I think the idea of looking at "polluters" isn't really a useful paradigm for CO2 like it is for other things. Because ultimately the largest CO2 emitters are all just middle men to the individual consumer.
Exxon spilled a bunch of oil because Exxon violated a bunch of safety standards and ran their ship aground. and getting fined which is then passed onto consumers doesn't help there. Exxon is responsible for a huge amount of CO2 emissions because Exxon's customers want to put fuel in their F150s, passing along that cost does help.
I think $40/ton is too low long term, but it is about $42 per MHW of coal generation $24 for Nat Gas or 40c per gallon + whatever the refining tacks on for gasoline. That's a pretty big price increase for most US consumers about 20%.
Has a good price per KWH information on them, but this would makes Q1(cheap) Coal cost about the same as Q3 nuclear or highest priced onshore wind. And average CCNG around the same as average onshore wind.
Anything that adds cost on the fossil side is indirectly a subsidy for nuclear/renewable, and will accelerate the shutdown of the oldest and worst coal plants. And also provide incentive for consumers to change their behavior. $4 a gallon gas nearly broke Americans from their SUV addition(and broke Detroit), but it didn't last long enough.
Where as a steadily increasing carbon tax is a pretty good way to make electric vehicles make more economic sense without laying out giant tax credits for people who probably don't really need them anyways. Not that carbon taxes don't have their own regressiveness issues.
Also a carbon tax is easier for businesses(particularly those who make green products) to plan around than the sort of constantly appearing and expiring and highly variable tax credits.
One ton of oil contains 7.4 barrels of oil (per Saudia Arabia), each barrel being 42 gallons. That's 310.8 gallons per ton, or about 13 cents per gallon. A roughly 6% increase in price.
Coal is much much cheaper, at $35 to $45 per ton, so you're doubling the price. This would basically put coal power plants out of business, and many plants in the US are still coal based.
I'm too brain dead right now to convert MMBtu to tonnes so I can compare natural gas, but suffice it to say it won't be nearly as impactful as coal. So the effect will be to drive power generation to natural gas, without having enough of a price impact to kill our reliance on fossil fuels.
Carbon taxes are per ton of CO2 emissions. Not the weight of the feed material. So 6.3lb of gas(1 gallon) makes about 20lb of CO2 when burned. Diesel is about 22lb/gallon.[/url]
This has the different lb/kWh for various coal types, CCNG and Oil
Fuel Pounds of CO2 per million Btu Heat rate (Btu per kWh) Pounds of CO2 per kWh
Coal
Bituminous 205.691 10,080 2.07
Subbituminous 214.289 10,080 2.16
Lignite 215.392 10,080 2.17
Natural gas 116.999 10,408 1.22
Distillate oil (No. 2) 161.290 10,156 1.64
Residual oil (No. 6) 173.702 10,156 1.76
So I heard you guys like graphs. I'll show you graphs...
Normalized anomaly (anomaly divided by the standard deviation) shows the departure from normal in "sigma's", or "σ". One should expect the value to be between -2σ and +2σ about 95% of the time for a pure random signal with a normal distribution.
I don't really have much to say other than it is absolutely maddening how little of a fuck is actually given about the environment by almost everyone.
But one hopes that in a thousand years places like Vegas are remembered with the deepest scorn. Perhaps we all should bury time capsules containing just a piece of paper that reads 'I fucking told you!'
How do you think I spend my Thursdays!?
Edit: shit I need to get better about checking time stamps.
Sleep on
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
So I heard you guys like graphs. I'll show you graphs...
Normalized anomaly (anomaly divided by the standard deviation) shows the departure from normal in "sigma's", or "σ". One should expect the value to be between -2σ and +2σ about 95% of the time for a pure random signal with a normal distribution.
So basically, whatever the point of critical failure was, we hit it in 2016.
Fuck 2016.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
I just realized something.
Those Chinese cities, built way inland in the middle of nowhere hinterlands places, constructed to become instant cities of tens of millions - those are for their own climate refugees. Six hundred million people currently live in places that are threatened by rising sea levels, so those city shells were built to start moving people as soon as a major ice sheet collapses. The evacuations would be orderly: people displaced from the coast getting new apartments and industrial capacity could be moved inland as well to factory shells already constructed and waiting. China looked at the facts, knew that sea level rise was unavoidable, and started making preparations years ago.
Meanwhile in the US we'll probably have tent cities of refugees from Florida scattered all over.
AbsalonLands of Always WinterRegistered Userregular
edited February 2017
Okay, so if the sun decides to get solidly weaker and we suddenly get a 30-year record for low global temperature, how much can the ice possibly recover? According to physics, Is it easier for the sea ice to gain or lose ground?
Okay, so if the sun decides to get solidly weaker and we suddenly get a 30-year record for low global temperature, how much can the ice possibly recover? According to physics, Is it easier for the sea ice to gain or lose ground?
That wouldn't remove the carbon dioxide for the atmosphere so we'd still be fucked, just colder.
I've heard it said that what we're seeing now is the results of emissions from about two decades in the past. If that's true then even if carbon dioxide emissions magically dropped to zero tomorrow we'd still be screwed, because we'd have to suffer another two decades of messed-up weather.
Out of curiosity, does anyone have any links to ideas on climate change defenses? Ways to protect cities from sea level rise or farmland from desertification? This really seems like one of those "ounce of prevention, pound of cure" scenarios.
That wouldn't remove the carbon dioxide for the atmosphere so we'd still be fucked, just colder.
I've heard it said that what we're seeing now is the results of emissions from about two decades in the past. If that's true then even if carbon dioxide emissions magically dropped to zero tomorrow we'd still be screwed, because we'd have to suffer another two decades of messed-up weather.
Out of curiosity, does anyone have any links to ideas on climate change defenses? Ways to protect cities from sea level rise or farmland from desertification? This really seems like one of those "ounce of prevention, pound of cure" scenarios.
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
If part of the cost of national/civilizational survival is greasing a few palms, it's probably a cost that's worth it. Look at the US removing earmarks and where that's gotten us.
But China is putting a lot of effort into long-term survival, not just the cities. Like the 20 nuclear power plants currently under construction, planned to be completed by 2020, the rapid turn away from coal, massive investment in photovoltaics and wind as well (wind turbines going up at a rate of one per hour, every hour).
As for defenses, I want us (human race in general) to do iron fertilization of the north Pacific and entire Antarctic oceans for carbon sinking and restoration of fish stocks. Desertification can be lessened by hydrological projects like check dam building:
Cutting emissions was never the end game of affecting climate change. Cutting emissions is simply an act that lets us get to where we can deal with the problem and develop the carbon capture systems we need.
It's a reprieve that lets us start to deal with the problem.
There's really no effective way of stopping the effects of climate change without dealing with climate change directly. By that I mean that you can't simply put up walls around coastal cities, or engineer crops to survive harsher climates. If you're not dealing with the cause of climate change then anything you do to deal with the effects is going to fall short and fail.
Crops will eventually fail as the sources of irrigation dry up and weather becomes more harsh, including longer droughts. Cities will be affected by more than just rising sea levels and start seeing water and food shortages, harsher weather, and more riots.
What we need is carbon sequestration. Capture and never release. That's what coal was, it was sequestered carbon from several era ago. What we need is to capture the released carbon and then ensure that no one ever touches it again. Shoot it into space or let them try burning it on Mars, just something where it will never be used again.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
There is also the carbon capture method from Iceland that was proven to work - turning injecting carbon into basalt, turning it into limestone which locks away the carbon on a geologic scale. Of course, if carbon emissions aren't cut, then no amount of carbon mineralization would be able to keep up.
On a related note, the newest leader of the Taliban is urging Afghans to plant trees.
That wouldn't remove the carbon dioxide for the atmosphere so we'd still be fucked, just colder.
I've heard it said that what we're seeing now is the results of emissions from about two decades in the past. If that's true then even if carbon dioxide emissions magically dropped to zero tomorrow we'd still be screwed, because we'd have to suffer another two decades of messed-up weather.
Out of curiosity, does anyone have any links to ideas on climate change defenses? Ways to protect cities from sea level rise or farmland from desertification? This really seems like one of those "ounce of prevention, pound of cure" scenarios.
There is also the carbon capture method from Iceland that was proven to work - turning injecting carbon into basalt, turning it into limestone which locks away the carbon on a geologic scale. Of course, if carbon emissions aren't cut, then no amount of carbon mineralization would be able to keep up.
On a related note, the newest leader of the Taliban is urging Afghans to plant trees.
If we don't cut down all of the trees and burn them, the terrorists will have already won.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Today the gaurdian, the Dutch de correspondent and the Danish informant will publish about how shell knew about the impact on climate of burning fossil fuels in the 80's and actively lobbied to avoid draconic measures from the government.
Well grass is apparently green.
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
If part of the cost of national/civilizational survival is greasing a few palms, it's probably a cost that's worth it. Look at the US removing earmarks and where that's gotten us.
But China is putting a lot of effort into long-term survival, not just the cities. Like the 20 nuclear power plants currently under construction, planned to be completed by 2020, the rapid turn away from coal, massive investment in photovoltaics and wind as well (wind turbines going up at a rate of one per hour, every hour).
As for defenses, I want us (human race in general) to do iron fertilization of the north Pacific and entire Antarctic oceans for carbon sinking and restoration of fish stocks. Desertification can be lessened by hydrological projects like check dam building:
Really interesting links, thanks! With iron fertilization the guy from that link seems a bit nuts but on Wikipedia it checks out. Although the U.N. and mainstream environmentalism freaked out and banned the practice, saying that it "takes away from efforts to stop carbon emissions". Yeah, like the oceans are becoming jellyfish-filled deserts and your response is status quo? The fish aren't doing so hot as it is; why not take active action to help them?
Also Fate of the World is a great game
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Russ George probably has gone a bit nuts from endless frustration of having a process that works, that he tested and he knows it works, and not being able to use it. I really can't blame him; I'd go crazy too. Two years after that iron fertilization experiment, there were unexpected, record salmon runs on rivers all along the Canadian coast, a windfall for all the villages there. And yet some of those same very people turned against him for 'polluting' the environment.
The problem with greens is that so much of the movement is mixed in with neo-luddism and general anti-science sentiment, which makes no sense to me. It is frustrating talking to and working with people about wanting to preserve some good habitat or doing some measure to improve whatever and then instead it all turns into a fight about vaccines where now I'm the enemy for being on the side of Big Pharma or such bullshit.
Kurt Vonnegut said we should carve into the side of the Grand Canyon a message in case anyone finds our tomb world: "We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard... and too damn cheap."
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
The problem with greens is that so much of the movement is mixed in with neo-luddism and general anti-science sentiment, which makes no sense to me. It is frustrating talking to and working with people about wanting to preserve some good habitat or doing some measure to improve whatever and then instead it all turns into a fight about vaccines where now I'm the enemy for being on the side of Big Pharma or such bullshit.
This, so much. Like, golden rice can save a million kids a year in third-world hellholes from dying horribly and improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and they're against it because boo GMOs and boo corporations getting involved in food. It's like those 18th century nobles in Europe who uprooted peasants to build fake parkland- they don't really care about people, just that nature is "pristine".
There is also the carbon capture method from Iceland that was proven to work - turning injecting carbon into basalt, turning it into limestone which locks away the carbon on a geologic scale. Of course, if carbon emissions aren't cut, then no amount of carbon mineralization would be able to keep up.
On a related note, the newest leader of the Taliban is urging Afghans to plant trees.
I hope Iceland brought enough coastal basalt deposits for the rest of the class.
We get it, you hit the Geothermal lottery. Stop rubbing our noses in it.
If part of the cost of national/civilizational survival is greasing a few palms, it's probably a cost that's worth it. Look at the US removing earmarks and where that's gotten us.
But China is putting a lot of effort into long-term survival, not just the cities. Like the 20 nuclear power plants currently under construction, planned to be completed by 2020, the rapid turn away from coal, massive investment in photovoltaics and wind as well (wind turbines going up at a rate of one per hour, every hour).
As for defenses, I want us (human race in general) to do iron fertilization of the north Pacific and entire Antarctic oceans for carbon sinking and restoration of fish stocks. Desertification can be lessened by hydrological projects like check dam building:
Really interesting links, thanks! With iron fertilization the guy from that link seems a bit nuts but on Wikipedia it checks out. Although the U.N. and mainstream environmentalism freaked out and banned the practice, saying that it "takes away from efforts to stop carbon emissions". Yeah, like the oceans are becoming jellyfish-filled deserts and your response is status quo? The fish aren't doing so hot as it is; why not take active action to help them?
Also Fate of the World is a great game
That iron seeding sounds like it's right out of a tech tree in a 4x game. Very cool! (If it works!)
There is also the carbon capture method from Iceland that was proven to work - turning injecting carbon into basalt, turning it into limestone which locks away the carbon on a geologic scale. Of course, if carbon emissions aren't cut, then no amount of carbon mineralization would be able to keep up.
On a related note, the newest leader of the Taliban is urging Afghans to plant trees.
I hope Iceland brought enough coastal basalt deposits for the rest of the class.
We get it, you hit the Geothermal lottery. Stop rubbing our noses in it.
If part of the cost of national/civilizational survival is greasing a few palms, it's probably a cost that's worth it. Look at the US removing earmarks and where that's gotten us.
But China is putting a lot of effort into long-term survival, not just the cities. Like the 20 nuclear power plants currently under construction, planned to be completed by 2020, the rapid turn away from coal, massive investment in photovoltaics and wind as well (wind turbines going up at a rate of one per hour, every hour).
As for defenses, I want us (human race in general) to do iron fertilization of the north Pacific and entire Antarctic oceans for carbon sinking and restoration of fish stocks. Desertification can be lessened by hydrological projects like check dam building:
Really interesting links, thanks! With iron fertilization the guy from that link seems a bit nuts but on Wikipedia it checks out. Although the U.N. and mainstream environmentalism freaked out and banned the practice, saying that it "takes away from efforts to stop carbon emissions". Yeah, like the oceans are becoming jellyfish-filled deserts and your response is status quo? The fish aren't doing so hot as it is; why not take active action to help them?
Also Fate of the World is a great game
That iron seeding sounds like it's right out of a tech tree in a 4x game. Very cool! (If it works!)
It's one of those, it clearly helps, but how much you can do before it itself becomes a problem is unknown things.
Like say, adding a few large herbivores to a forest might help improve the amount of plants growing in it. But putting 10000 elephants in Golden Gate Park would not be a great plan. It's probably one of those 'useful tidying up' sort of eco projects that we should really be doing in conjunction with massive changes to the way we generate energy.
There is also the carbon capture method from Iceland that was proven to work - turning injecting carbon into basalt, turning it into limestone which locks away the carbon on a geologic scale. Of course, if carbon emissions aren't cut, then no amount of carbon mineralization would be able to keep up.
On a related note, the newest leader of the Taliban is urging Afghans to plant trees.
I hope Iceland brought enough coastal basalt deposits for the rest of the class.
We get it, you hit the Geothermal lottery. Stop rubbing our noses in it.
If part of the cost of national/civilizational survival is greasing a few palms, it's probably a cost that's worth it. Look at the US removing earmarks and where that's gotten us.
But China is putting a lot of effort into long-term survival, not just the cities. Like the 20 nuclear power plants currently under construction, planned to be completed by 2020, the rapid turn away from coal, massive investment in photovoltaics and wind as well (wind turbines going up at a rate of one per hour, every hour).
As for defenses, I want us (human race in general) to do iron fertilization of the north Pacific and entire Antarctic oceans for carbon sinking and restoration of fish stocks. Desertification can be lessened by hydrological projects like check dam building:
Really interesting links, thanks! With iron fertilization the guy from that link seems a bit nuts but on Wikipedia it checks out. Although the U.N. and mainstream environmentalism freaked out and banned the practice, saying that it "takes away from efforts to stop carbon emissions". Yeah, like the oceans are becoming jellyfish-filled deserts and your response is status quo? The fish aren't doing so hot as it is; why not take active action to help them?
Also Fate of the World is a great game
That iron seeding sounds like it's right out of a tech tree in a 4x game. Very cool! (If it works!)
It's one of those, it clearly helps, but how much you can do before it itself becomes a problem is unknown things.
Like say, adding a few large herbivores to a forest might help improve the amount of plants growing in it. But putting 10000 elephants in Golden Gate Park would not be a great plan. It's probably one of those 'useful tidying up' sort of eco projects that we should really be doing in conjunction with massive changes to the way we generate energy.
Well its a piece of the puzzle.
Iron Seeding: +5 Ecology
Basalt Sequestration: +2 Ecology
Little solutions here and there, crammed into environmental niches, is probably the best shot we've got of healing the damage we've already done.
ArbitraryDescriptor on
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
For a more uplifting science fiction author quote, here's one from Octavia Butler:
"...there’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers—at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”
Though speaking of adding large herbivores, the one thing I can really give credit to Kentucky for doing right is reintroducing elk.
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
In other news, the crack in Antarctica just keeps growing. It appears to be part of a larger breakup of the glacier caps holding back the bulk of the landlocked ice. Once these caps are gone, ice will flow freely into the ocean kicking off a positive feedback loop.
... and don't even get me started on the anti-nuclear power movement.
there's been a plan in the works for years to put a nuclear waste dump in south australia
it's geologically stable and there's a fuckload of land out there we're not using for anything else
but they can't get it to go forward because people just think that nuclear means scary and bad
the only reason i heard about it was people at some progressive workshop thing i went to campaigning against it, on the basis that it doesn't feel Natural and that's as far as anyone thinks about it
... and don't even get me started on the anti-nuclear power movement.
there's been a plan in the works for years to put a nuclear waste dump in south australia
it's geologically stable and there's a fuckload of land out there we're not using for anything else
but they can't get it to go forward because people just think that nuclear means scary and bad
the only reason i heard about it was people at some progressive workshop thing i went to campaigning against it, on the basis that it doesn't feel Natural and that's as far as anyone thinks about it
Also to be clear: this isn't a waste facility for high level waste, or spent fuel rods of whatever. This is a facility for lightly contaminated materials from university's and hospitals radiology departments.
The alternative at the moment (since all those places continue to function) is that these materials are being stored in hundreds of separates, secure facilities, such as some random closet in my old chemistry building.
It's long since gone in my Twitter feed, but I saw something earlier today that showed some statistics re: deaths caused by nuclear power vs deaths caused by stuff like dams bursting, dirty coal plants etc.
It's long since gone in my Twitter feed, but I saw something earlier today that showed some statistics re: deaths caused by nuclear power vs deaths caused by stuff like dams bursting, dirty coal plants etc.
It's long since gone in my Twitter feed, but I saw something earlier today that showed some statistics re: deaths caused by nuclear power vs deaths caused by stuff like dams bursting, dirty coal plants etc.
It's long since gone in my Twitter feed, but I saw something earlier today that showed some statistics re: deaths caused by nuclear power vs deaths caused by stuff like dams bursting, dirty coal plants etc.
Yea, the nuke talks are weird. Most people have this perception of nuke plants that hasn't moved past around the 70's era. Of course, most of our nuke plants (in the US) were built in the 70's...
The modern stuff uses much different systems with much better failure states. Of course, nuke plants are hideously expensive to create and decommission so there isn't a huge economic incentive for companies to rebuild and upgrade. If the failure on their current equipment happens they're so economically fucked it's irrelevant given the probability of such an accident occurring.
It's almost like a big collective action problem that we could only fix if everybody put just a little bit towards it. If only we had some sort of way to limit and implement things to govern the situation...
The problem is the practical reality is no one is greenlighting new plants and they want come online soon enough. In Australia nuclear power is a bludgeon the right uses against the left, but they will never ever actually do anything about it (they also won't do anything about renewables, but in this fashion they cleverly recruit idiot technophiles).
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
The problem is the practical reality is no one is greenlighting new plants and they want come online soon enough. In Australia nuclear power is a bludgeon the right uses against the left, but they will never ever actually do anything about it (they also won't do anything about renewables, but in this fashion they cleverly recruit idiot technophiles).
I pointed out earlier in the thread that China is currently building twenty new nuclear plants with plans to have them finished by 2020, . China also has been designing new reactors that can be sold pre-built for export. Again, China is the one facing practical reality and doing something about it while the west dawdles.
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Giggles_FunsworthBlight on DiscourseBay Area SprawlRegistered Userregular
It's long since gone in my Twitter feed, but I saw something earlier today that showed some statistics re: deaths caused by nuclear power vs deaths caused by stuff like dams bursting, dirty coal plants etc.
Insane. The Coast Guard is a remarkably efficient, effective anti-illegal immigration outfit already.
This little bit at the end is particularly galling :
'Homeowners in flood-prone areas of the country also would be levied a surcharge on their flood insurance, according to the document, although the OMB has been asked to come up with a plan to limit the extra payment for homeowners with “lower-value” homes.'
I can just see the justification now. "How can we profit off the increased rainfall from global warming (which we keep telling them doesn't exist)? I know! Tax the poor! I guess we can give them a coupon or something if they complain too much?"
Insane. The Coast Guard is a remarkably efficient, effective anti-illegal immigration outfit already.
This little bit at the end is particularly galling :
'Homeowners in flood-prone areas of the country also would be levied a surcharge on their flood insurance, according to the document, although the OMB has been asked to come up with a plan to limit the extra payment for homeowners with “lower-value” homes.'
I can just see the justification now. "How can we profit off the increased rainfall from global warming (which we keep telling them doesn't exist)? I know! Tax the poor! I guess we can give them a coupon or something if they complain too much?"
I didn't even catch that bit. That's insane given we're looking at rising sea levels and will probably see a lot more flooding in the future.
How would that even be done? I was under the impression flood insurance was done through private corps, not through the Fed.
Put shortly, private insurers will not insure homes for flood damage unless forced to. The federal government does that and has a, now nearly annually empty fund, that helps them pay for it. Money gets taken out of regular flood insurance payments and goes into a big pot. The pot is then supposed to pay insurance claims for people, but nearly 1/3rd goes to insurers themselves. So people get short changed on the deal but insurance companies get to do like they did in Sandy and make a 30% profit off of a hurricane.
There is a legitimate argument to be made for surcharges and coverage caps in particular with large beachfront properties. The way it works now, is kind of a perverse incentive for people to keep rebuilding in areas that will only become more and more frequent sites of disasters. And because they essentially rebuild from scratch, a lot of times the property they are rebuilding in harms way are actually nicer/more expensive than the ones that get wiped out. Leading to an even more expensive recovery the next time.
I doubt I could find it again because it was years ago, but I once saw a story on some guy in Florida who had like a 10 million dollar beach house, that the federal government paid for him to rebuild 2 times in like 10 years. Flood me once, shame on you, flood me 3 times in a decade fool on me for not moving and everyone else for paying for it.
The NBC news one is particularly damning in terms of what a sham the risk assessment v premium is on some of these properties.
Posts
Carbon taxes are per ton of CO2 emissions. Not the weight of the feed material. So 6.3lb of gas(1 gallon) makes about 20lb of CO2 when burned. Diesel is about 22lb/gallon.[/url]
This has the different lb/kWh for various coal types, CCNG and Oil
https://sites.google.com/site/arctischepinguin/home/global-sea-ice
How do you think I spend my Thursdays!?
Edit: shit I need to get better about checking time stamps.
So basically, whatever the point of critical failure was, we hit it in 2016.
Fuck 2016.
Those Chinese cities, built way inland in the middle of nowhere hinterlands places, constructed to become instant cities of tens of millions - those are for their own climate refugees. Six hundred million people currently live in places that are threatened by rising sea levels, so those city shells were built to start moving people as soon as a major ice sheet collapses. The evacuations would be orderly: people displaced from the coast getting new apartments and industrial capacity could be moved inland as well to factory shells already constructed and waiting. China looked at the facts, knew that sea level rise was unavoidable, and started making preparations years ago.
Meanwhile in the US we'll probably have tent cities of refugees from Florida scattered all over.
Yeah, China's pretty cognizant of climate change but i doubt they're thinking that far ahead.
Also, if someone has had trouble staying awake at night, I recommend http://arctic-news.blogspot.com
That wouldn't remove the carbon dioxide for the atmosphere so we'd still be fucked, just colder.
Out of curiosity, does anyone have any links to ideas on climate change defenses? Ways to protect cities from sea level rise or farmland from desertification? This really seems like one of those "ounce of prevention, pound of cure" scenarios.
It might be one decade: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/9/12/124002 Generally though, there is/will be lag time of unknown duration.
But China is putting a lot of effort into long-term survival, not just the cities. Like the 20 nuclear power plants currently under construction, planned to be completed by 2020, the rapid turn away from coal, massive investment in photovoltaics and wind as well (wind turbines going up at a rate of one per hour, every hour).
As for defenses, I want us (human race in general) to do iron fertilization of the north Pacific and entire Antarctic oceans for carbon sinking and restoration of fish stocks. Desertification can be lessened by hydrological projects like check dam building:
Link to a study of two streams in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona, where one had a series of check dams built through the floodplain and the other was left as a control.
Greening Ethiopia's deserts
Rajendra Singh - the water man of India whose work raised water levels, revived agriculture and restored rivers that had gone dry.
It's a reprieve that lets us start to deal with the problem.
There's really no effective way of stopping the effects of climate change without dealing with climate change directly. By that I mean that you can't simply put up walls around coastal cities, or engineer crops to survive harsher climates. If you're not dealing with the cause of climate change then anything you do to deal with the effects is going to fall short and fail.
Crops will eventually fail as the sources of irrigation dry up and weather becomes more harsh, including longer droughts. Cities will be affected by more than just rising sea levels and start seeing water and food shortages, harsher weather, and more riots.
What we need is carbon sequestration. Capture and never release. That's what coal was, it was sequestered carbon from several era ago. What we need is to capture the released carbon and then ensure that no one ever touches it again. Shoot it into space or let them try burning it on Mars, just something where it will never be used again.
On a related note, the newest leader of the Taliban is urging Afghans to plant trees.
http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2010/12/common-climate-misconceptions-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide/
Carbon dioxide residence time is rather high. If we cut all emissions now we will be fucked for the next 50 years.
If we don't cut down all of the trees and burn them, the terrorists will have already won.
Well grass is apparently green.
Also Fate of the World is a great game
The problem with greens is that so much of the movement is mixed in with neo-luddism and general anti-science sentiment, which makes no sense to me. It is frustrating talking to and working with people about wanting to preserve some good habitat or doing some measure to improve whatever and then instead it all turns into a fight about vaccines where now I'm the enemy for being on the side of Big Pharma or such bullshit.
Kurt Vonnegut said we should carve into the side of the Grand Canyon a message in case anyone finds our tomb world: "We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard... and too damn cheap."
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I hope Iceland brought enough coastal basalt deposits for the rest of the class.
We get it, you hit the Geothermal lottery. Stop rubbing our noses in it.
That iron seeding sounds like it's right out of a tech tree in a 4x game. Very cool! (If it works!)
It's one of those, it clearly helps, but how much you can do before it itself becomes a problem is unknown things.
Like say, adding a few large herbivores to a forest might help improve the amount of plants growing in it. But putting 10000 elephants in Golden Gate Park would not be a great plan. It's probably one of those 'useful tidying up' sort of eco projects that we should really be doing in conjunction with massive changes to the way we generate energy.
Well its a piece of the puzzle.
Iron Seeding: +5 Ecology
Basalt Sequestration: +2 Ecology
Little solutions here and there, crammed into environmental niches, is probably the best shot we've got of healing the damage we've already done.
"...there’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers—at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”
Though speaking of adding large herbivores, the one thing I can really give credit to Kentucky for doing right is reintroducing elk.
http://www.popsci.com/antarctic-crack-grows-even-bigger
there's been a plan in the works for years to put a nuclear waste dump in south australia
it's geologically stable and there's a fuckload of land out there we're not using for anything else
but they can't get it to go forward because people just think that nuclear means scary and bad
the only reason i heard about it was people at some progressive workshop thing i went to campaigning against it, on the basis that it doesn't feel Natural and that's as far as anyone thinks about it
Also to be clear: this isn't a waste facility for high level waste, or spent fuel rods of whatever. This is a facility for lightly contaminated materials from university's and hospitals radiology departments.
The alternative at the moment (since all those places continue to function) is that these materials are being stored in hundreds of separates, secure facilities, such as some random closet in my old chemistry building.
tl;dr, modern nuclear power is incredibly safe.
Except when it's not.
http://thedailybanter.com/2017/02/radiation-is-building-up-inside-the-fukushima-power-plant/
If it goes wrong, it's spectacularly more disastrous than other disasters.
Yes. And that's still nothing to the deaths caused by other power sources.
edit: also, do you have a link about that that doesn't also whargharbl about Trump/Putin in the same breath?
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/22/after-alarmingly-high-radiation-levels-detected-what-are-the-facts-in-fukushima/
And yes the other article was really clickbaity. I apologize.
New designs are much safer.
The modern stuff uses much different systems with much better failure states. Of course, nuke plants are hideously expensive to create and decommission so there isn't a huge economic incentive for companies to rebuild and upgrade. If the failure on their current equipment happens they're so economically fucked it's irrelevant given the probability of such an accident occurring.
It's almost like a big collective action problem that we could only fix if everybody put just a little bit towards it. If only we had some sort of way to limit and implement things to govern the situation...
I pointed out earlier in the thread that China is currently building twenty new nuclear plants with plans to have them finished by 2020, . China also has been designing new reactors that can be sold pre-built for export. Again, China is the one facing practical reality and doing something about it while the west dawdles.
They tend to work better when you don't put the backup generators in a floodplain. Whoever did their disaster recovery plan should be shot.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/to-fund-border-wall-trump-administration-weighs-cuts-to-coast-guard-airport-security/2017/03/07/ba4a8e5c-036f-11e7-ad5b-d22680e18d10_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_border-0634pm:homepage/story&utm_term=.db6ad642bc81
Put shortly, private insurers will not insure homes for flood damage unless forced to. The federal government does that and has a, now nearly annually empty fund, that helps them pay for it. Money gets taken out of regular flood insurance payments and goes into a big pot. The pot is then supposed to pay insurance claims for people, but nearly 1/3rd goes to insurers themselves. So people get short changed on the deal but insurance companies get to do like they did in Sandy and make a 30% profit off of a hurricane.
I doubt I could find it again because it was years ago, but I once saw a story on some guy in Florida who had like a 10 million dollar beach house, that the federal government paid for him to rebuild 2 times in like 10 years. Flood me once, shame on you, flood me 3 times in a decade fool on me for not moving and everyone else for paying for it.
The NBC news one is particularly damning in terms of what a sham the risk assessment v premium is on some of these properties.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/why-taxpayers-will-bail-out-rich-when-next-storm-hits-n25901
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/science/earth/as-coasts-rebuild-and-us-pays-again-critics-stop-to-ask-why.html