
Scientists’ warnings about climate change have intensified - edgefield0
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/a-scary-year-for-climate-change/
======
collyw
> “Again and again, the same message,” she tweeted recently. “Listen to the
> scientists, listen to the scientists. Listen to the scientists!”

And the mainstream media keeps reporting this while completely ignoring the
scientists.

~~~
macspoofing
(Climate) Scientists aren't actually that helpful in proposing solutions, just
predicting how screwed we are if we do nothing.

Moving from fossil fuels is actually quite hard. There is nothing to replace
oil as fuel for global trade (i.e. fuel for airliners, cargo ships, long-haul
trucking). There are tens of thousands of petroleum-based products without an
obvious replacement. The environmental movement is still spreading FUD on
nuclear (the only non-carbon emitting power source along with hydro and
geothermal), preferring to push solar and wind even though those need natural
gas backup to be viable.

At this point it's probably more practical to start planning for mitigations
to climate change effects.

~~~
Certhas
This is utter nonsense. There are things that are hard to replace, but all of
what you talk about is being studied by scientists extensively. Obviously not
climate scientists, becasue, duh, they are experts on cimate, not on long haul
shipping.

But renewables are scientifically a solved problem (all the predictions on the
long term technological development of renewables also turned out to be far
far to conservative). For the last 10% or so you need synthetic gas for long
term storage of energy, but actually with the electrification of the heating
sector, it turns out that nuclear would need synthetic gas for long term
storage, too, for economic reasons.

Further, it is is clear that a lot of R&D is still required, but again,
environmental economists have discussed in detail that the best way to
incentivize the R&D spending required would have been a solid carbon tax.

The problem is not the lack of solutions, the problem is the lack of political
will to implement them. It's disruptive, powerful lobbies have been funding
climate denialism for decades, and people are unwilling to suffer even a
minimal drop in living standards in order to stop climate change.

The technical hurdles are all doable, but whether we as a species can
collectively act on the knowledge that we collectively have is an open
question. It's the hardest question, and it's infused with ideological battles
on all sides. The US can't even operate an efficient public health system. It
accepts enormous inefficiencies and human suffering for ideological reasons.
And that's for its own citizens. Climate change will affect the poorest
countries most.

~~~
macspoofing
>But renewables are scientifically a solved problem

I don't think so. Whenever there is huge investment in solar and wind, you see
a comparable investment in natural gas to bridge the intermittency issues
(e.g. Germany). That isn't a solved problem. That solar and wind require huge
amounts of rare earth minerals, have huge land-use requirements, and are
largely unrecyclable, is not a solved problem.

>For the last 10%

You sure that shouldn't be the 'last 50%'?

>so you need synthetic gas for long term storage of ener

These discussions always seem to go this way. When presented with major
challenges to large scale deployments of solar and wind, an unproven,
unavailable or unworkable workaround is propsed. No, synthetic gas is not a
solution, just like pumped/gravity or Li-ion storage isn't either.

>The technical hurdles are all doable

To be clear, this is an expression of hope for the future (after more R&D),
and not reality today, correct? Today, we don't have a way to fully move off
of fossil fuels.

>It's disruptive, powerful lobbies have been funding climate denialism

There are powerful lobbies all over the place. For example, did you know that
natural gas companies are one of the biggest lobby groups for solar and wind
deployments? Why is that?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
That's a good summary of all the arguments made by the people who denied it
was happening while talking to any audience that would buy that line when
they're talking to slightly more sophisticated rubes.

But it's not based in facts, it's just a collection of false talking points.

No one who brings up rare earth in these discussions cares about that issue.
Usually they don't even understand or care why they're called rare earths.

But people are still denying it's even happening, others are arguing it's a
good thing so we should expect people to trot out well rehearsed lies on the
proposed solutions too.

I don't understand why anyone would want to do that, but again it's plainly
clear that's what's happening and pretending it's not isn't going to help
anything.

The benefit of the doubt has been sorely abused by the "skeptics" in this
matter, and now they want to be "skeptical" of the solutions to the problem
they claimed didn't exist.

Well mark me down as "skeptical" of these so-called skeptics.

In particular this line about the evil gas lobby being behind the push for
solar and wind is the most cynical lie I've heard in a long time.

~~~
macspoofing
>But it's not based in facts, it's just a collection of false talking points

That's not true and unfair. Believe it or not, I want to be proven wrong. I
want somebody to walk me through what a end-goal for our ideal energy mix is,
preferably without casually throwing it that we just need to create a new
exotic battery technology. The most hopeful proposals always put in something
in the fine-print like burning some carbon-emitting fuel, like 'biofuels'
(i.e. burning garbage or corn) to work around intermittency issues of solar
and wind. That's how I got disillusioned with solar(and wind) being the answer
to climate change. Then there's Germany (and California to a lesser extent),
huge economic regions that are a great test bed for large-scale deployments.
Germany is signing multi-decade deals to build NEW pipelines to ship natural
gas and isn't expected to be carbon free until 2060s (i.e. never). Both
Germany and California are importing fossil fuel-based electricity from
neighbours to plug holes in their grids. Meanwhile, France is basically
carbon-free for energy generetion, without much solar and wind.

Also, you haven't actually said which part is wrong. Just that it's wrong. Can
you make an effort?

>No one who brings up rare earth in these discussions cares about that issue.

I think there's a level of hopeful and overly positive thinking around what
solar panels can be to the point where it is cult-like. Why can't you be
skeptical of solar energy? I'm not denying climate change, or the need to
minimize carbon emissions. I'm skeptical of solar and wind as a modality for
that change.

There are major challenges with scaling solar deployments past a certain point
due to the fact that solar energy is highly diffuse, intermittent and variable
(across seasons and years).

I agree, the material requirements are a secondary consideration, but let's be
clear, if you're going to scale solar to being something like 50% of global
energy mix, those are important considerations.

>But people are still denying it's even happening

There are people like that, but they aren't the problem because we don't have
a real solution anyway. The people that are spreading FUD on nuclear are the
real problem. If Western world doubled-down on nuclear power to the same level
as France in the 60s and 70s think of the trillions of tons of CO2 that would
not have been emitted. So is the anti-nuke movement or conservative climate
change denials that is worse for climate change?

~~~
Certhas
> That's not true and unfair.

I believe you are genuine, but also the information you present is miles from
the reality in Germany and Europe, and the state of research in the field in
general.

> Believe it or not, I want to be proven wrong. I want somebody to walk me
> through what a end-goal for our ideal energy mix is, preferably without
> casually throwing it that we just need to create a new exotic battery
> technology.

Until 80% the carbon optimal mix is Gas + Renewables. For the last 20% you
need to start producing the Gas from excess energy during times when
renewables outstrip demand.

Also, gas is incredibly much better for carbon footprint than coal, so in the
short term replacing coal with gas makes a lot of sense.

And again, there are no unproven technologies in this scenario. Everything
exists and exists today. It just makes no sense to start generating gas from
renewables until you have many periods where renewables outstrip demand.

Finally, again, for economic reasons it starts making sense to do the same
(turn excess production into gas) for nuclear as well [2]. It also is obvious
that Germany fucked up with getting out of nuclear when they did.

The intermittency issues you claim also don't really exist as such in todays
grid. What's your source for that? In Germany the amount of balancing energy
used to combat intermittency has been _declining_ for years [1]. They have
congestion issues, but that is again a political rather than a technical issue
(if you can't get people to accept power lines in their backyards, good luck
with building nuclear power plants).

European grid stability has generally been improving with the build out of
renewables (and blackouts are ten times more common in the US than in
Germany). This is often said to be related to the improved coordination in the
European system.

A number of authors have mapped out different aspects of the transition
towards 100% systems [3]. But again, we already have 100% systems on islands
today. So your claim that no one knows how to build them is manifestly wrong.
There are plenty of problems with transitioning or scaling, but there is no
fundamental mystery about any of this.

For the 100% scenario the work of Greiner for example explicitly is built
around tackling the question of transmission vs storage, taking all sorts of
variability into account [4]. You can always quibble with the assumptions,
with the level of modeling, etc. But none of this is entirely new. We have had
reports maping out the 100% scenarios for years, with a number of different
options. (Last relatively excentric one I saw advocated building electrolysis
platforms powerd by windfarms offshore and directly transporting gas into the
gas system, I would class that as a technological challenge, even if there
isn't anything fundamentally unproven about the technology).

And again, look at what happened with solar. Our knowledge of running and
building these systems will increase dramatically as we build them. There is
no indication to me that we are not capable of doing so _if there was
sufficient political will_. And that last part is what's truly hard.

Of course then we still have to face the hard problems: Industry and
agriculture....

[1] [https://www.next-kraftwerke.de/wp-
content/uploads/ausschreib...](https://www.next-kraftwerke.de/wp-
content/uploads/ausschreibungen-regelenergie-q2-2019.png)

[2] [https://nworbmot.org/blog/burden-of-
proof.html](https://nworbmot.org/blog/burden-of-proof.html)

[3]
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032118307913)

[4]
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05290.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.05290.pdf)

~~~
macspoofing
Just a note: I appreciate that you took the effort to post the links you did.

------
itronitron
Are there any compelling papers or presentations on the impact and science of
climate change? Virtually all reporting presents/qualifies it as 'what
scientists say'. Since the convention in journalism is to create doubt for the
reader by phrasing something as 'person _says_ ' I find these articles easy to
ignore.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
You could do worse than read an IPCC report -
[https://www.ipcc.ch/](https://www.ipcc.ch/) \- which aims to distil the
agreed impacts. In aiming to present only that which is most certain they err
on the side of benign conservatism, which has attracted criticism.

A more readable view on possible impacts, which is the result of one
journalist's attempt to understand the science, is David Wallace Wells' The
Uninhabitable Earth. Whilst well cited throughout he may have included studies
and impacts that are less concrete.

For a balanced presentation BBC's Climate Change - The Facts with David
Attenborough gives all you should need in an hour.

~~~
mrpopo
Reminder that every single sentence in the IPCC report must be approved
unanimously by a panel of government-appointed authors from various countries,
including e.g. Saudi Arabia. Therefore IPCC reports are to be considered as
quite conservative (the seriousness of the situation is often leveled down).

Nonetheless, that's what makes them an irrefutable source. Anyone discrediting
the IPCC reports findings can and should be dismissed immediately from the
discussion.

~~~
qnsi
[]

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Being an intergovernmental body, they also include representatives from the
oil states and administrations who are "wilfully unconvinced" by any science
that might impact profit or industrial dominance. Yet IPCC reports still
require unanimity.

Here's a report of Saudi leading a push to tone down reports to protect their
oil interests, which I see as substantively different to _making a mistake:_

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-
insight/2014/m...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-
insight/2014/may/15/ipcc-un-climate-reports-diluted-protect-fossil-fuel-
interests)

------
sysbin
Something worth noting that likely gets ignored regarding the topic of climate
change. Some of the population really doesn’t care if the world becomes
inhabitable for humans after they die. As an optimist I’ve observed this
outlook and I think it’s because quality of life has actually diminished from
the visibility of social media and rising cost of homes. I could be wrong on
the cause but the original problem exists and I wonder if society needs to
improve for the mid to lower classes before people have the desire to help in
the protests.

------
RickJWagner
Maybe I'm just being cynical, but I think a lot of these things go in 4 year
cycles, with the American elections.

Not to dismiss climate change-- it's a real issue-- but the publicity around
it is certainly tied to politics.

~~~
beatgammit
Unfortunately, it seems to last 1-2 years, so I really only trust the news
about 50-75% of the time, less if there's ongoing political drama. The less I
hear from politicians in the news, the more I trust the news, which is sad...

------
peze
Propaganda of global proportions

~~~
Certhas
Yeah, because the damn environmentalists have all the power to impose their
views on the unsuspecting, well meaning, oil giants and global corporations.
If only those oil giants and their allies had pushed back early enough, maybe
the truth could have won out!

Well, reality check, in the 90s the GOP and even the oil giants accepted the
reality of and scientific consensus on global warming, but with sufficient
funding from interested parties, they were able to stave of decisive action
for decades, netting them many many billions.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTmS0exb7r8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTmS0exb7r8)

[https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-
examin...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/kochland-examines-how-
the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought)

------
vfc1
With the human population growing exponentially, its a certainty that we will
breeze by the 1.5 degrees limit very soon.

People don't want to give up their cheeseburgers, all excuses are good, and
the level of misinformation that goes around the topic of climate change is
through the roof.

I'm glad Greta is contributing to informing the general public of the
consequences of their choices but people don't want to hear it will take a
lifetime to change the behavior of even a small amount of people.

~~~
drmpeg
Only when Miami is completely underwater and uninhabitable will there be a
change of behavior.

~~~
vfc1
I bet that still then you will only hear: "it's just a couple of miles near
the coast, it's not the end of the world. It's not that bad."

~~~
thundergolfer
I get your point about people being stubbornly ignorant, but I learned this
today so I thought I’d throw it out there.

If ocean rising has gotten so bad that Miami is underwater the accompanying
acidification of those oceans will have reaped havoc on marine fishing putting
500 million people’s food security at risk.

Half a billion people in underdeveloped countries without to a vital part of
their diet. Half a billion, and that’s just people that rely on fish. Inland
people add to the numbers if their farming suffers.

------
lsd5you
We will have overpopulation and environmental crises in the future and they
will get explained away mindlessly as being completely caused by climate
change, when that may be only a partial or even not significant factor in the
events.

Not enough fresh water - climate change! Not the fact that the population
increased by a factor of 4, and the local acquifers have been drained.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
So what is your solution to overpopulation?

~~~
lsd5you
I dunno, either we lurch from crisis to crisis and possibly end up with an
ungovernable world, or look at implementing something like a one child policy
in countries with very high population growth (or pressuring them to do so by
preventing them from exporting population).

Certainly move the discourse beyond ... so well population is going up,
nothing can be done about it.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Fertility has already fallen below replacement levels in most of the world.
The only exception is Africa however carbon emissions from that part of the
world are so small it barely makes a difference. Even if you wanted to focus
in on Africa you will find the countries with the highest emissions like South
Africa have a fertility rate barely above replacement level.

The reality is nearly all the increases in population are built in already,
it's caused by people surviving into old age. The population is going up and
nothing can be done about it.

This is why arguments about population are pointless with regards to climate
change, we resolved that years ago through education and better health
provision.

