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Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040
A landmark report from the United Nations' scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has "no documented historic precedent."
The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.
The report "is quite a shock, and quite concerning," said Bill Hare, an author of previous I.P.C.C. reports and a physicist with Climate Analytics, a nonprofit organization. "We were not aware of this just a few years ago." The report was the first to be commissioned by world leaders under the Paris agreement, the 2015 pact by nations to fight global warming.
The authors found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, the atmosphere will warm up by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels by 2040, inundating coastlines and intensifying droughts and poverty. Previous work had focused on estimating the damage if average temperatures were to rise by a larger number, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), because that was the threshold scientists previously considered for the most severe effects of climate change. The new report, however, shows that many of those effects will come much sooner, at the 2.7-degree mark.
Scientists Call for $2.4 Trillion (per year) Shift From Coal to Renewables
The world must invest $2.4 trillion in clean energy every year through 2035 and cut the use of coal-fired power to almost nothing by 2050 to slow the quickest pace of climate change since the end of the last ice age, according to scientists convened by the United Nations.
[...] To limit warming to 1.5 degrees [Celsius] would require a roughly fivefold increase in average annual investment in low-carbon energy technologies by 2050, compared with 2015. The $2.4 trillion needed annually through 2035 is also an almost sevenfold increase from the $333.5 billion Bloomberg NEF estimated was invested in renewable energy last year.
See also: IPCC climate change report calls for urgent action to phase out fossil fuels - live
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @10:48AM (2 children)
Knock the UN headquarters into the East River and that frees up $7 billion for the world to reinvest.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @10:52AM (1 child)
Yeah, shoot the messenger. God willing, sacrifice made, that will avert the bad news.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @11:19AM
Defund communists, now!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by richtopia on Monday October 08 2018, @10:58AM (13 children)
We are boned.
Smoke em' if go got em'
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday October 08 2018, @12:53PM
"go" should be "ya"
Is it quitting time yet? All of these numbers/characters are looking the same again.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by zocalo on Monday October 08 2018, @02:25PM (11 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @02:47PM
Therr is plenty of reason to adopt better, more efficient, technologies that have nothing to do with climate change. Or even less efficient tech that reduces dependance on specific problematic energy sources like middle east oil... Or to adopt more robust and safe construction and supply pipelines so that any natural disaster is less dangerous.
Why do we never hear about these techs and reasons (some mentioned in this thread) from the usual suspects? It can only be that climate change is an excuse for something else for them.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday October 08 2018, @03:50PM (7 children)
It's not that governments inherently move slowly. Governments can move very very quickly when they think there's something to be gained by doing so.
The problem is that
1. There's not much money to be made in the short-term in addressing the problem.
2. There's a large short-term cost in addressing the problem.
3. The vast majority of decision-making from people with power is driven by short-term money.
Put those elements together, and it's abundantly clear nothing will happen until it's too late. As far as governments go, the worst offenders are basically in an international game of chicken, with each government trying to convince the others to solve the problem while doing at best nothing themselves and at worst actively trying to make things worse by trying to burn through all of their known oil reserves before anyone can stop them. As far as the public pressure goes, they simply engage in "greenwashing [wikipedia.org]" to propaganda their way out of the problem.
And no, these things don't have a political party. For instance, the Obama administration talked a great game about renewable energy, while at the same time carefully looking the other way while a company with help from the local police forces attacked the Standing Rock Sioux and their allies with dogs and water cannons in order to illegally [theatlantic.com] build an oil pipeline.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday October 08 2018, @06:33PM (6 children)
After me, the deluge.
https://imgur.com/gallery/tsCYc [imgur.com]
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4036/4254681996_27b1ed7ff0.jpg [flickr.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @06:58PM
I looked at the second one. The problem is that their idea isnt to create a better world (if it was they would be looking at nuclear power, concrete replacements, adaptability/robustness in construction etc). Their only idea is to give more money and power to people who like to tell everyone what to do, many of them apparently psychopaths.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 09 2018, @11:37AM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday October 10 2018, @08:09AM (3 children)
The part where the air is eminently more breathable and less acidic without coal plants and with chimney/tailpipe emission standards, that does qualify as a better world.
Harvesting renewable energy instead of digging chemicals mostly by supporting unpleasant people and displacing/killing/poisoning the people who are in the way.
Not converting two thirds of the resultant product into waste heat and pollution.
Not converting >90% of our electricity into heat when we try to generate light in summer.
Putting money into helping poor peasants make a living without doing forest clear-cuts.
Making industries responsible for their usage of the commons, instead of the tradition of laissez-faire which has left so many places with toxic dumps after the owners moved away.
...
The list can get pretty long. Sadly, paying for previously ignored externalities raises the cost of things, or more precisely integrates their costs upfront rather than socializing them. And yes, specific examples, like for all humans behaviours, will turn out to be mistakes and wasteful. Macroeconomics teach us to learn, then look past and keep on moving, rather, as you do, than highlight bad cases as final proof that nothing should be done.
I apologize for the MAGA crowd, but it turns out that the careless past has consequences for my kids, and I'd like to slow down the all-out profit-driven rampage on the environment. Turns out that Global Warming is a more comprehensive rallying cry against waste than more spectacular but SEP-fielded flaming rivers and LA smog.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 10 2018, @01:48PM (2 children)
Except when people die to make that happen. Coal power happens to be a very important way for developing world countries to bring their citizens out of extreme poverty. Similarly, chimney/tailpipe emission standards often are counterproductive, such as the Volkswagon emissions scandal where Volkswagon was punished severely for cheating on emissions testing. There, the cheating resulted in a car that performed better and consume fuel more efficiently (in other words lower CO2 output). Again, that costs peoples' lives through making a less efficient economy, less capable of doing its part to provide for our needs.
What again is the unsubsidized cost/benefit of renewable energy versus fossil fuels? The accounting games played with that talking point are ridiculous particularly when some of the alleged fossil fuel subsidies actually reduce market demand for fossil fuels (by encouraging demand for state production of fossil fuels, mostly in OPEC).
Waste heat is a near irrelevant concern and is a problem for renewables as well (all forms of energy production result in waste heat production). Then you're comparing two unrelated quantities, pollution and energy. Finally, while the pollution from renewable energy is mostly fixed at construction (solar cells don't usually continue to pollute after production), land use becomes a big issue with most (hydroelectric, wind, and solar all create significant restrictions on what can be used with them). This often results in substantial displacing/killing people (a thing you mentioned earlier). Hydroelectric in particular has a huge drawback here with many examples of people moved and people dying from dam failures.
Forest clear cuts can be done renewably. Something else is wrong there - poor management of resources.
Ditto. You've conflated a number of things that have nothing to do with mitigating global warming.
Let's add a couple more dubious benefits. Increasing the cost of food globally from the US's subsidizing of ethanol production. And doubling the cost of electricity for a significant portion of Europe (Germany and Denmark have a population of just under 90 million combined).
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday October 10 2018, @04:38PM (1 child)
You make me sad.
I'll petition Santa to bring you a lump of coal.
It will make you happy.
> some of the alleged fossil fuel subsidies actually reduce market demand for fossil fuels (by encouraging demand for state production of fossil fuels, mostly in OPEC).
What ?
> cheating resulted in a car that performed better and consume fuel more efficiently
At the cost of people's lungs, reducing their efficiency.
> What again is the unsubsidized cost/benefit of renewable energy versus fossil fuels?
Are you factoring in the aircraft carriers and the hate in the OPEC countries? Are you factoring in the fracking pollution in your back yard ?
>
Coalpower happens to be a very important way for developing world countries to bring their citizens out of extreme poverty.FTFY. What matters is the power. Gas is cheaper and healthier these days. Even burning oil is cheaper and healthier. Panels and batteries are what works in remote villages.
> people dying from dam failures
Really ? Really ? Wanna start counting the daily deaths/diseases from oil and coal industries ? Yeah, planes crash too, let's ignore how rarely they do compared to cars.
> Forest clear cuts can be done renewably.
Any clear cut results in a more fragile system, ready to collapse at the first disturbance (soil erosion, monoculture disease...)
> Increasing the cost of food globally from the US's subsidizing of ethanol production.
Yeah, I did type something about not all ideas being good. This one barely even qualifies as "trying", since it's mostly a political gift to Iowa and similar places. Notice how timely: Trump is trying to make Ethanol great again this week, and there's not pretense of eco-anything a few weeks before the midterms.
> doubling the cost of electricity
Hey, if we could double the price of energy in the US, maybe people would start addressing how wasteful (selfish, in a global market) they are.
Just got my annual negative electricity bill, just from getting rewarded for using about a third of what my "efficient 100 neighbors with similar square footage" use. I live comfortably with 6 people in a 45 yr-old house.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 11 2018, @11:18AM
I do recall environmental groups lauding this when it was first created. For example, the National Wildlife Federation still brags [nwf.org]:
was a legislative victory, even though they're advocating [washingtontimes.com] to reverse much of it now.
That's the pattern though. Create dumb laws and regulations for climate change, throw gobs of money at various pointless projects (which I think is partly how Big Oil got on board), and no real progress made. Now we're supposed to throw trillions of dollars a year at this? Good money after bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @05:06PM (1 child)
2.7 trillion/7billion=$385/person
Welp, I've already done my part (and more) averaged out over the last 15 years or so
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @07:00AM
Yeah, I'm sure people in Africa/SE Asia making $1 a month will pitch in with their $385 a year any day now.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Monday October 08 2018, @11:06AM (25 children)
And at one point, they spoke of "synergies" between adaptation and mitigation while ignoring that most examples of mitigation don't mitigate (and thus, don't have anything to synergize with). You end up with a lot of harmful crap like ethanol subsidies in the US (funny how certain parties got the climate religion long enough to pass that, eh?) and expensively subsidized renewables in Europe which, let us note, often don't reduce dependence on fossil fuels, but provide avenues for turning public funds into private profit.
If this were a serious report, they'd outline right in that summary the possible scenarios (for example, even a simple temperature increase versus cost/benefit). I'd still probably disagree with that (since the IPCC traditionally exaggerates such in favor of their preferred solution), but at least it'd be more honest.
A big missing factor here is the complete ignorance of economic factors like poverty and overpopulation. There's no point to slamming down on the brakes, if it results in a huge surge in poverty (which I think it will, based on the success of past mitigation attempts). And that in turn will result in higher levels of overpopulation and subsequently make for a likely return to fossil fuels at a near future time. I think it's telling that they can't demonstrate that the cure is better than the disease.
And it's interesting that they don't discuss climate sensitivity to green house gases. The estimates so far allow for long term temperature increases over 1.5 C already. I don't buy that myself, but it is interesting that the IPCC report fails to consider what should be a serious probability by their own reckoning, that mitigation is already too late for the temperature thresholds of 1.5 C and 2 C mentioned. Another indication that they're not seriously considering reasonable outcomes of their models and predictions.
(Score: 3, Troll) by Unixnut on Monday October 08 2018, @11:56AM (19 children)
Colour me unsurprised. A panel whose continued funding and influence on policy is dependent on doom mongering hysteria about the climate changing, issues report predicting horrible doom real soon now (tm) due to the climate changing.
2040 is near enough to influence policy, seek continued funding and seem relevant, but far enough that most panelists will have gorged on the gravy train and moved on by the time we find out if their predictions were right.
It also gives plenty of time to "refine" the models, so if by 2040 what they predicted now doesn't happen, they can say they have since refined the models, and doom will arrive 2060 (and the cycle starts anew).
Also, thanks for actually putting in the effort to explain why its a load of bollocks. I found it insightful.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday October 08 2018, @02:07PM (14 children)
Though the lamestream media makes its living whipping up fear and hysteria about anything and everything, you're a fool to disparage and dismiss the warnings about climate change. Climate change is happening right now, right in front of our noses, and it's easy to see if only we would look. Decades ago, I had a CO2 monitor. It was meant to monitor indoor air quality, which could easily exceed 600ppm, even 1000ppm, in a poorly ventilated building. The instructions said it should read about 280 ppm when outdoors. We left it outside for a few months, and the lowest reading I ever saw was a bit over 300. I thought maybe it was out of calibration. But no, CO2 levels had gone up. Today, you will not see less than 400. We've taken an awful lot of carbon out of the ground, in the blink of an eye on geologic time scales, and burnt it. Can't make a big change like that without causing other changes.
And you're a bigger, cynical fool for talking as if the world is only a zero sum game, and all the recommended actions are all about fake sacrifice that will transfer wealth from many people to a few fearmongers. Some of the things we can do are great ideas even if there is no climate change. Like, how about smarter stoplights? Surely you do not enjoy sitting at red lights, waiting for nothing because the cross street is empty of traffic but the traffic light is too brainless to respond appropriately. Next, are you a lawn care freak? Own a house and mow the lawn every week? Maybe even enjoy mowing the lawn? Most of us don't enjoy mowing the lawn. Do you water and fertilize too? Read this, it's a hilarious send up of the insanities in lawn care: https://richsoil.com/lawn/god.jsp [richsoil.com] One thing I have learned from mowing lawns is that except for the one big disadvantage of having to run a power cord to an outlet, an electric lawn mower is way, way better than a gasoline powered one. We're going to see a sea change in cars soon, very likely switching to a mostly electric fleet, with much improved batteries on the horizon. Then there's residential home construction. Commercial construction is much more sensible. But somehow, the home buyer accepts insanely expensive and incredibly inefficient and dated construction techniques that drive costs sky high, in part because manufactured homes are sooo low class. Having a brick layer place those little bricks, one by one, by hand, as just a facade of all things because it looks pretty, is really, really stupidly expensive. And they're higher maintenance, and not as reliable. So much better to make a one piece wall out of concrete and form a brick pattern on it, if you want that brick wall look.
There's lots more, but no, some people want to cry about losing things they'd be better off without, or worse, imagine loss of things that weren't good and which they never had anyway! The Good Old Days, you know, that weren't really so good, when lots of children died of horrible diseases that are easily prevented with vaccines today. And to think that in an electric car future, our children will be denied the "pleasures" of breathing exhaust fumes and hearing loss! Now there's the faking. Fake loss! Fake sacrifice!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @04:02PM
We've seen a 0.6°C increase from 1988 - 2017, not quite what we were warned about is it? [apnews.com] Good thing the science was settled back then. And we know the current warnings are legitimate because the UN is busy transporting half of Africa to Europe where energy consumption (and CO2 emissions) are higher. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Monday October 08 2018, @10:12PM (12 children)
Wow, quite a rant, none of which seems to be relevant to my post to which you replied, but ok. I'll try to respond.
My point was about a particular panel spreading doom propaganda for their own political purposes. Note that this has nothing to do with whether climate change is happening or not. There are better, less hysterical ways of going about it.
Most of the rest of your post seems to concern itself to trying to convince me about climate change is actually happening.
While I appreciate the effort, I am fully aware that climate change is happening. To deny climate change would be like to deny that the sun rises every day. My particular point was about the politicization of the science which takes climate change out of a formal discipline and plonks its straight into politics, which can best be described as the worlds shithouse on a good day. It takes the topic and turns it into a shit throwing match between two camps, who make a point of not listening to each other, but rather attempt to scream louder than the other side in efforts to drown them out.
Saying that, my opinions on climate change are very simple. I accept that climate changes, just like it has done for the life of the planet before humans, and just like it will do for the rest of the planets life (With or without humans on it). Some people try to break it down into "natural" climate change and "man made" climate change, but I don't see the distinction, as man is itself a piece of nature, so our changing of the environment is as natural as anything else.
Trying to "stop" climate change sounds the same to me as trying to stop the sun rising in the morning. Far better to accept and adapt to it as it comes, just like life on this planet has adapted for hundreds of millions of years before.
As for battery technology taking over, I don't think so. Batteries are still bloody awful. You have to charge batteries for extended periods of time, their power density is poor, they make use of exotic and rare earth metals (which are very polluting to extract), they are expensive per unit power stored, and they wear out and lose capacity over time. Forget about vehicles, lawnmowers and other serious machinery being battery powered, I sometimes wish my portable electronics were fuel powered rather than having batteries.
IMO It is a shame all this malinvestment in battery technology wasn't better spent working on fuel cells. The ability to "top up" my laptop to full power capacity in less than 30 seconds would have been lovely. I remember a thinkpad with a demo hydrogen fuel cell, in small canisters you could just pop in every time you needed another 15h of power. That was a future, better than the present.
(note: I don't necessary mean the fuel has to be fossil based, loads of "closed carbon" fuels are available).
Well, I can give you my experience. When I was looking to buy my first place, almost all the "new construction" buildings were eco-friendly and energy efficient. This quite frankly made them awful, and I will now list why.
For one, they are over regulated. Due to all the environmental legislation they comply with, you are restricted in so many ways. From being able to punch holes in walls, to being forbidden from installing air-con systems (because they are not eco friendly), to having to only use specific bulbs that are designed for those mounts, to not being allowed to paint the outside areas because the paint already there is designed to absorb/reflect light in such a way to keep the place working efficiently.
You cannot open the windows. In order for the system to function in an energy efficient manner, you cannot alter the draft of the building, so all the windows are sealed. To facilitate airflow, there is some kind of "draft air" system through ventilation shafts in each flat which recirculated in the building to prevent heat loss. Problem is when one person in the building does something really smelly (e.g. burn their cooking), the smell circulates to every flat in the building, with no way to open windows in your flat! In addition, they had some kind of black blinds on the outside of the windows that would open and close automatically based on sun position and internal temperature.
What they didn't consider is that it made you feel like you were in a prison. A sealed room, horrible smells randomly wafting in, no windows that can be opened, and black bars across the windows, that open and close without your consent.
They are a maintenance nightmare. From the solar panels on the roof needing cleaning, to the wind turbines needing maintenance, to all the electronic systems to manage the blind control, draft-air system, etc... the building was full of complex machinery that was expensive and prone to failure. Also, the sealed nature of the system meant you had all kinds of problems with humidity and mould. As a result you had a monthly maintenance cost that could cost the same as renting a normal flat somewhere else.
thirdly, they are designated "car free" areas, anyone living there is forbidden from owning a car. For me, that was one unacceptable restriction.
The buildings were the paragon of modern "eco friendly" living, having won loads of European awards for "house of the future", etc... However, they sat empty and the developer made a loss on them, because nobody wants to live like that, let alone spend hundreds of thousands of euros to buy such a place. Talk about a money sink.
Old houses, in addition to their simpler (and cheaper) construction and low maintenance costs, give you the freedom to modify it to your hearts content. You can paint the walls, punch holes in them, install air-con, and open the damn windows.
That is why I, like so many others, paid more for an older property (that needed restoration work), where I can do what I like with it, and it comes with car parking. Supply and demand.
If eco-friendly houses are to become popular, as with battery powered devices and other eco-tech, they have to be better than the old stuff they are replacing. So far that isn't happening. So government are trying to beat people into it by using legislation to force them.
However new laws/regulations cannot retroactively apply to things created before enactment, so what happens is that "old stock" becomes worth more, as supply reaches 0, but demand increases due to the new alternative being worse.
Round my area, 200-300 year old Victorian houses are the most expensive. Further afield, stone cottages 800+ years old even more so. I guess aesthetics play a part in it too, but I think it also has to do with rugged, reliable and simple construction, with easy/cheap maintenance.
In my experience, people really like the sound of engines. The majority appreciate it, even across genders (I was surprised to find how many women actually told me the like the sound of my car engine) then you got those who really love it and usually badger you about it (they are predominantly male).
I sure never heard of anyone going deaf from engine sounds. Sure, an engine with no exhaust at all may give you temporary ringing in your ears, but unless you deliberately stick your ears next to it for an extended period of time, you are not going to get permanent ear damage from it.
As for fumes, all modern cars are pretty clean (note: Europe here, not sure the regulations in the US). You get CO2, some CO, Some Nitros oxides, water, and that is about it. Diesels are dirty though, but most of that is just sooty deposits, which should be cleared up by the particulate filter.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 08 2018, @10:59PM (2 children)
[...]
Round my area, 200-300 year old Victorian houses are the most expensive. Further afield, stone cottages 800+ years old even more so."
Some might be listed, so with very little freedom to modify. My local council even specifies the type of brush and painting motion my ~450-year old (and listed) building is to be painted with (as well as having swatches of the only colour it's allowed to be painted in). I'd be surprised of anywhere near you with a thatched roof doesn't have to remain that way by law, for example. Unsurprisingly, our metre-thick limestone walls score a massive G on the energy efficiency scale (that's worse than the worst rating with a defined meaning).
"... easy/cheap maintenance."
Quite the opposite!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Tuesday October 09 2018, @08:45AM (1 child)
Yes, listed buildings are very different, but they are not listed just because they are old. Usually there is a reason for it, perhaps they (or the area they are in) are unique in environment/architecture, or have some historic value.
When I talk about old Victorian houses, I mean the things like the red-brick terraced houses that used to be for mill workers. The cookie cutter houses that are all over the place, and the vast majority of which are not listed (as witnessed by my old neighbours, who painted their house Mr. Blobby colours, pink with yellow dots!).
Those houses are (relatively) cheap to maintain, because they make use of normal materials and methods of manufacture that every builder is familiar with, so labour costs are cheaper. Hell, a lot of the work can be done by a competent DIYer.
Specialist modern houses with computerised smart-enabled systems require specialist maintenance and builders, who will cost a lot more. Plus there is a lot more to go wrong. My old Victorian house had windows that still worked since it was built. I highly doubt the computerised blind thingies on the eco-house will still be the original working pieces in a couple of hundred years. To be honest I would be surprised if the house itself was still around by then.
Heh, my current dwelling has 1.5m thick stone walls. The place is too old to be even listed on the efficiency scale (oldest records state the house was standing around 1300AD, so could be older than that). Saying that, the walls are excellent at keeping the place warm in winter and cool in summer. Quite a bit of energy gets stored in them I guess.
So out of curiosity, why did you buy your current place? Especially if you have restrictions based on it being listed, and more expensive maintenance than other houses. It doesn't sound like it was a decision based on financial concerns or freedom to modify :-)
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday October 09 2018, @01:27PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday October 09 2018, @04:33AM (7 children)
> Some people try to break it down into "natural" climate change and "man made" climate change, but I don't see the distinction, as man is itself a piece of nature, so our changing of the environment is as natural as anything else.
There is such a thing as taking responsibility for our actions. Calling everything we do "natural" is a cop out. No one wants to ride in a car in which the driver takes his hands off the wheel and declares he's going to let nature take its course. Might be natural to have us another total war, but it could be the death of us all, with nuclear weapons now in the picture. To repeat what I said earlier, we pulled a lot of carbon out of the ground. We are causing this climate change. It's not good. We must choose what to do about it, and one of the choices is to do nothing, make no changes to our lifestyles and habits. If we take that course, it's going to get ugly. Very likely will lead to war. The total cost to us all is less if we get busy trying to reverse the changes we've set in motion.
> When I was looking to buy my first place, almost all the "new construction" buildings were eco-friendly and energy efficient. This quite frankly made them awful, and I will now list why.
Home builders will take anything and bloat the hell out of it. That's what they did to New Urbanism, which among other things was supposed to produce highly affordable housing. All that so-called eco-friendy stuff you describe is builders using that as an excuse to add all kinds of expensive nonsense to homes. The blinds you describe are way too active. What they should have done is calculate the best angle for louvers to let sunlight through in the winter and block it in the summer, all based on how high the sun is in the sky, no need to move them.
In Canada in particular, they discovered that making a house too air tight, to reduce heat loss, caused all kinds of other problems-- sick building syndrome, moisture buildup, stuff like that. Now they make sure homes are well ventilated, and use other means to reduce heat loss.
> In my experience, people really like the sound of engines.
We're just going to have to get over that. Combustion engines haven't been around that long.
> I sure never heard of anyone going deaf from engine sounds.
Talk to some old farmers. Many have more severe hearing loss in the left ear, because they are right handed, and naturally turn to the right to look behind them. Tractors typically have an upright exhaust pipe in the front. Also, tractors, especially older ones, tend to be very poor at muffling the engine. So when the farmer turned to the right to look behind, his left ear was facing the exhaust.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Tuesday October 09 2018, @08:24AM (1 child)
That isn't really relevant. The situations are completely different. One is a deliberate abdication of control of a system which was designed to require human input to be safe. If cars driving by themselves was natural and worked for hundreds of millions of years, then having people take their hands off the wheel would be perfectly fine (and in some cases preferred).
Indeed, we had such a thing before, we called them horses, and it was in fact perfectly fine to take your hands off the reins and let nature take its course when you felt like it.
The climate, on the other hand, is not human designed, and doesn't require humans. It is a huge, complex, chaotic and dynamic system, one that only the most arrogant of humans would think we currently fully understand and can control it. A system that would function just fine if we all vanished tomorrow.
War is natural, or rather, it is the human social formalisation of the laws of natural competition between lifeforms. It will be with us for as long as life is on this earth, whether the climate changes to something less habitable to humans or not. Thinking that reversing climate change would bring peace on earth is just wishful thinking.
Saying that, I don't think total war would break out over the climate. You are more likely to have more small scale conflicts over land. In fact I don't think you would even really have such conflicts. More like mass migration as people move to places where there is a better environment for living.
Now having some nuclear holocaust occur is possible, just not over climate. There are certain humans on this planet that seek dominion over all. The kind of people who would rather be king of smouldering ruins than an equal amongst men in a rich and happy world. They are a million times more likely to trigger a self extinction event than the climate ever will.
As for pumping out carbon from the ground, most of that carbon was once in the atmosphere anyway, before it got sequestered away. That means that in the past, there was far more CO2 in the atmosphere then nowadays, and life still flourished (indeed some more than others, plants in particular like more CO2). Humans are not adding to the system, the system is more or less closed, all we can do is affect how fast it happens.
Yes, I agree. I felt those houses were architectural masturbation more than anything else, but it does go to show that if you want to make eco-friendly houses, you have to make them more desirable than the current housing stock. The developers probably thought they could ride the "green fashion wave" and sell them easily, but reality slapped them around the face.
Fact of the matter is, for around 90% of the human population, something being "eco friendly" is not that important. Some percentage of that 90% will pretend to care and be "green", but this is more fashion/virtue signalling, done mostly by people who have a lot of time and are wealthy enough to be "green" without it affecting their quality of life.
Actual proper environmentalists, who would sacrifice their current quality of life for the environment, are a small minority. Most people look at costs primarily.
Good, lets hope they continue improving. Like I said above, they have to make eco-friendly houses more desirable than the current housing stock by some measure other than environmental footprint. If they can make an eco friendly house that is cheaper to run and maintain (e.g. low heating/electricity bills compared to the old stock), people will buy them, not because they are environmentalists, but because it makes financial sense to do so.
They haven't, I think around 150 years, but doesn't change the fact people like them. I am pretty sure they will be around for a long time to come. Battery Electric Vehicles have been around even longer than ICE vehicles, and despite their shortcomings, they are still around to this day as well.
Battery electric cars suffer from the same problem as eco-friendly housing does at the moment. They are worse than IC cars in every metric except environmental footprint. And even there, if you look at the combined environmental cycle, from the toxic batteries, to the larger energy input required to build them, to the shorter lifespan of the cars, the environmental credentials of BEVs is not much better (and could even be worse) than simple IC cars.
This can be seen in the fact that BEVs are only bought when subsidised by the government. In Europe electric car purchases have been driven by four things:
1) A lump sum grant from the government to subsidise the initial purchase cost
2) Free electricity charging for electric cars. The government here actually gives electricity away to electric car owners. This is a big deal, basically your fuel costs are 0, or near 0.
3) Exemption from registration/road taxes, and other costs burdened on other vehicles.
4) Privileged "electric car parking only" in the most desirable spots
The above makes electric cars attractive, not the cars themselves. It is a distortion of the market that lets them be sold, but those distortions cannot hold forever. Indeed in one of the Nordic countries, where BEVs as a share of total cars was the largest in the EU, the government started struggling to afford the subsidy, and felt the market penetration was enough to carry on without it. So they shut down the subsidy, and to their surprise electric car sales collapsed to almost nothing. People just were not interested in them when they cost as much as a normal car would.
Even Elon Musk weighed in and berated the government for cancelling the subsidy, but it does not bode well for your company if your business plan relies on government basically bribing people to buy your goods.
In the UK, there were the "free charging points" round my area, where you could park and charge for free for 2 hours, then at a heavily subsidised rate for longer. When the local council decided to scrap that perk, the electric car forums were livid. People were complaining how they bought electric cars for the "free fuel", and were thrown "under the bus" by the government, and how now the cars were more expensive to run than an ICE car. Many swore that they will go back to eco-diesels or other ICE cars, while conspiracies of "Big Oil" being behind the scrapping to make electric cars less desirable abounded. It all sounded a bit whiny and entitled, but it shows that for many people who bought electric vehicles, it wasn't due to environmentalism, but the financial benefits.
Fact is, anything that becomes popular because of subsidies will only be popular as long as the subsidies persist. Governments must be careful with subsidies, because they are harder to remove the longer they exist. Latin America found this out the hard way. Many leftist governments subsidised petrol and other fuel for so long, that now, when the governments are struggling for money, every attempt to cancel the subsidy is met with riots. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place, until they run out of money, collapse, and shit hits the fan.
I got to admit, I didn't think of that. However you are talking about the state of the art 50 or so years go. Pretty much every tractor now is properly muffled, and even the old tractors have had mufflers retrofitted. However "old farmers" is a very very small percentage of the population. Your original comment was about how our children will be denied the "pleasure" of hearing loss, as if it is a widespread and ongoing concern.
I don't know about you, but in my experience most children don't spend a lot of time around old unmuffled tractors. For the vast majority of people (children included), vehicle exhausts will never be loud enough to cause hearing loss. A far higher chance their hearing will be damaged by concerts or earphones.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday October 10 2018, @01:23PM
The point of government incentives for BEV is to give the technology a leg up so it can develop until it can stand on its own, not to support it forever. But when incentives are too abruptly ended, canceled more like, and a lot of people are left holding the bag, yeah, the conspiracy theorists could be right for once, that Big Oil is behind it. They certainly have motive and means, and plenty of opportunity with excuses showing up frequently.
The way I think of BEV is that the electric motor is ten times better than a combustion engine. It's more reliable and longer lasting, takes less maintenance, is more efficient, delivers more power in less space, is smoother at power delivery, is less costly to build, and is simpler, lighter, and quieter. None of that has anything to do directly with the environment, but fact is, it is also better for the environment. The problem is that the humble gas tank is, or was, twenty times better than a battery at energy storage. I'm sure you've heard of studies that show the cost and pollution of battery manufacturing and disposal can be so high that a BEV might actually be worse for the environment. So the ICE wins. There's been a lot of work on batteries and they have closed the gap, but still not enough to make the electric motor and battery combo the better deal. Maybe the Tesla model 3 can do it. There are other energy storage technologies that have been considered, such as, the flywheel, the fuel cell, and compressed air, and there's of course various hybrid systems, and direct energy harvesting via solar panels. Compressed air just isn't enough energy storage to do much, but the other two still have potential, and a new development could make them best again. Perhaps a combo flywheel and battery energy storage could make the electric car best, but we shy away from such complexity.
I have wondered why BEVs don't come with solar panels, and the answer is that they don't add much. I did some back of the envelope calculations and concluded they increase range by about 3% at best, if your do your driving during daylight hours of course. As for being an emergency means of recharging, they're so extremely slow it could actually be faster to walk than wait on them.
Anyway, I am no blindly propagandizing environmentalist, ready to leap on anything just because someone claimed it is greener, not with all the hype and misinformation out there. When I think BEV is good enough, I'm in. I think BEV is close, and if they ever become widely available, I may buy a Tesla model 3. Or, who knows, maybe another BEV will look good by then. For instance, there's this new Kia Niro model, which is a hybrid but there is an all electric version. There's the Chevy Bolt, some small Fords (Focus and Fiesta), the Hyundai Ioniq and Kona, and BMW has this i3, Mitsubishi has their i-MiEV, and of course big bad Toyota has their Prius.
Meantime, I rather enjoy bashing auto manufacturers with the fact that the 1960s Ford Anglia gets 40 mpg, and in all the years since, they've done very little to improve on that and today's best ICE cars are still around 40 mpg, with a few models in the 50s.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 09 2018, @11:21AM (4 children)
On that last point, why do we pull carbon out of the ground if it's not good? It's dishonest to speak of an action as good or bad without considering why the action happens. We're definitely not pulling carbon out of the ground because we want to warm the planet.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday October 09 2018, @12:57PM (3 children)
Cost benefit analysis shows that going forward, rising sea levels will cost us a lot more than the value of that energy we obtained. We have a lot of coastal infrastructure that will be rendered useless if it goes underwater. Over 1 billion people may have to pick up and move to higher ground, or drown. If the people already on higher ground won't or can't make room, then there will be war. Changes in rainfall patterns will cause crop failures and starvation. If there's anything that sets off war, it's desperation for food. That's what really set off the Arab Spring. It wasn't a sudden longing for democracy, as our media implies.
I couldn't say where that line was, perhaps some time in the 1990s is when the cost of the carbon became higher than the value we could obtain from it. Or maybe the line is much more recent, about 2015 when the costs of various alternatives became competitive. In the past decade, solar cells have improved tremendously, especially in cost.
Most certainly Big Oil knew trouble was coming, and made one of the all time evilest and stupidest decisions ever, to deny the problem existed and even spread propaganda to that end. We know there are business leaders who would choose such a course of action, who are greedy and short-sighted enough to send us all over a cliff a short while later in exchange for a little more profit now. If we do end up in a nuclear war over this, and anyone survives, that act will stain Capitalism forever.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 09 2018, @01:26PM (2 children)
No, it doesn't.
In decades or centuries by which time most of the present day value will be justified. Meanwhile the value of real estate and infrastructure further uphill will become more valuable. The real loss here is from that less valuable uphill land being repurposed as urban real estate plus the slight decline in present day value from land that would eventually be submerged or protected at great cost. Time value matters here. A building that would be destroyed by global warming a century or two from now has almost as much value as a building that wouldn't.
Or maybe you're just making shit up. I favor that interpretation.
Where's the evidence?
And yet, they're not bothering. You should think about that. They can afford billions a year of propaganda, if they were so inclined. But it's just not there.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday October 09 2018, @11:03PM (1 child)
I could cite all sorts of evidence, but there's no point, doubt you'd accept it no matter how good it is. I note that you didn't make any citations to back up any of your assertions either.
Instead, why don't you consider this? Early in my career I once worked for a major HVAC company, and attended an after hours meeting in which we had the privilege of hearing our glorious leader give a speech. And what he said was real disappointing and shocking. I was expecting a bit of cheerleading and propaganda, and there was some of that. But the important parts were something very different:
1. He whined that if he had sold the company and invested the proceeds in the stock market, he'd be a lot richer. We just weren't working hard enough to equal the stock market. We were falling down on him.
2. Then he got all paternalistic, and said that he stuck with us, and didn't sell the company so that we would all have jobs. Gee, what a swell guy, huh?
3. Next, he said he didn't believe in all this Global Warming talk.
4. But he went on to say that if Global Warming was true, then good! Because then the company would get to sell more air conditioners.
Don't think that was atypical. Those are the kinds of short sighted morons we have running our large companies. No employee dared to stand up and talk back to any of that. For the most part though, they didn't feel particularly insulted, they were indifferent, wary, and bored. It was like most everyone regarded the leader as sort of a clownish mascot with no real power, a mouthpiece and not a very good one at that, though of course he did have all the powers of ownership, and certainly could have fired anyone he wished on the spot, for any or no reason at all. But it was of course impossible for him to exercise such powers in a constructive way without lots more knowledge than it would be reasonable to expect anyone to have. You might wonder why such a mediocre person was running a major company, and the answer is very pedestrian, ordinary, and pathetic. His grandpa or great grandpa (I forget which) bought the company almost a century before, and he was the grandson who ended up, with the consent of his relatives, inheriting control. That's all. I have often wondered how the heck the company managed to prosper with management like that, and there too the answer is sad: the competition is also rather pathetic. What would have happened if the Japanese had entered the HVAC market, like they did the automotive market? Probably would have forced the company to cut a lot of the crap and get a lot better, or die.
With a leader like that, what sorts of company moves do you suppose are likely? Why not cause even more Global Warming, at the least egg it on, because the leader thinks it'll be good for the company's business? I can't speak from personal experience with Big Oil's upper management, but there's no reason to suppose those Captains of Industry behave much differently. The culture of upper management in American companies, particularly in large established businesses, is fairly uniform.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 10 2018, @07:09AM
Currently, it's nonexistent. I think I won't accept that.
Global warming doesn't have to be true in order for it to sell more AC.
While it's off topic I do have ideas on how to improve that. It would involve a lot of "sucks to be you".
Again, where is this denialist propaganda? Why aren't we inundated with it? It's tiresome to have people repeatedly speak of imaginary moves by Big Oil. I think there's a simple answer. They're among the many businesses that profit from the current state of affairs, probably due to a combination of public funding and barrier to entry.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 10 2018, @02:02PM
You are conflating two different definitions of "natural". Man-made stuff is thus natural by one definition and unnatural by the second, the latter definition which is what is being used here.
Nor even if we accept man-made climate change as natural does it change anything. The point is not that man-made should be restricted because it is unnatural, but rather that such activities have consequences, good and bad, which can justify regulation.
My view is that contrary to assertions by the IPCC and related parties, there is little justification for the proposed heavy regulation and capping of CO2 emissions. But I grant that I could be wrong and this regulation could turn out to be necessary and important.
Second, I agree with your point about that generation of energy efficient housing that made for poor housing. The problem here is that when you optimize for one thing, you get this sort of defective outcome where other important factors, by being ignored and neglected, make the final production something to be shunned. We have to remember that we don't burn fossil fuels because we want to harm ourselves. They serve important purposes which are being ignored by the 1.5 C at any cost people.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @04:22PM (1 child)
Think for yourself bub, khallow has no real argument here, just a bunch of typical whinging.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 09 2018, @11:51AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @02:19AM (1 child)
It never amazes me how some people so easily dismiss climate scientist for their greed for a few $10K, but the fossil fuel industries' billions in profits are beyond reproach.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 09 2018, @09:32AM
Billions in profits means you're much more expensive to buy. One should wonder why the fossil fuel industry is so quiet on the matter.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @03:48PM (3 children)
Strange, my local news agency was able to get a bunch of numbers from the report (which I didn't read). With a table 1.5°C vs 2°C.
They are indeed not talking about adapting to a 0°C change, which shouldn't surprise you.
That they leave out 2°C is because they are already saying that 2°C is very bad and should be avoided "at all costs", so obviously >2°C should also be avoided "at all cost".
That leaves 1.5°C, from what I read in the local paper, the IPCC thinks that we may be able to limit it to 1.5°C but that limiting it much under 1.5°C is already completely unrealistic.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 09 2018, @01:37AM (2 children)
The problem here is that climate sensitivity has a huge range due to great uncertainty (and maybe a substantial amount of exaggeration by the IPCC). The strategy above would already be obsolete if, for example, the long term global warming from an increase of CO2 is 4.5 C per doubling. At present level of CO2, we would already be in the long term over 2 C warmer than preindustrial levels and it would thus make no sense to prepare for adaptation efforts that would only adapt to an increase of 1.5 C.
The IPCC supposedly is willing to err on the side of caution to the point of completely slamming on the brakes of the fossil fuel infrastructure that made the modern world. But they aren't willing to seriously discuss adaptation - even though by their own arguments and models there is a significant chance that we will have to adapt to 2+ C warming. We should wonder why the IPCC is so enthusiastically embracing this narrow strategy. I think it's because the mitigation spending is already driving corruption and conflict of interest. Adaptation means less public funding for mitigation measures. It may also mean that we choose to adapt to much higher levels of warming than merely 2 C.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @04:41AM (1 child)
Calculate "climate sensitivity" for yourself one day from the data the same the people publishing papers do. Its the exact same number as the standard error on a linear regression between "forcings" and "temperature".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 09 2018, @09:04AM
When I do, I get roughly 2 C per doubling (basically just short term warming plus a modest amount). That incidentally gives us over half a century to reach a CO2 level that would correspond to a 2 C increase in temperature and several centuries to reach a 4 C increase.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Monday October 08 2018, @09:36PM
The best part for the IPCC is that we won't be able to prove them wrong afterwards, if we follow their advice.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @11:59AM (2 children)
We know who will benefit from huge investment in renewables: it will be jewish bankers swindling yet more money from their victims in the name of renewables, holocaust etc and middle-men who want a piece of the windfall.
Look at how most of the money is stolen in natural disasters. Money is donated by good people to help the victims and the khazar jew and his friends take most of it. The criminal jews cause disasters using advanced weather-modifying weapons and then take people's money meant for helping their victims.
Open your eyes and be careful with the khazar filth. We know you want to help the environment and reverse (some) bad effects of climate change, but keep an eye on who is causing all this and who benefited from it. Do not give money to jewish rats either through business or aid.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 08 2018, @12:19PM (1 child)
Any technical details on these weapons? In particular, what's their power output? Seems to me that if you want hurricanes on demand, you need something that can generate power output at least within a few orders of magnitude of a hurricane (which let us note releases 200 times [noaa.gov] the total human consumption of energy at peak).
And googling for "khazar jew" releases yet a new variant of crazy. Now that Muslims are another out group, it was only a matter of time till someone neatly tied all the out groups into one blob.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @03:52PM
Their output is measured in "clouds". That's why "the cloud" was turned into a marketing term several years ago. It was all premeditated.
There's no way to use a search engine looking for "cloud" without getting buried in millions of results for cloud-based services. It was ingenious and it worked like a charm.
Good luck finding the truth you seek. Perhaps one day you will be lying in a field and see the answer in a cloud.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by agr on Monday October 08 2018, @12:03PM (14 children)
There is no longer any excuse for countries like Japan and Germany shutting down their nuclear power plants while still burning fossil fuel for power or transportation. Keeping nukes running or restarting them is a far more achievable way to cut CO2 in the next decade than deploying new carbon capture technology that has yet to be proven anywhere.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by G-forze on Monday October 08 2018, @12:11PM (8 children)
This. The only thing that could make even a dent in fossile fuel usage is a huge expansion of nuclear power. Money spent on development of small modular reactors in general and thorium reactors in particular, as well as continued research into fusion is the only way that money is not completely wasted.
If it weren't for all the fear mongering from the likes of Greenpeace, we could already have affordable, cheap and safe energy for everyone. Instead, we've had things like complete bans on even researching nuclear power since the eighties.
If I run into the term "SJW", I stop reading.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Gaaark on Monday October 08 2018, @01:03PM (7 children)
"If it weren't for all the fear mongering from the likes of Greenpeace,"
I see it as "If it weren't for all the fear mongering from the likes of organized religion": what could the likes of Galileo have done if there was no religious persecution back in the day? How much more advanced would we be today?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday October 08 2018, @02:32PM (5 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday October 08 2018, @04:06PM (1 child)
Oh man, 'Canticle' is my favourite book! :)
But how many of those wars were fought for religious reasons?
All?
Just saying.
Mrs. Grales says "Hi." :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday October 09 2018, @01:20AM
In the 16th and 17th century almost all of the wars were fought for religious reasons, unless Catholic France was fighting Catholic Spain.
Fun fact: The 30 years war (1618 - 1638) killed something like 25% of the German population, and as many as half of all German men in some places.
Yeah, OK it's not that much fun.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday October 08 2018, @06:42PM (2 children)
I'm not convinced that tweaking the clock and getting to tech earlier would result in a different outcome. The XXVII-century man is quite capable of understanding the concept of leveling entire cities.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday October 08 2018, @08:50PM (1 child)
Anyway, the point was more that mankind in general seems to inherently favour short term individual benefit over the longer term greater good, so bringing the Renaissance, industrial age and, quite likely, the nuclear age forwards, regardless of the exact sequence of events, would likely just result in starting to pollute the planet sooner. Likewise, once nukes get developed they'd get used at least once or twice (as we did) before any kind of WMD treaty could be produced, and once the genie is out of the bottle it isn't going back in, so a longer period of opportunity for a mistake to happen, some hothead with their back against the wall to push the button, or dirty bombs to get used by a terrorist group.
So yes, same shit, different day, and that day would probably have just come a good deal sooner that it did for us.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 09 2018, @09:24AM
Which is almost a negligible risk. After all, they don't actually do that much and take enormous effort to prepare anything more effective than regular explosives.
Especially when the greater good just isn't that good. That excuse has been used for millennia to favor short term individual benefit. I believe much of the climate change argument is of that flavor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @04:50AM
Kind of like the persecution of folks who cast aspersions on the quality of the data provided by the advocates of human caused climate change. https://realclimatescience.com/2018/01/uncontrollable-increases-in-stupidity/ [realclimatescience.com]
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/12/13/cru-temperature-record-is-complete-garbage/ [wordpress.com] I have no doubt that the climate is changing, it has since the Earth was formed, it's the idiots who think it should be the same all the time that are the problem.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @12:40PM (1 child)
And the utter lack of opposition to that on the part of "climate defenders" clearly displays how much they really believe their own doom predictions: NOT AT ALL.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @04:34PM
However even after conceding that nuclear is a lesser evil than climate change you still hit a brick wall. The same brick wall that held back wind and solar until very very recently: it costs too much.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Shire on Monday October 08 2018, @01:18PM (2 children)
Pilot programs for Gen IV reactors like the pebble bed and LFTR have been running for years. If the IPCC wants to spend trillions then a massive push towards these inherently safe nuclear reactors is absolutely the way to go. Safe, inexhaustible, reliable, and CO2 free power is just sitting there waiting for someone to implement it. And we don't even have to mine the fuel, we already have massive stockpiles of both uranium and thorium. Even the tree huggers should be encouraging such a shift, but instead they all point to failures like Chernobyl and Fukishima that were entirely due to the fact that those reactors were based on 1960's designs. Neither of those accidents would be at all possible with current designs. Hell, the current designs are even capable of burning existing nuclear waste. Why aren't we pushing hard for that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @01:31PM
Because it is mainly pushed to back a scam to sell people "carbon credits" and buy their coastal property for cheaper?
But looks like its dying out to me... I mean at this point everyone sane has at least started to question by default anything the MSM repeats over and over, regardless of what it is or if it makes sense.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Monday October 08 2018, @09:59PM
Yeah, Fukishima was terrible. Forget the 12,143 people that died in the tsunami, and another 5000+ that died in the earthquake, and the thousands that died in makeshift shelters post the earthquake.
1 person (one) died in the 50 year old nuclear plant which failed, lets concentrate on that.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @01:14PM
Has there ever been a UN report on anything that didnt end up conclusing the UN needs more money?
Meanwhile real solutions (in the sense that people would adopt them regardless of anthropogenic climate change) to the supposed problem like using geopolymer instead of portland cement remain largely ignored.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @01:16PM
Bucky Fuller famously coined the term Spaceship Earth. And noted that it didn't come with an operating manual. He wrote this which is a good introduction to big system thinking, https://www.organism.earth/library/document/66 [www.organism.earth] Looks to me like this latest IPCC report would make a good appendix, or in Fuller's words, a course correction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @04:17PM (2 children)
What is going to happen if another 50 year maunder minimum hits like it looks like may have just begun? Are there any predictions by the IPCC regarding this scenario?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday October 08 2018, @06:27PM (1 child)
What is going to happen if another 50 year maunder minimum hits like it looks like may have just begun? Are there any predictions by the IPCC regarding this scenario?
The same thing that happened last time: the globe will continue to warm unabated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @07:02PM
What do you mean by "last time"?
And warming vs not warming is a coin flip to someone who doesn't know much at all, they may as well be doing psychology research if that's all they can predict. So does unabated mean at the same rate you get if you fit a line to the last x = ? years?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @09:25PM (3 children)
That's the only way you're going to stop global warming.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @09:54PM (2 children)
I'm curious: why wouldn't "sterilize all humans" stop global warming?
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Monday October 08 2018, @10:20PM
Because the climate is constantly changing, humans may influence the speed at which it happens, or the direction it temporarily tends towards, but the earth is a dynamic and chaotic system, and it never stays fixed in place.
Humans have an obsession with "fixing" things so they don't change. Hence so much is put on "tradition", and the longer something is around, the more it is protected (e.g. religion). Some kind of order and continuity is needed for the human mind to be happy.
when it comes to social order, and even the local environment, humans can keep it more or less static. However when faced with huge, powerful chaotic systems, that we can't seem to control no matter how much we try, some people get all flustered about it, and keep trying fruitlessly to prevent change rather than embrace it.
If humans were all sterilised at once, within one generation we would be extinct, and the earths climate will continue to change, other life will adapt to the new conditions, perhaps some new intelligent species will evolve, form societies, and eventually become so dominant and secure that they can spend their time arguing about how to stop climate change, and then the cycle will repeat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @10:46PM
You raise a good point. OP forgot Mexicans.