Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread

[Razgovory]

My GF is intolerant to soy and nightshade vegetables. Without dairy I think she would go very hungry.

That's a weird thing to be bigoted against.

[crazy canuck]

How many of the wildfires were started by humans? Cause that's always an issue in Europe.

The majority and the most destructive are caused by lightning strikes in remote areas.  The rest are caused by human activity, campfires not properly put out etc.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

How many of the wildfires were started by humans? Cause that's always an issue in Europe.

The majority and the most destructive are caused by lightning strikes in remote areas.  The rest are caused by human activity, campfires not properly put out etc.

Can't do much about lightning, but people taking care to not screw up their campfires would be a big plus.
At least it's not criminals putting the forests to the torch

[Sheilbh]

Always find Helen Thompson interesting - if a little worrying (especially from a European perspective - although little bit of good news from Norway on that front, lucky country):

Why net zero requires a reinvention of civilisation
Decarbonising our world was an unimaginable task even before the energy panic triggered by war
Helen Thompson
Sunday August 06 2023, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

Fossil fuel energy has been the material basis of modern civilisation. The Industrial Revolution was the start of an energy revolution that transformed how human beings could live. Today the four basic physical pillars of our society — ammonia, cement, plastics and steel — are largely produced using fossil fuels. So net zero requires reinventing modern civilisation. It requires transforming the energy basis of our way of life within less than three decades. There is no precedent in human history.

If that were not challenge enough, the net zero 2050 project is defined by a foundational tension: its target involves carbon emissions, not the realisation of an energy revolution. It was never specified how much of the work in achieving the emissions target should be done by the energy change and how much by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The other open question is: are oil, gas, and coal to be replaced as primary energy sources by electricity or by hydrogen or a combination of both when they require entirely different infrastructures?

When it was first legislated for in 2019, net zero constituted an act of faith in technological innovation. Take decarbonisation of electricity, the easiest part of net zero, where by far the most progress has been made. In Britain low-carbon sources generated less than a quarter of Britain's electricity in 2010; nine years later it was more than a half. But solar and wind power are intermittent generating technologies. Dispensing with other sources of electricity requires technological breakthroughs in storage. Yet nobody could then, or can now, know if and when they will be realised.

The Conservative government's commitment — made by Boris Johnson in 2022 — to build eight large nuclear plants at the rate of one a year as well as small modular reactors, even though they are extremely expensive and require formidable planning, reflects the failure of wind and solar to deliver enough electricity without those storage breakthroughs. As the Commons science, innovation and technology committee warned Rishi Sunak in a report last month on nuclear power, "targets are not a strategy".

In practice, it is electrification that has largely won out over hydrogen in replacing oil in transport, gas in heating buildings and both in industrial production. The electric grid must soon do much more work than it is now doing. Yet UK electricity generation has been largely falling for the past decade.

In light of the scale of the undertaking, it is extraordinary that the net zero legislation passed through parliament with so little contest in the dying days of Theresa May's government, when the country was still politically consumed with the question of whether the UK would actually leave the EU. Perhaps being seen to move forward on the climate crisis — an issue that commands widespread support at the level of principle — seemed simple in comparison with the Brexit impasse.

Net zero served another purpose for British politicians in 2019, as elsewhere in Europe: after a decade of economic stagnation and the shock of the Brexit referendum, it doubled as a growth strategy and an industrial reset for the country's former manufacturing heartlands. But while low-carbon-driven growth and reshoring jobs back from China may be realised in the US, it cannot be to the same degree for any European country. Unlike North America, Europe is a resource-poor continent. A reliable supply of the metals and minerals required for low-carbon infrastructure will depend on a geopolitical strategy to tackle growing resource nationalism in Latin America and Africa as well as China's dominance of metal processing and rare earth elements. The US Inflation Reduction Act passed last August further constrains what is possible in Europe because its protectionist provisions will pull low-carbon investment capital across the Atlantic and incentivise some metal-rich economies like Australia to strike bilateral deals with Washington.

The US also does not have to engage with the same level of fossil fuel energy costs as European countries because of its own supplies. In Europe the gas-price shock in the autumn of 2021, driven by surging Chinese demand, followed by further increases from Russia's invasion of Ukraine have made many voters more energy-anxious than they were when the net zero legislation was inaugurated. Since to be rich is to be energy-rich and to be poor is to be energy-poor, energy insecurity incites conflict over distribution.

The uncertainty inherent in net zero compounds the political problem. Whether mass car ownership can be recreated with electric as opposed to internal-combustion-engine vehicles is a known unknown. While the commitment made in 2020 to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 will not affect less well-off voters since only the affluent buy new cars outright, ultra-low emission zones — albeit first introduced to combat air pollution — are another matter.

The reality that net zero is disruptive to the status quo is becoming clear. Underneath net zero — although not spelt out in 2019 — is a call for voters to adapt to a new energy world that is unlikely to replicate the fossil fuel one. Politicians accustomed to a world in which energy abundance could be taken for granted will be prone to panic in this novel one. The last time there was an energy-centric politics, in the 1970s, wartime memories were sufficiently strong that they could still appeal to a narrative of shared sacrifice. In the absence of any such sense of national purpose today, they can no longer speak this language with confidence.

Already there is a shift to saying aloud that fossil fuel energy security still counts: last week the prime minister announced that the government would grant new licences to drill for oil and gas In the North Sea. Soon some politicians will no doubt be tempted by the idea that it is better to protect voters at home who are fearful of net zero by paying for countries in Asia with large populations and lower living standards to decarbonise faster. But there is no reason to think these states will sacrifice their own energy security so that the UK can continue to use gas while waiting for another future to arrive.

In this respect, net zero was supposed to help contain geopolitical competition over fossil fuels, not to intensify it by creating an even sharper hierarchy of states who can rely on them. Whether net zero is challenged or not, politicians and voters will have to learn to live with a constant contest over energy. We are in a world of permanent energy politics.

Helen Thompson is professor of political economy at Cambridge University and co-presenter of the podcast These Times

Edit: And you overlay this onto the world and I'm just not sure I can see a meaningful route to strategic autonomy without secure, separate sources of the materials required (and the uranium and nuclear may be part of France's interest in Niger). It feels like another point where European ambition will clash with reality and while we may want to stay out of growing US-China competition, we'll probably have to pick as an export market for them.

[Razgovory]

I thought Helen Thomas was dead.

[Iormlund]

The other open question is: are oil, gas, and coal to be replaced as primary energy sources by electricity or by hydrogen or a combination of both when they require entirely different infrastructures?

Didn't read past this sentence. Hydrogen is only a viable source of energy if you live in Jupiter. Same goes for electricity. Neither are primary energy sources.

But I guess it is too much to expect a political economy professor to know that.

[Josquius]

Hydrogen is a political excuse to avoid doing anything on electrification.

[Sheilbh]

Hydrogen is a political excuse to avoid doing anything on electrification.

I agree on actual energy and personal vehicles - but the areas she flags of the choice between electrification and hydrogen are for transport (I think two of the big shipping companies have basically made opposite bets on this though), for heating buildings and for industrial production. My understanding is those are areas where people think hydrogen could play a role. Which means that it's not just electrification we need but significantly more generation and capacity than right now.

[Josquius]

Hydrogen is a political excuse to avoid doing anything on electrification.

I agree on actual energy and personal vehicles - but the areas she flags of the choice between electrification and hydrogen are for transport (I think two of the big shipping companies have basically made opposite bets on this though), for heating buildings and for industrial production. My understanding is those are areas where people think hydrogen could play a role. Which means that it's not just electrification we need but significantly more generation and capacity than right now.

No idea on shipping. But its mostly rail I was thinking of. You always see it thrown up as an excuse not to do the electrification work we need despite it being such untested technology.

[Admiral Yi]

You always see it thrown up as an excuse not to do the electrification work we need despite it being such untested technology.

I never see it thrown up as an excuse not to do the electrification work we need to do.

[Sheilbh]

No idea on shipping. But its mostly rail I was thinking of. You always see it thrown up as an excuse not to do the electrification work we need despite it being such untested technology.

So weirdly I was just looking at the Guardian and they have a piece on shipping because there's the first entirely hydrogen powered ferry:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/07/full-clean-ahead-can-shipping-finally-steer-away-from-fossil-fuels

Although I swear I read a story that was a bit broader than that (and it might have been one shipping company going all in on bio-fuels and the other on hydrogen - I feel like it was Maers and someone else) but it might be a helpful solution for the container ships (initially dual fuel) because you don't need to re-engineer them that much.

I mainly see it as an excuse not to electrify in domestic vehicles when my understanding is we're just nowhere near that yet - but that it could be really helpful in the large scale transport. Similarly, it could have a role in large industrial processes and poossibly heating, especially district heating, but I think on those we are largely electrifying instead.

[HVC]

Hydrogen takes a lot of energy to produce. So you'll burn your dirtier coal to get your electricity to make your hydrogen so that you burn less fossil fuels

[Richard Hakluyt]

The idea is to use excess wind energy to make hydrogen and then burn the hydrogen during periods of low wind to balance the grid. Hydrogen can also be used to power vehicles, with water as the exhaust, though you do have to be careful as it is pretty explosive.

The problem is that this is expensive, at least at the moment. several times more expensive than electric vehicles.

[Sheilbh]

The idea is to use excess wind energy to make hydrogen and then burn the hydrogen during periods of low wind to balance the grid. Hydrogen can also be used to power vehicles, with water as the exhaust, though you do have to be careful as it is pretty explosive.

The problem is that this is expensive, at least at the moment. several times more expensive than electric vehicles.

Yeah - I'm dubious on its use for generating power for the grid. But the other benefit from a transport perspective, for example, is that my understanding is that it's lighter than the equivalent battery power (at this point) which I think could make it more attractive for shipping or possibly aviation (both about 2% of global emissions).

Similarly there's no way it'd be useful for heating individual homes - but in countries with district heating schemes or for big commercial buildings my understanding is it would be viable (and wouldn't necessarily involve as much changes to people's homes). Not sure about the rest of the world but in the UK heating accounts for about a third of our emissions - it's comparable to domestic vehicles, so not insignificant. Globally energy use in buildings is about 15% which is equivalent to all transport emissions, but I'm not sure how much of that is heating. I think it could have a role there, but again the policy preference has been electricity and batteries.

From a European perspective I think there's a possible particular worry there because we don't have the materials or manufacturers of batteries. There are definitely areas where electrification is the answer, there are other areas where I think there are options but we are choosing electrification and - from a European perspective - I think that poses the risk of increasing our dependence which I'm not sure is being though through by policymakers. Especially because I suspect we'll end up repeating the pre-2022 mistake of relying on America for our security and China for our energy infrastructure, which I'm not sure is wise.

Also it's the bit that I think is really missing in how energy transition is talked about that it often seems like it's replacing our current energy usage with electricity but I don't think it's always explained that that means generating vastly more electricity than we currently do. The Climate Change Committee in the UK have said that in our economy alone we need to double electricity generation in the next 25 years. At the minute we're only on track to produce more electricity than we currently consume in 2030. Luckily we are masters in rapidly and cheaply building vast amounts of new infrastructure

[Josquius]

In Sweden, and maybe other places, rather than home boilers a lot of places get their heat from municipal boilers.
I wonder whether the UK has to look more in this direction again- as much as the government actually doing something is a hard battle that needs to be fought.

You always see it thrown up as an excuse not to do the electrification work we need despite it being such untested technology.

I never see it thrown up as an excuse not to do the electrification work we need to do.

Maybe you're just not interested in railway and home electrification? It crops up quite a bit.