Plastic bags, climate change, renewable energy,

hifiandmtb

Sphincter beanie
What I don't understand is why you feel this way and are satisfied to continue as you do? Is it cognitive dissonance or ennui?
Define "continue as you do".

A vegetarian? Built my own (tiny by Straya standards) high efficiency house? Only own one car, minimise its use? Personally cease all overseas travel?

This thread should never be a dick waving contest, it should be an education in how commerce blinds us into thinking we are (can) solving the CC conundrum.

People who flagrantly cause CO2 emissions do make me angry, and always will.

Plus, the science & study behind CC is fascinating.
 
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cokeonspecialtwodollars

Fartes of Portingale
Hypothetical scenario... A new "in charge of preventing the global climate change catastrophe" role has been created and you've drawn the short straw, you're able to mandate one single policy, what is it?

I'm personally leaning to the extreme end of the spectrum with a Thanos style intervention targeting the human species.
 

Oddjob

Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
Define "continue as you do".

A vegetarian? Built my own (tiny by Straya standards) high efficiency house? Only own one car, minimise its use? Personally cease all overseas travel?

This thread should never be a dick waving contest, it should be an education in how commerce blinds us into thinking we are (can) solving the CC conundrum.

People who flagrantly cause CO2 emissions do make me angry, and always will.

Plus, the science & study behind CC is fascinating.
How many imported cars have you owned? Whats the energy usage of a house compared to a unit? What does your job allow people to do?

Ultimately individual action is meaningless, with a few exceptions. Unless you can make a meaningful poltical impact or can afford to geo-engineer its all hubris.

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Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
How many imported cars have you owned? Whats the energy usage of a house compared to a unit? What does your job allow people to do?

Ultimately individual action is meaningless, with a few exceptions. Unless you can make a meaningful poltical impact or can afford to geo-engineer its all hubris.

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I cannot agree. If you really care about climate change then despite others' lack of action you would be a hypocrite to continue to travel overseas and consume and waste just because everyone else does or because others aren't reducing. We all need to do something, sure it wont fix the problem until major emitters are gone or curtailed however while we all burn ignorantly nothing will change.
 

hifiandmtb

Sphincter beanie
Exactly DC, it’s how what I do sits with me morally. I do what I think is reasonable, and consider my actions.

But this has little to do with the scientific, sociological & otherwise informational messages I post in this thread.

For some reason I’m being judged for posting things like that YT video above?

I do dream of a level play field, where legislation required everyone to act equally when it came to energy consumption. That’d be swell.
 

Oddjob

Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
I cannot agree. If you really care about climate change then despite others' lack of action you would be a hypocrite to continue to travel overseas and consume and waste just because everyone else does or because others aren't reducing. We all need to do something, sure it wont fix the problem until major emitters are gone or curtailed however while we all burn ignorantly nothing will change.
What I am saying is that it makes stuff all difference. Vegetarianism/no travel/insert sacrifice of your choice here, is just virtue signalling. Pinning our hopes on reduced consumption without a price signal is just a fairy tale. Similarly ignoring the availability of options like stratospheric sulfur is also wilful ignorance.

What we all need to do is find some way to convince everyone to sign up to pricing carbon. If we can't do that, then we need to accept geo-engineering and find mitigation strategies to get the himan race through the next 200 years.



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hifiandmtb

Sphincter beanie
What I am saying is that it makes stuff all difference. Vegetarianism/no travel/insert sacrifice of your choice here, is just virtue signalling. Pinning our hopes on reduced consumption without a price signal is just a fairy tale. Similarly ignoring the availability of options like stratospheric sulfur is also wilful ignorance.

What we all need to do is find some way to convince everyone to sign up to pricing carbon. If we can't do that, then we need to accept geo-engineering and find mitigation strategies to get the himan race through the next 200 years.
Repeat after me:

. Tech alone cannot solve CC
. Tech alone cannot solve CC
. Tech alone cannot solve CC

Did you bother to watch the YT vid? In essence, it said what you’ve already stated. You are not some sort of soothsayer

In choosing not to both reduce energy consumption plus introduce new tech, we are not choosing to ignore CC. We are choosing a CC outcome that has been predicted, and it’s horrible.

Your plan B enviro-eng is another form of tech, unproven & end goal unknown.

Also read that Google drive mandate I posted earlier. It goes into immense detail on what can & should be done, more than your couple of paragraph solution.
 

Oddjob

Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
Repeat after me:

. Tech alone cannot solve CC
. Tech alone cannot solve CC
. Tech alone cannot solve CC

Did you bother to watch the YT vid? In essence, it said what you’ve already stated. You are not some sort of soothsayer

In choosing not to both reduce energy consumption plus introduce new tech, we are not choosing to ignore CC. We are choosing a CC outcome that has been predicted, and it’s horrible.

Your plan B enviro-eng is another form of tech, unproven & end goal unknown.

Also read that Google drive mandate I posted earlier. It goes into immense detail on what can & should be done, more than your couple of paragraph solution.
Define solve CC. I expect that we will overshoot 3 degrees, there will be global panic, geo-engineering will occur to buy time and then it will take about a century and half to return to 19th century level CO2 levels and reduce population to about 5 billion.

Solar dimming has been conclusively proven. In much the same way we've known about the greenhouse effect for over a century, we've also known about the impact of aerosols on global temperature. We could stop temperature increases next year. Unfortunately we would destroy the ozone layer in the process and it would do nothing about ocean acidification.

Libraries have been written about climate change and how to deal with it. If there's consensus on anything in resource management and economics its that carbon pricing is the lowest cost solution to limiting or even reversing climate change. The problem is that it needs to be implemented on a global scale. I'm certain that this is not possible in time to hit a 2 or 3 degree target.

Options not involving carbon pricing are more expensive and logically even less likely to succeed.

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hifiandmtb

Sphincter beanie
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make?

And re: this statement:

"...We could stop temperature increases next year..."

Got any scientific study showing proven scale & social acceptance of this approach?

You reading anything I'm posting?

I'll bring the mountain to Mohammed, shall I? Chapter titled "
Avoiding a Worst-Case Scenario: The Geo-Engineering
Option.
" from here:

• Once our society collectively decides to respond to the climate emergency, it is
possible that major scientific breakthroughs will occur, allowing humanity to
rapidly remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in time to restore a safe
climate.

• At some point in the future, there is a risk that climate warming will cause the
irreversible release of highly potent greenhouse gases stored in Arctic methane
clathrates and land-based permafrost that could cause severe, abrupt climate
change and lock in even more severe, long-term climatic disruption. There is
evidence that relatively small quantities of greenhouse gases are leaking from
these sources, although it is not precisely clear when the tipping points could
occur.

• In 2010, the National Science Foundation warned that if even a “fraction” of the
methane stored in the floor of the shallow East Siberian Arctic Shelf in the Arctic
Ocean is released into the atmosphere, it could “trigger abrupt climate
warming.”

• About 1.4 trillion tons of methane are trapped below the shelf, and it was recently
estimated that around 10 million tons leak from the shelf annually, according to
researcher Natalia Shakhova of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. It is not
clear when the shelf began leaking or if it is leaking because of human activities,
but Shakhova and her team are concerned that the shelf is beginning to
destabilize.

• According to Shakhova, an abrupt, decade-long release of 50 billion tons of
methane is “highly possible at any time,” and would trigger a “climate
catastrophe.” Methane is 25 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide
over a 100-year-period, and 72 to 100 times as potent during the 20-year period
after it is emitted. There is a great debate among climate scientists about
whether the methane clathrates pose such a grave and imminent threat.

• A 50 billion ton belch of methane would quickly raise global temperatures
+1.3°C from current levels and increase global atmospheric methane levels
twelve-fold, pushing temperatures far beyond the unsafe +2°C “guardrail” and
likely setting off a number of other climate tipping points. Most ecosystems
generally cannot adapt to more than +0.1°C of change over the course of a
decade. It has been projected that such a belch would cost the world economy
$60 trillion.

• At the moment, the only way known to prevent such a scenario is the deployment
of high-risk geo-engineering technologies that are designed to rapidly cool the
earth.

• In particular, humans could use rockets, aircraft, or a giant hose to inject sulfate
particles (aerosols) into the upper atmosphere and substantially cool the earth in a
matter of months. This technology, the most well-known “solar radiation
management” approach, is in development. It would mimic the effect of
volcanoes, which spew sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere, and have
demonstrably cooled the earth in the past by reflecting the sun’s rays back into
space.
• Directly cooling the earth using solar radiation management could theoretically
prevent both a general melt of the permafrost as well as a catastrophic, largescale, irreversible release of methane from clathrates. It could also theoretically
slow down or even halt the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets,
and give humanity a window of time to restore atmospheric greenhouse gas
concentrations to safe levels.

• However, solar radiation management would likely disrupt global rainfall
patterns, causing floods and droughts that would adversely affect billions of
people across the planet, and possibly kill large amounts of people in the absence
of massive international assistance. As a result of these potentially horrific side
effects, the use of this technology could potentially lead to war between nationstates. There could also be other side effects that cannot be predicted before the
technology is deployed.

• There is no way to test these technologies at scale. We agree with writers, such as
Naomi Klein, who argues that using these techniques would make all humanity
and the natural world guinea pigs in an extremely dangerous experiment.
However, it is also true that this extremely dangerous experiment has already
begun, thanks to hundreds of years of planetary deforestation, greenhouse gas
emissions and aerosol emissions that have completely transformed the earth
system and initiated a new geological epoch called the “Anthropocene.”
Consciously attempting to direct the entire global climate system using a relatively
small, continuous atmospheric injection of pollutants would certainly constitute
an entirely new phase of the experiment, raising a host of moral dilemmas.

• The use, or planned use, of solar radiation management could also provide
governments with an excuse to further delay major greenhouse gas emissions
reduction and removal — both of which are scientific and ethical imperatives.

• Emissions must be drastically reduced soon, in order to both stabilize global
surface temperatures long-term, and to reverse ocean acidification, which is
killing off key components of the ocean food chain — specifically shelled
organisms — and therefore poses a threat to the entire marine food web. More
than a billion people across the world rely on marine species as their primary
protein source. Solar radiation management technologies do not reverse ocean
acidification, which is caused by carbon dioxide emissions and is known
colloquially as “global warming’s evil twin.” Only carbon emissions reduction
and removal can halt and reverse ocean acidification.

• If the process of aerosol sulfate injection was completely disrupted by depression
or war for several years, the cooling effect could wear off, leading to a sudden,
disastrous pulse of warming that could overwhelm the ability of ecosystems to
adapt. If solar radiation management was deployed in order to mask the global
warming from a business-as-usual emissions trajectory and was suddenly
interrupted, it would result in an extremely disastrous warming pulse. Even if no
interruption occurred, solar radiation management would need to somehow be
deployed continuously for hundreds of years on end if it was deployed as a
substitute for zero emissions and greenhouse gas removal — a truly horrible idea.

• However, it will ultimately be difficult to avoid a sudden pulse of warming, since
about half of the “global dimming” effect from aerosol emissions that is currently
cooling the earth by -1.2°C will wear off quickly if fossil fuel burning is rapidly
curtailed. The earth would suddenly warm by about +0.6°C. The sulfate aerosol
particles emitted in fossil fuel burning fall out of the atmosphere after 10 days, but
are continuously replenished as humanity continues to burn large quantities of
fossil fuels. This means that as we curtail fossil fuel burning (and therefore sulfate
aerosol emissions), the rate of global warming will likely accelerate as the shortterm aerosol cooling effect wears off, although this could be tempered by sharp
cuts in emissions of short-lived warming agents such as methane and black
carbon.

• Meanwhile, the majority of fossil fuel carbon emissions cause a powerful climate
warming effect for about 200 hundred to 2,000 years, while a substantial minority
of emissions continue to impact the climate for tens of thousands of years and
longer. Delaying the date at which we curtail fossil fuel burning (and thus end
the temporary global dimming effect) will not solve the problem, since fossil fuels
are a finite resource that would be exhausted long before the warming impact of
emissions wears off — even if we continue to burn fossil fuels at only a fraction of
current levels long into the future.

• Former NASA scientist James Hansen calls this conundrum humanity’s “Faustian
Bargain.”
A mandate absolutely worth reading.
 
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Oddjob

Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make?

And re: this statement:

"...We could stop temperature increases next year..."

Got any scientific study showing proven scale & social acceptance of this approach?

You reading anything I'm posting?

I'll bring the mountain to Mohammed, shall I? Chapter titled "
Avoiding a Worst-Case Scenario: The Geo-Engineering
Option.
" from here:



A mandate absolutely worth reading.
The point is to ask chicken little if the sky is really falling.

The scary thing about geo-engineering is that it doesn't need social acceptance. Its cheap enough that a rich individual could do it themselves and flying balloons or drones carrying sulphur rich fuel over international waters is not illegal.

I read it. I was just politely ignoring it. I have more chance of achieving my goal of being Brad Pitt than any country following that document.

I agree that geo-engineering is not a good idea, but at this point its a bit like democracy compared to all the other alternatives...

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hifiandmtb

Sphincter beanie
People ask what needs to be done.

What needs to be done is in that document.

Again, I still don't know what point you are trying to make. Chicken little comments are, well, untrue.

And where is your evidence that geo-engineering can be delivered in scale & effectiveness over a long period of time without interruption?

Why is it so uninteresting & difficult to discuss such a momentously calamitous problem? This should be one of the only things we are discussing. Most else is a pointless distraction.
 
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silentbutdeadly

has some good things to say
The problem is that most people ask what needs to be done...by someone else.

The reality is that what needs to be done...even down to the letter of your document... won't be.

Something will be done but it will be a weird mongrel mix of mitigation, adaptation and disaster response that will please almost no-one, inconvenience billions, cost trillions, kill many but many more will muddle through. So basically much like life as it is today....for billions of people.
 

Flow-Rider

Burner
The problem is that most people ask what needs to be done...by someone else.
Because I'm not going to give up my precious life style unless my neighbour does type of mentality. We've had governments that can't lead one after the other, as soon as it takes the candy from the baby it cries and they lose votes which in turn they lose power. If they really had any interest in the planet instead of their political career they would have laid down the law.
 

Oddjob

Merry fucking Xmas to you assholes
Because I'm not going to give up my precious life style unless my neighbour does type of mentality. We've had governments that can't lead one after the other, as soon as it takes the candy from the baby it cries and they lose votes which in turn they lose power. If they really had any interest in the planet instead of their political career they would have laid down the law.
+1.

I guess this was my point in poking Hifi with a stick. The first best option is collective action through carbon pricing. Everything else will will either be more expensive (command and control), have nastier side effects (geo-engineering), or be immaterial (complaining to the converted).
 

Haakon

Keeps on digging
+1.

I guess this was my point in poking Hifi with a stick. The first best option is collective action through carbon pricing. Everything else will will either be more expensive (command and control), have nastier side effects (geo-engineering), or be immaterial (complaining to the converted).
Carbon pricing worked in Australia. It was wildly more effective than hoped at driving observable emissions reductions and according to treasury was a net positive influence on the economy.
 

hifiandmtb

Sphincter beanie
+1.

I guess this was my point in poking Hifi with a stick. The first best option is collective action through carbon pricing. Everything else will will either be more expensive (command and control), have nastier side effects (geo-engineering), or be immaterial (complaining to the converted).
No it’s not. The first best collective action is rationing. Then other things.

I don’t know why I’m arguing with you over this though, many with more qualifications know that carbon pricing as a start won’t move us fast enough.

We are beyond being able to move slowly. All carbon pricing does is move commerce in a different direction. Commerce won’t fix this in time.
 
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