Green, ethical, energy issues in the news 9 June 2015 at 7:25AM edited 12 July 2021 at 11:38AM in Green & ethical MoneySaving 7.6K replies 463.1K views

Martyn1981

Piddles wrote: »

Forget that, it's already too late

It is likely too late to stop dangerous global warming

I can't see that article, but it depends on what we class as dangerous.

What we are seeing today reflects atmospheric CO2 from about 30-50yrs ago, due to the lag. So if things are getting messy now, then we've already baked in much higher CO2 related weather conditions going forward.

Then we have the small issue that annual CO2 emissions are almost leveling out, but are still the highest ever, so currently we are not only adding more CO2, but more than ever before, so it's a long road back from there to zero.

But even at zero emissions (perhaps 2050), we still have the cumulative levels growing from today to 2050.

It's bad, all bad, that's why I try to promote the positive news, and especially fight back against false negatives ...... we are where we are (sadly), no going back now, so the challenge now is to reduce the additional harm as fast as possible, because the rest of this century is going to be bad, it's just a question of how bad now. :sad:

Piddles

Solarchaser wrote: »

Tesla model 3 sounds good to me

Tesla Model 3 standard edition price now reduced from £41,550 including Plug-in grant, £37,340

That's a lot of heat which is encouraging for the planet, but not so encouraging for your place on the waiting list.....

Piddles

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I can't see that article, but it depends on what we class as dangerous.

What we are seeing today reflects atmospheric CO2 from about 30-50yrs ago, due to the lag. So if things are getting messy now, then we've already baked in much higher CO2 related weather conditions going forward.

Then we have the small issue that annual CO2 emissions are almost leveling out, but are still the highest ever, so currently we are not only adding more CO2, but more than ever before, so it's a long road back from there to zero.

But even at zero emissions (perhaps 2050), we still have the cumulative levels growing from today to 2050.

It's bad, all bad, that's why I try to promote the positive news, and especially fight back against false negatives ...... we are where we are (sadly), no going back now, so the challenge now is to reduce the additional harm as fast as possible, because the rest of this century is going to be bad, it's just a question of how bad now. :sad:

It said basically that. We started to late, we're making too little progress, the annual global emissions continue to go unrelentingly upwards, there's no technical magic bullet that going to rescue us. Basically, a lot of resources have now to go into planning on how to adapt to the hell that awaits our children and grand children.

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I can't see that article, but it depends on what we class as dangerous.

What we are seeing today reflects atmospheric CO2 from about 30-50yrs ago, due to the lag. So if things are getting messy now, then we've already baked in much higher CO2 related weather conditions going forward.

Then we have the small issue that annual CO2 emissions are almost leveling out, but are still the highest ever, so currently we are not only adding more CO2, but more than ever before, so it's a long road back from there to zero.

But even at zero emissions (perhaps 2050), we still have the cumulative levels growing from today to 2050.

It's bad, all bad, that's why I try to promote the positive news, and especially fight back against false negatives ...... we are where we are (sadly), no going back now, so the challenge now is to reduce the additional harm as fast as possible, because the rest of this century is going to be bad, it's just a question of how bad now. :sad:

If by bad you mean the number is going to go up sure
But actual harm and loss is going to be a net nothing

Plus my understanding is that the forcing function of CO2 or the partial pressure as it was called in chemistry lessons is now quite heavily from the air to the oceans and land. So much so that about half the CO2 emmissions are not seen in the air. Another way of saying this is that if we cut emmissions to about 50% of today then atmospheric CO2 will stop going up. Of you cut emmissions to say 25% of today atmospheric CO2 would actually go down (or so it is in theory)

If we went down to net zero then atmospheric CO2 would actually rapidly fall
This is actually a mild risk
So we really want to return to 300ppm and put the climate on a knife edge that could slip into an ice age (magnitudes worse than minor global warming)

GreatApe

Piddles wrote: »

It said basically that. We started to late, we're making too little progress, the annual global emissions continue to go unrelentingly upwards, there's no technical magic bullet that going to rescue us. Basically, a lot of resources have now to go into planning on how to adapt to the hell that awaits our children and grand children.

You can't believe that global warming is going to be anything major at all?

It's really a joke it's so trivial I mean humans need to literally turn this planet into a spaceship so we can move its orbit to save it from an expanding sun and one day an exploding sun

Human progress is so rapid that global warming is a trivial joke
The problems we face this generation that are real are AI and unforseen events like a super volcano or asteroid strike and of course global nuclear war. Not that the composition of the atmosphere is changing by one or two atoms per million per year

Fossil fuel useage will be rapidly replaced once the AI arrives
Because everything will more or less be free at that point
You want 1 terra watt of offshore wind power and mountain sized batteries?
Sure here you go.....it might take the AI six months to do

Self replication will mean anything and everything is going to be possible
1 droid can build 1 droid in a week which can build one droid in a week which ..
In the time it takes to grow a baby human you have built 550 billion droids... your workforce
Even if they were only as productive as just 1 human you have just increased world output 1000x even if the humans stop working

We won't need that many droids we would be fine with probably just 1 billion droids doing all the work for 10 billion humans and fixing all the climate problems you can imagine

Let's just hope they don't decide to torture us for eternity or to exterminate us.
Perhaps they will put us in a big collective zoo and come us off the other 95% of earth and 100% of space can be theirs

GreatApe

This infinite world could be 50% wind 50% PV powered with a global HVDC grid such that virtually no storage would be necessary probably most of that infrastructure far away and out of sight and the lines buried underground

It's also possible nuclear might play a part in that infinite AI droids world
1 TW nuclear reactors maybe deep under the sea
You'd only need 1,000 such reactors for a world of 1 trillion humans

Any mass energy needs for the AI would probably be met by space based power
I'm thinking magnitudes more energy than is hitting the earth in the form of sunshine so it wouldn't be possible to power it terrestrially via any (or every) means possible.

Who knows maybe said AI will figure out a way of converting matter into anti matter and all we would need is less than 1 gram of anti matter per second to power all of human activity and society. There's your clean energy future for you. Arriving this century sometime

Martyn1981

Piddles wrote: »

It said basically that. We started to late, we're making too little progress, the annual global emissions continue to go unrelentingly upwards, there's no technical magic bullet that going to rescue us. Basically, a lot of resources have now to go into planning on how to adapt to the hell that awaits our children and grand children.

And of course, it only gets worse. The target of 1.5C rise, which we are not anywhere on target yet to meet, gives us a 2/3rds chance of avoiding runaway global warming. And 2/3rds is not exactly great odds ..... imagine playing Russian roulette with 2 rounds in the chambers ..... no thanks.

And even if we do meet the zero target by 2050, we won't actually be heading for +1.5C, but +2C, as the lower temperature is what we might be able to catch the peak at with the deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technology from 2050-2100, tech that doesn't currently exist or isn't currently economical.

But other than that, sunny days!

PS Sorry for the downer, back to good RE news now.

Martyn1981

Two stories, both experimental, but with great potential.

A New Kind Of Geothermal Energy And Faster Charging Batteries Are Coming

Regarding the 'low' temperature geothermal - opening up an additional source of clean generation, with predictability, would certainly help strengthen the RE package as a whole.

Martyn1981

Remember the UK plans to end gas heating in new properties from 2025, well California is looking at similar plans, possibly from 2020.

This Is How Natural Gas Loses: One Building At A Time

Piddles

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Remember the UK plans to end gas heating in new properties from 2025, well California is looking at similar plans, possibly from 2020.

This Is How Natural Gas Loses: One Building At A Time

Great article, thanks. For me, it does emphasise that this is ALL about getting the cost of electricity from renewables (and particularly storage and/or global grid/time zone shifted solar) to out compete fossil fuels globally on price.

A couple of related questions for you Mart:

• what do you think is happening with the government's carbon neutral new build plan? It seems like a no-brainer from a distance and from the current climate change direction. As far as I can tell, it adds 1-2% to the costs of a new build and I would have thought also to the value of that property, plus all the energy savings over time.
• where are we with distributed micro wind generation? Domestic solar at our latitude seems at the total opposite of the demand/supply equation when it comes to home heating.