[HN Gopher] Global Climate Report - September 2021
___________________________________________________________________
Global Climate Report - September 2021
Author : infodocket
Score : 141 points
Date : 2021-10-14 14:49 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ncdc.noaa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ncdc.noaa.gov)
| melling wrote:
| I suppose we should stop using coal to generate electricity.
|
| https://www.iea.org/fuels-and-technologies/coal
|
| Of course we've known this for decades. Google even took a crack
| at it in 2007:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/11/google-hopes-t...
| [deleted]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| There's some interesting data in there. If you look at the
| supplemental info, note that this year is well on track to be
| bracketed within the top ten hottest years on record:
|
| > "This graphic compares the year-to-date temperature anomalies
| for 2021 (black line) to what were ultimately the ten warmest
| years on record: 2016 (1st), 2020 (2nd), 2019 (3rd), 2015 (4th),
| 2017 (5th), 2018 (6th), 2014 (7th), 2010 (8th), 2013 (9th), and
| 2005 (10th)."
|
| Now, consider the lag effect on climate response and atmospheric
| forcing (i.e. the ocean absorbs a fair amount of the extra heat,
| but as the ocean warms, that heat gets injected back into the
| atmosphere, especially polewards, so there's a lag time before
| current atmospheric forcings are full realized, and that's a
| multidecade effect, so we won't feel today's forcing completely
| for decades, even a century).
|
| Conclusion as I see it: every year for the next 50 years is going
| to be bracketed in the top ten hottest years, meaning the years
| 2030-2040 will all be hotter than 2010-2020 and so on. Decade by
| decade for the rest of the lives of people alive today, this will
| continue - and while getting off fossil fuels is needed, is
| indeed the only way to slow this trend, it's only going to slow
| down the year-to-year increase.
|
| Additionally, as polar melt proceeds, permafrost melt and
| outgassing becomes self-sustaining even if humans completely stop
| fossil fuel use and deforestation.
|
| Practically, this means adaptation is simply a must. People have
| to move out of flood plains, waste treatment plants in low-lying
| coastal zones needed to be moved uphill, people need to realize
| the global refugee crisis is going to be 10X as bad as anything
| seen yet at least, perhaps a steady rate of 1,000,000 per year
| fleeing climate disaster zones.
|
| In reality we are heading back to climate conditions last seen
| ~3-5 million years ago, before the ice ages set in, with sea
| levels dozens of meters higher than they are now. Nobody likes to
| hear this it seems, but the science does seem to be saying that
| this has already happened, sort of.
| gmuslera wrote:
| We are not going to a new normal, because even if we stop
| everything feedback loops will keep worsening things till we
| can't adapt anymore, will be no mark in the sand saying that we
| will stay there.
|
| It is not just about temperature, or sea level, is a system
| where we thrived while it was stable enough, going to a long
| period of chaos. Agriculture and food production in general,
| infrastructure, travel and more will be increasingly disrupted.
|
| Passive adaptation may not be the way out, just letting the
| water to boil up till the frog is cooked, or risk ending things
| faster with the some of the surprises that climatologist are
| getting year to year. Stopping or compensating emissions, and
| aggressive/extensive carbon capture may be a way out. Going
| into silos much like what happened in Wool may be another
| (where a lot of things can go wrong, anyway).
| WorldMaker wrote:
| All of that is assuming we don't make major advances in
| carbon/methane capture and maybe some sort of "ice capture"
| plan, of course.
|
| I don't know how much hope we have to actually see major
| advances in these areas, but given what we all expect of how
| much pressure we will be in collectively I can imagine a lot
| more money being thrown at is as people get desperate.
| tuatoru wrote:
| Carbon capture and sequestration, as it's called, suffers
| from a major co-ordination problem, the free-rider effect.
| Why pay yourself if others are paying? You get the same
| benefit. Every country can see that, so no-one pays.
|
| Look how well the world did with covid-19. Low income
| countries are still desperately short of vaccines, which
| means that covid is going to be endemic from now on.
|
| Or look how well the world coped when there were commodity
| food price spikes in 2005-2008, and 2010-2011. Countries
| banned exports, rather than co-operating.
|
| We're going to have more of those (food price spikes), btw.
|
| Something that has been vanishingly low probability (once per
| 5_000 years, say), until now, is simultaneous harvest failure
| by say 10% or more in two or more of the four "bread-basket"
| (grain) regions of the world.
|
| Simulations suggest that probability will rise over the
| course of the century to about 50% per decade starting in the
| '40s.[1] I hope we're planning for it.
|
| 1. Daniel Quiggin, Kris De Meyer, Lucy Hubble-Rose and
| Anthony Froggatt, _Climate change risk assessment 2021_ ,
| Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House
| Environment and Society Programme Research Paper 2021. ISBN
| 978-1-78413-491-4.
| brutusborn wrote:
| There are solutions for the free-rider effect, such as
| Pegovian customs duties.
|
| But isn't the point moot, since all climate change
| solutions suffer from the same effect?
| tuatoru wrote:
| No. The Musk solution, make clean technology cheaper and
| better than fossil-fuel technology. doesn't.
| carapace wrote:
| There's a fascinating talk from about eleven years ago: Dr.
| Gwynne Dyer - Geopolitics in a Hotter World - UBC Talk
| Transcribed (Sept. 2010)
| https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geo...
| video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY
|
| Among other things he talks about is the possibility of
| unilateral geoengineering by some of the nations that will be
| feeling the effects sooner and more, uh, compellingly than
| others:
|
| > I talked-actually, the head of the Bangladesh Institute of
| Strategic Studies about this (you didn't even know that
| existed, did you?). Well, there is one, it's quite serious-run
| by a General, bright guy. I said, "have you heard about
| geoengineering?" and he smiled-seraphically-and he said, "Mmm.
| Yes. Your question?"
|
| > And I asked the question, "Do you think that this is
| something the Bangladesh government might want to do a little
| bit, before, let's say, the US government or the Chinese
| government?"
|
| > He said, "yes it has crossed our minds."-and then he stopped
| talking.
| c1sc0 wrote:
| I'd say that unilateral geo-engineering by private entities
| becomes an option. Far easier for a private billionaire to
| fund this than for any government considering the geo-
| political implications . Who's up for playing billionaire
| punk?
| JoshTko wrote:
| Climate collapse is probably the Great Filter.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Previous generations though it was nuclear war. I wonder what
| our grandkids will decide it's going to be. Probably something
| we couldn't even imagine being a disaster today.
| tuatoru wrote:
| I still think it'll be nuclear war as the proximate cause.
|
| The US military used to call climate change a "force
| multiplier". It turns all the existing stresses up to 11.
| (Water shortage, ideological and ethnic conflict, great power
| dick-measuring, etc. etc.)
|
| [Sorry, I can't lay hands on the PDF right now, and I think
| the research unit was disbanded about 10 years ago, so the
| report will be difficult to find on the internet. But it was
| in about 2005 or 2006.]
| chess_buster wrote:
| Pfff, why not both.
| JoshTko wrote:
| The way I see it climate collapse is going to significantly
| increase the probability of nuclear war
| retrac98 wrote:
| I'm going to sell up my city house and get a little land in the
| country so we can be more self sufficient while shit increasingly
| hits the fan.
|
| We in the first world need to radically reduce our consumption
| and reassess our relationship with this planet, and we need to do
| it now.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Of course, if you're serious about prepping isn't it generally
| a good idea not to tell people?
|
| Good luck - hope you find a good community.
| tjr225 wrote:
| I'm trying to find humor at the irony of rich tech bros moving
| to where poor people live and driving the poor people further
| away.
|
| Also; many have argued cities are more efficient than the
| alternative: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/environmental-
| advantages-citi...
|
| Not that I disagree with your sentiment, but 8 billion people
| going back to a primitive way of life doesn't seem like a
| sustainable option either. Nice that you have the privilege to
| do it, though. Ironically, we are in need affordable housing
| where the city jobs are. That way we aren't forcing low paid
| workers to commute 1+ hours each way each day to put food on
| their families table. Here's the ironic part: depending on
| where you live, selling your city house in the current market
| only makes that problem worse!
| retrac98 wrote:
| What does a rich tech bro make these days?
| varelse wrote:
| Cities are wonderful places except that hell is other people.
| There's actually no need to go back to a primitive way of
| life but there absolutely is a need to learn more basic
| survival skills with respect to self-sufficiency. Or if you
| can't even change a tire on a car you should be afraid, very
| afraid.
| davidw wrote:
| > hell is other people.
|
| This is such a common attitude in the US, but it's also a
| very US attitude. I mean, when I lived in Italy, there were
| just always other people around. High mountains, small
| towns, walk in the countryside... you're quite likely to
| see someone anywhere you go. So you just deal with it.
|
| These things are personal preferences, so difficult to
| reason about, but I feel that a lot of people in the US
| would be happier if they didn't have this hangup about
| "other people", while participating in a society that is
| entirely and completely dependent on other people.
| varelse wrote:
| I'm happier walking around in downtown Hong Kong, a place
| with much greater density of humanity than anywhere in
| the United States, than I am here in the US. I think you
| are denying the existence of fundamentally irrational US
| citizens who make things suck for everything else in a
| way citizens of some other countries simply don't.
| davidw wrote:
| I have my share of complaints about the US, and with
| COVID, there are more, but by and large, other people
| here aren't so bad.
|
| I feel like it's not tenable to maintain this attitude of
| "it's only good if there's no one else", which you see
| here a lot.
| varelse wrote:
| Well, if there aren't real concrete consequences for
| doing demonstrably obviously illegal things, then it
| seems to me it will only get worse here going forward. So
| I honestly do not blame anyone whatsoever for wanting to
| run away to either the middle of nowhere or to live among
| likeminded sorts. I did so myself after getting
| physically attacked by pandemic deniers who lived down
| the street from me.
|
| But this was a pre-existing condition - the last half
| decade really unleashed and enabled the full scope of our
| national insanity with the pandemic and 2020 election the
| coup de grace IMO.
| [deleted]
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| in the other end of the world... in somewhat dense place where
| there's no hundreds of human-free kilometers, i know some
| family that not only are living off-grid, off-water say 3-4kms
| away from some village, but also off-phone, off- whatever
| infrastructure, .. and they also managing to live off-banks,
| off-bills, and all that. Producing and trading naturaly grown
| stuff.. Now that seems like impossible to me.. or impossibly
| persistent..
| tjr225 wrote:
| I know a shitload of people living off grid underneath
| interstate 5 and yet everyone hates them!
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Are you certain you'll have a smaller footprint? By all my
| calculation, I can't have less an impact on
| climate/biodiversity than by living in a flat in a city. No
| remote, least heating, public park (instead of a private
| garden, which is comparatively not good at all for
| biodiversity), still buying food from local farm, etc. Frugal
| urban lifestyle always beats the rural unless you're a farmer
| for the many.
| mahogany wrote:
| I like and support all of these ideas -- trying to go off grid,
| becoming more self-sufficient, reducing consumption -- but I
| will just add that few people/families historically have been
| _entirely_ self-sufficient. It turns out that such a thing is a
| lot of work and really hard or impossible to maintain,
| depending on what your goals are. Even the Europeans that were
| settling in America in the 1700s were likely not self-
| sufficient -- there was plenty of gifting and trade throughout.
|
| The key is your community. If shit really does hit the fan, I'd
| imagine that your chance of survival is much higher if you have
| a community around you where there is mutual support, rather
| than being entirely alone in a 200 acre woodlot.
|
| (Not saying that your goal is to be 100% self-sufficient --
| just pointing this out because I've idealized this before. It's
| an understandable reaction to the craziness of the modern
| world.)
| y4mi wrote:
| > _but I will just add that few people /families historically
| have been entirely self-sufficient_
|
| I'm not sure why you think that should be the goal.
|
| If they're mostly self sufficient they'll be off to a much
| better start then others. Even if it's not perfect, its
| definitely _better_
|
| And if it actually does get really bad... They'll probably
| have people join them so self sufficiency won't be necessary
| anymore.
| mahogany wrote:
| There are a lot of people in various "prepper-adjacent"
| communities that romanticize and idealize being fully self-
| sufficient. There's often a hyper-individualistic mentality
| that comes with that too. My comment is just to add context
| that going fully self-sufficient is extremely challenging
| and community is important, especially in an end-of-world
| scenario.
|
| To be clear, I think becoming more self-sufficient is
| definitely a good thing, and I strive toward that myself.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >I think becoming more self-sufficient is definitely a
| good thing
|
| Why? I live in Paris, and get my food (vegetable, fruits,
| bread, eggs, peas...) from an AMAP. It's like a coop for
| about 100 families where we pay the farmer one year in
| advamce for their whole annual production. It's cheaper
| than most supermarkets, it's local and organic, it's self
| sufficient (no competition, we pay the farmer well,
| according to their actual costs). We only have to
| organize the distribution weekly (take a few hours per
| year for every member). I bet the farmer will do better
| for our organization than any "self sufficient" family.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| What's the goal of this? eating healthier products or
| does it minimize environmental impact? In particular,
| would that model scale to the whole city of Paris?
| retrac98 wrote:
| I'm not aiming for anything as radical as a lot of the
| replies seem to think. I just want bit of space to breathe
| cleaner air, grow food and install some renewables.
| mahogany wrote:
| I don't think you are. Maybe I should have added that at
| the beginning instead of the end of my comment. I think
| your goals -- especially the ones you outline in this
| comment -- are great and I have similar ones.
| retrac98 wrote:
| Don't worry, I didn't think you did. Some of the other
| replies made some odd assumptions though.
|
| Thanks for your kind words, and best of luck.
| jostmey wrote:
| Don't destroy habitats in country just to move out of the city.
| It's probably worse for the environment
| retrac98 wrote:
| Not planning to.
| yyy888sss wrote:
| In my town most of the upper income people live outside the
| city in houses with rainwater collection, septic tanks and
| increasingly no electric grid connection either (thanks to
| solar panels and battery). There is nothing self sufficient
| about this. Every one of these households still has 2 cars,
| fridge, tv, internet, computers, supermarket food, medicine,
| clothes and furniture from China etc. Most people who go off
| grid in developed countries probably consume more resources
| than the average city dweller living in a small apartment.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Living in a remote area is much worse for the environment
| because of all the energy need to deliver goods out there for a
| tiny amount of people
| retrac98 wrote:
| Out where?
| [deleted]
| tuatoru wrote:
| A high consumption, high travel lifestyle is bad for the
| environment wherever you are.
|
| Living in a remote environment limits your income. (Or used
| to, anyway. I guess we'll see in five or ten years.) Nearly
| everyone's spending closely follows their income.
| yesimahuman wrote:
| Living remote and working in tech definitely does _not_
| limit your income these days. You can live like a king
| outside of major cities on a engineer or higher-up tech
| salary these days.
| fakedang wrote:
| Living remote does not limit your income. And in fact, from
| reduced spending (due to lower CoL), you get way more bang
| for your buck.
|
| Living rural can work if you reduce your consumption and
| travel. If you're getting your water from a well in your
| land with electricity from natural renewables, and you also
| grow your own vegetables and raise your own chicken, you're
| self-sufficient.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Living in a remote area can be as low-impact as you want it
| to be. The grandparent post said he was going off-grid so he
| should be energy self-sufficient. assume he'll grow some
| crops, hunt, fish and/or get locally produced/hunted/fished
| goods and you're left with whatever "luxury" he'll want to
| have which he can not take with him while moving out to the
| countryside. If you want to live the life of a city-dweller,
| getting commercial goods delivered at your doorstep at a
| moments' notice, yes, in that case you'll be doing everyone a
| favour by staying put in the city. Most people who plan on
| living off-grid in the boonies do not crave for that
| lifestyle, they tend to aim for self- or local-sufficiency as
| much as possible.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >he should be energy self-sufficient. assume he'll grow
| some crops, hunt, fish and/or get locally
| produced/hunted/fished goods
|
| If you shared the farm and solar panels with a few friends
| you trust, is this close enough? Because you can have that
| in a city (search for Enercoop in France for the energy,
| and AMAP for _Association Pour une Agriculture Paysanne_).
|
| Local, clean, self sufficient, etc. but with a minimum of
| solidarity. Also, you have a much smaller footprint by
| living in a city so it's a scalable model (i.e not one man
| for himself and apres moi le deluge).
| varelse wrote:
| Tell that to the Amish anytime.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| L'exception confirme la regle.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| What "we in the first world" mostly need to concentrate on is
| mitigation of the effects of whatever the climate bestows upon
| us, there is no sense in trying to change the course of the
| climate. Mitigation means developing crops which will grow and
| prosper in areas where the conditions become more amenable to
| agriculture, e.g. large parts of the northern hemisphere which
| are now tundra might become more bountiful if the temperature
| goes where it was during the last interglacial and during the
| Holocene climatic optimum. If there is a marked rise of sea
| level - which is not a given, it wholly depends on where on the
| planet you happen to take measurements since several areas are
| still rising due to post-glacial rebound [1] - this can be
| mitigated in several ways as has been shown in the Netherlands
| for centuries.
|
| It does not make sense to waste time doing penance by
| "reassessing out relationship with this planet" - the planet
| couldn't care less whether we live or die - when the
| capabilities of "the first world" are much better suited for
| developing and implementing technologies to improve the quality
| of life for anyone who cares to implement them. This does not
| mean churn out more useless commercial crap to be produced by
| the lowest bidder. What it means is developing and producing
| effective desalination systems to ensure the availability of
| fresh water, effective energy storage systems which _actually
| work_ , can be _affordably_ produced _now_ in _enough quantity_
| , design and series-build nuclear (fission) power generation
| systems which can be delivered and installed on locations
| without needing to type-approve each and every installation as
| if it is a from-the-ground-up design, etc. Whatever impact a
| changing climate - whether that change means a warmer or cooler
| climate - has it will be worldwide but the mitigations will
| need to be implemented on a local/regional/national level.
|
| So, no penance is wanted nor needed nor would that be of any
| help. It is good old human ingenuity which we should turn to. A
| species which looks towards colonising other planets should be
| - and is - capable of facing this much smaller challenge and
| emerge victoriously.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound
| retrac98 wrote:
| It's not this simple.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Nothing is simple. Surviving during the last glaciation
| wasn't simple yet people still lived. Crossing the ocean
| without accurate maps wasn't simple yet the oceans were
| crossed. Developing and growing enough crops to feed 7.5
| billion people when Malthus said the planet could not
| sustain 1 billion people wasn't simple but they were
| developed and the population is still growing. Landing on
| the moon, diving to the Marianas trench, reclaiming the
| 'polders' in the Netherlands, developing nuclear power,
| writing Beethoven's 5th symphony, writing and memorising
| "The Gulag Archipelago" to later commit it to paper were
| not simple but all those things were done.
|
| What do you mean by saying "it's not that simple"?
| retrac98 wrote:
| That the problem is more complex than you're making it
| out to be.
| weakfish wrote:
| The burden is of proof is on you to explain your point.
|
| (Coming from someone (me)scared shitless about climate)
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Please explain in what sense my explanation simplifies
| the problem and what would need to be changed to what I
| propose to make it better. Just saying that "it is not
| that simple" without saying where I'm wrong doesn't help
| me better my ways. In short I propose to solve problems
| instead of meditating on them while retreating from the
| world stage. What is missing?
| akudha wrote:
| If you are okay with it, could you share more details? Where
| are you moving to? How are you handling power, water? And
| internet?
| Glench wrote:
| Love that NOAA is getting shit done. They just redid the
| climate.gov website to be more useful: https://www.climate.gov/
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Only if we have the tenth of competence in SSA and DMVs (state
| run) around the US. I want some strong leader to abolish them
| and start again. Fire all the useless employees that corrupt
| these places if they don't improve.
|
| I'm paying for this. And so are you. And we should expect
| nothing but excellence. It's harsh but this is what I feel.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I've lived in and gotten drivers licenses in several states
| and in none of them were there any problems with the DMVs
| that couldn't have been improved by hiring more people.
|
| It seems like a pretty thankless job, and I would by no means
| want to do it.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| At this point, your anecdote doesn't help - heck, DMV's
| inefficiencies are so widely known and even featured in
| some movies: https://www.google.com/search?q=dmv+sloth
| bigbillheck wrote:
| There are lots of things that are 'widely known and even
| featured in some movies' which have no basis in fact (or
| if they ever did, it's long gone).
|
| For an example relevant to here, consider how movies
| depict operating a computer and how that relates to one's
| own lived experiences.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| It seems deeply odd to say anecdotes don't help and then
| talk about movies, if it doesn't help him it doesn't help
| you
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing something, but what does this have to do
| with the NOAA's climate report?
| anonporridge wrote:
| Make work, bullshit jobs is basically a crude mechanism for a
| kind of UBI for many people.
|
| Our governments are deeply disincentivized to cleanup these
| inefficiencies because it means higher unemployment.
|
| This is one of the reasons I'm a strong supporting of an
| actual UBI + universal healthcare. If people's lives aren't
| destroyed and driven to death by poverty if they don't have a
| job, then there won't be as much moral and political hazard
| to eliminating bullshit jobs in favor a system that works
| better for all of us.
| felgueres wrote:
| The gov optimization function is to maximize production not
| employment. This is an ongoing fallacy in the political
| narrative but the unseen consequences of making up jobs is
| overall lower purchasing power.
| anonporridge wrote:
| There's also an element of keeping people busy so they
| don't have time to organize or challenge the status quo
| of power.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Isn't this a convoluted way of saying we have too many
| people?
| anonporridge wrote:
| Depends. Do you think the only reason people should exist
| is to serve the machine?
| mlang23 wrote:
| But how would you force people to vaccinate if they are on
| UBI and dont have to jump when their employer says so? Or
| do you crack the U of UBI then, attaching strings to the
| basic income to make people comply to what you want them to
| comply with?
| exporectomy wrote:
| Replacing bullshit jobs with UBI takes away many ways that
| important emotional needs are met. Feeling useful,
| important, part of something bigger, respected, etc. These
| are very important for quality of life.
| anonporridge wrote:
| I would argue that it's worse to slowly come to the
| sickening realization that you're not _actually_ useful.
| That the people around you just put up with you and give
| you something to occupy your time with out of pity.
|
| If we make sure everyone's basic economic needs are met,
| then maybe they'll surprise you and find a job or social
| niche where they legitimately are useful and valued. But
| if you're economically imprisoned to your current job,
| then you won't have the time or freedom to explore.
|
| Also, unemployment insurance and welfare as they are now
| are fundamentally different from UBI. The nature of these
| programs is "stay unemployed or economically useless, or
| else you lose the benefit" and it actively
| disincentivizes people from trying to contribute to
| society.
| krapp wrote:
| >Feeling useful, important, part of something bigger,
| respected, etc. These are very important for quality of
| life.
|
| And it's pathologically toxic that we as a society
| believe the only valid way to meet those emotional needs
| is by providing value to a company in exchange for the
| means to survive.
| handrous wrote:
| I take it you've not spent much time talking with people
| in bullshit jobs? Most would be _thrilled_ to be paid to
| watch /teach their kids, or work on an artistic side-
| hustle or hobby. Work is just the stupid, pointless
| bullshit someone makes them do to have money, while
| taking time from them they could be using for things that
| are actually valuable. It's not meeting an emotional need
| or making them feel important. God, certainly not
| respected.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I would side with the opposite: To make it easy to fire
| government employees (mostly leaders and managers) like we
| do in private industry. Deeply unpopular but I believe it's
| the correct strategy. UBI is not fixing the underlying
| problem. Strong top down direction like Apple or Space X.
| coffeecat wrote:
| > UBI is not fixing the underlying problem.
|
| I disagree entirely. The practical and moral reason why
| it's difficult to fire workers is because it generally
| results in the worker losing his income and healthcare,
| leading to personal and familial hardship. If healthcare
| were de-coupled from employment, then the hardship
| experienced by a fired worker is reduced. If some amount
| of income is de-coupled from employment, then the
| hardship experienced by a fired worker is further reduced
| (unemployment insurance works fine enough as a temporary
| band-aid, but it's not the real deal).
|
| If we can get enough social infrastructure in place so
| that fired workers experience minimal hardship, then it
| becomes morally acceptable to make our government and
| companies more efficient, by laying off inefficient or
| unnecessary workers. Society then gets to equitably reap
| the rewards of this increased efficiency.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Relatedly, in theory it also makes it much easier for a
| worker in a "local maxima" of doing a job they dislike
| inefficiently so long as checks get cleared more of an
| incentive to quit on their own decision and find a better
| personal "efficiency" for their labor if they feel much
| more comfortable that they have a safety net if they
| decide to seek new options.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Along similar lines, it also reduces the risk of quitting
| to follow some entrepreneurial venture, potentially
| boosting innovation in addition to adding a force pushing
| the market towards decentralization, which is probably a
| good thing.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Along the same lines, it also (in theory) helps non bread
| winners in abusive domestic relationships leave the
| relationship, since they have a static income stream tied
| to themselves rather than being 100% dependent on their
| partner.
| ahevia wrote:
| I'm just hoping there's enough momentum and support for
| addressing climate change that NOAA can _keep_ getting things
| done. Regardless of who might be in office in the future.
|
| Last thing we need is a new administration in 2024 completely
| undoing all the progress we're making again.
| perfunctory wrote:
| What is your hope based on? Genuinely curious. All evidence
| shows that there is neither momentum nor support, next to
| nothing is being done and global emissions just keep rising.
| ahevia wrote:
| My hope comes from personal experience. Not exactly
| empirical. I've been involved in the climate movement for a
| long time now (since before I was even a teenager) and
| things have improved vastly during my life alone. If you
| asked me this question a few years ago I would be down in
| the dumps, but what I see around me these days has me much
| more positive of how humanity makes it through this. (I'm
| sorry I don't really have one specific link or citation.
| Yale Climate Communication is a good place to start though)
|
| There is still a lot of losses and a lot of inaction. I
| don't know if humanity will have a peaceful time mid or
| late century, but I don't think the situation is as dire as
| it used to be.
| varelse wrote:
| Right before he died, David MacKay did a study indicating
| we needed to rely on an insane amount of nuclear to
| survive (but we live in a world insanely against nuclear
| power). Since then the price of solar energy has
| plummeted. Has anyone done the study to update these
| numbers?
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environm
| ent...
| WorldMaker wrote:
| I read "just hoping" as "wishing for" not "have hope that".
| andred14 wrote:
| Stop BSing us ALL previous climate disaster predictions DID NOT
| happen.
| superflit2 wrote:
| We really should build more Nuclear.
|
| Nuclear is the real clean energy.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >We really should build more Nuclear.
|
| California's last nuclear plant is almost done.
| Environmentalists are against nuclear and so it's difficult to
| build more.
|
| In all the world, I believe only about 100 nuclear plants are
| even planned. Most of which are in China.
|
| https://endcoal.org/tracker/
|
| Looks to be about 1,000 new coal plants being built or at least
| planned. Most of which are in China. Which will no doubt
| operate for decades.
|
| Obviously North America is more interested in Solar, Wind, and
| Natural Gas. Eventually we will get to gridscale power storage.
| Suddenly it'll be problem solved.
| marcyb5st wrote:
| No, it won't be problem solved.
|
| We have already kickstarted positive feedback loops like
| thawing of the tundra, reduced albedo due to smaller ice
| sheets, ... . We actually need to go carbon negative for a
| while to offset those. The technology you mention surely will
| help greatly in avoiding speeding things up, but they won't
| take us back to preindustrial levels alone.
| epistasis wrote:
| Nuclear isn't difficult to build because of
| environmentalists, it's difficult to build because we don't
| know how to build big things anymore.
|
| Check out the autopsy of VC Summer's failure, or the delays
| at Vogtle, and you won't find any environmentalists to blame.
| At least I haven't been able to find any hint of that, and if
| it were possible to blame environmentalists, I would think
| that the contractor and utility would be screaming it.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Preferably fusion, but that's still proving super hard. But
| yes, any form would help a lot.
|
| If you're suggesting hydro, wind and solar are not clean energy
| though I think you need to expand on that.
| anonporridge wrote:
| For all practical purposes, we need to pretend like fusion
| doesn't exist. Sure, we should still invest in it and do
| research, but we're setting ourselves up for disaster if we
| peg our hopes on viable fusion.
|
| Plus, fusion likely has the same kind of practical, economic
| limitations (huge upfront capital cost and long build time)
| that make fission hard to justify in an environment of small,
| cheap fossil fuel burners and wind/solar units.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| It does feel exciting that fusion has apparently moved from
| being "just 5 years away" for something like three decades
| to this past decade they've revised down to now perpetually
| "just 2 years away", at that burndown rate we can expect it
| in maybe three decades.
|
| That said the cheapest fusion power we'll ever have access
| to will always be solar power because the capital costs of
| building our solar system's sun are already well and easily
| sunk/amortized.
| tuatoru wrote:
| Here's my comment from a couple of days ago.
|
| I'll add that as well as reaching Qtotal > 500, we need
| continuous operating life to be of the order of 10
| million seconds, "only" 13 orders of magnitude away. Not
| going to happen in 2 years, or 5 years, or 40 years.
|
| ---
|
| The mininum viable Qplasma would be in the neighborhood
| of 100.[1] Fusion may get competitive for electricity
| generation with a Qtotal > 500.[2]
|
| 1. Sabine Hossenfelder, How Close Is Nuclear Fusion?,
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY&t=8s
|
| 2. Nicholas Hawker, A simplified economic model for
| inertial fusion,
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33040650/
| zarq wrote:
| It's clean in the sense that it isn't generating CO2. But it is
| a finite resource. Also, the environmental impact of a nuclear
| power plant is non-negligible.
| lobocinza wrote:
| Everything is finite. Solar and other "renewables" aren't
| clean or renewable because the components don't live forever
| and their manufacturing requires rare earths which are a
| finite and very unclean to mine. AFAIK rare earths are not
| being recycled so we are just sweeping the dirty under the
| carpet and not really greenifying the energy. But for
| countries that currently burn coal anything would be an
| improvement.
|
| Nuclear is finite but so is coal and oil and we are nowhere
| close of running out of it. New reserves will be discovered
| once there's demand. And used fuel can be recycled in breeder
| reactors.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Solar panels don't contain rare earth elements. Apply
| heightened scrutiny to any source that told you that they
| need rare earth elements.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Nuclear's clean only as long as nothing goes wrong.
| adrianN wrote:
| When something goes wrong that doesn't cause more global
| warming either, it just creates a durable refuge for
| wildlife.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Whenever I have regrets, I remind myself that I can't know what
| would have happened if I had went down that other road, maybe a
| poor decision saved me from a worse fate.
|
| If we had scaled up on nuclear, there's no way every reactor
| would have had the best engineers, best contractors, best
| governance -- there would certainly be some that cut corners or
| got built on a fault line or vulnerable to some other
| unpredictable disaster or terrorist attack.
| nice_byte wrote:
| that would still be better than what we ended up with. i'll
| take a dozen fukushima type events over the span of 20-30yrs
| over slowly but steadily ruining the planet every day.
| guscost wrote:
| Well, that was a tsunami that killed ~10,000 people, so
| maybe not _exactly_ like Fukushima.
| tuatoru wrote:
| I'll take a dozen Fukushimas _every year_ (deaths from
| radiation: 1; deaths from evacuation stress: 273) over the
| hundreds of thousands killed every year by air pollution
| from coal burning.
| marssaxman wrote:
| We probably _should have built_ more nuclear plants, but it 's
| too late now. Any plants we started planning today would not
| come on line for 10-20 years. In the meantime, renewable energy
| is cheaper, simpler, and quicker; any money we might be able to
| spend developing additional nuclear plants would be put to
| better use developing more wind, solar, and long-distance
| transmission infrastructure.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Nuclear is (more or less) clean, and would have been great to
| focus more on 20 years ago (instead of slowing it down, that
| was a mistake), and can still be part of the solution, but it's
| no longer the best or only solution.
|
| "Stabilising the climate is urgent, nuclear power is slow. It
| meets no technical or operational need that these low-carbon
| competitors cannot meet better, cheaper, and faster."
|
| "The report estimates that the average construction time for
| reactors worldwide was ten years, significantly longer than the
| World Nuclear Association's estimated construction time of
| between five and eight years. Nuclear reactors are also slow to
| start and a number have closed, with nine units closing over
| 2018 and a further five units expected to close over 2019."
|
| "The report also states that nuclear power is more expensive
| than renewables. Nuclear energy costs around $112-189 per
| megawatt hour (MWh) compared to $26-56MWh for onshore wind and
| $36-44MWh for solar power. Levelised cost estimates for solar
| and wind also dropped by 88% and 69% respectively, while they
| increased by 23% for nuclear power."
|
| https://www.power-technology.com/news/nuclear-energy-report-...
| XiJinpinggg wrote:
| Mass production solves all these problems. France build
| almost 50 reactors in 10 years in the seventies.
| epistasis wrote:
| I am not opposed to nuclear on principle, but I am
| pragmatically opposed to building new nuclear for three
| reasons: 1) the amount of nuclear that we get per dollar 2) the
| long delay between funding/approval/design and the first power
| delivers to the grid, and 3) the chance that when we do spend
| money, that we will actually get something out at the end.
|
| Throughout the US and Europe, all recent attempts at building
| new nuclear have suffered from massive construction failure.
| Not from regulatory burdens, but from just building what was
| designed by engineers. Vogtle, Summer, Flamanville, Hinkley,
| and Olkiluoto have been huge disappointments.
|
| France's only hope for new nuclear to replace their aging fleet
| is now small modular reactors, a technology that in the past
| has been rejected foe being too costly since the costs are
| supposed to go down with larger reactors, not smaller.
|
| If we get new nuclear, it will either be because Russia builds
| it (and there's no evidence that Russia could take a US
| construction crew and get a completed project), or because we
| try a new form of nuclear.
|
| I think it's time to realize that nuclear technology does not
| fit our current skill set. And that wind, solar, and storage
| have leapfrogged nuclear in terms of advanced technology.
| tuatoru wrote:
| > 2) the long delay between funding/approval/design and the
| first power delivers to the grid, and 3) the chance that when
| we do spend money, that we will actually get something out at
| the end.
|
| So lobby your senator and congressperson to create and pass
| legislation enabling nuclear (changing radiation limits to be
| scientifically based, and banning NIMBY lawsuits, for
| example), and to fast-track the whole approvals process.
| (Type-approval of factory-made designs, for example. And
| automatic approval of coal furnace replacement with type-
| approved reactors.)
| kaycebasques wrote:
| I remember a few years back the phrase "global weirding" was
| circulating to indicate that weather around the world is expected
| to get more volatile (rather than just warmer across the board).
| With "global weirding" in mind are there any areas that are
| experiencing cooler climate than historical average?
| monkeyfacebag wrote:
| All I have is my personal experience that SF felt especially
| cold this summer.
| Diederich wrote:
| "weather weirding" will tend to statistically disappear quite
| quickly given any kind of averaging.
|
| A better measure is the number of incidents of weather
| extremes: heat, cold, rain, drought, storms.
|
| I'm not going to look those up right now, but there's a ton of
| evidence that those incidents are going up dramatically.
| baq wrote:
| That's the point - to highlight that weather isn't climate.
| Average temp up 2 deg Celsius means 100F weird weather in the
| polar circle in the summer.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| rain replaces snow in some places, which changes a lot of
| things; plants and water that change local weather, change;
| overall trend of desertification ("becoming a desert") is big
| nend wrote:
| Here's the map for 2020:
| https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/global/mapping/2020
|
| Looks like India and parts of Canada/Alaska experienced
| slightly cooler temps, as well as a decent area over water.
|
| For 2019, large parts of interior Canada and the US, as well as
| parts of Oceania.
|
| https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/global/mapping/2019
|
| One of the other noticeable things about those maps is Siberia.
| Affected quite a bit by warmer temps in both years.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| One perspective to look at "global weirding" is that global
| climate change right now is seeing a massive influx of new
| _energy_ , and not all energy becomes heat. So the volatility
| implied in "global weirding" doesn't necessarily mean we'll see
| much in the way of record lows/record cold places (though we'll
| still see some), but we'll see more energy in the climate in
| general: stronger winds, stronger storms, more storms, storms
| in different places "than usual".
|
| We're seeing a lot of that indeed: this is the second tropical
| storm season in a row we've exhausted the prepared number of
| about 22 alphabetical "English first names" and have moved on
| to Greek letters and other stopgaps.
|
| We've seen tropical storms hit more places, including some big
| activity in what used to be "far north" for tropical storm
| season such as New York state.
|
| We've seen an expansion/shifting of "Tornado Alley" in the
| United States. States that never previously had tornado drills
| have had to add them and start trying to educate their
| residents.
|
| We have seen some record snow storms and some record single day
| lows in many cities, especially in "wind chill" lows that
| factors in increased cold wind velocity, even if no one city
| can claim to be that much cooler than it was before.
| chroem- wrote:
| > I remember a few years back the phrase "global weirding" was
| circulating to indicate that weather around the world is
| expected to get more volatile (rather than just warmer across
| the board).
|
| Isn't this a predicted observation in the case of increased
| media reporting?
| DesiLurker wrote:
| I started to call this 'weather randomization' because thats
| what it is.
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