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>> The easy fixes might have worked if we could get worldwide buy-in 20 years ago This is completely true - it's just sad that even now, we can't seem to make

>> The easy fixes might have worked if we could get worldwide buy-in 20 years ago This is completely true - it's just sad that even now, we can't seem to make the right decisions. Both democrats and republicans have had the opportunity to head this off and have done little to nothing to stop it. Every time one of these threads come up, I still see Carter's speech in 1977 about the energy crisis: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/carter-energy/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-... That was 35+ years ago, what have we done since then? Not much. Reduce emissions by a fraction here and there while other countries ramp up their industrial revolutions and outweigh any gains we make in this country. >> Levelling off is no longer good enough, it's too late for that, we need a massive decrease in global carbon emissions. Not sure how this would even be accomplished. Even if you took off all the gas powered cars on the road and replaced them with electric vehicles it wouldn't be enough - and then you have to contend with the pollution on the Li-Ion battery production and recycling issues. I'm not being sarcastic, but would like to know what you'd propose that would work. In smaller countries mass transit works well, but since our country is so large geographically and our mass transit differs from state to state, I'm not sure even if you outlawed cars all together and just ran with public transportation that would help either.

paulmd 10y ago
>> Not sure how this would even be accomplished. Essentially an end to fossil-fuel combustion as far as is technologically feasible. A large-scale rollout of nuclear power, replacing literally everything, with enough capacity to cover the peaks. Large-scale electric vehicle rollout where feasible, large-scale synthetic-liquid fuel (derived from nuclear energy and atmospheric sources) rolled out where direct electric is infeasible (colder climates and aircraft). http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jrse/4/3/10.1063/1.4719723 http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jrse/4/3/10.106... There is no technical impediment to a large-scale nuclear rollout. We literally have unlimited power at our fingertips and we cannot find the will to use it. The only thing we need is the political will to solve the waste disposal problem - which is another of those problems that humanity refuses to solve until their house is burning down. Between reprocessing and our geologically-sound repositories we can easily solve the problem until we have cheap and reliable launch capability in 50-100 years (eg launch loop) and launch it into the sun. Arguably we have that now - the Atlas-V has done 106 consecutive successful launches now. This is actually why I say that we need to solve energy consumption on a long-term basis as well. Nuclear is so good that we will literally poison our planet with waste heat unless we preemptively solve that problem. Depending on your figures the impact of waste heat is between 1% and 50% as significant as the greenhouse impact of fossil fuels. The number varies based on how much of the atmosphere you are considering venting the heat towards - a vast majority of our energy is dissipated within say 100 meters of the surface and a vast majority occurs in cities that make up say 1% of the total surface area. We can certainly bring everyone up to a first-world standard of living but we can't continue indefinite population growth and indefinite per-capita increases in energy consumption. A 25-100x increase in total energy consumption can easily happen within a few decades if we continue to allow population to boom while also increasing per-capita consumption, both at exponential rates. Exponential growth happens fast. https://www.skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm https://www.skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.h... http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/01/waste-heat-as-a-contributor-to-observed-warming/ http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/01/waste-heat-as-a-contribu...

paulmd 10y ago

>> Not sure how this would even be accomplished. Essentially an end to fossil-fuel combustion as far as is technologically feasible. A large-scale rollout of nuclear power, replacing literally everything, with enough capacity to cover the peaks. Large-scale electric vehicle rollout where feasible, large-scale synthetic-liquid fuel (derived from nuclear energy and atmospheric sources) rolled out where direct electric is infeasible (colder climates and aircraft). http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jrse/4/3/10.1063/1.4719723 http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jrse/4/3/10.106... There is no technical impediment to a large-scale nuclear rollout. We literally have unlimited power at our fingertips and we cannot find the will to use it. The only thing we need is the political will to solve the waste disposal problem - which is another of those problems that humanity refuses to solve until their house is burning down. Between reprocessing and our geologically-sound repositories we can easily solve the problem until we have cheap and reliable launch capability in 50-100 years (eg launch loop) and launch it into the sun. Arguably we have that now - the Atlas-V has done 106 consecutive successful launches now. This is actually why I say that we need to solve energy consumption on a long-term basis as well. Nuclear is so good that we will literally poison our planet with waste heat unless we preemptively solve that problem. Depending on your figures the impact of waste heat is between 1% and 50% as significant as the greenhouse impact of fossil fuels. The number varies based on how much of the atmosphere you are considering venting the heat towards - a vast majority of our energy is dissipated within say 100 meters of the surface and a vast majority occurs in cities that make up say 1% of the total surface area. We can certainly bring everyone up to a first-world standard of living but we can't continue indefinite population growth and indefinite per-capita increases in energy consumption. A 25-100x increase in total energy consumption can easily happen within a few decades if we continue to allow population to boom while also increasing per-capita consumption, both at exponential rates. Exponential growth happens fast. https://www.skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm https://www.skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.h... http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/01/waste-heat-as-a-contributor-to-observed-warming/ http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/01/waste-heat-as-a-contribu...