|
Inglonias posted: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... To be honest, I've sort of stopped paying attention to the various summits and meetings. Each one has been so lackluster in result, and I highly doubt this one will be any different. Besides the pledges not being enough (2.7 C is way too high to aim for), the current plan is that carbon emissions would still be growing by 2030--just not as fast. The point you make about them following through is important too. I'm pretty sure the Paris agreements are all non-binding. For a country like the US, that might mean a really heartfelt, honest try at a meaningful pledge by the Obama administration, but there is no way in hell a bill limiting carbon or funding fossil-fuel free energy is getting through congress right now. The same is going to be true for most countries. I would pay more attention to the protests around the summit as a place to grow real organizations and movements that will force politicians to act. cowofwar posted: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. One of the big reasons climate change is an especially difficult issue has to do with how we respond to threats: I think then that sometimes the best way to reach people in their bubbles is through other issues. Socialist Alternative, the organization I'm a part of, saw its biggest growth with the first Kshama Sawant Seattle city council election campaign. The Seattle branch of SA has gone since then from about a dozen people to over a hundred, and has been able to work more effectively with other activists and groups using the platform a Seattle city council position brings to make change. But the first thing they tackled wasn't climate change at all--it was the minimum wage. However, the huge amount of people and publicity the minimum wage fight in Seattle got, as well as the contacts it made, helped make the protests against the Shell rig and the oil and coal trains bigger and more effective. A lot of the people in bubbles aren't living a cozy suburban lifestyle, but are too busy stressing about lack of money, high rent, education, jobs, transit, police brutality, and other immediate, visceral issues. There's a ton of people in those situations who are fed up with the status quo, but need to see immediate improvement in their lives before they even can get days off to get active. That's why I think any and all environmentalists need to work closely with social justice, labor, and unions. People want jobs with a high wage? Pressure a city council or a state legislature to pass a bill employing folks to make homes more energy efficient, or build rail lines, or solar and wind projects. People can't afford rent? Build government housing that is highly energy efficient, so people have a decent place to live, get low heat bills and reduce net residential energy consumption. Traffic screwed up in [insert city here]? New rail lines or bus routes or bike lanes will employ people, reduce congestion, and reduce emissions. Even causes like racism that seem unrelated to the environment at first are related (minorities and disenfranchised people will be hit hardest by climate change), and actions on fighting racism will build active people who are good at organizing, can spread ideas, and are learning first hand about a lot of connected political and economic issues. Building a large enough force of those active, conscious people on this wide spectrum of issues will get the most people active, make the movement credible and meaningful (after all, it will have many small victories to point to), and lead to the kind of massive movement we need to actually make significant progress on fighting climate change.
|
# ? Nov 11, 2015 06:10 |
|
|
# ? Mar 29, 2024 09:41 |
|
Effectronica posted:Gen III designs still have fundamental safety concerns, but we'll leave that aside for right now. And all of this is massively easier and cheaper than the alternatives, which is why your first point was laughable nonsense.
|
# ? Nov 11, 2015 19:29 |
|
Like if you don't switch everyone to nuke power there's really nothing to even talk about. Renewable technology is no where near mature enough to replace fossil fuel fired plants and won't be until long after everyone here is dead if ever. Considering how fast we need to greatly reduce emissions it doesn't matter how hard it would be to switch to almost entirely nuclear energy, there is literally no other option on the table that isn't pie in sky naive dreams.
|
# ? Nov 11, 2015 19:43 |
|
And this (all the posts so far on this page) is why I find things like this self-congratulatory technocracy annoying -- the solution can't be the admittedly neat tricks our best engineers can pull, those are just fixing a fraction of the symptoms at best. We need fundamental change in how our systems of administration and economics work. We need to reward totally different kinds of behavior and have totally different incentives. There's going to be no selling "hey, developing countries, switch off a large fraction of your industry yesterday and we'll try to install recent model nuclear power in your vicinity so you can stop contributing to the environmental catastrophe we in the developed west have predominantly caused" with cheery guitar strumming and neat production values.
|
# ? Nov 11, 2015 20:30 |
|
The fact that the majority of eco-warriors consider nukes a non-starter and yet are trying to advocate for green energy is just so, so depressing. I'm at work and going over a Friends of the Earth report on transforming energy systems and they lump nuclear in the same category as loving coal fired power plants, it's absurd. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
|
# ? Nov 11, 2015 20:45 |
|
Effectronica posted:Gen III designs still have fundamental safety concerns, but we'll leave that aside for right now. Be more like South Korea. * Settle on a reasonable design of nuclear power plant * Build all nuclear power plants in the country to that design * Save $billions on successive power plants as licensing, shutting down NIMBY court cases, etc. becomes easier since you can just refer to the first nuclear site's trip through legal and development hell and point out it's the same situation all over again. In addition, the construction crew will be able to learn from the ridiculous construction failures on the first site and can avoid repeating them (unlike in a system where you build a ton of one-off nuclear reactors of completely different designs) The UK, in this case, is doing it wrong because the new reactor fleet is supposed to be two French Surrender Reactors at Hinkley point, and then three AP-1000s and two Chinese knockoff reactors (literally, they're a modified version of a copied US reactor) at two different sites. quote: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. Germany's €500 billion renewable is one seventh of German GDP, for comparison. It's that Full Renewables Now will be even more expensive than Full Nucular Reactors Now. quote: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. Economic development doesn't happen overnight, and building first world-class energy infrastructure of any type from scratch will be expensive. Well, burning coal might be the least expensive option, but that's what we're trying to avoid in the first place. quote: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. The skilled labor thing is can really slow down a nuclear rollout but given the construction time and general lead up to a nuclear rollout, dumping money into nuclear engineering degrees could still be done early enough to at least somewhat alleviate the issue. And yeah, public opinion in many countries can be an issue, but that shouldn't affect countries without a rich and hysterical public (the only accurate assessment ever made by Sigmar Gabriel )
|
# ? Nov 11, 2015 20:53 |
|
stephenfry posted:And this (all the posts so far on this page) is why I find things like this self-congratulatory technocracy annoying -- the solution can't be the admittedly neat tricks our best engineers can pull, those are just fixing a fraction of the symptoms at best. We need fundamental change in how our systems of administration and economics work. We need to reward totally different kinds of behavior and have totally different incentives. Most developing countries don't have enough CO2 emissions from electricity generation to matter (the main exceptions are basically China, India, Brazil all of which can and do have nuclear programmes), and don't have the education infrastructure to teach nuclear engineers. So if the least developed countries in the Southern Hemisphere burn oil and natural gas to fuel their economy for a bit longer, that's not ideal but not the end of the world either, and if the job description isn't "run a first world economy with an existing electricity grid 24/7" but "provide light to a farming village 50km from the nearest power line, and occasional outages in a calm night are still better than nothing" then putting some solar power or wind turbines next to the village might well be the most sensible option. Regarding underlying causes: that's all well and good, but environmental damage and climate change are happening right now and will take a very long time to reverse, so treating the symptoms of land use, pollution, and CO2 emissions by making our (industrialised countries) high impact lifestyles even more hilariously energy intensive but less land and emissions intensive is a useful thing to do even if you don't think that's enough to become long term sustainable. How are u posted:The fact that the majority of eco-warriors consider nukes a non-starter and yet are trying to advocate for green energy is just so, so depressing. The issue is that a lot of environmentalists don't operate under a framework of seeking pragmatic solutions to environmental problems no matter what the solution looks like. Historically, environmentalism has often involved fighting the ~system~ or picketing corporations and economic development has obviously caused quite some damage to ecosystems so just developing in a different direction or throwing energy at problems to make them go away is quite a radical way to go about things. In addition, you get a lot of people who generally want a more ~connected~ society (everyone should grow their own food or at least know their farmer and produce electricity locallly, so decentralisation is a goal in and of itself), have an issue with the concept of a corporation itself and/or need a clear villain (Monsanto is a special kind of evil, not just a generic uncaring business), have an idealised view of nature and ~natural~ things vs. technology, and what have you. Centralised big nuclear power stations powering dense cities and factory farms are thus anathema, even if some The people worth targeting most are those who just adopted these positions by cultural osmosis and are sufficiently lukewarm about them to be convinced to follow different approaches.
|
# ? Nov 11, 2015 21:32 |
|
Just a somber reminder that we've likely already hit 1*C change thanks to all the extra CO2 from the fires in Indonesia
|
# ? Nov 11, 2015 21:36 |
|
CommieGIR posted:Just a somber reminder that we've likely already hit 1*C change thanks to all the extra CO2 from the fires in Indonesia And that won't get better - rainforests become more vulnerable after initial disturbance because they need quite a while to rebuild the dense vegetation that maintains high humidity and thereby lowers fire risk, so regrowth forests (and newly-exposed forest edges) will be more easily burned.
|
# ? Nov 11, 2015 21:38 |
|
blowfish posted:
Yeah I understand why they are the way they are (growing up in the 60s-80s didn't help either with the specter of MAD looming over your head) but holy poo poo is it frustrating. I find I have to bite my tongue often because I enjoy my job and the envrio-community does do good work and relentlessly advocates for social and environmental justice. Nukes and GMOs, like you mentioned, are just terribly frustrating to me.
|
# ? Nov 11, 2015 21:38 |
|
blowfish posted:And that won't get better - rainforests become more vulnerable after initial disturbance because they need quite a while to rebuild the dense vegetation that maintains high humidity and thereby lowers fire risk, so regrowth forests (and newly-exposed forest edges) will be more easily burned. Yup, and Rainforest in South America is still being decimated at an alarming rate. We're already halfway to the 2*C limit that we set for ourselves. And we're barely into the 2000s. How are u posted:Yeah I understand why they are the way they are (growing up in the 60s-80s didn't help either with the specter of MAD looming over your head) but holy poo poo is it frustrating. I find I have to bite my tongue often because I enjoy my job and the envrio-community does do good work and relentlessly advocates for social and environmental justice. Having to explain to multiple people that nuclear reactors cannot blow up like nuclear bombs is frustrating. Half of the people I explain this to have been under the assumption thank to years of misinformation that nuclear power plants are like nuclear bombs in your back yard.
|
# ? Nov 11, 2015 21:39 |
|
blowfish posted:And that won't get better - rainforests become more vulnerable after initial disturbance because they need quite a while to rebuild the dense vegetation that maintains high humidity and thereby lowers fire risk, so regrowth forests (and newly-exposed forest edges) will be more easily burned. Also Indonesian rainforests grow on a very thick layer of peat that stores a poo poo-load more carbon than the trees themselves. It is the reason that Indonesia is such an incredible GHG emitter.
|
# ? Nov 11, 2015 21:41 |
|
CommieGIR posted:Yup, and Rainforest in South America is still being decimated at an alarming rate. Conservation-wise I sometimes look at coastal rainforest fragments on the map and ask myself if it's even worth preserving them since many are too small to function as a rainforest ecosystem quote:We're already halfway to the 2*C limit that we set for ourselves. And we're barely into the 2000s. quote:Having to explain to multiple people that nuclear reactors cannot blow up like nuclear bombs is frustrating. Half of the people I explain this to have been under the assumption thank to years of misinformation that nuclear power plants are like nuclear bombs in your back yard.
|
# ? Nov 11, 2015 21:54 |
|
The weather here has been very pleasant lately. Thanks, climate change!
|
# ? Nov 11, 2015 23:18 |
|
blowfish posted:Conservation-wise I sometimes look at coastal rainforest fragments on the map and ask myself if it's even worth preserving them since many are too small to function as a rainforest ecosystem Depending on exactly what fragments you're talking about a few corridors might be enough to sustain populations of apes and big cats! Not much you can do for the super picky birds that won't go within 100 m of a break in the canopy.
|
# ? Nov 12, 2015 00:25 |
|
Climate change is alright in my book, in like 20 years my Idaho farm will be beach front property. My gas guzzler is a business investment
|
# ? Nov 12, 2015 00:28 |
|
CommieGIR posted:Yup, and Rainforest in South America is still being decimated at an alarming rate. I don't know why I keep coming back here for news. It just makes me want to go back to spewing doom and gloom everywhere. This whole thing is just completely out of control at this point, and that scares the poo poo out of me. I should be sleeping right now for fucks sake. I suppose I should contribute other than that... ...Yeah, sure. Nuclear would be great. Don't know how to make it happen though.
|
# ? Nov 12, 2015 07:11 |
|
Posted this in the wrong goddamned thread (old thread isn't closed yet) so I guess I'm crossposting. " What's Really Warming the World posted:
|
# ? Nov 12, 2015 23:01 |
|
That Bloomberg article (where those graphics came from) owns. If for some reason you want to challenge shitheads who still call this a scam or some poo poo, point out some historic things, such as: 1884 - "carbonic acid" (aka CO2) recognized as a greenhouse gas (though that specific term had yet to be fleshed out). 1909 - greenhouse gas originates 1950 - CO2 levels measured 1965 - President Lyndon B. Johnson says this to Congress: quote:This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. 1965 - President's Science Advisory Committee report: quote:Based on projected world energy requirements, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (1956) has estimated an amount of fossil fuel combustion by the year 2000 that with our assumed partitions would give about a 25 percent increase in atmospheric CO2, compared to the amount present during the the 19th Century. As nobody did a loving thing since then, the actual recorded concentration for 1999 was a bit over 368ppm. Evil_Greven fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Nov 13, 2015 |
# ? Nov 13, 2015 02:34 |
|
Looks like the predictions of a super el nino were spot on @EricBlake12 @afreedma the SST datasets set so many records on initial release I thought they were wrong- Atlc/Pac/Ind oceans set or close to a record http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/11/18/global_temperatures_hit_new_high_amid_record_el_nino.html
|
# ? Nov 19, 2015 02:56 |
|
Best to post something positive along with that or Trabisnikof will call you a climate change denier.
|
# ? Nov 19, 2015 03:34 |
|
I'm writing my first research paper on climate change and it's horribly depressing. Also since this is my first paper ever in like 15 years if one of you want to volunteer to read it and tell me thoughts that would be cool. I'm having trouble finding realistic dissenting opinions that are not crackpots if anyone has any suggestions. Hollismason fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Nov 19, 2015 |
# ? Nov 19, 2015 03:47 |
|
Hollismason posted:I'm writing my first research paper on climate change and it's horribly depressing. Also since this is my first paper ever in like 15 years if one of you want to volunteer to read it and tell me thoughts that would be cool. Tautologically wouldn't the dissenting opinions not be realistic? Hello Sailor posted:Best to post something positive along with that or Trabisnikof will call you a climate change denier. The graph is the positive part
|
# ? Nov 19, 2015 04:00 |
|
I've found a few articles here and there but they're usually like " Oh and by the way after all this science I talked about , Climate Change is really about Obama taking over". They just get weirdly political. It starts normal and the just goes down hill. Like the idea surrounding the 2 degree guardrail and how actually now compared to 14 years ago its considered to be a very bad thing and we should readjust. Or that this is all "normal". I've yet to read a good article where someone without gettiing political states that this is a "normal" cycle to the Earth. Basically I'm looking for the 3%.
|
# ? Nov 19, 2015 04:39 |
|
People have had piles of money thrown at them by conservative think tanks to prove climate change wrong, and all results that don't revolve around a rant about Obummer end up saying "climate change is happening, we're a major cause, climate scientists may have gotten minor details wrong but the overall conclusions are valid" at most.
|
# ? Nov 19, 2015 11:33 |
|
I figure we deserve something to be thankful for...quote:If you thought last month seemed unusually hot for October, you weren’t imagining things. Globally, it was the hottest October on record, according to information released on Nov. 18 by NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It was also the greatest above-average departure from the average for any month.
|
# ? Nov 23, 2015 05:55 |
|
Climate Change: What was to be Done?
|
# ? Nov 23, 2015 09:26 |
|
VectorSigma posted:Climate Change: What was to be Done? Not giving up because it can always get worse.
|
# ? Nov 23, 2015 10:40 |
|
Gave a little talk today at my school on geoengineering. Please god let politicians never get it into their heads that we can solve climate problems by dumping sulfates into the atmosphere.
|
# ? Nov 23, 2015 14:01 |
|
brakeless posted:Please god let politicians never get it into their heads that we can solve climate problems by dumping sulfates into the atmosphere. At some point somewhere in a region extraordinarily hit by the warming this will probably happen. Dystopian sci-fi scenario: The sulfate emission wars.
|
# ? Nov 23, 2015 14:26 |
|
That's why it's better to start talking about geoengineering now and come to an agreement, because a lot of solutions are within the financial reach of even poorer nations if they're under existential threat. I think geoengineering is going to be something we'll have to do to suppress the average global temperature until we can get C02 emissions down, but I recognize that whatever method we decide upon is risky.
|
# ? Nov 23, 2015 14:33 |
|
brakeless posted:Gave a little talk today at my school on geoengineering. School as in where you attend or where you attended? If geoengineering is part of your career, I'd be interested in reading about what you do.
|
# ? Nov 23, 2015 14:34 |
|
brakeless posted:Gave a little talk today at my school on geoengineering. "To solve this massive amount of chemicals we dumped, lets dump some more chemicals" Didn't they recently find the dispersants used in the Gulf of Mexico are having some really bad side effects?
|
# ? Nov 23, 2015 18:18 |
|
Nothing. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
# ? Nov 23, 2015 18:45 |
|
Hello Sailor posted:School as in where you attend or where you attended? If geoengineering is part of your career, I'd be interested in reading about what you do. It might be at some point, right now I'm just a dumb almost graduate student. What scares me about geoengineering is that if we start doing it, we'll basically have to keep doing it indefinetly, or until atmospheric concentrations start falling naturally, which is basically the same thing. If we just increase emissions and try to mitigate with heavy geoengineering and then have to stop for whatever reason, it could lead to extremely rapid warming, like 1 degree/10 years rapid. That's like giving the ecosystem both barrels. Carbon capture might help, but considering that last year's emissions alone fill a volume at 1 atm that almost equals the Baltic Ocean, I'm not too hopeful on that front. I'm not sure if I even want to study this poo poo. The more you look the more depressing it gets.
|
# ? Nov 23, 2015 21:50 |
|
Didn't that used to be a thread title?
|
# ? Nov 23, 2015 22:13 |
|
Geoengineering truly horrifies me and God loving help us if we ever start. Thankfully I'll be dead before the effects of a fuckup get bad. Jesus Christ what a terrible idea.
|
# ? Nov 23, 2015 22:17 |
|
How are u posted:Geoengineering truly horrifies me and God loving help us if we ever start. Why
|
# ? Nov 23, 2015 22:20 |
LeoMarr posted:Why Even the most prestigious, most well informed climate researchers will tell you that: 1. We're almost guaranteed to gently caress it up, either though unintended or intended consequences. 2. There are still aspects of earth ecosystems that we don't fully understand and therefore can't model or predict for right now, let alone what might happen with some halfass idea to throw sulfates in the ocean or trigger volcanoes or whatever. 3. See number 1. Really man, it's a bad idea. Which is why I'm 100% sure that as soon as the Western world starts looking some real climate consequences dead in the eye, it'll be the first thing to get attempted. On a somewhat more constructive note, I just got a job with a political org that is focusing on doing some campaigns around climate change, environmental justice, etc. What are some solid academic journals that I can tell my bosses to purchase access to for climate research?
|
|
# ? Nov 23, 2015 22:44 |
|
|
# ? Mar 29, 2024 09:41 |
|
Do you guys have credible research on the impacts of meat consumption on global warming / the environment in general? There's so much contradicting information on the internet, and it's hard to separate good from bad as everywhere I look, people who report the information have a massive vested interest one way or another. Would it really help if a massive portion of the population embraced a vegan diet?
|
# ? Nov 24, 2015 19:00 |