Climate Change III - The Power of Chaos

[ThinkerX]

2 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Im pretty interested in following the consumer uptake with EV models this year and the next 5 years to gain a better sense of where the trend actually is.

The forecasts seem to be quite a bit different from one report to the next.

I think a huge part of the reason for the slow EV transition is the longevity of gasoline-powered rigs. Somebody buy a new gas rig today; odds are it will still be on the road in twenty years. Likewise, a gas car that is six or eight years old now, will likely still be on the road come 2035. That dampens the demand for new EVs. On the other hand, by 2030-2035 there should be a *lot* of used EVs out there at decent prices.

[The Anti-Targ]

It's getting better of course but battery lifecycle is a factor in the use car market. An EV with a 300km range new that is sold today will have something less than a 300km range when it is put onto the used car market in 2030 no matter how well the owner looks after the car. A petrol/diesel powered car will have the same range as when it was new, so long as it is well maintained. However the price people will want to sell the used EV will be higher than the petrol/diesel car with pretty much the same features.

I don't see many people paying a premium for EVs new or used because of their concern for the environment. Some will but not enough people to massively reduce emissions from private vehicles. Until new EVs are sold at middle income family petrol car prices and decent range used EVs are sold at low income family petrol car prices EVs will not become dominant in the market.

In our case the cheapest new petrol car on the New Zealand market is about $20,000. The cheapest new pure EV on the New Zealand market is more than double the price at over $40,000. One good thing though is the cheapest new hybrid is only just over $20,000, so there is really no price barrier to getting into hybrids esp since the fuel savings available with hybrids will make up that small price difference in a reasonably short space of time. It doesn't help to completely eliminate private car tailpipe emissions, but it does help to reduce them. But we need, in NZ, a $20-25K new car with zero emissions before we can really start dreaming of a zero GHG emissions private transport fleet.

Edited February 27 by The Anti-Targ

[The Anti-Targ]

Very interesting effect of climate change that I'd never heard of before now.

Vegetables are losing their nutrients. Can the decline be reversed? | Vegetables | The Guardian

Quote

In 2004, Donald Davis and fellow scientists at the University of Texas made an alarming discovery: 43 foods, mostly vegetables, showed a marked decrease in nutrients between the mid and late 20th century.

According to that research, the calcium in green beans dropped from 65 to 37mg. Vitamin A levels plummeted by almost half in asparagus. Broccoli stalks had less iron.

Nutrient loss has continued since that study. More recent research has documented the declining nutrient value in some staple crops due to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels; a 2018 study that tested rice found that higher CO2 levels reduced its protein, iron and zinc content.

The climate crisis has only accelerated concerns about crops’ nutritional value. That’s prompted the emergence of a process called biofortification, a strategy to replenish lost nutrients or those that foods never had in the first place.

I lot of people have placed the blame of nutrient loss on industrial farming, which may or may not be contributory (and is often given as a reason for why a person eats organic food). But given some of the nutrient loss is because of increased atmospheric CO2 that loss has nothing to do with farming method.

I don't think it's necessary to manipulate crops to put nutrients in that are not naturally part of the plant, since a balanced diet should give you all the nutrients you need. But bringing the natural nutrient contents back up to early 20th century levels seems like a necessary climate change adaptation. It seems like common sense to say people should eat more fruit, nuts, vegetables etc, but if everyone needs to eat 50% more in order to meet their base nutritional needs, esp for micronutrients, then that just means there's less to go around, so it's better to pack more into every gram than for people to need to eat more to get what they need.

[Rippounet]

14 hours ago, mcbigski said:

I don't think it's a stretch that control freaks who want to come for my auto, my grill, my mobility, and my nutrition aren't also going to come for my caffeine.

One of the things that has boggled my mind in recent years is that (unless the science is all wrong ), by making this about liberty, conservatives essentially guarantee that, in the near future, the extent of individual liberty will in fact be in question. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, in the sense that a simple-minded defense of "liberty" actually does end up making it the problem.

While this is not the case at present, this is the kind of study that is being discussed in environmental circles:
Quantifying Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Human Deaths to Guide Energy Policy

From the abstract:

Quote

In this article, approaches to estimating future human death tolls from climate change relevant at any scale or location are compared and synthesized, and implications for energy policy are considered. Several studies are consistent with the “1000-ton rule,” according to which a future person is killed every time 1000 tons of fossil carbon are burned (order-of-magnitude estimate). If warming reaches or exceeds 2 °C this century, mainly richer humans will be responsible for killing roughly 1 billion mainly poorer humans through anthropogenic global warming, which is comparable with involuntary or negligent manslaughter.

And from the article:

Quote

It has been clear for a decade or more [63] that the final death toll due to AGW will be much greater than 100 million, or one million per year for a century—an extreme best case if current death rates from AGW miraculously remained constant at about one million per year (a level that may have already been reached). Conversely, the final death toll in a 2◦C warming scenario will certainly be much less than 10 billion, which is the predicted global human population in 2100 in the absence of AGW [64]. Although climate change clearly represents a global catastrophic risk to food supplies [65], only a small minority are suggesting that 2◦C of warming could cause human extinction [66]. Warming of well over 2◦C, however, could indeed cause natural climate feedbacks to get out of control, leading eventually to human extinction [66]. Between these extreme boundaries, it is likely more than 300 million (“likely best case”) and less than 3 billion (“likely worst case”) will die as a result of AGW of 2◦C. That prediction is consistent with detailed predictions of climate science summarized by the World Health Organization and their probable consequences for human mortality [67].

It all becomes a global test of collective morality. If humans proved reasonable, much could be preserved. Conversely, making this about "liberty" or "control," amounts to choosing a "malthusian solution" to the environmental crisis, i.e. reducing human population by a quarter to a third.

[Zorral]

nvm

 

Edited April 10 by Zorral

[ThinkerX]

6 hours ago, Rippounet said:

One of the things that has boggled my mind in recent years is that (unless the science is all wrong ), by making this about liberty, conservatives essentially guarantee that, in the near future, the extent of individual liberty will in fact be in question. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, in the sense that a simple-minded defense of "liberty" actually does end up making it the problem.

Wrong thread for this, but Conservatives are about liberty for themselves in a sort of race-based caste system, with the other castes being tightly controlled.

[The Anti-Targ]

Interesting to see that some retired ladies in Switzerland have successfully sued the Swiss govt for violating their human rights due to climate change. The unique case is that older women are at most risk of death from heat waves and that climate change is already causing heat waves that elevate the risk of death in older women. The plaintiffs in the case were only allowed to be women over 55 (from memory) for that reason. That the EU human rights court found in favour of the plaintiffs potentially means other demographically based cases could be brought against governments.

 

[Zorral]

The Coffee Apocalypse
Are you ready for coffee made from chickpeas? Soon, you might not have a choice.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/04/coffee-cup-best-bean-brand-climate.html