If anyone wonders why some resist accepting climate change as a fact, the above statement gets to a big piece of the underlying puzzle. I strongly suspect that if climate change was merely a scientific topic, there would be little-to-no resistance to accepting it as fact.
But it's not just a scientific question, it's (been made into) a question of how humans fundamentally live on the planet. And so of course a subset of society is going to resist societal change. It's not that people are particularly stupid, it's that they don't like the fundamental changes to how they live that they believe will follow.
Of course, we all know all of this, but for some reason we like to pretend we don't.
In my personal opinion, if you truly care about stopping climate change, you should be spending our effort developing solutions that do NOT require fundamental changes in how humans live on this planet. That path is much more likely to be successful in the political realm and thus more likely to actually save the planet.
Of course, issues with the greenlieness of electric cars, etc etc - but remember when solar panels were a net negative? AFAIK, that sure as hell didn't last.
that only works temporarily. business as usual still means consuming exponentially more resources over time, which is not sustainable.
#eatthesolarsystem
It's logical, it's clear - there's only one way to go from here
Without a doubt, the only way to go from here is out!Goods substitution happens, and it happens so fast you hardly notice it.
Agree 100%! A few years ago Chevron ran an add campaign in DC metro depicting people saying things like "I will use less water" and "I will bike to work" and that shit made my blood boil. Every day I thought to myself "No assholes - how about you supply energy that isn't filthy!"
Given that pretty much all of our current energy sources have a carbon cost (e.g. in the production of solar panels), it makes sense to try to limit our consumption too.
I do agree. My issue was with the single-sidedness of Chevron's campaign. To me it implied that energy consumers are the primary cause of environmental woes.
Speaking for my industry only (commercial shipping), if companies were willing to sacrifice some profit & growth, commercial ships could all operate virtually free of harmful GhG emissions. This is technically possible today.
However, given the fragmentation and overcapacity that currently exists, the international competition is too fierce for any company to make such a leap for the general good. This is why IMO MARPOL emission regulations to include Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) and Emission Control Areas (ECAs) are so critical - because it says to companies "hey, it's o.k. to spend a little extra on CAPEX and OPEX, because everyone else has to also." (1)
Given what is possible today with available technology, however, I think the emission control cap tiers are far too conservative. The final tier (in a few decades) should be zero GhG emissions for all shipping. It is feasible - and really with overcapacity where it is, now is the best time to take the plunge because the reliant markets (e.g. virtually every market) will hardly feel the impact.
Shipping is a very tiny percentage (1.5%) of global GHG emissions (2), so I'd be interested to hear if experts in other fields that are larger emitters (e.g. aviation, automotive, etc) feel about the feasibility of hitting zero GHG emissions.
1. http://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/environment/pollutionpreventio...
1) There is nothing sexy about the car. Tesla cars aren't just electric cars - they're also fantastic cars. Tesla makes a great (amazing?) car that is electric, rather than a an electric that may be a great car.
2) Yep, fueling infrastructure. You can charge your electric cars at home, at the office; the supercharger and battery swap stations; that Tesla (AFAIK?) charges your car for free... Where do you need to go to get hydrogen fuel?
There's also an analysis - maybe in the Wait, But Why? on Tesla - as to how you can't sell alternative vehicle stock from normal dealerships; it just doesn't make enough sense to the dealer, but ATM I don't remember the reasoning. Also AFAIK, Mr Musk has a good write-up on why hydrogen fuel isn't The Thing.
But mostly #1, IMO.
http://www.environment.act.gov.au/energy/growth-in-the-clean...
It was always a stupid idea. The economics don't make any sense at all.
If you extract hydrogen from hydrocarbon, you're still bound to fossil fuel, and you have to build a hydrogen infrastructure.
If you do centralized electrolysis, you still need renewable energy to not be bound to fossil fuel, and you have to build a hydrogen infrastructure.
If you do decentralized electrolysis, i.e. you plug in your hydrogen car to charge it, you essentially have a battery that is slower, more expensive, and shittier than existing Li-ion batteries.
We have the infrastructure for electric cars already, they're more efficient than hydrogen cars, and they're cheaper to produce so why bother? It's extremely unlikely that the underlying economics and energy fundamentals will change, but if Toyota wants to dump billions into research - fine, I'm not going to stop them.
You also ignored the fact that filling a tank is more convenient and faster than charging a battery. Or that batteries have a limited lifespan.
If the economics don't work, why would the leading automaker that originates from an island without domestic fossil fuels bet on it?
You get less mileage/kWh from a system that consumes electricity and fills up fuel cell tanks, than a system that consumes electricity and charges on-board Li-ion batteries.
Filling a tank is absolutely convenient, but gasoline is safe at room temperature and normal atmospheric pressure. Liquid hydrogen isn't. And there's almost no hydrogen infrastructure in place. We have a lot of infrastructure for charging electric cars already, and charging stations are being built at a rapid pace to satisfy actual demand.
Toyota is spending a ton of Other People's Money on an interesting research project. The government of Japan is perfectly free to subsidize that if they feel like it, and I'm sure we'll get something useful and interesting out of it at the end, but fuel-cell cars are just not going to beat electric ones.
I agree with your first point but disagree with the above in quotes. Climate change fundamentally changes the way many global hegemonies do business and make money. That trickles into politics via lobbying and influences what people think because of who they vote for. That's why Elon Musk's (and maybe the tech industry as a whole) capitalist approach to climate change is the best hope we have.
Various other environmental advances have happened through technology without requiring behavioral changes: removing lead from gasoline, removing CFCs from aerosols and so on.
We're globally at 2.36 births per woman, it dropped below 3.0 in the 90's. We'll probably reach world population stagnation in the 2050's.
Yes!
If you make the most environmentally friendly alternative the cheapest, people will choose it, as if by magic.
If you make electric cars cheaper to own and operate than ICE cars, people will switch.
If you make solar power cheaper than coal, energy providers will switch.
If you make synthetic meat cheaper than real meat, there won't be any more factory farms and livestock slaughter.
If an at-home 3D printer can make your clothes and toys and stuff cheaper, you won't need to ship enormous amounts of containers with manufactured goods from China.
I don't know about that. It seems like moving to mostly-electric transportation and replacing coal and natural gas power plants with wind and solar isn't a huge lifestyle change.
That's not to say that such a change can be done quickly, nor it will be easy. We still have some unsolved problems like energy storage. But it's not like we all need to become hunter-gatherers and live in cob huts. I think that by implying that people are going to have to give up driving or not heat their houses in the winter in order to address climate change, we just make it that much harder to gain political support from those same people.
Don't worry. As the climate changes, it will fundamentally change how humans live on this planet. Oh you wanted to choose how we change. Well, then, I share your pessimism.
Now solar is cheap, coal seems incredibly unwieldy. Not just the poles and wires, but the mine, the railway to take the coal from the mine to the plant...
We are now a year or two past an inflection point -- building new coal plants at this time would seem like a much riskier investment. And that means the rate of construction is going to drop way below the rate of retirement pretty fast & pretty soon.
And because solar has high variability, it's going to get overbuilt (nobody wants their battery to go flat much, so it'll spend most of it's time full). ie, there is going to be a bunch of "spare power" lurking around that is effectively free.
And since a lot of problems can get turned into energy problems, that's a pretty happy place to be.
Rash prediction:
The Gold Coast currently has a mothballed desalination plant, and a water line from it to the South-East Queensland dams (built during the "Millenium drought"). I would not be surprised if within 30 years, it is running full-time, and pumping inland, even if the town-water dams are full -- because the marginal cost of running it instead of not-running it is zero, and with a bit more engineering the spill-over can be redirected to top up the Murray-Darling's flow. It'd require about 69kms of additional pipe, to connect Wivenhoe Dam to Cooby Dam. (Cooby Dam is in Toowoomba, which also has a bore into the Great Artesian Basin, so at that point you're inland enough to pump back into the basin. Draws from the basin have been blamed for the reduction in flows of springs that feed the Murray-Darling system...)
The quantities of water down a pipe might be small, in river terms, but if the marginal cost of power during periods of excess is zero, and seawater is free, then it might start to seem odd not just to leave it turned on whenever there's spare load...
Renewable energy becomes competitive in many places worldwide since ~1-2 years, which will fuel investments and change the way we generate energy. Not because of climate change, but because of economics. Batteries are vastly more efficient than a decade back. It doesn't need a huge invention for batteries to be competitive with ICEs in cars, a few more years at current development speeds will likely be enough.
It was started with investments by people worried about climate change, but once it's economic it will be adapted by (nearly) everyone.
I think that we can beat climate change without needing to convince people that they have to fight it. Sell a decent electric pick up with ample range in the US and the extra power you get from an EV, in combination with home charging (finding gas stations on the country side can be annoying) could easily make it the best selling vehicle in the US. And I'm pretty sure it won't take too long for Ford to bring exactly that to market.
Problem with the startup crowd is they tend to get the former better than the latter.
I think each one costs around $10 billion; I don't think 5 nuclear power plants will solve climate change.
You'd need 3 of those plants to replace all electrical generation on earth, assuming they're at a 95% capacity factor. So call it a trillion dollars, maybe. Then you've got to look at total energy usage, which is order of magnitude larger, at 120TWh, so you'd need 12 to supply every energy need of current civilization. Maybe ~$50 trillion all included.
So one year of the entire world's productive output.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#/medi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Cu...
That, and it hasn't exactly been proven to work stably yet (Note that the OP said fission, not fusion).
Note that at these prices it is cheaper to build solar, and in some cases (and places) solar AND pumped hydro power storage.
[1] http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-as...
Would you mind telling me, how war you want to go on the second graph? Thx
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-e...
The priority is of course that it helps a company called YC make money, which should work. Keep in mind that this is the reason why companies are created and exist in the first place. It's called capitalism (and the reason for over-consumption, which lead us here). If it helps other people as well, then that is welcome, but not a priority.
It feels kind of fruitless to continue this discussion with two sides that just don't agree even on what the discussion is about.
So my suggestion to those who believe there is no way back; start companies that build solutions to some of the consequences you fear.