|
Conspiratiorist posted:Actually, OOCC holds the belief that the way forward is to put the pedal to the metal, as only a technological solution plus increased wealth can solve the climate issue. Here's the "pedal to the metal" of this country: US carbon emissions peaked in the year 2005. We're about 15% below that peak as of 2017, and in that time the GDP has grown by about 20%. That is not only a rapid rate of decarbonization, but that rate of decarbonization is going to become a lot quicker due to renewables now being the cheaper source of electricity in much of the country, and due to accelerating purchases of electric vehicles.
|
#
¿
May 12, 2018 19:53
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 16:37 |
|
|
StabbinHobo posted:moooooooooom they're being meaaaaaaannn Welcome back to the thread. Arkane posted:Why don't you elucidate the obvious conclusions you have drawn...what is your guess at the state of the planet in 2050 at the current trajectory?
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2018 21:46
|
|
|
lofi posted:I've been reading a lot about how insecure europe's food chain is - is it really one bad/worse season away from mad max, or will we get to go full fash first via a slow collapse? My BFs hippy sister has a farm in Wales, and it's feeling more and more like the 'best thing to do' is move over there and roll around in sheep poo poo forever. Food production has been growing faster than population for many decades now across the world, and Europe produces way more food than they eat, which is why they are a net exporter of basic food goods (excluding stuff like coffee/spices, which they import massively). A disruption of food supply would require a political event (see: Venezuela); droughts and floods occur all the time in Europe without major disruption. I think of greater concern than your extremely negligible impact on the planet would be your proneness to conspiratorial thinking.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2018 05:21
|
|
|
lofi posted:I was under the impression that it was a lot more precarious than that. Maybe I'm putting too much weight on things like https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/puma_03/ That study makes mention that Europe, more so than some other places, may be susceptible to food chain disruption, and makes recommendations that could ameliorate those concerns. I think it's a huge leap to go from that to what you posted (one bad season could lead to mad max, fascism spreading), which even granting that it was a little bit of creative hyperbole, still seems like a dystopian fever dream. One other point: the interconnectedness of the world ends up being a great hedge against food disruption because ill effects are localized, and one area's bad season is another area's bountiful season. We're overall becoming much better at growing food, and as that article alludes to, better at distributing it to a growing population. Which is why famines are becoming much less common, and over the past couple of decades, have mainly been the result of political strife rather than because of food production. I mentioned conspiratorial thinking because you seem to think we're headed for some highly negative outcome that you need to escape and prepare for -- there are people in this thread who agree with you. Yet, humanity is heading in the exact opposite direction (aside from the current bubble in populism that will ebb over time), and climate impacts, even if you believe in the most dire scientific predictions, will take multiple decades to manifest themselves in meaningful ways. If you're really that concerned about your own impact, it's becoming cheaper and easier to live an essentially carbon neutral life, and will become MUCH cheaper and easier still by the time any hypothetical children are entering adulthood.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2018 13:54
|
|
|
Shady Amish Terror posted:'Comfortable-ish' means that if you're already able to put food on the table and have a place to live in a highly-developed country, those facts are likely to remain true. Your quality of life will steadily drop, your government will become an unsustainable fascist cesspit How do you square this gloomy prediction with the fact that the Earth has warmed by a modicum amount in the past 30 years, and yet quality of life has increased an absurd amount across the globe in that time period? And that, worldwide, on average, governments have become more democratic over that time-span? It's like you've created an alternate reality to fit your viewpoint, rather than look at the world around you to inform your views. edit: Also you shouldn't be so sensitive to this guy's nitpicks of your alarmism as not alarmist enough. Blind leading the blind, etc. Arkane fucked around with this message at 16:17 on May 16, 2018 |
|
#
¿
May 16, 2018 16:14
|
|
|
Ssthalar posted:Just to counter this point. I agree that Trump shows that populism can hijack a democracy and that when things like this happen, democracy declines....but I think it's sort of masking the more important point that the trajectory of the world is bending, in fits and starts, towards more freedom and better outcomes. Populism ebbs and flows. Zoom out from 2018 a little to the arc of where the race is going. We are getting smarter, wealthier, healthier, and freer. Some would argue that we do so at the expense of the planet. But this will be self-correcting, as it is already doing.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2018 16:21
|
|
|
Nocturtle posted:I bet the lobsters feel pretty good when the pot just starts warming up. Seriously, this is specious and you can't expect it to be convincing. I suppose the basic point is that we're becoming wealthier and more advanced faster than we're feeling the ill effects of any impacts we are having on the climate. Carbon emissions are growing, but the global economy is growing much faster than carbon emissions, because we're decarbonizing. Your analogy is terrible, but perhaps emblematic of an alarmist's view of our economy. The lobster lacks self awareness and the tools to do anything. He sits there idly, unchanged as something terrible and irreversible befalls him. Are we sitting idly? No. Is something terrible and irreversible befalling us? Perhaps terrible, people disagree on the severity...irreversible, it depends, but mostly no. As to idleness: carbon emissions in the west have already peaked. The frontiers of technology are such that developing countries will be able to reach peak carbon far faster than the west, relative to GDP per capita. In line with that, a large majority of the new electricity generation that was installed last year across the globe was renewable. Did people expect that to be the case 10 years ago when they projected accelerating fossil fuel usage to match economic growth? And astride to that point of sitting idly, we continue to lower the (right now, very large) costs of removing carbon from the atmosphere, something that is becoming a more realistic solution on a time horizon of 10+ years. There are a dozen more things that can be talked about here. I think asking people to imagine the world in 2050 is a good exercise if they engage with it rigorously, and look at how the world has changed over the previous 10, 25, 50, 100 years. Anchoring yourself to the status quo and merely projecting it forward 30 years is just being dishonest with yourself. The sad thing is that people prescribe as the solution that we need to hinder growth or slow birth rates or exit the economy or halt emissions via severe coercion. And the marketing message of that prescription is to make a laundry list of death and misery that is sure to befall us if we don't take our medicine. And yet the world around you is becoming greener and richer and better by not doing that, or doing it with slight government coercion. And the scientific basis for death and misery befalling us in our future, already untenable when it became de rigueur a decade ago, becomes less tenable with each passing year. So perhaps there is some validity to the lobster analogy, because alarmists that are anchored to a dystopian future are mentally akin to a lobster in a pot. Just gradually unmooring themselves from reality. Hopefully some self-awareness will develop eventually... Arkane fucked around with this message at 18:10 on May 16, 2018 |
|
#
¿
May 16, 2018 18:08
|
|
|
self unaware posted:oh so this is what denialists call a carbon tax these days What would your carbon tax - and the associated bureaucracy - do that is not already happening? Why would it be better? How would you reconcile the highly regressive nature of your carbon tax with whatever those goals are? Really easy to post a buzz word.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2018 18:14
|
|
|
So I initially didn't get this, but I think you are misreading status quo. In the year 1985, we emitted about 18 Gt of CO2 and world GDP was about 12.5 trillion, a ratio of .7 trillion per gigaton. In 2000, we emitted around 23 Gt of CO2 and world GDP was 33.5 trillion, a ratio of 1.5 trillion per gigaton. In 2017 , the world GDP was ~78 trillion, and there were 32.5 Gt of CO2 emitted, 2.4 trillion per gigaton. We're using less and less carbon as a component of how wealthy the world is, and the ratio of how wealthy the world is to the amount of carbon emits has changed dramatically over time. The RCP 8.5 "alarmist" pathway that has us shooting past 2C of warming also has us emitting 70 Gt of carbon a year in 2050 (and 100 Gt of carbon a year in 2100). This is "status quo" thinking of the mix of wealth to carbon emissions staying relatively the same, conditioned on the assumption that in order to grow the economy, we need to grow emissions. That they are coupled. In reality, though, it is very possible that we're *VERY* close to peak carbon emissions, that economic growth and emissions growth will completely decouple:  (2017 was 32.5)
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2018 18:56
|
|
|
self unaware posted:lol if you think I'm going to spend my time convincing a guy who calls taxation "government coercion" that a carbon tax is good policy Your posts in this thread are mostly just one-liners devoid of substance and very short on facts, so if you did start engaging, that would be a large shift in behavior. Might even force you to assess your own beliefs! Anyway, we can test the hypothesis about whether a legislative remedy was or is appropriate. Let's look at the 2009 cap & trade bill that made it out of the House. The goal was a 17% emissions reduction (from 2005) by 2020, and 20% nationwide electricity generation from renewables by 2020. We're going to either meet or come very close to those goals, and the legislation was not passed. What you just posted, a carbon tax, would probably have similar goals (with the added twist of being regressive). But one wonders, in light of what is happening, why a legislative remedy is appropriate at all? The US is moving rapidly away from carbon, even as our economy flourishes. We can't very well create laws for China or India. So what would be the point of what you are suggesting? Arkane fucked around with this message at 19:29 on May 16, 2018 |
|
#
¿
May 16, 2018 19:27
|
|
|
spf3million posted:So going forward, the cumulative emissions are going to increase linearly instead of exponentially? For cumulative values, it seems very likely it'll switch to linear growth in the near term, then logarithmic growth shortly after that. Decreases in the far future, maybe, although it's possible that people in the far future will not want to intervene in decreasing atmospheric CO2, because they like the fertilization of forests? Just a random speculation. StabbinHobo posted:i can't believe i made the mistake of an effortpost reply to arkane, i feel like i've been rickrolled and goatse'd in one and its all my fault because i knew better Well you did talk about peak oil and coal usage staying flat, so I can't say you have a firm grasp on energy supply & demand. You also said wind power would be 8% and solar 4% in 2050 when we're very near those numbers RIGHT NOW in the US (6 and 2). Guess I just had trouble grappling with someone who thought humans were going to make basically 0 progress on energy in the next 32 years.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2018 19:47
|
|
|
StabbinHobo posted:- wind will continue its rapid growth, but that will still only move it from 2% of the total supply to like 8 StabbinHobo posted:I said wind would quadruple and solar would grow an order of magnitude, and somehow your broken stupid brain read that as "we're going to stop building them". StabbinHobo posted:Thank you, its nice to know there are still sane people reading. Go to page 32 here, and you can see that renewable electricity generation (excluding large hydro) has doubled from 6% of electricity generation in 2010 to 12% in 2017. And that, I believe, is only utility-scale, so it will undersell renewables by a small amount due to small-scale solar (i.e. a home or a business with solar panels on their roof). According to the IEA's report, renewables generate 9% of world electricity excluding all hydro power, which comes close to Bloomberg's figure. Additionally, you can look at the US, where we publish annual statistics, and solar has gone from about .04% of electricity generation in 2010 to 1.9% (including residential) in 2017, with wind going from 2% to 6% over that time period. Given the worldwide doubling of renewable's share of energy generation during the 2010 to 2017 time period, I don't think it is far fetched to think that the US numbers may closely resemble the global numbers right now of about 8% combined for electricity generated by wind & solar. In your post you say wind & solar will go from ~3% now to 12% in 2050. I think it is virtually impossible to be below 12% in 2025. And as the panels get more efficient and cheaper, solar (and solar + batteries in due time) will become cheaper than SHUTTING DOWN an existing fossil fuel plant. At that point you will have a colossal shift in a very short period of time. Open your mind a little bit to the possibilities of 2050. Arkane fucked around with this message at 01:27 on May 18, 2018 |
|
#
¿
May 18, 2018 01:25
|
|
|
Perry Mason Jar posted:Really enjoying TL's constant insistence that 2C is fine when six people died from a tornado in the Tri-State Area this week. You're connecting two things that have no discernible link.
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2018 14:38
|
|
|
Will be fascinating to read AR6, and see people here try to grapple with it. AR5 was less alarmist than AR4, which was less alarmist than TAR -- and AR6 will continue that trend. Climate models are still running too hot (even with the recent El Nino, which only brought it to the model-mean), climate sensitivity was way too high in AR5 model runs (averaged 3.2C ECS, recent studies point far lower), and the RCP 8.5 carbon emission scenarios look like a joke with the explosion of renewables and electric vehicles since AR5 and the tapering off of emissions growth. As of right now, you're going to see an across the board lowering of projections with the tag-on effect of lowering estimates for sea level rise. And yet this thread lives in an alternate reality of ever-increasing alarmism and despair, with the occasional psychotic Thanos character instructing the assembled masses that we need to start killing people off.
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2018 19:10
|
|
|
call to action posted:Anything that fundamentally alters the ability of future humans to engage with our Earth in a meaningful, sustainable way is immoral. Nothing funny about it. Let's face it though, it doesn't matter if kids in the future don't know what a forest is as long as some rear end in a top hat can pet his fuckin' cats. Just to briefly interrupt your clueless ranting: forests are becoming more robust and biomass is expanding as a result of increased CO2. Warmer temperatures will also allow increased forest cover at higher elevations and higher/lower latitudes. This will eventually lead to more animal life as food sources expand. OK, carry on.
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2018 23:44
|
|
|
Conspiratiorist posted:Christ, do you not understand what an externality is? You're getting caught up in some really weird semantics. Alright so the US is about 14% of worldwide carbon emissions, and our carbon emissions peaked over a decade ago with continued drops since then (about 1% per annum, and faster than that on a per capita basis and per GDP basis). What would be the goal of this tax that is not already happening without the tax? You could push for faster drops, perhaps 5% per annum on an absolute basis, but the environmental payoff for whatever that costs economically would be extremely small on a planet scale. And you have no guarantees that this might not just happen anyway without your tax.
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2018 00:07
|
|
|
Just a silly hypothetical, but let's say that we knew that Earth was going to shift from our interglacial period to a glacial period and that the process was scheduled to begin exactly in the year 2100. The glacial period would decrease the temperature by multiple degrees gradually, and kill off a good deal of the life on earth. Should humans try to prevent it/delay it from happening or no? Preventing it or delaying it maintains the interglacial status quo, where life has flourished. Strictly curious if people are bothered by humans doing anything to the planet that is 'unnatural', or opposed principally to the possibly ill effects from warming. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
¿
May 21, 2018 05:23
|
|
|
Bloomberg has upped their projection of electric vehicle cost parity with ICE vehicles from 2026 to 2024, 6 years from now: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-22/more-luxury-electric-vehicles-will-soon-be-available-for-lease Future coming quickly!
|
|
#
¿
May 29, 2018 02:02
|
|
|
So It Goes posted:It’s early but does anyone know or have thoughts if the Carbon Engineering stuff is legit, or how helpful it could end up being? This is somewhat similar to the CarbFix that I was posting about earlier, and it looks like they're both headed to the same goal, $100/ton of CO2. Also both funded in part by Bill Gates. It is legit; both of these are in actual use , so it isn't theoretical. Getting the cost down will be the main goal, I would assume. I guess one question would be, assuming that we have this technology and can deploy it at a large scale starting in 2025 or so, what would be the goal for CO2 levels? Stable at current year levels or would we want to revert back to pre-industrial 270ppm if we could? The latter could end up with a lot of biomass dying off.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2018 18:05
|
|
|
VideoGameVet posted:What's the energy budget for the process? How does it compare to a change in agricultural practices to sequester carbon? I don't know the answer to these questions. I would imagine very minimal and much cheaper respectively. The current iteration of CarbFix runs in conjunction with a geoengineering plant, so it has created a negative emissions power plant.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2018 18:24
|
|
|
As has been shouted into the climate void of this thread numerous times, the ingredients needed to reach something like 4C are not materializing. 4C would require massive CO2 growth and/or high climate sensitivity, neither of which appear to be the case. If carbon growth is slowing and climate sensitivity estimates are getting lower, how is it that you think 4C could become a baseline? In other news, following on the strong El Nino a year or so ago, we may get a second El Nino, which could again spike temperatures in the near term.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 15, 2018 17:51
|
|
|
Notorious R.I.M. posted:Can't wait to get some cherrypicked analyses when I ask what on Earth leads one to believe that ECS estimates are being revised downward. Arkane posted:We've reigned in and lowered the bounds for climate sensitivity (again), and the high-end climate model will likely drop CO2 emissions projections as well due to the global deployment of renewables obliterating the IEA's projections together with the decarbonization we've seen across the globe, including specifically China. I'm skeptical we'll reach much higher than 600ppm, if that. Renewables and batteries (storage/electric cars) are getting too good, too quickly for those high-end carbon dioxide scenarios to be realistic anymore.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 15, 2018 20:35
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 16:37 |
|
|
Salt Fish posted:I've been reading your posts for like 4 years, and you've managed to slide from believing in 0 degrees to posting studies in an attempt to cast doubt on four degrees. I mean, if you say you got 0 degrees from any my posts, then you're either trolling or you didn't actually read any of my posts...I have never posted nor implied that. What I have consistently said for as long as I can remember is that the computer models that project temperature far, far into the future are likely to be biased warm. I think reality has born that out to be a much more accepted viewpoint. The bleak alarmism that permeates this thread belies the fact that their position is becoming less tenable.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 18, 2018 05:04
|
|