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IPCC Climate Change Report Calls For Urgent Action To Phase Out Fossil Fuels (bbc.com)
The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued a report that says global temperatures are heading towards 3 degrees C, and that the original goal of keeping the rise under 1.5 degrees C will require "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society." While the window of opportunity is not yet closed, the prospect looks unlikely and hugely expensive. BBC reports: The critical 33-page Summary for Policymakers certainly bears the hallmarks of difficult negotiations between climate researchers determined to stick to what their studies have shown and political representatives more concerned with economies and living standards. Despite the inevitable compromises, there are some key messages that come through loud and and clear. "The first is that limiting warming to 1.5C brings a lot of benefits compared with limiting it to 2 degrees. It really reduces the impacts of climate change in very important ways," said Prof Jim Skea, who is a co-chair of the IPCC. "The second is the unprecedented nature of the changes that are required if we are to limit warming to 1.5C -- changes to energy systems, changes to the way we manage land, changes to the way we move around with transportation."
"Scientists might want to write in capital letters, 'ACT NOW IDIOTS,' but they need to say that with facts and numbers," said Kaisa Kosonen, from Greenpeace, who was an observer at the negotiations. "And they have." The researchers have used these facts and numbers to paint a picture of the world with a dangerous fever, caused by humans. We used to think if we could keep warming below 2 degrees this century then the changes we would experience would be manageable. Not any more. This new study says that going past 1.5C is dicing with the planet's liveability. And the 1.5C temperature "guard rail" could be exceeded in just 12 years in 2030. We can stay below it but it will require urgent, large-scale changes from governments and individuals, plus we will have to invest a massive pile of cash every year, around 2.5% of global GDP, for two decades. Even then, we will still need machines, trees and plants to capture carbon from the air that we can then store deep underground. Forever! In order to get to 1.5C, the report says the following will be necessary: Global emissions of CO2 need to decline by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030; Renewables are estimated to provide up to 85% of global electricity by 2050; Coal is expected to reduce to close to zero; Up to 7 million sq km of land will be needed for energy crops (a bit less than the size of Australia); and Global net zero emissions by 2050. As if this wasn't demanding enough, the report says that to limit warming to 1.5C, it will involve "annual average investment needs in the energy system of around $2.4 trillion" between 2016 and 2035.
If the planet reaches 2C of warming, coral reefs would be almost entirely wiped out and global sea-levels will rise around 10 centimeters more. "There are also significant impacts on ocean temperatures and acidity, and the ability to grow crops like rice, maize and wheat," reports The Guardian.
Further reading: Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040.
"Scientists might want to write in capital letters, 'ACT NOW IDIOTS,' but they need to say that with facts and numbers," said Kaisa Kosonen, from Greenpeace, who was an observer at the negotiations. "And they have." The researchers have used these facts and numbers to paint a picture of the world with a dangerous fever, caused by humans. We used to think if we could keep warming below 2 degrees this century then the changes we would experience would be manageable. Not any more. This new study says that going past 1.5C is dicing with the planet's liveability. And the 1.5C temperature "guard rail" could be exceeded in just 12 years in 2030. We can stay below it but it will require urgent, large-scale changes from governments and individuals, plus we will have to invest a massive pile of cash every year, around 2.5% of global GDP, for two decades. Even then, we will still need machines, trees and plants to capture carbon from the air that we can then store deep underground. Forever! In order to get to 1.5C, the report says the following will be necessary: Global emissions of CO2 need to decline by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030; Renewables are estimated to provide up to 85% of global electricity by 2050; Coal is expected to reduce to close to zero; Up to 7 million sq km of land will be needed for energy crops (a bit less than the size of Australia); and Global net zero emissions by 2050. As if this wasn't demanding enough, the report says that to limit warming to 1.5C, it will involve "annual average investment needs in the energy system of around $2.4 trillion" between 2016 and 2035.
If the planet reaches 2C of warming, coral reefs would be almost entirely wiped out and global sea-levels will rise around 10 centimeters more. "There are also significant impacts on ocean temperatures and acidity, and the ability to grow crops like rice, maize and wheat," reports The Guardian.
Further reading: Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040.
Solar Reserve have some great low externality base load solar power stations. The heat is stored in molten salt and is available when the sun goes down. Base load solar plant like this can be scaled up, I have no affiliation with them however I find their technology interesting.
Coupled with domestic, industrial and commercial P.V there is enough energy in the sun to build power infrastructure. Combined with the terawatts of power available with wind and geothermal does anyone think the oil and coal industry want this technology to be developed and advanced?
I reason that any form of massive dynamic grid will need a lot of intelligence to make the power available where it is needed, which means interesting technological avenues to explore, a massive explosion of information technology and, fortunes to be made as the economy changes. If we can overcome the economic inertia.
None of the criticisms of these technologies ever ask what it would take to build such infrastructures and all of the technologies look like they scale well. We know we can't continue the way we are going because we will die. This is not just about the planet - Save the Humans, the planet will be just fine.
The only rational conclusion is that the world is being run by complete anti-social psychopaths who actually want such an outcome, otherwise it would be done already. The excuses are less and less believable every day.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
While the US federal government has a distinct lack of political will change pollution, it is still possible for states to take action that will have a wide effect.
For example, a state could require an environmental tax on all products (including imports) that are equivalent to the cost the remove the pollution expelled in the production (or use) of the product. They could then use that money to fun CO2 capture systems. Naturally, you would want to ramp this up over a few years as to reduce the economic impact. While the demands of a single state would have a small impact, it would provide the political cover for other states to join in.
This would soon bankrupt coal power plants and quickly point power companies toward ramping up environmentally friendly power sources lest competition take their profits. So if some state politicians can just grow a pair and do this then we'll be on our way to environmental recovery.
Good progress is made by the brave, not the cowards who only think of themselves.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Speaking as a Canadian, a 10C increase would be quite nice(even tolerable in summer)... If we could hold back the climate refugees ;p
Simply put, if you don't put this in terms of monetary impact to those involved (politicians, government) then you're going to get ignored.
There's nothing better than saying: If you do nothing, then your land with factory/plant X is going to be full of water and unusable - this means your businesses in that area (which probably lobby you) won't exist, and it'll cost this much to move them if you do nothing. Over time, this will multiply and become hugely expensive, certainly more expensive than doing something about it and limiting emissions (etc other stuff in report to mitigate warming)
Facts mean little to politicians. I thought people knew this already?
But... is it?
Is it ACTUALLY more expensive to not do anything? Certainly, morally, but in terms of actual solutions and their efficacy and the knock-on effects and the cost of implementations - the data is actually thin on the ground.
The Paris agreement is an example. Even if we all stuck to it, these same research bodies are now saying it's not enough.
If the cost of not-drowing-in-Waterworld is to actually make many modern conveniences so expensive and unobtainable, have we "won"? Is that "better"? Is people aren't being flooded out of the coastal regions, but nobody can afford their electricity bill, or medicines and oils and products and shipping is suddenly twice as expensive?
Everyone's done the "cost analysis" of not doing something. Nobody has (realistically) done the cost analysis of actually doing something that might work - or even really suggested what that is.
It's a huge bugbear to me. The solutions are half-assed casual suggestions ("release less CO2", "stop burning oil"), etc. but the COST of doing so is not just a number on a balance sheet. More old people will die in winter, more things we take for granted won't be practical, and the associated error-bars are HUGE because we just don't know what's going to happen.
I'm perfectly happy to trust in science and saying yes, this is happening, it's bad, it's caused by us. Let's take that as an "assumption" to work from even if you don't personally believe it.
Now what? What do we do that fixes it? We stop burning coal. Okay, what would that affect? To my knowledge only one country in the world is coal-free on any regular basis (Germany?), and that's still one of the countries most reliant on coal overall. It's ALWAYS fossil fuels. Then nuclear. Then biomass (trees!). Then all the other "renewable" sources.
So just a simple statement as "don't burn coal" drastically affects the economy and energy production of every country on the planet. That's going to knock into heating, cooling and industry before anything else. Which is going to kill people (even if only the elderly) and make everything more expensive.
And that's just one item. Taken together, do the effects of "let's just burn everything, ramp up energy and use that resource to find a better solution" actually kill less or more people over the next 100 years? We don't know. Few ever study the "other side" of the coin.
The problem with this kind of thing, which I wholeheartedly believe is conveying a necessary message, is that the message boils down to "DO THIS OR DIE!" and then someone in the crowd says "But... if we do that... do we not die anyway? Just in a different way, while destroying industry and society and causing more damage long-term?" And nobody has even the decency to look sheepish or say "Well, no, actually we looked and it wouldn't hurt at all if we did X instead".
The research into that side might exist, but it's certainly not being advertised and not being made popular and almost certainly not being done as rigorously or as seriously as the scaremongering.
I'd honestly like to know - if we do EVERYTHING - if we all get unanimous worldwide co-operation and overnight we all become vegans who wash their clothes on rocks, solar-power the entire world, never burn so much as a match again, pump all our energy resources into reversing the CO2 increase, recycle every plastic bag in every landfill in the planet, etc. etc. etc. - whatever loony ideas we can come up with - will that *actually* make it better than the alternative? Because I see drastically little evidence that way. I know we all say "it's there, it's what the scientists say"... but as I consider myself a scientist, I can't honestly look and say "I must recommend this path, or indeed ANY path, out of this mess, because it will be better than the thing we think might happen if we don't".
Everyone acknowledges the problem. The solution eludes us. And the cost-benefit analysis of any dream we can imagine is really "Er... dunno... probably not" at best.
That's a very US-centric view. In the EU, for example, we have considerably more control over corporations. See our environmental and privacy protections, for example. We also tend to have more limits on the funding of political parties and the amount they can spend, which really helps keep things from getting as bad as the US.
Having said that, even in the US the corporations don't have total control. Look at emission limits on cars, surely if big oil and car manufacturers were running things those wouldn't exist.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
STFU.
Spin a giant fresnel lens (or simply a diffuser) at L1 to shade the earth, like was already suggested in 2004 by Gregory Benford. He said you could use plastic, but I have my doubts that would survive very long. Aluminium oxide maybe? L1 delta v isn't much higher than LEO, so with SpaceX costs this should be doable for 10s of billions in lift cost.
A fraction of the opportunity cost of destroying the global economy and triggering WW3.
Is this temperature graph showing the temperature data before or after NOAA's retroactive 'corrections' to the temperature record? It's curious that all the corrections make historical temperatures colder and recent temperatures warmer. Almost as if they needed to fudge the data so that the 'global warming crisis' wouldn't fizzle out in the face of lack of evidence.
What does this have to do with Trump? The EU increased their carbon output in 2017 (and is doing worse in 2018). Are they Trump supporters? https://www.reuters.com/articl...
Sadly the possibility of everyone being dead years from now is not considered by these algorithms. HFT bots don't consider what's going to happen beyond the next few seconds. Most companies don't look beyond the next few quarters - usually not beyond 1 quarter. Some industries like insurance look further ahead and are already taking global warming into account, but most don't.
Humanity is strapped to a machine that is indifferent to human suffering or ecological collapse and is dragging us toward catastrophe for our species and most of the life in the known universe.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This is the massive threat to humanity we've seen in sci-fi movies, usually represented by an invading alien species or some massive natural(ish) disaster, but in real life it was our own pollution that first posed a huge threat to us all.
And now we see how we react as a species to that threat. We didn't temporarily put aside our differences to work toward a common goal as fiction has often speculated. Instead most people kind of brushed the problem off and went back to focusing on the small-scale problems in their own lives, and a few people convinced themselves that the threat was made up and we'd all be fine. When we already had a good idea of how dangerous this threat was, those people elected a raging moron who shared their collectively suicidal beliefs to what was at the time the most powerful political office in the world.
The biggest threat to humanity is ourselves. Working to optimize our societies into what is effectively a perfect breeding ground for psychopaths over the last few hundred years (and especially over the last few decades) has been biting us in the ass the entire time and is about to finally rip out our throats.
I think our only hope is a millennial-driven political revolution - vote out every conservative everywhere across the globe, and put something between social democrats and democratic socialists in power so we can refocus our societies on benefiting as much of humanity as possible and defeat the incredibly short-sighted and largely detrimental business interests driving us to collective ruin.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Actually, your story is a great example of why most people aren't really making an effort to change behaviors over climate change concerns. .... These things are relatively non-negotiable. Most of us only have so much income we can spend on things, and making more requires MORE energy usage. Maybe you start a service business as a side job or second job? Well, now you're traveling around to client sites in your spare time and running errands for needed supplies to do the work. With the high cost of such propositions as switching your vehicles to electric cars, it's out of financial reach for many people still.
At the end of the day, we need to use a lot of energy to accomplish the things in life we want to do. Everything from taking those trips to visit family or friends to the daily work commute needed to earn a paycheck
The biggest changes will only come about as the primary energy sources are converted over from burning fossil fuels. The power generation plants are actually doing this, but it's a very slow process that's (perhaps ironically) slowed down quite a bit by all the legal requirements for things like "environmental impact studies" - foisted upon the utility companies by the likes of Greenpeace. The main solution will probably be nuclear power - which is the toughest one to put online without a lot of resistance from environmental groups.
Honestly, I feel like I've almost over-extended myself already, financially, investing in some of these "Green" solutions. I put as many PV solar panels on my roof as the company could fit, using the most efficient ones per square foot available at the time. I traded in a Jeep and a sports car to get a used Tesla S. And I just took out a loan to do some home repairs that included ripping down the old siding and material behind it and replacing it with better insulated, modern materials. So hopefully, that cuts down on my winter heating bill and energy usage. So I'm going to sleep well at night that I've done my share. But realistically, all of this is a tiny drop in the bucket in the big picture -- even if it's a huge chunk of my total income.
Everyone acknowledges the problem. The solution eludes us.
Marine cloud brightening.
And the cost-benefit analysis of any dream we can imagine is really "Er... dunno... probably not" at best.
Ocean rise is currently the biggest economic impact, since so many people live on the coast. So keeping track of ocean levels is key.
Ah, the old "Gore is a hypocrite therefore the science is wrong" argument. What next - Feynmann could be an ass therefore quantum mechanics is bunk?