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I know we are not supposed to comment on voting here, but I would appeal to whoever is voting this response down to please consider making a reasoned rebuttal o

I know we are not supposed to comment on voting here, but I would appeal to whoever is voting this response down to please consider making a reasoned rebuttal of it instead. Down-voting is supposed to be for something that is just complete noise. This comment is just a disagreement with my post. Hardly grounds for voting it down. I disagree with the post because although I am in favour of all the initiatives suggested in it I suspect they are insufficient in the face of an economic system which is designed to keep expanding and growing. In addition: Nuclear power carries huge risks with it (which may become proportionally preferrable to climate destruction) Solar is useful only for some parts of the world. We lose massive amounts of energy in transmission from generation to consumption. Storage is still a huge problem. All of the above suggests that unless some realistic solutions for storage and transmission are on the table we need to shift manufacturing and consumption closer to the energy sources. Historically civilizations have clustered around such energy centers. The small (but real) gains available from meat-consumption reduction and gasoline-consumption reduction start to look significant.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
From the Center for Environmental Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley > The US can reach 90 percent clean electricity by 2035, dependably and without increasing consumer bills It really is as simple as scaling up renewables, transmission, and storage. https://gspp.berkeley.edu/news/news-center/the-us-can-reach-90-percent-clean-electricity-by-2035-dependably-and-without-increasing-consumer-bills https://gspp.berkeley.edu/news/news-center/the-us-can-reach-... Factory farming is an entirely separate issue. You have to make low meat and no meat diets sexy like Tesla made EVs sexy.
- frabbit 6y ago
  I completely agree that is doable, and indeed profitable for many of us, but it is only a partial solution. That same report says: a 90 percent carbon-free electric generation sector by 2035, which would reduce economy-wide emissions 27 percent. Yet the IPCC targets are 43% globally by 2050, unless we believe that there is going to be some currently non-existent technology introduced then something needs to be done to close that gap...reduction seems obvious: Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050. This means that any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO2 from the air. Although that relates 2010 emissions to 2030 I think the CO2 emissions are actually higher now: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions#how-have-global-co2-emissions-changed-over-time https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...
  - frabbit 6y ago
    CORRECTION: USA 2010 emissions were 5.9 million metric tonnes and dropped to 5.1 in 2019 according to: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide...
  - CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
    I’ve been watching some videos from https://paulbeckwith.net/ https://paulbeckwith.net/ IIRC he was reviewing some paper a while back about the disappearing arctic ice that wasn’t included in the IPCC models. Basically claiming that the target dates they mention should in fact come a few decades earlier. So if things need to happen by 2050, it could be more like by 2035

toomuchtodo 6y ago

From the Center for Environmental Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley > The US can reach 90 percent clean electricity by 2035, dependably and without increasing consumer bills It really is as simple as scaling up renewables, transmission, and storage. https://gspp.berkeley.edu/news/news-center/the-us-can-reach-90-percent-clean-electricity-by-2035-dependably-and-without-increasing-consumer-bills https://gspp.berkeley.edu/news/news-center/the-us-can-reach-... Factory farming is an entirely separate issue. You have to make low meat and no meat diets sexy like Tesla made EVs sexy.

frabbit 6y ago
I completely agree that is doable, and indeed profitable for many of us, but it is only a partial solution. That same report says: a 90 percent carbon-free electric generation sector by 2035, which would reduce economy-wide emissions 27 percent. Yet the IPCC targets are 43% globally by 2050, unless we believe that there is going to be some currently non-existent technology introduced then something needs to be done to close that gap...reduction seems obvious: Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050. This means that any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO2 from the air. Although that relates 2010 emissions to 2030 I think the CO2 emissions are actually higher now: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions#how-have-global-co2-emissions-changed-over-time https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...
- frabbit 6y ago
  CORRECTION: USA 2010 emissions were 5.9 million metric tonnes and dropped to 5.1 in 2019 according to: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide-emissions-from-1999/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide...
- CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
  I’ve been watching some videos from https://paulbeckwith.net/ https://paulbeckwith.net/ IIRC he was reviewing some paper a while back about the disappearing arctic ice that wasn’t included in the IPCC models. Basically claiming that the target dates they mention should in fact come a few decades earlier. So if things need to happen by 2050, it could be more like by 2035