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Climate: Il fait VRAIMENT CHAUD (fka un petit)


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2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I would assume/hope that this means climate change will be an important issue in your next major elections (sorry, have no idea when that'll be) and that should the Conservatives stubbornly refuse to embrace the need to transition, they will lose - thus forcing them to turn around for the next cycle.
I think that's the way it should happen, i.e. at some point, no political party will have the capacity to risk ignoring the issue, so populations will then get to choose who they think can be efficient at dealing with it.
Of course, alternatively, humans are just too dumb to react to the threat and our species disappears around the end of the century, but that's a bit dark, even for me. There will always be islands of dumbfuckery of course, but I would hope that they progressively dwindle and become negligible.

That would require an opposition that cared about climate change. In a functional two party system, bipartisan apathy is pretty effective at disarming any impetus for action. Maybe over the long term it will see another party take over the left position, but that's going to take time.

I live in one of the most left dominant seats in the country, my local member used to pretend to be progressive but is now the opposition leader. When we in his electorate were choking on smoke from catastrophic fires our conservative PM was in Hawaii on holidays and our "progressive" opposition leader was out of the state literally doing a tour of coal mines in Queensland and giving the PM a complete pass. So yeah, they're as useless as the conservatives.

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  • 2 weeks later...

On the 16 year anniversary of hurricane Katrina's landfall, hurricane Ida is hitting Louisiana as another near cat5 hurricane that formed 3 days ago. Super-rapid intensification. Plus a COVID spike with full hospitals that could not evacuate. Hope any boarders in the region are safe.

:frown5: Also seeing a lot of pictures on Twitter of homeless, unsheltered folks still out in the street in New Orleans.

Edited by Week
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Exciting advancements in offshore wind turbines. These next-gen sea platforms can be cable tethered to the seabed and kept upright with ballast. 

One advantage that offers is they can put these giant turbines much further out into the sea where more wind energy can be captured than the near shore turbines in use now and that are restricted to the much more shallow littoral coastlines.

Here's better detail about these, which also I may add can generate several hundred percent more energy than our current turbines.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90672135/this-wildly-reinvented-wind-turbine-generates-five-times-more-energy-than-its-competitors

Edited by DireWolfSpirit
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  • 6 months later...

We're all doomed. Happy Monday!

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/04/ipcc-report-now-or-never-if-world-stave-off-climate-disaster

Quote

Greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, and can be nearly halved this decade, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to give the world a chance of limiting future heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

The IPCC working group 3 report found:

  • Coal must be effectively phased out if the world is to stay within 1.5C, and currently planned new fossil fuel infrastructure would cause the world to exceed 1.5C.

  • Methane emissions must be reduced by a third.

  • Growing forests and preserving soils will be necessary, but tree-planting cannot do enough to compensate for continued emissions for fossil fuels.

  • Investment in the shift to a low-carbon world is about six times lower than it needs to be.

  • All sectors of the global economy, from energy and transport to buildings and food, must change dramatically and rapidly, and new technologies including hydrogen fuel and carbon capture and storage will be needed.

Edited by IheartIheartTesla
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One quote I read was that to avoid >1.5 Deg C by the end of the century emissions need to be cut by 45% by 2030. However we are currently no course for a 14% increase. If what I read is true, individual demonstrative action, like installing solar panels on your house, or driving an EV is merely a show of solidarity rather than meaningful action. I support such acts at the individual level, but community and institutional action are the only things that can have a proper impact.

The socio-political status quo is incapable of delivering the emissions changes that are needed. The only vestige of hope that remains is that the modelling is an order of magnitude wrong in over-estimating either the warming effect of the next 50+ years of emissions or the consequences of that warming effect. I don't expect to live for another 50 years, but I think the 27 years the actuarial tables estimate of what remains of my life will mean I get to live to see at least the start of the really serious consequences (as if the current consequences are not serious enough) of our collective inaction.

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1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

One quote I read was that to avoid >1.5 Deg C by the end of the century emissions need to be cut by 45% by 2030. However we are currently no course for a 14% increase. If what I read is true, individual demonstrative action, like installing solar panels on your house, or driving an EV is merely a show of solidarity rather than meaningful action. I support such acts at the individual level, but community and institutional action are the only things that can have a proper impact.

Yes. A while ago I read Bill Gate's book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, which is a pretty good read. I strongly disagree with the extent in which Bill Gates advocates that the solution lies with technology, but I do agree with his assessment that it will be virtually impossible to get the world to take an energy austerity approach to the problem, and certainly not in time for it to make any real difference. But the book itself did a nice succinct overview of the problems we face in dealing with climate change.

Anyway, I looked at some goodread reviews, and a common criticism of the book is that Gates constantly invoked government entities, and said little about what individuals could do - mostly he said to contact your local representative and lobby for regulatory changes. And quite a few readers were unhappy with this. But I think it is an accurate representation of how things are. The way developed and developing nations are structured, it takes a Herculean task to minimize one's carbon footprint on a mere individual level. Nearly every part of our societies are built around some carbon generating source. To address that requires regulation and government action.

Which is not something that will occur. Human populations react to short term stimuli; we are very poor at addressing things in the long term.

I personally believe that one of the few realistic ways we can address climate change that could make a significant difference in mitigating the worst effects is going full bore in nuclear energy. We would still experience many severe effects of climate change, but I think it would mitigate the problem relative to what it will be otherwise.

However, nuclear energy is still too unpopular and has too much of an upfront cost for this to be a probable undertaking. The irony of our future environmental catastrophe is that environmentalist groups will ultimately be a large part of why that catastrophe occurred.

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

The socio-political status quo is incapable of delivering the emissions changes that are needed. The only vestige of hope that remains is that the modelling is an order of magnitude wrong in over-estimating either the warming effect of the next 50+ years of emissions or the consequences of that warming effect. I don't expect to live for another 50 years, but I think the 27 years the actuarial tables estimate of what remains of my life will mean I get to live to see at least the start of the really serious consequences (as if the current consequences are not serious enough) of our collective inaction

As climate modeling improves, there seems to be a regular trend that the severity of climate change had previously been underestimated.

I'm 20 right now, so I will certainly be around to enjoy the fruits of what previous generations have accomplished, and it's incredibly depressing. 

 

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The problem we are starting to have with nuclear (fusion) is that even if countries completely embraced it as an energy solution the commissioning time and rate of building such plants almost certainly puts us well beyond 2030 to start having a significant emissions reduction impact. the number of nuclear plants that could come online before 2030 might, as an arse pull guess, take us from a 14% increase by 2030 to a 0% increase, but that still gets us no where near the 45% decrease the IPCC says we need.

That's kind of why I think a forlorn hope that the modelling is vastly overestimating the negative effects is all that's left. I don;t think there are any really globally impactful solutions that can be brought to bear in time.

Well I guess a different kind of nuclear solution could be brought to bear before 2030, but I doubt many people are advocating for that.

 

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5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

The only vestige of hope that remains is that the modelling is an order of magnitude wrong in over-estimating either the warming effect of the next 50+ years of emissions or the consequences of that warming effect. 

 

3 hours ago, IFR said:

As climate modeling improves, there seems to be a regular trend that the severity of climate change had previously been underestimated.

 

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

That's kind of why I think a forlorn hope that the modelling is vastly overestimating the negative effects is all that's left. I don;t think there are any really globally impactful solutions that can be brought to bear in time.

The modeling, as I've understood to the degree I can [I'm uneducated] seems nigh on bullseye insofar as consequences-- the issue with the models that I've seen are less what's going to happen and more when. Some scenarios are playing out sooner than expected, and in the case of polar ice melt for example, much sooner than expected. Some of the outcomes in the polar regions we're seeing now were anticipated decades from now.

I suspect this particular issue with the linearity of the modelling has less to do with the equations themselves and more to do with the disparity between real computing power vs the unified scale of the problem. You can cut a bite sized chunk of out an complex adaptive system to make your calculations easier to manage, sure, but even a hardly significant error or difference in any variable, or impact vulnerability, can subsequently turn into a daunting disparity once its exchanged across the entire interactive grid map.

Which scares the shit out of me frankly, because it suggests [to me] that a cascade isn't outside the realm of possibility either. And that's just like... fuck. Even if humanity could miraculously defeat competing capitalistic interests [hah] and somehow manage to work on the problem with a combined, singular will, and with the required materials already at hand [hah x 2] we still might not beat the clock because the clock could be wrong.     

Edited by JEORDHl
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1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

The problem we are starting to have with nuclear (fusion) is that even if countries completely embraced it as an energy solution the commissioning time and rate of building such plants almost certainly puts us well beyond 2030 to start having a significant emissions reduction impact. the number of nuclear plants that could come online before 2030 might, as an arse pull guess, take us from a 14% increase by 2030 to a 0% increase, but that still gets us no where near the 45% decrease the IPCC says we need

Cold fusion is still decades away, as it has always been since the 1950s.:P

But the time demands of building an infrastructure of nuclear power plants is dependent on the country. A large part of the notorious time frame for nuclear is the inconsistent regulatory framework that specifies how a plant can be built.

But yes, it's not an immediate solution. Neither are renewables. There are no immediate solutions except energy austerity, and that's not going to happen.

But nuclear is a solution to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, and far better than this pipe dream of relying entirely on renewables.

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5 hours ago, IFR said:

Cold fusion is still decades away, as it has always been since the 1950s.:P

But the time demands of building an infrastructure of nuclear power plants is dependent on the country. A large part of the notorious time frame for nuclear is the inconsistent regulatory framework that specifies how a plant can be built.

But yes, it's not an immediate solution. Neither are renewables. There are no immediate solutions except energy austerity, and that's not going to happen.

But nuclear is a solution to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, and far better than this pipe dream of relying entirely on renewables.

I meant fission, dang it. Even with fission the lag time between deciding to go nuclear and effectively replacing most GHG emission power generation is too long of a time scale to avert bad things happening. The nuclear replacement, insofar as it is possible, should have started at least 10 years ago. It still could be better late than never. Too late to stop bad things from happening, but in time to stop the worst case scenarios from happening.

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5 hours ago, JEORDHl said:

Which scares the shit out of me frankly, because it suggests [to me] that a cascade isn't outside the realm of possibility either. And that's just like... fuck.

Indeed.

If any feedback loop starts (or has started), we're truly fucked. And the permafrost is melting faster than expected in Russia, so I'm not even sure whether "if" is correct anymore.

Quote

 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/17/the-great-siberian-thaw

In May, Russia’s environmental minister proposed a nationwide system to monitor climate-induced changes in the permafrost, noting that its thaw could cause more than sixty billion dollars’ worth of damage to the country’s infrastructure by 2050. The next month, Vladimir Putin, who in 2003 had remarked that global warming simply means “we’ll spend less on fur coats,” said of the country’s permafrost zone, “We have entire cities built on permafrost in the Arctic. If it all starts to thaw, what consequences will Russia face? Of course, we are concerned.”

 

Permafrost being the "wild card" of IPCC predictions, there's a very real possibility that global warming will be much quicker than anticipated.
I expect +3° to +4° in my lifetime, i.e. within the next 50 years.

What does this all mean?
Imho, we should prepare for the worst (and hope for the best). Form citizens' committees to prepare, stock food (at least for 2 weeks, 2 months if possible), identify local sources of water, food, and energy and learn about how they work, be prepared to react and help as soon as shit hits the fan. A coordinated group of skilled humans can work wonders, even in the most dire situations. Organizing will be key, so some knowledge of direct democracy is in order.
Preparing for the collapse of human societies is no longer the hysterical obsession of fringe lunatics: it is the most sensible course of action for people who understand the information they have. Our governments are doing jack shit (only defense ministries seem to be making actual plans, and they are generally not about helping civilians first and foremost), and many are even busy making them worse.
And before anyone can tell you that developed countries will be fine... Even if they were spared by some cosmic miracle (which they won't be: our crops will be hit hard), we're about to face an unprecedent human migration. Imho the World Bank's numbers are too conservative and we're talking of at least 200 million refugees for the US and the EU each in the next two decades. At least. In some specific circumstances, that number could be doubled.
This is going to be very messy. It may seem futile to prepare for the end of civilisation as we know it, but it is essential. Not just for our personal survival in the short-term, but for the recovery in the long-term. We're heading for decades or centuries of difficult conditions, with the first few decades being the toughest (I think it's reasonable to expect between 1 and 3 billion deaths). The plans we can make today, even the most rudimentary ones, may be the seeds necessary for our grand-grandchildren to build something better from the ruins.
It's the least we can do, really.
 

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Christ, that's bleak Rip. I have been having those thoughts in the back of my mind as the models improve and impacts are realized sooner and sooner. We can all make our own decisions - but, for me, it affirms the decision to not have kids. My wife and I joke that we were never consulted before we were brought into this world and 'forced' to work soulless jobs -- that joke takes a completely different tack when considering impending calamities that are all but assured within the next 50 years.

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2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I meant fission, dang it.

:lol:

Fusion is the elusive carrot of hope constantly being dangled though. I see frequent news of the latest fusion breakthroughs. If only it were an option, life would be so much easier. At least in some respects.

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

The nuclear replacement, insofar as it is possible, should have started at least 10 years ago. It still could be better late than never. Too late to stop bad things from happening, but in time to stop the worst case scenarios from happening.

This is precisely what I'm driving at. We are not going to avoid many of the problems climate change will bring.

I share a lot of Rippounet's pessimism.

I would go so far as to say the belief that we can avoid going over 1.5C is delusional. It's possible in theory, but only if you are working outside our current global sociopolitical framework. Avoiding 2C is wildly optimistic.

I think under 2.5C is feasible in the timeline that the world performs a 180 turn and embraces nuclear energy. But this won't happen.

From an Occidental point of view, the environmentalists treating renewables as some magic bullet that will somehow solve our problems is highly damaging. There will be a continuous tug-of-war as we ineptly attempt to transition into renewables, but find ourselves clinging to fossil fuels as a baseline means of energy production.

This attitude will percolate into developing countries, which will continue to increase in their energy demands, while also using fossil fuels as a baseline. A large infrastructure of renewables will be established, but we'll find that it isn't nearly enough. It's a fig leaf, something to allow people to pretend that they are addressing the problem.

At some point the public may realize that nuclear is the way to go. But then 3C or higher may be unavoidable no matter what we do.

Edited by IFR
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1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Indeed.

If any feedback loop starts (or has started), we're truly fucked. And the permafrost is melting faster than expected in Russia, so I'm not even sure whether "if" is correct anymore.

Permafrost being the "wild card" of IPCC predictions, there's a very real possibility that global warming will be much quicker than anticipated.
I expect +3° to +4° in my lifetime, i.e. within the next 50 years.

Yup. Methane dissipates quicker, but It is worse than CO2 in this regard. A few other things that are difficult to model for are interactive vegetation and fire season, the latter of which gets more obscene every year. I hate to say it, like it literally pains me, but it certainly feels like you’re right and we’re already within a feedback loop.

 

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

This is going to be very messy. It may seem futile to prepare for the end of civilisation as we know it, but it is essential. Not just for our personal survival in the short-term, but for the recovery in the long-term. We're heading for decades or centuries of difficult conditions, with the first few decades being the toughest (I think it's reasonable to expect between 1 and 3 billion deaths). The plans we can make today, even the most rudimentary ones, may be the seeds necessary for our grand-grandchildren to build something better from the ruins.
It's the least we can do, really.
 

 

Mmn. Which is the main reason I’m against increasing nuclear energy. If we don’t decommission them in time for whatever reason, significantly irradiated areas of the world aren’t going to help future generations either.

Edited by JEORDHl
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3 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Mmn. Which is the main reason I’m against increasing nuclear energy. If we don’t decommission them in time for whatever reason, significantly irradiated areas of the world aren’t going to help future generations either.

I don't say this to be insulting, but this is a not uncommon viewpoint that is rooted in a deep misunderstanding of the risks of modern nuclear energy.

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I’d only be insulted by that if I was operating under a conceit that I understood everything lol

I would like to understand, however, the thought that development of the nuclear power at the scale your suggesting is possible without exacerbating climate impacts, for one, and how civilized society breaking down isn’t counterproductive to the continued distribution of the energy. 
 

It really doesn’t feel like most people are getting how disruptive, and violent, the eventual breakdown of civil society will be. 
 

Edited by JEORDHl
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