The crux of the matter is that we need to drive thermodynamics backward at planetary scale. This is a fancy way of saying that we need to increase electricity generation by an integer factor beyond current global demand without producing net CO2. The list of existing energy sources capable of scaling like this that don't rely on burning carbon is extremely short: nuclear fission.
I don't see any possibility of the required power generation capability being built. Even if the economic resources were made available, which is at least plausible in the abstract, the irrational politics around nuclear power in the developed world would guarantee that there would be little actual progress.
Constructively addressing climate change means massively increasing power generation capacity as a primary input. Given the ample evidence that this is not politically achievable, I think it is fair to call pessimism "realism".
> The list of existing energy sources capable of scaling like this
... solar and wind are scaling much better than every prediction, for many years now, yet somehow that's not good enough for the people who claim to be realists. Odd.
Unfortunately there are no realists in a position to really affect Government investment.
Why is every nation not committing an investment on the scale of the Apollo/Manhattan Projects? Politically it should be sell-able as a near-term investment (jobs) and future prosperity (cheaper renewable energy).
Governments should be putting billions into fusion, wave/tidal generation (nothing should be too expensive), upgrading all hydro to pumped hydro as well as developing more.
should be fully supported and funded. As each of the dozens of 400m+ deep underground coal mines around the world are wound down and replaced with wind or solar generation, convert them to pumped hydro, providing jobs for displaced coal miners and saving their communities in the process.
> we need to increase electricity generation by an integer factor
As in India, which is nearly finished building from ~ 40GW to 170GW of renewable energy. And you skip past the powers of conservation. We don't need more power, we need less CO2.
> capable of scaling ... nuclear fission
The CO2 problem needs to be addressed promptly, and efficiently. Renewables build -much- more quickly, and the immediate cost of hundreds of nukes would finance thousands of green installs. (Waste aside.) Sunlight and wind are the result of the Sun's NF ... it eats the waste problem.
> I don't see any possibility.
Oh it's possible. What you 'see' as irrational politics I see as just as rational as the CO2 evidence. And the rational response is to vote out all of those who stand in the way of prompt and efficient.
Breaking ground today, a nuclear reactor will be operational after about 10 years.
In that time, other forms of energy generation (with no major lasting effects following catastrophic failure) and storage are getting cheaper, and if that happens at a sufficiently fast (e.g. half-life (heh) of price of a few years) than fission reactors will be priced out before they even start running.
But necessity is the mother of invention, so we will probably invent a viable nuclear fission-based energy solution at the 11th hour, probably by someone who also helped cause the death of countless people through their earlier work[0]. I know this sounds absurdly far-fetched, but it’s pretty much par for the course for us humans.
You sounds like the typical advocator of oil pipelines over protected land and I'm sure you know how that ended up. Can we build safe pipelines? Yes. Do we? No. Why? Because of the human factor, which comes down to greed, stupidity, and laxation of regulation.
This is the same exact case for nuclear. Already we see that a majority of nuclear power plants in the US are operating at almost 2x the design life and will likely get additional extensions. This is done by continued laxation of regulation.
And this is in the US where I would expect the strictest of regulation. When the rest of the world sees the US doing this, it sets a precedence for them to follow and I'm sure other countries will have even less strict regulations and inspections. It's really only a matter of time until we have another disaster.
Lots of assumptions baked in here. Chief among them is that renewables deployment will continue to be slower than new energy demand. If you look at the charts, this is pretty unlikely since the renewables trend is a consistent exponential increase year over year while the demand curve is very lumpy and mostly linear when averaged.
Next is the assumption that renewables have to be deployed at grid scale, with the materials and transmission costs associated with that. This is also not true - solar + battery is a perfect use case for distributed deployment by homeowners, businesses, parking lots, etc. in any sunny location, and trends in non-grid installed solar reflect this where non-utility accounts for over a third of new installs per year.
Next is the questionable bundling of global statistics rather than breaking out by country. If you break it out by country, the trends are a lot different. For example, most of the west already reached effective peak energy demand (or close to it), and renewables deployments are offsetting dirtier production methods at a decent pace, mostly due to economics. The "bad" trends the author points are are specific to developing locations.
There's more, but this is already a long comment.
Edit: Another one... solar panels don't last "a few years more" [than turbines], they last a decade or more longer. Current estimate is 25-30 years with proper maintenance before performance is significantly degraded, and even at that point they still work just fine. It's not like you don't have to replace or overhaul major power plant components every few decades for other energy sources...
This is also not true - solar + battery is a perfect use case for distributed deployment
This is simply not feasible. Do the math. To store 3 days worth of current US energy use, you need to build $50 trillion worth of batteries. If you assume that the battery installation lifetime is 20 years, and amortize it over that period, you’re looking at over 10% of US GDP spent just on building and installing the batteries. Seriously, do the math.
> solar panels don't last "a few years more" [than turbines]
This is not a point against solar, but the "lifetime" of wind turbine installations is misrepresented in the article. It states "the life expectancy of a wind turbine may be less than 15 years." and it links one 7 year old article to support that idea, which is known to be false except in the sly sense that for sure a windturbine may need repairs at any time.
Modern windfarms are commonly financed to be built and make a profit from investment by selling electricity for 15 years. After that contract is up, however much they require new blades and/or refurbished or modernized generators - extending their life is due to be much cheaper than putting entirely new ones in their foundations. The relatively short supply contracts are very desirable to investors, not a sign of unreliability.[1]
Breaking out energy demand by country doesn’t work, because the climate doesn’t care whether a ton of CO2 is emitted by an American or a newly middle class Indian. There is no strategy based on renewables and conservation that even plausibly allows the third world to reach the development of the first world while averting climate change.
My feeling is that most significant degradation comes from problems with assembly weather sealing, connectors, and/or electronic components. The cells themselves should last for a long time with modest degradation.
Inverters on the other hand seem to be closer to consumables in PV installs, but even those should last 10-20 years depending on the model, and refurbishment is possible.
> renewables deployment will continue to be slower than new energy demand.
Does renewable deployment cover new energy demand as well as the fossil fuels we are supposed not to use anymore?
> renewables deployments are offsetting dirtier production methods
Renewables take their toll on the environment too. Batteries and solar panels need fossil fuels for their production, and the mining of rare metals is an extremely polluting industry (and often delocalized in countries with little regulations).
> If you look at the charts
The charts I looked at suggested that there will be both an energy and an environmental crisis.
It's very hard to argue over this topic as all we can do is cite experts. Maybe I'm attracted to the most pessimistic authors? where to look to have the scientific consensus on this matter?
We are going to need technology that will pull CO2 from the atmosphere. Yes, doing that is very energy intensive, but we have tech like nuclear power that could power such a process.
People want to have their lifestyle and telling people in developing countries that they can never have the Western lifestyle and telling people in developed countries that they have to reduce their lifestyle are simply untenable politically.
We should be focusing on climate change mitigation.
Pulling is easy, the "technology" is called trees and actual technology will never be able to compete with them as long as the CO2 content in the atmosphere is measured in hundreds of ppm (and if it ever reaches into the thousands we might just as well give up and focus on building mementos for passing alien civilizations to find)
The challenge is to keep the extracted carbon from returning to the atmosphere. Those underground reservoirs of coal and hydrocarbons we have been digging up all the time are hard to beat.
Our society is able to take flights all the time, has year-round availability of seasonal fruit, has gargantuan industrial processes treating millions of sentient beings like inanimate product to supply meat, etc. Obviously these things aren't sustainable, given that their structures are so closely intertwined with fossil fuel usage, yet it would be basically impossible to convince everyone on Earth to stop using making use of them, which is why I suppose I agree with the "pessimistic" view that the author has.
Regardless, mitigating a disaster while still causing that disaster doesn't result in the disaster ending. If we allocate all our efforts into mitigation we won't be in a position to actually restructure our society to be sustainable when the problem of climate change remains.
> We are going to need technology that will pull CO2 from the atmosphere. Yes, doing that is very energy intensive
Wouldn't you need even more energy to pull it in that it took to release it? So to undo 10 years worth of global emissions, you'd need more energy than was generated worldwide over those 10 years? Sounds impossible.
> We should be focusing on climate change mitigation.
I've never heard a convincing case for this that accepted that warming will keep going and going unless we stop emitting.
Mitigation in that event will be something like "abandon all historical coastal cities and keep building new port infrastructure every couple decades".
There's an interesting point here on the resource intensiveness of creating 'renewable' energy itself (ie. windmill costs).
I share the authors concern here that doing the exact same thing we're doing now but handwave electric is not going to get us to where we're going to need to be. We need to be smarter about how we use energy and our resources and use less.
For example shifting our entire automobile based transportation infrastructure to the exact same thing but electric is not nearly as impactful on lowering CO2 emissions taking those cars off the road via better public transit and land use that enables active transportation (ie. walking/cycling).
Even if people used electric bikes instead of electric cars, it's way more impactful on lowering CO2, and still creates a better land use proposition (ie: less need for parking, less need for roads, less traffic jams, things can be closer together which leads to less need to go as far for people who aren't using electric bikes)
Decoupling transportation from fuel source via electricity makes the problem a lot more tractable. It's a lot easier to regulate and change a few hundred generators then hundreds of millions of individual ICEs.
Modern coal-fired powerplants are substantially more efficient then car internal combustion engines.
It's the hard truth. As it is, there's just no way to solve the problem without some sort of global cataclysm. I think people in power have the logistics to know this, which is why I'm so skeptical about the political movement today in western nations that largely revolves around consolidating power over world energy even further into the hands of a small group of elites that more or less exist beyond the reach of any one nations political process.
I think the progress in de-carbonizing electricity is promising - California was already at less than 50% fossil fueled electricity production in 2018 [0]:
Carbon-emitting generation:
35% Natural Gas
3% Coal
11% "Unspecified" (lets be pessimistic and assume all of that is fossil fuel)
Non-carbon emitting (or carbon neutral):
11% Large Hydro
9% Nuclear
31% "Renewables" (solar, wind, small hydro, etc)
Yes, transportation is still almost entirely fossil fuel based. Many homes and businesses use natural gas for heat. Industry uses fossil fuels as well in significant amounts. None of these can be ignored.
But de-carbonizing electricity is a crucial first step.
"11. A global population strategy to enable a smooth descent to the two to three billion that could live comfortably indefinitely within the biophysical means of nature."
This is highly disturbing. With the 11,000 scientist warning the other day they proposed something similar. I find it very worrying. Who will decide who lives? Or who has kids and a family? This will not end well...
So far the best possible situation is playing out: people are voluntarily choosing not to have kids (or not to have as many kids), as they respond to economic incentives. Kids are expensive and a huge time suck, and with the continued development of very fulfilling hobbies and pastimes for urban professionals without kids, many people are independently making the conclusion that it's not worth it.
I don't have very high hopes for us getting out of this demographic crunch without a world war, but so far Millenials are not letting us down, though they aren't exactly happy about it. Let's hope that we can remain on the "mildly disgruntled" side rather than the "shooting war".
He forgot one alternative besides fission: fusion! And I'm not talking about Iter, that's probably still decades away, but much smaller sized portable fusion generators.
The events around climate change have been predicted in the scriptures for a long time (ice melting, storms, quakes, waves of the sea heaving themselves beyond their bounds, fires/smoke, and other significant catastrophic events--not just the usual levels of them). We need not be surprised, but we really can be OK.
I do appreciate the science and am glad for progress in our efforts. It seems to me we are not competent enough to solve such things when we have largely rejected the instructions given by the earth's creator (like, honesty, the Golden Rule, etc, etc): we have a hard time trusting each other even when we say we agree. I'm glad we can share our own thoughts. We need His help both to address important issues globally, and in our personal lives.
I think solutions to climate change that require global coordination are doomed to failure. When things start getting rough it’s going to be some entity independently pursuing a geoengineering solution, with whatever risk that entails. It’s not the best approach, but it’s something that someone can impose on the whole world without conquering them and shutting down their coal plans.
The effects of climate change will play play out across many localized areas. Some will be dramatically more impacted than others. The impacts will require remediation solutions, some difficult and expensive. Millions will be displaced and affected, and complex engineering challenges will arise.
This will not end humanity. The apocalypse is not coming. Humans will adapt because we have no choice. Engineering a solution to a global climate problem is borderline impossible. Engineering a solution to imminent local direct impacts of climate change is a more coherent, approachable problem.
I agree with the author's assessment - humans require fossil fuels for society's function. Thus, instead of moping around about how we are all fucked, it seems a more productive exercise to sort out how to cohabitate a world where we are going to continue consuming, for the medium term, our near infinite supply of natural gas for energy.
The real problem to me is the Climate TMI. There are just too many arguments/opinions/facts etc., there's no way to tell which one I should believe based on my gut feelings (which is the only thing I can rely on at the end of the day). This OP looks sensible, but I'm sure I'll be persuaded by any other article that has an opposite argument. I'm practically drown in the sciences. I hope it's not just me.
Well, all this is besides the point. Which is, our economic activity is destroying the environment (and not just through climate change) but we 're not stopping because it would cost a lot of money.
So basically we're putting money over the survival of the species and generally life on earth. Our priorities are back to front, and discussing how cheap or expensive it is to switch to renewables is pointless. We're just headed for extinction. And good riddance to us, because we're bloody stupid monkeys who can't control the processes we set in motion. Becaues we are reckless and destructive and we do not trust each other enough to work together to avert our shared catastrophe.
point 11 on part 2: a smooth transition of the global population to 2-3B.
Over how long a time-frame does Dr.Rees expect this to happen? Thanos only killed half the population. Mao only starved ~40M/50M.
He has no imagination for what could be with all the will and imagination of a generation faced with dire results and instead draws bleak resolutions that sound like the aftermath of a WW3.
> Not on the table are ecological tax reform (beyond investment incentives and carbon taxes), structural changes to the economy that would lower consumer demand and reduce energy and material throughput, policies for income/wealth redistribution, major lifestyle changes or strategies to reduce human populations.
The broadside attack on capitalism is going to be the undoing of the climate advocacy movement. Neoliberalism has become the global consensus, and it’s not going anywhere. Neoliberals and outright conservatives have been in charge of the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Australia, the United States, etc., for decades. Even “socialist” Macron has reinvented himself as a neo-liberal. People remember the depredations of socialism and the stagnation of “democratic socialism” and don’t seem eager to repeat them. (Greta Thunberg’s home country of Sweden cut spending as a percentage of GDP by almost 20 points since 1990, slashed corporate taxes, deregulated and privatized, etc.).
Telling people we need a command economy to effectively combat climate change is a non-starter. “Major lifestyle changes” or ghastly thoughts like “reducing human population” will result in climate advocates being pilloried.
There are basically three possible outcomes:
1) We don’t change, technology doesn’t save us, and climate change turns out to be not as bad as some people feared. (A recent UNDP report estimated that a “high warming” scenario would case Bangladesh’s GDP growth rate to decrease from 6% to 4% by 2100. Bangladesh would be vastly better off taking that hit than departing from neoliberal economic policies.)
2) We don’t change, but technology reverses climate change.
3) We don’t change, technology doesn’t save us, and contrary to consensus science, runaway greenhouse effects kill us all.
He’s not wrong. If governments were to deliberately starve their economies of fossil fuels on the scale we need you’d see the same response as in Chile or France except much bigger and more violent- the government that does that, collapses within a fortnight.
[+] [-] jandrewrogers|6 years ago|reply
I don't see any possibility of the required power generation capability being built. Even if the economic resources were made available, which is at least plausible in the abstract, the irrational politics around nuclear power in the developed world would guarantee that there would be little actual progress.
Constructively addressing climate change means massively increasing power generation capacity as a primary input. Given the ample evidence that this is not politically achievable, I think it is fair to call pessimism "realism".
[+] [-] greglindahl|6 years ago|reply
... solar and wind are scaling much better than every prediction, for many years now, yet somehow that's not good enough for the people who claim to be realists. Odd.
[+] [-] dwd|6 years ago|reply
Why is every nation not committing an investment on the scale of the Apollo/Manhattan Projects? Politically it should be sell-able as a near-term investment (jobs) and future prosperity (cheaper renewable energy).
Governments should be putting billions into fusion, wave/tidal generation (nothing should be too expensive), upgrading all hydro to pumped hydro as well as developing more.
Ideas like this: https://www.arup.com/projects/bendigo-underground-pumped-hyd...
should be fully supported and funded. As each of the dozens of 400m+ deep underground coal mines around the world are wound down and replaced with wind or solar generation, convert them to pumped hydro, providing jobs for displaced coal miners and saving their communities in the process.
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|6 years ago|reply
As in India, which is nearly finished building from ~ 40GW to 170GW of renewable energy. And you skip past the powers of conservation. We don't need more power, we need less CO2.
> capable of scaling ... nuclear fission
The CO2 problem needs to be addressed promptly, and efficiently. Renewables build -much- more quickly, and the immediate cost of hundreds of nukes would finance thousands of green installs. (Waste aside.) Sunlight and wind are the result of the Sun's NF ... it eats the waste problem.
> I don't see any possibility.
Oh it's possible. What you 'see' as irrational politics I see as just as rational as the CO2 evidence. And the rational response is to vote out all of those who stand in the way of prompt and efficient.
[+] [-] uoaei|6 years ago|reply
In that time, other forms of energy generation (with no major lasting effects following catastrophic failure) and storage are getting cheaper, and if that happens at a sufficiently fast (e.g. half-life (heh) of price of a few years) than fission reactors will be priced out before they even start running.
[+] [-] shrimp_emoji|6 years ago|reply
Fusion is safe! D: Fusion when?
[+] [-] fouc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smoll|6 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber
[+] [-] hanniabu|6 years ago|reply
You sounds like the typical advocator of oil pipelines over protected land and I'm sure you know how that ended up. Can we build safe pipelines? Yes. Do we? No. Why? Because of the human factor, which comes down to greed, stupidity, and laxation of regulation.
This is the same exact case for nuclear. Already we see that a majority of nuclear power plants in the US are operating at almost 2x the design life and will likely get additional extensions. This is done by continued laxation of regulation.
And this is in the US where I would expect the strictest of regulation. When the rest of the world sees the US doing this, it sets a precedence for them to follow and I'm sure other countries will have even less strict regulations and inspections. It's really only a matter of time until we have another disaster.
[+] [-] mdorazio|6 years ago|reply
Next is the assumption that renewables have to be deployed at grid scale, with the materials and transmission costs associated with that. This is also not true - solar + battery is a perfect use case for distributed deployment by homeowners, businesses, parking lots, etc. in any sunny location, and trends in non-grid installed solar reflect this where non-utility accounts for over a third of new installs per year.
Next is the questionable bundling of global statistics rather than breaking out by country. If you break it out by country, the trends are a lot different. For example, most of the west already reached effective peak energy demand (or close to it), and renewables deployments are offsetting dirtier production methods at a decent pace, mostly due to economics. The "bad" trends the author points are are specific to developing locations.
There's more, but this is already a long comment.
Edit: Another one... solar panels don't last "a few years more" [than turbines], they last a decade or more longer. Current estimate is 25-30 years with proper maintenance before performance is significantly degraded, and even at that point they still work just fine. It's not like you don't have to replace or overhaul major power plant components every few decades for other energy sources...
[+] [-] xyzzyz|6 years ago|reply
This is simply not feasible. Do the math. To store 3 days worth of current US energy use, you need to build $50 trillion worth of batteries. If you assume that the battery installation lifetime is 20 years, and amortize it over that period, you’re looking at over 10% of US GDP spent just on building and installing the batteries. Seriously, do the math.
[+] [-] strainer|6 years ago|reply
This is not a point against solar, but the "lifetime" of wind turbine installations is misrepresented in the article. It states "the life expectancy of a wind turbine may be less than 15 years." and it links one 7 year old article to support that idea, which is known to be false except in the sly sense that for sure a windturbine may need repairs at any time.
Modern windfarms are commonly financed to be built and make a profit from investment by selling electricity for 15 years. After that contract is up, however much they require new blades and/or refurbished or modernized generators - extending their life is due to be much cheaper than putting entirely new ones in their foundations. The relatively short supply contracts are very desirable to investors, not a sign of unreliability.[1]
[1] https://www.intechopen.com/books/stability-control-and-relia...
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rayiner|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goatlover|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omgwtfbyobbq|6 years ago|reply
https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/testing-a-thirt...
https://global.kyocera.com/news-archive/2009/0805_jeao.html
My feeling is that most significant degradation comes from problems with assembly weather sealing, connectors, and/or electronic components. The cells themselves should last for a long time with modest degradation.
Inverters on the other hand seem to be closer to consumables in PV installs, but even those should last 10-20 years depending on the model, and refurbishment is possible.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] yodsanklai|6 years ago|reply
Does renewable deployment cover new energy demand as well as the fossil fuels we are supposed not to use anymore?
> renewables deployments are offsetting dirtier production methods
Renewables take their toll on the environment too. Batteries and solar panels need fossil fuels for their production, and the mining of rare metals is an extremely polluting industry (and often delocalized in countries with little regulations).
> If you look at the charts
The charts I looked at suggested that there will be both an energy and an environmental crisis.
It's very hard to argue over this topic as all we can do is cite experts. Maybe I'm attracted to the most pessimistic authors? where to look to have the scientific consensus on this matter?
[+] [-] irq11|6 years ago|reply
The increase in fossil fuel demand, however “lumpy”, is more than current total renewable output.
(Who is downvoting? this is a statement of fact, from the article.)
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|6 years ago|reply
People want to have their lifestyle and telling people in developing countries that they can never have the Western lifestyle and telling people in developed countries that they have to reduce their lifestyle are simply untenable politically.
We should be focusing on climate change mitigation.
[+] [-] usrusr|6 years ago|reply
The challenge is to keep the extracted carbon from returning to the atmosphere. Those underground reservoirs of coal and hydrocarbons we have been digging up all the time are hard to beat.
[+] [-] greffetti|6 years ago|reply
Regardless, mitigating a disaster while still causing that disaster doesn't result in the disaster ending. If we allocate all our efforts into mitigation we won't be in a position to actually restructure our society to be sustainable when the problem of climate change remains.
[+] [-] seanwilson|6 years ago|reply
Wouldn't you need even more energy to pull it in that it took to release it? So to undo 10 years worth of global emissions, you'd need more energy than was generated worldwide over those 10 years? Sounds impossible.
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graeme|6 years ago|reply
I've never heard a convincing case for this that accepted that warming will keep going and going unless we stop emitting.
Mitigation in that event will be something like "abandon all historical coastal cities and keep building new port infrastructure every couple decades".
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|6 years ago|reply
I share the authors concern here that doing the exact same thing we're doing now but handwave electric is not going to get us to where we're going to need to be. We need to be smarter about how we use energy and our resources and use less.
For example shifting our entire automobile based transportation infrastructure to the exact same thing but electric is not nearly as impactful on lowering CO2 emissions taking those cars off the road via better public transit and land use that enables active transportation (ie. walking/cycling).
[+] [-] soperj|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] XorNot|6 years ago|reply
Modern coal-fired powerplants are substantially more efficient then car internal combustion engines.
[+] [-] brlewis|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djohnston|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattsfrey|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ac29|6 years ago|reply
Carbon-emitting generation:
35% Natural Gas
3% Coal
11% "Unspecified" (lets be pessimistic and assume all of that is fossil fuel)
Non-carbon emitting (or carbon neutral):
11% Large Hydro
9% Nuclear
31% "Renewables" (solar, wind, small hydro, etc)
Yes, transportation is still almost entirely fossil fuel based. Many homes and businesses use natural gas for heat. Industry uses fossil fuels as well in significant amounts. None of these can be ignored.
But de-carbonizing electricity is a crucial first step.
[0] https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_sys...
[+] [-] cyrksoft|6 years ago|reply
Part 2: https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/12/Climate-Crisis-Realis...
This is highly disturbing. With the 11,000 scientist warning the other day they proposed something similar. I find it very worrying. Who will decide who lives? Or who has kids and a family? This will not end well...
[+] [-] nostrademons|6 years ago|reply
I don't have very high hopes for us getting out of this demographic crunch without a world war, but so far Millenials are not letting us down, though they aren't exactly happy about it. Let's hope that we can remain on the "mildly disgruntled" side rather than the "shooting war".
[+] [-] tiborsaas|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Compact_Fusion...
The smaller scale might simplify things.
Borrowing from the analogy in the article, fusion is a magnetic field management problem.
[+] [-] lcall|6 years ago|reply
I do appreciate the science and am glad for progress in our efforts. It seems to me we are not competent enough to solve such things when we have largely rejected the instructions given by the earth's creator (like, honesty, the Golden Rule, etc, etc): we have a hard time trusting each other even when we say we agree. I'm glad we can share our own thoughts. We need His help both to address important issues globally, and in our personal lives.
(More details on these thoughts at http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html , a simple site w/o javascript).
[+] [-] duahncjak|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] julienb_sea|6 years ago|reply
This will not end humanity. The apocalypse is not coming. Humans will adapt because we have no choice. Engineering a solution to a global climate problem is borderline impossible. Engineering a solution to imminent local direct impacts of climate change is a more coherent, approachable problem.
I agree with the author's assessment - humans require fossil fuels for society's function. Thus, instead of moping around about how we are all fucked, it seems a more productive exercise to sort out how to cohabitate a world where we are going to continue consuming, for the medium term, our near infinite supply of natural gas for energy.
[+] [-] euske|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saagarjha|6 years ago|reply
Maybe not, but what would you suggest we do otherwise?
[+] [-] YeGoblynQueenne|6 years ago|reply
So basically we're putting money over the survival of the species and generally life on earth. Our priorities are back to front, and discussing how cheap or expensive it is to switch to renewables is pointless. We're just headed for extinction. And good riddance to us, because we're bloody stupid monkeys who can't control the processes we set in motion. Becaues we are reckless and destructive and we do not trust each other enough to work together to avert our shared catastrophe.
[+] [-] UltimateFloofy|6 years ago|reply
Over how long a time-frame does Dr.Rees expect this to happen? Thanos only killed half the population. Mao only starved ~40M/50M.
He has no imagination for what could be with all the will and imagination of a generation faced with dire results and instead draws bleak resolutions that sound like the aftermath of a WW3.
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|6 years ago|reply
The broadside attack on capitalism is going to be the undoing of the climate advocacy movement. Neoliberalism has become the global consensus, and it’s not going anywhere. Neoliberals and outright conservatives have been in charge of the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Australia, the United States, etc., for decades. Even “socialist” Macron has reinvented himself as a neo-liberal. People remember the depredations of socialism and the stagnation of “democratic socialism” and don’t seem eager to repeat them. (Greta Thunberg’s home country of Sweden cut spending as a percentage of GDP by almost 20 points since 1990, slashed corporate taxes, deregulated and privatized, etc.).
Telling people we need a command economy to effectively combat climate change is a non-starter. “Major lifestyle changes” or ghastly thoughts like “reducing human population” will result in climate advocates being pilloried.
There are basically three possible outcomes:
1) We don’t change, technology doesn’t save us, and climate change turns out to be not as bad as some people feared. (A recent UNDP report estimated that a “high warming” scenario would case Bangladesh’s GDP growth rate to decrease from 6% to 4% by 2100. Bangladesh would be vastly better off taking that hit than departing from neoliberal economic policies.)
2) We don’t change, but technology reverses climate change.
3) We don’t change, technology doesn’t save us, and contrary to consensus science, runaway greenhouse effects kill us all.
[+] [-] fallingfrog|6 years ago|reply