CC3 -- Why I believe that a third option is needed for climate change

Akrasia · 30-07-2020 2:44pm

All of this poisoning of the well, calling activists and politicians hypocrites and challenging their authenticity is all a lovely way to avoid the argument about whether climate change is actually real and what we actually need to do to limit our impact on the global climate

I have said this over and over again. Individual action is not going to solve the problem, it requires global collective action, and this requires political action at national and supernational level.

Dealing with the coronavirus has cost the global economy trillions of dollars

Climate change is a much bigger crisis than Coronavirus because there is no vaccine or Herd immunity for climate change. If we spent even a fraction of the resources that we spent on coronavirus mitigation, on creating renewable energy infrastructure, decomissioning old fossil fuel powerstations, creating new electric vehicle infrastructure, building electric high speed mass transit infrastrucure to reduce the need to fly or drive etc etc, then we would be some way towards mitigating climate change, and we would also have the benefit of 21st century infrastructure that is based on cheap, clean renewable energy instead of dirty expensive polluting fossil fuels

Gaoth Laidir · 30-07-2020 3:30pm

Cheap, renewable energy. I agree with you on that much. The rest is all just nonsense.

Saying that climate change is more serious that an acute global pandemic with no cure is typical of the crazy hyperbole that confirms the removal of people like you from realistic and reasoned thought.

Man has adapted to changing environments for as long as man has been on this planet. There is no climatic change capable of causing the acute emergency that could fill a hospital ICU like we saw in e.g. Lombardia in Italy. You will, of course, claim that this or that hurricane/flood/drought/snowstorm/heatwave/fire is intrinsically linked to AGW, but as always the link - if any exists - will be a lot less tenuous than you claim. I'm sure you'll come in with claims on this year's Atlantic hurricane season, yet to do so would, by your definition, be just cherrypicking, as the globe as a whole is only operating at about half the LTA tropical activity, despite the large number of Atlantic named systems so far (a couple of which did not warrant naming, imo).

Birdnuts · 30-07-2020 10:21pm

Akrasia wrote: »

All of this poisoning of the well, calling activists and politicians hypocrites and challenging their authenticity is all a lovely way to avoid the argument about whether climate change is actually real and what we actually need to do to limit our impact on the global climate

I have said this over and over again. Individual action is not going to solve the problem, it requires global collective action, and this requires political action at national and supernational level.

Dealing with the coronavirus has cost the global economy trillions of dollars

Climate change is a much bigger crisis than Coronavirus because there is no vaccine or Herd immunity for climate change. If we spent even a fraction of the resources that we spent on coronavirus mitigation, on creating renewable energy infrastructure, decomissioning old fossil fuel powerstations, creating new electric vehicle infrastructure, building electric high speed mass transit infrastrucure to reduce the need to fly or drive etc etc, then we would be some way towards mitigating climate change, and we would also have the benefit of 21st century infrastructure that is based on cheap, clean renewable energy instead of dirty expensive polluting fossil fuels

I suggest you read up on the matter cos many so called "green" energy sources are far from "cheap" or "clean" in reality. EG. since supports for wind farms came in here 20 years ago our power prices have gone from below the EU averge to near the top of the league - all this at a time when oil and NG prices have tanked.

Akrasia · 31-07-2020 12:34am

Gaoth Laidir wrote: »

Cheap, renewable energy. I agree with you on that much. The rest is all just nonsense.

Saying that climate change is more serious that an acute global pandemic with no cure is typical of the crazy hyperbole that confirms the removal of people like you from realistic and reasoned thought.
[\quote]
Coronavirus will be a footnote in the history books in 50 years time. Climate change will be omnipresent, affecting every aspect of economic political and cultural life.

The scale of those effects depends on the actions we take now

Man has adapted to changing environments for as long as man has been on this planet. There is no climatic change capable of causing the acute emergency that could fill a hospital ICU like we saw in e.g. Lombardia in Italy. You will, of course, claim that this or that hurricane/flood/drought/snowstorm/heatwave/fire is intrinsically linked to AGW, but as always the link - if any exists - will be a lot less tenuous than you claim. I'm sure you'll come in with claims on this year's Atlantic hurricane season, yet to do so would, by your definition, be just cherrypicking, as the globe as a whole is only operating at about half the LTA tropical activity, despite the large number of Atlantic named systems so far (a couple of which did not warrant naming, imo).

You’re looking at a mole that has just started changing color and rationalizing that it cannot be cancer even though you have been shown the biopsy results that say it is malignant

Climate change is cumulative and the effects will worsen over time, just like cancer. If you ignore the diagnosis and wait until the symptoms are severe it’s too late to prevent metastasis

Gaoth Laidir · 31-07-2020 8:54am

Again, merely changing the medical analogy does nothing to strengthen your point. What will it be next; tuberculosis?

Akrasia · 31-07-2020 12:30pm

Gaoth Laidir wrote: »

Again, merely changing the medical analogy does nothing to strengthen your point. What will it be next; tuberculosis?

The analogy is perfectly apt.

Cancer can be present for years before there are any symptoms, but once symptoms begin to show, it is often too late to cure the disease. That is why we have cancer screening programs to catch it early enough to treat it.

Climate change was discovered and linked to increasing CO2 levels decades before we had any evidence of the actual symptoms of climate change manifesting themselves in the global climate system. Natural variability is real and small increases in global average temperature are easily masked by the natural variability that still exists, but climate change didn't stop at small increases, it is now at 1 degree Celsius above preindustrial levels and this is causing identifiable events that would have been impossible without AGW

But even without waiting to measure events as they occur, climate scientists were still able to use models and look back at prehistoric climate records to estimate how the earth will be affected by the rising global average temperatures and the prognosis was that we should do whatever we can to prevent CO2 from going above 350ppm

This was to give humans the best chance to avoid any of the major side effects of climate change. Unfortunately we overshot that target and we are now at 400ppm and over one degree C of warming above pre-industrial levels and we are seeing the start of the predicted consequences becoming the new normal.

Like living with cancer, being in a certain amount of pain is now a fact of life that can be managed to a certain extent, but the cancer is not cured, it is not in remission, it is still growing, and the pain we are seeing today is just the beginning of what we can expect as the disease spreads.

We're still increasing our atmospheric CO2 concentration and on track to more than double Pre-industrial levels within the next few decades, and this is likely to more than double the amount of warming we have seen so far. The consequences of this are like ignorng a growing tumour because it hasn't been causing much pain early on, until it suddenly metastasises and begns to grow in your pancreas and liver and bone marrow and you face the reality that you are termnally ill without any hope of treatment

Our climate is still (hopefully) within our own hands, we can begin aggressive treatment, take the short term pain to invest heavily in clean renewable technology as soon as possible to mitigate the risk that one or more tipping points will be breached that cause a runaway climate change, a metastatic cancer that is no longer treatable by reducing human emissions. Nobody knows exactly where these tipping points are, just as no Oncologist knows exactly when a cancer will metastasize but they do know that the best way to reduce the risk is to treat it early and aggressively if possible

By the time the symptoms of climate change are unequivocal to even the morst ardent skeptic, it will be far too late to act to reduce the consequences. By the time you see the symptoms of cancer, the cancer is already life threateing.

Oneiric 3 · 31-07-2020 3:13pm

Using cancer, of which most of us on here has known at least one person who had died all too young from it, as an analogy to climate change is in very poor taste and as about as poor of optics as can be used.

Akrasia · 31-07-2020 6:14pm

Oh come on

We’re all adults here.Since when did simply referring to cancer in an analogy become offensive?

Nabber · 31-07-2020 7:32pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Oh come on

We’re all adults here.Since when did simply referring to cancer in an analogy become offensive?

I would say it’s more along the lines of the intention of using cancer as it’s synonymous with something terrible. ie AGW is equal to cancer, which it’s clearly not.

One could also say that AGW is religious cult that has seized political power. Where more and more of its proponents focus on shutting down dialogue, as was the way with the majority of leading religions.

What is the case here is that the majority of people want a clean healthy planet, but aren’t on board with the alarmist “Algorian” view that we are doomed.
The argument of Cherry Picking and ‘weather’ is now a favourite tactic to use of AGW supporters.

Fatigue is setting in, as people see that there has been no adverse effect, prominent figures in Africa are leaning towards this being a rich ‘white’ person pursuit. Where save the XYZ comes at the cost of African standard of living.

Action starts at the consumer not at the collective/political level. Carbon is expended by and large to support consumerism. Being a keyboard warrior earns you no carbon credits.

Buy local. Reduce expenditure of luxuries. Walk!
If a company is dirty, boycott.
Goya Beans was boycotted by a group of Twitter iPhone using, Bolivian coffee drinking, sketcher wearing hypocrites!
Much like the hypocrisy of AGW.

Oneiric 3 · 31-07-2020 8:46pm

Nabber wrote: »

Fatigue is setting in, as people see that there has been no adverse effect, prominent figures in Africa are leaning towards this being a rich ‘white’ person pursuit. Where save the XYZ comes at the cost of African standard of living.

I posted a good article month's back on this thread (or a thread similar to this) that highlighted this very point. Developing and 3rd world peoples have basically zero interest in 'climate change', because it is, as you rightly state, a worry of the most privileged in our society, and as the old saying goes, those who preach the loudest...

Wanderer78 · 31-07-2020 10:19pm

Oneiric 3 wrote:

I posted a good article month's back on this thread (or a thread similar to this) that highlighted this very point. Developing and 3rd world peoples have basically zero interest in 'climate change', because it is, as you rightly state, a worry of the most privileged in our society, and as the old saying goes, those who preach the loudest...

If we figured out how to share wealth more evenly, as rising inequality causes environmental degradation to also increase

Akrasia · 31-07-2020 11:15pm

Nabber wrote: »

I would say it’s more along the lines of the intention of using cancer as it’s synonymous with something terrible. ie AGW is equal to cancer, which it’s clearly not.

I was clearly making the point that Climate change is similar to cancer in it is insidious where it can grow with few Obvious symptoms, and when the symptoms become pronounced it is often too late to treat it successfully

The obvious point was that when we have a diagnosis of a serious progressive disease, early treatment dramatically improves the prognosis
(If treatment exists)

One could also say that AGW is religious cult that has seized political power. Where more and more of its proponents focus on shutting down dialogue, as was the way with the majority of leading religions.

one could say this if one happens to be a climate change denier

What is the case here is that the majority of people want a clean healthy planet, but aren’t on board with the alarmist “Algorian” view that we are doomed.
The argument of Cherry Picking and ‘weather’ is now a favourite tactic to use of AGW supporters.

Fatigue is setting in, as people see that there has been no adverse effect, prominent figures in Africa are leaning towards this being a rich ‘white’ person pursuit. Where save the XYZ comes at the cost of African standard of living.

Action starts at the consumer not at the collective/political level. Carbon is expended by and large to support consumerism. Being a keyboard warrior earns you no carbon credits.

Buy local. Reduce expenditure of luxuries. Walk!
If a company is dirty, boycott.
Goya Beans was boycotted by a group of Twitter iPhone using, Bolivian coffee drinking, sketcher wearing hypocrites!
Much like the hypocrisy of AGW.

Absolute nonsense and nowhere near the action necessary to avoid climate change

Boycotts do not provide investment for new infrastructure and you need political action to regulate industry. The boycotts should be to prompt political action, not to replace it

Akrasia · 04-08-2020 12:25am

Saw an article this week that Ireland are on track to start meeting 40% of electricity demand from renewable sources this year

This is really good news. Energy production is an engineering problem. Climate change can be solved with proper investment in engineering solutions with a smaller element related to behavioral changes

Those same behaviors need to change if we’re going to reduce all of the other negative impacts on our biosphere caused by thoughtless human activity

The political action required to prevent climate change should work in tandem with every other sustainable goal. Reduce, reuse, recycle and use renewable energy.

M.T. Cranium · 04-08-2020 7:42am

Not living in Ireland, I am a bit foggy on the details, how is electricity generated there? In Canada we have almost unlimited hydro-electric opportunity, some attempts to integrate wind farms into grids that has largely proved a waste of public resources, nuclear energy that the left will not support expanding for political reasons that have their origin in the cold war, never made sense then and make less sense now (and we have untapped uranium resources) ... and a few coal fired generating stations that are being phased out in eastern Canada.

As to vehicle preferences, electric and hybrid vehicles have captured a small part of the market but people seem to have concerns about their power ratios.

Wanderer78 · 04-08-2020 8:27am

M.T. Cranium wrote:

Not living in Ireland, I am a bit foggy on the details, how is electricity generated there? In Canada we have almost unlimited hydro-electric opportunity, some attempts to integrate wind farms into grids that has largely proved a waste of public resources, nuclear energy that the left will not support expanding for political reasons that have their origin in the cold war, never made sense then and make less sense now (and we have untapped uranium resources) ... and a few coal fired generating stations that are being phased out in eastern Canada.

Think we re largely gas fired, but it is interesting to see the speed of change over to alternatives, I do think we could be dropping the ball in regards nuclear, I'm not convinced alternatives can completely fill the gap when we eventually ditch fossil fuels. I'm hearing great things about thorium reactors, far safer apparently and more efficient, but it ll be hard to convince the public in general, not just us lefties, but the push back is understandable

Nabber · 04-08-2020 5:42pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Absolute nonsense and nowhere near the action necessary to avoid climate change

Boycotts do not provide investment for new infrastructure and you need political action to regulate industry. The boycotts should be to prompt political action, not to replace it

It's consumerism driving the majority of carbon emissions. Really looking at governments to make changes is the lazy way out.

"I only do it because the government made it legal"

Any meaningful change can only happen at the individual level. We have seen year on year increased influence from governments to make companies 'green'. They are not working, there is no solution to our ever increasing energy needs. Reduce the excessive life styles.
Encourage people to want to change, do it in a honest way, drop the alarmist rhetoric.

Instead we get distractions of windfarms, hydro dams, solar farms.. All of which destroy local habitats, they show very little return on their carbon foot prints.

Nabber · 04-08-2020 5:50pm

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Think we re largely gas fired, but it is interesting to see the speed of change over to alternatives, I do think we could be dropping the ball in regards nuclear, I'm not convinced alternatives can completely fill the gap when we eventually ditch fossil fuels. I'm hearing great things about thorium reactors, far safer apparently and more efficient, but it ll be hard to convince the public in general, not just us lefties, but the push back is understandable

Nuclear is typically lumped in with carbon fuel, usually through ignorance.
We don't want nuclear plants as they are not safe but we buy in nuclear energy, we are good European neighbours like that :pac::pac:

[Deleted User] · 04-08-2020 7:23pm

Nabber wrote: »

It's consumerism driving the majority of carbon emissions. Really looking at governments to make changes is the lazy way out.

"I only do it because the government made it legal"

Any meaningful change can only happen at the individual level. We have seen year on year increased influence from governments to make companies 'green'. They are not working, there is no solution to our ever increasing energy needs. Reduce the excessive life styles.
Encourage people to want to change, do it in a honest way, drop the alarmist rhetoric.

Instead we get distractions of windfarms, hydro dams, solar farms.. All of which destroy local habitats, they show very little return on their carbon foot prints.

It's alright blaming people consumers for making the wrong choices, but it is difficult when 100% of manufacturers are making "consumer grade" products, products that are designed with short life and are expensive & difficult to repair. Products that require frequent replacement of all accessories when the main unit is replaced as the connectors are changed with every design "refresh" anything to maximise the waste and profit. Companies should be mandated by law to list the design life of their products as well as being taxed on selling deliberately life shortened products.

Such measures, along with taxing "fast fashion" would vastly reduce the waste generated by our consumerist led economy.

Don't get me started on commercial products that are forced into obsolescence by manufacturers who withdraw support from them, thus rendering them unsupportable in operation.

Birdnuts · 04-08-2020 9:36pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Saw an article this week that Ireland are on track to start meeting 40% of electricity demand from renewable sources this year

This is really good news. Energy production is an engineering problem. Climate change can be solved with proper investment in engineering solutions with a smaller element related to behavioral changes

Those same behaviors need to change if we’re going to reduce all of the other negative impacts on our biosphere caused by thoughtless human activity

The political action required to prevent climate change should work in tandem with every other sustainable goal. Reduce, reuse, recycle and use renewable energy.

Probably from the IWEA:rolleyes: - an utterly meaningless figure given how our grid actually works ie. unreliable wind needing constant back up and not in sync with peak demands

Danno · 05-08-2020 3:44pm

The American Taxpayer has lost out bad here, despite US$200mln being recovered.

https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/200m-settlement-announced-over-bankrupt-tonopah-solar-project-2084328

The $1 billion Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plant, which received $737 million in loan guarantees in 2011, has been offline since April 2019. The closure brought back memories of California solar panel manufacturer Solyndra which received a $535 million federal loan guarantee in 2009 only to file for bankruptcy in 2011.

[...]

Under President Barack Obama, the Department of Energy agreed to issue loan guarantees for the Nye County project in September 2011, shortly after Solyndra shuttered and filed for bankruptcy. Solyndra became a source of embarrassment for a president who had visited the company’s Fremont plant in 2010 and declared, “The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra.”

Another costly vanity project by the green industry and it's admirers.

[Deleted User] · 05-08-2020 4:16pm

Birdnuts wrote: »

Probably from the IWEA:rolleyes: - an utterly meaningless figure given how our grid actually works ie. unreliable wind needing constant back up and not in sync with peak demands

This will always be the case until cheap and plentiful storage becomes available, now with large scale EV production ramping up around the world, vehicle to grid technologies will soon be able to take up much of this slack. Add to this an ever increasing number of home battery systems coming on line (once the feed in tariffs issue is sorted out) most of the wind & solar generated energy will be stored for use when needed.

It takes time to transition from a centralised generation system to a distributed generation & storage grid.

Birdnuts · 05-08-2020 5:55pm

dolanbaker wrote: »

This will always be the case until cheap and plentiful storage becomes available, now with large scale EV production ramping up around the world, vehicle to grid technologies will soon be able to take up much of this slack. Add to this an ever increasing number of home battery systems coming on line (once the feed in tariffs issue is sorted out) most of the wind & solar generated energy will be stored for use when needed.

It takes time to transition from a centralised generation system to a distributed generation & storage grid.

And all that depends on a constant supply of Lithium and rare-earth metals - all of which come with their own toxic environmental consequences and supply issues

[Deleted User] · 05-08-2020 6:51pm

Birdnuts wrote: »

And all that depends on a constant supply of Lithium and rare-earth metals - all of which come with their own toxic environmental consequences and supply issues

Yes, a thrice off source of pollution in their extraction Processing into batteries & recycling,

FF on the other hand pollutes only once, but pollutes every time you need to consume it.
Batteries are re used multiple times, so the overall pollution from their creation can be delivered by the number of recharges after manufacture/remanufacture.

With fossil fuels on the other hand, you can only divide by one!

Nabber · 05-08-2020 7:21pm

dolanbaker wrote: »

It's alright blaming people consumers for making the wrong choices, but it is difficult when 100% of manufacturers are making "consumer grade" products, products that are designed with short life and are expensive & difficult to repair. Products that require frequent replacement of all accessories when the main unit is replaced as the connectors are changed with every design "refresh" anything to maximise the waste and profit. Companies should be mandated by law to list the design life of their products as well as being taxed on selling deliberately life shortened products.

Such measures, along with taxing "fast fashion" would vastly reduce the waste generated by our consumerist led economy.

Don't get me started on commercial products that are forced into obsolescence by manufacturers who withdraw support from them, thus rendering them unsupportable in operation.

I agree.
I'm not defending corporations, they have shown time and again that the bottom line out weighs all else.

It's not governments alone that can make change. If consumers create the demand a corporation will supply.

[Deleted User] · 05-08-2020 8:17pm

Nabber wrote: »

I agree.
I'm not defending corporations, they have shown time and again that the bottom line out weighs all else.

It's not governments alone that can make change. If consumers create the demand a corporation will supply.

Consumers usually want the cheapest instead of the "best value for money", it's really education they need to realise that buying something for x that only lasts for y number of years is poor value when they can buy something for x +25% that lasts for y x 2 or can be easily be repaired/serviced and last even longer.

But they'll often look at the sticker price and buy on that alone.
In the end paying far more for products (throwing them away) that they actually need to.

Wanderer78 · 05-08-2020 8:30pm

Nabber wrote: »

I agree.
I'm not defending corporations, they have shown time and again that the bottom line out weighs all else.

It's not governments alone that can make change. If consumers create the demand a corporation will supply.

Neoclassical economics is largely a load of nonsense, our economic systems ultimately work on the principle of supply supply, if supply and demand was truly true, overall storage capacity for our goods should be falling, due to modern manufacturing techniques such as 'just in time' etc, but our reality is, overall storage capacity is growing

Akrasia · 05-08-2020 9:44pm

Nabber wrote: »

It's consumerism driving the majority of carbon emissions. Really looking at governments to make changes is the lazy way out.

"I only do it because the government made it legal"

Any meaningful change can only happen at the individual level. We have seen year on year increased influence from governments to make companies 'green'. They are not working, there is no solution to our ever increasing energy needs. Reduce the excessive life styles.
Encourage people to want to change, do it in a honest way, drop the alarmist rhetoric.

Instead we get distractions of windfarms, hydro dams, solar farms.. All of which destroy local habitats, they show very little return on their carbon foot prints.

Again this is nonsense. individual action is individual action. One way for me to reduce my personal emissions down to zero is to kill myself. But me removing half a lifetime of emissions will have zero impact on climate change. Individuals acting on their own will not solve a problem that is systemic.

You can be guaranteed that if it wasn’t illegal and regulated, that there would still be children playing with toys covered in lead paint.

The only way individual action can work is if it is backed up by collective action

If excessive consumerism is the problem, and it definitely is a part of the problem, it won’t be solved by individuals choosing to be less consumerist, it will be solved by political action, regulations, education, incentives for individuals to consume more responsibly and industry to produce sustainably.

Akrasia · 05-08-2020 9:57pm

Danno wrote: »

The American Taxpayer has lost out bad here, despite US$200mln being recovered.

https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/200m-settlement-announced-over-bankrupt-tonopah-solar-project-2084328

[...]

Another costly vanity project by the green industry and it's admirers.

The US pays 20bn a year in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry a year Do you have 40 other failed .5bn projects a year to balance out your post?

Birdnuts · 06-08-2020 12:46am

Akrasia wrote: »

The US pays 20bn a year in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry a year Do you have 40 other failed .5bn projects a year to balance out your post?

No they don't - and expansion of NG tech has reduced emmissions there far more quickly then the likes of Germany and their colossal spend on Wind subs for which they still use coal as their biggest source of energy

Birdnuts · 06-08-2020 12:48am

dolanbaker wrote: »

Yes, a thrice off source of pollution in their extraction Processing into batteries & recycling,

FF on the other hand pollutes only once, but pollutes every time you need to consume it.
Batteries are re used multiple times, so the overall pollution from their creation can be delivered by the number of recharges after manufacture/remanufacture.

With fossil fuels on the other hand, you can only divide by one!

Batteries decline in charging power over time and you are also forgetting the energy used in their manufacturing

CC3 -- Why I believe that a third option is needed for climate change

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