Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread

[Habbaku]

Why leap to the simpler explanation when a more convoluted one that lets you hurl insults is available?

[derspiess]

So McConnell is going to schedule a vote on the Green New Deal.  The bill's Senate sponsor (Markey, D-MA) is hacked off about it, calling it "sabotage"

[Habbaku]

On the face of it, I support McConnell on this. Why shouldn't the GND be brought to a floor vote? Are the Democrats irate that they haven't been given enough time to sell it, or...?

[Maximus]

"I want you to panic"

Good clear message - greeted by polite applause by the Davos crowd

https://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2019/jan/25/i-want-you-to-panic-16-year-old-greta-thunberg-issues-climate-warning-at-davos-video

It's a good message, made the more impressive by the fact that she has autism and selective mutism. She's done a TED talk as well.

[mongers]

"I want you to panic"

Good clear message - greeted by polite applause by the Davos crowd

https://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2019/jan/25/i-want-you-to-panic-16-year-old-greta-thunberg-issues-climate-warning-at-davos-video

It's a good message, made the more impressive by the fact that she has autism and selective mutism. She's done a TED talk as well.

Most of us olds have failed the place.

Hoping the younger ones don't become as cynical as my generation.

[Berkut]

On the transport side, you can go electric, but the effect is limited if power generation still relies heavily on fossil fuels.  You burn indirectly instead of directly. So the trick is replacing coal and oil generation with say nuclear and solar. But it's very hard to change the energy generation mix in a material way very quickly.  Power generation facilities have high capital costs and fairly long lead times to construct so unless you are willing to make massive Manhattan Project style commitments it is hard to meaningfully move the energy mix over short periods of time. That is especially true for nuclear: the plants take years and years to build and commission, cost gobs of money, and face bottlenecks due to the loss of qualified engineers during the lost decades.  Solar is a bit easier but the tricky part is you need to find a site that is reasonable near existing transmission lines and places where there is demand. The best places to site solar are on dry level land. But a lot of the energy demand is in damp places like the Midwest, or hilly places like California, or both like the northeast. Solar also has the problem of variability so absent big immediate breakthroughs in storage tech, there are limits to its contribution to the total energy mix.

The other route is capture tech which is still in the speculative stage in terms of practical scalable application.

We waited to long to do it properly, so now we do need technological panaceas and fast.  That means immediate implementation of Moon Program/Manhttan Project level crash R&D programs in key areas like storage and capture, creating multi-trillion infrastructure banks to fund clean generation facilities ASAP, dropping aversion to nuclear and hoping the industry can come up with a safe and viable cost-efficient design, and somehow find or train up enough qualified people to build and run them fast.

An excellent and incisive intellectual response.  When Berkut sees these, he cannot criticize it as he properly does the facile and intellectually lazy one-smiley responses. 

I could be wrong, but I read that as 'skepticism that we, as a society, have the collective foresight and strength of will to do this'.

Yes, this.

[crazy canuck]

We waited to long to do it properly, so now we do need technological panaceas and fast.  That means immediate implementation of Moon Program/Manhttan Project level crash R&D programs in key areas like storage and capture, creating multi-trillion infrastructure banks to fund clean generation facilities ASAP, dropping aversion to nuclear and hoping the industry can come up with a safe and viable cost-efficient design, and somehow find or train up enough qualified people to build and run them fast.

And we are probably at the point where nation states doing their own thing is not viable.  There is going to have to be intense international cooperation to develop the energy 2.0 grid that will be necessary.

Berkut's response would also be appropriate here.

[The Minsky Moment]

Yes, this.

There are two other options.  One is an immediate and radical alteration in human lifestyles to massively reduce energy usage.  The other is to face trillions of dollars of economic losses.

[Valmy]

So McConnell is going to schedule a vote on the Green New Deal.  The bill's Senate sponsor (Markey, D-MA) is hacked off about it, calling it "sabotage"

I mean...why not? It is not like they were ever going to get the votes in the Senate to pass it. And even if they did it would be vetoed. So Markey should be happy about the opportunity to symbolically vote for this and not actually have to worry about what happens if it passes.

[Razgovory]

Yes, this.

There are two other options.  One is an immediate and radical alteration in human lifestyles to massively reduce energy usage.  The other is to face trillions of dollars of economic losses.

I think we are going to use Brexit as our model and just sort of muddle through.

[crazy canuck]

the difference being that on the day before 2 degrees of warming hits, we can't have a snap referendum to reverse the decision.

[Berkut]

Yes, this.

There are two other options.  One is an immediate and radical alteration in human lifestyles to massively reduce energy usage.  The other is to face trillions of dollars of economic losses.

...and we will pick option 3, do nothing.

[Valmy]

Yes, this.

There are two other options.  One is an immediate and radical alteration in human lifestyles to massively reduce energy usage.  The other is to face trillions of dollars of economic losses.

...and we will pick option 3, do nothing.

I am afraid option 2 is going to be chosen for us if we do not choose option 1.

[crazy canuck]

Yes, this.

There are two other options.  One is an immediate and radical alteration in human lifestyles to massively reduce energy usage.  The other is to face trillions of dollars of economic losses.

...and we will pick option 3, do nothing.

I am afraid option 2 is going to be chosen for us if we do not choose option 1.

Yeah, option 3 is the same as option 2.

[Grey Fox]

These are not the options. We will get trillions of dollars of economic losses no matter what. It's between having our current civilization going into the future or a significaly reduced numbers of humans on this planet.