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posted by martyb on Wednesday February 12 2020, @06:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the did-you-check-to-turn-the-lights-off dept.

Germany's economy nowadays emits as much carbon dioxide as it did in the 1950s, when it was 10 times smaller.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), carbon dioxide emissions trends for 2019 suggest clean energy transitions are underway. Global power sector emissions declined by some 170 Mt, or 1.2%, with the biggest falls taking place in the advanced economies of the European Union, Japan and the United States. There, CO2 emissions are now at levels not seen since the late 1980s, when electricity demand was one-third lower.

In these advanced economies, the average CO2 emissions intensity of electricity generation declined by nearly 6.5% in 2019. This is a rate three times faster than the average over the past decade.

This decline is driven by a switch from coal to natural gas, a rise in nuclear power and weaker electricity demand, combined with the seemingly unstoppable growth in renewables. These now constitute over 40% of the energy mix in Germany (wind power +11%) and the United Kingdom, where rapid expansion in offshore wind power generation is happening.

The bummer lies with the rest of the world.

There emissions continue to expand with close to 400 Mt last year. About 80% of that increase is happening in Asia. Coal demand here continues to expand, accounting for over 50% of energy use.


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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday February 13 2020, @06:02PM (3 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday February 13 2020, @06:02PM (#957779) Journal

    Environmentalists, though, are still trying to convince people to be prepared to sacrifice economic growth to save the planet.

    Yes, they are going to keep trying and they will keep failing. It's extremely difficult to convince people to go hungry every day to save tree frogs in some rainforest on the other side of the Earth that they have never seen, and will never see.

    Elon Musk has constructed an entire business model for selling environmentalism to wealthy, guilty liberals, especially the Silicon Valley type nouveau riche that still believes in the progressive California politics they grew up with but feel the pull of living like stupid-rich kings.

    That's one of his most important contributions, though, isn't it? He recognized that you need to start the thing as a luxury purchase and work your way down to the mass market. It's exactly what the auto makers did back in the day, and it wasn't until later that Henry Ford made a car for the everyman. Elon Musk has found the business model that works for making a profit while saving the Earth. His approach will get it done. The hair shirt-wearing eco-hippy approach (I am one, actually) has never gotten it done, and will never get it done. For every 1000 people Greta Thunberg has turned off, Elon Musk has converted 10,000.

    There's a world- and climate-saving lesson in that, if the hysterical will shut up and learn it.

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  • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday February 14 2020, @03:32PM (2 children)

    by meustrus (4961) on Friday February 14 2020, @03:32PM (#958169)

    It's extremely difficult to convince people to go hungry every day to save tree frogs in some rainforest on the other side of the Earth that they have never seen, and will never see.

    I couldn't tell you when was the last time anybody tried to appeal to my love of tree frogs. Frankly, animal conservation has very little to do with climate change and a lot more to do with the economies of places with lots of biological diversity. Like Brazil, and its economics that are leading to the mass fiery destruction of its rainforests.

    Sad, but not a result of climate change.

    Lately, when I hear somebody making an emotional appeal about climate change, it's not about tree frogs. It's about our children. It's about the economic impact of rising temperatures. It's about the increasing likelihood of large-scale famine and drought, of the entire world becoming engulfed in conflicts over access to shrinking natural resources. It's about Singapore and Florida sinking under rising sea levels. It's about refugee crises the likes of which have never been seen in the entirety of recorded history.

    Then again, I'm one of those Millenials that in general don't share your preconceptions [ecowatch.com]:

    Far and wide, young people consider climate change to be the world's most serious issue, according to the World Economic Forum's 2017 Global Shaper Survey of more than 31,000 millennials from 186 countries and territories.

    Close to half (48.8 percent) of those surveyed chose "climate change/destruction of nature" as their No. 1 concern. This is the third year in a row that 18-to-35-year-olds declared the issue as their biggest global concern.

    The vast majority of survey participants also agreed about what causes climate change—91 percent answered "agree" and "strongly agree" with the statement "science has proven that humans are responsible for climate change."

    About 78 percent of respondents also said they are willing to change their lifestyle to protect the environment.

    Maybe you heard about climate change back when it was global warming, and the only non-scientists who cared were too busy chaining themselves to trees to explain to us selfish bourgeois how rising temperatures could usher in an apocalypse that affects humans just as much as it affects tree frogs. I heard about climate change from neoliberals like Al Gore who like their capitalist free markets, thank you very much, and are quite concerned about their long-term viability if, say, the Gulf Stream collapsed due to arctic desalination and northern Europe became a frozen hellscape instead of the temperate paradise it is now.

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    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 14 2020, @04:28PM (1 child)

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday February 14 2020, @04:28PM (#958181) Journal

      Lately, when I hear somebody making an emotional appeal about climate change, it's not about tree frogs. It's about our children. It's about the economic impact of rising temperatures. It's about the increasing likelihood of large-scale famine and drought, of the entire world becoming engulfed in conflicts over access to shrinking natural resources.

      What children? Millennials are not having children [forbes.com]. Millennials are too socially isolated [vox.com] to form relationships to have children. So that's good news, right? They don't have to worry about the effects of climate change on children because they only have themselves to worry about.

      Drought? 70% of the Earth's surface is still covered in water, and if ambient temperatures are rising then presumably more water will evaporate from oceans, form clouds, and rain than before. The hydrological cycle will still work, perhaps even faster and better.

      Rising temperatures? Will Houston become uninhabitable? Well, no net change there because Houston has always been uninhabitable. But Siberia and Canada are huge and nearly completely empty--plenty of room for all.

      Shrinking natural resources? Yes, it is true that the world supply of whale oil is not what it once was, but there's good news(!) here, too: we don't use whale oil anymore. Also, there are materials scientists who are making a lot of progress with graphene and carbon nanotubes, such that soon we won't need so much of those "natural resources" anymore because we can build what we need out of pure carbon. If we can figure out a cost-effective way to win that carbon from the atmosphere, then it would be a double bonus, right? We could also dig up those old landfills and recycle the stuff we threw in them over the last hundred years. It's neat what you can do when you put your mind to it.

      That's all tongue-in-cheek, but we can approach these challenges a couple of ways. One is the old, morose, the-sky-is-falling way that is a dead end. The other is a positive, forward-thinking way that can grow and unfold in a nearly infinite way. The positive way can not only help us surmount challenges on Earth, but prep us to solve such resource challenges on other worlds, if we can ever get there.

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      • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday February 17 2020, @05:20PM

        by meustrus (4961) on Monday February 17 2020, @05:20PM (#959216)

        [citation needed]

        Canada and Siberia opening up doesn't exactly help people in low-lying areas and areas that will be afflicted by drought due to changing climate patterns. Desertification is real. Unless you are suggesting that somehow Canada and Russia are prepared to receive a flood of brown-skinned refugees.

        The current political climate, and the likely political climate of the next 50 years, suggests that such a horde of refugees is more likely to face border walls and armed guards.

        As for new materials and new technologies, oil-derived plastics are still cheap. Petrochemicals are going to be much cheaper than any of these exotic new processes for decades to come. Without significant long-term investment, it simply isn't going to happen. And the only people talking about significant long-term investment in renewable materials are the few environmentalists with some business sense.

        The oil industry is just as much of your enemy as the tree-huggers. More, in fact, because the oil industry actually has power. Power enough to shape world economics so that petrochemicals are the only game in town for as long as they can keep finding more oil. With global warming literally melting the poles as we speak, there are exciting new opportunities for these robber barons to keep selling us petrochemicals for the next 100 years at least.

        As long as people like you are unwilling to accept any reduction in economic growth, you can kiss your carbon nanotube future goodbye. It will never be able to compete with plastics in our lifetimes as long as the oil industry maintains their grip on the world economy.

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