Scientists caught off-guard by record temperatures linked to climate change
reuters.com
reuters.com
I've tried to stop living such a carbon dependant lifestyle but I look outside and my efforts feel futile. How do I REALLY do something about this other than a few pretentious yet barely discomforting lifestyle changes and the odd empassioned few sentences at dinner parties?
Start pushing for a carbon tax?
Start an electric car company?
Begin development of technology to get us to Ma.....oh wait
Plant heaps of trees?
Buy drones and start my own version of operation sunscreen?
Seriously. The mild excitement that comes with media alarmism has transitioned into "I really need to start doing something drastic or I'll regret it"
On one side there are the climate change deniers (and the people who don't care about it). They are fine to continue business as usual.
On the other side there are the people who are concerned about climate change. But instead of agreeing to effective solutions (compromises) that allow us to somewhat mitigate global warming (such as nuclear energy) they oppose those solutions and instead propose things that are 1) not realistic to implement in the short-term and that 2) the first group (the climate change deniers) would never agree to.
Basically the outcome is that we're stuck in a grid lock now and nothing happens at all.
Regarding nuclear energy: Most of the people whom I know oppose nuclear energy because of 1) "what happens if there's an accident" and 2) "what should we do with the waste". My response to this: 1) Per TWH nuclear energy is statistically safer than other energy sources: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so... and 2) While there are some more long-term approaches for waste (reprocessing, maybe Thorium) even in the short-term I prefer a well definied disposal site over just blowing the waste into their air (which is what happens with fossil-fuel powered plants. I recommend reading http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/james-lovel... for a few more arguments.
Also, I agree that flat blocking of nuclear is unreasonable. But in my opinion disagreement on the issue is a relatively marginal issue in the general sweep of tackling climate change. Again, in the UK, we're just at the end of an open commissioning process for new nuclear, led by the centre right party, with agreement across all major parties.
Despite that level of political support, and a complete lack of protectionism (to the extent that one of the leading bids is funded by a Chinese state-owned energy company!) it is still going to be very expensive, and has a very long development and construction time.
Undoubtedly it's sensible for baseline demand (i.e. continuous 24hr demand which doesn't require scaling up or down), but to me it's not going to be a make or break solution either way. It's not sensible to completely tie yourself in to an expensive, monolithic technology to come online in 20 years, and operate for 50 years thereafter. It's an important hedge which we should definitely take up, but it's not the total solution which people present.
The new DNC platform coming out of the convention this week doesn't seem to agree with you. It focuses solely on renewable sources, sweeping nuclear under the carpet.
70-80% of people agree that anthropogenic climate change is happening
I don't understand why those concerned about climate change continue to insist on putting the word "anthropogenic" in there. It's mostly irrelevant to the conversation, and comes off as little more than finger-pointing. If there's a problem that needs to be addressed, whether it's caused by humans or not isn't really the issue. If there were an asteroid heading toward the earth, we wouldn't say "we didn't throw that rock at ourselves, so we'll ignore it". Likewise, the discussion over climate change should be on the climate change; trying to make the cause of the problem part of its name just creates additional contention.
I strongly disagree that whether or not climate change is human-caused is unimportant. How can you have a consensus on the solution without consensus on the problem?
A lot people who don't think humans are responsible will take the position that change is natural, therefore okay. Or, they will attribute change to other factors which would call for other solutions. If you don't think climate change is driven by the human-caused increases in greenhouse gas concentrations which we have seen, why would you try to tackle natural climate change through altering the concentrations of those gases?
So "finger pointing" to humanity isn't that bad of a tactic to get things done.
There would be a massive media campaign to discredit observations of the asteroid, and dismissal of concerns about it, and someone would run for president on an explicit platform of asteroid denial.
No, we should look at it, we should deal with it (in the best possible way) regardless of it being manmade or not. The anthropogenic part of the argument shouldn't have any weight at all in the decision to act or not to act (I am for acting).
It only should play a role in understanding the causes so to better fight the effects.
If it's anthropogenic then it is a brand new phenomena in geological time and will throw many ecological systems into disarray or destroy them completely because they never evolved the adaptations. If it's not anthropogenic, then no big deal this is a regular cyclical warm period that the Earth goes through naturally. If it's a natural cycle that we're not contributing to then we have nothing to fix.
What in the world does this have to do with asteroids?
Your conclusion doesn't follow. Just because man didn't create it [1] doesn't mean that it's necessarily cyclical. The earth has changed in many ways in its lifetime. Some of those changes are indeed parts of cycles. Other changes are strictly one-way.
[1] hypothetically; I'm not actually making that claim, just following that line of argument
That's not to say that such a thing is without danger. I'm particularly wary of unintended consequences. But the people that are pursuing vast reductions in emissions aren't giving very much thought to the unintended consequences of their approach, either.
My point is that the arguments are being made with a huge amount of assumption on all sides. That's not the way to get to a good answer. We need to really consider what the likelihoods of possible outcomes are, in terms of lost human utility; and we might be able to do about them, including their costs and likelihood of success. I don't see a lot of real pro-vs-con debate - most of what I see is the Al Gore tactic of intentionally exaggerating claims to frighten people into acquiescence.
Mainstream political thought in the US has largely self-sorted into two categories of politicians - ones that don't believe that climate change is happening, and won't do anything about it, and ones that do believe that it is happening, and won't do anything about it. Neither is of any use to us.
This is not entirely accurate. First, I wish the platform mentioned nuclear explicitly; I think that would be healthy. However, while renewable energy sources get a mention, the focus is on "clean power." The platform directly endorses the Clean Power Plan, which has a significant role for nuclear power: https://www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan/fact-sheet-clean-power-pl...
Nuclear power is part of an "all the above" energy strategy that supports economic growth and job creation, enhances our nation's energy security, and protects the planet for future generations. The Clean Power Plan (CPP) ensures that zero carbon nuclear power will continue to play a prominent and meaningful role in America’s energy mix.
It's absolutely true that the platform doesn't highlight the need for nuclear energy, but it's certainly not about blocking nuclear energy either.
If we aren't causing it (or contributing significantly), then stopping what we're doing won't fix it. So yes, it's important to the conversation that we're actually causing the problem.
That's not correct. If I'm sitting in my car and it starts to roll downhill, it's gravity that's causing the movement, not my car. Yet applying the brakes is still the correct course of action.
Moreover, even if we assume that humans are the cause of the problem, it doesn't necessarily follow that the cessation of human activity is the optimal course of action. There may be other effective alternatives (e.g., large-scale engineered efforts to increase planetary albedo via cloud formation) that are significantly cheaper. It might be that the costs of mitigating the problem exceed the expected damage that the problem is expected to cause.
To be sure, I don't know that either of those possibilities hold in this case, but it's mistaken to simply assume them away.
Really the UK needs some kind of energy strategy other than hoping for the market and the Large Combustion Plant directive to sort it out. It needs to be a "yes, and" strategy - there's no reason to set up a dichotomy between renewables and nuclear, that merely prevents progress on either. We need to keep provisioning renewables until the night-time issue becomes significant. Really we ought to have done more with tidal and wave power rather than allow Pelamis to become bankrupt.
Personally I have 4kW of solar on my roof and take a bus to work.
...
"The rate of new build was biggest in 1984, and had a value of (drum-roll please...) about 30 GW per year – about 30 1-GW reactors."
For nuclear specifically, a mass roll out of nuclear plants is simply too difficult - cost, production bottlenecks, public opposition, production time and delays, etc. Almost no new plants are being built in the U.S. currently - you can't easily go from that to replacing a large percentage of the power system with nuclear plants.
I'm not sure how any reasonable person could see nuclear as being one of the more viable or effective solutions (particularly when compared to low-hanging fruit like increased energy efficiency).
And yet many Asian countries are doing just this.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-01-11/china-shou...
[2]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/aug/25/wikileak...
Whether that's an accurate assessment in the long run or not, it's their choice to make, and not one the US would be likely to emulate - after all, we've got Westinghouse and the AP-1000 design right here. We've also got a much more thoroughly developed uranium production pipeline and a similar extent of available reserves, which means we won't face the same structural problems China does in ramping up fuel production - they're essentially having to build that process from scratch, and there's only so far it's worth letting your plant production outpace your ability to fuel the reactors you're building.
> The country should set a 2020 ceiling on reactors in operation at 70,000 megawatts to avoid a shortfall of fuel, equipment and qualified plant workers
> "By bypassing the passive safety technology of the AP1000, which, according to Westinghouse, is 100 times safer than the CPR-1000, China is vastly increasing the aggregate risk of its nuclear power fleet. "
And this is just trying to increase nuclear from ~3% to ~4%.
Maybe the U.S. would do things much better, but we should keep in mind that we just had the first new reactor come online in 20 years. And in that case, it was mostly built in the 80's (construction was halted), it's sister reactor was already running at the plant (since '96), and it still took 9 years to complete (and it's still being tested, it's not commercial yet).
The argument that a main component - some people even seem to argue the main component - of the fight against climate is a large scale switch over to nuclear seems completely divorced from reality.
Here in the US, we're not constrained by fuel shortages, and we don't have to make ourselves beholden to a potentially hostile foreign state in order to take advantage of the AP-1000 design. We also have the world's broadest and deepest reservoir of institutional knowledge on the subject of nuclear power - a technology invented in the United States, and which we have arguably developed to the greatest extent of any nation on Earth, even if we have thus far chosen not to reap the full benefits of our efforts.
You're right that we aren't building out modern nuclear technology as well as we could be. But we aren't facing the same structural limitations China is, and we therefore do not face a similar choice between unpalatable options. The deficit we face is merely one of will - that is, we're not building out new nuclear because we can't, but rather because the very same people who inveigh most strongly against ignoring AGW have an ideological and frankly emotional objection to modern nuclear infrastructure, an objection which arises entirely from industrial accidents which occurred with technology now half a century old, and from which the industry has learned.
To be quite clear, I have significant concerns of my own with how new nuclear is likely to be implemented. Specifically, as I've stated in this forum and others, the existence of a profit motive around the operation and safety management of nuclear reactors is in my opinion a substantial risk. That risk is, however, susceptible of mitigation or elimination by quite realistic measures, and even if left completely as is, collapses into negligibility alongside the risks posed by either continuing to ignore AGW, or building a response that relies entirely on ill-tested, seasonally variable, and enormously inefficient power generation methods to supply life-critical baseload power.
Many nuclear advocates seem to share this misconception. Fighting climate change is not about simply switching all power generation to one and only one alternative source. It's not about whether we are going to rely 100% on nuclear or 100% on solar, and it's not even only about generation.
A large part of the efforts are focused on things like increased efficiency. Alternative energy also plays a role (including nuclear, though it plays a relatively small role). These efforts will help cut emissions until we get below 450 (or 350), not entirely eliminate emissions. We don't need solar (for example) to provide electricity 24/7 - we need it to help decrease the emissions. If we have enough elements that decrease the emissions some amount, we'll eventually get below 450 (or 350).
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding by some about what the fight against climate change actually entails. It is not about picking the one and only energy source for the future.
> The deficit we face is merely one of will
This ignores the economic and construction issues that nuclear plants have.
Engineering problems with known solutions, were we only to implement them.
> There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding by some about what the fight against climate change actually entails.
If that's so, it's a result of the rhetoric employed by many on the conventional, non-nuclear anti-AGW side. For example, you're the first person I've ever heard espouse this kind of incrementalism on CO2 figures. For most rhetoric on the subject, "apocalyptic" is not too strong a term.
I think a lot of nuclear advocates adopt their position on the basis that it's the most effective available response if things really are that bad. And then we get confused when people would rather keep technologies that spew filth constantly into the air, instead of accepting a very slight increased risk of localized and contained industrial accidents which are costly but not deadly. (Yeah, I know: Chernobyl and Fukushima. No one is proposing we build RBMKs in the US, and unlike Japan, if we want to build 2nd-gen BWRs safe from tsunamis, we have ample inland territory on which to do so.) If it's a choice between nuclear power and civilizational collapse involving megadeaths, that seems like a no-brainer. If it's not such a choice, it's fair to ask why so many people have done so much to make it seem so.
Honestly, I think the environmental movement has shot itself in the foot here in a huge way. Decades of painting nuclear power as Satan incarnate has made it politically impossible, indeed unthinkable, to include new, safe nuclear as the foundation of a strategy addressing AGW with a truly sustainable generation architecture, so what we're left with is quarter measures and cheese-paring fractionalism - changing lightbulbs to save the world.
The biggest issue with nuclear is that it, by itself, is entirely insufficient to deal with the problem. And the best policy solutions to climate change--namely, a refundable carbon tax--would themselves encourage the proliferation of nuclear to the extent nuclear is actually helpful.
I don't see how we can possibly break out of this cycle without revisiting the notion of an infinite-growth economy. Until we curb human population and energy consumption, we'll continue sprinting from dead-end to dead-end.
And we have, for all current intents and purposes, an infinite supply of nuclear, solar, and wind energy.
Further, I question the notion that solar and wind power are infinite in supply. At some point, absorbing solar radiation that would otherwise heat the surface of the earth must have some effect on global weather patterns, and a similar argument can be made for wind power. I don't think we're anywhere near that point, but it just goes to show that the "infinite growth" mindset is extremely problematic in the long run.
As for human population, this is true of first-world countries, but not universally true. India is an example of extreme demographic growth.
Any way you want to cut it, our power (or, more generally, resource) demands cannot grow infinitely. Where you are correct is in pointing out that the population constraint is fundamentally at odds with the geopolitical and economic need for demographic growth. This is precisely the point I'm lamenting.
1) Paint too bleak a picture: Most people will conclude there's nothing to be done, and take no action. 2) Paint too rosy a picture: Most people will conclude it's no big deal, and take no action.
In terms of change, we have dramatically cut back on CO2 production vs. predictions from even 10 years ago. So we are making progress.
But admittedly the situation may change within the lifetime of a new nuclear station, or even in the 20 years before it's actually built.
Base load power is a misnomer based on coal/nuclear plants having poor responses to changing demand. Without fuel use over production is completely viable. Some net storage for 99.9% reliability for a combo of wind / solar / hydro in the US adds ~10-20% which is still vastly lower than nuclear which is expensive even after massive subsides.
Yes, the grid will look rather different, but backbone power transmission is going to stay a tiny percentage of GDP.
(The gap between max wind output and median output is huge, but the gap between median output and minimum output over a day for a large area is much smaller.)
PS: You see a lot of overly simplistic analysis that fails to account for the hydro power as energy storage and shifting demand east west to shift solar production vs. demand. A massive dam stores a lot of power which can be released on demand at any point in the year. Add some pumped hydro storage for fitting the day to day demand curve which can be thousands of miles from both production and use and storage is already both cheap and a solved problem.
Humanity has always been on the brink of demise. We've always been barely able to feed our people. This took us from hunter-gatherers to the development of agriculture, on to irrigation, fertilization, terraced farming, crop rotation, selective breeding, genetic manipulation.
In terms of energy, as we depleted the forests of wood for burning, we've gone through similar transformations, learning to harness other means of light and heat like wax, whale oil, and so on.
It turns out that the greatest resource we have is not vegetable or mineral, it's the human mind. Intentionally shutting off the creation of new minds - the engines that are going to find the means of solving all the other problems - is counterproductive.
I don't believe the proposition that global warming is not a problem because human ingenuity will fix it.
Our land and oceans are already straining under our population load.
I mean, we stopped denuding the forests to get firewood, so a visitor from, say, 3 centuries ago would be astonished at how well wooded the land is near cities. You can canoe down the Delaware River today and feel entirely surrounded by the trees, yet around the time of the Revolution, those hills were bare.
We hunted whales almost to the point of extinction. But we came up with better energy sources, and while this was recent enough that the whales haven't quite recovered yet, they're not threatened in this manner anymore.
So you'll have to explain to me how this time it's different than the countless other times when our ancestors (look back at Malthus!) claimed that we were on the brink of disaster.
You keep repeating that, but it simply isn't true. The oceans have not been straining in the pre-industrial era in the slightest.
> You can canoe down the Delaware River today and feel entirely surrounded by the trees, yet around the time of the Revolution, those hills were bare.
This is a typical anecdote that falls flat in the face of data. Look at global forestation rates in the pre-industrial era and today.
> So you'll have to explain to me
No one owes any explanation to a person who denies facts when presented with them. You made claims without evidence, therefore your claims can be dismissed without evidence.
There is much more to living than just food. That we can grow enough food is not a persuasive argument that there aren't too many people on the planet. People shit, pollute, destroy, and consume.
But this has ALWAYS been true. You haven't given any reason to think differently.
There is much more to living than just food. ... People shit, pollute, destroy, and consume.
Exactly. Yet we've invented sanitation. And if you look at the trends, our higher standard of living has given us the luxury to curtail the pollution and destruction. America's air and water is MUCH cleaner now than it was when I was growing up (just as the Clean Air Act was getting started).
Thanks to smart scientists and engineers, we've learned new ways to do things that that are far more environmentally friendly.
In a way you're right. The problems will never be entirely fixed, because nothing is infinite. But a very long history shows that while we're always on the brink of destruction, we're also always on the brink of brilliant new insights that break us through those barriers.
The source of those brilliant insights is the minds of the people. Calling for drastic reductions in birth rates would be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs: innovation is what's going to keep saving our butts.
Well, duh, that's why.
There are also involuntary reduction methods...
The problems of the middle east aren't just religious, the region has seen huge population growth in the 20th century beyond the ability of its natural resources to sustain it. This is not hyperbole, Yemen is running out of water.
If it's 54C outside in Kuwait, how habitable is that really? What if it's three or four degrees hotter?
The problem is that carbon releasing, cheap energy is more delicious than apples. It is worth a lot more than apples and the people who control that energy are a lot more powerful than apple growers. But the solution is the same.
How would you convince people to stop eating apples? You could protest against the eating of apples. You could lobby for apple taxes. You could do many, many things, but to be honest I don't think you would be very successful.
If it were me, I think I would work very hard to eliminate apples from my life (at least as much as I could). I would work very hard to learn how to be happy without apples (or at least with a tiny amount of apples). Having learned how to be happy without apples, I would show my neighbours and friends how they can be happy without apples.
Because the thing is, you require a cultural change to get everyone going the same direction. And they won't do it unless they think it's going to be OK. Right now all they hear is death and destruction on one side, or a life of freezing poverty on the other side. Most of them are happy to believe the apple salesmen who tell them that the concept that apples change the climate is preposterous.
It's an amazing device.
And they have worse hygiene :)
I agree with your sentiments overall though.
Also, IIRC, he got on the stage and thanked them while it was still going on. Before he saw the mountain of trash they left on his property.
Unfortunately, many of the world's large countries are democracies, and it's hard to, say, ration meat consumption in them. It's too easy for power-seeking populist politicians to gather votes from people who like meat by telling them that sort of thing is nonsense and a left-wing conspiracy.
> I would work very hard to learn how to be happy without apples (or at least with a tiny amount of apples).
The problem is: with no apples, you can't be as happy as with apples. At least, not until the others are enjoying their apples and share the negative sides with you. It's the usual tragedy of the common, when anybody could be happier if (and only if) everybody ate less apples.
Warning, past this point you may think I'm a lunatic. I really am trying to see what works and what doesn't work. I've been really surprised at how much stuff I really don't want once I've gotten rid of it.
I don't have a car. I hang my clothes on a line (I even went a year washing my clothes by hand, but my wife drew the line there ;-) ). I wash my dishes by hand. I have a 200W heater that I use for 4 hours a night in the winter (1 degree C). I have a small electric fan that I use for a similar time in the summer (35 degree C). I experience weather* (wow). I have LCD panel lights (which are incredibly awesome). My wife and I average no more than 1.5 kWh a day. Even though we pay about 40 cents per kWh, I can't remember when our bill exceeded the minimum charge (imposed by stupid-power-company-fees). I could go on and on. And the thing is, I really am happier as a result of what I'm doing.
Can everybody be as happy as me with as little as me? I'm not sure. Maybe somebody can do better. I hope so. But I keep seeing what I can do and showing it to others to see what they think. I think it's the only way.
* I use about $20 a year in charcoal in a hibachi in really cold weather. I work from home and don't heat the home. I try to heat me. However, below 5 degrees C is pretty hard on the health, so I really don't advise it. Above that is surprisingly doable. 10 degrees C is even pleasant.
I'm sincerely glad for you, but how much of your current happiness comes from the challenge that you posed yourself and you won? In other terms, how much effort are you putting every day in your (fully respectable) cause?
> Can everybody be as happy as me with as little as me? I'm not sure.
Me neither. It looks to me as you chose to be happier via ecology. Most people have already chosen how they wish to be happier, and giving up cheap energy is just a huge roadblock for them.
this sounds like total resignation. how about challenging those people on their choices?
Hanging the clothes is another interesting one. We wash the clothes every day in the morning. The washing machine uses surprisingly little energy (average load is 64 Wh according to the manual). Hanging the wash takes a couple of minutes before work. Taking them down and folding them another couple of minutes after work. If it's raining that day we dry them on a rack indoors (sometimes takes 2 days in the rainy season, but it doesn't bother me any!). This is just dramatically better than my old process of hanging around for 2 hours for my laundry to be done. Hanging the laundry keeps them from getting wrinkled. The clothes also last a lot longer. Again, I was amazed at how much better it really was. Even when I was washing clothes by hand, I could do both my wife's and my clothes in 10 minutes easily. Usually did it just before I took a shower. If something needed to soak, I soaked it while I was taking a shower. My wife didn't like it, though, because I'm not as delicate as the washing machine (i.e. it's a job that requires some skill) and since the washing machine is actually quite efficient, we scrapped that.
Again, I could go on for a long time, but you probably don't want to be bored by all the discoveries I've made over the years. Some things require learning some skills. Some things require learning some new processes. However, I have been pleasantly surprised at how little effort is required to have a dramatic improvement in life quality at the same time as reducing energy usage.
Some things are uncomfortable in my new life. Sometimes it's hot in the summer. I drink cool beer at dinner time. You have no idea how good it tastes. Sometimes it's cold in the winter. I lie in front of a sunny window like a cat in complete bliss. I eat cold noodles in the summer and hot stew in the winter. I walk for hours on end in the perfect weather of spring and fall. My life is just better. By a lot.
I don't really expect to convince you in this kind of forum and I wouldn't bother replying, but you seem to be curious even if you are understandably sceptical. It's a bit easier to convince people where I live (in Japan) that what I'm doing makes sense because most of it is already part of the traditional culture. My mother in law is in her mid 80s and has never used a heater or air conditioner in her life -- she thinks they are evil. And a lot of things would have to be done completely differently in other parts of the world. I'm from Canada and you can't do without heat when it is -30 degrees C.
I think the key thing is to just challenge the assumptions we make -- A car allows you to do more things, so it makes your life better. A heater makes you comfortable, so it makes your life happier. These things seem obvious, but at least in my experience they don't necessarily follow in practice.
Nobody will change what they are doing now unless it is part of their culture. The culture will not change unless people see other people enjoying something new. If you want to change the culture, change what you are doing now, find a way to enjoy it, show other people. It doesn't happen over night, but it can happen more quickly than you might imagine. Just look at pedestrian city centres in Europe (would anyone agree to let cars drive on the high streets of England any more? I seriously doubt it). Look at people carrying cloth bags to grocery stores. In some places people would rather walk into a store without their pants than without their own bag. Neither of these things were remotely true when I was a child. Things change in surprising ways.
In the same way, she thinks I am a complete crazy person with this stuff. She doesn't agree with all of my ideas, but she enjoys the ones that work out. She supports me in trying to find the ones that work, just as I support her in being involved in her church activities.
She's Japanese and I'm Canadian and when we met neither of us spoke their other's language particularly well. It's always been a relationship where we need to work hard to understand each other and where we are surprised by the other's view point once we finally understand it. It's part of the charm ;-)
One step in the right direction would be to stop (literally!) fighting to make apples as inexpensive as possible. We could allow the market for apples reflect the true costs of their discovery, harvesting, processing, and transport, with no subsidies.
The price would likely be significantly higher, and many people would curtail their apple consumption of their own accord.
In short, we either need a radical new source of apples, or we need to find a way to use far fewer apples.
I'm afraid that in no way we can have the second without the first one. People switched to fossil fuels because life was way too much easier with them, and no climate change can convince us to go back unless we find another big source of cheap energy or, simply, we exhaust the oil fields.
That all said, a lot of what is currently installed will probably never see energy buy-back. Rather, we have to look upon a lot of existing renewable investment as just that - investment - for this has paved the way for actually energy positive renewable energy technology, which we now have, and seem poised to squander.
This misery will be very unevenly distributed. Most people will trade one weather for another. Some will definitely benefit. A good portion will probably see their current place uninhabitable.
Pushing for carbon tax and carbon trade is the best overall option. Devil is in the details, of course. Carbon tax should be significant and carbon trade shouldn't have loopholes. It should prevent exporting carbon production to other countries (carbon tax for imported products). It should involve meat production (according to FAO meat consumption produces 17% of human carbon emissions, more than transportation).
Biggest problem is attitude against measures that are large enough. People accept measures against climate change only if they are sold with promises of immediate rewards.
Economic estimates of the cost of effective measures vary, but typical estimate is 0.5 - 1% reduction into world GDP. This is something we don't have political will to do and mentioning negatives is a taboo. Rational people just flatly refuse to acknowledge that it's possible that reducing carbon emissions might be net negative for economy next 20-40 years. Only our children would see the benefits.
I think it is genuinely difficult to say that with any certainty. The economy as well as the climate is highly non linear, with all sorts of unforeseen cost gradients off in undiscovered territory, of low slopes and mountain ridges, and local minima.
The purpose of a carbon tax would be to lower the barriers in favour of low carbon technologies, but we can't say in advance what the result will be, until we are on that path, and seeing the outcome of our capital investments.
It's perfectly possible that we could collectively direct our capital investments solely in solar, batteries, fuel cells etc, and within a short period of time they drive below the local minima accessible through fossil and combustion technologies. You would see a great disruption of existing investments, but disruption is not inherently a bad thing.
You could see 40 years of extraordinary technological and economic progress, but even so you'd still have no way to compare what the outcome might have been of 40 years of energy investment going solely to fossil fuels, relative to the same time and money going to the alternatives. It is undiscovered until you are there.
I think ultimately we just have to do our best to price in the externalized costs and to a certain extent to set the hard limits of the amount of damage we are willing to inflict, and let the economy adjust to the reality of the situation.
Yes. It's difficult to say, but you can make estimates and they have been done. Estimates made by economists are better than wishful thinking.
>You could see 40 years of extraordinary technological and economic progres
We don't have time. We have used our carbon budget. Doing things in hurry is what increases the cost.
To stop global warming below 2 C requires that our emissions are cut into fraction of current levels within 15 years. That's incredibly short time. We should be shutting down coal plants already and companies should write off their investments. There is no time for smooth transition.
Major estimates agree that that avoiding climate change is affordable can can be done, but time has run out (not running out, has run out). U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the cost would be 13 trillion trough 2030 using idealized scenarios. It would reduce GDP just 0.1%. Big task but clearly affordable. The bad new is that there is no sign that there is will to invest even close that much. There is no political will to do that. IEA estimates say that the cost is around $30 trillion.
Things like GOP's "clean carbon" policy take out the possible and all idealized scenarios. There is no change in hell that GOP ruled House does anything significant to make "perfectly possible" happen. 4 years from now cost has increased again.
>I think ultimately we just have to do our best to price in the externalized costs and to a certain extent to set the hard limits of the amount of damage we are willing to inflict, and let the economy adjust to the reality of the situation.
Yes. I think 4 degrees is what is going to happen. Horrible cost for humanity and nature. Show your kids coral reefs when they are still there.
- Eat less meat or cut it out fully (or at least not every day)
- Fly less and use long distance trains where you can
- Insulate your property to reduce energy use
- Ride a bicycle and take public transport rather than drive (or get an EV)
- Install solar power / battery storage / heat pumps
- Switch energy supplier to a green provider
However, to be effective beyond that you need to do things that scale and have a multiplying effect or bootstrap/kickstart a virtuous circle. This should be a familiar principle for the startup crowd on HN. Some simple ideas:
- Write about your experiences in green living online
- Get a job in a green industry (lots of them need developers)
- Help others get jobs in green industries
- Invest in green companies (crowd funding etc.)
- Divest from fossil fuel (pension choices etc.)
- Join a community group and donate your time / skills
For example, I help run a community group called Cleanweb UK and we have a free jobs site (https://cleanwebjobs.com) that tries to get tech workers into jobs that help fight climate change. Friends of the Earth often run hackathons.
You could also make tools to help people who are trying to reduce their carbon impact. For example, I built https://shutdownscanner.com to help office managers measure how many computers are left on when not in use. There are many opportunities to build tools that assist in demand shifting and other green data based systems.
Also, long distance passenger trains absolutely do not reduce freight transport. They lease the the use of the tracks which provides additional income to the freight carriers and the freight carriers have right of way at all times on the tracks. On top of that the Northeast Coast(Washington, DC and north) lines in the US are electric.
Did you just randomly make this stuff up? It is completely false information.
You are the one who is misinformed. Railroad operators are required to give access to Amtrak as part of a deal that allowed them to cancel long-distance passenger service. They would much rather not give access to Amtrak in the first place. Furthermore Amtrak is supposed to have priority over freight trains, however Amtrak is at the mercy of the dispatchers of the railroad whose lines they are travelling over.
The Northeast corridor is completely owned by Amtrak. Outside of that area, there are no electrified long distance passenger services in the United States. Outside of the Northeast corridor, flying is a much greener option than taking a train.
To quote the Boston Globe "Under an agreement signed in 2003, Amtrak has used, maintained, and dispatched trains on the Attleboro line — the MBTA tracks between Boston and the Rhode Island line — for free."[0]
[0] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/04/18/mbta-seek-penal...
Seriously, stop it. You are just making stuff up. Why are you doing that?
The MBTA is a transit line. It's also in the Northeast Corridor, which, as I've already established, is quite different than the majority of the country. I assume you are from the northeast, so I understand your confusion regarding the status of Amtrak in the rest of the nation. In the majority of the country, Amtrak travels on rails owned by the railroads, and the railroads are very much not fond of passenger rail. They are forced to provide access to Amtrak as part of the agreement that allowed them to discontinue revenue passenger service. The railroads were obligated to provide revenue passenger service as part of a bail out in teh early 20th century.
I read your link and it literally has no bearing on anything I just said, because of the aforementioned fact that it is in the Northeast Corridor. Furthermore the agreement was signed in 2003, which has nothing to do with anything I am talking about. Third, the Northeast sucks for rail freight because the loading gauge is so small compared to the rest of the country, and population density is higher, so passenger rail is comparatively better there than elsewhere.
Your superior knowledge on the subject is merely illusory. I suggest you do some research into the history of passenger rail in the United States. I'm sure you are intelligent, but your attitude sucks. Here's some stuff to get you going:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_railroads_eligible_to_...
http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/-hiltonamtrack... (warning, pdf)
Railroads took Amtrak to court over passenger rail scheduling (this article also gives a bit of a rundown of the conflict):
While in some sense, this is technically correct, it does not actually address the problem.
Much as with the financial crisis, what we have here is a case of the 80/20 rule - or rather, the 99.99980/0.00020 rule. 0.00020% of the people have almost all the power to combat global warming. (They aren't using it.)
I'm evaluating how to improve this small, isolated facet. Foamed glass blocks and sheets are really great insulation, but are currently prohibitively expensive for working and middle class to acquire in massive quantities (sufficient to reach and even exceed PassivHaus standards). However, if one is willing to accept lower efficiency end-product (made up for with thicker walls), extremely long, labor-intensive manufacturing times, and gradually add to insulation over years, it looks like it is feasible to build a backyard concentrated solar power kiln (only about 1,300 degrees C required, so not too many heliostats) and make one's own foamed glass insulation.
A minor benefit is the process requires a small amount of carbon, so while coal dust is usually specified, it might be possible to turn this process into a very minor carbon sink using other sources of solar-thermal-powered manufactured carbon.
You also need a machine that crushes glass into chunks, and can also crush into a powdery form called cullet. Make those solar electric-powered, and you have a process that can easily last a generation or two, making highly useful insulation the entire time there is plentiful sunshine out of your neighborhood's glass waste stream.
Aesthetically though, this kind of insulating is a difficult sell to mainstream developed world sensibilities: you need 2-3 feet thick walls and ceilings filled with this insulation, and about 10 feet in the sub-slab or pier foundation, to reach the American equivalent of R-90 all-around, for example. PassivHaus requires a lot less, but they are evaluating on net economic benefit across 30 years max while I don't mind a multi-generation payback if the result is an energy footprint that is in the single digit percentages of even "green" houses today.
They will then invest this money in companies that will plant trees, build alternate power or something similar to permanently remove the CO2 you produced ensuring you are carbon neutral for the year.
Also my electricity company has a program where you can pay 10% more and all the electricity will be sourced from renewable sources that are carbon neutral. I switched many years ago and barely noticed the increase.
These are all basically enacting a carbon tax on yourself, and if enough people do it it will encourage the polluters to invest in more renewable forms of energy (as their profits will continually drop) and lead to a better world.
Consider an electrified road would be cheaper than gas and no need to refill the tank, but we have ~zero cars that could use it right now. However, start building them and economics will finish the job. How to pay up to that tipping point? Well a new tax of some type...
And exactly how much CO2 and other chemicals are belched out by these giant container ships we use to get it all to us?
We can buy all the solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars and energy efficient washing machines we want, but until China (and probably others) starts playing ball AND we find a way to move vast quantities of stuff around without container ships we're probably fighting a losing battle.
Would it be possible to manufacture goods in the regions they're to be sold in?
edit: wordings.
If you want to fix that problem, institute a carbon tax, and import tarrifs on countries that don't have carbon taxes.
Practically, with things like the TPP, that's not the way the world is going.
It's a coarse grained rule of thumb, but money basically represents a share of the world's abundance. When you spend money, you are claiming a part of that abundance for yourself. And the more you spend, the larger share you are claiming.
So if you eat a vegetarian meal at a restaurant at $40, that is worse for the environment than eating $10 worth of meat at home.
Things are further confounded by what kind of non-meat products you eat. For instance, fruit and most leafy-green vegetables have a similar cost per calorie to meat. Thus, I would argue that they have about the same environmental impact as meat.
So really, if you want to tread lightly on the environment, I think you want to be eating a lot of grains, vegetable oils, nuts, milk and (less expensive) cheese. You want them all to be non-organic. And you want to be preparing your meals yourself.
Unfortunately, this is provably false. For beef, you need to grow 12,000 calories of plants to produce (i.e. feed) 1,000 calories of beef. About 8 to 1 for pork, 6 to 1 for turkey, and 5 to 1 for chicken.
Someone up above was saying that meat should be avoided because producing it is hard on the environment. What I'm saying is that targeting meat is targeting the wrong attribute. People should be targeting cost per calorie.
If you replace a meat-only diet with a fruit-only diet, it's more or less just as bad for the environment. Since meat and fruit cost about the same per calorie, they have about the same impact on the environment per calorie consumed, since the cost of food is a good proxy for the cost of the inputs to that food. (Yeah, I know cows emit a lot of methane; I'm aiming for a rule of thumb here.)
1. Ground Beef
- $3.725 per lb (in June 2016, according to the BLS[1])
- 971 calories per lb [2]
- 260 calories per dollar
2. Lettuce
- $2.029 per lb (also from the BLS, same link as above)
- 77 calories per lb [3]
- 38 calories per dollar
3. Apples
- $1.444 per lb (also from the BLS, same link as above)
- 235 calories per lb [4]
- 162 calories per dollar
The math doesn't lie. Lettuce is almost an order of magnitude more expensive per calorie than ground beef. And you can go look up other fruits or leafy green vegetables (I used two of the examples you provided), they basically all fall in this range. Some meats (mostly seafood) are more expensive per calorie than beef, some are less expensive (mostly poultry and pork).
What it all boils down to, though, is that if you want to feed more people with the same amount of land/energy/whatever, you need to be looking at dairy (500-800 calories/$), oils (1200-2000 calories/$), and especially grains (> 2000 calories/$).
There's a reason why the dawn of civilization coincided with agriculture and domestication of grains: grains are an incredibly cheap source of calories.
Also, FYI, in the U.S. at least, organic food is not usually pesticide free. It just means that only "natural" pesticides are used. And harvesting things by hand is terrible for the environment. Humans are incredibly expensive and use tons of resources. After all, human generally want things like cars, climate controlled dwellings, and latest gizmos and gadgets, whereas a tractor could care less about these things :P.
[1]: http://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/data/averageretailfo... [2]: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/beef-products/6197/2 [3]: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable... [4]: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/...
This is just so completely false and what you are really doing is trying to simplify it too much.
Sure if the vegetarian meal was grown where there used to be a rain forest, flown across the world and driven in trucks then maybe it would be worse for the environment than a small local farm that don't have a lot of animals would.
But that is _never_ the case and to get that $10 meat the meat have to eat a lot more than my vegetarian meal. Everything is of course depending on the conditions, but there is no need for any denial on how bad meat production is for the environment. It is unsustainable for the humans to eat as much meat as we do today.
I would recommend the Mr. Money Mustache blog. While its premise is early retirement/financial independence, the author writes extensively about lifestyle design. His actual (self-stated) goal is to save humans from destroying themselves.
The prescriptions sound drastic at first (ride a bike for any trip under 10 miles?!) but it turns out they also make you healthier and richer.
The non-western world deserves to get to live as well as it possibly can. And telling poor African countries that if they build another coal plant they put their world loans in jeopardy is criminal. Subsidizing a few solar or wind plants doesn't even begin to impact electrical needs across the poorer parts of the world. Yet we'd rather people died today by the millions from preventable higher mortality rates due to poverty, than allow the developing world unfettered access to coal.
There's a reason many Asian countries have told the rest of the world off and started building nuclear plants as fast as they can.
I do most of my commuting with an ebike, because it's fun. It really is very enjoyable and I also get some light cardio exercise at the same time. It's also extremely cheap. A full charge only costs a few cents. Surprisingly, it's pretty fast, too. Using a more optimal route and not having to stop everywhere, I'm faster than the bus - even if I ignore the 10 minutes of walking to/from the bus stop.
An ebike is something you really should try for completely selfish reasons. It's good for your health, your wallet, and your quality of life.
Now, in some cases, I understand that the alternative (because there's usually the alternative) candidate is so unpalatable to you because of their other political positions.
I'm just saying that, if we're serious about this, we must rate "Does this candidate understand that Global Warming is real?" as a "Very Important Factor"(TM) in choosing your representatives. At all levels of the government.
I feel the same way about vegetarians and vegans. You're not saving the world by eating salads or sharing the occasional thing on Facebook. You might feel better about yourself and your choices, which is great. But it's only a drop in the ocean, and won't have any effect unless you try to do something bigger. And it's actually going to help with global warming, if the world can start eating less (or no) cows and chickens.
It's certainly too big for one person to solve, but that's why people start organizations. I know it's not much, but you can start by signing this petition: http://www.stopwarming.eu/?petition=signup
And somehow encourage people to have less kids.
I gave up my car some years ago. The internet advised me that I did not live in a walkable neighborhood, even though I lived about as close to my job as was possible and there were three or four shopping centers within a 20 minute walk of my apartment. I began walking to work and I and my sons began walking to get groceries and do other shopping.
The entire neighborhood began walking more. The cops stopped staking out my apartment complex. The vegetation in the area got visibly healthier.
Walk more and set the example. I have seen this make a real difference in multiple neighborhoods.
Admittedly, my country (Netherlands) is still fully on coal and the worst offender for CO2 emissions is apparently the large seafaring companies who we can only limit by buying more local (which is a trend anyway).
I'm not too worried, at least about the anthropocentric part of the deal. What will happen apart from that will happen anyway so also no need to worry about that.
The problem with media in my case is, that it leaves me paralyzed towards action more than it motivates me.
OT (sorry): cconcepts, is there any way to reach you via email? I have a question about one of your posts, but you don't have an email address in your profile
I don't see lowering energy consumption worldwide as a realistic goal, the opposite may happen and be necessary. In the coming decades the already waaayyyyy too warm regions of the earth like the Middle East will become even warmer, their only options are moving somewhere else or using energy to create livable spaces (i.e. AC). Just like they made cities like Phoenix, AZ, possible. Without greater energy use we will have another "Völkerwanderung". By the way, the problem of heat isn't just to survive it - doing any productive work, brain work or manual labor, requires lower temperatures than mere survival.
Given the advances in renewable energy technology that seems feasible.
Nor do I think restriction would significantly help, it seems we've already gone too far. It's like walking on ice and the path back now has so many cracks it's actually more dangerous than the path forward. Of course, which path forward still matters, but "use less energy" is the path back.
Not to mention psychology: Setting a goal of "go back to when we used less resources, limit yourself, live your life with as little impact as possible - don't move around (travel) so much, etc." doesn't sound nearly as appealing than a goal that encompasses activity and progress. Resources are finite - but our abilities to create actual cycles instead of one-way streets (to huge waste dumps) are not. I don't think the main message can or should be one of limitation and restriction, that's not what makes humans "tick" - no matter how you think about it (i.e. for better or worse).
That said, I think it's not outside the realm of possibilities that huge disruptions are possible and the death of a lot - and I mean a lot - of people. I don't know enough about agriculture, but I think our food production - and let's not forget water - are systems that are "anti-fragile", to use Taleb's term.
First, i think raising awareness is very important. I know its frustrating and seems like an endless battle, but it's the only sustainable route. Also i think its working, when i compare myself to my parents or grandparents the environmental consciousness increased (at least in germany). They bike to work, many even don't own a car, they think about their footprint when they buy groceries, they support public transport instead of highways (and in some areas even accept a worse driving experience for better public transport) etc.
"Of course, which path forward still matters, but "use less energy" is the path back." Well Germanys energy consumption peaked 1979 (i think) because of efficiency. Also the discussion is not about the amount of energy, but the environmental impact of the energy.
now about "supporting the other guy". NGOs do much more then raising awareness, for example they employ experts that monitor the government and the industry. They help develop legislature, they lobby, they investigate etc. They have knowledge you and i can not gain, because it is impossible for an single human being to study so much topics and gather so much experience. Look at it like you want to disrupt the automotive industry, you can't do it...at least not alone ;) You need to assemble a team, raise capital and spread awareness of your masterplan while researching your secret, disruptive technology. Since most of the people here are located in 'merica, i don't know exactly what the situation is over there, but here in germany every city have their own NGOs and they need help. Every kind of help, from replacing their shitty website to creating interactive campaign pages etc. Also there is a lot of room for ideas to create nonprofit startups with. In munich, germany there is even an incubator-like facility (impact-hub) to help nonprofit and for-profit startups that pursue ideas that help the people, environment etc.
An incredibly large percentage of the world's population simply doesn't believe that climate change is a real problem, and then they vote for leaders who are also climate change deniers (or leaders who call it a Chinese conspiracy).
It's a real problem.
That is simply the outcome of human society's organization for scalability and nothing nefarious.
An equivalent in the brain is that even thousands of synaptic connections to a neuron a few matter orders of magnitude more than all others, a handful of those can together trigger an action potential but if they don't contribute a graded potential it takes hundreds or even thousands of the others. In addition, the (much less numerous) inhibitory neurons have far greater weight than the excitatory ones, similarly in a human network key players have a much easier time blocking something than getting something to be done. In a network some nodes matter much more than others. You are better off identifying who actually matters instead of yelling into the forest. That approach also has the disadvantage of leading to disillusionment and in the end disengagement of those trying it because the results are meager.
We have fed massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere over the past decade, more than any decade in the past, and our rate of emission continues to increase. Admittedly the double delta (the rate of change of the rate of change) has now gone negative, but the fact remains that an enormous amount of damage has been done, and continues to be done.
We are already seeing preliminary consequences in the form of heating, excess precipitation, "strange" weather, and this is already incurring costs, both economic and upon the climate. Flood defences aren't cheap, nor is rebuilding homes and infrastructure.
On the climate cost front, for instance, the three springs in the UK and elsewhere killed or damaged an awful lot of trees this year, which decreases the amount of carbon reabsorbed - this kind of feedback cycle isn't really anticipated by current models which rather look at broad variables like "is the average temperature within the average range within which trees can live" - not "will we have trees sprout considerably then be frozen twice before succeeding in one year".
We have giant holes opening up in the tundra which are spewing forth enormous amounts of methane which again, wasn't really anticipated, and is another positive feedback loop.
In terms of what you can do - learn skills that are useful in a post-post-scarcity society. I don't think we can avoid drastic climate change at this point, but we can sure as hell try to survive through it as best we can - and it's likely to force dramatic lifestyle changes, to put it lightly.
If you want to do something directly which may abate but not avert the impending disaster, find a way to promote political and popular will to actually do something urgently and internationally - most are still lukewarm on the topic, and will only actually start responding when things get nasty indeed - and then likely only on a local basis and in an uncoordinated fashion.
Sorry, that does all sound defeatist, but I think we're going to find ourselves investing an awful lot of time and energy in dealing with the consequences of climate change in the near future, rather than dealing with the root cause. That may end up being a permanent state of affairs - I can imagine that it could actually be turned to net economic benefit for some by generating employment in new industries (dike building will be big business), although many without the benefit of a coordinated response and the fortune to live in part of the world which cares to respond will suffer, greatly.
Humans have survived ice ages - civilisations and societies have not, to our knowledge - humans will likely survive this - but this civilisation - who knows.
From a historic perspective the CO2 were vastly higher for hundred of millions of years. Climate change will be a challenge (sea level rise for Calcutta, New York etc) but I doubt it will be a doomsday scenario.
What I'm saying is that it doesn't require every human, every bureaucrat, every organ of state power to be utterly destroyed to bring about societal collapse - it actually requires rather little for affairs to descend into chaos. This is why we see governments investing increasingly in security apparatuses, as they realise that maintaining control now and in the future requires a firmer grasp than they have maintained. The US DoD saw climate change as a grave threat to national security over a decade ago, and they still do now. If you end up with mass migration from flooded areas, displaced people, you have crime and a need for greater enforcement - if you add food shortages to the mix, you end up with starving desperate people - again, not a majority, but enough to strain a system that operates within fine tolerances beyond its limits.
I don't think that we're going to see the annihilation of the species, I don't think we're going to see the annihilation of all technological society or anything of the sort - but I don't think that we will survive quite as we do now, and I think it's going to be a pretty rough ride from here to wherever we're going.
This.
Worse, it's a chaotically stable system run by people who have no idea what a chaotically stable system is, or how little change is needed for the wheels to come off.
I'm not even slightly optimistic, because as a species we have evolved exactly the wrong kind of management and decision-making processes to get through this.
Survival requires being able to think at the species and planetary level.
Too many humans are unable to think beyond their own individual short-term interests, with clan (tribal and class) interests coming a close second.
Until that changes, planet-sized problems like climate change are inherently unsolvable.
The last major CO2-related warming cycle was about 50 million years ago. Most life on the planet died off, with what survived mainly near the poles. Crocodiles swam in the Arctic.
Stop or significantly reduce driving.
Stop or reduce flying.
That's all there is to it. A quarter of the US does that and we meet all our targets. Stop being a wimp and suck it up and do what's right. It's very obvious and doable.
Governments are the only bodies that could do something to this but it appears right wing nuts have captured the political arena in western countries by focusing on unhelpful non-issues to further their political ambitions.
Nobody cares about the environment unless the doomsday comes nexr week. And the doomsday wont come - it will be a slow boiling, and we all will be the frogs.
Personally, I don't think there is anything a person without political connections can do to really do anything - except to shift the general discourse to environmental issues up until we reach the point where we in general understand environmental issues to be moral issues of utmost importance - and thus drive general policies towards sane goals. The trend seems positive - recycling seems to be a big thing and 'green is good' - but so far for the majority environmental issues seem to be lifestyle issues and not critical issues.
In this light, I suppose anything one can do in ones communities to raise the awareness on ecological issues is good. One of the main problems of communcating with the public is that the environmental agenda front is filled with self-righteous nutcases without critical analysis skills and who are more like a crazy crystall healers rather than a Jaques Cousteau style pragmatists.
Now that I think of it, the more pragmatic geeks we can get involved in ecological issues the better. The world deserves a better breed of ecological afficionados.
What really is disheartening and what no one in the media and government is talking about is how in 2015 CO2 levels rose by the largest amount in human recorded history. 3.05 PPM http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html We are being lied to and mislead by our governments that uniform actions are being performed to save the planet for the future of man. Vested interests in the fossil fuel industry continue to drive climate change. Yes, solar and wind energy is starting to become incredibly efficient and cheap but not enough of it is coming online in proportion to fossil fuel burning that persists and is also installed annually. If we do not rally against it, our ability to live on this planet is at stake. The lives of our posterity are also at risk because of the burning. It will not be until we take extreme actions not on a country level but as humanity together that we will slow the burning and save ourselves.
What are these actions you might ask that will actually be effective? These can range from banning fossil fuels entirely, global carbon pricing system, banning deforestation, changing human diets, extreme uniform investment in renewable energy and potentially fourth generation nuclear reactors, more funding for developing nations to install alternative energy sources, and to shift the transportation grid towards sustainability.
Human activity, ranging from fossil fuel extraction, to natural gas usage, has massively led to a large amount of natural gas leakage across the network. All this leaking adds up and is an "unseen" but incremental accelerant on these problems (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...)
This one says Ozone layer is recovering: http://research.noaa.gov/News/NewsArchive/LatestNews/TabId/6...
This one says increased CO2 has helped the speedy recovery of Ozone: http://classroom.synonym.com/co2-deplete-ozone-layer-4828.ht...
I understand the topic is climate change. Probably there are other factors contributing to it. Its been said Methane and NOx are more potent. Is there an increase in those emissions? We are only looking at CO2 it seems.
Seems to me that people believe that doing nothing we will keep living in the same way. Sorry to have to wake you up. Doing nothing will screw up the planet and your (and mine) "lifestyle".
The article referenced in this discussion[1] have other nice data/information about this topic.
I have kids and this is not the future I want for them.
[0] https://ir.citi.com/hsq32Jl1m4aIzicMqH8sBkPnbsqfnwy4Jgb1J2kI...
Please, keep in mind that renouncing to your car will not prevent you from breathing smoke, unless many people around you do the same. Reducing to the bare minimum your electricity consumption will not lower the slice of your taxes devoted to dealing with global warming, unless many people around you do the same. Et cetera...
> I have kids and this is not the future I want for them.
Why did you choose to have kids? Was not having kids an acceptable lifestyle cost for you in order to save the planet ?
Humanity is doomed. We had a good run.
> Hi all, Im sure there are many reasons why this would not work but thought would be good to get some input. I came across this article about creating carbon fibre from atmospheric carbon https://www.technologyreview.com/s/540706/researcher-demonst... and as carbon fibre utilising 3d printers now exist like https://markforged.com/product/mark-one-composite-3d-printer... this seems like something with amazing potential. Of course one of the main challenges is the energy needed to operated such a machine - but in the right places (which im guessing is windy as the carbon pulling machine needs high air exposure anyway) renewable forms of energy could maybe be used? In a daydream I thought it would be amazing to replace steels and plastics with atmospheric carbon. Reduce oil dependency, lower carbon footprint (even thought its not putting it back in the ground it seems like a good second), created a fantastic building element. Anyhow - would be great to hear why this wont (or would!) work from someone who knows more than me about this stuff. :)
Scaling? "given an area less than 10 percent of the size of the Sahara Desert" does nobody have any idea how large that is? If he'd said "an area the size of Texas and California combined" it might look less feasible.
But really it needs millions in altruistic funding to even get a pilot plant going. It's a lot like Tesla's plan to get everyone driving electric cars: no technical barrier, but the financial one is huge and it takes a while to scale even if it's successful.
And we already have self-replicating zero-emission carbon extraction machines. They're called trees. You could just plant trees, wait a few decades and then drop them with some weights into the ocean if you wanted to get rid of carbon. Of course you would have to do that at industrial scale and somehow find a way to replace all the nutrient minerals you're also sinking into the ocean.
And we're talking about gigatons per year. The only thing that's comparable in human production is concrete. We would have to build all our roads, cities and megastructures out of carbon to reverse current emissions.
The world has turned a blind eye to the millions dying from starvation and preventable disease. And will do so again when tens to hundreds of millions die from the effects of climate change e.g. starvation, flooding, heat waves etc.
And as the disaffected and left behind turn to terrorist acts to vent their frustration the rest of humanity will close borders, become more xenophobic and intolerant. Governments will be polarised to the extent that they will be largely ineffectual.
Ultimately it is going to be the likes of Tesla and hopefully Apple to make electric cars a lust item, scientists to finally get nuclear fusion, carbon storage and renewable battery technology working and entrepreneurs to glue it all together.
We can only hope that it becomes just bad enough to scare everyone[1], but no worse (i.e. methane pockets). If it's already "worse" geoengineering is the only thing that can save us because it's a runaway process, cutting carbon emissions would only delay the inevitable. We're not seeing much in the way of investment into that final pocket ace, though, at least Alphabet had a shot at it.
[1]: http://traveller24.news24.com/News/Alerts/watch-another-torn...
Present experience proves that people, especially the impoverished, can't just easily uproot and leave one country for another, with no political or sociological consequences whatsoever.
Looking at accuweather's data (www.accuweather.com, search for a city, then click 'month'), virtually everywhere in the US has been pretty much bang on the average temps for June and July.
If you look at the data for New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and various other cities across the US, you'll see that temperatures have been exactly average for June and July.
So, I'm just wondering where this data came from, and why it is difference from the actual recorded temperatures. Is it because it is satellite data? If so, why does it differ?
In typical HN fashion this is a press release rather than an actual scientific article.
Just to clarify, I'm not a climate change denier. However scare articles with no science behind them do more harm than good (if that is what this is).
EDIT here is where the data comes from:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201606
I guess a small amount above average temperatures just isn't noticeable in the average temperature graphs.
From your link
> The worldwide ocean surface temperature during June 2016 was 0.77°C (1.39°F) above the 20th century average, the highest global ocean temperature for June in the 137-year record.
0.77C is not a small amount
It is in the context I was using (the accuweather graphs). If you have a look, you'll see that 0.77C is not noticeable.
Yet a massive El Nino event caused the increase in world temperature and higher rainfall around the world in 2016. This isn't even a debatable fact, yet apparently not worth mentioning in an article about weather and temperature events in 2016.
(1) Does the climate change? Apparently. E.g., we had glaciations, most recently IIRC, about 12,000 years.
(2) What is a greenhouse gas: Leading examples are water vapor, CO2, and methane. Each of these is transparent to visible light, e.g., if water vapor or CO2 were not transparent to visible light, then we could see our breath as we exhale. So, since greenhouse gasses are transparent to visible light, visible light from the sun passes through greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, strikes the surface of the earth, and gets absorbed by and warms the surface. That warmer surface then radiates as in Planck black body radiation. That radiation is mostly out in the infrared we cannot see with our eyes. But here is what a greenhouse gas does: It absorbs the Planck black body infrared radiation from the surface of the earth, gets warmer, and warms the atmosphere. Without a greenhouse gas, that infrared radiation might just continue and escape into outer space. The glass in the ceiling of a greenhouse works similarly -- it lets visible light from the sun in but blocks infrared light from the warm interior surfaces of the greenhouse from getting out (there is some controversy in how a greenhouse works, but a greenhouse is still the source of the term greenhouse gas).
(3) Since CO2 is a greenhouse gas, CO2 in the atmosphere warms it? Yup.
(4) What are the sources of CO2 in the atmosphere? I don't have good data on all the sources and how much each contributes (it's not clear that anyone does). Supposedly one of the largest sources is volcanoes, and there we have to count the ones under the oceans, too. Supposedly rotting vegetation is a source. All animals exhale CO2. Burning fossil fuels, wood, etc. releases CO2. Baking calcium carbonate to make lime for cement, etc., releases CO2. Supposedly a large source of CO2 is the oceans: Supposedly warmer water can absorb less CO2. So, as ocean water warms, from circulation, volcanoes, the seasons, warmer climate, etc., CO2 can be emitted. A guess is that the oceans are an overwhelmingly large store of CO2 and a major source/sink of CO2 (as a source emits CO2, a sink absorbs it). Yes, rotting vegetation emits CO2, but, then, sure, as that vegetation originally grew, it was a sink of CO2.
(5) Does CO2 absorb all the infrared light? Nope, not even close. CO2 absorbs in just three narrow frequency bands, one for each of bending, twisting, and stretching of the molecule. More generally, say, for other gasses, the subject is molecular spectroscopy, based on, e.g., quantum mechanics, some group theory, etc.
(6) Okay, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and, thus, warms the atmosphere. If someone lights a match, then that, too, will warm the atmosphere. A question is, how much? In particular, how much CO2 warms the atmosphere how much?
So, we believe that what CO2 does follows only from well understood principles of physics and chemistry. For large changes in CO2 concentrations over long terms, say, centuries, maybe we would have carefully to consider biology, that is, how plants, the oceans, etc., respond to the extra CO2.
But, already just for small changes in CO2 over just a few decades, apparently the calculations from principles in physics and chemistry are quite challenging. E.g., for flows in the atmosphere and oceans we would have to use the equations of fluid flow, the Navier-Stokes equations, for the whole planet, including the oceans. Of course, for such a calculation, we would need boundary conditions, e.g., what all the CO2 concentrations, temperatures, and flow rates are now. For the oceans, our best data for the boundary conditions is often crude.
Still there have been efforts to do the calculations. The efforts resulted in predictions of temperature for a few decades.
The results of some dozens of efforts to do these calculations have been summarized in, e.g.,
http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg
By now we have been able to compare the predicted temperatures with the observed ones. The result is that in nearly all cases of the calculations, the predicted temperatures were way above the observed temperatures. In simple terms, as science, the calculations flopped.
So, for the question of how much CO2 warms the planet how much, we don't have solid scientific information.
(7) Apparently a common Claim is that essentially the only cause of changes of the temperature of the planet is greenhouse gasses, essentially just CO2, from human or other sources. So, with more CO2, the temperature will go up; with less CO2, the temperature will go down; the times the temperature went up was due to more CO2; the times the temperature went down was due to less CO2.
Well, we can test this Claim. We have three tests, A-C:
Test A. As at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
there was the Little Ice Age:
"The NASA Earth Observatory notes three particularly cold intervals: one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, each separated by intervals of slight warming."
It was significantly colder, certainly in both Europe and the US. Some of the effects are famous: E.g., in the famous painting of General Washington crossing the Delaware River, there was ice in the river. IIRC, usually there isn't. There was winter ice skating on the Thames River in London; IIRC usually there isn't.
Was this cooling caused by lower CO2 concentrations? Apparently there is no such evidence. So, the cause was something else. So, the Little Ice Age serves as a counterexample to the Claim above. So, there can be causes of significant changes in temperature that have little or nothing to do with CO2.
Test B. Can say the same for the Medieval Warm Period, as at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period
from "lasting from about 950 to 1250".
Test C. For more, at Vostok Station in Antarctica, the Russians took some ice cores and from them measured CO2 concentrations and temperature back ballpark 1 million years. They found several times when temperature went up and CO2 concentrations went up. Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth showed a graph of those two over several hundred thousand years. E.g., as at Web page
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/labs...
can see graph
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/labs...
Gore claimed that the higher CO2 caused the higher temperatures. Well, due to the long time interval of the horizontal axis of the graph, not easy to see on the graph was that the CO2 peaks occurred about 800 years after the temperature peaks. So, really, just by common sense, the higher temperatures were not caused by higher CO2. Instead, something caused the higher temperatures; they caused more biological activity, and in 800 years that activity caused higher CO2.
So, here we have three failed tests of the Claim, three counterexamples of the Claim above. For anything scientific, those counterexamples are an overwhelmingly serious problem for the Claim about CO2.
=== The Current Scientific Situation ===
If we get a case when CO2 went up and soon temperature went up, that still is poor evidence that the higher CO2 caused the higher temperature, that is, the several counterexamples to the Claim remain.
That is, from the data, we already know, e.g., the end of The Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, and the Vostok data, that there are causes of significant warming that have nothing to do with CO2.
Indeed, it is not at all clear that at realistic concentrations CO2 has anything at all significant to do with the temperature of the earth; to the Claim from climate data we have several overwhelmingly serious counterexamples, and otherwise we just don't have any solid scientific evidence: We tried with calculations from principles of physics and chemistry, and they flopped.
Net, from the calculations and from the historical record, we have no solid evidence that, at anything like realistic levels, more CO2 in the atmosphere will cause significant increases in the temperature of the earth. Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but we just don't have any solid evidence, from either calculations or observations, that CO2 will be causing any significant warming of the earth.
So, can we use science to urge reductions in burning fossil fuels, subsidize wind and solar sources of electric power, impose carbon taxes, etc.?
IMHO, my view is that such steps would be extremely irresponsible, would shoot our economy in the gut for reasons that are little more solid than some ancient religion, e.g., when the Mayans killed people to pour their blood on a rock "to keep the sun moving across the sky" -- e.g., as at
http://books.google.com/books?id=DgqLplWtGPgC&pg=PA76&lpg=PA...
on page 76 of
Susan Milbrath, 'Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies)', ISBN-13 978-0292752269, University of Texas Press, 2000.
with
"Indeed, blood sacrifice is required for the sun to move, according to Aztec cosmology (Durian 1971:179; Sahaguin 1950 - 1982, 7:8)."
Only a couple of years ago, people were saying that this climate change fad was a load of rubbish because the temperature had stabilised for a year or two. That's not how it works. Hot years and cool years will always exist. What climate scientists are very sure of now is that the long term average trend is upwards.
Yes, these record temperatures are supporting evidence of the upwards trend in temperatures, but they are not in themselves a sudden change in what we understand of the climate.
If predictions from 10 years ago, let's say, had been replaced by worse predictions one or two years ago, we would still know with some certainty what will happen next. But what the article says is that everything we know is that things are getting worse than expected and we have no way to know how worse. Scary.
It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future
This is why we need to completely stop producing GHGs as soon as possible. The longer we wait the further we slip into unknown territory.
So long story short, we don't know why and we need to quit acting other wise and put more effort into correcting models so that they are least close to predicting what has occurred over the last few decades of known data. If a model cannot reproduce what has happened it cannot be reliable in predicting what will. How can we not fix them?
Also, the records don't go back to 1979, most go back to the start of the instrumental record in the 1880's. And satellite data isn't a panacea, the process of getting from the direct measurements to a temperature distribution involves a significant amount of processing based on theoretical models, and corrections for factors like orbital decay, and different satellites and processing methodologies have historically shown a lot of disagreement. It's all useful data, but it's not as if satellites are perfect and everything that comes before is worthless.