So. I see people around me in climate agony, with one (very smart) friend saying he doesn't want to have any children because of climate misery they will experience.
I, as it happened, have sadly have paid little attention to the numbers side of climate things. So, with the climate change being a widely acknowledged disaster and an unimaginable catastrophe, how would it affect Germany?
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51281986
The worst-case scenario for emissions of CO2 this century is no longer plausible, say researchers. Referred to as "business as usual", the scenario assumes a 500% increase in the use of coal, which is now considered unlikely.
[...]
Very few scientists realised that RCP8.5 was originally a 90th percentile outcome, not a most likely or business-as-usual outcome. They assumed too much, when they should perhaps have checked, say the authors of the review.
"How many of your average climate scientists know the nuances of RCP8.5? It would certainly be interesting to know."
The media, taking their steer from scientists, have tended to use the highest impacts when reporting on projections based on emissions scenarios.
A 500% increase in anything is not "business as usual" by definition, yet the IPCC and the various journalists and NGOs in its orbit have for years regularly reported it as such and used it to gin up reports of a non-existent crisis. Consider whether an institution that describes a scenario of massive change as "business as usual" can be trusted and what that means for their other claims.
The BBC describes this as a "communications cockup" in which scientists merely didn't realize the assumptions of the scenario they were talking about. But such "cockups" occur regularly and are simply not plausible.
If you really dig into this supposed crisis, it's always like this. The assumptions are absurd, unfounded or invalidated, the data is presented as precise but the error bars are massive and a million other things. You don't hear about it outside of forums like this one because the people who benefit from the population believing in an endless crisis have made it taboo to point out what they're doing.
> A 500% increase in anything is not "business as usual" by definition
I have two questions here:
1) why is a 500% increase in coal usage "not business as usual by definition"? What is the definition you're going off, and why does it not fit? "Business as usual" doesn't mean "everything as it is right now", it means "continuing on the current trajectory". If there was a definitive trend of increased coal usage, how would a 500% increase fall out of the definition of "business as usual"?
2) this is a gripe you have with communication, but it's actually not really relevant to what I asked. Do you have a specific answer for my initial question? An example could be that you show the prognosticated change in temperature, and show that current data falls completely out of it.
Global coal use is set to rise by 1.2% in 2022, surpassing 8 billion tonnes in a single year for the first time and eclipsing the previous record set in 2013, according to Coal 2022, the IEA’s latest annual market report on the sector. Based on current market trends, the report forecasts that coal consumption will then remain flat at that level through 2025 as declines in mature markets are offset by continued robust demand in emerging Asian economies
That was 2022, a year in which Europe had to increase coal usage for the first time in a long time due to exploding natural gas pipelines and Germany shutting down nuclear power. Even in that extreme and unprecedented situation, the world managed only a 1.2% increase in coal usage. In other years coal usage fell or was flat. A 500% increase is a fantasy and everyone who looks at it for even a split second knows it.
The complaint isn't the name of the worst case scenario. That's just an example. This scenario is routinely used as the basis for "climate crisis" claims, so it's not merely a naming issue either. The complaint is about the overall duplicity and manipulative nature of what this field produces.
>> An example could be that you show the prognosticated change in temperature, and show that current data falls completely out of it.
https://i0.wp.com/judithcurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04...
But bear in mind that even this sort of graph can be misleading, because it assumes the relation between temperature and the effect on the climate is understood. It actually isn't.
BTW, you say "it's actually not really relevant to what I asked" but you originally said "we're on track for the more pessimistic paths" and it was meant to show that although this claim is often made, it's not really right. The more pessimistic path is implausible and has been for a long time.
You might say there's a coalition. Several kinds of opposition adding up.
For example, all of the nuclear operators were caught discarding nuclear waste at a construction site some years ago, without either permission or records. The site was supposed to become a storage site, but throwing nuclear waste before it's opened, in places where construction workers will have to work later, and not keeping records? The episode lost trust with the engineering-friendly part of the audience.
If anyone were to seriously suggest building a new plant here, the cost overruns of Hinkley Point C would be a large problem, because another part of the public is really stingy about the public purse.
And so on. It's not all fear of nuclear accidents, it's more of a coalition.
This still sounds like an emotional response. We need to keep in mind that coal based energy emits more radioactive matter at a larger scale then nuclear.
The only difference is that the trash from nuclear is easy to handle and store.
It seems like we implicitly still subscribe the the saying that "The solution to pollution is dilution" – we rather want to dilute our radioactive waste in the air than to put it is manageable containers or leaving it on construction sites.
I don't think even a 10,000 person strong web of nuclear anti-corruption and safety organisations would be 1% as expensive as the additional costs due to buying more gas from Russia, let alone the climate impact costs.
The problem is that these bodies are set up to have a commercial incentive to minimise costs and low probability of detecting poor procedure. I'm not sure if German culture can break the natural hierarchical tendencies (don't contradict superiors, don't report bad news), but probably better chance than in the US (where you'll lose your job and health insurance, and get blacklisted and possibly sued and criminally convicted, if you become a whistle blower).
The insurance company that insured the building I live in sent a letter a couple of years ago, saying that after the string of water leak problems we've had, our insurance premiums would more than double. In effect judging our insurance risk by the number and cost of our past problems. I suspect you won't describe that judgment as emotional.
But when people judge a power company by its past safety record, you describe that as emotional. Why? What's the difference? What makes one judgment emotional and the other not? What does "emotional" mean?
my point is, that the "insurance premiums" we have to pay now are significantly higher because we did not employ nuclear on a larger scale 50 years ago.
to stay in analogy: you had the choice of choosing another piping system that would have decreased your insurance premiums, but didn't based on an motional response.
what we forget to factor in is the enormous tax we have to pay now and the coming years due to the decision of not employing nuclear: infrastructure to manage higher water levels. climate migration issues, energy dependency issues, you name it.
and that tax we have to pay due to an emotional response.
I’ve heard that too. Are you sure that this comparison is taking into account radioactive waste at all, rather than just comparing direct emissions into the environment during normal operation?
it seems like these number include _everything_ also the "nuclear waste in a barrel" radiation emissions.
Also, that was the same type of reactors as in Chernobyl.
It kind of made sense.
* Germany has a share of renewable energy for electricity in 2022 of 46%
* The US has a share of renewable energy for electricity in 2022 of around 22%, even tough the potential is much larger in the US than in Germany
* Germany has per capita roughly half (55%) of the US electricity consumption
* the US has roughly a 4 times larger population
* in the US there is one of the two big parties which is promoting fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas).
And whataboutism comparisons with the US, which everyone knows is a basket case of corrupt special interests, is truly pointless.
That's not a fact, it's simply false.
Renewable energy will be expanded, as it has in the past. We have currently around 50% renewable energy for electricity.
> which everyone knows is a basket case of corrupt special interests
that's very shallow, given the complexity of energy policy
I don't think either of those are necessarily true. It could very well be that Greenpeace sees nuclear as a vestige of the non-renewable past and that they wish to remove hindrances that slow down the further acceptance of the fact that we will have to bet heavily on renewables if we are to make it out of this. The problem with strawmen of your own making is that they can be cut down by others just as easily as you could do so yourself. Greenpeace is obviously not pro-coal and the resulting release in radiation, they would have much rather seen that instead of building these nuclear plants in the first place the money that went into them had gone into renewables instead, which would have had a more positive impact on climate change in the longer term. Besides, coal isn't the only replacement fuel for the drop in nuclear capacity, which wasn't all that large to begin with so this is a bit of a FUD argument, especially given that after the studies that showed the amount of radioactivity released through fly ash there have been substantial efforts made to contain the exhaust and capture the fly ash (electrostatically, for instance).
But the pro-nuclear faction is now equating less nuclear with more coal in an attempt to greenwash nuclear power. Chernobyl was as good as it gets for an accident of that scale, Fukushima closed the door as far as Germany was concerned. And France is an accident away from having a real problem because they are quite dependent on nuclear power and if the tide ever turns there they will have a real problem catching up.
Germany, meanwhile has a pretty high percentage of renewables already:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany
And given the amount of funds they are pumping into renewables they may well end up ahead of their schedule (in part due to the drop in Russian natural gas).
If anything here in NL the war in Ukraine has given a massive impetus to the transition from fossil to renewables and I hope the effect of that lasts long enough to get us to the finish line.
The energy production needed to be supplied is not todays need, but the need of a future where we don't want to dig up oil.
This means that jet fuels need to be produced by sequestration and all transport needs to powered by electricity (or fuel from sequestration).
We also want a future where most of the land is not occupied as farm land and is more wild. This requires indoor farming techniques – again extremely energy intensive.
In the end we should plan for a world that uses a lot more energy than today.
As renewables scale roughly linear to land it is by many not seen as a feasible alternative, as it wouldn't be able to supply 10x the need of today (which it will already struggle with).
In the end: Greenpeaces argument only works if they believe that we are at the end of technological development.
I remember when Greenpeace was a bunch of guys and girls and an old boat that they painted over because they cared about the whales. Such idealism is a necessity in order to provide some balance in a world where business tends to dominate over social and long term welfare issues. In that sense they succeeded where many others have failed, their voice has added a lot of weight to various issues and has measurably increased awareness of many environmental issues.
To present their effort as having the opposite effect isn't really productive, it clearly isn't their goal nor does it match with any statement that they have made or even a realistic assessment of the technical situation. And that's what makes these arguments so annoying, it's just gamesmanship, it elevates winning the game to a higher level than that it does our long term survival.
Massive renewables + a viable storage option is clearly the way forward, anything else is just money games by vested interests.
As for jet fuels: I think the age of the jet will come to an end at some point and I'm not at all going to mourn that. It was a luxury that we probably couldn't afford and don't actually need all that much. Travel should be time consuming and expensive because if it isn't we will move around so much that the planet will suffer dis-proportionally. Maybe we'll see another round of boats or maybe a slower form of air travel, I really don't know. But the idea that you hop on a plane at 7 in the morning, are in Barcelona at 9:30, attend a meeting, have lunch and fly back has so much wrong with it that I much prefer our current COVID incentivized world of video conferencing.
> As for jet fuels: I think the age of the jet will come to an end at some point
This is fair, you argue within a framework where we have seen the technological peak – something I don't think you will meet to much sympathy for in the forum.
As such, this is also where this conversation stops – you can't build a house without the foundation.
As if I care.
> As such, this is also where this conversation stops – you can't build a house without the foundation.
Well, you decided to join it, you're entirely free to back out any time you want. But the house has a foundation, it just isn't going to be in the color that you want. Power will likely be variably priced depending on what time or day or season it is and whether that future arrives 10 years from now or 50 doesn't really matter, it will arrive regardless because non-proliferation alone will stop the world to adopt nuclear power en masse.
[1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/564769/airline-industry-...
So I take that as a harbinger of what's to come, and in we don't actually know how high those levels would be if COVID had not happened and I suspect quite a bit higher than they are today. Videoconferencing has replaced in person meetings for us in all but the rarest cases.
Unless that you live in China or Europe that has a good train network, I think the unintended consequence will be more people in cars and more accidents.