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Uranium Phoenix
Jun 20, 2007

Boom.

Climate Change: What is to be Done?

The old climate change thread long ago descended into people either succumbing to despair, or rehashing them same old arguments over and over. This thread (and first post) is an attempt to cover the basics of the old thread, and then point the new discussion more towards solutions and action. For that reason, especially if your post is “how do I argue with this dumbass?” or “oh god we’re all screwed gently caress gently caress gently caress”, please actually read the relevant sections in this big ‘ol dumb OP I’ve made before posting. That said, I know I’ve typed far too many words to expect anyone to actually read any of this, but here they are anyways:

Index
  1. Introduction
  2. Problems
  3. Solutions (Pros/Cons)
    1. Individual Effort
    2. Reform
    3. Revolution
    4. Technological
    5. Mitigation
    6. Overpopulation
  4. Resources
    1. Debating
    2. Links, Articles
    3. Good Posts


1. Introduction

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know what climate change is. If you have been living under a rock, things like melting permafrost might have alerted you anyways. Essentially, as we add greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere, those gases trap more heat, and the world heats up. This leads to a change in climate all around the world, as well as a whole hosts of other problems. I’ve tried to summarize these problems (see section 2). Climate change is human caused, and if left unsolved as a problem, catastrophic. There is absolutely no question as to whether or not climate change is real and human caused.

This thread has several purposes. The first is to act as a source of recent information on climate change. Feel free to post articles and discuss them. The second, more important role, is to discuss solutions to climate change. I’ve tried to summarize commonly discussed solutions and the basic arguments “for” and “against” them (see section 3). Hopefully, the focus on solutions will be therapeutic for those people who feel despair about the issue, which is quite common given its overwhelming nature. Finally and inevitably, this thread is a resource for helping people debate climate change with idiots. But, before you post, check section 4 (Resources). Most deniers are very poorly informed and are continuously rehashing decade-old arguments.



2. Problems

Climate change (or global warming) has several obvious effects. For one, it causes the average global temperature goes up. Many places get hotter and drier, and we see heat waves and droughts. Duh. However, adding more energy to a system as complex as the Earth causes some less intuitive effects. It increases the intensity of storms and weather systems, meaning some places will see more devastating blizzards, and others, larger monsoons. We will also see more frequent tornadoes and more intense hurricanes. These, in turn, cause immense damage, flooding, and death.

In places where there are higher temperatures, heat waves, and droughts, crops are going to be devastated. We’ve seen a preview of that already. Pretty much all of the staple crops the world are sensitive to climate, and would have a much harder time growing in a hotter climate. And, we can’t simply just move them to new more hospitable climate zones in, say, Canada or Russia; the crops also need good soil to be grown, and the inhospitable soil in those regions isn’t going to form overnight. Starvation and malnutrition, which already affect over 800 million people, are going to become much worse.

The problems of flooding, damage, and food shortages will also be exacerbated by rising sea levels and increased ocean acidity. Higher sea levels will make storm surges more devastating, and given that 44% of the population lives near the coasts, this is a huge issue. It also means that many coastal cities will either require massive barricades or huge relocation efforts. More acidic oceans form as carbon dioxide is absorbed by the oceans from the atmosphere, which in turn hurts a lot of organisms like plankton, diatoms, and anything else with a shell. These organisms are the foundation of the food chain. Combined with problems like overfishing and pollution, devastating ocean ecosystems will create yet another shortage of food. We can already see examples of the changing ocean ecosystem.

Melting ice around the world will exacerbate the above problems of droughts and flooding. Warmer temperatures will mean that water isn’t frozen in winter and gradually released as it melts throughout the year, meaning river levels will alternate between too high and too low. Retreating glaciers and mountain snowpack will mean that there is no natural reserve of water during droughts for many areas. As before, problems not caused by climate change make this problem even more difficult to deal with. We are depleting aquifers (underground water) far faster than they are replenishing. These reserves of water are finite. Draining them also causes land subsidence, which could make river and coastal flooding worse. The melting of major ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica will, obviously, raise sea levels. This flooding is already inevitable.

Shifting and warming climates will also devastated species all over the world--species that are already suffering from habitat destruction and pollution. A new mass extinction has already begun, and the effects will only intensify as global warming progresses. In many areas, forests will become deserts. Desertification is a huge threat; if forests that are currently acting as carbon sinks are removed, burned, or die off, it will add to the climatic feedback. Another problem with the shifting climates will be diseases. Many tropical diseases like malaria will increase, possibly threatening some few hundred million more people with infection.

Finally, the above problems will reverberate throughout society. Taking away shelter and food security is a great way to create conflict and war. As coastal cities are devastated by storms and flooding, the mass displacement of huge populations will cause crises, especially if there is no plan to deal with it.

But if the above already seems like an overwhelming problem not even worth fighting since it’s so massive and intractable, keep this in mind: it can always get worse. Much worse. The longer we don’t act on climate change, the more extreme the damage and death will be. Time is of the essence, but even if we fail to act quickly (and we have), we still need to act.

The point of this thread is not to make you despair. It simply emphasizes why discussing solutions is so important. This is a problem we must solve, because the potential death and devastation is too horrid to contemplate otherwise. Doing nothing is not a neutral position: it simply reinforces the status quo.




3. Solutions
Most people aren’t going to argue for a single solution; for example, people who like to focus on individual effort also recognize that new laws are necessary. People who think revolution is the only solution also realize that there needs to be in-between steps in the meantime. People who think that technology will solve our problems realize there need to be adopters of those technology, be they individuals, governments, or corporations. Still, I think it’s useful to break down solutions into these overarching groups to make them more digestible, and to be better able to discuss each idea’s benefits and problems. These are the six most common ideas I see and hear discussed. If you think that a major or credible idea has been left out, please post it. If you think I’ve done a disservice to one of the arguments’ “for” or “against” section, please feel free to suggest changes or write your own, and I’ll try to integrate them into this post. Honestly, I know I’ve done something of a poo poo job with this section.

The goal here is to give everyone a conceptual understanding of the various solutions in fair way, since in the previous thread people liked to argue past each other, or were more concerned about landing witty stabs against a strawman than actually debating policy or even understanding each other. In practice, the “for” and “against” sections are not necessarily diametrically opposed, but more there to give readers an idea of why someone is a proponent of an solution, and also what flaws that solution has.

a. Individual Effort
An extremely common idea, especially among liberals, is that individuals changing their buying habits, installing solar panels, and boycotting certain products will create a sustainable, green, society. Another proposal is to go buy a plot of rural land and grow/make everything you need.
For:
This is the easiest action anyone can take. Buying LED lightbulbs, insulting your water-heater (or buying a more energy-efficient one) or not eating beef are extremely easy changes to make, and take minimal effort. Even more expensive or difficult changes, such as getting an energy audit, upgrading household insulation, or installing solar panels can often bring long term savings to a household. Creating a demand for energy efficient housing could drastically reduce residential energy use. Biking to work instead of driving not only saves money and gas, but is good exercise. Because these changes are easy and relatively inexpensive, they can easily become popular simply by raising awareness. With social media and the internet, the information is more attainable than ever, and raising awareness is something anyone can do.

Growing food in your garden is also easy, and saves money and prevents the CO2 needed to create and ship bulk crops and meats. The practice can be expanded in rural areas; individual, sustainable farming practices and sustainable lifestyles will shift society away from a carbon intensive one.

Against:
Buying “green,” installing solar panels, renovating your house (if you even own it; the average person doesn’t), getting an energy audit, replacing all your windows, or buying a farm somewhere to live off the land takes one extremely important resource: money. The upfront cost is simply unobtainable for most people. Give that income inequality is at a historic high in the US, this is a ridiculous proposition even for America. Billions of people all over the world are mired in poverty, and the prospect of them “going green” is utterly laughable. Besides that, the effects of individuals are limited. Even if residential energy was able to become completely carbon-free, that only accounts for about a fourth of all energy use in the US. Commercial and industrial carbon is still carbon, and no individual choice will affect the massive incentives these companies have to keep on cheap, carbon-intensive fossil fuels. Boycotting these companies is not a solution. Coca-Cola hired paramilitary thugs to murder unionists. Hershey’s gets their cocoa from huge amounts of child labor. BP wrecked the Gulf ecosystem with their spill. Walmart abuses its labor force and devastates towns across the country. None of these companies face any sort of meaningful threat to their finances through boycott; I cannot name a single effective boycott of any multinational corporation, no matter how horrendous their atrocities.

Building your own farm is a meaningless gesture. For one, again, it’s out of reach of the average person. It also cannot deal with the effects of climate change. Droughts, floods, heat waves, and storms are going to affect all farms, no matter how organic they are. Besides, any solution to climate change needs to be one the seven billion people on this planet can participate in. Not everyone can go make an organic farm in north Canada, and any response that excludes the vast majority of the global population is a morally reprehensible position.

Even the most hardcore individualist agrees that individual effort and mere awareness will never be enough, so let us move to the next common proposition.

b. Reform
For:
This is a problem we need to fix now, so any solutions need to be ones that can be done immediately. We can’t wait for social media to make self-installing solar panels a craze, nor can we wait for revolution to change the system before acting. Through elections, lobbying, and action, we need to push for carbon taxes, strict regulations on emissions, and other laws that will start fighting climate change. The best places to take action are in primaries, or working inside the Democratic party (the Republicans being rather hopeless). Environmentalist groups can act as a place for people to unify for dedicated campaigning and pressuring candidates.

Against:
Any attempt to reform our current system will largely be wasted fighting the system that caused this crisis in the first place. The decisions of politicians are driven almost exclusively by the economic elite, and in our post-Citizen’s United world of unlimited corporate donations, unrestrained lobbying, and the domination of government by two parties that both believe in private industry, markets, and unchecked capitalism, there are no meaningful reforms that are going to happen. Also, I hear other countries aren’t doing so great either. For example, Germany recently is decommissioning nuclear plants, and replacing it with coal.

There is simply no political will for climate reforms--and by that, I mean politicians won’t do it. Things like taxing the rich and many regulations have overwhelming popular support in polls, but haven’t happened. And what have environmentalist groups done? Not much. As long as they pour their limited resources into reform, they have wasted their time bashing themselves against an indomitable wall of money. Many groups, then, have turned to the local level of politics. However, state legislatures and congress will often pass laws specifically to forbid local communities from regulating corporations or emissions. Trade agreements also mean that international bodies will strike down local laws that create regulations or green job programs, and upcoming trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership only look like they will further undermine the autonomy of countries, states, and local communities to act.

Finally, what basis is there for a reform movement to grow? Most people are concerned with day-to-day problems, like making next month’s rent, having a job, and not being poor as hell. Carbon taxes do nothing to stop rising inequality in the United States, never mind the globe. A slow, steady reform policy will take more people, money, and organization than will ever occur under current governments and systems. Internationally, the non-binding emissions goals that governments give lip service to, but are free to ignore, are insufficient too.

c. Revolution
Pros:
The root of climate change is in capitalism. Capitalism as a system demands unlimited growth, constant consumerism, and values profit over everything else, including human life and the environment. Climate change and all the environmentally destructive problems are a symptom of it, but as we all know, it causes plenty of other problems too, including global poverty. A capitalist system by definition ensures that profit and power continue to be in the hands a few, and we have seen the billionaires and elite class grind to a halt any and all meaningful change that could address global warming.

Therefore, the only way to truly stop climate change is to overthrow the system that created it. This means creating mass movements that can challenge the systems of power, and fighting for small gains that can be used to grow. Movements to stop the Keystone XL, Fight for 15, Black Lives Matter, and countless local movements are emerging all around the United States (and others are emerging around the world). These movements are the seeds upon which a larger anti-capitalist movement can grow, as we can see capital strongly tied to racism (with for-profit prisons, police, the war on drugs, etc.), wage suppression (obviously), and environmental destruction (fossil fuel companies). Each small victory allows larger victories, and revolution can happen in a surprisingly small amount of time when a tipping point is reached (such as in Tunisia, or historically, Russia).

This would allow the full force of the United States economy (and any other country that joined in) to fully focus on climate change, which at this point, is really the only thing that could make a meaningful difference.

Cons:
Obviously, changing the entire global economic system (or a large enough portion of it to matter) is an absurdly difficult task. This involves taking on all the billionaires, corporations, and governments of the world. The economic and political power of the current capitalist system is orders of magnitude greater than any current organization or movement, and even the most powerful mass movements of the past were defeated. Even successful socialist revolutions collapsed into totalitarianism or some hybrid of dictatorship and capitalism fairly quickly, as the USSR and China show. Any modern revolution would have to contest with US imperialism, as revolutions have in the past. Chili saw Allende assassinated by a CIA backed coup, and even mere industry nationalization efforts saw horrific retaliation, such as in Iran. In the past, the US has used COINTELPRO to derail movements through infiltration, spying, psychological warfare, legal harassment, illegal force, and even assassination. Any modern movement goes up against an even more powerful security apparatus, capable on spying on, well, pretty much everyone. Modern revolutions in Egypt and Syria haven’t gone too well. And that’s just the government. Corporations will fight with all their power to undermine any mass movement through any means, and socialism as a word has already been attacked for several decades.

d. Technological
For:
The technologies of today were almost unimaginable a hundred years ago. We cannot predict where technology will advance, but given how it has solved past problems, we can be comfortable in knowing that something will solve our problems. For crops, GMOs can be created that are heat and drought resistant, and can do more with bad soil. Renewable energy continues to advance. Novel advances in chemistry could make fixing nitrogen a less energy intensive proposition, and advances in manufacturing efficiency could make our energy problems a thing of the past. Climate change is slow enough that we will have a solution for its problems before it becomes intractable.

Against:
Of course, if we could fuel the world through the magic of wishful thinking, we wouldn’t be facing the crisis in the first place. Technological advances may help supplement any of the other solutions, but thinking that technology alone can solve climate change is an infantile prayer at best. Hedging on fusion power is spinning a roulette wheel. Fission power in any form will need reforms to become viable. Solar, wind, and efficiency technologies are incremental. GMOs can only modify crops so much before the simple facts of no water and bad soil become impossible to deal with.

e. Adaptation and Mitigation
For:
What can we do to stop climate change? In short, nothing. Climate change is already inevitable. We are locked into several degrees of warming already, and by the time we act, it may be several more. Therefore we should focus on mitigating its effects. Improving dikes, controlling rivers, upgrading storm barriers, and modifying agriculture are going to do more good than the expensive project that would be “stopping global warming.”

Against:
As with technology, adaptation and mitigation will no doubt be necessary; we’re already locked into about 2 degrees Celsius of warming, and our cities are insufficiently prepared for existing disasters, never mind future ones. As with other solutions, a mitigation only strategy with no other changes would be catastrophic. The Earth will continue to warm if we don’t eliminate our carbon emissions, and all of the problems we try to mitigate will continue to grow in scope and scale until mitigation is impossible. Mitigation under the current system also damns the poorest people and countries in the world--people, who, coincidentally, did the least to contribute to the problem and will be the hardest hit by it. There also is the problem, as with all of these solutions, of actually convincing politicians to act. If they haven’t done anything for our current disasters, why should we expect them to plan for future ones?

f. Overpopulation
For:
The Earth has a finite carrying capacity. Each person consumes energy and resources, so the more people we have, the more energy and resources we use. Seven billion people and growing is too many, and only through population reduction can we stop climate change. Population control laws like China’s are rather draconian; there are better ways to stop growth. Empowering and educating women, as well as giving people the means to and choice to use birth control has proven to be extremely effective at lowering birth rates, and it has the side benefit of helping dismantle some of the horrendous sexism across the globe. Social programs that support families (like Social Security or welfare) also mean that families don’t need to have lots of kids for security or money. Through these social programs, we can encourage smaller families

Against
In practice, population control is bad. When people talk about reducing birth rates, they generally are talking about a third world country, not themselves, thus exposing any population control movement as racist and classist. We can see in the US and all over Europe racists waving signs and ranting about some immigrating group. Cries of ‘We’re full!’ accompany all sorts of other racial abuse. In previous incarnations, the idea of population control spurred on the eugenics movement.

Setting aside that criticism, there’s a strong argument to be made that if everyone adopted the US’s consumption, we would indeed have too many people on the planet. First, a disproportionate amount of consumption in the US is done by the economic elites, which is a problem stemming from economic inequality, not population. Second, the consumerist aspect of the United States is not what gives it a high living standard. per capita energy usage is not necessarily coupled with living standard. Buying way too much poo poo at malls is a cultural idea, not an essential quality of life. There is enough food to feed everyone on the planet now; the problem is one of distribution, not production. There’s also plenty of ways to give people carbon-free energy for a high living standard, and if we focus on giving people necessities like housing, education, and good medical care, we have plenty for everyone there too. Meaningful social interactions, friends, autonomy, purpose, and a stress-free life make people happy, not infinitely purchasing crap. With that in mind, we should note Earth’s carrying capacity has changed in the past because of us; it can certainly do so again. We must also note that any humane population reduction would take too long to address climate change; we need to stop climate change now, not a few generations later. Our focus should not be on population, but on fighting a system based on infinite growth, consumption, oligarchy, and oppression.

Note to idiots: Note that “oh no, we might accidentally wipe out the human species by not breeding!” is not part of the above argument because it’s really really really stupid and if you feel the need to post anything related to it, don’t.


(Hottest years and coldest years).


4. Resources

a. Debating
Basics
One good thing to ask first is: Is there anything I can say to change your mind? If the answer is “no,” don’t bother engaging with the denier. If they claim to be open minded, you want to avoid reinforcing their false beliefs and avoid the backfire effect. An effective debunking should have:
  • Core facts—a refutation should emphasize the facts, not the myth. Present only key facts to avoid an Overkill Backfire Effect (yes, this means you might have to know some poo poo about climate change);
  • Explicit warnings—before any mention of a myth, text or visual cues should warn that the upcoming information is false;
  • Alternative explanation—any gaps left by the debunking need to be filled. This may be achieved by providing an alternative causal explanation for why the myth is wrong and, optionally, why the misinformers promoted the myth in the first place;
  • Graphics – core facts should be displayed graphically if possible.

(This is all taken from the Debunking Handbook, linked below)
That’s all very general though. Below are some lines of thought you might consider.

Topics
“It’s fake.”
The evidence for climate change is overwhelming, and even most deniers are shifting away from this stance. For the people that still adamantly refuse to agree with reality, try asking them why they think over 97% of climate scientists say global warming is happening. If they say it’s because there’s money in it, ask them why more scientists, then, aren’t taking the 6-figure salaries a lot of oil companies are paying their shills (denying climate change is a $[link] industry). It also might be a good time to explain how most climate scientists will openly talk about how they really want climate change to be fake, because they know exactly how awful it’s going to be, or to educate them on how grants and the scientific process works. You can also point out the recent trend of record setting global temperatures and extreme weather (the extreme weather we’ve been having is statistically more likely to happen in a warming world). Since that’s something they’ve probably directly observed and lived through, it may be more relatable and therefore effective.

“Well, it’s real, but it’s not human caused (or) it’s not that bad.”
These are the newer talking points, though they, like straight denial, are an excuse by deniers to maintain inaction. Deniers will focus heavily on the “hiatus” on increasing temperatures as evidence that climate change has either stopped or will be slow enough to be a non-issue. Here, it again may be useful to draw attention to recent extreme weather events; these are tangible things that have happened because of climate change (the amount and intensity of many events really just can’t be explained without it). You also can fall back on the opinions of experts: why aren’t climate scientists convinced it won’t be that bad? The “hiatus” (it’s not really a thing is essentially a combination of natural variation and a lot of heat getting trapped in the oceans; the climate models are, in fact, not wrong. Denier climate models, on the other hand, are extremely wrong. If a denier throws out a lot of jargon to confuse you, it might be helpful to ask them what it means. A lot of times, they don’t know either.

“This respected expert at [fancy university] said…”
Generally, there’s a select few “experts” on why climate change is totally fake/not a big deal that deniers will continually reference. Try asking them how they selected the expert they’re referencing, as opposed to say, anyone else. The answer? They cherry-picked someone who they already agree with. Second, the “expert” is often from a completely different scientific field, or has a doctorate that’s not even in science. Emphasizing the importance of evidence may be helpful here, since the narrative deniers will try to create is one of their dude being the Galileo underdog hero. While one can look back and see how, say, proponents of plate tectonics were laughed at right up until proven right, they were redeemed because the weight of evidence was in their favor. Today, the weight of evidence for anthropogenic climate change is utterly overwhelming; the scenarios are not comparable.

Tactics
Untested, people tend to assume they are experts on subjects they know nothing about. Being able to parrot inane talking points from denier sites likely only increases this delusion. Ask questions of deniers. Get them to explain, in detail, how the things they’re talking about work. Test their knowledge of facts and how climate scientists come to the conclusions they do. If they can’t explain how scientists come up with climate models, why so many of them believe in climate change and IPCC AR-5 says in no uncertain terms that climate change is real and will cause devastating problems if left unchecked, it might cause them to reassess their understanding, which might cause them to change their views. Being able to do this means you need to have a decent understanding of various facts, though, so make sure not to neglect your own education.

While conservatives are both stereotypically and statistically deniers, one of the problems they have with climate change is that the solutions for it directly conflict with their world view. Appealing to their own self-interest and ideals might work. The effects of climate change will impact their family and their kids. The power of corporations negatively impacts their freedom, and the monopolies that oil and coal companies have on energy restrict their freedom of choice and any benefits markets may provide. The most common concern conservatives have is economic: they want good jobs. Renovating the infrastructure of the entire country would create millions of jobs, since there would be so much work to do.

Liberals tend to have their own problems with global warming. Their focus on reform ignores the problems with our current system, leading them to tone down rhetoric and action to the point of utter ineffectiveness. This manifests itself in an embrace of politicians who admit climate change is real, even if they don’t actually do anything about it, half-hearted “reasonable” policies, and confining themselves to “serious people” who clearly don’t take the catastrophic effects of climate change seriously. In the economic realm, the fact that long lines of products are listed as “green” or “energy efficient” doesn’t actually mean they are, nor can rampant consumerism stop problems with overconsumption of resources and energy.


(Example: This .gif compares mainstream science predictions with the predictions of the "expert" deniers)


b. Links
Resources
http://www.ipcc.ch/index.htm - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Includes all the scientific evidence you need. The Summary for Policymakers in each section is especially useful. Also a great source of visual aids like graphs and maps.

http://www.withouthotair.com/ - Without Hot Air
This is a free online book that sets aside rhetoric and actually talks about the numbers involved in different energy alternatives. This is a great reference for hard numbers and data.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ - Skeptical Science
This site is great for covering common denier talking points and myths about climate change. Most of these arguments haven’t changed at all, so even if an argument is supposedly “new,” this site likely has a refutation. It also has its own links to follow, and it’s a great place to start if you don’t know a lot about climate science.
An especially useful link they have is the Debunking Handbook, which goes over how to argue if you want to successfully change someone’s mind on a misconception. This is a great resource.

http://www.carbontax.org/services/where-carbon-is-taxed/ - Carbon Tax Center
As the site name implies, this is a pro-carbon tax site with information about carbon taxes and their effects. I’ve barely read it.

Articles
Capitalism vs. the Climate
Naomi Klein tackles why conservatives are so adamant at denying climate change, and why the liberal response is insufficiently radical. Her book This Changes Everything has a broader scope and also has great information.

2015 is Earth's warmest year by widest margin on record
2015 shattered warming records, with December being an especially hot month. This also goes into detail.
This, of course, will be largely ignored or hand-waved away by deniers and delayers who's pet ideology is threatened by the facts of climate change. Years later, it might be used as 1998 was--an anomalously hot year they can compare future years to in order to show the slow rise of global temperatures as an excuse for inaction.

Paris climate deal offers flame of hope, says UN official
This is just one of many articles on the Paris agreement, where 195 countries committed to keeping global warming below 2C. Is this agreement a good thing? Sure. It certainly doesn't go far enough. It's also way too late--we're probably past 2C of warming already with our current carbon levels--but it still gives people something to build off of. Google around to find plenty of commentary on it.

NOAA and NASA Team Up to Investigate Strong El Niño
Expect the usual effects of an El Niño. The good news is that scientists are well prepared to study the effects on a scope not previously done before.

Over half the world’s population suffers from ‘severe’ water scarcity, scientists say (Scientific article: Four billion people facing severe water scarcity)
A recent article highlighting the present state of water scarcity. Balancing agricultural demand with keeping ecosystems healthy and people fed will increasingly be a challenge, and it's important to know just how many people are vulnerable in this. (Thanks Hello Sailor).

Australia Cuts 110 Climate Scientist Jobs - This loss will negatively affect our progress on understanding of the climate of the entire southern hemisphere. This is a prime example of how seriously most politicians are taking things right now. (Thanks Evil Greven)

Giant holes found in Siberia could be signs of a ticking climate 'time bomb'
Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry (refers to this paper on CH4 emissions)
Two articles on methane's effect on climate change. Methane hydrates in Siberia and other permafrost areas could cause a massive spike in atmospheric methane. Meanwhile, how much methane countries have been releasing has probably been drastically underestimated, and because methane is such a powerful greenhouse gas, we're probably a lot worse off than we thought. These are good articles for debunking the idea that natural gas/fracking is a good idea.
(Thanks CheeseSpawn)

Research Papers
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024 - Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature - A paper analyzing the scientific consensus on climate change. If you ever need a source for "97% of scientists agree with climate change", here it is.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/media/erl460291datafile.txt - This is the papers analyzed by the above paper. If you ever wanted to look directly for the source of a claim, or are just interested in finding relevant climate research, this is a great resource.
(Thanks totalnewbie and rivetz)


c. Good Posts
Feel free to propose additional links and articles to add to this list.

Also please propose pictures that you think would make the OP look nicer since right now it’s a big text wall. I’m going to continue to update the OP, and hopefully this new thread will have a little less rehashing and dumb bickering than the last (right).


So what is to be done?

As the above makes clear, no single idea is sufficient. In order to stop climate change, we need:
  • Popular support
  • Immediate reforms
  • Systemic, economic change (to address over-consumption, infinite growth, and the profit motive)
  • To empower people to act (more democracy, less oligarchy)
  • To address the daily needs of people
  • To fight the power of the super-rich and corporations
  • To move to an emission-free world as rapidly as possible
  • Prepare to adapt to and mitigate the damage already done
  • Organized, educated people willing to engage in politics and direct action

Those are the broad strokes, at least. Any solution we advocate for should contain these. And so, there is a place for all of the above solutions to various degrees.

The thing we can do right now, is get active.

Uranium Phoenix fucked around with this message at 02:35 on May 10, 2016

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Uranium Phoenix
Jun 20, 2007

Boom.

To kick things off and set the tone, I'll start with local stuff I've been part of.

Up in Bellingham, the Cherry point coal terminal has been an object of contention. Environmental and activist groups have been rallying around the issue, and are slowly fighting back against it. It's also brought together these activists and the Lummi Nation, linking the struggle for environmental justice to justice for them. It's been a slow fight evolving over the course of several years now, but one that has brought together a lot of people and has potential to grow into something bigger.

Another issue is the waterfront redevelopment, where labor and greens have been working to get a green jobs program, with a guarantee of all new jobs being at a living wage, and keeping it open to the community (instead of becoming a fenced off rich people resort, which is what some assholes want). The group I'm part of has been trying to build for more actions, and really pushing for a green jobs program, and other branches are have helped take actions down in Seattle with symbolic things like block the Shell rig or some of the oil and coal trains going north.

What groups are other people a part of? What actions are you taking, or looking to take locally?

Uranium Phoenix fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Nov 7, 2015

Junkyard Poodle
May 6, 2011


What does the waterfront development have to do with climate change?

Honj Steak
May 31, 2013

Hi there.
Top OP, thanks!

eNeMeE
Nov 26, 2012

Colonel Cancer
Sep 26, 2015

Tune into the fireplace channel, you absolute buffoon
I've insulted my water heater and so far it's just giving me silent treatment. Am I helping?

Uranium Phoenix
Jun 20, 2007

Boom.

Junkyard Poodle posted:

What does the waterfront development have to do with climate change?

It doesn't, not directly. It got left a polluted mess by Georga-Pacific, meaning a lot of the local environmental groups and community groups have been talking about it for some time. That, and the push for living wage jobs isn't directly about stopping carbon emissions. The point is it doesn't have to be--yet. It's an opportunity for a small but important victory to be achieved by uniting community, labor, and environmental groups. A success there would be empowering, and could lead to future successes. If we're all able to get a say on what happens at the waterfront (currently, the city council would rather people not), it could lead to a solar energy project, or a green jobs program that starts at the waterfront and moves to other parts of the city, or to new officials on the city or county council and a political shift that leads to elected officials who care more about sustainability, mass transit, stopping the coal trains, etc.

The point is that stopping climate change doesn't have to start with international policy, or widespread federal action that comes from an environmentally focused congress (because good luck with that). You can start to fight climate change on a local level by helping labor groups, green groups, and other like-minded folks grow in number, influence, and power. Enough of that happening around the country can start to lead to larger movements, larger victories, and eventually start to lead to the massive change we do need to stop climate change.

Edit:

Colonel Cancer posted:

I've insulted my water heater and so far it's just giving me silent treatment. Am I helping?
Yes. Don't let that fucker talk back to you.

Next, get your neighbors to start cussing out their water heaters. That's how it starts!

Uranium Phoenix fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Nov 8, 2015

Junkyard Poodle
May 6, 2011


Makes sense, but is a solar project really one of the goals for the waterfront? I'm for the movement to renewables/sustainability, but Bellingham is one of the cloudiest places in the US.

Evil_Greven
Feb 20, 2007

Whadda I got to,
whadda I got to do
to wake ya up?

To shake ya up,
to break the structure up!?
For fun, here's some old info that I stumbled upon this weekend regarding climate change:
White House Memo 17 September 1969
President's Science Advisory Committee report, 1965

The first led me to the second, which has a bunch of neat info like projecting 25% increase in CO2 levels by 2000 (from 1950 baseline) and a corresponding increase of 0.6°C to 4.0°C at the surface... actual increase was a bit over 32% and right at 0.6°C.

Nixon hosed us again. Well, him and LBJ.

Evil_Greven fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Nov 8, 2015

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug
Nukes, nukes, and more nukes.

And some Solar and wind sprinkled around for good measure.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

CommieGIR posted:

Nukes, nukes, and more nukes.

And some Solar and wind sprinkled around for good measure.

A time machine to funnel fat stacks of cash into fusion research ca. 1975.

GulMadred
Oct 20, 2005

I don't understand how you can be so mistaken.

blowfish posted:

A time machine to funnel fat stacks of cash into fusion research ca. 1975.
Why?

Commercial deployment of fusion tech will be subject to many of the challenges faced by fission plants: high capital costs, arduous permitting and inspections processes, infeasibility of private-sector insurance coverage, management+disposal of radioactive wastes, and nuclear weapons proliferation risk. It would enjoy a political and popular-opinion advantage over fission power, but public sentiment could always turn against it (due to cronyism in the allotment of research grants, public-financed plants going badly overbudget, tritium leaks at research facilities, persistent inability to achieve breakeven after spending hundreds of billions of taxpayers dollars, or whatever). I doubt that the first-generation commercial plants would be cost-competitive with natgas, unless your time machine can somehow convince Congress to pass a carbon tax.

So... what do we acually gain by accelerating fusion research in this hypothetical scenario? Aside from nerdboners.

Also - please remember that people are stupid. The Sierra Club has been pre-emptively opposed to fusion power since 1986.

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug

GulMadred posted:

Why?

Commercial deployment of fusion tech will be subject to many of the challenges faced by fission plants: high capital costs, arduous permitting and inspections processes, infeasibility of private-sector insurance coverage, management+disposal of radioactive wastes, and nuclear weapons proliferation risk. It would enjoy a political and popular-opinion advantage over fission power, but public sentiment could always turn against it (due to cronyism in the allotment of research grants, public-financed plants going badly overbudget, tritium leaks at research facilities, persistent inability to achieve breakeven after spending hundreds of billions of taxpayers dollars, or whatever). I doubt that the first-generation commercial plants would be cost-competitive with natgas, unless your time machine can somehow convince Congress to pass a carbon tax.

So... what do we acually gain by accelerating fusion research in this hypothetical scenario? Aside from nerdboners.

Also - please remember that people are stupid. The Sierra Club has been pre-emptively opposed to fusion power since 1986.

The Sierra club is hilarious, because its mostly a bunch of rich environmentalist woo peddlers who want everyone to return to nature.

Squalid
Nov 4, 2008

Sierra Club does a lot of good work in the realm of protecting endangered species, and they've been instrumental in lot of important campaigns like those against the xl pipeline. Which of course is why it's so frustrating seeing them take counter-productive positions on issues like nuclear power :sigh:

Yoshi Wins
Jul 14, 2013

Thank you for making this thread. The links in the OP look helpful at first glance, and I'll be reviewing it more closely. I have experienced some existential despair in the past about the mounting climate change and sustainability problems that we face, and it is helpful to have a resource that makes action feel more feasible. I just wanted to express my appreciation for that.

Bastard Tetris
Apr 27, 2005

L-Shaped


Nap Ghost
This is an excellent OP. Climate change is a massive problem that requires complex and integrated solutions, and you did a great job at highlighting the complexity in solutions. Thanks for posting.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

GulMadred posted:

Commercial deployment of fusion tech will be subject to many of the challenges faced by fission plants: high capital costs, arduous permitting and inspections processes, infeasibility of private-sector insurance coverage, management+disposal of radioactive wastes, and nuclear weapons proliferation risk. It would enjoy a political and popular-opinion advantage over fission power, but public sentiment could always turn against it (due to cronyism in the allotment of research grants, public-financed plants going badly overbudget, tritium leaks at research facilities, persistent inability to achieve breakeven after spending hundreds of billions of taxpayers dollars, or whatever). I doubt that the first-generation commercial plants would be cost-competitive with natgas, unless your time machine can somehow convince Congress to pass a carbon tax.

Fusion funding has actually been at remarkably low levels. "We will have fusion power within a generation" assumed a Apollo-style cold war money burning spree.

adding non-US spending brings this up to the "fusion never" line or thereabouts

Spending a couple ten billion spread over 60 years instead is super inefficient (at some point you're just paying fusion researchers to go in circles with occasional minimally improved experiments), nobody really expected the existing bunch of prototypes on a shoe string budget to achieve breakeven (also lol national ignition facility lol) and it's a wonder that we even have ITER/Wendelstein 7-x in construction and a semi-coherent plan to build DEMO afterwards.

quote:

So... what do we acually gain by accelerating fusion research in this hypothetical scenario? Aside from nerdboners.
Having commercial scale nuclear reactors that are more efficient, produce minimal waste (basically only irradiated wall panels), run on functionally unlimited fuel we don't have to mine, and cannot have meltdowns ever (laffo who cares about tritium? Current nukes are licensed to emit it into the atmosphere already yet all people care about is accidents and rusty casks) now instead of in 2075.

quote:

Also - please remember that people are stupid. The Sierra Club has been pre-emptively opposed to fusion power since 1986.

Yeah, but people who think ~unnatural~ is a meaningful criticism are a lost cause anyway.

suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Nov 8, 2015

Twerkteam Pizza
Sep 26, 2015

Grimey Drawer
What is to be done seems to be a rally cry of Lenin there OP

Also you seem to think privatization is a bad thing you commie

Junkyard Poodle
May 6, 2011


Who funds icecap.us?

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib

CommieGIR posted:

Nukes, nukes, and more nukes.

And some Solar and wind sprinkled around for good measure.

Extending the use of nuclear power significantly is not practical on a near-future timescale without the kind of massive effort and expenditure you could also use for poo poo like geoengineering, global modernization of all industrial equipment, and so on.

Arkane
Dec 19, 2006

by R. Guyovich
The OP is remarkably more alarmist than the IPCC,, and diverges significantly from the science on issues like drought, flooding, hurricanes, and tornadoes. You state things as certainties that may not happen. Here is AR5 on what we've observed on extreme weather:

quote:

“Overall, the most robust global changes in climate extremes are seen in measures of daily temperature, including to some extent, heat waves. Precipitation extremes also appear to be increasing, but there is large spatial variability"
"There is limited evidence of changes in extremes associated with other climate variables since the mid-20th century”

“Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin”

“In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale”

“In summary, there is low confidence in observed trends in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms because of historical data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems”

“In summary, the current assessment concludes that there is not enough evidence at present to suggest more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century due to lack of direct observations, geographical inconsistencies in the trends, and dependencies of inferred trends on the index choice. Based on updated studies, AR4 conclusions regarding global increasing trends in drought since the 1970s were probably overstated. However, it is likely that the frequency and intensity of drought has increased in the Mediterranean and West Africa and decreased in central North America and north-west Australia since 1950”

“In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low”

As far as global hunger...to repeat from the last thread, food is not trending to be a problem in the foreseeable future: humanity is increasing food production faster than the human population is growing (google food production per capita), and human population will be leveling off at around 9 billion over the next 40 or so years, before it starts declining. Contrary to your point that starvation is going to "worse," we're well on our way to solving global hunger over the next couple of decades as Africa & the middle east modernize (and hopefully become more peaceful).

And on the topic of Greenland and Antarctica melting, you gloss over the fact that these are very slow processes, and the melting of these bodies of ice even under extreme temperature increases would take hundreds or thousands of years. Sea levels are rising far too slowly for it to have an outsized impact on coastal cities anytime in the next few decades at least, if not longer.

Finally, temperature is increasing far less than the climate models predicted. This should give pause to someone painting too alarmist of a picture about the future.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!
^no climate thread is complete without an Arkane post :thumbsup:

Effectronica posted:

Extending the use of nuclear power significantly is not practical on a near-future timescale without the kind of massive effort and expenditure you could also use for poo poo like geoengineering, global modernization of all industrial equipment, and so on.

Well, even now before large scale storage becomes crucial renewables have turned out to be a similarly massive effort, though distributed across a larger number of projects. See e.g. Germany: surrounded by a bunch of low-renewable electricity grids to buffer out electricity supply fluctuations allowing us to pretend storage won't be a thing, but already spending the equivalent of two to three nuclear reactor builds per year to make things work. Target cost of the Energiewende is around €500bn, more than enough for Full Nuclearisation Now.

Oh, by the way, did I mention my cuntry has hamstrung itself intentionally by axing all funding for nuclear fission research not primarily targeted at waste storage, completely turning the scientific community in the field upside down? Even other countries doing a nuclear exit like Belgium haven't been that braindead.

e: in practice, given that it's the EU and Areva Must Be Subsidised (instead of, say, General Electric or Hitachi), we would of course end up with a fuckton of French Surrender Reactors EPRs aka the biggest cost overrun generator known to man. However, even then it would be pretty hard to crack €12bn a pop and we could still build the 40 required to completely nuclearise the power grid.

suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 11:26 on Nov 9, 2015

Uranium Phoenix
Jun 20, 2007

Boom.

For those of you not familiar, Arkane is a usual fixture in climate threads. He usually comes in, posts about how climate change really isn't all that bad (using either cherry-picked data, misrepresentations, or questionable sources), and then when called out, usually disappears into back into the shadowy aether from whence he sprang. This is a pretty common tactic among deniers; many have shifted away from actually saying that climate change isn't real, and instead attempt to point out that, fine, it's real, but it's not that bad so we don't have to do anything.

Arkane posted:

The OP is remarkably more alarmist than the IPCC,, and diverges significantly from the science on issues like drought, flooding, hurricanes, and tornadoes. You state things as certainties that may not happen. Here is AR5 on what we've observed on extreme weather:
In this case, Arkane is using cherry-picked quotes, and attacking a position I didn't take. Notice the OP talks about future climate impacts. However, Arkane is taking the current observed climate impacts, pointing out that they haven't happened (many of which are expected by 2050 or 2100, so of course we haven't seen them yet). Here is what the AR5 report says about predicted impacts on storms and agriculture:

AR5 Page 15-16 posted:

Until mid-century, projected climate change will impact human health mainly by exacerbating health problems that already exist (very high confidence). Throughout the 21st century, climate change is expected to lead to increases in ill-health in many regions and especially in developing countries with low income, as compared to a baseline without climate change (high confidence). By 2100 for RCP8.5, the combination of high temperature and humidity in some areas for parts of the year is expected to compromise common human activities, including growing food and working outdoors (high confidence). {2.3.2}

In urban areas climate change is projected to increase risks for people, assets, economies and ecosystems, including risks from heat stress, storms and extreme precipitation, inland and coastal flooding, landslides, air pollution, drought, water scarcity, sea level rise and storm surges (very high confidence). These risks are amplified for those lacking essential infrastructure and services or living in exposed areas. {2.3.2}

Rural areas are expected to experience major impacts on water availability and supply, food security, infrastructure and agricultural incomes, including shifts in the production areas of food and non-food crops around the world (high confidence). {2.3.2}
Bolding mine. To go into detail in one area, plenty of work has been done on the increasing intensity of hurricanes (note that I didn't actually claim that hurricanes would increase in frequency):

Elsner 2008, Nature posted:

Atlantic tropical cyclones are getting stronger on average, with a 30-year trend that has been related to an increase in ocean temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean and elsewhere... We find significant upward trends for wind speed quantiles above the 70th percentile, with trends as high as 0.3 +/- 0.09 m s-1 yr-1 (s.e.) for the strongest cyclones. We note separate upward trends in the estimated lifetime-maximum wind speeds of the very strongest tropical cyclones (99th percentile) over each ocean basin, with the largest increase at this quantile occurring over the North Atlantic, although not all basins show statistically significant increases. Our results are qualitatively consistent with the hypothesis that as the seas warm, the ocean has more energy to convert to tropical cyclone wind.

Nature Geoscience review posted:

...However, future projections based on theory and high-resolution dynamical models consistently indicate that greenhouse warming will cause the globally averaged intensity of tropical cyclones to shift towards stronger storms, with intensity increases of 2–11% by 2100. Existing modelling studies also consistently project decreases in the globally averaged frequency of tropical cyclones, by 6–34%. Balanced against this, higher resolution modelling studies typically project substantial increases in the frequency of the most intense cyclones, and increases of the order of 20% in the precipitation rate within 100 km of the storm centre
For those of you interested, here's a link to the skeptical science post on hurricanes.

As you can see, Arkane misrepresented the position I was taking, cherry-picked irrelevant quotes from a reputable source, and then snuck in a completely unsourced and untrue quote ("Finally, temperature is increasing far less than the climate models predicted") to top things off. If anyone wants clarification or a more detailed rebuttal on any of his other claims, let me know.

---------------------------------------------------------

Base Camp Blanket posted:

Thank you for making this thread. The links in the OP look helpful at first glance, and I'll be reviewing it more closely. I have experienced some existential despair in the past about the mounting climate change and sustainability problems that we face, and it is helpful to have a resource that makes action feel more feasible. I just wanted to express my appreciation for that.

Bastard Tetris posted:

This is an excellent OP. Climate change is a massive problem that requires complex and integrated solutions, and you did a great job at highlighting the complexity in solutions. Thanks for posting.
Thanks.

blowfish posted:

Yeah, but people who think ~unnatural~ is a meaningful criticism are a lost cause anyway.
The best part is, nuclear power is super natural. Setting aside the giant fusion reactor that we orbit (and the hundreds of billions of fusion reactors in our night sky), a natural fission reactor was discovered in Africa. The core of the earth is partially heated by radioactive decay of uranium and thorium!

Nuclear power has an amazing potential to help solve this crisis, but as with all the solutions, there are political and economic barriers that mean people will have to fight to make it happen. Fortunately, it is possible to convince many environmentalists that nuclear is good, but it does take some doing.


Junkyard Poodle posted:

Makes sense, but is a solar project really one of the goals for the waterfront? I'm for the movement to renewables/sustainability, but Bellingham is one of the cloudiest places in the US.
"Goals" is a strong word to use at this point. It's been tossed around, but only as a vague idea. The entire waterfront debacle has been going on for years, and will likely continue to go on for years, though recently it's been a bigger topic of discussion.

Arglebargle III
Feb 21, 2006

Is anyone at all annoyed that ExxonMobile's internal scientists predicted 3 degrees Centigrade of warming in 1978, before the company launched a media machine designed to deny climate change? Internal memos said something like "If the average person doesn't know what to think about warming, that's a victory." link

Arglebargle III
Feb 21, 2006

The coming damage is so bad people don't believe you when you say things like "we'll have to build walls around New York and London to keep the sea out" or "we don't know if fish will survive in numbers large enough to support a fishing industry" so I wonder how to get through to people. It seems like nobody can believe what's happening in California even as it happens. They'll happily tell you about growing wineries in Vermont, Wisconsin and Minnesota but the obvious corollaries just run into a mental wall. You get no reaction.

Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007

Witchfinder General

Does anyone have a investigative or report regarding the impact of a reduction in population on Global Warming? For example, did China's one child policy mitigate effects and would a similar antinatalist program help with global warming?

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug

Effectronica posted:

Extending the use of nuclear power significantly is not practical on a near-future timescale without the kind of massive effort and expenditure you could also use for poo poo like geoengineering, global modernization of all industrial equipment, and so on.

We're going to spend triple that with renewable grids anyways, nuclear is starting to look cheaper.

But no, nuclear we at least have even certified Gen III plant designs, geoengineering is still largely a big 'If'. And I cannot even imagine the cost of a global industrial modernization, but I guarantee it far outpaces the cost of a nuclear buildout.

Nice piece of fish
Jan 29, 2008

Ultra Carp

Uranium Phoenix posted:

If anyone wants clarification or a more detailed rebuttal on any of his other claims, let me know.

Thanks for a great post, but I really would rather see Arkane ignored and ridiculed as much as possible as even rebutting his disingenuous bullshit is lending some sort of credibility to one if the biggest and most malicious liars I have ever seen. As a two-second google search and a quick read can refute most of the stuff he says, I'd rather some time be spent talking about who he is, why he wants to misrepresent things and his long history of doing so - because I'd really hate for anyone to think he's arguing in good faith.

Inglonias
Mar 7, 2013

I WILL PUT THIS FLAG ON FREAKING EVERYTHING BECAUSE IT IS SYMBOLIC AS HELL SOMEHOW

You're the best, UP.

This is a big problem, and I am one of the ones who wishes we didn't have it.

If you don't mind me asking, what is the best we can hope for to come out of the summit in Paris? Obviously the worst case scenario is that nothing happens, but what is the best we can hope for? I undersrand you likely aren't a politician, but still...

The news is reporting that we have the capability tolimit warming to 2.7C if every country follows through on their pledges AND THEN follows up on them with more, but even that seems pretty rosy to me at this point.

As for what I am doing to help, 350.org is holding an event in DC at the end of November. I will be there. I'm phoneposting so I can't do links (I tried really hard for the link to that article above!), but I assume that people here can google.

Mat Cauthon
Jan 2, 2006

The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.



Great OP, thanks for taking the time to write that up. Very informative and manages to not be too negative while also reinforcing the seriousness of the topic.

Kassad posted:

I joke, but another French TV channel showed a report on the impact of climate change on agricultural yields (in France) in the future. It's all going downhill except for (maybe) rice. The production of wheat, for instance, will decrease by 6% for each degree above present temperatures . The anchorperson followed that up by saying that truffles would spread northward. Yay.

That's a quote from the old thread, but I'm really curious what the source is for the italicized text? Because holy poo poo.

Bubbacub
Apr 17, 2001

Uranium Phoenix posted:

The best part is, nuclear power is super natural. Setting aside the giant fusion reactor that we orbit (and the hundreds of billions of fusion reactors in our night sky), a natural fission reactor was discovered in Africa. The core of the earth is partially heated by radioactive decay of uranium and thorium!

Nuclear power has an amazing potential to help solve this crisis, but as with all the solutions, there are political and economic barriers that mean people will have to fight to make it happen. Fortunately, it is possible to convince many environmentalists that nuclear is good, but it does take some doing.

Is there a way to quantify how destructive uranium mining is vs. coal mining per unit of power generated?

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug

Bubbacub posted:

Is there a way to quantify how destructive uranium mining is vs. coal mining per unit of power generated?

https://enochthered.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/the-environmental-footprints-of-coal-and-uranium-mining/

Coal Mining is massively more destructive, as its generally strip mined out, due to the sheer mass in tons of coal you need to mine to generate said amount of power.

Uranium mining is a lot more targeted and needs to mine less total tonnage to generate the same amount of power.

quote:

In 2007-2008, Ranger produced 5273 tonnes of U3O8.

A conventional, relatively inefficient low-enriched uranium fuelled LWR with a thermal (primary energy) power output of about 3 GW requires approximately 200 tonnes of U3O8 to be mined to fuel it for one year, assuming that newly mined uranium is used for all its fuel.

Therefore, the annual uranium output from Ranger corresponds to about 2.5 x 1018 J of primary energy, or about 8.6 times the primary energy content supplied by the coal mine.

That is, that one uranium mine supplies the same amount of energy content as nine of the coal mines – one seemingly quite small uranium mine, which is about a third of the size of the coal mine, supplies the same amount of primary energy content as this. (I won’t embed that image in the post, since it will probably completely destroy the formatting of the page.)

quote:

This is a coal mine. Specifically, it’s the Blair Athol coal mine in central Queensland, Australia, but there’s no special reason why I chose this specific example of a coal mine. The mine produces 12 megatonnes of coal per year. (This is just a satellite image taken from Google Maps, which anybody can of course easily access

Coal has a thermal energy content of about 25 MJ/kg, and therefore 12 megatonnes of coal corresponds to a primary energy content of about 2.9 x 1017 J.

So tonnes versus mega-tonnes.

cowofwar
Jul 30, 2002

by Athanatos
I was thinking the other day that most people who lives in urban areas (most North Americans), are completely detached from the natural world so I can understand them being dubious of climate change. They live in a climate controlled box and spend thirty seconds a day outside between the office and car and home. They water their lawn regularly so weather has no effect on their yards. When their power bill goes up they blame politicians and don't investigate why. When they go to Mexico it's hot and the water is blue but they don't go diving.

Unless you are in touch with non-human altered environment over a multi-year span you will not have any first hand evidence of climate change.

How exactly do you reach those people in their bubble? Do you write them off and go for their children instead?

What got my attention as a kid was climbing Mt Baker for the third time and noticing the massive retreat of the glacier within only ten years. It was pretty impressive, but you can't expect any number of significant people to be in to mountaineering or have the awareness to notice these things.

I guess the answer is time-lapse images but people will just upvote it on reddit and go back to cat photos.

cowofwar fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Nov 10, 2015

Squalid
Nov 4, 2008

Inglonias posted:

As for what I am doing to help, 350.org is holding an event in DC at the end of November. I will be there. I'm phoneposting so I can't do links (I tried really hard for the link to that article above!), but I assume that people here can google.

Googled this, didn't find anything. Their website isn't very intuitive... What's the date/subject?

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib

CommieGIR posted:

We're going to spend triple that with renewable grids anyways, nuclear is starting to look cheaper.

But no, nuclear we at least have even certified Gen III plant designs, geoengineering is still largely a big 'If'. And I cannot even imagine the cost of a global industrial modernization, but I guarantee it far outpaces the cost of a nuclear buildout.

Gen III designs still have fundamental safety concerns, but we'll leave that aside for right now.

So, are you proposing greenfield sites, or expanding existing sites with additional units? In the first case, you need a gigantic array of surveys to identify suitable sites, in the second case, merely a large array of surveys to determine how to construct the additional units. Simple geographical concerns would dictate a mixture in any case.

So, you've got anywhere from 5 (Perry)-15 (Fermi Unit 2) years to construct a unit and have it generating power. How are we going to speed that up? If we're not speeding that up, now we've got to add the cost of the additional natural-gas and renewable facilities to deal with the oncoming generation shortfalls in, not that that's a gigantic cost.

But let's look at the raw cost of construction. Using estimated overnight costs at the low end, $2000/kW, we get $740 billion to replace all the non-nuclear with nuclear as far as current energy generation goes. Using the Moody's estimate of $5000/kW for actual construction costs, we get $1.85 trillion. Not, by any means, a small matter politically, even if only one-seventeenth of US GDP. Global estimates for going nuclear at current levels of electricity generation would in turn require about $12 trillion, about one-seventh of global nominal GDP. Now, I am neglecting renewables, but bear in mind that electrical demand will continue to grow.

Just for kicks, bringing everyone up to 10,000 kWh of electrical consumption (about average between the USA and Germany, France, Japan) using nuclear alone would take $40 trillion, more than half of nominal world GDP.

But these costs will necessarily be amortized out over how long you plan construction to take. Over a decade, it would take only $4 trillion to bring the world up to the electrical capacity of developed countries. In turn, however, this means less effectiveness as a response to climate change.

The actual numbers don't matter so much, however, as the political matter of selling such expenditures, even if we assume a global police state that can crush lay dissent.

Similarly, you need to develop more people who can work in a nuclear power plant. For the US, we would need roughly quadruple the current amount of engineers, operators, and so on, and for nuclearing the world, nine times as many, and for the just solution, thirty times as many. The best way would be to cadre current people, which in turn would necessitate nationalizing, or probably internationalizing, existing reactors. Along with the expenditures necessary to produce people who have the basis for training in turn.

Then you've got the increased demand for skilled laborers, and you've got to sort that mess out, probably necessitating a reworking of labor relations if we're not in the global police state for real.

And then there's the political opposition that would emerge to all this.

So, really, you're massively underestimating the costs.

Grognan
Jan 23, 2007

by Fluffdaddy

Effectronica posted:

Gen III designs still have fundamental safety concerns, but we'll leave that aside for right now.

So, are you proposing greenfield sites, or expanding existing sites with additional units? In the first case, you need a gigantic array of surveys to identify suitable sites, in the second case, merely a large array of surveys to determine how to construct the additional units. Simple geographical concerns would dictate a mixture in any case.

So, you've got anywhere from 5 (Perry)-15 (Fermi Unit 2) years to construct a unit and have it generating power. How are we going to speed that up? If we're not speeding that up, now we've got to add the cost of the additional natural-gas and renewable facilities to deal with the oncoming generation shortfalls in, not that that's a gigantic cost.

But let's look at the raw cost of construction. Using estimated overnight costs at the low end, $2000/kW, we get $740 billion to replace all the non-nuclear with nuclear as far as current energy generation goes. Using the Moody's estimate of $5000/kW for actual construction costs, we get $1.85 trillion. Not, by any means, a small matter politically, even if only one-seventeenth of US GDP. Global estimates for going nuclear at current levels of electricity generation would in turn require about $12 trillion, about one-seventh of global nominal GDP. Now, I am neglecting renewables, but bear in mind that electrical demand will continue to grow.

Just for kicks, bringing everyone up to 10,000 kWh of electrical consumption (about average between the USA and Germany, France, Japan) using nuclear alone would take $40 trillion, more than half of nominal world GDP.

But these costs will necessarily be amortized out over how long you plan construction to take. Over a decade, it would take only $4 trillion to bring the world up to the electrical capacity of developed countries. In turn, however, this means less effectiveness as a response to climate change.

The actual numbers don't matter so much, however, as the political matter of selling such expenditures, even if we assume a global police state that can crush lay dissent.

Similarly, you need to develop more people who can work in a nuclear power plant. For the US, we would need roughly quadruple the current amount of engineers, operators, and so on, and for nuclearing the world, nine times as many, and for the just solution, thirty times as many. The best way would be to cadre current people, which in turn would necessitate nationalizing, or probably internationalizing, existing reactors. Along with the expenditures necessary to produce people who have the basis for training in turn.

Then you've got the increased demand for skilled laborers, and you've got to sort that mess out, probably necessitating a reworking of labor relations if we're not in the global police state for real.

And then there's the political opposition that would emerge to all this.

So, really, you're massively underestimating the costs.


So instead of the Iraq war we could have closed all coal plants in the US?

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib

Grognan posted:

So instead of the Iraq war we could have closed all coal plants in the US?

Yep! Think about that one for a while.

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug

Effectronica posted:

Yep! Think about that one for a while.

Stop making me sad.

Kafka Esq.
Jan 1, 2005

"If you ever even think about calling me anything but 'The Crab' I will go so fucking crab on your ass you won't even see what crab'd your crab" -The Crab(TM)
That makes me so sad I've spun all the way into The Killing Joke style glee.

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Inglonias
Mar 7, 2013

I WILL PUT THIS FLAG ON FREAKING EVERYTHING BECAUSE IT IS SYMBOLIC AS HELL SOMEHOW

Squalid posted:

Googled this, didn't find anything. Their website isn't very intuitive... What's the date/subject?

Sorry about that.

https://act.350.org/event/global-climate-march_attend/11168/

They're holding events all over the world related to this, which is likely why it didn't show up.

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