9 ms·

The oil and gas we have already tapped will take us past 1.5°C

50 points by anexprogrammer 10y ago

CalRobert 10y ago
I can't fathom how to actually keep temperature rises to 1.5 degrees C in a political climate where people profess concern about the environment but wail and gnash their teeth if gas goes up by a nickel. At least, not in a world where the people with means to purchase large amounts of fossil fuels primarily live in democracies.
- alex_duf 10y ago
  I wish the oil/coal/gas price would go up... That would make solar so much more competitive and discourage people from buying combustion engines.
  - bwindels 10y ago
    I wish we would elect leaders that introduce a carbon tax.
    - CalRobert 10y ago
      Thus the democracy problem. So long as people feel they benefit more than they suffer from over-exploitation of the common resource (in this case, the atmosphere, which we use as a dump for our emissions), they will vote against any such tax. Of course, it's kind of a prisoners' dilemma problem, since country A passing a carbon tax (and reducing consumption accordingly) makes fossil fuels cheaper for country B. There are ways to address this, like adding import duties on products from countries who dump their garbage in the atmosphere, but those are fairly unpopular too since people like being able to buy cheap stuff from China.
      - justin66 10y ago
        > Thus the democracy problem. So long as people feel they benefit more than they suffer from over-exploitation of the common resource (in this case, the atmosphere, which we use as a dump for our emissions), they will vote against any such tax. We don't actually get to vote for individual taxes. The world would be an interesting, and quite different, place if you provided the voter with an accounting summary and asked them to choose line items, etc. etc. People currently have little idea how their money is spent and little say in how to change it.
        CalRobert 10y ago
        But people do vote on particular pet issues like a carbon tax. Grey Davis was crucified politically by Schwarzenegger for a supposed increase in the "car tax" when in fact he was letting a previous discount on the vehicle registration fee lapse due to the state's serious budgetary issues. The candidate who says "we need to increase the cost of fossil fuels so you use less of them.." won't even have an audience listening for the second part - "...to save the planet from pretty much boiling to death and ending civilization as we know it". Though, cynic that I am, I worry that most drivers would prefer billions dying to paying more for fuel. Maybe that's just because I spent too much of my life in southern California, though. Gas prices are one of those issues people vote on emotionally rather than logically. While I'm not crazy about his approach to personal finance, I'm always reminded of something Dave Ramsey said (I had a coworker years ago who listened to him on the radio). "You guys complained about gas to no end when it was expensive, but now that we're at a buck a gallon do you feel rich?" The point being that the importance of fuel prices are overestimated in the average person's budget.
        justin66 10y ago
        Good points about gas prices. It's also silly the way people assume oil prices are all a matter of government policy, as opposed to the business cycle. So much about being perceived as a successful politician at the national level is about entering at the right moment, when the economy is on the upswing, or about to be. > But people do vote on particular pet issues like a carbon tax. California's rather unusual. At the national level, which is what matters most, we don't do taxation by referendum. I'm not advocating that, either. The current system would work fine if people put a little more effort into understanding the budget and pressing their candidates to form positions. > The candidate who says "we need to increase the cost of fossil fuels so you use less of them.." won't even have an audience listening for the second part - "...to save the planet from pretty much boiling to death and ending civilization as we know it". Well, they do have something of an audience, but that audience is somewhat diminished by the brain-damaged nature of the American public when it comes to understanding science. But it's not as if messages of self-sacrifice for the common good always go unheard.
- DogPawHat 10y ago
  Whole thing would have been a bit easier if Leman hadn't gone belly up. Climate Change costs would have been more visible then the have been.
voidz 10y ago
Probably going to get slammed for saying this, especially in a time where downvoters decide for the most part what is allowed and what isn't, but here goes anyway: even though it affects many things, I simply do not care one iota when people talk about rising temperatures and melting ice caps. Why? Because to me it feels like "just stuff that can happen". And I'm insignificant too, unlike these big corporations and factories that cause most of these problems without caring about anything but how to avoid paying taxes and so on. I'm not a guy who throws random stuff out on the street. I do use my car sparingly because of emissions and I do donate a lot to animal and environmental protection funds. So like every other healthy person I do care about nature, and it breaks my heart to hear about rain forests being cut or burned down, whales and dolphins being killed, and seals being clubbed to death. I eat to live, not live to eat, and I am protective of my environment. But whenever I read stories about stuff like rising temperatures, I just could not care less. They're just stories in my mind, with a lot of political, societal and economic interests, that make sure you will never really know the truth at all, and they play on guilt and blame. So I became totally uncaring about rising temperatures and all that stuff as a result.
- m_mueller 10y ago
  Please read up on Arctic methane release and the Clathrate gun hypothesis. I wonder whether a doubling of the current greenhouse effect within only tens of years would still not bother you.
  - teekert 10y ago
    Yeah because bothering will help... I for one am going to do things differently: Where me and my friends grew up sometimes crying over acidic rain, holes in the ozone layer and a generally inhabitable earth, I will not do that to my kids. I will raise them with a respect for Nature but that's it. I bet solar will soon be the most sensible solution for most power needs market-wise as well as environment-wise. Feeling shitty about yourself and your future does not change a thing, if anything it make your feel hopeless instead of empowered (like "original sin" from the bible does).
    - 10y ago
goodcanadian 10y ago
Yes, while the masses are starting to come around to the idea that climate change is real, people still seem to think we can stop it. Even if we stopped all CO2 production immediately, temperatures would still be expected to warm for several decades. We are already in a situation where we have to choose between "bad" and "worse."
- m_mueller 10y ago
  I just hope there's enough ressources spent into figuring out atmospheric engineering - we may only have one shot at this.
- jug 10y ago
  I worry this will cause public opinion to go "see, regardless what we do, it doesn't help, so it's not us and it's going to shit anyway so let's just keep doing as usual" and then things go super wrong. I mean, when people are presidential candidates and climate change skeptics...?
- xbmcuser 10y ago
  Not only that the major carbon growth is going to come from large parts of Asia and Africa where people are still without power. They are 3-4 times the population of the western or developed world if they they reach even half the quality of life western world enjoys. They will be producing a few times more carbon than what ever the developed world cuts back
apsec112 10y ago
So much of this is the fault of oft-ignored local zoning boards. Everyone complains that Americans don't want to give up their cars. Well, of course they don't. In 99.9% of the US, it's illegal to live within reasonable walking distance of your job or your grocery store, and it's illegal to build densely enough to make public transportation practical. So of course everyone drives everywhere, they have no other choice.
- minikites 10y ago
  I'm not sure zoning is the issue when you take a look at Houston, a sprawling car-centric city with very lax zoning rules.
  - CalRobert 10y ago
    Ah, but Houston has rules designed to force urban sprawl in myriad different ways. They just refuse to call it zoning. Case in point - my old apartment was 2 bedrooms and had no offstreet parking. It was near a number of excellent bars with no parking. Fortunately it was easy to walk between them! Houston has rules forcing people to live far from said bars, and forcing both their home and the bar to have parking (which spreads things out even without density maximums), and makes it harder to patronize those bars without driving intoxicated. https://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2016/04/14/sprawl-beyond-zoning/ https://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2016/04/14/sprawl-beyond-zo...
gd1 10y ago
Please, tell me more about the theory behind your apocalyptic wet dream. 'Clathrate guns' didn't do shit in the holocene climatic optimum, or the previous interglacial. Go on, I need a laugh.
- JustUhThought 10y ago
  The tenor of your comment is not cool.
  - gd1 10y ago
    Fucking bite me. Dribbling alarmist wank like 'methane clathrates' is why people are sceptical. It ranks right up there with theories about my toaster exploding come Y2K because it has embedded chips in it. I mean jesus christ, it was 2.5 to 7.0 degrees celsius warmer in the arctic for TWO THOUSAND YEARS just 9000 years BP (i.e. a geological blink), and no, we aren't dead from some giant methane burp. "During the period of maximum forest extension, the mean July temperatures along the northern coastline of Russia may have been 2.5° to 7.0°C warmer than modern." - Holocene Treeline History and Climate Change Across Northern Eurasia, http://epic.awi.de/4164/1/Mac2000c.pdf http://epic.awi.de/4164/1/Mac2000c.pdf
    - xbmcuser 10y ago
      2000 years ago the world population was maybe 20mil. Saying the earth being a few degrees warmer now wont make a difference is stupid statement. As billions will die from droughts famine and the wars that will be the result of it. We humans are warming the earth you don't want to do anything about it or don't care about it is one thing. Saying it won't effect the world as the temperature was warmer 2000 years ago is a stupid statement.
      - gd1 10y ago
        No, you illiterate moron, I said the temperature IN THE ARCTIC was 2.5-7.0 degrees celsius warmer 9000-7000 years before present (BP). Not 2000. Hence, apocalyptic theories about methane clathrates are horse shit. And I said absolutely nothing about it having any bearing on global warming/climate change in general.
JustUhThought 10y ago
One major perspective this and similar articles do not consider is all the non energy uses of coal and petroleum. Burning petroleum for ebergy is hardly it's only use. Look around you at all the plastics. Even coal has great promise as a building material. Think carbon fiber and, well all the different permutations of materials that carbon rich ore can be made into.
- mkj 10y ago
  Pretty sure just burning it is an order of magnitude more than other uses. Coal for building sounds exciting though?
  - JustUhThought 10y ago
    No doubt it is now. I was speaking as to future uses.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  A Diamond Age does seem like a hopeful solution to the problem, if we could rationally harvest the and convert it to carbon fibers and diamonds rather than fill our air and oceans with so much excess CO2. I wonder if we are that rational, though.
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
And here we are poised on the threshold of a whole new fossil fuel technology: Methane Hydrate. Centuries of reserves, simpler to harvest, and here's the kicker: more dangerous if it escapes unburned than if its burned! So spills will be directly catastrophic to the atmosphere.

I can't fathom how to actually keep temperature rises to 1.5 degrees C in a political climate where people profess concern about the environment but wail and gnash their teeth if gas goes up by a nickel. At least, not in a world where the people with means to purchase large amounts of fossil fuels primarily live in democracies.

alex_duf 10y ago
I wish the oil/coal/gas price would go up... That would make solar so much more competitive and discourage people from buying combustion engines.
- bwindels 10y ago
  I wish we would elect leaders that introduce a carbon tax.
  - CalRobert 10y ago
    Thus the democracy problem. So long as people feel they benefit more than they suffer from over-exploitation of the common resource (in this case, the atmosphere, which we use as a dump for our emissions), they will vote against any such tax. Of course, it's kind of a prisoners' dilemma problem, since country A passing a carbon tax (and reducing consumption accordingly) makes fossil fuels cheaper for country B. There are ways to address this, like adding import duties on products from countries who dump their garbage in the atmosphere, but those are fairly unpopular too since people like being able to buy cheap stuff from China.
    - justin66 10y ago
      > Thus the democracy problem. So long as people feel they benefit more than they suffer from over-exploitation of the common resource (in this case, the atmosphere, which we use as a dump for our emissions), they will vote against any such tax. We don't actually get to vote for individual taxes. The world would be an interesting, and quite different, place if you provided the voter with an accounting summary and asked them to choose line items, etc. etc. People currently have little idea how their money is spent and little say in how to change it.
      - CalRobert 10y ago
        But people do vote on particular pet issues like a carbon tax. Grey Davis was crucified politically by Schwarzenegger for a supposed increase in the "car tax" when in fact he was letting a previous discount on the vehicle registration fee lapse due to the state's serious budgetary issues. The candidate who says "we need to increase the cost of fossil fuels so you use less of them.." won't even have an audience listening for the second part - "...to save the planet from pretty much boiling to death and ending civilization as we know it". Though, cynic that I am, I worry that most drivers would prefer billions dying to paying more for fuel. Maybe that's just because I spent too much of my life in southern California, though. Gas prices are one of those issues people vote on emotionally rather than logically. While I'm not crazy about his approach to personal finance, I'm always reminded of something Dave Ramsey said (I had a coworker years ago who listened to him on the radio). "You guys complained about gas to no end when it was expensive, but now that we're at a buck a gallon do you feel rich?" The point being that the importance of fuel prices are overestimated in the average person's budget.
        justin66 10y ago
        Good points about gas prices. It's also silly the way people assume oil prices are all a matter of government policy, as opposed to the business cycle. So much about being perceived as a successful politician at the national level is about entering at the right moment, when the economy is on the upswing, or about to be. > But people do vote on particular pet issues like a carbon tax. California's rather unusual. At the national level, which is what matters most, we don't do taxation by referendum. I'm not advocating that, either. The current system would work fine if people put a little more effort into understanding the budget and pressing their candidates to form positions. > The candidate who says "we need to increase the cost of fossil fuels so you use less of them.." won't even have an audience listening for the second part - "...to save the planet from pretty much boiling to death and ending civilization as we know it". Well, they do have something of an audience, but that audience is somewhat diminished by the brain-damaged nature of the American public when it comes to understanding science. But it's not as if messages of self-sacrifice for the common good always go unheard.
DogPawHat 10y ago
Whole thing would have been a bit easier if Leman hadn't gone belly up. Climate Change costs would have been more visible then the have been.

voidz 10y ago

Probably going to get slammed for saying this, especially in a time where downvoters decide for the most part what is allowed and what isn't, but here goes anyway: even though it affects many things, I simply do not care one iota when people talk about rising temperatures and melting ice caps. Why? Because to me it feels like "just stuff that can happen". And I'm insignificant too, unlike these big corporations and factories that cause most of these problems without caring about anything but how to avoid paying taxes and so on. I'm not a guy who throws random stuff out on the street. I do use my car sparingly because of emissions and I do donate a lot to animal and environmental protection funds. So like every other healthy person I do care about nature, and it breaks my heart to hear about rain forests being cut or burned down, whales and dolphins being killed, and seals being clubbed to death. I eat to live, not live to eat, and I am protective of my environment. But whenever I read stories about stuff like rising temperatures, I just could not care less. They're just stories in my mind, with a lot of political, societal and economic interests, that make sure you will never really know the truth at all, and they play on guilt and blame. So I became totally uncaring about rising temperatures and all that stuff as a result.

m_mueller 10y ago
Please read up on Arctic methane release and the Clathrate gun hypothesis. I wonder whether a doubling of the current greenhouse effect within only tens of years would still not bother you.
- teekert 10y ago
  Yeah because bothering will help... I for one am going to do things differently: Where me and my friends grew up sometimes crying over acidic rain, holes in the ozone layer and a generally inhabitable earth, I will not do that to my kids. I will raise them with a respect for Nature but that's it. I bet solar will soon be the most sensible solution for most power needs market-wise as well as environment-wise. Feeling shitty about yourself and your future does not change a thing, if anything it make your feel hopeless instead of empowered (like "original sin" from the bible does).
  - 10y ago

goodcanadian 10y ago

Yes, while the masses are starting to come around to the idea that climate change is real, people still seem to think we can stop it. Even if we stopped all CO2 production immediately, temperatures would still be expected to warm for several decades. We are already in a situation where we have to choose between "bad" and "worse."

m_mueller 10y ago
I just hope there's enough ressources spent into figuring out atmospheric engineering - we may only have one shot at this.
jug 10y ago
I worry this will cause public opinion to go "see, regardless what we do, it doesn't help, so it's not us and it's going to shit anyway so let's just keep doing as usual" and then things go super wrong. I mean, when people are presidential candidates and climate change skeptics...?
xbmcuser 10y ago
Not only that the major carbon growth is going to come from large parts of Asia and Africa where people are still without power. They are 3-4 times the population of the western or developed world if they they reach even half the quality of life western world enjoys. They will be producing a few times more carbon than what ever the developed world cuts back

apsec112 10y ago

So much of this is the fault of oft-ignored local zoning boards. Everyone complains that Americans don't want to give up their cars. Well, of course they don't. In 99.9% of the US, it's illegal to live within reasonable walking distance of your job or your grocery store, and it's illegal to build densely enough to make public transportation practical. So of course everyone drives everywhere, they have no other choice.

minikites 10y ago
I'm not sure zoning is the issue when you take a look at Houston, a sprawling car-centric city with very lax zoning rules.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  Ah, but Houston has rules designed to force urban sprawl in myriad different ways. They just refuse to call it zoning. Case in point - my old apartment was 2 bedrooms and had no offstreet parking. It was near a number of excellent bars with no parking. Fortunately it was easy to walk between them! Houston has rules forcing people to live far from said bars, and forcing both their home and the bar to have parking (which spreads things out even without density maximums), and makes it harder to patronize those bars without driving intoxicated. https://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2016/04/14/sprawl-beyond-zoning/ https://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2016/04/14/sprawl-beyond-zo...

gd1 10y ago

Please, tell me more about the theory behind your apocalyptic wet dream. 'Clathrate guns' didn't do shit in the holocene climatic optimum, or the previous interglacial. Go on, I need a laugh.

JustUhThought 10y ago
The tenor of your comment is not cool.
- gd1 10y ago
  Fucking bite me. Dribbling alarmist wank like 'methane clathrates' is why people are sceptical. It ranks right up there with theories about my toaster exploding come Y2K because it has embedded chips in it. I mean jesus christ, it was 2.5 to 7.0 degrees celsius warmer in the arctic for TWO THOUSAND YEARS just 9000 years BP (i.e. a geological blink), and no, we aren't dead from some giant methane burp. "During the period of maximum forest extension, the mean July temperatures along the northern coastline of Russia may have been 2.5° to 7.0°C warmer than modern." - Holocene Treeline History and Climate Change Across Northern Eurasia, http://epic.awi.de/4164/1/Mac2000c.pdf http://epic.awi.de/4164/1/Mac2000c.pdf
  - xbmcuser 10y ago
    2000 years ago the world population was maybe 20mil. Saying the earth being a few degrees warmer now wont make a difference is stupid statement. As billions will die from droughts famine and the wars that will be the result of it. We humans are warming the earth you don't want to do anything about it or don't care about it is one thing. Saying it won't effect the world as the temperature was warmer 2000 years ago is a stupid statement.
    - gd1 10y ago
      No, you illiterate moron, I said the temperature IN THE ARCTIC was 2.5-7.0 degrees celsius warmer 9000-7000 years before present (BP). Not 2000. Hence, apocalyptic theories about methane clathrates are horse shit. And I said absolutely nothing about it having any bearing on global warming/climate change in general.

JustUhThought 10y ago

One major perspective this and similar articles do not consider is all the non energy uses of coal and petroleum. Burning petroleum for ebergy is hardly it's only use. Look around you at all the plastics. Even coal has great promise as a building material. Think carbon fiber and, well all the different permutations of materials that carbon rich ore can be made into.

mkj 10y ago
Pretty sure just burning it is an order of magnitude more than other uses. Coal for building sounds exciting though?
- JustUhThought 10y ago
  No doubt it is now. I was speaking as to future uses.
WorldMaker 10y ago
A Diamond Age does seem like a hopeful solution to the problem, if we could rationally harvest the and convert it to carbon fibers and diamonds rather than fill our air and oceans with so much excess CO2. I wonder if we are that rational, though.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

And here we are poised on the threshold of a whole new fossil fuel technology: Methane Hydrate. Centuries of reserves, simpler to harvest, and here's the kicker: more dangerous if it escapes unburned than if its burned! So spills will be directly catastrophic to the atmosphere.