The project has potential but isn't quite ready for prime time yet.
137 karma · joined October 29, 2020
The project has potential but isn't quite ready for prime time yet.
It is important to note that in the language of these simulations no "overshoot" is included in the temperature trajectory. A 1.5°C global warming is talking about the long term (millenial timescale) stable temperature we reach after our little "experiment".
If we can "quickly" (a few hundred years) return to 1.0°C or even less warming, compared to pre-industrial levels, these tipping points have not actually happened yet. (https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1418830/latest.pdf summarizes this very well)
Nico Wunderling shows that while for some systems (like the Amazon rain forrest) peak temperature (even over only a few years) is most important, for slower systems like the Greenland ice sheet the target, long-term temperature is most dominant.
Priotizing the most urgent matter should therefor lead us to talk about the quickly acting tipping points, often related to biological ecosystems. For those it is most important to actually stay below 2°C of warming. For the Greenland ice shield there is ample time after the year 2100 for us to prevent the worst.
As we need to replace as much fossil-fueled power plants as possible and as quickly as possible, wasting ressources into building nuclear power plants sounds stupid. Other interesting factors:
* Heating climate is a risk for nuclear https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/climate-events-are-t...
* Maintenance cost is hard to predict https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/EDF-revises-up-c...
* 30 planned + 60 unplanned days shutdown on average https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37252
I can't say I agree.
By that logic malware doesn't exist. That's the wildest west version of the internet that we gladly left behind.