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Verge posted:Bill Gates loves climate change. I remember he wanted to saturate the atmo (or was funding a project or something related I dunno) with silicates or something...can't find it. Was pretty cool. If anyone can find it please link. It was a while ago, I think after he put a bounty on reinventing the condom and before the carbon capture plant. Gates funds everything from Mosquito lasers to wind power balloons. His MO is basically to throw money at a lot of stuff that might have a chance of somehow working, even if it seems improbable. It makes sense in that nobody can reliably predict what technologies will make it to market - but it also means that a lot of the stuff he funds will inevitably fail. It's Silicon Valleys approach to startups applied to engineering problems which may or may not work out in practice.
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Dec 3, 2015 05:47
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Radbot posted:Why would investments do anything in response to this agreement, considering there's no enforcement mechanism or market-based solution (carbon tax, cap and trade, etc.)? Regulatory uncertainty shifts costs. It's not about which thing is cheaper right now - it's what you believe will give you the best return on your investment over the next 10-20-40 years, or however long you project it will take your investment to be paid off. If investors perceive that, for instance, coal is likely to be hit by more and costlier restrictions or that wind power is about to receive a large subsidy, they will take it into account when they decide if they are going to invest in it. From an investment perspective the weakness of fossil fuels is that you can't predict costs of fuels, unlike nuclear/solar/wind. You can guess and hope and pray that natgas will still be very cheap in 20 years so your brand new 1b$ natgas plant will still be profitable then - but truthfully, you don't know. That risk has a cost. The Paris deal introduces more risk for fossil fuel investors since there's now a greater chance governments are going to be messing around with subsidies and taxes in the coming years. Whether the impact will be huge or trivial depends on how seriously investors believe it's not just hot air.
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Dec 14, 2015 20:04
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Rime posted:No, they've picked up something fierce. Asia-Pacific is one big ball of "burn all the loving trees to the ground. ALL THE TREES. BURN THEM."  The European coal lobby produces cartoons. It's my new favorite thing.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:32
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Squalid posted:Methane emissions are dependent on numerous factors, for example that article indicates the reservoir in the study was receiving high nutrient inputs, stimulating emissions. Depth and temperature are also important. So part of it is just picking good locations; more methane is going to escape from a warm, shallow reservoir than from one that is cold and deep. Better managing agricultural runoff from the surrounding area should also reduce emissions. It's not a problem you can eliminate, but certain practices can minimize harm. This also means in some circumstances hydropower just isn't a good solution, which sucks but what can you do. Is it different from ordinary lakes?
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Dec 15, 2015 20:55
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Freakazoid_ posted:It sounds like you've already made up your mind. There's nothing to debate if you will never accept what monsanto has done. What do you believe Monsanto has done?
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Jan 4, 2016 00:16
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Greggster posted:Disregarding any consequences GMO-food has on humans (which to my understanding ranges from no signs of increased health risks to unsure whether there are long time-risks), what are the negative consequences it can have or already have had on the environment? In the context of health risk it's not useful to speak generally of GMOs because the only property GMOs have in common is the classification as GMOs. The health risks depends on the specific changes in the specific strain. We similarly don't speak generally about the health risks of "additives" because it's nonsensical if we don't narrow it down to a specific additive or group of additives. There are a number of different ways of changing a crop strain such as genetic modification, hybridization, mutagenesis and selective breeding. Each take different approaches to get to the same end goal: a more desirable strain. Genetic modification is different from the other methods in that it's more targeted. The other methods rely to some degree on random chance and in the case of mutagenesis on provoked mutations through radiation and chemical baths - random chance on steroids. We know that toxic strains can be inadvertently created through selective breeding and mutagenesis because we've done it and at least once, one made it to market. We can theorize that it can also happen with genetic modification but it has not actually happened. Basically you have to evaluate every strain on its own merits no matter how it was created. Arguments relating to Big Agro, intensive farming, glyphosate, costly farm practices and chemicals are very common when discussing GMOs but has either nothing to do with it or relate only to a specific type of GMO, not GMOs in general. To answer your question: there is so far no evidence that GMOs as a whole come with any health risks or that strains created through that particular method is more likely to be harmful, than strains created through other means.
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Jan 4, 2016 01:47
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katlington posted:Whoa, What was that? Edit: See also: Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Effects, Chapter 3: Unintended Effects of Conventional Plant Breeding Bates fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Jan 4, 2016 |
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Jan 4, 2016 04:50
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Salt Fish posted:Unfortunately we don't live in the alternate universe where GMO technology is used in a thoughtful perfect way. We live in *this* world where its used in imperfect ways. Just like a gun is not "just a tool" and has social and cultural connotations more significant than its literal form, so too do GMO foods. I think that's a fine stance to take. There are no perfect options and no choices without consequences and that obviously also applies to GE technology. Ultimately there's good reasons to use it in spite of the pitfalls we must avoid. Personally I have high hopes for the technology both in terms of food security and the potential to limit the human footprint on Earth.
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Jan 4, 2016 05:42
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We're producing energy in a way that's harmful to the environment but that doesn't mean we have to stop producing energy. In the 1980s we were using CFCs for refrigeration and it was depleting the ozone layer. Now we don't anymore - and yet we still somehow have refrigerators.
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Jan 5, 2016 12:48
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El Grillo posted:Genuinely didn't know there were large-scale storage solutions in operation already. vOv Lots of hydro was built at the same time as nuclear to balance it out. Modern designs are easier to regulate.
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Feb 7, 2016 21:56
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ToxicSlurpee posted:One of the biggest issues is that capitalism, at its fundamental level, demands exponential growth, increased consumption across the board, and more more more MORE MORE MORE loving MORE nonstop. In capitalism "enough" does not exist. That right there is the fundamental problem. Economic growth and energy consumption are different things.  
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Mar 20, 2016 22:05
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Trabisnikof posted:I don't understand how the investment in those sorts of "farming" projects will actually be better for the climate than traditional ag can be. Like sure, LEDs use less electricity to grow plants than other lights, but traditional farms use the sun for free. I don't know that it's more environmentally friendly but economically it makes good sense to grow some crops in greenhouses - generally things that have a short shelf-life and require refrigeration. The alternative is to constantly ship refrigerators full of lettuce from the other side of the planet which is also energy intensive. It's not like wheat where a ship can fill up a bunch of silos and then London is tied over for a while - you have to constantly resupply and that's more expensive and inefficient. Of course it's a silly way to grow cereals, grain, corn etc. which is where we get most of our calories but it does have a place.
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Mar 22, 2016 19:30
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Our knowledge of climate change and the laws of physics suggests no feasible path to the extinction of the human race. Yes, everything is technically possible which is why we don't consider all possibilities but rather focus our attention on probable possibilities and the extinction of the human race in 100 years through climate change is decidedly not probable.
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Apr 18, 2016 14:57
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oxsnard posted:The EU's current climate change policies have lead to shutting down nuclear plants in favor of chopping down forests to burn in coal boilers, so I would keep it in perspective at least Well it's not like it's our forests 
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Apr 20, 2016 18:53
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The poor use less carbon than the non-poor. Carbon taxes would mainly hit the suburbs and create an incentive for industries to do things differently.
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May 17, 2016 12:57
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SedanChair posted:What is the point of saying how much of one particular thing it would take to get rid of all the CO2 produced by humans on earth? That's like giving up. The point is that big numbers are big.
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May 24, 2016 03:57
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G.C. Furr III posted:You're missing the point by overly focusing on the industrialisation part rather than the actual existing historical demonstration of the extreme rapidity of change when capitalism is no longer in charge What about the examples of capitalism not being in charge and the economy imploding? Do we just hope the right guy happens to be in charge? And industrializing faster when all the technologies and systems have already been developed isn't that amazing. What's interesting is what happened once the Soviets couldn't follow the blueprints laid out by capitalist countries and they had to develop and adapt in parallel. The rate of change appeared to be markedly lower than in capitalist countries.
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Jul 28, 2016 09:07
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KaptainKrunk posted:Krushchev flirted with economic reform but political stability and the dominance of the bureaucratic and managerial class came first in the eyes of the old guard. Gorbachev's reforms might have worked had he not blown the whole thing up by removing the CPSU's monopoly on power (which was the whole lynchpin of the economic system, still salvageable even by the late 80s). You're right that the economic dynamism faded; the Soviets had a hell of a time adopting to the post-Fordian era. However, that has a lot to do with the political decisions made and not made than any sort of inherent failing of a command economy. I think a command economy could potentially be most efficient in terms of economic development. It just requires that the people in charge make the right decisions. The problem is just that most people are wrong. There's 1000s of companies trying to figure out what the next thing in any industry will be and most of them will fail. By extension if you appoint any one group of people to decide how an industry should evolve then that group will more likely than not also be wrong. It's possible you can find a Ford or a Jobs and put them in charge of just the right thing at just the right time and then they probably would make the right decisions and implement it faster - more likely than not you'll put someone else in charge though.
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Jul 28, 2016 10:38
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BattleMoose posted:Is it? There are still heaps of industries that specifically evaporate water off to get the salt. At worst you bankrupt those business and start an advertising campaign to get people to add more salt to their food! What could possibly go wrong? Well currently brine gets dumped back into the ocean and it's loving up the Gulf and Red Sea and longer term might mess up the Med too.
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Jul 31, 2016 06:27
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Somewhat related Forbes did a piece on falling energy storage costs and how that may affect power generation in the near future. Basically the first use of utility scale batteries probably won't be to store renewable energy but rather to buffer traditional power plants so they can produce at a more constant and ideal rate.
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Jul 31, 2016 20:43
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LLSix posted:I was raised in a Republican family and I just watched "An Inconvenient Truth" for the first time. Man, they really did a thorough hack job on him. I grew up thinking he was a fringe lunatic but I found Al Gore a reasoned and thoughtful speaker. It's broadly accurate. Just remember he's a politician, not a climate scientist. Refuting every single point in the movie would have no bearing on whether anthropomorphic climate change is a real phenomena or not. Edit: TildeATH posted:Anthropogenic, you idiot. lol spellcheck hosed me. Bates fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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Aug 5, 2016 05:56
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TheNakedFantastic posted:Yes, I'm not necessarily disagreeing that that can or will happen. However modern agriculture systems have decades to adapt and it could just as easily happen that even places like India manage to find some sort food stability. The collapse of modern civilization or mass starvation is far from a certainty even isolating the third world. Well the population of Africa is set to triple over the next 80 years and a lot of agricultural land there will become unusable. Sooo.... either a lot of African countries become wealthy enough to buy food from someone else or a lot more people will be drowning in the Med.
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Sep 30, 2016 02:40
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Jimbot posted:Anyone have some specific tips not mentioned in those resources linked in the OP? If someone makes a baseless claim ask for hard data and refuse to move on until they give it. Make the conversation about their claims - don't tell them they are wrong, ask them why they are right.
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Nov 22, 2016 04:36
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It's been raining all day here so I'm pretty sure we're not running out of water.
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Nov 22, 2016 18:57
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The Sun is 4% hotter these days so it's cool there's less CO2 around.
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Jan 2, 2017 01:49
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It's not so much southeastern Europe as it is the countries that have experienced the highest immigration pressures. Those tendencies will expand across Europe in lockstep with immigration.
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Jan 16, 2017 11:34
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It would be economically useful but the number of babies people have doesn't really depend on how much food is grown within the borders of their country.
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Jan 27, 2017 17:43
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Sea level rose by 6 cm in the 19th century and 19 cm in the 20th so that would be quite the acceleration.
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Feb 18, 2017 05:27
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Here's an article about La Paz in Bolivia adapting to changing weather patterns and disappearing glaciers. It's reasonably manageable in a city of 600k but I suspect we'll see it happen on a much larger scale soon enough.
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Feb 21, 2017 15:38
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There's a whole new thread for apocalypse survival chat.
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Feb 23, 2017 18:11
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Crazycryodude posted:Seriously, holy poo poo. The planet is choking to death on the emissions and environmental impact of just a couple billion people living it up as first worlders, but oh sure there's totally a way to maintain 10 or so billion people at that standard forever and be fine In terms of decreasing consumption or sticking it to "international capitalism" some people growing vegetables is like farting in the wind.
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Aug 27, 2017 19:49
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the old ceremony posted:to pre-empt your next argument, yes i know that children and the elderly can't be expected to live without climate control when the summers are hitting 118f regularly, which very soon they will be. it's not an all-or-nothing thing, some spaces can still be air-conditioned to protect vulnerable people. but 90% of the population can survive without it. So? I've never owned a car and many other people could exist without one too just fine. It's completely irrelevant because you're simply not going to convince people to do it until they have to - just like they won't turn their lawns into potato patches until they have to or do without air-conditioning or meat until they have to. Maybe the government should force it on us but in a democracy that's not going to happen quickly if at all.
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Aug 28, 2017 04:46
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Paradoxish posted:The fact that so much new capacity is natural gas is extremely depressing. The silver lining is US electricity production flatlining since 2005 so it's not added capacity. Every new gas plant probably replace a coal plant.
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Aug 29, 2017 22:48
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Useful illustration of one of the main impacts of climate change.  It's based on a Wikipedia list but they're generally reasonably accurate for data summation "Most intense" refers to "cyclones which attained a pressure of 900 hPa (mbar) (26.56 inHg) or less."
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Sep 6, 2017 22:33
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GreyjoyBastard posted:I am bad at water macro-issues. Why would the rivers not refresh at (roughly) the same levels? The glaciers normally recharge from precipitation, right? Why wouldn't that precipitation still fall, just, you know, now directly flowing into the rivers? (And not having a supply buffer but that's not a thing that really matters in the long term as far as flow over twenty years or whatever) The useful feature of glaciers is the addition of melt water in spring when you need water for agriculture. It's essentially wasted if it flows out during winter.
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Sep 11, 2017 05:03
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call to action posted:Wow, you're intensely stupid. Climate science is the only thing that may keep human life in an organized, civilized form on this planet through 2100. The bullshit, fake-rear end carbon sequestration schemes that have no basis in physical or economic reality represents a hideous accelerationism that I simply can't subscribe to. Every single RCP scheme has literal hopium for devices that cannot and will not exist embedded within them, no reference to the clear positive feedback loops we're currently seeing, etc. Based on the scientific literature what do you believe will happen then?
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Sep 11, 2017 18:04
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VideoGameVet posted:Before Tillerson's comments though. So who knows what's happening. Well it also just doesn't make sense to leave it. It's basically a non-binding statement of intent. If you leave you lose political capital now and every time anyone mentions the Paris Accord henceforth it will be with the side note that the US left it. If you stay in it and fail to reach the goal you can at least claim you tried.
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Sep 18, 2017 11:20
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achillesforever6 posted:The worst hot take I've been seeing from shitheads on Climate Change is that its actually good because it's been leading to innovations in energy production I suppose it's positive they moved up from "CO2 is plant food. Why do you hate plants?"
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Sep 21, 2017 15:22
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Squalid posted:If you live in the United States most people generally speaking are fat. I expect that is true of most vegetarians as well as for other demographic groups. Nevertheless, the American Dietetic Association had this to say about vegetarian diets and body mass. I expect vegetarians are more conscious of health and have the personal resources and knowledge to pursue it as indicated by them altering their diets in the first place. Meat in itself is not going to make you fat though. The problem is when you do stuff like coat it in bread, soak it in oil and eat a bucket of oil-soaked potatoes with it. Not eating meat ain't gonna do poo poo if you drink tubs of soda and eat pizza every day so in this case it's more correlation than causation.
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Sep 24, 2017 11:54
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Oil contains more carbon than trees so let's just buy that and sequester it in the oceans.
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Sep 28, 2017 12:49
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