Fossil fuels must remain in the ground to keep warming below 1.5°C, study says | Hacker News Reader

Fossil fuels must remain in the ground to keep warming below 1.5°C, study says

euronews.com

38 pointsunderscore_ku18 comments

The most efficient carbon capture technology is not releasing the carbon in the first place.

And if you think the consequences of doing that will be bad, not doing it will be far worse. Because when that starts to become even more evident you won't be able to turn back in time to undo what is being done now.

We had massive lockdowns to try to limit the damage of a single virus. A lot of fuel burning was avoided thanks to reduced mobility, and remote working. More or less the world survived to that. Coupled with more efficient/clean power generation could be the firsts in a series of steps that could manage to at least delay, if not avoid, the worst effects of global warming.

Isn't this obvious?

If we keep publishing studies about it, we can tell the next generation (and ourselves) “we weren’t sitting idly by, we were researching the situation to make sure we understood it.”

It should be. It’s that and/or recapturing the carbon, purely from a logical perspective.

But that doesn’t seem to be obvious to every climate activist I ever discussed with, at least a dozen at this point, who would suggest a zillion interventions and regulations, none of which would keep even a tiny bit of fossil fuel unburnt. The climate doesn’t care whether the carbon is released in America or Africa, or whether it’s done for moral or immoral purposes.

Is there a rational climate movement somewhere that one can join? Asking for a friend.

Not sure who you are arguing with, all climate activist I talk to strive to zero fossil fuels. Implicitly calling people irrational tends to only get you troll responses.

That’s the obvious goal, but what kinds of concrete demands do you hear? I’m trying not to set up straw-men, but I only get things like banning combustion cars and banning plastics. None of which would incentivize the Saudis to pump even one less barrel from the ground. The oil would just go elsewhere for a price that might be slightly less, but is still a very large factor of the production costs.

If one doesn’t realize that, one might implement lots of policies that “feel good”, are very expensive in terms of standards of living, but have no net effect on the climate.

How about we start getting rid of subsidies for fossil fuels, direct and indirect? That's just one, I've got more.

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/923668

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subs...

we should probably retire the term "climate activist".

1) the association with "activism" suggests fringe / special interests and indirectly inserts political friction in deadly serious issues that are truly global and affect all of us.

2) the sustainability issues we are facing are not just about climate (and the obsession with CO2 in particular might turn counterproductive if other risks get under-reported). e.g. it is almost certain that our direction of travel does not leave room for any other major species besides domesticated ones (and those we can't eradicate like viruses and cockroaches). in same vain, our general pollution footprint (plastic, agrichemicals etc) steadily degrades the environment we all live in.

sustainability is a broad and mainstream concern and we should reframe it as such if we honestly want to find solutions.

Or to put it another way, because climate is now a concern that most informed people share, there’s a strategy by some political groups to try to smuggle in other, somewhat less popular demands under the same umbrella: from wildlife protection to deindustrialization to social issues.

The problem is that any important action on climate change triggers immediately some linked social issue. from coal miners, to Amazon rainforest logging, to people resisting wind turbines in their backyard, you name it.

These frictions are not trivial to resolve. The bigger issue we face is how to invent functioning (problem solving) politics, both within and between countries

https://www.emergencyreactor.org ?

How about these guys: https://rebellion.global/ ?

nope, its not obvious. there is (in principle) the possibility of capturing and storing carbon released from the further burning of fossil fuels (or even already released amouts).

according to the paper they include this impact (and a related sensitivity analysis) in the overall conclusion:

"A sensitivity analysis on key model assumptions was undertaken to explore the effect on unextractable reserve estimates (Supplementary Information section 3). These include the rate of carbon capture and storage (CCS) deployment..."

Here in Sweden the green party still insist that fossil fuels must be part of the energy grid until future tech can make batteries cheap enough. In their view existing non-fossil fueled alternatives are too expensive to replace fossil fuel. This sentiment get echoed in much the global green movement as it currently exist.

If the green movement still favor fossil fuels over costs, then the idea has yet to be imprinted in the general populations brain that fossil fuels must stay in the ground. The message that the green movement need to adapt is that cheaper energy is not worth heating the planet. Keep the fossil fuel in the ground. If we can convince them of this fact then maybe there is some hope of convincing the rest of the world of it too.

Are we still talking about this? Perhaps it's time to hear what IPCC Experts say :https://youtu.be/1BDmIis9STE

Why shouldn't we talk about it. I mean; Yeah, we're pretty much done for.

I don't see how we are going to survive the social upheaval created by millions and millions of displaced climate refugees. We've seen how Europe struggled with the refugees from the Syrian civil war and how quickly xenophobic parties took over the discussion. It will be "Das boot is Voll [0]" more quickly than you can say "The industrialized world is primarily responsible for climate change."

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boat_Is_Full

Live somewhere that will take the measures necessary to survive the upheavel.

I'm not sure there will be anyplace to survive the upheaval.

Civil wars will spill over to regional wars and pretty soon everyone is involved in one conflict or another.

What would be your suggestion?

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