Is Climate Change Impacting Your Long Term Planning?

[S John]

We garden a bit, long term I really want to live in a more rural area and expand that.  I’ve always kinda wanted chickens too.  Wife has an aunt that lives about an hour from here in the Hill Country and they have solar panels and a water catchment system which are both things that I’d love to invest in long term.  I just need to secure the living spot I want, and I have been actively working towards that.

There also have been two recent local incidents that really got me thinking about stuff like this.  First was Hurricane Harvey.  Even though Austin didn’t get much more than some downed tree branches and a bunch of rain, the situation in Houston, particularly with regard to concerns about the oil supply, caused people to panic and everyone went and filled up thier gas tanks at once.  Even though there were no major storm related issues in Austin everyone panicking caused the local gas supply to run out completely.  I was legitimately low on gas and skipped filling up on the way home because there were lines around the block, and when I came back later in the evening it was out at multiple stations.  Pretty amazing that just the thought of a large scale issue created a herd mentality and a REAL issue.

Similarly, a few months ago Austin had a boil water warning that lasted a little over a week.  It rained so much that the filtration systems couldn’t keep up.  Again, not a major crisis, you could always just boil your tap water, but people went ape shit and every grocery store sold out of every drop of water, quickly, for multiple days.  I was in Amarillo for work which wasn’t affected at all so I loaded up with water up there to bring home.

Anyway, neither ended up being a major thing for my household but both were lessons in being prepared and a warning of just how quickly the whole fucking thing can unravel in a real crisis. 

[ThinkerX]

Getting older and my health isn't that great anymore.  Still...

 

I've thought for a while I might have it in me yet to build a cabin, maybe two with a bit of help.  Thinking of the small lake on the backside of the old homestead.  The past couple of years, I've been giving more and more thought to this 'green energy' stuff, specifically the heating side of things - this is Alaska, after all.  Idea I'd like to try if bankruptcy doesn't set in first is a solar concentrator used to heat an underground water tank below the frost line, then tap into that to heat the cabin(s).  That far down, the ground is temperature neutral - get that tank heated up enough, and it should stay warm for quite a spell - maybe through most of the winter if done right.  Thinking combo of solar panels (almost midnight sun country here come summer) and using a wee bit of heat from the tank to run Stirling engines to put a trickle charge into batteries for the winter months. 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

It's impacting me, I suppose. I'm being more observant. When people start talking about their gun stashes for apocalypse (I live in Colorado so it comes up five times a day), I mentally take note. That's where I'll get my guns when things go to shit.

And if things don't go to shit, I don't have to spend my limited money on survival supplies. 

[Altherion]

In a word, no. If you look at history, human beings have never been good at predicting the future a quarter century out -- it's quite likely that most things we're worried about now will either be resolved and the problem will be something else entirely -- and it's not even guaranteed that any individual will make it that far. Thus, I don't spend time worrying about what will happen in a few decades from now.

That said, I'd love to have an electric car (not the low range ones, a Tesla or something of the sort), solar panels and a Powerwall-like battery to balance the usage. Unfortunately, at the moment I wouldn't have anywhere to charge the car and I don't own the roof of the building I live in. On the bright side, all of these technologies are still improving by leaps and bounds so hopefully I'll be in a position to make use of them once they hit the usual plateau.

[karaddin]

Our long term plan is moving to NZ, Auckland specifically. Auckland is a lot like Sydney and its climate is around 2-3C lower than Sydney so hopefully around what we like by the time Sydney is getting sufficiently awful for us to want to get out. We've already had winter shrink to 2 months of mild winter for the most part and summer is out to 4-5 months long and this summer was really oppressive. Add another 1.5C of warming and it won't be nice here.

[Rippounet]

4 hours ago, Altherion said:

If you look at history, human beings have never been good at predicting the future a quarter century out

If you think about it, that's actually highly debatable. There have always been *some* people who are very good at predicting what the world will look like (broadly speaking) in a few decades.

[DMC]

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

If you think about it, that's actually highly debatable. There have always been *some* people who are very good at predicting what the world will look like (broadly speaking) in a few decades.

It's not only highly debatable, it's just plain wrong.  People can and do predict future occurrences all the time.  People are also frequently wrong in their predictions of the future.  Altherion prefers to pick and choose which ones to latch onto as it's convenient and call it "good" science, because he's the ultimate arbiter of science and the rest of us are Jesse:

 

[OldGimletEye]

Please tell me we are not climate change deniers too. Dear lord. Face palm. No make that a double face palm.

8 hours ago, Altherion said:

In a word, no. If you look at history, human beings have never been good at predicting the future a quarter century out --

Well, things like math, the scientific method, and computers are of relatively recent vintage. You might have thought you made a point, but I don't think so.

8 hours ago, Altherion said:

 it's quite likely that most things we're worried about now will either be resolved

Explain how? We've known about this issue for at least about 4 decades now, and yet haven't been able to price carbon correctly to take into account the cost to future generations. Evidently, you feel that you can just completely disregard the latest IPCC report. 

Golly, anything could happen!

Quote

and it's not even guaranteed that any individual will make it that far. Thus, I don't spend time worrying about what will happen in a few decades from now.

I'm old enough, that before the shit really starts to hit the fan, there is a good chance I will have cashed in my chips. Surprising enough though, not everything is all about me, a real shocker I know. People a couple of decades younger than me are likely to be put in a bad spot. And some of those younger people I know personally and care about.

You're kind of like Charlie Sheen in a hotel room here. You'll trash the place without one iota of a thought about who needs to use it next.

[TrueMetis]

12 hours ago, Altherion said:

In a word, no. If you look at history, human beings have never been good at predicting the future a quarter century out -- it's quite likely that most things we're worried about now will either be resolved and the problem will be something else entirely -- and it's not even guaranteed that any individual will make it that far. Thus, I don't spend time worrying about what will happen in a few decades from now.

That said, I'd love to have an electric car (not the low range ones, a Tesla or something of the sort), solar panels and a Powerwall-like battery to balance the usage. Unfortunately, at the moment I wouldn't have anywhere to charge the car and I don't own the roof of the building I live in. On the bright side, all of these technologies are still improving by leaps and bounds so hopefully I'll be in a position to make use of them once they hit the usual plateau.

If it was resolved, then it turns out we're actually quite good a predicting the future, and so we took steps to solve the problem. Like the only way this makes sense, is if the predictions are correct and so we can properly take steps to resolve the problem. This sounds very much like the people, who after the CDC/WHO/other major health organization makes a prediction about an epidemic and takes major steps to deal with it so that nothing serious happens, goes "well what was the big deal, why do we even need to spend money on infectious diseases if nothing bad happened anyway?

The quandary of being good a predicting the future, is that when we're good at it and use that ability to change what will happen, idiots will then claim we're bad a predicting the future. See idiots who point to what happened with the hole in the ozone layer to dispute climate change as the best example of this.

[Conflicting Thought]

For sure its impactin my long term planning, for example, its a big part of the reason for me not wanting to have kids.  And its also 100% affecting my mental state wich in turn affect my planning of future projects and expectations. 

[lokisnow]

14 hours ago, Triskele said:

@lokisnow could I ask what year your Leaf was?

I actually have a Leaf as well because my employer made a deal with Nissan and also gives us free charging so I had a big incentive to get this particular model at a moment when I was in the market for a new car.  

I have always been notionally down with electric cars but was steered towards this purchase.  I do hate the limited range on this car, but I almost exclusively use it for a 5-ish mile commute, and for that it's just great.

To the thread more generally I have not done much, but I worry about living in SoCal and figure it could get hit hard as far as US locations go.  

2014

[Cas Stark]

Add me to the list of 'not selling the remnants of the family farm'. 

[lokisnow]

Electric cars are actually reaching an interesting and untalked  about inflection point in 2019, depending on how many cars Tesla and BYD sell this year, electric cars will represent 2.5-5% of the entire fleet of vehicles sold.

The inflection point is the crossover where the global total of electric car sales is greater than the total year over year GROWTH of the entire global sales.

so if in 2018 90,000,000 cars are sold (2 million are EVs) and then in 2019 92,000,000 cars are sold, but 3,500,000 are electric cars, manufacturers will have actually sold only 500,000 more ICE cars than the year before, and in 2020 they will inevitably sell fewer ICE cars than they did in 2019–the end of growth In that market.  (At the current Electric car growth rate of 70% year over year, 2020 should see about 5.95 million electric cars sold, about 7-9% market share)

in other words, assuming market growth of electric cars remains on trend, ICE manufacturing of new cars is peaking this year, and every year thereafter will see the manufacture and sale of fewer ICE cars than the year before.

In the past couple years, this has been almost inconceivable because the overall fleet growth of ICE more than swamped the market share growth of electric, but it’s happening now and it’s quite sudden and it’s also partially why the big traditional manufacturers are currently scrambling to roll out electric models, because they’ve realized they may have hit a sales peak of ICE and are in danger of becoming Nokia because they’re not ready for electric.

[Maithanet]

26 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Electric cars are actually reaching an interesting and untalked  about inflection point in 2019, depending on how many cars Tesla and BYD sell this year, electric cars will represent 2.5-5% of the entire fleet of vehicles sold.

The inflection point is the crossover where the global total of electric car sales is greater than the total year over year GROWTH of the entire global sales.

so if in 2018 90,000,000 cars are sold (2 million are EVs) and then in 2019 92,000,000 cars are sold, but 3,500,000 are electric cars, manufacturers will have actually sold only 500,000 more ICE cars than the year before, and in 2020 they will inevitably sell fewer ICE cars than they did in 2019–the end of growth In that market.  (At the current Electric car growth rate of 70% year over year, 2020 should see about 5.95 million electric cars sold, about 7-9% market share)

That is interesting, I hadn't thought about it that way.  Although expecting growth to continue at 70% seems exceedingly optimistic.  Electric vehicles are still quite expensive, the incentives are starting to go away, and lots of people are resistant to electric vehicles.  Not to say I don't expect it to continue to grow, but I'd be very surprised if they can maintain even 50% year over year growth over the next three years.  Hell, even 30% sounds high to me. 

But the electrification of vehicles has two huge impacts for climate change: 

1. It puts more pressure on the necessity of greening of the electric grid. 

2. It provides a lot more money behind the (seemingly eternal) push to build a better, cheaper battery.  Even a small improvement in batteries can earn billions of dollars, and if any company achieves a significant leap in the technology, they could be the next Apple or Exxon Mobil. 

[Maithanet]

Looking into the issue further, I think I suffered from too much of a US market bias.  EVs have really exploded in China and Europe in the past two years.  EVs made up 1.3% of new vehicle sales in the EU in 2016, and that has increased to 2.5% by 2018.  In China, it has increased from 1.3% to 4.1% in those two years.  That is a huge change. 

I have no idea if that growth can or will continue (my suspicion is that it won't, but again, I really have no idea).  Very interesting. 

[lokisnow]

10 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

That is interesting, I hadn't thought about it that way.  Although expecting growth to continue at 70% seems exceedingly optimistic.  Electric vehicles are still quite expensive, the incentives are starting to go away, and lots of people are resistant to electric vehicles.  Not to say I don't expect it to continue to grow, but I'd be very surprised if they can maintain even 50% year over year growth over the next three years.  Hell, even 30% sounds high to me. 

But the electrification of vehicles has two huge impacts for climate change: 

1. It puts more pressure on the necessity of greening of the electric grid. 

2. It provides a lot more money behind the (seemingly eternal) push to build a better, cheaper battery.  Even a small improvement in batteries can earn billions of dollars, and if any company achieves a significant leap in the technology, they could be the next Apple or Exxon Mobil. 

Most of the growth is in the global market, which doesn’t have the same subsidy loss Tesla and gm are suffering in the us in 2019, particularly in China where there are a half dozen manufacturers making tons of Evs you’ll never see in the west. And a lot of the growth comes from traditional manufacturors getting into the game. Tesla can’t keep up with global demand for their vehicles, their US factory is maxed out at about 700,000 a year and the China factory they’re building can’t do more than about 500,000. Still that gives them growth capacity through 2021 at least. And by that time they’ll probbly be bringing a Europe factory in to help satisfy demand in that market.

the most vulnerable ice manufacturors are Toyota and Ford, Ford because it’s basically ignored electric outside of compliance cars and Toyota because they went all in on hydrogen fuel cells and are getting fucked as a result. (Hydrogen fuel cells may be a more ideal solution for long haul trucking than batteries though, but Toyota isn’t poised to make that transisiton)

Toyota is suffering a double whammy from tesla in the Us as they’re losing massive numbers of Prius and Audi customers to the model 3, and they never saw it coming 

[lokisnow]

7 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Looking into the issue further, I think I suffered from too much of a US market bias.  EVs have really exploded in China and Europe in the past two years.  EVs made up 1.3% of new vehicle sales in the EU in 2016, and that has increased to 2.5% by 2018.  In China, it has increased from 1.3% to 4.1% in those two years.  That is a huge change. 

I have no idea if that growth can or will continue (my suspicion is that it won't, but again, I really have no idea).  Very interesting. 

The loss of growth in China market sales to EVS has done more to get ICE manufacturors on board with serious electric volumes more than any market condition in the US or in europe. They thought they were going to grow sales forever in China and they’re having shrinking sales instead.

[IheartIheartTesla]

The US is the big personal car market of course, and it makes sense for Tesla to break here. However, China has been making big strides in EV buses for instance (again, probably has more impact in China since they travel by bus more I imagine). So yes, there is stuff happening around the world.

You know, half of my job is in the general area of carbon mitigation, but I've never really given any thought to planning. I tend to think of it as something my 3 kids will have to navigate more. So I would rather help them plan for the future rather than do much planning for myself. I'd encourage them to settle in some place that will be buffered from climate change, at least for the interim. And I'd make sure they have better skills than I do at handling extreme conditions.

[lokisnow]

11 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Looking into the issue further, I think I suffered from too much of a US market bias.  EVs have really exploded in China and Europe in the past two years.  EVs made up 1.3% of new vehicle sales in the EU in 2016, and that has increased to 2.5% by 2018.  In China, it has increased from 1.3% to 4.1% in those two years.  That is a huge change. 

I have no idea if that growth can or will continue (my suspicion is that it won't, but again, I really have no idea).  Very interesting. 

Norway is also an interesting case, I think most of the last year more than 50% of cars sold were electric (Bev+PhEV), and overall they’ve gotten their entire vehicle fleet to something like 15% electric with their incentives, that’s amazing, and applicable to many other countries if they want to commit at the scale Norway did.

[Kalbear]

Honestly EVs are so much fun to drive and so little hassle I'd be shocked if they dont take off soon in the US. Not everywhere - Americans love their shitty SUVs - but quite a bit. 

Seattle is chock full of em.