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We've Already Built too Many Power Plants and Cars to Prevent 1.5 °C of Warming:
In a [...] paper published in Nature today[*], researchers found we're now likely to sail well past 1.5 ˚C of warming, the aspirational limit set by the Paris climate accords, even if we don't build a single additional power plant, factory, vehicle, or home appliance. Moreover, if these components of the existing energy system operate for as long as they have historically, and we build all the new power facilities already planned, they'll emit about two thirds of the carbon dioxide necessary to crank up global temperatures by 2 ˚C.
If fractions of a degree don't sound that dramatic, consider that 1.5 ˚C of warming could already be enough to expose 14% of the global population to bouts of severe heat, melt nearly 2 million square miles (5 million square kilometers) of Arctic permafrost, and destroy more than 70% of the world's coral reefs. The hop from there to 2 ˚C may subject nearly three times as many people to heat waves, thaw nearly 40% more permafrost, and all but wipe out coral reefs, among other devastating effects, research finds.
The basic conclusion here is, in some ways, striking. We've already built a system that will propel the planet into the dangerous terrain that scientists have warned for decades we must avoid. This means that building lots of renewables and adding lots of green jobs, the focus of much of the policy debate over climate, isn't going to get the job done.
We now have to ask a much harder societal question: How do we begin forcing major and expensive portions of existing energy infrastructure to shut down years, if not decades, before the end of its useful economic life?
Power plants can cost billions of dollars and operate for half a century. Yet the study notes that the average age of coal plants in China and India—two of the major drivers of the increase in "committed emissions" since the earlier paper—is about 11 and 12 years, respectively.
[*] Monday.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday July 03 2019, @03:05PM (9 children)
OK, so how long before someone starts putting serious thought and money into more drastic counters to AGW? I'm talking giant orbital sunshades to lessen the amount of solar radiation we receive, massive projects to artificially increase the Earth's albedo etc.
Obviously these projects are only any good if they are used AS WELL AS rather than INSTEAD OF managing our CO2 output, but it seems to me that this is the only way to get through the century without major ecological and societal collapses.
And if it works... well, just maybe the human race will have the tools and organisation to manage the Earth's climate and keep it at a human-optimal level indefinitely.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by choose another one on Wednesday July 03 2019, @03:17PM (3 children)
Question: state the difference between "giant orbital sunshades to lessen the amount of solar radiation" and "giant space weapon to put non compliant populations in darkness"
Answer: none. Need to think carefully if we really want to go there...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 03 2019, @03:25PM
That giant orbital sunshade needs to have a slightly concave mirror surface on one side to do the ant under a magnifying glass trick to non compliant
auntsants.If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday July 03 2019, @03:33PM
Fair point, but if I was feeling troublesome I could ask:
State the difference between "pumping billions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere in order to satisfy the 1st world's addiction to happy meals and shit" and "pumping billions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere in order to dislocate, drown and starve billions of poor people all over the world." The difference already seems pretty academic to a large part of the Earth's population.
Besides, anyone with the resources to put a giant sunshade in orbit over an entire population also has the resources to drop an ICBM on them. This doesn't really add any new threat.
Anyway, I imagined the sunshades would be only partly opaque. You'd want a design with regular holes in it, like a sieve, to reflect only some of the light and allow the rest through. Think "screen door" rather than "parasol". That would mean you'd still get sunlight in its shadow, it just wouldn't be as bright. Good designs would let you open / close some or all of the holes at will to modify the amount of shade.
With luck and some proper changes down on Earth you'd only need it up there for a decade or so to build the ice caps back up a bit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @06:23PM
Try again...
Answer: Casting a large shadow to the ground is very hard. Reducing light input is relatively easy. Is it easier to put a 1-square-mile parachute in orbit (which would impact... how much land mass?), or 1000 10,000-square-yard parachutes in orbit?
Light diffuses (try holding a pin against a window, and see if you can see the shadow on the ground), and from the ground, those smaller parachutes wouldn't be visible besides a slight dimming of the sun. That could have a long term impact on things like agriculture, but couldn't easily be weaponized.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 03 2019, @03:49PM
The excess carbon came from the ground. Putting it back in the ground would help tremendously.
The easiest way to accomplish that is let plants do the job. Plants are fantastic at taking CO2 out of the air. But we would have to help things along. Collect the plant material and bury it before decomposition releases all that carbon back into the atmosphere. Some of it could be dumped into wetlands that are suffering from erosion.
Yeah, it's probably too late, not enough time left for that to make a big enough change fast enough. We will need more, but what more? Or, we'll have to face the music. I keep hearing that climate models have been continually biased towards conservative estimates, so as not to further upset the denialists. So in all likelihood, things will be worse than we've been led to expect.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 03 2019, @05:01PM (3 children)
At least on the "thought" side, about 11 months ago: This is a proposal to reduce sunlight hitting the Earth by mimicing volcanic eruptions [nature.com].
I for one find it telling that there are a lot of people for whom "blot out the sun" is seen as less drastic than "substantially reduce CO2 emissions". Of course, there are also still a lot of folks out there that are busy trying to pretend that either
1. Some new technology will appear out of nowhere (even though nobody's found anything and lots of people have tried) to provide us with all the energy we need without causing further CO2 problems, and everybody will somehow immediately switch to using it, or
2. Having every current coastal city in the world underwater, about half of all arable land becoming desert, most pollenators going extinct, increasing hurricanes and other storms, increasing wildfires, etc etc won't cause any major problems. You know, about 50% of the earth's population losing their homes and/or being unable to eat, no biggie.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday July 04 2019, @08:17AM (1 child)
> I for one find it telling that there are a lot of people for whom "blot out the sun" is seen as less drastic than "substantially reduce CO2 emissions".
First, I specifically said we should do this IN ADDITION to reducing CO2 emissions. But to address your point:
It's not that this is seen as "less drastic" than CO2 reduction, this is altogether MORE drastic. But drastic times call for drastic measures, and in the end this is just more pragmatic. Face it, we've been trying to get people to reduce CO2 for nigh on forty years, and STILL hardly anyone is listening. Then, as soon as a generation that almost seems to give a shit actually gets the reins of power and starts signing treaties and taking (modest) action, up pops some twatcumber like Trump to roll back everything that has been fought for. It's almost as if there were some huge, shadowy, massively rich and powerful cabal pulling the strings of power, with a vested interest in continuing to burn carbon. But that's just crazy talk, right?
Also, even if we about-turned right now and made improbably huge gains in CO2 reduction, we are still on an unavoidable course to at least 1.5, if not 2 degrees or more of warming. No amount of CO2 reduction can stop that now. But maybe 10 years of artificial winter over the poles to restore some ice and increase albedo would help. OK, Sucks to be a polar bear, but it seems they are pretty much fucked anyway.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday July 04 2019, @01:43PM
It's not that "hardly anybody is listening", exactly.
The Europeans are listening, in a big way, and have cut their carbon emissions by about 20% and are continuing measures to reduce that number even further.
The USA is listening enough that their carbon emissions haven't been increasing for the last 20 years, which is in fact an accomplishment given capitalism's drive for infinite growth curves.
The problem is that the Chinese and Indians have decided to aggressively burn as much coal as they can until somebody makes them stop.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 05 2019, @10:26AM
For example, it can mean the difference between an Earth with a human population that isn't exponentially growing due to widespread poverty and one that repeatedly experiences die-offs due to the "substantially reduce CO2 emissions" constraints. But more likely, they're proposing these solutions because deliberate "substantially reduce CO2 emissions" strategies have lost their credibility. There is a remarkable amount of dysfunction associated with climate change mitigation projects like doubling electricity costs in Germany. That this gets ignored, or worse treated as a virtue, would get a lot of people seeking alternatives that aren't quite so insane, like blotting out the Sun.