The Climate Change Discussion Thread

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

sounds similar to the posturing pedestrian argument of how guns are a big part of the solution for gun violence problems in the USA. Like some kind passage from the NRA bible: guns begat guns which begat guns which begat guns....

fossil fuels got us into this mess. how the fuck are they going to get us out of it?

That is a false analogy and you damn well know it.

You work at Western, why don't you try to see how fast you would be out of a job without the oil you hate. From running out of water, no electricity or communications, and not being able to get to work and neither can your students. How fast would you and your family starve when there is no oil to produce, package, and transport the food that you rely on everyday. See how fast your family gets sick due to a break down of our sanitations systems and there will be no help because all our medicines, medical supplies, and nurses & doctors are all of a sudden not available.

Fossil fuels {and especially oil} runs our lives and to say other wise is just a feel-good attempt to exonerate ourselves of personal responsibility. Our entire industrial society was, and is still is, built and based upon the amply supply and mass usage of oil and getting rid of it all of a sudden would plunge our world back to a pre-1800 economy and standard of living. Anyone who plans to go fossil fuel free all of a sudden better be prepared to starve, freeze, and die MUCH earlier.

We will ALWAYS need fossil fuels and there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with that. Mother Nature doesn't give damn whether we use fossil fuels or not as long when we are done using them we don't turn around and stick them in the air but rather back underground were they belong.

Let's not kid ourselves, an immediate stop of fossil fuels in our now urban society would kill us and no, that is hyperbole but simply reality and if you don't believe me than go and try it for yourselves.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Floppa

Ah yes, all humans are perfectly rational agents when it comes to consuming and advertising isn't a thing. You can make the same argument for drugs, but in the case of opioids, big pharma pushed them really hard, then acted like "Oh but we're just responding to market demands!"

Yes, I have wants and needs as a consumer. Enough plastic packaging to choke a horse surrounding EVERYTHING I BUY isn't one of them! Why are socks bound together with little plastic strips? And what's with electronics getting packaged with tiny 1-inch-long charge cables??? Give me a cable or don't!

Yes people bear responsibility but that doesn't mean we should let big corps off the hook for their irresponsible practices.

If you want to live without the products corporations make and go live in the wilderness, that's your choice. But you are not making that choice. That plastic you are complaining about is a rounding error in the production and delivery of consumer goods' CO2 output.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

That is a false analogy and you damn well know it.

You work at Western, why don't you try to see how fast you would be out of a job without the oil you hate. From running out of water, no electricity or communications, and not being able to get to work and neither can your students. How fast would you and your family starve when there is no oil to produce, package, and transport the food that you rely on everyday. See how fast your family gets sick due to a break down of our sanitations systems and there will be no help because all our medicines, medical supplies, and nurses & doctors are all of a sudden not available.

Fossil fuels {and especially oil} runs our lives and to say other wise is just a feel-good attempt to exonerate ourselves of personal responsibility. Our entire industrial society was, and is still is, built and based upon the amply supply and mass usage of oil and getting rid of it all of a sudden would plunge our world back to a pre-1800 economy and standard of living. Anyone who plans to go fossil fuel free all of a sudden better be prepared to starve, freeze, and die MUCH earlier.

We will ALWAYS need fossil fuels and there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with that. Mother Nature doesn't give damn whether we use fossil fuels or not as long when we are done using them we don't turn around and stick them in the air but rather back underground were they belong.

Let's not kid ourselves, an immediate stop of fossil fuels in our now urban society would kill us and no, that is hyperbole but simply reality and if you don't believe me than go and try it for yourselves.

jesus, what is with the ad hominem attack? You are telling me nothing that isn't known by anyone with an elementary school education. OF COURSE we aren't going to immediately get off of fossil fuels (which I did not imply), but we need to move much faster with replacing our carbon-intensive economy with something ecologically sustainable, even if it means short term economic pain (the pain of which will be far, far greater if we continue on our inadequate path, to say nothing about how our ecology will be destroyed).


You are out of line with your "Family will starve" childish bullshit. Sounds like a very hackslackian argument to me ("drive a car? you hypocrite!")

As for my job, well I just so happen to do a lot of research on how to nudge individuals to a more sustainable lifestyle, taking into consideration the enabling and constraining factors (including our carbon-intensive infrastructure) that promote or impede sustainable consumption. It isn't my main research area, but one of several that I have been working on for two decades. I think my job is pretty safe (besides, I am tenured )My comment is not at all a "feel good attempt at self-exoneration". Again, you are out of line.

[Hackslack]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

jesus, what is with the ad hominem attack? You are telling me nothing that isn't known by anyone with an elementary school education. OF COURSE we aren't going to immediately get off of fossil fuels (which I did not imply), but we need to move much faster with replacing our carbon-intensive economy with something ecologically sustainable, even if it means short term economic pain (the pain of which will be far, far greater if we continue on our inadequate path, to say nothing about how our ecology will be destroyed).


You are out of line with your "Family will starve" childish bullshit. Sounds like a very hackslackian argument to me ("drive a car? you hypocrite!")

As for my job, well I just so happen to do a lot of research on how to nudge individuals to a more sustainable lifestyle, taking into consideration the enabling and constraining factors (including our carbon-intensive infrastructure) that promote or impede sustainable consumption. It isn't my main research area, but one of several that I have been working on for two decades. I think my job is pretty safe (besides, I am tenured )My comment is not at all a "feel good attempt at self-exoneration". Again, you are out of line.

LOL!!! Nice dig… never have I ever said that btw… lets not forget that you are the one that equates the oil and gas industry to the tobacco industry, like, almost as if the tobacco industry helped make exponential gains in one first world way of life the same way O&G has… haha! You should post that one link again where the individual basically states it’s not in the consumers hands to make conscious decisions to not use fossil fuels, rather it’s the producers who make it a requirement. I thought that was a funny one.

[MolsonExport]

Yeah right you never said that.

The oil and gas industry spends billions on lobbying and counter-propaganda to disguise just how bad their extraction methods and products are for the ecology. They are very much like the tobacco industry in that regard.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Hackslack

This is absolute classic.

Vancouver Sun reporting the students on strike because of climate change, then two stories down they are reporting a record 30,000 people visiting Vancouver via cruise ships this weekend. Talk about a huge middle finger to those students striking in Vancouver. Where is Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart protesting the visitors on cruise ships?! Another beautiful case of hypocrisy coming out of the lower mainland!

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-...e-strike-today

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-...r-this-weekend

getting closer

[Hackslack]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

getting closer

Not quite. The same question would still remain. Why wouldn’t they protest the cruise ship industry, god awful amounts of GhG come from those ships, roughly 1 million cars worth, every single day, all for pleasure! Anyway, try again.

[Truenorth00]

It’s Not a Competition, But Renewables Are Beating Nuclear Anyway

By Nathaniel Bullard
19 August 2021, 06:00 GMT-4

Energy giant BP Plc has been publishing its annual review of global energy statistics for seven decades. (I’ve been reading it — and digesting its data — for about a fifth of that time.)

The latest edition published in July is, understandably, quite focused on the largest year-on-year decline in primary energy consumption since 1945. But there’s another finding worth noting: 2020 was the first year in which renewable power generation (excluding hydro) surpassed nuclear power generation.

Charted out, the comparison is striking. In 1965, the year BP’s data begins, nuclear generated 24 terawatt-hours of power, while wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass generated 15 terawatt-hours. That was as close as the two categories would be again until 2019.

The gap between the two widened for four full decades, but with nuclear generation basically flat since the turn of the century and renewables continuing to grow, the latter caught the former in 2020.

Compare the shape of the renewables curve to nuclear’s. The perfectly smooth renewables curve is an aggregate of hundreds of geothermal plants, thousands of biomass turbines, a-third-of-a-million wind turbines, and more than a billion photovoltaic modules, installed across numerous global markets. It shows not a single annual decline in more than 50 years.

Nuclear is basically the opposite: a single technology with a small number of plants in an even smaller number of markets. Many discrete decisions — whether to embark on a massive expansion in one market, say, or to shut down generation for years in the wake of disaster — are visible in this chart. There, in 2011, is the Japanese nuclear fleet response to the Tōhoku earthquake and ensuing tsunami. And we don’t need to squint to see the shutdown of six plants last year in the U.S, Sweden, Russia, and France.

Nuclear plants are also pretty old. Most were designed for a 40-year useful life, and a lot of them are approaching that age now—a full 45% are between the ages of 31 and 40. There are more nuclear plants older than 46 than there are those under 6.

One heartening sign for nuclear power is the relative abundance of the youngest plants. There are four times as many nuclear plants five years or younger as there are between the ages of 11 and 15, and twice as many as those aged 16 to 20.

It’s important to remember that from a climate perspective, nuclear and renewables are not in competition. There will be enough growth in electricity demand to support significant expansion of every zero-carbon power generation technology.

Nuclear could even wind up being essential to deep decarbonization in other sectors. BloombergNEF recently published three scenarios for reaching a net-zero emissions energy sector by 2050, and one of them assumes a massive deployment of small, modular nuclear reactors designed to complement wind, solar, and batter technologies. That scenario includes nuclear power applied not just to electricity, but also to manufacturing hydrogen. A number of early-stage companies are testing these smaller, more modular nuclear generation technologies, which is a promising start.

Still, getting nuclear power back on the growth curve is a decade-long process, i.e. the best time to have done it would have been 10 (or 20) years ago. The second-best time is right now. We should hope that the two lines on that power generation chart get closer again. We would all be better off for it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...nuclear-anyway


The charts in the article are even better. Perfect S-curve behaviour by renewables and now well into the linear portion.

[Floppa]

Originally Posted by milomilo

If you want to live without the products corporations make and go live in the wilderness, that's your choice. But you are not making that choice. That plastic you are complaining about is a rounding error in the production and delivery of consumer goods' CO2 output.

CO2 isn't the only form of pollution to worry about

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Floppa

CO2 isn't the only form of pollution to worry about

It's by far the biggest one we need to care about though and as long as you dispose of that plastic you mention properly, it's not a problem.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Floppa

CO2 isn't the only form of pollution to worry about

We should worry about all forms of pollution. But maybe we should prioritize the one that is an extinction level event on par with that which wiped out the dinosaurs?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exti...climate_change

[Floppa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

We should worry about all forms of pollution. But maybe we should prioritize the one that is an extinction level event on par with that which wiped out the dinosaurs?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exti...climate_change

And society collectively telling corporations that we're tired of all the packaging will have some effect on both

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Floppa

And society collectively telling corporations that we're tired of all the packaging will have some effect on both

The negative impact of plastic packaging on the climate is completely negligible. Actually, the reason plastic is used so much is because it saves energy (companies don't like wasting money). It's light and strong, so saves money on fuel for transport, and it helps ensure food doesn't spoil as quick, meaning less gets wasted and thus uses less energy in production. Plastic is a fucking phenomenal material.

[Architype]

Originally Posted by milomilo

The negative impact of plastic packaging on the climate is completely negligible. Actually, the reason plastic is used so much is because it saves energy (companies don't like wasting money). It's light and strong, so saves money on fuel for transport, and it helps ensure food doesn't spoil as quick, meaning less gets wasted and thus uses less energy in production. Plastic is a fucking phenomenal material.

We really need biodegradable materials instead of plastic. The sheer amount of plastic is a nuisance, even in everyday life.

[jamincan]

It's pretty well documented that plastic bags have significantly lower emissions associated with them than alternatives. There are a ton of articles looking into this, but findings are consistent. In order to equal the emissions associated with a single-use plastic bag, you would need to re-use a paper bag roughly four times or more, a reuseable plastic bag anywhere from 5-10 times, and a cotton bag about 131 times. I couldn't find a number for organic cotton, but previously I recall it being ridiculous - something like several thousand times over the single-use plastic. (* excuse the exact numbers, I'm working mostly from memory and a brief scan of articles. The gist is accurate.)

The reality as well is that single-use plastic bags aren't really single-use. They can be reused, we just don't tend to, except for waste.

The terrible impact of organic cotton is particularly interesting. I personally avoid organic products since I learned just how high their environmental impact was. They use monumental amounts of water, are less productive, and there is huge amounts of waste due to lost crops. And yet, for a certain set of people, they buy organic, thinking they're saving themselves and the planet, while they drive home a few blocks from the grocery store in their Escalade.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Architype

We really need biodegradable materials instead of plastic. The sheer amount of plastic is a nuisance, even in everyday life.

Why? It'll go in landfill and never degrade, the same as happens with normal plastics. And one of the reasons plastic is used so much is because it doesn't degrade. Adding biodegradability to it will make it less useful in many situations.

[Floppa]

Originally Posted by milomilo

The negative impact of plastic packaging on the climate is completely negligible. Actually, the reason plastic is used so much is because it saves energy (companies don't like wasting money). It's light and strong, so saves money on fuel for transport, and it helps ensure food doesn't spoil as quick, meaning less gets wasted and thus uses less energy in production. Plastic is a fucking phenomenal material.

There is a massive island of garbage in the middle of the Pacific and you think it's fine??? You realize it ends up in the food chain and WE eat it?

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Yeah right you never said that.

The oil and gas industry spends billions on lobbying and counter-propaganda to disguise just how bad their extraction methods and products are for the ecology. They are very much like the tobacco industry in that regard.

Don't forget hiding their own research showing climate change is real, and caused by fossil fuel carbon emissions.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...-40-years-ago/

They found that the company’s knowledge of climate change dates back to July 1977, when its senior scientist James Black delivered a sobering message on the topic. “In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels," Black told Exxon’s management committee. A year later he warned Exxon that doubling CO2 gases in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by two or three degrees—a number that is consistent with the scientific consensus today.

[WarrenC12]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...out-using-coal

Using Hydrogen instead of coal to produce steel. At least Hydrogen has the potential to be produced cleanly.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Floppa

There is a massive island of garbage in the middle of the Pacific and you think it's fine??? You realize it ends up in the food chain and WE eat it?

The garbage island is not fine but the source of that issue is not plastic sock ties and 15cm USB cables, and the solutions generally proposed will do nothing about it, while making the
climate problem worse.