[HN Gopher] Norwegian youth win climate court case against the N...
___________________________________________________________________
Norwegian youth win climate court case against the Norwegian State
Author : velmu
Score : 114 points
Date : 2024-01-18 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.greenpeace.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.greenpeace.org)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Related: https://apnews.com/article/youth-climate-lawsuit-
| montana-sup... ("AP: Montana Supreme Court upholds landmark
| climate ruling that said emissions can't be ignored")
| Gys wrote:
| > rendering the approvals of three oil and gas fields in the
| North Sea invalid
| xenospn wrote:
| Norwegian GDP just took a hit
| voisin wrote:
| It boggles my mind that we allow GDP to not account for
| externalities to the environment. Like burning a wick, we
| cheer the flame with no consideration for the dynamite at the
| other end.
| nathancahill wrote:
| For a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value
| for shareholders.
| legitster wrote:
| It's _gross_ domestic product, not net.
|
| The problem is that anytime someone attempts to quantify
| the cost of climate change, no one is happy with the
| numbers.
| diob wrote:
| Reminds me of the mindset of the species in Pandora's Star
| by Peter F. Hamilton. They basically accepted that they
| would die fast due to toxins / radiation / disasters for
| "progress" / "efficiency", and instead just focused on
| trucking forward and breeding like mad.
| brutusborn wrote:
| GDP is just a measure, and it doesn't include
| externalities. Any state or person is free to make up their
| own metric that includes it. Call it GDP_E and put it in
| every government report!
|
| Saying it should include externalities is like saying that
| the scales at the butchers should include nutrition
| information with weight: that would be cool but that's not
| what scales/weight measures are for.
| roenxi wrote:
| If we're going to include negative externalities then
| someone has to figure out all the positive ones too. The
| economic upside of cheap energy isn't being accounted for
| in the price either, because low prices tautologically
| can't capture high value per unit and flows on to people
| further down the value chain.
|
| The challenge of doing so is insurmountable, that way is
| the madness of centralised planning.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The first order negative impact of burning fossil fuels
| is stuff like pollution, global warming etc. This is not
| accounted for by the price of these fuels.
|
| The first order positive impacts of burning fossil fuels
| are accounted for in the price of the fuels. That's what
| people are paying for. I need to drive a car, here is
| some money for oil.
|
| What you are apparently talking about are the second
| order positive impact of fossil fuels. Some upside due to
| living in an environment of abundant cheap energy. I
| think you will have to argue more that these second order
| effects are comparable in size to the first order
| effects.
| roenxi wrote:
| Which reminds me; who are these people who are being hit
| by the pollution and aren't using fossil fuels? They
| aren't people in Norway; they're all living a lavish
| lifestyle full of stuff created with fossil fuels. That
| isn't a real externality. To a first approximation we're
| already paying for a large chunk of the price for the
| pollution generated on our behalf.
|
| _PostScript_ Whoever it is would be much better off
| getting more access to fossil fuels than having access
| curtailed. China did not become a wealthy industrial
| powerhouse with environmentalist policies. The argument
| that negative externalities are a problem is silly;
| clearly curtailing fossil fuel access is more damaging.
| Sucks to be Africa or wherever with spotty oil
| infrastructure and access. Whether it is technically an
| externality or not, it is clear that unaffected third
| parties would benefit from more oil, not less.
|
| The externalities are clearly not being accounted for
| properly/are not net negative when curtailing a thing
| causes living standards overall to drop.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Global warming is a second order effect of abundant CO2
| production.
|
| Why does your second order effect count, but not readily
| available sterile hospital materials made of petroleum?
| bertil wrote:
| > economic upside of cheap energy isn't being accounted
| for
|
| It is: we anticipate companies to operate "indefinitely,"
| which turns to a high market value. Banks sell that
| stock, pension funds store it, and their activity is
| accounted for.
|
| What we don't consider (in the GDP, company valuations,
| bank transactions, or any metric) is how the millions of
| people who will survive the first mass wet-bulb death
| event will react.
| Aunche wrote:
| The cost of oil production in Norway is high compared to
| most OPEC countries, so net production will mostly flat.
| They can just loosen their grip a bit. The GDP would drop
| for nothing.
| bethekind wrote:
| Whenever Green Peace is happy, GDP always suffers
| Epa095 wrote:
| In general short term goals (like current GDP) often takes
| a hit when long term goals (like the cost of the
| externalities) gets added to the mix.
|
| But you can't just max out that credit card all the time
| you know.
| elil17 wrote:
| A country like Norway, with one of the highest GDPs per
| capita in the world (significantly higher than even
| America's), is exactly the country that should be thinking
| about the environment before they think about economic
| development.
| tordrt wrote:
| The environmental effects of stopping oil and gas
| production in Norway are not clear. Norway account for
| something like 2% of the worlds production. OPEC are
| already price fixing the market, and could (and propably
| would) easily replace Norways production. Some reports
| argue it will even increase emissions due to being replaced
| by less sustainable produciton.
|
| The developing world is too dependent on oil and gas. Rapid
| degrowth in global oil and gas production would lead to
| mass hunger. It is only the developed world who can afford
| to stop using oil and gas at the moment. We have to replace
| the worlds energy needs with something else, before we take
| environmental choices to cut production. Third world
| countries suffer without cheap oil and gas.
| bethekind wrote:
| Is this really a win?
|
| You need a strong economy to shift to a Green future. Norway was
| a small country before oil and gas, now they've made the best use
| of it out of any country in the world.
|
| Shouldnt they keep their foot on the pedal a little longer?
| Making new battery technology isn't cheap.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If a house was on fire, what would you consider a win to put it
| out? Or would you do everything possible to put it out? As the
| climate continues to rapidly change, the tolerance for
| extraordinary measures would rise I would imagine (especially
| amongst youth cohorts who will inherit the cleanup over the
| next ~100 years).
|
| Shareholder value had a cost (industrialization in general
| [1]), and now it must be paid back.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2
| brutusborn wrote:
| Bad analogy. If your house is on fire, there is no
| opportunity cost to putting it out and there is no
| uncertainty. You have nothing to lose. If an asteroid was
| headed for earth you would be on the money, but climate
| change isn't like that.
|
| It is a relatively gradual change with a lot of uncertainty
| about the final magnitudes of warming and the actual risk
| involved. Bad policy to reduce emissions have opportunity
| costs. E.g. biofuels policy exacerbating starvation in the
| 3rd world. Read Bjorn Lomborg, he suggests the best policies
| as well as other problems we should prioritise above climate
| change. Then read Judith Curry to better understand the risks
| involved.
|
| It's not black and white and choosing solutions is hard but
| random countries turning off their fossil fuels is not an
| effective policy.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Fossil fuels will need to be left in the ground [1] [2],
| it's as simple as that. The value of those reserves and
| assets on books, if not naturally declining to zero, must
| be forced to zero. If nations or corporations act self
| interested and don't leave them in the ground [3], what do
| you expect to be done as the world burns? Nothing? That's
| not an option.
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/09/climate-majority-of-
| fossil-f... ("The vast majority of the world's known fossil
| fuel reserves must be kept in the ground to have even a 50%
| chance of keeping global temperatures from rising 1.5
| degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.")
|
| [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03821-8
| ("Parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement pledged to limit
| global warming to well below 2 degC and to pursue efforts
| to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degC relative to
| pre-industrial times1. However, fossil fuels continue to
| dominate the global energy system and a sharp decline in
| their use must be realized to keep the temperature increase
| below 1.5 degC (refs. 2,3,4,5,6,7). Here we use a global
| energy systems model8 to assess the amount of fossil fuels
| that would need to be left in the ground, regionally and
| globally, to allow for a 50 per cent probability of
| limiting warming to 1.5 degC. By 2050, we find that nearly
| 60 per cent of oil and fossil methane gas, and 90 per cent
| of coal must remain unextracted to keep within a 1.5 degC
| carbon budget. This is a large increase in the
| unextractable estimates for a 2 degC carbon budget9,
| particularly for oil, for which an additional 25 per cent
| of reserves must remain unextracted. Furthermore, we
| estimate that oil and gas production must decline globally
| by 3 per cent each year until 2050. This implies that most
| regions must reach peak production now or during the next
| decade, rendering many operational and planned fossil fuel
| projects unviable. We probably present an underestimate of
| the production changes required, because a greater than 50
| per cent probability of limiting warming to 1.5 degC
| requires more carbon to stay in the ground and because of
| uncertainties around the timely deployment of negative
| emission technologies at scale.")
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38506585 ("HN:
| Cop28 president says 'no science' behind demands for phase-
| out of fossil fuels")
| brutusborn wrote:
| It's definitely not that simple. Ask yourself: why did
| the international committee use 2C as a limit? Why not 3C
| or 4C?
|
| I suspect is is because it is based on politics and not
| science but I'm open to being corrected.
|
| Also ask yourself: if fossil fuels are used to produce
| medicine and fertiliser with zero emissions, why would we
| want to stop producing them?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I don't mean to be rude, in the slightest, but your
| suspicions are based on nothing but your own opinion
| (unless you're a climate scientist) and I'm going to
| defer to subject matter experts. I'm not a scientist, but
| I listen to them [1] [2] [3]. Your submission history
| indicates a hint of climate denier [4] and your comment
| here [5] about carbon capture being in use at scale and
| successful is an outright falsehood (direct air capture
| is very expensive and in its infancy, and the cost of
| sequestering is not included in the cost of fuel
| consumed), so here we are. I am doing my best to argue in
| good faith.
|
| > Also ask yourself: if fossil fuels are used to produce
| medicine and fertiliser with zero emissions, why would we
| want to stop producing them?
|
| When you can prove this can be done, certainly, I'll
| agree with you. But there must be evidence, and it must
| be provided. Hope and misdirection is not a strategy.
|
| [1] https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/17/do-scientists-agree-
| on-clima... ("Do scientists agree on climate change? Yes,
| the vast majority of actively publishing climate
| scientists - 97 percent - agree that humans are causing
| global warming and climate change. Most of the leading
| science organizations around the world have issued public
| statements expressing this, including international and
| U.S. science academies, the United Nations
| Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a whole
| host of reputable scientific bodies around the world. A
| list of these organizations is provided here [next
| citation].")
|
| [2] https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
|
| [3] http://www.opr.ca.gov/facts/list-of-scientific-
| organizations... ("The following page lists the nearly
| 200 worldwide scientific organizations that hold the
| position that climate change has been caused by human
| action.")
|
| [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36307850
|
| [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39047555
| brutusborn wrote:
| I work with a few climate scientists so my opinions
| aren't my own. I referenced 2 researchers above, what is
| wrong with their opinions?
|
| [4] isn't climate denial, it was an attempt to get some
| criticism of an interesting heterodox theory, and I found
| it! [5] CCS is being used at large scale on many
| projects. Maybe we have different definitions of "at
| scale" and "successful"
|
| I don't need to prove it can be done: we already produce
| these with emissions and we already have CCS to avoid
| these emissions, there is nothing technological stopping
| this except economics.
|
| The consensus is that climate change is real and I agree
| wholeheartedly. What I disagree with is exaggerations of
| the negative outcomes and rejections of technological
| solutions based on politics rather than science. In this
| aspect you will find many conflicting opinions.
|
| Also please answer my question about 2C. Asking this is
| what led me to realising how much of climate policy is
| based on convenient politics and not science.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > Also please answer my question about 2C. Asking this is
| what led me to realising how much of climate policy is
| based on convenient politics and not science.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/whats-difference-
| betwee... ("Explainer: What's the difference between
| 1.5degC and 2degC of global warming?")
|
| https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2865/a-degree-of-concern-
| why-g... ("A Degree of Concern: Why Global Temperatures
| Matter")
|
| https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/08/1-5-or-2-degre
| es-... ("1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius of additional global
| warming: Does it make a difference?")
|
| You keep saying climate policy is based on politics, but
| you are not providing any evidence of that. Please
| provide evidence of your assertion this is political. You
| argue that "there is nothing technological stopping this
| except economics"; that means it isn't feasible unless
| proven the economics will improve. A proof of concept
| does not guarantee scale.
| brutusborn wrote:
| My evidence is the lack of a basis for 2C and lack of a
| cogent plan to limit warming to 2C. I tried to find the
| basis and instead just found lots of IPCC discussions
| with no scientific basis.
|
| That's why I asked: you can find articles saying that a
| degree of difference is very important, but not the basis
| for why 2C is used.
|
| If you are arguing that fossil fuels must be shut down
| immediately, you must have an understanding of why 2C is
| used, and the difference in harm between 2C and whatever
| we end up with if we keep emitting. If you are not aware
| of this science in these cases then you are basing your
| beliefs on politics.
| yongjik wrote:
| The way I understand it, the "uncertainty" about global
| warming as of 2024 is the same kind of uncertainty as
| whether an alcoholic with liver cancer can live three or
| six more months if he continues ignoring his doctor's
| advice.
|
| I'm open to discussions about different approaches and
| their relative merits, but we're beyond the point where "we
| don't know how bad it will get" is a valid argument for
| anything.
| brutusborn wrote:
| If you don't know how bad it will get, how can you
| balance the negatives of remediation?
|
| For example, if the world was ending next year it might
| make sense to turn off all fossil fuels and eradicate
| most of the human population. But if it is only a few
| degrees per century we can consider... better options.
| yongjik wrote:
| Holy strawman, who said anything about eradicating most
| of humans?
|
| Let me rephrase: realistically speaking, the things
| humanity will manage to do in the next 10 years will be
| such a lukewarm attempt that the chance we will
| "accidentally" overshoot and create more misery is close
| to zero.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Again, If you don't know how bad it will get, how can you
| balance the negatives of remediation?
|
| We already created misery via starvation due to biomass
| subsidies, what makes you think our future policies will
| be harmless?
|
| Of course my example was absurd, but it illustrates the
| trade offs involved.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Will climate change negatively affect Norway? Clearly there
| are big time losers with climate change, but is Norway's
| house really on fire? Or is it a house on the other side of
| town that is on fire and has little chance of impacting
| Norway's house?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Shareholder value had a cost, and now it must be paid back"
|
| The problem is, it is voluntarily.
| Deprecate9151 wrote:
| Reading the article, none of that seems to be in scope for the
| decision. The decision seems to focus on the fact these new
| locations didn't adequately meet their existing impact analysis
| requirements in the first place, not that the impact was deemed
| unacceptable.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| We already have a massive sovereign wealth fund built from
| investments seeded by oil income.
|
| Last year, large phosphate deposits were found in Norway,
| effectively doubling the known world supply. Given a similar
| taxation model, we could keep growing the wealth fund even as
| we phase out the oil industry over time.
|
| Though oil industry phase-out is not something with a political
| consensus behind it right now anyway. Labour and the
| conservatives tend to reach across the aisle on that topic.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I'm not an expert on the Norwegian court system, but they seem to
| have a Supreme Court, so I assume this can be appealed. And,
| since it's a completely novel[1] ruling, and the state has a
| large amount of money they could receive if this were overturned,
| I expect it will be appealed.
|
| [1] "Novel" meaning "without precedent in Norwegian rulings". I
| did not mean "without foundation" or "unreasonable".
| Ekaros wrote:
| Seems to be District Court. Seems to be somewhat similar to
| Finnish system. Where district court basically deliver most
| random and weird decisions. Then they generally get appealed to
| court of appeals. Which is more logical place. Likely this will
| be overturned there. And then end in supreme court...
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| It was Oslo Tingrett, This is the lowest level ordinary court
| (there are 23 of them), above is the Lagmannsrett (6 of them)
| with handles appeals from the Tingrett. Above the
| Lagmannsrett is the Hoyesterett (High Court) which again
| handles appeals from lower courts. As far as I know cases
| cannot be brought directly in the high court but must
| progress through the lower courts first.
|
| Both tingrett and lagmannsrett are district courts in the
| sense that the cover specific geographical areas (kretser,
| circuits).
|
| https://www.domstol.no/no/om-rettssystemet/de-alminnelige-
| do...
| legitster wrote:
| Are there now grounds to start shutting down existing oil fields?
|
| Something like 20% of the government budget comes from oil
| revenue, and the entire pension system (to my understanding)
| comes from oil funds.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Its funny how things always seem to be set up like that...
|
| Oh, sure, you want the state to stop doing bad environmental
| things? Well, ok, as long as you pay for it!
| Deprecate9151 wrote:
| It does not seem so, the artcile indicates the court focused on
| procedural issues related to the impact assessment required for
| the permits to build the new oil locations. The issues seems to
| be focused on the fact they weren't done, or were incomplete. I
| would imagine only pump locations with similar deficiencies
| would be in trouble.
| legitster wrote:
| > combustion emissions [from] petroleum extraction are such a
| significant and particularly characteristic consequence of
| such projects that they must clearly be considered indirect
| climate impacts within the meaning of the (EU) Project
| Directive
|
| It didn't seem particular to the locations. Under this
| ruling, if the oil gets shipped to India and burned there
| they would now need to include it in the local impact
| assessment.
|
| Maybe they just need to resubmit with a new impact
| assessment? But it does seem like the precedent they are
| trying to set is to reject _all_ projects based on emissions.
| Deprecate9151 wrote:
| It may functionally stop all new projects (although I doubt
| that it will get that far).
|
| I don't see anything implying that existing projects
| approved under the old framework would need to be re-
| assessed and shutdown though. That was my main point.
| legitster wrote:
| If there is legal precedent that carbon emissions from
| sovereign oil sources potentially violate the UN
| Convention on the Rights of the Child, there's no reason
| to believe there would not immediately be new cases
| opened up against existing projects on the same grounds.
| Deprecate9151 wrote:
| They could open the cases, but this decision hinged on
| the permitting process not following the law that it
| needed to consider emissions, which the Rights of the
| Chile was a component of.
|
| It is not a given the reasoning used in this decision
| could be used for oil and gas projects that followed a
| proper permit process at the time they were granted.
| There is more reason to believe this case would NOT apply
| in that situation.
| HPsquared wrote:
| And what about the sovereign wealth fund? That money came from
| historical fossil fuel extraction, after all.
| mthoms wrote:
| What about it?
| dools wrote:
| Norway issue their own currency, so 100% of their budget comes
| from money they spend into existence.
|
| Oil has an impact on their ability to import, and on their
| ability to meet their own energy requirements.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| that's not exactly correct given the inflationary nature of
| printing to "spend into existence." History is filled with
| crumbled societies printing their own money as mention.
| tordrt wrote:
| What do you mean by spend into existence? If they collect
| much more money in taxes and investments than they spend
| (which they ary), are they then really spending anything into
| existence?
| bertil wrote:
| I can't speak intelligently about the relationship between the
| pension fund and the wealth fund (it is complicated), but I
| _think_ you overestimate the share of upcoming revenue from oil
| over the on-going benefit from operating a fund that is betting
| on sustainable solutions. Someone smarter than me should
| correct the record here.
|
| However, the key information here is neither side of that
| contradiction, but that Norway has found a very large deposit
| of Phosphorous. Until now, Marocco has the largest reserves (by
| so much it's actually daunting, confusing really, how they
| didn't end up like the Saudi Arabia of bird poop, which is
| essential for growing food, so a tad more essential than
| burning donuts).
|
| Norway seem keen to leverage that the way they leveraged fossil
| fuels, so I'd expect that fund to grow bigger, faster, and
| without the discomfort of selling something that could, and
| most likely will, end up drowning Norwegian towns.
| Luc wrote:
| Isn't Greenpeace's ideology aligned with degrowth nowadays? I
| remember reading how they were against carbon capture (and, of
| course, geo-engineering).
| pretendgeneer wrote:
| Being against Carbon Capture and geo-engineering is just
| following the science.
|
| Carbon capture has constantly been shown to just not work at
| any scale. and geo-engineering causes so many extra problems
| and will absolutely lead to termination shock at some point.
| madsbuch wrote:
| can you make a scientific argument that carbon capture and
| geo engineering will not work at scale.
|
| if not, then you are just littering with words.
| hnbad wrote:
| Carbon capture technologies produce more carbon emissions
| than they can capture if you account for the resource use
| for production and construction. Even when they do slightly
| better than breaking even the margin is so low that scaling
| it up is not a meaningful contribution relative to the
| amount of emissions we would need to counteract. This is
| unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.
|
| Geo engineering to the degree necessary to revert climate
| change is bad sci-fi, not science, no matter what
| billionaires selling personal EVs are telling you.
|
| On the other hand we know that we are seeing an immense
| problem of overproduction which is incentivized by the
| economic system and impossible to tackle by blaming
| consumers for bad choices and asking the industry nicely to
| reduce waste or letting them get away with greenwashing by
| planting trees and raising honey bees. We could change that
| but it would require significant market intervention, which
| we (most Western nations at least) have been ideologically
| opposed to for decades.
| newsclues wrote:
| You understand "following the science" arguments are stupid
| right?
| codetrotter wrote:
| No. Why?
| brutusborn wrote:
| Because science just updates our beliefs, it doesn't
| produce 'truths' that we can follow. See the Problem of
| Induction or the Duhem-Quine thesis.
| hnbad wrote:
| What do you think truth is other than confident beliefs?
|
| Nothing can produce "truths". If you want absolute
| truths, pick a holy text and decide for yourself what
| absolute truth you can pin on it.
| newsclues wrote:
| It's a process not an end state.
|
| "Follow science" and 'follow "the" science' are two
| different things, and we just need to go back in history
| to understand that humans did some horrible stuff because
| of "the" science.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Hm.. I don't see that distinction in this case.
|
| To me when they say they "follow the science" it does not
| imply an end state. To me it only implies "everything we
| know so far".
|
| I am sure that if scientific results showed the opposite
| of their current idea, they would once again update their
| view.
| was_a_dev wrote:
| It isn't if you aren't a scientist in that field. As you're
| not qualified to do otherwise.
|
| As a physicist in quantum sensing. I follow the science
| (opinion) of climate scientists as they're the experts of
| that field. And that opinion is constantly evolving, but I
| follow that.
|
| Anything else is just being an armchair scientist.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Surely a physicist is best placed to 'Nullius in Verba'
| and to do his own research. Climate models are
| fundamentally physical simulations after all...
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Everything is fundamentally physics.
| was_a_dev wrote:
| Climate models are fundamentally physical, but I don't
| have the insight in the field to have the deep insight to
| make qualified opinions.
|
| I could after significant research as suggested. But that
| is a significant endeavour, hence following the opinion
| of the field is typically sufficient.
|
| It's like a fronted developer making comments on kernel
| development and vice versa. It's both fundamentally code,
| but different fields.
| brutusborn wrote:
| I think if you've looked at numerical models then you
| have enough knowledge to at least judge the underlying
| assumptions: boundary conditions, numerical stability,
| discretisation methods, validation methods and results.
|
| In the same way that I can verify a SAT solution, I don't
| need to know how to code a sat solver.
|
| Unfortunately there are fundamental disagreements about
| most of the critical parts of climate science, so going
| by the opinion of the field isn't foolproof (who to
| choose? How to choose?). Many fields have had false
| consensus beliefs before, and most of their problems
| weren't 1000th the difficulty of climate modelling.
| ipaddr wrote:
| That's called gatekeeping. Wonderful opinions can come
| for anyone.
|
| A scientist is someone who found someone to pay them.
| Nothing more, nothing less.
|
| Ignoring ideas unless they came from a brand is the
| opposite of science. Then you drop your brand (physicist)
| and expect others to judge your opinion as more
| important. It didn't work. As a senior physicist in
| quantum sensing I'm invalidating your brand.
| was_a_dev wrote:
| Wonderful opinions can come from anyone.
|
| Are these scientifically founded opinions. Not
| necessarily, hence why "following the science" is valid
| if you are following experts in their field.
|
| If you're a software consultant, would you take on the
| opinions from a marketing client on the best algorithm to
| implement for their solution? Probably not.
|
| If someone put in the effort and time to throughly
| research the topic and draw an opinion from that.
| Regardless of their title or their funding, then why
| would you discount it?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Ideologues won't accept it because they are waiting for a
| technology solution and these are the best they've seen
| offered so far. Their optimism is predicated on market driven
| technology solutions saving us quickly enough. Negativity
| toward their favorite technology solutions is interpreted as
| pessimism toward their ideology.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Carbon capture is being successfully used all around the
| world. It's in its infancy, but so were solar panels decades
| ago, and we didn't give up on them.
|
| We don't have enough data on geoengineering to judge yet,
| there is no real science to follow.
|
| Also I don't understand this attitude of rejecting potential
| solutions outright. Science doesn't "prove" things, we can't
| 'follow' it due to the problem of induction. So we should
| stay open minded and support all potential solutions, not
| just those we like best.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Without a massive amount of renewable energy we won't be
| able use CCS at scale.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Why not? If we burn gas using CCS and develop a lot of
| nuclear, we wouldn't even need renewable energy. I'm not
| saying it's bad, just that it's not essential (and may
| actually be a distraction in e.g. Germany where it has
| displaced nuclear development and resulted in coal plants
| being reopened).
| barbazoo wrote:
| I should have said "clean energy", you are obviously
| right about nuclear power.
| bertil wrote:
| > Carbon capture is being successfully used all around the
| world.
|
| [Citation needed]
| legitster wrote:
| > geo-engineering causes so many extra problems and will
| absolutely lead to termination shock at some point.
|
| This doesn't sound like a terribly scientific assessment.
|
| Climate change is either an environmental disaster and
| geoengineering would be a huge risk - or climate change is an
| existential threat to humanity in which case we have nothing
| to lose. Which is it?
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >existential threat to humanity in which case we have
| nothing to lose
|
| Being under threat doesn't justify making things worst. I
| know I'll die some day but that's not a reason to be
| suicidal.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Existential threat means things can't get worse (you just
| stop existing).
|
| Ignoring the potential of geoengineering implies you are
| sure that we have a better solution which will work. I
| hope we don't have to use geoengineering but I am certain
| the status quo of hoping renewables and batteries in the
| 1st world will save us is not going to work.
| IlliOnato wrote:
| Threat is not certainty. If somebody is out there to kill
| you, you are under an existential threat, until they are
| caught. It's not a reason to start playing Russian
| roulette, saying "I'm already in danger, cannot get worse
| than that!"
| brutusborn wrote:
| The same logic applies to shutting down oil and gas
| production: if we are not certain, then why risk the
| downsides?
|
| I'm not saying this is a good way to think, just that it
| shows the fault in your logic.
| InSteady wrote:
| >The same logic applies to shutting down oil and gas
| production: if we are not certain, then why risk the
| downsides?
|
| You are conflating the cost of not extracting a fraction
| of a fraction of current production capacity with the
| risk ending human existence through changing systems we
| do not have anything close to a full understanding of nor
| precise control over.
|
| Degrees of risk matter, in fact they are the whole point
| of GPs logic.
| pretendgeneer wrote:
| Climate change can be an existential threat to humanity and
| Geo-Engineering can make it worse at the same time.
| legitster wrote:
| How can something be worse than an existential threat?
|
| If you knew you were going to die next week, what's to
| stop you from picking up smoking right now?
|
| The truth is we don't need geoengineering because the
| truth is that it's not an existential threat for
| humanity, it's just the future is going to suck really
| hard for a lot of people if we don't get off our our
| collective asses.
|
| Going around moaning "we're all doomed and there's no use
| trying" is exactly the opposite of what we need right
| now.
| barbazoo wrote:
| https://messaging-custom-
| newsletters.nytimes.com/dynamic/ren...
|
| The rich love using future carbon capture to justify present
| day inaction.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Trying to capture carbon out of the air makes zero sense
| besides as anti climate change propaganda. Why wouldn't you
| capture the carbon at the source of the emission where it is
| much more concentrated? I'll tell you why, because then the
| cost is born by the emitter but they'd rather shift that cost
| onto society as a whole.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I have no idea what Greenpeace's position on carbon capture is,
| but it's definitely isn't anti-growth to oppose carbon capture.
|
| And when I say "carbon capture" I of course mean "pinning our
| hopes on carbon capture". If _actual, working, viable_ carbon
| capture existed then nobody would be against doing it, but that
| 's a pipe dream. It's always going to be more economic to not
| burn stuff than to burn it and then unburn it.
|
| Kind of like carbon credits. If they were real they'd be a
| pretty decent idea, but they're basically full scam.
| IlliOnato wrote:
| Well, one more condition is needed: scalable. An actual,
| working, viable carbon capture exists: growing trees and then
| cutting down and carbonizing them. Unfortunately, this does
| not scale to offset enough of CO2 in time.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Isn't Greenpeace's ideology
|
| The only thing that's ideological is advocating for a
| technology that uses virtually as much energy to put carbon
| back into the ground than the carbon yielded in the first
| place, when the alternative is to simply not take it out of the
| ground to begin with.
|
| Carbon capture is like trying to cool your room by leaving the
| fridge door open or running on the treadmill while eating fast
| food. Trying to delegitimize efforts just by labelling them
| 'degrowth' as if that is an actual argument, needs to stop.
| It's the pro-growth cult that causes us to constantly have to
| invent solutions for problems that we could avoid in the first
| place.
| onyxringer wrote:
| Putin approves. Emissions will stay the same, but you'll by the
| oil from Russia.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Correct. Demand is all that matters. This BS is just supply
| side economics for liberals.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| Decreasing the supply increases the price, so demand will
| decrease. Although it's hard to apply classical economics to
| the oil market when it's so far from a free market (OPEC
| etc.)
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I would strongly support focusing on getting rid of wood / coal
| burning first instead of going for much more efficient gas.
|
| An import tax on coal burning countries (especially China) would
| push the incentives in the right direction instead of outsourcing
| the climate externalities to them.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Norway has the most heat pumps per capita and coal is 3% of
| their energy supply, so what prompted this comment?
| ImJamal wrote:
| What does that have to do with outsourcing to China and
| others?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "China is the world's leader in electricity production from
| renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of
| the second-ranking country, the United States. China's
| renewable energy sector is growing faster than its fossil fuels
| and nuclear power capacity"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
|
| There are many things you can say about china, but they do take
| climate change serious (maybe because they have already
| problems with desertification).
| jahnu wrote:
| Indeed!
|
| " The International Energy Agency estimates that China more
| than doubled its solar generation capacity and added two-
| thirds to its wind generation capacity in 2023."
|
| https://archive.is/b0qif
| hcurtiss wrote:
| How can you say that when they are simultaneously radically
| increasing coal power generation, as highlighted in the
| article? It appears to me they have an "all of the above"
| strategy driven by their desire for prosperity.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| You're in a thread about climate change. How is burning wood
| contributing to climate change? It's a renewable energy source
| on the scale of ~20 years, in contrast to digging up million
| year old fossil fuels. Many people around the world use local
| fallen trees on their property as their energy source, rather
| than decompose into the same carbon cycle. Would you rather
| them import fossil fuel natural gas right now? Areas have to do
| controlled burns of wood anyway to manage forest fires. You
| only want to prevent the cases where masses of forest is razed
| with no plan to regrow.
|
| I feel like this is a case where urbanites with no idea how
| rural life works attempt to legislate their naivety onto others
| for the worse, like the rural firefighter responsibly managing
| their property and the forests of their state.
| bllguo wrote:
| there are millions and millions of people still living in rural
| villages. how dare they want electricity? they should be
| sacrificing their already meager quality of life to fix
| problems that Westerners are disproportionately responsible
| for, and subsidize profligate Western consumption.
| burkaman wrote:
| The tax you're describing sounds like it would be illegal under
| international law and tied up in courts for years if not
| decades. I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea in
| principle, but I don't understand why you would have to do that
| first before taking much more achievable action. There are a
| lot of people working on this problem, we can focus on quite a
| bit at the same time.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Cool cool will the youth also return the money in their oil
| pension funds?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Step one of securing a "pension" is making sure that the world
| is livable half a century from now. On that account their
| priorities are correct.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Their pension needs to be liquidated to pay for reparations
| and the externalities that oil production caused.
|
| At least this is the Greenpeace standard for businesses.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Okay then. Then that's what their next plan of action is. I
| thought you were going for some kind of burn.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| "We should improve society somewhat - Yet you participate in
| society. Curious!" revisited
| thendrill wrote:
| The pension fund money is not real and will never be seen by
| the population, it is all controlled by private hedge funds.
|
| Retirement age in Norway is 70... And there are some rumors
| about going to 72. Also there is talks of increasing taxes on
| the pensionsts... So what is the point of having a pensions
| fund if you are never going to retire...
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| There is no retirement age in Norway. You may start drawing
| your pension at the age of 62 (unless you haven't contributed
| enough) but you are not required or even expected to retire.
| The 70 year limit is the one beyond which your employer can
| force you to leave without cause.
| burkaman wrote:
| Title is a little misleading (for me at least), this is not one
| of the many cases where a group of young people sued their
| government for a broad violation of their rights. This is a more
| narrow case where the plaintiffs said the government is supposed
| to consider emissions impact when approving oil and gas projects,
| and did not. There aren't really any youth directly involved.
|
| The court didn't say Norway can't drill anymore, just that when
| you're doing an environmental impact assessment of a new oil
| field (which is required in Norway) you obviously have to assess
| the impact of burning the oil. I don't think this is very
| controversial.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Natur og Ungdom is a youth group so I don't know why you say
| youth aren't involved.
| burkaman wrote:
| Yes sorry you're right, I don't know what I was looking at.
| Members of that group are 13-25.
| bertil wrote:
| > new oil field
|
| I was surprised because I assumed Norway wouldn't open new oil
| fields. I'd say it's "interesting," but what I actually mean
| isn't publishable.
| belval wrote:
| Hot take, but I feel like Norway gets greenwashed a lot as
| better than everywhere else, when they are basically a
| northern Saudi Arabia in terms of exports with over 70% of
| their exports being oil and gas.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Norway is a beautiful modern liberal democracy, Saudi
| Arabia is a theocratic desert dictatorship hellhole.
| seb1204 wrote:
| Having been to both countries I fully agree. However the
| GP had a point in that the public image of Norway is
| hydro power and 90% EVs nowadays. The fact that they are
| a major oil and gas exporter is not as widespread.
| tordrt wrote:
| Why wouldnt Norway open new oil fields?
| petre wrote:
| I usually discover after years that these climate action
| movements were actually sponsored by Russia. It has already
| happened with the fracking. But then it's too late because
| they've already produced effects.
| burkaman wrote:
| Can you link to some times this has happened in the past? I
| searched and found some opinion pieces and quotes, but no
| evidence yet.
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