Climate Change III - The Power of Chaos

[Rippounet]

41 minutes ago, Ran said:

And here we get to your economic degrowth biases. If things can be produced cleanly, as increasingly they are, then why do you care if demand for production goes up?

I just explained why with the very clear example of electricity production.

Conversely, why is it so important for you that production keep going up? What does it symbolize on a personal level, that you would be unable to see that production is inherently destructive? Obviously, it can only be made "clean" up to a point. The physical reality is that production, by definition, implies taking and transforming raw materials. It's not just that the environmental impact of production can never be 0 (unless we change the very laws of physics), it's also that we are still very very far from anything "clean." We haven't even managed to get rid of coal yet, because the demands are just too high.
I think it's worth underlining this: we've barely stabilized the use of the fuel we used to start the industrial revolution, that's how little we've moved in over two centuries. Sure, we've developed "incredible" new, cleaner technologies, but on a global scale, they've pretty much always been added to the old, dirty ones, which means that, on a global scale, progress on the environmental front has largely been an illusion - possibly even a communication strategy.

The other physical reality one must acknowledge is that destruction/pollution is cumulative. To be candid, that's the key fact that changed everything in my eyes. For a long time, without even realizing it, I was used to assuming that the planet had some kind of regenerative mechanism that meant that things would be fine if we just made production a little bit cleaner.
And then, when looking at the facts, I realized that is not how reality works. The destruction/pollution of the past remains, and the destruction/pollution of today is added to it. That's why the "incredible" gains you have in mind barely have any actual impact and why I tend to say that "nothing is done," because we still haven't found a way to help the environment regenerate.
Even if we stopped allemissions tomorrow, temperatures and ocean levels would still rise for quite some time. There's a kind of inertia to the whole system that is terrifying, because we've totally overwhelmed the ability of the environment to heal itself.

At the same time, what we've managed to bring down so far is the rate of growth of the destruction/pollution. Not the destruction/pollution itself, but the rate. at. which. it. grows. That's why thinking we can still keep economic growth (as defined today) is absolutely absurd. Or, to be more accurate, it's dogma, because growth is associated with social progress, and it's common to assume that de-growth means shortages and poverty - human misery.

41 minutes ago, Ran said:

Estimates from 2006 about how much solar power generation would exist by 2020 was off by 3000%. Estimates about how much wind-power would exist was off by 400%. We are at essentially the very start of a global transition to renewables, with some estimates placing renewable energy as providing 60% of all electricity by 2035, and 80-90% of all electricity by 2050.

I don't know about past estimates, but the ones you're giving for the future are not just optimistic: they're close to materially impossible - unless our use of minerals improves by a factor of 3 to 10 (on average) and/or our electricity demands goes down.

It's not me saying that, though I have checked some of the numbers myself. Experts and reports all say the same when they take into account the issue of raw materials: we will never be able to produce 80-90% of 30,000 TWh with renewables. From what I understand, we could come close to doing it once. Once. By that I mean that we may have the resources to build the solar panels, the wind turbines, and the batteries to make global electricity production and transportation green. Then we'd watch everything deteriorate without having anymore raw materials to replace it, and we'd have to either mine other minerals that would somehow work, or switch to yet another energys ource. That is why everyone is talking about nuclear energy: without it, we may quickly slide back, technologically.

The French left has reluctantly had to acknowledge that btw. It was anti-nuclear for a long while (which is why we'e been so slow to develop new nuclear generators) and was pushing for 80-90% of renewables, but several reports from both governmental and non-governmental organizations were recently released, and they all pointed out that even if the electricity demand did go down, it would still not be possible to rely on renewables that much ; the absolute minimum of nuclear electricity is somewhere around 30%, but the scenario that ended up being pushed forward comes closer to 50% - and that still requires a decrease in electricity demand. That's for France, obviously, but even if there are some countries that can get more from renewables, the maths works the same for most.

41 minutes ago, Ran said:

In his 2015 reassessment, which he has used as recently as 2023, the number is more like 1.5 of 9 -- biochemical outflows of nitrogen and phosphorous and the genetic half of biodiversity.

Not quite. Steffen et al's 2015 paper redefined the concept to look at whether humanity can "push the Earth system into a new state," in other words it looks at the lasting damage caused by humanity. However, planetary boundaries are more commonly used to look at whether humanity is safely operating within those boundaries for itself, as in Persson et al's 2022 paper. Rockström's Stockholm Resilience Center has a page where they listed various documents, to help understand that the concept can be used in different ways ; you'll notice that there are different graphs on that page, and they're all true, they just use the same concept for different purposes.

41 minutes ago, Ran said:

The thing that gets me is that when I listen to Rockström or read his colleague Michael Mann (of "hockey stick" fame), they both sound a great deal more optimistic than you present yourself are. But then, Michael Mann has specifically called out "doomism" among those concerned about the environment, which can lead them astray due to an unfounded sense of panic.

Funnily enough I've been reading about communication strategy lately, and one book I read had interviews with Mann. From a communication perspective, it's very clear that one should be careful not to show pessimism - it is counter-productive. Mann seems to have gotten to this point because of the countless death threats he received.

The problem was well described a few threads ago, by Kal I think: if you're too optimistic, people will assume the problem will be solved without them getting involved in any way, but if you're too pessimistic you'll be accused of being a doomsday prophet and people won't even listen to what you're saying - or want to kill you. Whatever you say, you "lose" some people, not necessarily the same people, although the facts are unpleasant enough for that to be the case at times.

I didn't come to this forum with the intent to convince anyone and thus never considered it my "job" to be careful not to get into "doomism." That's on me, because I always assumed that the facts were clear enough for anyone to accept. But that's not how things work, either, and I've had to think about the deeper implications of the environmental crisis on a philosophical level to understand why the facts arent getting through to people, and that's on top of the obvious ideological dimension of the problem.

4 hours ago, Ran said:

It's not the facts that I'm not taking seriously.

I'm sure that's what you believe, but presenting my positions as "doomism" is a convenient way to dismiss many of the facts that I'm communicating. And while I can be guilty of something comparable at times (not being a professional, at least not yet), it would be a false equivalence to think I'm doing the same thing as you do. All the folks I'm reading or talking with absolutely acknowledge that there's been progress, and that there are many reasons to be hopeful. It's just that, absent a technological miracle tomorrow, technological progress can never be enough to prevent what's already happening, nor will it be enough to prevent things from getting significantly worse in the near future. It also won't be enough for everyone to adapt to a very different global climate.
Much damage has already been done, and it won't get better from here ; what we're now discussing is how to prevent exponentially terrible damage in the future, twenty or thirty years from now.
In a nutshell, the trick here is to accept what's already happened, and what it means, while remaining hopeful that we can still stop it from getting much much worse after 2050. You can't avoid some degree of pessimism, because despite climate change being very real, environmental awareness still barely translates into the political sphere today. But you must still remain optimistic about the possibility of that happening in the next decades.
I'm not talking about technological progress, which is part of the solution but will not suffice, nor about spending a few hundred billions here and there for "green" projects, but about what amounts to a socio-economic and philosophical revolution. Growth is bad. Production will always be harmful. We can find an infinite number of ways to be happy without growth and with far less production. It's actually quite simple, which is why I remain hopeful.

And just in case you want to go back to ad hominem attacks, here are a few articles from today's Le Monde:

- Climate: major oil companies are quietly backtracking on their environmental pledges.
- Op-ed: "The time has come for post-growth and the satisfaction of basic human needs without exceeding planetary limits'
- United Kingom experiences the warmest month of June ever recorded.

Also stumbled upon this interesting video from "PBS Terra" called "THIS Is the Safest Place to Live in the US as the Climate Changes" that sums up a number of things rather nicely. Feel free to accuse the scientists interviewed in the video of "doomism," that won't be on me. They also have a decent video on the wet bulb effect too.

Anyway, as I wrote before on this thread, it's not the end of the world, it's just the end of neo-liberalism. One way or the other, it's now an intellectual "zombie" to use Krugman's little witticism. I get that it's difficult to accept for those who've tied their notion of human dignity to growth, production, or work. In the final analysis, that's on them, and only them.

 

[ThinkerX]

My stance is a little grimmer: Inside of a century, humanity will be getting upwards of 80% of its power from renewables because the vast majority of the remaining fossil fuels will be too expensive or dangerous to extract. Power consumption WILL fall in line with this because there won't be any other choice.

I expect the mix between renewables and fossil fuels to hit the 50-50 mark circa 2040-2050, again because the fossil fuel supply situation won't allow for anything else.

[Conflicting Thought]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

I just explained why with the very clear example of electricity production.

Conversely, why is it so important for you that production keep going up? What does it symbolize on a personal level, that you would be unable to see that production is inherently destructive? Obviously, it can only be made "clean" up to a point. The physical reality is that production, by definition, implies taking and transforming raw materials. It's not just that the environmental impact of production can never be 0 (unless we change the very laws of physics), it's also that we are still very very far from anything "clean." We haven't even managed to get rid of coal yet, because the demands are just too high.
I think it's worth underlining this: we've barely stabilized the use of the fuel we used to start the industrial revolution, that's how little we've moved in over two centuries. Sure, we've developed "incredible" new, cleaner technologies, but on a global scale, they've pretty much always been added to the old, dirty ones, which means that, on a global scale, progress on the environmental front has largely been an illusion - possibly even a communication strategy.

The other physical reality one must acknowledge is that destruction/pollution is cumulative. To be candid, that's the key fact that changed everything in my eyes. For a long time, without even realizing it, I was used to assuming that the planet had some kind of regenerative mechanism that meant that things would be fine if we just made production a little bit cleaner.
And then, when looking at the facts, I realized that is not how reality works. The destruction/pollution of the past remains, and the destruction/pollution of today is added to it. That's why the "incredible" gains you have in mind barely have any actual impact and why I tend to say that "nothing is done," because we still haven't found a way to help the environment regenerate.
Even if we stopped allemissions tomorrow, temperatures and ocean levels would still rise for quite some time. There's a kind of inertia to the whole system that is terrifying, because we've totally overwhelmed the ability of the environment to heal itself.

At the same time, what we've managed to bring down so far is the rate of growth of the destruction/pollution. Not the destruction/pollution itself, but the rate. at. which. it. grows. That's why thinking we can still keep economic growth (as defined today) is absolutely absurd. Or, to be more accurate, it's dogma, because growth is associated with social progress, and it's common to assume that de-growth means shortages and poverty - human misery.

I don't know about past estimates, but the ones you're giving for the future are not just optimistic: they're close to materially impossible - unless our use of minerals improves by a factor of 3 to 10 (on average) and/or our electricity demands goes down.

It's not me saying that, though I have checked some of the numbers myself. Experts and reports all say the same when they take into account the issue of raw materials: we will never be able to produce 80-90% of 30,000 TWh with renewables. From what I understand, we could come close to doing it once. Once. By that I mean that we may have the resources to build the solar panels, the wind turbines, and the batteries to make global electricity production and transportation green. Then we'd watch everything deteriorate without having anymore raw materials to replace it, and we'd have to either mine other minerals that would somehow work, or switch to yet another energys ource. That is why everyone is talking about nuclear energy: without it, we may quickly slide back, technologically.

The French left has reluctantly had to acknowledge that btw. It was anti-nuclear for a long while (which is why we'e been so slow to develop new nuclear generators) and was pushing for 80-90% of renewables, but several reports from both governmental and non-governmental organizations were recently released, and they all pointed out that even if the electricity demand did go down, it would still not be possible to rely on renewables that much ; the absolute minimum of nuclear electricity is somewhere around 30%, but the scenario that ended up being pushed forward comes closer to 50% - and that still requires a decrease in electricity demand. That's for France, obviously, but even if there are some countries that can get more from renewables, the maths works the same for most.

Not quite. Steffen et al's 2015 paper redefined the concept to look at whether humanity can "push the Earth system into a new state," in other words it looks at the lasting damage caused by humanity. However, planetary boundaries are more commonly used to look at whether humanity is safely operating within those boundaries for itself, as in Persson et al's 2022 paper. Rockström's Stockholm Resilience Center has a page where they listed various documents, to help understand that the concept can be used in different ways ; you'll notice that there are different graphs on that page, and they're all true, they just use the same concept for different purposes.

Funnily enough I've been reading about communication strategy lately, and one book I read had interviews with Mann. From a communication perspective, it's very clear that one should be careful not to show pessimism - it is counter-productive. Mann seems to have gotten to this point because of the countless death threats he received.

The problem was well described a few threads ago, by Kal I think: if you're too optimistic, people will assume the problem will be solved without them getting involved in any way, but if you're too pessimistic you'll be accused of being a doomsday prophet and people won't even listen to what you're saying - or want to kill you. Whatever you say, you "lose" some people, not necessarily the same people, although the facts are unpleasant enough for that to be the case at times.

I didn't come to this forum with the intent to convince anyone and thus never considered it my "job" to be careful not to get into "doomism." That's on me, because I always assumed that the facts were clear enough for anyone to accept. But that's not how things work, either, and I've had to think about the deeper implications of the environmental crisis on a philosophical level to understand why the facts arent getting through to people, and that's on top of the obvious ideological dimension of the problem.

I'm sure that's what you believe, but presenting my positions as "doomism" is a convenient way to dismiss many of the facts that I'm communicating. And while I can be guilty of something comparable at times (not being a professional, at least not yet), it would be a false equivalence to think I'm doing the same thing as you do. All the folks I'm reading or talking with absolutely acknowledge that there's been progress, and that there are many reasons to be hopeful. It's just that, absent a technological miracle tomorrow, technological progress can never be enough to prevent what's already happening, nor will it be enough to prevent things from getting significantly worse in the near future. It also won't be enough for everyone to adapt to a very different global climate.
Much damage has already been done, and it won't get better from here ; what we're now discussing is how to prevent exponentially terrible damage in the future, twenty or thirty years from now.
In a nutshell, the trick here is to accept what's already happened, and what it means, while remaining hopeful that we can still stop it from getting much much worse after 2050. You can't avoid some degree of pessimism, because despite climate change being very real, environmental awareness still barely translates into the political sphere today. But you must still remain optimistic about the possibility of that happening in the next decades.
I'm not talking about technological progress, which is part of the solution but will not suffice, nor about spending a few hundred billions here and there for "green" projects, but about what amounts to a socio-economic and philosophical revolution. Growth is bad. Production will always be harmful. We can find an infinite number of ways to be happy without growth and with far less production. It's actually quite simple, which is why I remain hopeful.

And just in case you want to go back to ad hominem attacks, here are a few articles from today's Le Monde:

- Climate: major oil companies are quietly backtracking on their environmental pledges.
- Op-ed: "The time has come for post-growth and the satisfaction of basic human needs without exceeding planetary limits'
- United Kingom experiences the warmest month of June ever recorded.

Also stumbled upon this interesting video from "PBS Terra" called "THIS Is the Safest Place to Live in the US as the Climate Changes" that sums up a number of things rather nicely. Feel free to accuse the scientists interviewed in the video of "doomism," that won't be on me. They also have a decent video on the wet bulb effect too.

Anyway, as I wrote before on this thread, it's not the end of the world, it's just the end of neo-liberalism. One way or the other, it's now an intellectual "zombie" to use Krugman's little witticism. I get that it's difficult to accept for those who've tied their notion of human dignity to growth, production, or work. In the final analysis, that's on them, and only them.

 

i cant put the thank you emoji but thank you, its scary reading people like ran, becouse i think a lot of people think like that, a lot of people on developed countries think like that and its really fucking scary and depressing.

[The Anti-Targ]

Yeah, talking about emissions per capita is kind of nonsense. The climate operates globally which means total global emissions is what matters. The fact that the population keeps increasing means even a reduction in emissions per-capita in comparison to, say, 1990 could still mean a dangerous ongoing increase in total emissions. Thank the gods that the early century estimates of wind and solar power were out by a staggeringly large amount because if they were accurate things would be looking even more dire than they are.

We're not just going to run into raw material issues with wind and solar, we're going to run into geographic limitations, the easily accessed sunny and windy places in the world are going to be 

Environmental groups are taking far too long to come around to nuclear and they are being far too influential on energy policy makers making nuclear much harder to add to the mix of solutions that will see fossil fuel electricity generation eliminated in the necessary time-frame.

Pacific Island atolls are already in the shit. Apologia saying we're definitely getting better at reducing the rate of increase in global carbon emissions is cold comfort to those nations that are looking likely to entirely disappear, at least as geographic entities. Where the people will go is a question that needs to be considered right now and answered very soon. Luckily they are numerically small in number, several hundred thousand people at most. But so far no one it putting their hand up to provide the land to re-create their own country, or assimilate into existing countries. For a lot of countries the displacement will only be internal, retreating from coastlines. For those pacific atolls it will be total abandonment and relocation to somewhere else in the world.

[Ran]

9 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Yeah, talking about emissions per capita is kind of nonsense. The climate operates globally which means total global emissions is what matters.

Peak emissions from carbon energy generation is being reached by 2025-2030. It's going down from there, and the pace at which it will drop will be increasingly rapid. 

9 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Thank the gods that the early century estimates of wind and solar power were out by a staggeringly large amount because if they were accurate things would be looking even more dire than they are.

There's strong evidence that the estimates for the future are also still very wrong. Again, we are at the cusp of a total change in how most of the world gets its power. There is a snowball effect that I don't think a lot of people are taking into consideration.

9 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

We're not just going to run into raw material issues with wind and solar

There is no raw materials issue. The claim otherwise comes from doomers peddling radical degrowth.

No person on the coast of Bangladesh wants to hear that not only are you going to have to move inland as part of the cost of global energy production having outpaced advances in decarbonization for too long, but also don't you dare think that your  great-grandchildren will be substantially wealthier and healthier than you or your parents were (and in fact, probably just cut out any idea of having any great-grandchildren, too many people on Earth you know.)

9 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

we're going to run into geographic limitations, the easily accessed sunny and windy places in the world are going to be

Certainly, there's regions of the world that will have issues with one specific renewable or another. But there's a lot of other types of renewables. Nuclear, yes, that's a big one and I agree with you 100%. Hydro, of course. Deep geothermal seems to be on the verge of gaining traction as well, and that one's really exciting because once you figure it out, you can set it up pretty much anywhere. Pump water down, let it heat up, extract the heat with heat pumps, rinse and repeat.

Abundant renewable energy, so abundant it outstrips current demand, is going to unlock some pretty cool stuff. Vertical farms which grow much more food in a much smaller footprint with a lot less water usage and associated run-off pollution start becoming economically feasible.  Desalination of water is energy-intensive, but with lots of cheap energy on hand,  you can start reducing pressure on natural aquifiers and waterways to provide water for the ~35-40% of the world's population who live on or very near the coasts. Both of these things will have direct impacts on some of the "planetary boundary" concerns.

 

ETA: Noah Smith has a good primer on why degrowth ideology is simply wrong, including some very basic economics that I think are uncontestable. 

Edited July 4, 2023 by Ran

[Rorshach]

Quick comment, but I find Noah Smith to be deluded here.

I think he's right in that degrowth is politically impossible. He may be right about it being the wrong way to go, too - I don't know enough about that to comment. 

However, when he presents his alternative ... that's every bit as delusional as he claims degrowth is. Politically, his solution is nothing of the sort, and ends up as merely wishful thinking. Thereby giving us the catastrophe he rightfully points to when showing Hausfather's graphs. 

So basically, reading Noah Smith ... we're fucked.

[Ran]

Yes, it's politically impossible, and not just for developed nations but for developing nations. You cannot expect the world to be one where everyone has an income of $16 a day, and you can't expect people who are already living very developed but also pretty efficient lives (e.g. France, Nordic countries) to regress in the name of climate equity. What you can do is put emphasis on continuing to be efficient and conscious of waste. But the goal should be to lift everyone up to developed nation status, not shove everyone down to ascetic living.

I admit his specific view of the solution seems odd, and some of the commenters point out that there seems a fallacy there, but that doesn't mean there isn't a solution.

I don't think we're fucked, just as Johan Rockström and Michael Mann don't think we're fucked. 

Edited July 4, 2023 by Ran

[Rorshach]

I don't want to think we're fucked, but given that the solutions all require heavy political lifting within a very short time frame, I struggle to see how we can avoid it. 

All the scientists I follow (blogs, twitter etc) point out that there is still time, but that we need to get serious rather fast. Like this from Glen Peters. If you're able to access the thread, tweet 8 shows the needed cut in CO2 should we aim for 1,5 degrees warming, 1,7 degrees or 2 degrees. All those graphs need absurdly fast action.

 

[Ran]

2 hours ago, Rorschach - 2 said:

 

All the scientists I follow (blogs, twitter etc) point out that there is still time, but that we need to get serious rather fast. Like this from Glen Peters. If you're able to access the thread, tweet 8 shows the needed cut in CO2 should we aim for 1,5 degrees warming, 1,7 degrees or 2 degrees. All those graphs need absurdly fast action.

A peak of 2 degrees is very achievable, and depending on how things play out a 1.7 doesn't seem that impossible if transition accelerates as some think it will accelerate.

Every .1 degree is worth fighting for, but within reason.

ETA: I mean, this was announced today, and Toyota doesn't make these sort of announcements if it doesn't have high confidence: 

Quote

But on Tuesday, Kaita said the company discovered ways to address the durability problems from about three years ago and now had enough confidence to mass-produce solid-state batteries in EVs by 2027 or 2028.

Toyota claimed it had made a “technological breakthrough” to resolve durability issues and “a solution for materials” that would allow an EV powered by a solid-state battery to have a range of 1,200km and charging time of 10 minutes or less.

By reducing the number of processes required to make battery materials, the cost of solid-state batteries could be lowered to similar or cheaper levels than liquid-based lithium-ion batteries, he added.

Who knows what other advances are around the corner? Solar cells are more efficient now than they were two decades ago, and are likelier to be more efficient two decades from now. Lots of chatter about new generation nuclear power plants that are safer and more efficient. Air-iron batteries for energy storage are likely to be a thing. And so on and so forth.

Edited July 4, 2023 by Ran

[Impmk2]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

 

ETA: I mean, this was announced today, and Toyota doesn't make these sort of announcements if it doesn't have high confidence: 

 

I'm sorry but the quoted just isn't true. Toyota has been proudly announcing solid state breakthoughs and mass production being just around the corner for years now, while utterly failing to hit their own commercialisation targets and actively lobbying against transitioning away from fossil fueled cars.

It's a marketing strategy: Don't buy other people's EVs, they'll be obsolete. Hold off and buy ours. Meantime here's a nice hybrid we can sell you.

[Ran]

34 minutes ago, Impmk2 said:

I'm sorry but the quoted just isn't true. Toyota has been proudly announcing solid state breakthoughs and mass production being just around the corner for years now, while utterly failing to hit their own commercialisation targets and actively lobbying against transitioning away from fossil fueled cars.

So in 2012 they thought they'd have a solid state battery that can power a car by 2022, encountered a durability issue that delayed them 3 years, and now they've announced actual plans to begin mass production in 2027 or 2028.

That seems pretty different from what was reported in 2012 and 2017, which was that they felt confident they were getting close to it but also weren't sure how long it'd take to produce at scale.

34 minutes ago, Impmk2 said:

It's a marketing strategy: Don't buy other people's EVs, they'll be obsolete. Hold off and buy ours. Meantime here's a nice hybrid we can sell you.

That said, people should be buying hybrids if the inconveniences of current EVs are not to their taste, rather than pure ICE. You'll still get a pretty massive reduction in emissions, especially since so many trips people take tend to be short and within slower residential/urban areas.

 

Edited July 4, 2023 by Ran

[Rippounet]

13 hours ago, Ran said:

There is no raw materials issue.

Yeah, lol, even such an article struggles to reconcile its optimistic perspective with reality. For instance:

Quote

Take copper, for example: the world has mined about 700 million metric tons of copper since we started mining thousands of years ago. We’ll need to mine another 700 million metric tons just in the next three decades

Kind of a big challenge, yeah? The question becomes "can we actually do that?" and the article itself concludes:

Quote

Figuring out how to get the materials we need to build a cleaner future without harming people or environments in the process should be a major focus of the renewable energy transition moving forward, Papathanasiou says. “We really need to come up with solutions that get us the material that we need sustainably, and time is very short.”

So the answer seems to be... maybe?

But snark aside, here's how anyone who is not blinded by dogma should go about it. A good starting point is the 2020 World Bank report entitled "Minerals for Climate Action." You start reading at page 71, specifically, and you'll get a good overview of the topic.
Next step is looking at a scientific paper on 100% renewables. I recommend Breyer et al's 2022 article entitled "On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research" because it's a meta-study giving an overview of the entire field (and it's very optimistic ). You want to jump to section D called "Raw Material Demand for 100% Renewable Energy Systems." That's where you start hitting what the authors call "challenges."

How many minerals might be an issue exactly? Oh, you know, just lithium, cobalt, neodymium, dysprosium, antimony, chromium, indium, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, silver, zinc, and zirconium. Oh, and copper may quickly be an issue as well, which is kind of a big deal since we've used that a lot ; it seems we could maybe replace it with aluminium, but that seems like a pretty big deal nonetheless.
And this is from a very optimistic paper. And by "optimistic" I mean "borderline un-scientific." For instance, when discussing the issue of possible lithium shortages by 2050, the authors state that one solution could be "extremely high collection and recycling rates, close to 100%."
Now I have learned from other scientists that a 100% recycling rate would violate the second law of thermodynamics... And right now, the recycling rate for lithium is close to 0.
But I'm being snarky again. Why's that? Because having the resources isn't even the biggest issue. On some level, one could consider that it's always possible to find a mineral suited for the task somewhere on Earth (including in the oceans). But there are other problems...

1) Extraction must be viable. It's not just about finding the resources, but about how easy they are to extract. And by easy I mean "how much energy is needed for extraction." If you need to get your lithium from the bottom of an ocean, obviously it might mean that you spend more energy getting the lithium than you'll harness energy thanks to it. So "depletion" is misleading: we probably won't face depletion, but we will reach peak production for a number of key minerals soon. Meaning that, mining them will quickly become absurd, because of the cost in energy (and water, and pollution... ).
2) Extraction must be timely. Breyer et al's paper mentions "bottlenecks," as do many other publications. Because of course, we need those minerals asap in order to meet the insane targets in renewables necessary to keep economic growth and pretend it can be green. In fact that alone, logistically, may well prove impossible, especially if geopolitics get in the way... In other words, the supply chains will be difficult to maintain (they'll be harder to maintain than for oil).
3) Extraction shouldn't destroy the environment. Obviously if mining raw materials necessary for renewables ends up destroying huge swathes of the environment, it's absurd. And of course, local populations don't take kindly to mining operations in their backyard... This is already a huge political issue in southern countries, as can be seen with the recent case of Argentina's San Salvador. Funnily enough, Western media do tend to talk of the "opportunities" behind the mining, and easily forget about the pollution and environmental destruction - and subsequent popular resistance. In a nutshell, it's the story of the Keystone pipeline, but on a global scale - in other words, a form of neo-colonialism. Nothing new here.
4) Geopolitics becomes a problem. The EU for instance has established a list of strategic raw materials for the next decades, and that list keeps getting longer. Spoiler alert: China has significant control over many of these key minerals. Could that possibly be an issue? Eh... have a guess.

Anyway, you combine all that, and you start looking at what experts say when taking into account raw materials...
And that's how you get to know that it cannot be done, it will never be done, and it's all just a huge pile of steaming bullshit for the gullible.

What will happen? Some developed countries will in fact "go green," at least in part (like Germany), by securing raw materials in developing countries, at the expense of the locals there - as has been the case for centuries. That way, people living in developed countries will be able to convince themselves that it's possible, that they aren't responsible for the environmental crisis, that "green growth" is somewhat possible, and that the dominant socio-economic system isn't the problem.
But it won't be enough, because of course, that communication strategy (i.e. greenwashing) will mostly be for consumption in developed countries - again, for the gullible and the uninformed. Meanwhile, the rest of the world, aware that these countries are responsible for about 80% of past emissions, will not "go green"  and continue to use fossil fuels.
Emissions might eventually go down, a bit. The biosphere will still be destroyed (maybe even quicker thanks to mining operations meant to sooth Western minds ), the tropics will still become uninhabitable, and the world will face up to three billion refugees, with everything that entails.
Of course, even that scenario is somehow optimistic, because it supposes the climate and geopolitics will leave developed countries enough time to indulge in greenwashing.
Whether this will be the case is not certain.

 

23 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

My stance is a little grimmer: Inside of a century, humanity will be getting upwards of 80% of its power from renewables because the vast majority of the remaining fossil fuels will be too expensive or dangerous to extract. Power consumption WILL fall in line with this because there won't be any other choice.

Yeah, the alternative to choosing de-growth is obviously de-growth just being imposed on us by reality.

It's going to happen anyway, so it'd be much better to do it on our own terms, in a planned manner.
 

[Rippounet]

11 hours ago, Ran said:

What you can do is put emphasis on continuing to be efficient and conscious of waste.

That's... pretty much exactly what degrowth is all about.

If your view of degrowth comes from articles like that of Noah Smith, it's no wonder you're viscerally opposed to it. The entire view of what they call the "degrowth project" amounts to one giant strawman, with proposals I'd never even heard of.

Edit: this article (Exploring degrowth policy proposals: A systematic mapping with thematic synthesis) sums up much of the degrowth movement, while also bringing some valid criticism to the table. I believe this bit is the core:

 

Quote

 

3.3.8. Production & consumption

Degrowth wants to change production and consumption in six main ways. It starts with (1) reducing overproduction, that is goods and services that are resource-intensive while contributing little to collective well-being (often cited examples include pesticides, advertising, arms, beef, flying, and SUVs). To achieve this, the agenda calls for a transition to (2) democratic, not-for-profit business models such as cooperatives, self-production, smaller businesses, and commons-based peer production that emphasise the importance of (3) relocalising activities in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions while fostering local resilience. Other proposals focus on consumption: (4) limit advertisement, for example by banning ads in public spaces and for products with high environmental impacts; and promote (5) lifestyles of sufficiency by discouraging luxury consumption (for example through boycotts, flying quotas, progressive taxes on consumption, taxes on secondary houses, excise tax on sports cars, yacht, and private jets) and encouraging voluntary simplicity (bike infrastructures, co-housing, shared utilities, repair cafés, decommodified hobbies). The last segment of this theme aims to (6) reduce waste by criminalising planned obsolescence, mandating environmental impact assessments, introducing durability labels, and guaranteeing the right to repair.

 

 

Edited July 5, 2023 by Rippounet

[The Anti-Targ]

15 hours ago, Ran said:

 

Certainly, there's regions of the world that will have issues with one specific renewable or another. But there's a lot of other types of renewables. Nuclear, yes, that's a big one and I agree with you 100%. Hydro, of course. Deep geothermal seems to be on the verge of gaining traction as well, and that one's really exciting because once you figure it out, you can set it up pretty much anywhere. Pump water down, let it heat up, extract the heat with heat pumps, rinse and repeat.

Sure, there are some remaining un-tapped natural sources of energy, but those still have geographic limits. You can only dam certain rivers for hydro, and many of those rivers have already been dammed for hydro power. Plus there is the opportunity cost of the land that will be lost when making a new water reservoir. Deep geothermal is only realistically accessible in some places. IMO energy abundance from currently known methods of generating electricity is not going to get us to that unlimited / inexhaustible supply situation where we can easily afford to do the things that are prohibitively expensive while electricity supply is a limited resource. We basically need fusion to work to get to that state, or maybe some new physics yet to be discovered that open up an entirely new field of energy capture/creation.

Carbon emissions from fossil sources falling is fine, but if they are still happening it's still bad. Emissions from fossil sources need to effectively end, not just reduce. The humanity and the wider biosphere may be able to cope indefinitely with emissions at about 0.1% of what they are today if there are certain essential activities that cannot carry on without fossil fuels (steel production possibly comes to mind, have we figured out how not to use coal to produce high quality steel yet?), so absolute elimination may not be necessary. But to all intents and purposes dropping to that low of a rate of emissions is elimination of fossil fuels from virtually every commercial and personal sphere of activity. A breakthrough in CCS could allow for a higher rate of ongoing fossil emissions. So there are possibilities. But I don't think it is right to sit back and say, something will come along in the future to fix the problem. The world needs to act on what it knows right now, but be able to change course if/when the scientific/technological miracle happens.

In news about the climate right now:

Quote

Last month has also been confirmed as the world's warmest June yet recorded.

Scientists at the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction said that the world's average temperature had reached 17.01C on 3 July, breaking the previous [one day] record of 16.92C that had stood since August 2016.

They are crediting a mix of the switch to El Nino this year as well as climate change. Interesting that the hottest global day apparently seems to happen in the NH summer. I guess SH summers are almost always cooler because there is so much ocean down here that our summer peaks are lower, and there is so much land up there that NH winters are generally colder than SH winters.

[Conflicting Thought]

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

What will happen? Some developed countries will in fact "go green," at least in part (like Germany), by securing raw materials in developing countries, at the expense of the locals there - as has been the case for centuries. That way, people living in developed countries will be able to convince themselves that it's possible, that they aren't responsible for the environmental crisis, that "green growth" is somewhat possible, and that the dominant socio-economic system isn't the problem.
But it won't be enough, because of course, that communication strategy (i.e. greenwashing) will mostly be for consumption in developed countries - again, for the gullible and the uninformed. Meanwhile, the rest of the world, aware that these countries are responsible for about 80% of past emissions, will not "go green"  and continue to use fossil fuels.
Emissions might eventually go down, a bit. The biosphere will still be destroyed (maybe even quicker thanks to mining operations meant to sooth Western minds ), the tropics will still become uninhabitable, and the world will face up to three billion refugees, with everything that entails.
Of course, even that scenario is somehow optimistic, because it supposes the climate and geopolitics will leave developed countries enough time to indulge in greenwashing.
Whether this will be the case is not certain.

its fucking tragic, people that live in first world countries that take advantage of us, steal our ressources, destroy our ecosistems, kill us, and then tell us that mantaining their standars of living is possible, and actually we are doing sooo well, degrowth? bah, thats ridiculous! just let me put huge mine over here when we dont see the destruction it causes, and we reap all the benefits (hello Canada and Norway), and who cares about some people in the global south that no longer have fresh water because the mine (barrick gold) just contaminated one of the bigest river in south america for their precious resources and infinite growth. the glib responses of these people and countries are disgusting. dont be surpirsed when you come here for your vacations that people dont embrace you with open arms

Edited July 5, 2023 by Conflicting Thought

[The Anti-Targ]

That 1 day global temperature record didn't last long, because 4 July turned out to be hotter. 

[mcbigski]

On 7/4/2023 at 9:32 AM, Ran said:

Yes, it's politically impossible, and not just for developed nations but for developing nations. You cannot expect the world to be one where everyone has an income of $16 a day, and you can't expect people who are already living very developed but also pretty efficient lives (e.g. France, Nordic countries) to regress in the name of climate equity. What you can do is put emphasis on continuing to be efficient and conscious of waste. But the goal should be to lift everyone up to developed nation status, not shove everyone down to ascetic living.

 

There's an inflection point where birthrates go down with more prosperity and better environmental results.  Really my biggest problem with the over population, stop using energy people.

I say fission everywhere, orbital solar in the future, and fusion in 50 years.  2 outta three ain't bad.  

I'm actually expecting higher temps the next few years, since the Sun seems to have busted out of its minimum.  Nothing to do with how many private jets climate warriors like John Kerry have flown recently though.

[Ran]

On 7/5/2023 at 3:27 AM, The Anti-Targ said:

But I don't think it is right to sit back and say, something will come along in the future to fix the problem.

Who advocated for that? When I say every .1 is worth fighting for, does that suggest I mean we should sit back? 

There's a great role governments can have in combatting climate change. Emphasis on investment in decarbonization, in renewables, in research. Subsidies for renewable energy to drive down prices further to speed up the replacement of carbon-based power generation. Subsidies for technology like EVs that replace oil. Regulations to further tighten carbon capture requirements at plants and factories. Etc.

And there is of course a role for private citizens and the private sector. Innovating technology, creating brands that focus on sustainability and provide people options to purchase more sustainable items, etc. 

On 7/5/2023 at 3:27 AM, The Anti-Targ said:

The world needs to act on what it knows right now, but be able to change course if/when the scientific/technological miracle happens.

Rippounet's argument is that the world  has not really acted at all, hence time for some mild(?) eco-terrorism to put fear into the hearts of people. My argument is that the world in aggregate has in fact acted, is acting, and will continue to act, and the question is what are the optimal and realistic public policies to bend the curve further.

On 7/5/2023 at 3:53 AM, Conflicting Thought said:

degrowth? bah, thats ridiculous!

It's ridiculous because it requires magical thinking to suppose it can and will happen.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Ran

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Who advocated for that? When I say every .1 is worth fighting for, does that suggest I mean we should sit back? 

There's a great role governments can have in combatting climate change. Emphasis on investment in decarbonization, in renewables, in research. Subsidies for renewable energy to drive down prices further to speed up the replacement of carbon-based power generation. Subsidies for technology like EVs that replace oil. Regulations to further tighten carbon capture requirements at plants and factories. Etc.

And there is of course a role for private citizens and the private sector. Innovating technology, creating brands that focus on sustainability and provide people options to purchase more sustainable items, etc. 

Rippounet's argument is that the world  has not really acted at all, hence time for some mild(?) eco-terrorism to put fear into the hearts of people. My argument is that the world in aggregate has in fact acted, is acting, and will continue to act, and the question is what are the optimal and realistic public policies to bend the curve further.

It's ridiculous because it requires magical thinking to suppose it can and will happen.

I didn't intend to suggest you are a do nothing some new thing will save us in the future type on climate change, apologies.

People, govts, even a lot of companies are acting. But IMO not fast enough, and there is some creative accounting going on too. Shit is already going south after all, and it will get worse, because we haven't stopped unsustainable levels of emitting yet. I don't think the world is yet at a state where the optimal public policies are realistic, and the realistic public policies are a long way from being optimal. The big question is when or if optimal and realistic come into alignment.

 

[maarsen]

6 hours ago, mcbigski said:

There's an inflection point where birthrates go down with more prosperity and better environmental results.  Really my biggest problem with the over population, stop using energy people.

I say fission everywhere, orbital solar in the future, and fusion in 50 years.  2 outta three ain't bad.  

I'm actually expecting higher temps the next few years, since the Sun seems to have busted out of its minimum.  Nothing to do with how many private jets climate warriors like John Kerry have flown recently though.

The solar minimums and maximums are not related to the sun's temperature but to sunspots. It is a 22 year cycle and at maximum we get more sunspots which are cool spots on the surface of the sun.