, we've had the ability to sterilize a great percentage of the world via nuclear weapons for a long time. Welcome to the Holocene
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Sep 19, 2013 04:39
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Vermain posted:Not particularly - and I mean this in two contexts. The first is the broader "public" context: No one wants to read that article, and they probably won't, because the concept of this horrible apocalypse bearing down on their everyday life is not going to spur them to some kind of action nor move them towards a better lifestyle, precisely because it is apocalyptic. Time and again, fear as a framing mechanism ("You've got to do something or it's all over!") has proven to be a poor motivator. The mental function of disavowal will take over as soon as they step outside and see the green grass, birds singing, etc. The second is in the more narrow context of this thread: Is there anyone here who disagrees with the notion that climate change is a very serious problem that can and will have a direct impact on much of the life on Earth? There are varying degrees of concern in this thread. Not everyone who reads the thread posts replies and I think there might be a tendency for people who dissent with the majority of posters to stay away from the discussion. I don't think that your point about fear applies. I think that fear is a poor motivator when it's fear for fear's sake. I believe that an honest and objective appraisal of a situation is a great motivator for change. Where I object to reporting that causes fear is when that reporting is not objective or reasonable and in those cases we would both agree that fear is a poor motivator. If anything we should stop insisting that the public doesn't care or can't understand or is childish or willfully ignorant. I believe that people are intelligent and that many people are the victim of misinformation and that we can help them through accurate discussion of the realities of climate change.
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Sep 19, 2013 04:48
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Fear motivated Noah to make a raft. (/sarcasm)
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Sep 19, 2013 05:44
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Those predictions do feel a little hard to swallow, when you compare them to the geologic past. The Cambrian era had CO2 levels of about 5000 ppm, over ten times the current level, and it was 'only' about 7 degrees warmer than today. It's difficult to see how we could get to multiple times that with lower levels of atmospheric carbon. Which, obviously, 7 degrees of warming wouldn't exactly be a walk in the park, either. But twenty seems pretty out there.
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Sep 19, 2013 07:47
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Strudel Man posted:Those predictions do feel a little hard to swallow, when you compare them to the geologic past. The Cambrian era had CO2 levels of about 5000 ppm, over ten times the current level, and it was 'only' about 7 degrees warmer than today. It's difficult to see how we could get to multiple times that with lower levels of atmospheric carbon. On the other hand, the PETM event had global average surface temperatures approaching 30°C, and that was much more recent than the Cambrian. I read most of the more accessible bits of the paper, the basic finding wrt surface temperature is that they estimate a climate sensitivity of around 3°C per doubling of CO2 from 1950 levels. The difference from the Cambrian is that they find that climate sensitivity is state dependent. They don't use the Cambrian, but the PETM and other more recent hyperthermals, and compare starting states to estimate their sensitivity. The 20°C number comes from saying "theoretically if we burnt every drop of conventional and unconventional fossil fuels, we might get about 8 doublings of the 1950 level, so around 3 times about 8 is around 20." I think the point the authors are trying to make by throwing out those upper limits is that if we do nothing and burn all the fossil fuels, we wreck the planet totally, so business as usual combined with adaptation is non-sustainable. At some point we will have to act positively to combat the problem. Of course, not a climate scientist so I could be reading it all wrong.
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Sep 19, 2013 10:05
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The New Black posted:I think the point the authors are trying to make by throwing out those upper limits is that if we do nothing and burn all the fossil fuels, we wreck the planet totally, so business as usual combined with adaptation is non-sustainable. The problem is that this is not even a possibility for humanity. It's a dishonest statistic that really doesn't further anything. Nobody is saying "well, I can handle six degrees of warming, but thirty sounds pretty bad". Anything over 2-3 is a complete catastrophe, there's just no reason to give impossible scenarios any kind of thought when the realistic ones are just as bad.
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Sep 19, 2013 15:13
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a lovely poster posted:The problem is that this is not even a possibility for humanity. It's a dishonest statistic that really doesn't further anything. Nobody is saying "well, I can handle six degrees of warming, but thirty sounds pretty bad". Anything over 2-3 is a complete catastrophe, there's just no reason to give impossible scenarios any kind of thought when the realistic ones are just as bad. I think it's also not even possible from another angle - at a certain point unconventional fossil fuel sources become EROEI negative, and then not even ExxonMobil will want to take them out the ground. I think you have a point. But on checking again, when they say all fossil fuels they don't mean "all". For their 20 degree warming scenario, they're using a figure of 4.8xCO2 emissions (the remainder up to 8xCO2 (12W/msquared) comes from N2O and CH4 providing 25% of the forcing, which they get from paleoclimate, I guess they're talking about feedback effects). 4.8xCO2 (9W/msquared) would require 5000 to 10000Gt C (the uncertainty is in airborne fraction of the CO2), and as they point out the Global Energy Assessment lists all recoverable fossil fuels as 15000Gt C, so there are plenty of recoverable fossil fuels to meet that scenario. I don't know why they keep using the phrase "all fossil fuels", it just seems to confuse the issue. As they themselves say: quote:It seems implausible that humanity will not alter its energy course as consequences of burning all fossil fuels become clearer. Yet strong evidence about the dangers of human-made climate change have so far had little effect. Of course this scenario plays out over more than a century, and so it couldn't even happen anyway - if 3-4 degrees wrecks civilisation in a few decades, we're not going to be in a position to emit carbon for centuries. I don't really know about the morality of using these models, but it seems to play into the hands of the subset of deniers who call people like Hansen 'alarmists', and makes his whole argument looks worse by comparison.
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Sep 19, 2013 16:04
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Inglonias posted:So, how seriously should I take this article? It's... a little horrifying to say the least. Even in the most Randian of free market societies, "burning all fossil fuels" wouldn't happen, because there is way to much profit in other uses of petrochemicals. 1 gallon of antihistamines sells for much more than 1 gallon of gas and all that. A large amount of the fossil fuels that we know are out there are completely impossible to recover without spending more energy to get than is in the fossil fuel. That being said, the economically recoverable stuff is still quite enough to really gently caress us up, but we aren't going back to 5000 ppm.
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Sep 19, 2013 16:09
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It reminds me of this guy I know who really bought into panning for gold based on some stupid statistic like "only 10% of existing surface gold has been recovered" when the real story is the economic feasibility of getting that actual material doesn't exist. I understand that there's been a lack of action on society's part, but hyperbolic articles aren't going to change anyone's mind who hasn't been persuaded by this sort of data anyways.
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Sep 19, 2013 17:37
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QUILT_MONSTER_420 fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Nov 28, 2013 |
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Sep 19, 2013 17:54
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Strudel Man posted:Those predictions do feel a little hard to swallow, when you compare them to the geologic past. The Cambrian era had CO2 levels of about 5000 ppm, over ten times the current level, and it was 'only' about 7 degrees warmer than today. It's difficult to see how we could get to multiple times that with lower levels of atmospheric carbon. You need to be careful with comparisons to the geologic past, because more variables have changed than just CO2. For example the sun is much brighter today than it was in the Cambrian, meaning a much lower CO2 concentration could produce higher temperatures. Even comparisons with the more recent PETM need to be taken with a grain of salt, because of changes in the earth's albedo and oceanic currents. That said we are totally boned if we burn all exploitable reserves of fossil fuels
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Sep 19, 2013 19:52
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effectual posted:Fear motivated Noah to make a raft. (/sarcasm) And the good news is, he was reborn as Elon Musk and making spaceships!
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Sep 20, 2013 04:49
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enraged_camel posted:And the good news is, he was reborn as Elon Musk and making spaceships! Looking forward to the auction for places on the space-ark. Let the market decide!
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Sep 20, 2013 11:22
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I've followed this thread for a while now but I'm despairing at the combination of the situation outlined in the OP and the attitude of news sites and their commenters. I'm a physicist by background and I vividly remember a course on the climate changing my attitude from 'this global warming stuff sounds bad, we should probably look at being a bit more green' to, as the thread title says, 'we are so hosed'. Most predictions have us down as throughly, obviously hosed within my lifetime. Even if I didn't have that background, scientists are pretty much unequivocally saying that the situation is dire and that we have to change very soon and very quickly to avoid disaster, if it's even possible at this point. So why the extreme cynicism from the general public? If I search news for 'Global Warming' the first two results from the Daily Mail and the Telegraph show that the commenters are dead against the idea of ACC, using some combination of pseudoscience, accusing scientists of lying for reasons and 'lalalala, I can't hear you, there's no such thing as climate change'. Even the lefty Guardian shows a fairly even split. What's interesting is that it's not necessarily the commenters regurgitating what the media tells them, the Daily Mail previously reported on climate change with sensational scary headlines to fit into the 'everything is poo poo' editorial line only for comments to reply gleefully that ACC is a load of poo poo and scientists are either clueless or making it up. So why are the general public so unconvinced? Will anything ever convince them otherwise that will happen within our lifetimes? It seems to me that even catastrophic climate disasters would be met with 'well, that probably would have happened anyway, the climate changed before humans!'. I feel like people in 100+ years (assuming we make it that far in alright nick) will look back at today's comments on climate change the way we look at old adverts for miraculous healing radioactive products times a billion. And we don't have the excuse of not knowing better. Sorry for the complete change in direction, there have just been a lot of similar articles recently and it's been bothering me.
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Sep 20, 2013 13:59
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It's because people don't want to change but they are being forced to. You are seeing shifts to a more green society (CO2 production went down compared to the last year) but it's a very painful shift and people are going to bitch about it.
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Sep 20, 2013 14:32
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I'd characterise it as a kind of being in denial. Who wants to be told not only that they have to cut their energy use by 70%, but also that all the climate weirdness and melting ice is their fault? That's an underlying factor. Then you've got all the doubt and misinformation being thrown out by the fossil fuel lobby, the whole 'manufactured controversy' thing. The illusion of debate gives people 'permission' to believe what they want to be true anyway.
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Sep 20, 2013 17:15
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Climate change as a challenge also meshes extremely poorly with our modern, quite individualist mindset. It's a problem that demands collective solutions, and it absolutely requires running roughshod over any number of interests to tackle the problem. Our political and social system is built up so that this is supposed to be impossible; that everyone be given "equal time", that everyone be treated seriously and that the moderators of the public discourse should be "impartial". So, when you get the odd dissenting voice saying that it's not a problem after all, everyone will want to listen to him because we don't like to think that there's a problem, especially one that we cannot possibly deal with by empowering individuals in some way. That's not to say that we don't *try* to deal with it in that manner, just that it doesn't work.
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Sep 20, 2013 17:17
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Walton Simons posted:I feel like people in 100+ years (assuming we make it that far in alright nick) will look back at today's comments on climate change the way we look at old adverts for miraculous healing radioactive products times a billion. And we don't have the excuse of not knowing better. I feel that this era will be viewed historically in ways similar to other large historical atrocities. People will ask, 'How did they not know? Why did they go along with it? Why didn't they stop it?' We will not be considered merely foolish, but likely as actively immoral.
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Sep 20, 2013 17:33
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Walton Simons posted:What's interesting is that it's not necessarily the commenters regurgitating what the media tells them, the Daily Mail previously reported on climate change with sensational scary headlines to fit into the 'everything is poo poo' editorial line only for comments to reply gleefully that ACC is a load of poo poo and scientists are either clueless or making it up. The Mail is a rag, that's why. Even if they did occasionally run an article that was facing the right direction, their general line is denialist sensationalism, so it's no wonder their readership believes (at the very least) that there's no consensus or the truth is somewhere in the middle. This is a paper that will ignore the Met Office's predictions about the summer weather, go to some private clown company for the real predictions and proclaim The Scientists don't know what they're talking about and that the weather will actually be like this. Then when their predictions are completely wrong they pull out a 'so much for the predictions' article and imply it was the Met Office who got it wrong. They have no interest in science or research or facts in general, in any sphere (except house prices for the middle class - that's not the American 'middle class' either). The Telegraph is better being an actual broadsheet and all, but it's still a Tory paper with a conservative angle owned by wealthy business interests. I mean this is what the media does in general, they make money and promote the interests of their owners and those who represent them in government. So sensationalised articles sell papers and push an agenda, they make readers feel smart because they're not being 'taken in' and it provides cover for the government to do things like giving tax breaks to fracking companies and making GBS threads on renewable energy and nuclear. Ensures everyone can keep on keeping on, basically. We have a society that discourages critical thinking and high standards of evidence and debate, makes it easier for those in power to get on with doing what they want to do without having to explain themselves or answer any difficult and awkward questions. Most people only know what they're told, and right now they're being told what people want them to 'know' about climate change. I can practically guarantee you when it all goes to poo poo people will blame scientists for 'failing to make a convincing case'
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Sep 20, 2013 19:02
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I read a few pages of this thread last night (I've read about 10 pages in total, mostly in the beginning and the latest posts) and this morning I was watching a show on cruise ships. It made me wonder if some sort of "unreasonable excess" law with hard limits for building, transportation, and development would be feasible. Ultimately I know it wouldn't work because people would be up in arms about "our freedoms" or some poo poo, but drat, the cruise ships reminded me of Nero's gigantic party ships, which isn't the most positive parallel. Although it's a worldwide problem, living in other countries brings to mind how entitled America feels towards its energy use. Either that or they just don't think about it. People have weird ideas about "standard of living." I never felt my standard of living was lower in Japan, even though I was probably using about half the energy I do in the U.S. on a daily basis. Public transportation is worlds apart from the U.S. as well. The thing is, I think the majority of America would be fine with this level of consumption, they've just never experienced it and aren't encouraged to think about it, or they're actively campaigning against the idea that they need to restrain themselves. Sorry I don't have anything super valuable to contribute... Very enlightening thread. Attack! fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Sep 20, 2013 |
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Sep 20, 2013 19:12
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Thanks for those responses, they all really answer my questions. Public understanding of science has always interested me and I've found it to be quite lacking on most issues. I don't want to be that guy who says 'heh, people are so dumb' because it's unrealistic to expect everyone to take an interest in science. I was thinking that the amount of pseudoscience flying around might have an effect on opinions on ACC. I want people to listen to scientists if they're not educated in that particular area but equally when people talk about 'nutritionists' and kinds of alternative medicine I'll say it's bollocks and not to listen. Sometimes I have to go away and read about new ideas and treatments to find out if they're legit. How can you expect someone who doesn't really take an interest to know the difference?
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Sep 20, 2013 20:10
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You can't expect people to know the difference, which is sort of the point - that's what people are banking on (literally in a lot of cases). I mean it's not just science, people are exposed to all kinds of 'facts' and narratives by people who are supposed to be authorities (the media, politicians) which are clearly lazy and superficial, inaccurate, or outright lies and deception. Actually realising this requires a lot of background knowledge and distrust of these authorities, which most people don't have. Most people don't have time to find out. I mean this is a wider sociological issue, we have a culture where people are educated not to be the best they can be and develop an inquiring mind, but to reach as high a grade as possible on an employability checklist. We have an undemocratic political system where the only real input anyone gets is a vote every couple of years, and that's between two or three political parties who don't really want to have to justify themselves or change the way they do things. We have a media in the hands of a few wealthy owners, and heavily driven by advertising revenue, with actual journalism being increasingly left to a handful of agencies and official PR releases (read Flat Earth News if you want a bit more on that). The goal isn't to inform people and give them the truth. You're right that it has an effect on people's opinions on ACC, but that's not a coincidence. The media's long been a tool for shaping public opinion and understanding of an issue, and there are all kinds of psychological buttons to push that will influence people. It doesn't even have to be outright sensationalised nonsense pieces (which keep being pushed despite having been debunked long ago and many times since), just a subtle tone of scepticism and careful 'reporting' of denialist statements by prominent figures can be enough to sow doubt. And it's very hard to undo that. If you're a brit you should pop into the UK thread, we got lots of sciencey people and posts on the lack of evidence-based policy. And general rantings. It's fun, cmon in!
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Sep 20, 2013 22:07
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I know this is a little off-topic and it's on short notice, but I only found out about this myself because of a reminder email. If you happen to be in the US, there are a whole bunch of events tomorrow protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline. Rightly or not, it's basically where a bunch of environmental organizations have chosen to fight their fight in this country. There's a full map of events here, and they're taking place all over the country: http://act.350.org/event/draw_the_line/search/ I'm still deciding whether or not to go to the event in DC. If I had more notice about this, I certainly would, but some stuff has come up recently. I'll see if I can make it.
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Sep 20, 2013 22:15
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Paul MaudDib posted:I don't disagree that slowing population growth will hopefully eventually level off the growth of energy usage. My point is that it's really important that it actually level off eventually. It's going to take a long time for rural Africa and China to industrialize, and then slow their population growth. Let's call it a minimum of 50 years to industrialize to a reasonable standard and then another generation or two for population to fully level off. You can't just extrapolate exponential growth into the far future. Also we can in principle allow first world energy usage to increase further, since there is only so many people on the planet. Having 3 times or 10 times the worldwide energy consumption of today isn't even remotely close to "we're literally cooking the planet with waste heat alone". effectual posted:Sorry to interrupt another nuclear circular argument, but my local rag (seattletimes.com) is running stories this week about ocean acidification. Should help raise awareness a bit. Yes, climate change will completely gently caress us in a wide variety of interesting ways. Also, a good proportion of corals, foraminiferans etc 
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Sep 22, 2013 11:55
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Welp new australian conservative government voted in. Literally in the first few days the new denialist primeminister disbanded the climate commission and fired Tim Flannery, and he says his most pressing concern is to remove the carbon pricing mechanism. I loving hate conservatives.
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Sep 22, 2013 20:34
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blowfish posted:You can't just extrapolate exponential growth into the far future. Also we can in principle allow first world energy usage to increase further, since there is only so many people on the planet. Having 3 times or 10 times the worldwide energy consumption of today isn't even remotely close to "we're literally cooking the planet with waste heat alone". Citation needed. If we normalize first-world use of energy (300 GJ per person per year for the US) to the entire planet (7.11 billion) we end up with an energy consumption figure of 2133 exajoules for the entire planet (real world: 454 exajoules). The Earth absorbs about 3,850,000 exajoules from the sun. If we multiply the global energy consumption by a factor of 10, then human energy generation would represent about 1/180th of solar energy absorbed by the Earth, about half a percent. For a sense of scale there, scientists are flipping a poo poo because the Earth's albedo is dropping. A 1% reduction in albedo (that's a 1% increase in retained solar energy) would be approximately equal to doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The additional solar energy absorbed from that would work out to be 38,500 exajoules, versus your hypothetical 10x scenario's 21,330 exajoules from human life. Do you think that the Earth would stay the same if we increased the CO2 in the atmosphere by 56%? That seems pretty significant to me. And that's in a platonic hypothetical world where we can generate energy without greenhouse gasses. If you factor in that most energy production comes from fossil fuels and start factoring in a bunch more greenhouse gasses it becomes obvious how wrong you are. e: 1% albedo is equal to 1% of CO2, not total greenhouse gasses, according to NASA e2: One further note, this is obviously just a napkin calculation that doesn't include factors like 16% of our energy coming from renewables (roughly defined as everything except fossil fuels and nuclear, including stuff like hydro), which is double-counted as both solar energy and human energy. I don't think it's a major factor since I don't believe renewables can be scaled out to 10x their present generation capacity. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Sep 22, 2013 |
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Sep 22, 2013 21:02
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Well, I'd take issue with some of the assumptions you're making (because this is interesting so I'd like to see it hashed out a bit more). Firstly blowfish is talking about total energy consumption rising to 3 or 10 times as high, which would (using your numbers) put it at between 1362 and 4540 exajoules. Dividing that between 7.11B people gives between 192-639GJ per person. That's 0.00035% to 0.0012% of the incoming solar energy - the actual increase above our current energy use is 908-4086 exajoules, or 0.00024% to Obviously the population isn't going to remain at 7.11 billion, but historically developed countries have tended to have lower reproduction rates for various reasons, so getting other nations to that level is something to aim for even purely on a numbers basis. But running with these numbers, we're looking at 192-639GJ per person (or divided between a higher number of people). We could take the US figure of 300GJ/capita as a baseline for 'first-world use of energy', but here are some other nations' energy uses: pre:Norway: 279GJ Australia: 235GJ Sweden: 230GJ Kazakhstan: 193GJ ---------------------192GJ New Zealand: 175GJ France: 169GJ Germany: 168GJ Japan: 163GJ UK: 136GJ ---------------------128GJ (2x global average) Italy: 118GJ ---------------------64GJ (current global average) So a tripling of current energy use could bring the global per capita level to one that still exceeds that of most first-world countries. Obviously that would mean greater emissions from countries that currently have much lower energy use (that's most of them), but it would also mean lower emissions from the US, one of the largest polluters. Cutting US emissions by a third (which is a crude estimate obviously) would be a 12% reduction in the global CO2 output. It would be interesting to run those numbers globally, raising or lowering each country's per capita energy to the same level and adjusting their CO2 output by the same proportion. Obviously it's not that simple, and big polluters like China spend a lot of their energy on making poo poo for consumer countries, which would be less of the case if they had a lot more to use for their citizens, but it would be interesting to see how much it lines up against the albedo-like CO2 increase for that 0.00024% number. The other thing is obviously energy efficiency - the first world is still notoriously wasteful, especially in transport fuel and energy production. Simply moving to more efficient power generation and minimising the use of fossil fuels in transport would lower that per-capita usage even further. Reducing the amount of greenhouse gases released to generate that power would help with the warming issue, since the whole problem isn't the heat itself, it's that it can't escape. Obviously that's a problem that needs to be solved, but if we manage to get to a point where CO2 levels are coming down somehow, so long as we don't gently caress it up by putting too much back up there, I don't think there's an inherent problem with producing more heat. Globally speaking anyway e- oops that was a bad number baka kaba fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Sep 23, 2013 |
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Sep 23, 2013 00:24
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I will point out that as a New Zealander, our power use per capita should be approx the same as France. The difference is in transmission loss (Centralised power structures is an issue when you rely on geothermal and hydro).
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Sep 23, 2013 00:30
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Paul MaudDib posted:Citation needed. Actually, it's like 0.05 percent of the effect of doubling atmospheric CO2, or 0.1% if the world turns into 'merica. Obviously not good, but nowhere near catastrophic or even at the level of suck facing us with current best case climate change scenarios. e: 0.1% of current climate change effects amounts to "problem basically solved", so... I can't really bring myself to worry about that problem. Also see baka kaba's post. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Sep 23, 2013 |
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Sep 23, 2013 16:42
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Also, HDI growth and economic growth are both rather decoupled from energy growth. We can in fact grow the global standard of living without equally growing energy demand.
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Sep 23, 2013 20:19
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Trabisnikof posted:Also, HDI growth and economic growth are both rather decoupled from energy growth. We can in fact grow the global standard of living without equally growing energy demand. Do you have any data that supports this? I've never heard it suggested that HDI/Economic growth is "decoupled" from energy growth. Please don't post county-specific data to illustrate a point about the world as a whole.
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Sep 23, 2013 20:35
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