12 ms·

Cheap renewables won’t stop global warming (2018)

151 points by acidburnNSA 8y ago

scythe 8y ago
It's a little off IMHO to argue that energy storage affects fuel usage only in electricity. The most visible company in the business right now is Tesla which primarily goes after transportation. Together, electricity and transportation account for 56% of US emissions: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... Another large chunk of emissions come from burning fuel for heating, at least 11% (commercial/residential heating slice) but probably about half of the industry slice as well comes from local energy generation. This tends to be harder to replace with batteries because of the form of energy desired, e.g. you can't replace an acetylene torch with electricity. If we very generously assume that most modes of transportation excepting airplanes and snowmobiles can be run on batteries, and gas heating can be replaced with electric heat pumps, the proportion of emissions affected by these two technologies could be around 60-70%. That's not a complete fix, but it is a big piece of the puzzle. However, the technology turnover is extremely difficult and expensive, which I think is the bigger problem hiding behind "renewables".
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  You can replace an acetylene torch with gas electric arc welding and cutting. It is done, but is currently more expensive (not a whole lot mind you). The problem is not manufacturing but mostly smelting and refining. (Including recycling) You need huge sustained and peak energy input for that, renewables do not deliver it.
acidburnNSA 8y ago
This contains a link to the actual discussion [1] which I highly recommend watching. Bill demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of energy systems, guided by one of his favorite authors (Vaclav Smil) who recently wrote the incredible and humbling book, Energy and Civilization [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k [2] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Energy-and-Civilization https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Energy-and-Civilization
- dharma1 8y ago
  Great interview. Really sounds like for the next 25 years (where China will increase energy capacity by 2x and India 4x) better nuclear fission plants will be the only viable choice for a source of energy that doesn't increase co2 emissions
- blencdr 8y ago
  Another really interesting conference [1] about energy, economics and physics. Bill Gates is right and the path to reduce our greenhouse gas emission won't be easy. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA
- mklarmann 8y ago
  I met Vaclav Smil 3 years ago in Zurich and talked with him. He told me, he doesn't believe in climate change. I find that very odd. His books might still be good so.
  - acidburnNSA 8y ago
    He must have changed since then. He sees the effects of climate change quantitatively and worries a lot about them. I've discussed this with him several times. At this point he's extremely tired of writing quantitative facts and seeing the world basically ignore the magnitude of the challenge of the energy transformation we're up against. He's skeptical that we'll be able to get our act together for the thing we need. Here are some of my shorthand notes from last time I spoke with him. It's clear that he believes in climate change. We've detached ourselves totally from the material world. Everyone is a money massager or investment banker. But point is that everything has been made by someone somewhere. Primary iron (electric arc furnace, in US is recycled) 1 billion tonnes of coke per year to make primary iron in China. 1.6 B tonnes of steel. Cement: 4.2 B tonnes/year with the worst possible fuel. 300 M t plastics. And ammonia. Without these there are no roads and buildings and metal. These are fundamental pillars of civilization that have no non-fossil sources. Carnegie melon made 5 g of iron by reducing with hydrogen. So how do you replace 4 pillars of civilization in scale with something non-carbon? DR Congo have lots of hydro. There could be a lot of hydro building there. India has some coal, they will burn all of it. Indian coal is low quality. Until at least 2047 coal will be primary source of India energy. You don't want to think about future of energy in Africa. If you have 0.5 Billion in Nigeria. If you want sleepless nights, think about Nigeria. Cleave it any way and it will have half a billion. No reliable electricity in the capital. To answer your question he has no idea, it's a nightmare. Lots of cleavages. One big river is drying out. Sunshine isn't going to carry the civilization.
Santosh83 8y ago
Lesser consumption will.
- jerkstate 8y ago
  And less trade with countries who use mostly carbon intensive energy sources
  - rusureabootthat 8y ago
    Yeah we should cut out China and India and all developing countries!
    - benj111 8y ago
      Well if renewables become cheap.... I understand what you're saying, but it's acceptable to take a stand against sweatshops, child labour etc. Why not against pollution?
      - gdy 8y ago
        Please do. Highest per capita CO2 emission rates belong to the US, its Middle Eastern allies and Canada.
  - gdy 8y ago
    The US has almost the highest per capita CO2 emission rate followed closely by Canada. The countries higher on that list are American Middle-Eastern allies and several tiny nations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...
    - jerkstate 8y ago
      Great point, we should also discourage immigration to the USA and Canada to keep the population in those countries down.
baxtr 8y ago
> “Electricity is just 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Gates. “There is no substitute for how the industrial economy runs today.” That’s why...
- D_Alex 8y ago
  That's a bit stupid, really. We can substitute many GG producing activities with carbon free electricity. Some examples: - Heat pumps for space and water heating, instead of gas, heating oil etc. Cooking on an induction stovetop instead of gas. - Electric transport (cars, buses, trains.... maybe hyperloops to substitute for airplanes) - Electric heating for furnaces, kilns etc - Production of industrial chemicals via electric processes, eg hydrogen (hence ammonia, methanol etc) by electrolysis instead of steam methane reforming etc. etc. With electricity, you can even reform CO2 into useful products (eg methanol, synthetic hydrocarbons, dimethyl ether), replacing current CO2 producing processes with ones that utilise CO2. (And if you are interested in supporting this, I would like to hear from you as this is my current area of work).
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    > Cooking on an induction stovetop instead of gas. Congratulations, you have banned Chinese food. I’m reasonably confident most professional chefs and a lot of amateurs would be very, very angry if you tried to ban cooking with gas. People aren’t actually willing to make sacrifices to their own personal quality of life to fight climate change as we’ve seen many times with carbon taxes or with the yellow vest movement in France.
    - fastbeef 8y ago
      I'd say that resturant-grade induction stovetops perform as good as or even outperform gas.
    - mikekchar 8y ago
      Actually induction woks are amazing. You can get them as hot as gas. Here's a really bad Youtube video showing some guys testing one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUuu6nRT29Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUuu6nRT29Y They aren't cheap though. I seriously want one :-) But your general point is well taken.
wjnc 8y ago
Project Drawdown [1] deserves a mention in any discussion in this field. They are a substantive research enterprise trying to map what can (technically, not politically) be done to reach the point where CO2 ppm start to fall in the next 30 yrs. Good thing is: it can be done. Bad thing is: the incentives aren't there right now. Bill is right, energy isn't the largest component. It's food and (delta) people that need to change the most. Step away and we need all measures to work and succeed in concord, including energy. There's a podcast for you to have a taste for the quality of the modellers and what they are up to in the next fase. [2]. My 2 cents is a CO2-tax would align incentives quite painfully. All we get in return is the drama of creating an artificial pool for a unlimited 'resource'. The cost of all measures is quite affordable, on a global, long-term scale. [1] https://www.drawdown.org https://www.drawdown.org [2] http://www.thedrawdownagenda.com/about/ http://www.thedrawdownagenda.com/about/
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  On the delta people, is the current projected sigmoid good enough or way too slow?
  - wjnc 8y ago
    That's one in the podcast. Some African countries do the full demographic transition within a decade (!). That means bringing girls from the home to school, increasing their wealth creating capacity and hence less and later children. That's very hopeful. Let's say that with all the (religion based) wars for parts of Africa and Asia things are looking less hopeful. You can only include females in human capital when there is relative peace. I think their focus and girl development for the ultimate goal of less CO2 ppm was the first time I grokked some of the more modern gender discussion which I usually cannot relate to (mostly because of terminology and fervour, not for a lack of basic instinct of trying).
- solotronics 8y ago
  From a CO2 standpoint wouldn't it be good to stop subsidizing immigration to the first world? It's not just delta-population it's people moving from a low consumption environment to a high consumption one.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
akie 8y ago
No one mentioning carbon extraction technologies here? Just adding less CO2 to the atmosphere is not enough to stop the trend, we actually need to undo what we've been doing all these decades and need to massively invest in carbon extraction technologies. Trillions of dollars, probably - about the same amount of what we spent on the Iraq war, so I'd say it's not undo-able.
- D_Alex 8y ago
  It is far cheaper to reduce the emissions of CO2 by switching to carbon free energy to a sufficient level that atmospheric CO2 stops rising (~25-50% of current level, different sources give different numbers), than to extract CO2 from the atmosphere.
  - akie 8y ago
    You are now talking about the cost of the technology, but that's not the complete picture. Switching to carbon free energy will probably work, but it will take longer to get to where we want to go. If it takes longer to stop climate change, there will likely be higher costs in undoing the effects of it. There are already severe droughts and highly unusual weather right now, if it takes us another 20 years to undo what we've done, who knows what kind of extreme weather we will see? However, if we can prevent (more years of) extreme weather and rising sea levels by extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, then the total bill for the whole project will be lower because we don't have to pay for undoing the damage. Additionally, who says that money spent on climate change prevention is money wasted? I'm fairly convinced that these investments will actually create jobs, in addition to preventing disaster.
- TimGremalm 8y ago
  I've read about this neat process for extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. You place a ultra compact box in the ground containing it's own building instructions and tooling for separating CO2 in to oxygen and building giant structures of the carbon. It's apparently called photosynthesis.
  - 8y ago
jussij 8y ago
Posting this from Australia, being +50 and having lived through one of the hottest summers I can remember. Strangely enough today we officially went into Autumn yet that too feels like Summer across most of Australia. This leads me to believe that in fact the world has seriously under estimated climate change. For what little it is worth, my last 10+ years of lived experience here in Australia has seen things getting hotter and hotter. My take on the situation is the IPC have actually got it wrong and there are way more, unidentified positive feedback loops in play, meaning the global climate system is actually showing signs of accelerated warning. Here in Australia we are now in Autumn and the temperature is +10 above average, making it feel like the middle of Summer. Time will tell, if in the next few year's we once again manage to break this current Autumn heatwave record. I suspect it will.
- joaomacp 8y ago
  I live in Portugal. If this summer is as hot as the last one with several 40c+ days I will move out for sure. I just can't take it, and like most people I don't have ac. I could get ac, but if I have the option I'll escape to Scandinavia or Germany
- Wellshit 8y ago
  Last year we had 35C in October 15. This year we had 25C in February 25. This is in the northern hemisphere. Both temperatures would be fine between May and September (including)
- perfunctory 8y ago
  climate science is very conservative indeed.
- specialist 8y ago
  "unidentified positive feedback loops in play" Ocean acidification, thawing tundra, burning lands. We could stop all human activities tomorrow and those processes will continue to accelerate, releasing ever more greenhouse gases. And if the oceans warm much more, methane clathrate will be released. We could easily hit 2000ppm. Conditions not since since the Eocene period. We need to actively secure and capture CO2 and methane to stabilize our climate, much less reverse the warming.
gdubs 8y ago
These conversations inevitably turn towards population control. Here's the thing: we started this process of global warming when we had a lot less people on the planet, and it would continue even if we cut the population in half. If the science is correct – and I personally think it is – we have something like a decade to get onto a different trajectory. While reaching sustainable population levels in the long term is in vital, population control is not going to address the crisis in the next ten years. Even if we cut the population in half. And, how on earth would you even do that without throwing the world into turmoil? There's no escaping the fact that the developed world emits more carbon per capita than the rest of the world. To me, it's obvious: the developed world needs to become drastically more efficient with carbon, and it needs to do it yesterday. We need to lead the way, and we need to pay for it. It makes no sense to put this on the backs of the developing world – who are already suffering the consequences of our emissions. If I had to put it on a bumper sticker, it would be: "It's Agriculture, stupid." Conventional agriculture damages topsoil, and destroys forests, which are two of the most effective carbon sinks we have. When you combine that with the amount of petrochemicals involved in conventional farming, along with fuel burned freighting food halfway across the world on a daily basis (how are those out-of-season cherries?), we're just beginning to come to terms with just how big of a contributor our food system is to global warming. Here's my list of what we should be doing: 1) Carbon tax 2) Eating less meat, and less out-of-season produce 3) Repairing soil and forests through conservation and more sustainable farming 4) Letting people work remotely to cut down on car and air travel 5) Massive public and private investment in infrastructure 6) Universal access to family planning
- robomartin 8y ago
  No, sadly, no. None of the above. Here’s an uncomfortable fact few know about and even fewer are talking about: If humanity, and all we have ever created, evaporated from the planet tomorrow, it would take 50,000 to 75,000 years for atmospheric CO2 concentration to come down by 100 ppm. Source: Ice core data going back 800,000 years. Look it up and see for yourself (sorry can’t link right now).
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
syllable_studio 8y ago
There are many pieces to this puzzle. Energy Storage is a hugely important piece to solve. https://blog.syllablehq.com/can-we-create-the-worlds-largest-battery-deep-below-sea-level/ https://blog.syllablehq.com/can-we-create-the-worlds-largest... ^ This is a proposal that we consider the ocean as a source for relatively affordable pumped storage.
ryanwaggoner 8y ago
The weaknesses of our technocratic mindset on HN are so apparent whenever this subject comes up. This is not a technical problem. We know the threat, we know what we should do, but we can't actually get it done. This is a political problem. And to my eye, it's a particularly intractable one. In democracies, in order to make the huge sweeping changes required to avoid the worst of climate change, you need the population on board. And they are not on board for those kinds of changes. You can scream and wave your hands all you want about CO2 taxes and smaller houses and not eating meat, but as soon as you start hitting people in their pockets hard to encourage other actions, they'll just vote you out of office instead. There will always be another politician who is happy to tell the population that they don't need to put up with this crazy sacrifice, there are better ways, etc. So either you get voted out of office or you just cave to the pressure. Humans are going to suffer from climate change, a lot. And even then, I suspect technology is what will save us, not billions of people deciding (for the first time ever) to make great individual sacrifices for the greater long-term good. It's the ultimate collective action problem, and we are not up for it.
- tomjen3 8y ago
  This isn't a political problem, all problems are technical, because we are only ever going to solve problems politically.

151 points by acidburnNSA 8y ago

It's a little off IMHO to argue that energy storage affects fuel usage only in electricity. The most visible company in the business right now is Tesla which primarily goes after transportation. Together, electricity and transportation account for 56% of US emissions: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... Another large chunk of emissions come from burning fuel for heating, at least 11% (commercial/residential heating slice) but probably about half of the industry slice as well comes from local energy generation. This tends to be harder to replace with batteries because of the form of energy desired, e.g. you can't replace an acetylene torch with electricity. If we very generously assume that most modes of transportation excepting airplanes and snowmobiles can be run on batteries, and gas heating can be replaced with electric heat pumps, the proportion of emissions affected by these two technologies could be around 60-70%. That's not a complete fix, but it is a big piece of the puzzle. However, the technology turnover is extremely difficult and expensive, which I think is the bigger problem hiding behind "renewables".

AstralStorm 8y ago
You can replace an acetylene torch with gas electric arc welding and cutting. It is done, but is currently more expensive (not a whole lot mind you). The problem is not manufacturing but mostly smelting and refining. (Including recycling) You need huge sustained and peak energy input for that, renewables do not deliver it.

acidburnNSA 8y ago

This contains a link to the actual discussion [1] which I highly recommend watching. Bill demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of energy systems, guided by one of his favorite authors (Vaclav Smil) who recently wrote the incredible and humbling book, Energy and Civilization [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k [2] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Energy-and-Civilization https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Energy-and-Civilization

dharma1 8y ago
Great interview. Really sounds like for the next 25 years (where China will increase energy capacity by 2x and India 4x) better nuclear fission plants will be the only viable choice for a source of energy that doesn't increase co2 emissions
blencdr 8y ago
Another really interesting conference [1] about energy, economics and physics. Bill Gates is right and the path to reduce our greenhouse gas emission won't be easy. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA
mklarmann 8y ago
I met Vaclav Smil 3 years ago in Zurich and talked with him. He told me, he doesn't believe in climate change. I find that very odd. His books might still be good so.
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  He must have changed since then. He sees the effects of climate change quantitatively and worries a lot about them. I've discussed this with him several times. At this point he's extremely tired of writing quantitative facts and seeing the world basically ignore the magnitude of the challenge of the energy transformation we're up against. He's skeptical that we'll be able to get our act together for the thing we need. Here are some of my shorthand notes from last time I spoke with him. It's clear that he believes in climate change. We've detached ourselves totally from the material world. Everyone is a money massager or investment banker. But point is that everything has been made by someone somewhere. Primary iron (electric arc furnace, in US is recycled) 1 billion tonnes of coke per year to make primary iron in China. 1.6 B tonnes of steel. Cement: 4.2 B tonnes/year with the worst possible fuel. 300 M t plastics. And ammonia. Without these there are no roads and buildings and metal. These are fundamental pillars of civilization that have no non-fossil sources. Carnegie melon made 5 g of iron by reducing with hydrogen. So how do you replace 4 pillars of civilization in scale with something non-carbon? DR Congo have lots of hydro. There could be a lot of hydro building there. India has some coal, they will burn all of it. Indian coal is low quality. Until at least 2047 coal will be primary source of India energy. You don't want to think about future of energy in Africa. If you have 0.5 Billion in Nigeria. If you want sleepless nights, think about Nigeria. Cleave it any way and it will have half a billion. No reliable electricity in the capital. To answer your question he has no idea, it's a nightmare. Lots of cleavages. One big river is drying out. Sunshine isn't going to carry the civilization.

Santosh83 8y ago

Lesser consumption will.

jerkstate 8y ago
And less trade with countries who use mostly carbon intensive energy sources
- rusureabootthat 8y ago
  Yeah we should cut out China and India and all developing countries!
  - benj111 8y ago
    Well if renewables become cheap.... I understand what you're saying, but it's acceptable to take a stand against sweatshops, child labour etc. Why not against pollution?
    - gdy 8y ago
      Please do. Highest per capita CO2 emission rates belong to the US, its Middle Eastern allies and Canada.
- gdy 8y ago
  The US has almost the highest per capita CO2 emission rate followed closely by Canada. The countries higher on that list are American Middle-Eastern allies and several tiny nations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...
  - jerkstate 8y ago
    Great point, we should also discourage immigration to the USA and Canada to keep the population in those countries down.

baxtr 8y ago

> “Electricity is just 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions,” said Gates. “There is no substitute for how the industrial economy runs today.” That’s why...

D_Alex 8y ago
That's a bit stupid, really. We can substitute many GG producing activities with carbon free electricity. Some examples: - Heat pumps for space and water heating, instead of gas, heating oil etc. Cooking on an induction stovetop instead of gas. - Electric transport (cars, buses, trains.... maybe hyperloops to substitute for airplanes) - Electric heating for furnaces, kilns etc - Production of industrial chemicals via electric processes, eg hydrogen (hence ammonia, methanol etc) by electrolysis instead of steam methane reforming etc. etc. With electricity, you can even reform CO2 into useful products (eg methanol, synthetic hydrocarbons, dimethyl ether), replacing current CO2 producing processes with ones that utilise CO2. (And if you are interested in supporting this, I would like to hear from you as this is my current area of work).
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  > Cooking on an induction stovetop instead of gas. Congratulations, you have banned Chinese food. I’m reasonably confident most professional chefs and a lot of amateurs would be very, very angry if you tried to ban cooking with gas. People aren’t actually willing to make sacrifices to their own personal quality of life to fight climate change as we’ve seen many times with carbon taxes or with the yellow vest movement in France.
  - fastbeef 8y ago
    I'd say that resturant-grade induction stovetops perform as good as or even outperform gas.
  - mikekchar 8y ago
    Actually induction woks are amazing. You can get them as hot as gas. Here's a really bad Youtube video showing some guys testing one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUuu6nRT29Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUuu6nRT29Y They aren't cheap though. I seriously want one :-) But your general point is well taken.

wjnc 8y ago

Project Drawdown [1] deserves a mention in any discussion in this field. They are a substantive research enterprise trying to map what can (technically, not politically) be done to reach the point where CO2 ppm start to fall in the next 30 yrs. Good thing is: it can be done. Bad thing is: the incentives aren't there right now. Bill is right, energy isn't the largest component. It's food and (delta) people that need to change the most. Step away and we need all measures to work and succeed in concord, including energy. There's a podcast for you to have a taste for the quality of the modellers and what they are up to in the next fase. [2]. My 2 cents is a CO2-tax would align incentives quite painfully. All we get in return is the drama of creating an artificial pool for a unlimited 'resource'. The cost of all measures is quite affordable, on a global, long-term scale. [1] https://www.drawdown.org https://www.drawdown.org [2] http://www.thedrawdownagenda.com/about/ http://www.thedrawdownagenda.com/about/

AstralStorm 8y ago
On the delta people, is the current projected sigmoid good enough or way too slow?
- wjnc 8y ago
  That's one in the podcast. Some African countries do the full demographic transition within a decade (!). That means bringing girls from the home to school, increasing their wealth creating capacity and hence less and later children. That's very hopeful. Let's say that with all the (religion based) wars for parts of Africa and Asia things are looking less hopeful. You can only include females in human capital when there is relative peace. I think their focus and girl development for the ultimate goal of less CO2 ppm was the first time I grokked some of the more modern gender discussion which I usually cannot relate to (mostly because of terminology and fervour, not for a lack of basic instinct of trying).
solotronics 8y ago
From a CO2 standpoint wouldn't it be good to stop subsidizing immigration to the first world? It's not just delta-population it's people moving from a low consumption environment to a high consumption one.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

akie 8y ago

No one mentioning carbon extraction technologies here? Just adding less CO2 to the atmosphere is not enough to stop the trend, we actually need to undo what we've been doing all these decades and need to massively invest in carbon extraction technologies. Trillions of dollars, probably - about the same amount of what we spent on the Iraq war, so I'd say it's not undo-able.

D_Alex 8y ago
It is far cheaper to reduce the emissions of CO2 by switching to carbon free energy to a sufficient level that atmospheric CO2 stops rising (~25-50% of current level, different sources give different numbers), than to extract CO2 from the atmosphere.
- akie 8y ago
  You are now talking about the cost of the technology, but that's not the complete picture. Switching to carbon free energy will probably work, but it will take longer to get to where we want to go. If it takes longer to stop climate change, there will likely be higher costs in undoing the effects of it. There are already severe droughts and highly unusual weather right now, if it takes us another 20 years to undo what we've done, who knows what kind of extreme weather we will see? However, if we can prevent (more years of) extreme weather and rising sea levels by extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, then the total bill for the whole project will be lower because we don't have to pay for undoing the damage. Additionally, who says that money spent on climate change prevention is money wasted? I'm fairly convinced that these investments will actually create jobs, in addition to preventing disaster.
TimGremalm 8y ago
I've read about this neat process for extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. You place a ultra compact box in the ground containing it's own building instructions and tooling for separating CO2 in to oxygen and building giant structures of the carbon. It's apparently called photosynthesis.
- 8y ago

jussij 8y ago

Posting this from Australia, being +50 and having lived through one of the hottest summers I can remember. Strangely enough today we officially went into Autumn yet that too feels like Summer across most of Australia. This leads me to believe that in fact the world has seriously under estimated climate change. For what little it is worth, my last 10+ years of lived experience here in Australia has seen things getting hotter and hotter. My take on the situation is the IPC have actually got it wrong and there are way more, unidentified positive feedback loops in play, meaning the global climate system is actually showing signs of accelerated warning. Here in Australia we are now in Autumn and the temperature is +10 above average, making it feel like the middle of Summer. Time will tell, if in the next few year's we once again manage to break this current Autumn heatwave record. I suspect it will.

joaomacp 8y ago
I live in Portugal. If this summer is as hot as the last one with several 40c+ days I will move out for sure. I just can't take it, and like most people I don't have ac. I could get ac, but if I have the option I'll escape to Scandinavia or Germany
Wellshit 8y ago
Last year we had 35C in October 15. This year we had 25C in February 25. This is in the northern hemisphere. Both temperatures would be fine between May and September (including)
perfunctory 8y ago
climate science is very conservative indeed.
specialist 8y ago
"unidentified positive feedback loops in play" Ocean acidification, thawing tundra, burning lands. We could stop all human activities tomorrow and those processes will continue to accelerate, releasing ever more greenhouse gases. And if the oceans warm much more, methane clathrate will be released. We could easily hit 2000ppm. Conditions not since since the Eocene period. We need to actively secure and capture CO2 and methane to stabilize our climate, much less reverse the warming.

gdubs 8y ago

These conversations inevitably turn towards population control. Here's the thing: we started this process of global warming when we had a lot less people on the planet, and it would continue even if we cut the population in half. If the science is correct – and I personally think it is – we have something like a decade to get onto a different trajectory. While reaching sustainable population levels in the long term is in vital, population control is not going to address the crisis in the next ten years. Even if we cut the population in half. And, how on earth would you even do that without throwing the world into turmoil? There's no escaping the fact that the developed world emits more carbon per capita than the rest of the world. To me, it's obvious: the developed world needs to become drastically more efficient with carbon, and it needs to do it yesterday. We need to lead the way, and we need to pay for it. It makes no sense to put this on the backs of the developing world – who are already suffering the consequences of our emissions. If I had to put it on a bumper sticker, it would be: "It's Agriculture, stupid." Conventional agriculture damages topsoil, and destroys forests, which are two of the most effective carbon sinks we have. When you combine that with the amount of petrochemicals involved in conventional farming, along with fuel burned freighting food halfway across the world on a daily basis (how are those out-of-season cherries?), we're just beginning to come to terms with just how big of a contributor our food system is to global warming. Here's my list of what we should be doing: 1) Carbon tax 2) Eating less meat, and less out-of-season produce 3) Repairing soil and forests through conservation and more sustainable farming 4) Letting people work remotely to cut down on car and air travel 5) Massive public and private investment in infrastructure 6) Universal access to family planning

robomartin 8y ago
No, sadly, no. None of the above. Here’s an uncomfortable fact few know about and even fewer are talking about: If humanity, and all we have ever created, evaporated from the planet tomorrow, it would take 50,000 to 75,000 years for atmospheric CO2 concentration to come down by 100 ppm. Source: Ice core data going back 800,000 years. Look it up and see for yourself (sorry can’t link right now).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

syllable_studio 8y ago

There are many pieces to this puzzle. Energy Storage is a hugely important piece to solve. https://blog.syllablehq.com/can-we-create-the-worlds-largest-battery-deep-below-sea-level/ https://blog.syllablehq.com/can-we-create-the-worlds-largest... ^ This is a proposal that we consider the ocean as a source for relatively affordable pumped storage.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago

The weaknesses of our technocratic mindset on HN are so apparent whenever this subject comes up. This is not a technical problem. We know the threat, we know what we should do, but we can't actually get it done. This is a political problem. And to my eye, it's a particularly intractable one. In democracies, in order to make the huge sweeping changes required to avoid the worst of climate change, you need the population on board. And they are not on board for those kinds of changes. You can scream and wave your hands all you want about CO2 taxes and smaller houses and not eating meat, but as soon as you start hitting people in their pockets hard to encourage other actions, they'll just vote you out of office instead. There will always be another politician who is happy to tell the population that they don't need to put up with this crazy sacrifice, there are better ways, etc. So either you get voted out of office or you just cave to the pressure. Humans are going to suffer from climate change, a lot. And even then, I suspect technology is what will save us, not billions of people deciding (for the first time ever) to make great individual sacrifices for the greater long-term good. It's the ultimate collective action problem, and we are not up for it.

tomjen3 8y ago
This isn't a political problem, all problems are technical, because we are only ever going to solve problems politically.