We just hit 1.5 C above per-industrial levels for the first time.
We just hit 1.5 C above per-industrial levels for the first time.
Data released from Copernicus, a branch of the European Union Space Programme, shows August was 1.59C warmer than 1850–1900 levels, following a 1.6C increase in July.
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Again, I'm not going to read that. It will just make me sad and angry a d nothing will change.
Politicians don't give a shit, even of they'd understand what is going on, they're mostly too dumb...
Things are going to get a LOT worse and nobody seems to understand that there is no quick fix here. "Yeah but CO2 scrubbers can..." no they cannot. Building those generates tonnes of CO2, then run ing them effectively generates CO2 as well. Think about it. Even if you put them on a solar grid (which too will initially cost CO2, not hugely important but just to keep in mind), the electricity that that grid generates to pull 100 tonnes of CO2 out of the air will NOT be available to other systems which will generate 150 tonnes of CO2 for their electricity.
Untill ALL electricity is solar, wind or nuclear, it literally is just throwing away energy. It's actually more efficient to just connect those solar cells for your CO2 scrubbers to the electrical grid. You won't pull 100 out, but now at least somewhere else won't put in 150 into the system.
And even if they work. Do you have any idea how much CO2 we currently generate, and worse, how much we have generated that is in the atmosphere that we need to pull out for things to get better?
The current state of CO2 scrubbers is close to carrying water out of the ocean with buckets.
You wanna pull the extra CO2 out of the air? We've been adding extra on an industrial scale for near 2 centuries. RHAT amount of CO2 is what we need to pull out to get back to what it should be.
You always have losses with conversions, but taking that the earth has beeb pulling more CO2 you can more or less say that getting all the extra CO2 out of the atmosphere will take at least the same amount of energy that we've been generating with burning fossil fuels for the past 2 centuries. Think about it, were talking spending energy to pull air through a system, spending energy to filter the CO2, spending energy to store it, spending the same amount of energy we got from bur ing fuels to split the c from the O2 (same process in reverse), then spend energy to process and store all that carbon. Mayke Plastics out of it, maybe? Storing co2 is a problem as the amounts are astronomical. Where do youbstire cubic kilometers of CO2 , every year? If it escapes your back to square one.
Yes, that is a shit load of energy that we can't produce all at once. For the next decades we'll have to dedicate 25-50% of our energy output to cleanit the atmosphere, there is no way around that, there are no free lunches here.
Electrical cars are NOT the solution. For a small part, maybe, but mostly not. Electrical cars require roughly the same amiunt of energy as a gas car, that still needs to be generated. We need to use less energy. Wasting tonnes on energy on transporting 2 tonnes just to move a 70kgs person for a few kms is just insane. Use bikes. Walk. Use public transportation.
You wanna solve the climate change crisis?
- make sure all central electrical power generation is solar /wind /water /nuclear within 10 years. Until we are at that point, the rest doesn't even matter.
1a) in parallel, start redesigning all our cities to become walkable. This doesn't mean the conspiracy bullshit that American criminally lying politicians are saying, this means that stored and stuff we want is close by. Cities will be primarily for people, not cars. You can walk to stores because they're close by. You can use bicycles to go everywhere we want. Public transportation can take care of the rest and with that we can get rid of 90+% of cars. Not because it's forbidden, hit because we'll designed cities don't NEED cars.
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There are loads of things that can't go electrical, like airplanes. Reminds me: BUILD TRAINS. FFS America get your shit together and start building good railroads. Then you can get rid of half your airplane flights. Most flights are short enough that a high speed train is faster than flying anyway. The longer flights s yous still need cannot go electrical. You'll need to build and run scrubbers spending the same amount of energy as those airplanes (and other systems that can't go electrical) just to make sure their CO2 doesn't add to the problem.
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increase our energy capacity by a factor of two. We need to generate twice the amount of energy (all green) so that 50% can go to scrubbing our atmosphere for the next, say, century.
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think about how to store all the captured CO2 or convert it to plastics or something.(double the energy required)
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get ready to pay 2-3 times more for our energy. We've been the party generation who have enjoyed cheap energy from burning crap. The next 3-4 generations at least will be paying the bill, that is if they get to live to do so.
THIS IS IMPORTANT, I CANNOT CLARIFY THIS ENOUGH:
None of us will see this problem solved. Even if we actually seriously start working on fixing this shit today, we will be long dead and gone before this is done. THERE IS NO QUICK FIX. It took centuries to get here, it will take at least a century to get back where we started
Anyone claiming that this is easy to solve, sorry, is lying.
This is the biggest threat mankind has faced and people somehow just don't give a shit and it is fucking depressing
Everything you said tracks except 5. Renewables are already cheaper than fossil fuels, and that's with the subsidies for fossil fuels.
From a purely economic perspective fossil fuels don't make sense anymore, they're being kept around because fossil fuel companies are using immense amounts of money to fight against renewables.
People seem to forget renewable energy is essentially free. Sure there's maintenance and upfront cost but that's true for all energy generation. Fossil fuels simply can't compete and it's only going to get worse as we get better at collecting renewable energy.
No.
We're going to be paying 2-3 times more because we need to create enormous amounts of extra energy to clean the atmosphere.
That, and renewable energy isn't free either. Solar panels require regular replacement as they (still) degrade quite a bit (too much) over time. If I'm not mistaken, they still require replacement every 10 or so years.
Windmills require regular maintenance. The power grid requires maintenance.
Wind and solar requires enormous batteries that degree and require regukar replacements.
Renewables are only so so renewable, don't expect to pay anything less for the same amount of energy. Then now we will have to generate these enormous amounts of extra energy to take the CO2 out, who is going to pay for that? We all are.
So yeah, do expect to pay 2-3 times more for energy when this all starts, ideally tomorrow but likely 20 years from now as we're still not done partying.
I already mentioned maintenance.
You people act like coal plants don't have teams of maintenance engineers onsite 24/7.
I'm not acting like anything. I am fully aware of the requirements of fossil fuels. I'm mentioning all the requirements for "renewables" because there people typically act as if there are zero costs (and pollution and maintenance) related with it.
I'm not pro fossil fuels, not at all. Don't get me wrong. I'm simply saying that were Ina SERIOUSLY fucked situation that simply won't be solved within our generation, if ever at all. We're at a cliff and a small group just keeps partying while shuffling closer and the rest of the world gleefully shuffles right after them. A few renewables are not going to fix this
Price doesn't matter if it's cloudy like most winters with barely any sun and the wind is not blowing. Solar also won't work at night and energy storage is crap, batteries are very much not renewable. Of course there is reversible hydro plants but these can't be used everywhere and are a disaster for local ecosystems.
Everyone is acting like renewables will fix everything.. They won't. The only thing that can replace fossil fuels right now is nuclear, which is also not renewable, but at least we have plenty of fuel for it.
if we were to replace current fossil plants with nuclear, the fuel runs out in 70-100. years and will get much more expensive. Think about paying ten times your electricity bill in 20 years.
It is possible to run a 100% renewable grid, using technology like hydrogen or other chemical storage system.
Solar wont have the output in winter. Nuclear plants will have to shut down in summer, because the water supply will get unstable. France nuclear heavy energy production could collapse within the next two decades if the current trend of lower river water continues. And there is no reason to believe otherwise.
But the biggest issue is that the grid is thought the wrong way around. Currently the supply is adjusted to the demand. But for many applications the demand can be adjusted to the supply. On the household level that means your fridge and washing machine to run, when there is a lot of energy available. On the industrial level that means to automate productions and adjust their intensity to available energy.
Not all nuclear plants are the same. Some can use nuclear waste as fuel. Others are small and modular which allows them be turned on and off as needed and also be deployed easier and cheaper. We need solutions sooner, rather than later. Nuclear tech is here now, storage for renewables still needs more time to refine and streamline.
nuclear plants take decades to project and build. And the modular and reusing waste plants are still in the concept stage
Modular reactors have been equiped to submarines for decades, they passed the concept stage long ago.
There are many kinds of nuclear reactors, but not much was invested into them to bring the cost down.
I am not saying that nuclear is perfect. Unless we figure out fusion it won't be a long term solution. It's just what we need right now to get rid of fossil fuels while we figure out the large scale renewable grids with good storage tech.
Hydrogen is a good option, if only EV manufacturers focused more on that... Charging the EV would be a matter of minutes not hours and there wouldn't be issues with colder climates like the current batteries have.
If nuclear is so easy now, why is nobody doing it?
Hydrogen doesn't work and nuclear is too expensive CCS also doesn't work.
Renewables work and are cheap and easy to install. Combine them with battery in a SunWindBattery system and maybe a bit of hydro and we have enough energy.
There are so many solutions.
But instead we are using gas and burning oil. Politicians and fossil fuel companies obstruct renewables and other climate mitigation
Because profit is more important than human survival.
Thermal hydro has pretty much solved the storage problem and solar works fine during the winter.
There are many solutions to storage, not many being used. If someone is talking about storage, in 90% of cases they mean batteries and until that changes the problem isn't solved.
As for solar during winter, it might work, barely, but at much lower output just because you have a lot less sunlight during a day. So you have to cover 16-17 hours of no light with just 7-8 hours of sun. This varies wildly depending on location of course.