2024 will certainly be the hottest year on record. We're shooting past 1.5c ahead of schedule

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122998210#Comment_122998210

Holocene denial?

ednwireland

we locked down half the planet a few years ago it barely nudged the Emissions. global air traffic accounts for 2.5% of co2 emissions.

the "easy" solutions out there don't look like it to me.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123001228#Comment_123001228

You need to stop living in the past and familarize yourself with current prices.

Offshore wind costs have gone through the roof in the last 2 years. The current U.K. cfd price for offshore is €100 per MWh. Under our proposed offshore plan of 50% generation for consumers and 50% for hydrogen the strike price to the consumer, (even before the hydrogen strike price is added and even if we do get the same as the U.K for ORESS 2 of €100 per MWh which is highly unlikely), is going to be 25% more expensive than that nuclear bogey man greenies like to wave around, Hinkley C. With the strike price for hydrogen added then you are looking at ~ 50% higher.

That for a "2050 plan" that will not come close to providing our 2050 projected needs where on top of everything else we are guaranteeing these offshore providers we will take all they generate even if we do not need or want it. It`s financial economic suicide.

monseiur

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123000787#Comment_123000787

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123000767#Comment_123000767

Greenpeace have come and gone so has CND - the green party is gradually being consigned to the history bin not just here but across Europe. They are all a passing fad, no doubt in the coming years we'll see more of the same. The undeniable truth is that climate is forever changing and has been since the dawn of time by it's very nature it can never stand still. A quick glance at the world's history over the last say 800 years shows that we always had prophets of doom, our current crop are are convinced that climate change will be the end of us……and like the prophets of old, they have their followers. No doubt future students of history will have a good laugh at them.

The unvarnished truth is that planet earth is in existence for millions and millions of years, has been thru extremes of temperatures and periods of moderate temperatures in between and will no doubt continue for may millions of years in the future. The emissions caused by Homo sapiens in the past, now or in the future will have zero effect. Planet earth and it's ever changing climate will go on and on, sadly our stay is much too short.

NIMAN

I have no doubt planet Earth will survive. The big question is how many humans will be still around in several hundred or thousand years .

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123001291#Comment_123001291

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123001291#Comment_123001291

A lot less energy needed to produce/install them than they generate.

Wind turbines last decades, between 20 and 30 years on average

The oldest currently operating offshore wind turbine was built in the 1970s in Denmark.

When they reach end of life, they get decommissioned.

Question for you now. Do you ask these same questions about any other power generation technologies?

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123001519#Comment_123001519

The price of everything went through the roof in the past few years. You cant compare the current strike price for renewables with the strike price for hinkley c that was agreed in 2012. Adjusted for inflation, that price is now at least 130 euros per MWH, so offshore wind is still cheaper, and Hinkley C will likely not even turn a profit and will require massive state subsidies if it ever even finishes construction. (Been delayed again until at least 2030)

But you already know this

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123001944#Comment_123001944

The planet will be fine. The only reason we care about this particular planet is because its our habitat. Humans haven't existed for 'millions of years' we've existed under a very narrow range of temperature and could only flourish when the climate was stable.

We cant stop natural climate change, but we can control human drivers of climate change and this is the only thing that this thread is about

TokTik

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123003285#Comment_123003285

1. Massive amounts of energy is expelled building and constructing them. Tonnes of carbon heavy concrete for each one. Huge amounts of oil are also needed to build and maintain them.
   
2. They last on average 25 years, you are correct here.
   
3. Expand on “decommissioned”? They aren’t recyclable. They are generally thrown into landfill and covered in soil. How sustainable is that??

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123003383#Comment_123003383

It takes energy to make anything. The word 'massive' is meaningless unless you compare it to something else.

Do wind turbines save more energy and C02 over their lifetime than they cost to produce? Yes, by many orders of magnitude. The energy cost is re-payed in less than 8 months and the C02 is re-payed in less than 2 months.

And as we transition further away from relying on fossil fuels, these numbers continue to reduce

snotboogie

Ai will either solve this or screw us over before the main impacts are felt. Amazing that nobody is paying attention that the O3 model solved the ARC AGI challenge this month, something that was inconceivable 6 moths ago. A few days ago, famous AGI sceptic and one of the fathers of modern AI systems; Yann LeCunn, said that AGI is possible within 6 years, 6 months ago he was talking in decades. Logan Kilpatrick, an AI research lead at Google tweeted last night that a straight shot to Articifical Super Intelligence is looking more and more likely. Open AI and Anthropic are saying the same thing.

Akrasia

And decommissioning happens to all infrastructure that ends its useful life. The site gets repurposed, the materials get recycled or landfilled.

There are no toxic slag heaps like there are with coal or oil power stations, no run off water discharges that poisoned rivers, no strip mines like with turf or coal... No million square mile oil slicks, no methane flaring like with gas and oil, no earthquakes or ground water contamination like with fracking.... All of the above, just to get the fuel not even including construction or decommissioning of the plant and machinery

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123003442#Comment_123003442

AI wont solve climate change. We already know what we need to do.

smokie72

I'm old enough to remember as far back as the mid 1970's. To me our climate here in Ireland has definitely changed. It has gotten warmer. Up to the mid 80's it was common to have at least some days with lying snow most winters. Also we had more frost. And I mean severe frosts on a late autumn and winter's morning. Waking up and the garden would be white from it. In recent winters we don't get much frost, if at all. Grass does still be growing all through the winter. Nowadays we seem to be locked into weather patterns for weeks/months on end.

In Dublin I can't remember any winter with significant lying snow for more than a day between 1991 and 2009. I remember reading an article around 2007 saying some children in Ireland haven't seen much snow in their lives yet.

Read an article on the BBC recently about warming in Antarctica. Ice is melting and grass is growing there…

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241223-mushy-ice-and-lost-kit-the-scientists-studying-antarctica-as-it-melts

My garden is already in Spring mode and it's the last day of December! My Daffodils are starting to bloom. Our winters without hardly any snow are grey and dull. Spring tends to get any snow or frost now but with the sun higher in the sky it melts fairly quickly.

Our Summers are a bit of a lottery. If we get locked into a good weather pattern during the summer months then it be warm and dry(2013,2018, April May 2020, 2021 and 2022). Otherwise it is going to cool and damp. There is not much difference between the coldest summers day and the warmest winter day now. Apart from the length of day of course. I have met people who come here during our summer to escape the heat on the continent. I wouldn't go near Southern Spain in the summer. Guaranteed 40+ degrees in July and August to me is crazy. Even the locals don't like it. Why go when you be spending most days in doors in air conditioned rooms?

All that fresh water melting from the polar regions in to the Atlantic Ocean could affect the AMOC in the next 100 years. If that happens, how will that affect us?

While the planet has warmed up and cooled down in the past, that was over a period of thousands of years. We are only talking about the last 200 years. Since the Industrial revolution.

To me, over time the evidence is getting stronger and stronger that climate change is happening now.

snotboogie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123003452#Comment_123003452

But we practically cannot coordinate those efforts in a fractured competitive global environment. Advanced technology is the only way this is getting addressed. Brow beating individuals is a waste of time. By all means protest for more government action and be the change you want to see in the world but neither will have any effect.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123003319#Comment_123003319

You need to get out more if you believe that the cost of anything else other than offshore wind farms rose by the same level in the past two years.

Actually you can easily compare the U.K. Contract for Difference (CfD) prices for nuclear and offshore wind as they are both given in 2012 prices by calculating how much inflation increased the Hinkley C price and compare it to the U.K. price for offshore wind today.

The U.K. price today for offshore is €100 per MWh. We are awaiting a strike price for offshore wind from ORESS 2 where it is highly unlikely we will get anywhere like that price, but lets just say we did.

With our 2050 "plan" the generation from 37 GW offshore is to be split 50/50 between consumfroer supply and hydrogen production. That effectively means that the consumer will be paying for 100% of the generation, and to add insult to injury from Eamon Ryan`s guarantee, all these offshore companies can generate even if we do need need or want it. That means a strike price for the consumer for electricity of €200 per MWh.

At today`s prices Hinkley C, the most expensive nuclear plant greens can find is €156.77 per MWh. 25% cheaper than our strike price will be even if we get the unlikely rate as the U.K. for offshore wind. But the consumer, or indeed the Irish economy, isn`t off the hook at 25% more expensive electricity due to the strike price for generaton. The strike price for hydrogen ( presently @ €1610 per tonne U.K. CfD) will be added on top which will leave our total strike price at least 50% more expensive than Hinkley.

Greens are experts at knowing the cost of everything related to nuclear, but somehow when asked cannot give the cost of what they themselves favour, so I have no idea why tou would believe Hinkley would remain needing these "massive state subsidies". Off the top five net electricity exporters in 2023, four were countries that use nuclear generation, with France alone seeing a net profit of over €1 Billion, which is projected to double next year. The oddone out was Norway, but that was not due to their wind generation. It was due to them being uniquely blessed with hydropower generation.

j62

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123003532#Comment_123003532

Anecdotal evidence

In reality Ireland got colder

https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/every-country-in-the-world-was-warmer-in-the-2010s-than-in-the-1940s-except-ireland

Pa ElGrande

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123003452#Comment_123003452

We already know what we need to do.

While I may agree with you on the usefulness of AI regarding the subject matter. The second part of the claim is bogus.
Who is "We"?, how do "we" know what "we" need to do?

It appears to me you are referring to the royal we, promoting the consumption of goods that ease anxiety caused by manufactured hysteria masquerading as science. Climate change™ is nothing more than a wealth transfer scheme, whereby a green marketing label is assigned to specific products, the profits accrue to those promoting the schemes.

What makes a product green? The emissions in the manufacture and operation of the product are out of sight and out of mind of the end consumers. Here is reality, more coal, oil and natural gas is consumed since recorded history began.

The only green that matters in climate change:

• New Initiative to Help Unlock $3 Trillion Needed a Year for Climate and Nature | World Economic Forum
• One trillion dollars needed annually to help developing countries prevent climate breakdown
• From Billions to Trillions: Setting a New Goal on Climate Finance | UNFCCC
• The Untapped Trillions of Climate Finance
• World Bank Group and IMF Joint Effort to Scale Up Climate Action
• Up to $41 billion in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds | Oxfam International

Trillions ought to be enough to maintain the gulfstream environmentalists in the lifestyle they have become accustomed to.

Strumms

China is way ahead of anyone else in terms of its economic activity and fossil fuel consumption that are both seriously damaging the planet. They operate many coal fired power plants as well as all the more usual catalysts of co2. As of July this year, China had 1,161 operational coal fired power plants, which is more than four times the number of India, the second-highest country…. Which is another shîtshow in terms of co2 emissions.

Amazing how western countries want to beat themselves up and generally guilt trip themselves / ourselves whilst ignoring what’s going on elsewhere. Never heard that smarm merchant Varadkar criticising China or India regarding their abysmal record on this…instead when Varadkar welcomed Li Qiang to Farmleigh earlier this year, no serious mention of their climate issues at all in his long winded waffling press release. Just a general nod to general climate issues. Ducked it, big time….

Jack Daw

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123003452#Comment_123003452

Yes. Mass execution of 80% of the world population is really what we need to do but I don't think most people would be up for it.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123004963#Comment_123004963

Funny how PA thinks fossil fuel companies are funding climate denial just because they think they're swell guys

"Follow the money" (no, not that massive pile of money, the much smaller pile of money over there)

Pa ElGrande

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123005206#Comment_123005206

Oil and gas industry (extraction, processing, distribution) is worth ~$2.1 trillion globally per year. Last figures I saw a few years ago had the climate change industry at over $3.5 trillion per year. Search is broken on boards, I can't find the link quickly. Reality is organic compounds have a wide range of applications in our daily lives, oil and gas are highly taxed due to the increase in productivity they enable, states that make their energy too expensive are gradually realising the economic law of diminishing returns as industry shuts down while there are no "green jobs" to replace them.

On a tangent, those of you signing up for gym memberships this year, for every 10 kg of fat (triglyceride) you lose, 8.4 kg must be exhaled as CO2. This implies, those of us who put on weight over Christmas are carbon sinks, we are saving the planet, while people who go to the gym are "destroying" the planet. :)

The future’s uncertain and the end is always near, regarding the original premise of this thread, "warmest year 'eva" headlines from the UN WMO are an annual feature of climate press release circuit, fittingly the climate activist projections have the same level of skill as Nostradamus, coincidentally a regular headline generator at this time of year.

Unusually the local climate quango here in Ireland have been engaged in a coordinated public relations campaign this year, they know the only political opposition to climate change™ comes from independent TDs, this is a naked interference on behalf of vested interest groups to ensure the taxpayer money keeps flowing.

Mr. teddywinkles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122998063#Comment_122998063

Same could be said of people making vast sums of money off the green movement too.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123006010#Comment_123006010

There is an opportunity to make a lot of money in the green transition. This doesn't mean the science is wrong, its just a feature of the global economic system that every technology shift brings economic opportunities.

The Fossil fuel industry have enormous amounts of money to lose in this, so its extremely unsurprising that they're spending so many resources trying to block the movement towards renewable energy

thereiver

Of course all those ai datacentres need vast amount of power with trump and his crypto bros in power no one in the us government gives a damn about green power incentives .

the climate change conferance was a joke with 500 delegates from the oil companys .

i think 2024 will be remembered as the year we gave up on stopping or even slowing down climate change.

AI may be useful for some things like medical research but its water and energy

use will destroy the planet while putting 100,000 people out of work.

bnt

Of course the rich don't care: they think they can ride it out. There are people in to Accelerationism, who believe that things have gotten so bad, they should not only let human society fail, they should work to make it happen even sooner. Anyone who's read Atlas Shrugged (or the Cliff Notes) will understand the general idea: the world's "movers" go on "strike", withdraw their assets and expertise from the world, and retreat to a stronghold in the Rockies from where they can watch the world burn.

Sure enough, the Rockies are indeed being colonised by billionaires, while Mark Zuckerberg is building his bunker in Hawaii, and Elon Musk is hoping to escape to Mars. It may sound like I'm exaggerating, but there really are people who look at the climate and other crises and think "the way out is through, see all y'all who are left on the other side".

thereiver

Maybe the rich can build mansions in Norway or Sweden but or ordinary people won't have that choice there's red flags about climate change every month. America is have more extreme wildfires that take longer to stop and cause more damage to buildings in Florida some people are spending as much on fire flood insurance as they are on paying the mortgage coffee and other goods are rising in price due to floods and storms or drought reducing crop yields in 3rd world countrys .

In some parts of the states it's hard to work outside due to extreme heat in the summer

The next generation gen alpha will have to face extreme weather people like Donald trump will be gone before it really gets bad .

Thats the system we have all politicians don't think more than 5 years ahead .

We have to think in 5 to 10 year spans to slow down climate change

Pa ElGrande

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123007461#Comment_123007461

Congratulations, your Verified for Climate badge is in the post, Don't forget to add global boiling to better support the catastrophic anthropocentric global warming narrative or is it cooling, there are so many claims I can't keep track anymore, either way it's the future, you can say what you like, no one is going to hold you accountable in 10 years time, all the same give us the money now . . .

At the other end of the scale, by way of contrast, the [UK] Met's principle research scientist John Mitchell told us:"People underestimate the power of models. Observational evidence is not very useful," adding, "Our approach is not entirely empirical." source

“The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”  source – IPCC TAR WG1, Working Group I: The Scientific Basis

Whenever you dig into media clickbait headlines and claims about climate and tipping points, they will often point to activist organisations making claims on the basis of some rehashed paper by "climate scientists", when you look at the paper you will inevitably find they are using computer model outputs that serve the narrative AND gets them funding, along with weasel words to support doom-casting, like "threatened", "this suggests", "might happen", "has the potential to" and "could lead to" and the like, this can be labelled tactical science.

Publications — often targeted for the peer reviewed literature — designed and constructed to serve extra-scientific ends, typically efforts to shape public opinion, influence politics, or serve legal action. source

When it comes to the topic of Climate Change™, You should know there are a lot of pretend science, sciencey papers with predetermined findings, propaganda disguised as science, political maneuvering and not science at all – papers that look like science but are actually intended to fulfill other purposes than those of real science.

I'm going to highlight Dr. Fredeike Otto as an example of tactical science. Her post in Imperial college London is funded by The Grantham foundation.

Billionaire Jeremy Grantham is a British investor who has built a reputation over the years for anticipating bubbles and financial crises. He co-founded Boston-based GMO LLC, which has about $60 billion in assets under management. source

She co-founded Worldwide Weather Attribution, at time funded by ClimateCentral (tax efficient funding provided by Gulfstream environmentalists).

As an aside Climatecentral are the crowd behind the lazy "churnalist" headlines in Irish media about rising sea levels with map showing various coastal towns and cities under in the future. They tailor the panic typically using the "business as usual scenario" RCP 8.5 computer modelling parameters. Public relations firms have long realised journalists need to have copy in by deadlines and supply them with free or cheap content. Environmental correspondents like RTEs George Lee (~€180K) depend on eNGOs for content, nice work if you can get it.

Back to Dr. Otto, she is often quoted in Irish media attributing various weather events to Climate Change™. In order to grab headlines soon after the event, they rush out a paper using their sciencey sounding probabilistic extreme event attribution analyses protocol, don't bother with the fiction of peer review.

Here is the thing, as outlined by a Irish media alarmist John Gibbons, she tells you what her goal is.

Until relatively recently, it was considered impossible to establish whether any specific extreme weather event could be definitively linked to climate change. That is no longer the case. The new science of extreme event attribution allows almost real-time assessments to be made.

“Extreme event attribution is the first science ever developed with the court in mind”, according to climatologist, Dr Friederike Otto, a pioneer in this field. Asked if she thought companies like ExxonMobil could ever be held liable in a court for deaths in an extreme heat wave, Otto replied: “Not only can I imagine it, I believe it will happen sooner than you think”. source

Now you know how the climate alarmist sausage is made. Their projections are not based on any demonstrated skill you can ignore them. However they still want your money, now!

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123008800#Comment_123008800

There are lots of sciences developed with courts in mind. Pretty much all of forensic science for example was developed in alignment with the legal system.

Forensic science is there to help solve crimes

Climate Attribution science is developing to help identify where the blame lies for destructive climate events. Why is this important? For the same reasons solving crimes and convicting criminals is important.

Climate change denial relies on uncertainty, and the kinds of uncertainty, disinformation and doubt. For the last 4 decades they could always say 'You can't say this event was caused by climate change' which meant it was much more difficult to motivate anyone to act to prevent climate change in the future.

cdeb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123000787#Comment_123000787

I do agree with this alright. What I find interesting is how little discussion there's been about it actually - I mean the real nuts and bolts, at an individual level. Companies spend thousands each year telling staff what pronouns to use and other nonsense like that - if they spent that time educating staff on what causes carbon emissions, we'd be a lot better off.

It's only last year I realised that going through less than a tank of petrol a month causes more than 1 tonne of CO2. I've seen the suggestion we need to be aiming at 5 tonnes per person by 2030 (in the western world presumably - obviously lots in the developing world don't get close to this) and it's amazing to think that about 5,000 miles of driving is 20% of the way there. But to make a new small electric car for me to buy would be 10 tonnes. And yet people can buy these on PCP, tying them into buying a new car every three years! And to make a Land Rover/Range Rover-type SUV is 25 tonnes, before they even leave the forecourt and consume petrol quicker than most other vehicles, yet people will complain when you try to ban them. There's actually a thread in the motors forum right now about it, with a lot of people saying "Let people own them if they want" - they probably had the same argument about the smoking ban or smoky coal.

We're far too tolerant of emigration/immigration despite the huge carbon footprint too. Ah isn't it great to see them start a new life in Australia? But it's a recurring footprint, when you think of families travelling to Australia/Vancouver/China to meet close relatives every year. Those return flights all generate at least 5 tonnes per person (Australia would be more). Again, there's your annual limit gone.

So maybe the only thing I slightly disagree with is your phrase "forced on the public" - ultimately we're going to either have to do something or suffer the consequences, but educating people would be a huge step towards more general acceptance.

Of course you have the problem that if Ireland turned things around, you'd still have the rest of the world to worry about. But ultimately a sustainable world where climate change is a solved problem (like the ozone layer) has these changes coming in in Ireland, so what others do shouldn't be an excuse for inaction here.