The Core
Why We Are Here => Water Cooler => Topic started by: rcjordan on September 08, 2021, 03:25:04 PM
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Debbie says we're going to be parboiled.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/09/08/faster-more-drastic-cuts-to-fossil-fuel-extraction-than-previously-thought-will-be-needed-to-avert-climate-catastrophe-study-finds/?sh=6c3eba3ee9db
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Sadly, I think Debbie is right.
gas production will fall annually by 8.1% before the fossil fuel is completely phased out by the power sector in 2040
The group I'm most active with is focused on a price on carbon. That is essential, but I'd say that last date it which that was sufficient was in the 1990s.
It's all about the brutal math of the S-curve. At first, it takes a while to really hit your stride. Then you start decarbonizing fast and hit the steep part of the S-curve. Then things get hard (air travel, rocket ships, legacy industry) and the S-curve flattens. The longer you wait to start, the steeper the steep part of the S-curve has to get.
If we had started decarbonization on 1992, I think the peak of the bell curve would have been less than 5% in peak reduction years with most years more like 2-3%. We could have done that while expanding the global economy.
Now the peak year in order to stay below 1.5 degree C rise is probably closer to 20%. The Australian govt did a study on this around 2011 showing what the impacts of each year of delay are on how much harder it gets and how steep the curve gets in the middle of the process. My faulty memory tells me that if we didn't start serious reduction until 2021 it would go to 17%. I would need to check that though.
Every year that we make little or not progress, the steep part of that curve gets steeper for two reasons. First, the carbon budget is smaller. Second, the timeframe is compressed. So the steepness increases faster than you might think. It's very similar to bankruptcy. Every year you spend down your account, you have less money to work with and your budget reductions have to happen even faster. It's a double-bind.
So 8% seems like a reach, but 8% implies a steep part of the curve where reductions are 2-3X that amount. There is no way we'll see a 20% reduction in a single year by our own volition (asteroid strike will do it, but not a mere pandemic lockdown).
My sense is that by the time people truly cotton on to the fact that the *cost* (setting aside any moral/ethical issues) of global warming is very high, they will be surprised by the brutal and fundamental math of the S-curve.
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>parboiled
Surprise, surprise!!
Climate change: Not a single G20 country is in line with the Paris Agreement, analysis shows - CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/15/world/climate-pledges-insufficient-cat-intl/index.html
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We've known that for years. Nobody has ever been in-line with Paris. That's the problem with promises with no consequences. The great achievement of Paris was to extract promises though. At least now countries can be embarrassed by not achieving anything. With prior agreements, you didn't even have that.
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Well, sh##.
Sen. Joe Manchin, who has major links to fossil fuel industry, will craft U.S. climate plan
https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-nation/2021/09/20/manchin-climate-plan-biden-west-virginia-senator-fossil-fuel-industry/stories/202109200046
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Almost 1/3 (29%) of all energy goes into heating things up for industrial processes. That is a tough problem to fix, especially at the higher temperatures
https://about.bnef.com/blog/the-best-g-20-markets-for-decarbonizing-industrial-low-to-medium-temperature-heat/
In other news, one scenario that would meet the US's Nationally Determined Contribution under the Paris Agreement, would be:
- tax incentives for generation, storage, conversion of cars and light-duty trucks similar to the incentives under the Clean Energy for America Act
- clean electric targets similar to under the Clean Electricity Performance Program
- carbon tax starting at $15/ton in 2023, rising to $30/ton in 2028 and then going up $10/ton/year through 2040 (so by 2040 you would be at $150/ton in 2040).
I don't see Joe Manchin signing on nor do I see it surviving the 2022 midterms. In short: parboiled.
I do always remember something Howard Zinn once said in a lecture I attended. He said that in 1960 the famous Princeton philosophy professor Walter Kaufman wrote that "today's generation" was apathetic, directionless and unengaged. Kaufman's diatribe came out just before a wave of student sit-ins across the south and just before the fr## sp##ch movement launched in Berkeley.
So things can change quickly. Of course, they can change very quickly in a direction you don't like just as easily as in a direction your do like.
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>parboiled
Climate change: Carbon emissions from rich countries rose rapidly in 2021 - BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58897805
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Prince William blasts billionaire space race, urges focus on saving Earth
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/prince-william-blasts-billionaire-space-race-urges-focus-saving-earth-rcna2996
But, Willie, Bill Gates proposed seeding the atmosphere as a sunblock (similar to how Sahara dust reduces Atlantic hurricane development) and all the countries screamed NOoooo!
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"Transitioning to green energy will take time. Meanwhile, governments bring back the dirtiest of fossil fuels."
Coal returns from the dead to power the world as renewables fall short
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coal-returns-from-the-dead-to-power-the-world-as-renewables-fall-short-11635338557
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I was just looking at planned fossil fuel projects through 2030 for coal, oil and gas in exajoules of new capacity from this report:
https://productiongap.org/2021report/
China: -4.8
India: +7.4
US: +4.7
Germany: -0.6
Norway: -0.3
Russia: +7.9
Canada: +1.2
Some are adding a lot of coal
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China is miffed at AU and has switched to RU for its coal.
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COP26: India rejects net zero emissions target
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/29/cop26-india-rejects-net-zero-emissions-target-modi-off-to-climate-talks.html
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World needs $5 trillion in annual climate finance by 2030 for rapid action
https://www.trtworld.com/life/world-requires-5-trillion-by-2030-to-fight-climate-crisis-51133
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I'm listening to the new The Economist podcast on climate. A recent episode was on finance and the role it plays.
The hard part is that
1. Though investment in efforts to reduce and mitigate the impacts of climate pays off in the long run, the long run might be quite long
2. The benefits of the mitigation efforts might accrue to those who invest, but the benefits of reduction efforts accrue to everyone
3. The benefits of NOT working on reduction accrues to the people (you and me for example) who use more than our fair share now
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Yes, There Has Been Progress on Climate. No, It’s Not Nearly Enough.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/25/climate/world-climate-pledges-cop26.html
In 2014, Climate Action Tracker estimated that the world was on track for nearly 4 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100, compared with preindustrial levels.
Warming of 4 degrees has long been deemed a worst-case scenario. One assessment by the World Bank explored the risks, such as cascading global crop failures, and bluntly concluded that 4 degrees “simply must not be allowed to occur.”
This year, however, Climate Action Tracker painted a more optimistic picture, because countries have started doing more to restrain their emissions. Current policies put the world on pace for roughly 2.9 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100. (That’s a best estimate: the potential range is between 2.1 degrees and 3.9 degrees Celsius.)
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As "India’s economy expands in energy-intensive sectors, the country’s electricity demand will rise so sharply that it cannot yet afford to abandon cheap coal power, the source of 70 percent of its electricity, for several decades."
India announced ambitious renewable energy plans. It will also rely on coal for decades to come. - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/11/04/india-cop26-renewables-electricity/
The fossil fuel problem is not going to be solved in 2nd-3rd world countries unless someone develops a cheaper, plug-n-play pun alternative like DK's nuked molten salt.
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Pledges and vows are cheap & easy.
Banks are still financing fossil fuels – while signing up to net zero pledges | Mariana Mazzucato | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/04/banks-are-still-financing-fossil-fuels-while-signing-up-to-net-zero-pledges
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I was just listening to an interview with a finance person who is credible who did an analysis and said he came down to believing that ESG funds do more harm than good on climate. In many cases, they can make the cut by just having good corporate governance and there's no real signal being sent to the company about specific things, notably climate. Many of the ESG funds he looked at included Exxon and similar.
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PM Modi Sets 2070 Net Zero Target, Demands USD 1 Trillion Climate Finance
https://www.news18.com/news/india/pm-modi-sets-2070-net-zero-target-demands-usd-1-trillion-climate-finance-4392710.html
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~50 fucken years? Please tell me we won't pay for this nonsense.
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COP26: Rich countries ‘pushing back’ on paying for climate loss - BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59206814
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Climate on track to devastate world’s poorest economies: Study | Al Jazeera
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/8/climate-on-track-to-devastate-worlds-poorest-economies-study
Prediction of the Climate Change-driven Exodus of the Town of Tangier, the Last Offshore Island Fishing Community in Virginia's Chesapeake Bay.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2021.779774/full
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COP26: Rich countries ‘pushing back’ on paying for climate loss
This basic aspect has always been true. This was the stumbling block for George H.W. Bush. He fully accepted that *something* had to be done, but felt that the US was being asked to bear too much burden.
Looking at per capita emissions, lifetime historical emissions by county, who caused the damage versus who suffers the damage and almost everything I can think of, the weight of the moral argument is with the poor countries.
But set that aside for a second. Let's say we don't care about morality and ethics, we just want to do the practical thing. Paying for solutions that keep people in their birth countries and that limit the climate refugee problem, ultimately makes our border security a much simpler problem. Those solutions are probably cheaper in the long run than creating a Fortress America and Fortress Europe to keep all those people out.
And then there's the thing that rarely gets talked about. Many geo-engineering solutions are cheap, but rather dangerous. As a poor country faces existential threat, it will not be that expensive for that country to just launch a Hail Mary and dump copper sulfate into the ocean or some such thing in a last-ditch effort to save themselves, consequences on other nations be damned.
What goes around comes around eventually. I think we're more secure when they are more secure.
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>refugees
Man without a country.
Tuvalu looking at legal ways to be a state if it is submerged | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/tuvalu-looking-legal-ways-be-state-if-it-is-submerged-2021-11-09/
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"Actually meeting the far-off net-zero pledges would give humanity an even chance of limiting warming to about 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, the researchers say. But what countries are planning to do between now and 2030 makes those pledges impossible, and would lead to warming of about 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit)."
U.N. emissions gap report estimates global warming trajectory at 2.5 degrees C - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/11/09/cop26-un-emissions-gap/
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If the fossil fuel lobby were a country, it would be the largest delegation at COP 26
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/11/8/greenwashing_at_glasgow_un_climate_summit
“We don’t allow tobacco lobbyists into health conferences, so it begs the question why fossil fuel lobbyists are being allowed into the most important climate conference in a generation,” says Wilson.
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>refugees
UK: Frustration, defiance in village to be abandoned to the sea
https://apnews.com/article/climate-rising-sea-levels-wales-8c83d4e60018190a79afb263d64a9d8e
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Developing nations say they're owed for climate damage. Richer nations aren't budging
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/11/11/npr-climate-change-cop26-loss-and-damage
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Out of time: Climate talks go past deadline over coal, cash | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
https://www.post-gazette.com/news/environment/2021/11/12/Out-of-time-Climate-talks-go-past-deadline-over-coal-cash/stories/202111120145
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Shell plans to move its HQ to the UK, amid scrutiny of its taxes and emissions.
Shell to move HQ to London, in historic shift amid energy transition
https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/shell-to-move-hq-to-london-in-historic-shift-amid-energy-transition-11636973672458.html
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Worth a read.
Some Companies Net-Zero Pledges Aren’t as Good as They Sound | Time
https://time.com/6117635/companies-net-zero-greenwash/
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EU Looks Into Blocking Out the Sun as Climate Change Efforts Falter - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-26/eu-looks-into-blocking-out-the-sun-as-climate-efforts-falter
paywall, but the title pretty much says it all.
The European Union will join an international effort to assess whether large-scale interventions such as deflecting the sun’s rays or changing the Earth’s weather patterns are viable options for fighting climate change.
The bloc will announce a framework Wednesday for assessing the security implications of a rapidly warming planet, such as the potential for scarce water or food to trigger conflict and migration, according to a draft document seen by Bloomberg. Part of that assessment includes studying the potential dangers of re-engineering the atmosphere.
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This is a case where it is important to differentiate global warming from the general. Blocking out the sun can help with temperature, but it doesn't help with ocean acidification and other issues.
Still, it may be better to do something to slow down rising temps and oceans and then deal with the acidification and similar problems later. This gets at the nub of the moral hazard issue with blocking the sun though. If it seems to work for temperature, will people just kick the can down the road and let the oceans acidify?
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>will people just kick the can down the road and let the oceans acidify?
In your heart of hearts you know they will.
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It was mostly a rhetorical question.
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White House releases report on solar geoengineering
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/30/white-house-releases-report-on-solar-geoengineering.html