
Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist - dredmorbius
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/11/Climate-Change-Realist-Face-Facts/
======
jandrewrogers
The crux of the matter is that we need to drive thermodynamics backward at
planetary scale. This is a fancy way of saying that we need to increase
electricity generation by an integer factor beyond current global demand
without producing net CO2. The list of existing energy sources capable of
scaling like this that don't rely on burning carbon is extremely short:
nuclear fission.

I don't see any possibility of the required power generation capability being
built. Even if the economic resources were made available, which is at least
plausible in the abstract, the irrational politics around nuclear power in the
developed world would guarantee that there would be little actual progress.

Constructively addressing climate change means massively increasing power
generation capacity as a primary input. Given the ample evidence that this is
not politically achievable, I think it is fair to call pessimism "realism".

~~~
greglindahl
> The list of existing energy sources capable of scaling like this

... solar and wind are scaling much better than every prediction, for many
years now, yet somehow that's not good enough for the people who claim to be
realists. Odd.

~~~
Scaevolus
You still need baseload power plants, and the economics of battery-based
storage plants aren't there yet.

Hydropower is a nice solution, but highly geography-dependent. China is
attacking this problem by investing heavily in ultra-long-range HVDC power
transmission from dams in the west to cities on the east.

~~~
graeme
For using power to suck carbon out of the air, would you need baseload power,
or could you have a machine that ran whenever cheap solar electricity was
available.

Removing CO2 is important, and urgent in the medium term, but it isn't urgent
in the "must happen this second" sense. Intermitten removal would be fine if
the removal tech could be power intermittently.

~~~
jandrewrogers
Most steps of an industrial process will work with intermittent power, albeit
with substantial loss of process efficiency that will therefore require
building more infrastructure for the same effect than if you were using
baseload power. Some steps of an industrial process may effectively _require_
non-stop baseload power because restarting it is prohibitively slow and
costly.

It may be possible to do atmospheric CO2 removal with intermittent power, I
haven't attempted any kind of chemical engineering deep dive into what that
process entails, but that is likely to incur a significant loss of
productivity. Given that it is already an extremely expensive proposition, we
will probably need to maximize process efficiency, which means reliable
continuous power.

------
mdorazio
Lots of assumptions baked in here. Chief among them is that renewables
deployment will continue to be slower than new energy demand. If you look at
the charts, this is pretty unlikely since the renewables trend is a consistent
exponential increase year over year while the demand curve is very lumpy and
mostly linear when averaged.

Next is the assumption that renewables have to be deployed at grid scale, with
the materials and transmission costs associated with that. This is also not
true - solar + battery is a perfect use case for distributed deployment by
homeowners, businesses, parking lots, etc. in any sunny location, and trends
in non-grid installed solar reflect this where non-utility accounts for over a
third of new installs per year.

Next is the questionable bundling of global statistics rather than breaking
out by country. If you break it out by country, the trends are _a lot_
different. For example, most of the west already reached effective peak energy
demand (or close to it), and renewables deployments are offsetting dirtier
production methods at a decent pace, mostly due to economics. The "bad" trends
the author points are are specific to developing locations.

There's more, but this is already a long comment.

Edit: Another one... solar panels don't last "a few years more" [than
turbines], they last a decade or more longer. Current estimate is 25-30 years
with proper maintenance before performance is significantly degraded, and even
at that point they still work just fine. It's not like you don't have to
replace or overhaul major power plant components every few decades for other
energy sources...

~~~
xyzzyz
_This is also not true - solar + battery is a perfect use case for distributed
deployment_

This is simply not feasible. Do the math. To store 3 days worth of current US
energy use, you need to build $50 trillion worth of batteries. If you assume
that the battery installation lifetime is 20 years, and amortize it over that
period, you’re looking at over 10% of US GDP spent just on building and
installing the batteries. Seriously, do the math.

~~~
jhayward
> _To store 3 days worth of current US energy use,_

There is absolutely no need, of any kind, to store 3 days of US energy use.
It's a complete strawman.

~~~
xyzzyz
So where do we get energy from in case we get a windless week in winter, if
not fossil fuels or nuclear?

~~~
eranimo
The wind is always blowing somewhere.

~~~
heavyset_go
What are the transmission power losses over large stretches of land?

~~~
xyzzyz
2/3rds of the electricity produced in the US is lost in transmission:
[https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained//us-energy-
facts/](https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained//us-energy-facts/)

EDIT: this is actually wrong, I misinterpreted the diagram, see the comment
below.

~~~
ggm
Go look at
[https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/electr...](https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/flow/electricity.pdf)

I believe you mis-quoted the figures. You rolled up total conversion costs and
bloated them into transmission losses.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
We are going to need technology that will pull CO2 from the atmosphere. Yes,
doing that is very energy intensive, but we have tech like nuclear power that
could power such a process.

People want to have their lifestyle and telling people in developing countries
that they can never have the Western lifestyle and telling people in developed
countries that they have to reduce their lifestyle are simply untenable
politically.

We should be focusing on climate change mitigation.

~~~
seanwilson
> We are going to need technology that will pull CO2 from the atmosphere. Yes,
> doing that is very energy intensive

Wouldn't you need even more energy to pull it in that it took to release it?
So to undo 10 years worth of global emissions, you'd need more energy than was
generated worldwide over those 10 years? Sounds impossible.

~~~
jlmorton
No, technology like Direct Air Capture requires about 250kWh as a theoretical
minimum to capture 1 ton of CO2. Current methods require about 600kWh.
Meanwhile, one ton of coal generates about 2,500kWh of electricity.

~~~
jandrewrogers
This is not correct. Per the DAC literature I've seen, the fully burdened
energy cost to capture a ton of CO2 is around 12 MWh. The numbers you provided
appear to violate the laws of thermodynamics on their face, whereas the 12 MWh
number does not.

The 250kWh number likely only accounts for the operational energy
requirements, not the fully burdened energy requirements of creating the
consumable inputs.

------
Tiktaalik
There's an interesting point here on the resource intensiveness of creating
'renewable' energy itself (ie. windmill costs).

I share the authors concern here that doing the exact same thing we're doing
now but _handwave_ electric is not going to get us to where we're going to
need to be. We need to be smarter about how we use energy and our resources
and use less.

For example shifting our entire automobile based transportation infrastructure
to the exact same thing but electric is not nearly as impactful on lowering
CO2 emissions taking those cars off the road via better public transit and
land use that enables active transportation (ie. walking/cycling).

~~~
soperj
Even if people used electric bikes instead of electric cars, it's way more
impactful on lowering CO2, and still creates a better land use proposition
(ie: less need for parking, less need for roads, less traffic jams, things can
be closer together which leads to less need to go as far for people who aren't
using electric bikes)

------
djohnston
This makes me think we should be investing a lot more into nuclear energy.

~~~
uoaei
No ROI for 10 years at least. Other technologies are getting cheaper, better,
faster.

~~~
gxon
Other technologies may be better economically, but they won't be enough. Every
carbon neutral energy option needs to be on the table if we want to survive.

And who knows. If we actually had an effective carbon tax that internalizes
the externalities of carbon pollution, nuclear fission might suddenly look
very cheap.

------
mattsfrey
It's the hard truth. As it is, there's just no way to solve the problem
without some sort of global cataclysm. I think people in power have the
logistics to know this, which is why I'm so skeptical about the political
movement today in western nations that largely revolves around consolidating
power over world energy even further into the hands of a small group of elites
that more or less exist beyond the reach of any one nations political process.

------
ac29
I think the progress in de-carbonizing electricity is promising - California
was already at less than 50% fossil fueled electricity production in 2018 [0]:

Carbon-emitting generation:

35% Natural Gas

3% Coal

11% "Unspecified" (lets be pessimistic and assume all of that is fossil fuel)

Non-carbon emitting (or carbon neutral):

11% Large Hydro

9% Nuclear

31% "Renewables" (solar, wind, small hydro, etc)

Yes, transportation is still almost entirely fossil fuel based. Many homes and
businesses use natural gas for heat. Industry uses fossil fuels as well in
significant amounts. None of these can be ignored.

But de-carbonizing electricity is a crucial first step.

[0]
[https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_sys...](https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/almanac/electricity_data/total_system_power.html)

------
cyrksoft
"11\. A global population strategy to enable a smooth descent to the two to
three billion that could live comfortably indefinitely within the biophysical
means of nature."

Part 2: [https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/12/Climate-Crisis-
Realis...](https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/12/Climate-Crisis-Realist-
Memo/)

This is highly disturbing. With the 11,000 scientist warning the other day
they proposed something similar. I find it very worrying. Who will decide who
lives? Or who has kids and a family? This will not end well...

~~~
toxik
Probably just family planning. Nobody needs to die to save the earth, well,
not execution at least

~~~
cyrksoft
Family planning how? Who will decide who can have children and who can't?
Governments? A global one child policy? That's insane

~~~
jejei93ndmd
Is it insane to alter social norms to save the species as a whole or let
people drive it off the cliff by treating a uterus like a clown car?

We’re so far away from having to debate this as realistic thing politically
right now, the discourse is an exercise in fear mongering.

Plenty to be freaked out about before next month is passed.

~~~
cyrksoft
Having kids is not a social norm (at least not in every case). Who are you or
any politician to decide how many kids can a couple have? Even if it only is
fear mongering, I bet you this will be a political discussion in some years.

~~~
flukus
> Who are you or any politician to decide how many kids can a couple have?

I'm someone who subsidizes families having children, my taxes are paying for
their healthcare, their schools, their childcare, etc. And while I'm happy to
do that because maintaining society is important I'm not happy to do it for
someone pumping out 15 kids.

> I bet you this will be a political discussion in some years.

I bet you it won't, reproduction rates have plummeted in developed nations.

~~~
cyrksoft
How many 15 kids family are there out there? Besides, they also pay their tax
share...

------
tiborsaas
He forgot one alternative besides fission: fusion! And I'm not talking about
Iter, that's probably still decades away, but much smaller sized portable
fusion generators.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Compact_Fusion...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_Compact_Fusion_Reactor)

The smaller scale might simplify things.

Borrowing from the analogy in the article, fusion is a magnetic field
management problem.

~~~
dredmorbius
Bets based on advanced technology not presently in _at least_ the practical
demonstration phase are ... highly unlikely.

Fortunately in the case of solar, we're already in the active commercial use
phase, and there is a long-term declining cost trend. Whether that's
sufficient remains to be seen, but it's promising.

Nuclear has tended to become _more_ expensive over time, as consequences of
utilisation become more apparent.

~~~
tiborsaas
I agree that it's probably on the verge of Sci-fi, but one can dream :)

I'm not sure we should care about costs now. It sounds really lame on the long
run to say to past generations that "we could have changed things, but it
wasn't cost effective, anyways good luck rebooting the Golf stream and stuff"

~~~
dredmorbius
My argument is that the time for dreaming is past.

We need to _do_. Or plan / prepare for the alternatives.

Sustaining a modest research program on potential long bets is probably
defensible. But don't hinge all hopes on this.

------
lcall
The events around climate change have been predicted in the scriptures for a
long time (ice melting, storms, quakes, waves of the sea heaving themselves
beyond their bounds, fires/smoke, and other significant catastrophic events--
not just the usual levels of them). We need not be surprised, but we really
can be OK.

I do appreciate the science and am glad for progress in our efforts. It seems
to me we are not competent enough to solve such things when we have largely
rejected the instructions given by the earth's creator (like, honesty, the
Golden Rule, etc, etc): we have a hard time trusting each other even when we
say we agree. I'm glad we can share our own thoughts. We need His help both to
address important issues globally, and in our personal lives.

(More details on these thoughts at
[http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html](http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html)
, a simple site w/o javascript).

------
duahncjak
I think solutions to climate change that require global coordination are
doomed to failure. When things start getting rough it’s going to be some
entity independently pursuing a geoengineering solution, with whatever risk
that entails. It’s not the best approach, but it’s something that someone can
impose on the whole world without conquering them and shutting down their coal
plans.

~~~
0xffff2
I'm afraid you're right, but I'm also afraid that no one has the necessary
combination of money, technological skill and military might to undertake that
kind of geoengineering unilaterally.

~~~
duahncjak
This paper estimates the cost at ~$2.25B/year, and notes that more than 50
countries have military budgets exceeding $3B:
[https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d#...](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aae98d#erlaae98ds5)

They point out the plan assumes you can launch planes from a few different
points around the globe. You don’t need global agreement, but at least access
to some foreign airports.

~~~
chillacy
The scary part is how to resolve disputes over geoengineering. What if China
decides to make the Gobi desert farmland but downwind it makes California the
new Sahara desert?

------
julienb_sea
The effects of climate change will play play out across many localized areas.
Some will be dramatically more impacted than others. The impacts will require
remediation solutions, some difficult and expensive. Millions will be
displaced and affected, and complex engineering challenges will arise.

This will not end humanity. The apocalypse is not coming. Humans will adapt
because we have no choice. Engineering a solution to a global climate problem
is borderline impossible. Engineering a solution to imminent local direct
impacts of climate change is a more coherent, approachable problem.

I agree with the author's assessment - humans require fossil fuels for
society's function. Thus, instead of moping around about how we are all
fucked, it seems a more productive exercise to sort out how to cohabitate a
world where we are going to continue consuming, for the medium term, our near
infinite supply of natural gas for energy.

~~~
graeme
This worldview implies abandoning all coastal cities and several entire
countries, correct? Sea level rise alone requires that, to say nothing of
other effects.

And then there's higher wet bulb temperatures in heat waves. With enough
warming, that should render a large chunk of the planet effectively
uninhabitable without AC.

Do you accept these consequences when you make such claims?

~~~
julienb_sea
Yes, my expectation is that we will build habitats which withstand sea level
rise and temperature fluctuations, and abandon habitats which cannot be
retrofitted to withstand present conditions.

~~~
9HZZRfNlpR
Which is the way humanity has always responded to crisis. They move and adapt.

~~~
dredmorbius
Or fail to do so.

------
euske
The real problem to me is the Climate TMI. There are just too many
arguments/opinions/facts etc., there's no way to tell which one I should
believe based on my gut feelings (which is the only thing I can rely on at the
end of the day). This OP looks sensible, but I'm sure I'll be persuaded by any
other article that has an opposite argument. I'm practically drown in the
sciences. I hope it's not just me.

------
saagarjha
> The modern world is deeply addicted to fossil fuels and green energy is no
> substitute. Am I wrong?

Maybe not, but what would you suggest we do otherwise?

~~~
casefields
His only specific measure is this:

“A global population strategy to enable a smooth descent to the two to three
billion that could live comfortably indefinitely within the biophysical means
of nature.“

Same ‘ole Club of Rome, population control policies.

~~~
cyrksoft
Highly disturbing.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
Well, all this is besides the point. Which is, our economic activity is
destroying the environment (and not just through climate change) but we 're
not stopping because it would cost a lot of money.

So basically we're putting money over the survival of the species and
generally life on earth. Our priorities are back to front, and discussing how
cheap or expensive it is to switch to renewables is pointless. We're just
headed for extinction. And good riddance to us, because we're bloody stupid
monkeys who can't control the processes we set in motion. Becaues we are
reckless and destructive and we do not trust each other enough to work
together to avert our shared catastrophe.

------
UltimateFloofy
point 11 on part 2: a smooth transition of the global population to 2-3B.

Over how long a time-frame does Dr.Rees expect this to happen? Thanos only
killed half the population. Mao only starved ~40M/50M.

He has no imagination for what could be with all the will and imagination of a
generation faced with dire results and instead draws bleak resolutions that
sound like the aftermath of a WW3.

~~~
dredmorbius
The usual mechanisms are the historic threats to mankind: famine, pestilance,
war, disorder.

Depending on the timeline for achieving a 2-3B population, any period of less
than ~100 years is not attainable without a huge increase in mortality. That's
shown in numerous models suggested by the 1970 Limits to Growth project.

In pre-industrial times, and as recently as 1850s Ireland, massive population
declines _in regional areas_ were fairly commonplace. The Irish Potato Famine,
through direct mortality _and_ emigration, reduced the population of Ireland
from 8 million to 4, over a period of 60 years:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#/medi...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_\(Ireland\)#/media/File%3APopulation_of_Ireland_and_Europe_1750_to_2005.svg)

Ireland has _still_ not regained its 1850 population peak.

Note too that Ireland's population had increased tremendously from the 3
millions of 1740. The potato primed the trap the blight triggered.

There were numerous other notable famines in the 19th century, several in
China, then as Ireland under strong British influence. These continued through
the 20th century, including in both Nationalist and Communist regimes. The
Ukranian Holdomor struck at the same time as famines elsewhere in the world,
and was somewhat contemporaneous with the Dust Bowl in the US, a localised
famine, in which there was some starvation, though largely manifested as a
massive internal migration (see especially Steinbeck's _The Grapes of Wrath_
).

The people who realise this is a potential path are largely wholly aware of
just how horrific the prospect is, both in direct misery and the all-but-
certain breakdown of all social, governmental, commercial, and technical
institutions. While there are some who embrace this, they tend to be extreme
outliers.

Most see this as the scenario to avoid at all costs.

------
SubiculumCode
Where was Question 2 in the article? The author seemed to indicate two
questions would be addressed, but then the article just ended.

~~~
mirimir
[https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/12/Climate-Crisis-
Realis...](https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/11/12/Climate-Crisis-Realist-
Memo/)

------
rayiner
> Not on the table are ecological tax reform (beyond investment incentives and
> carbon taxes), structural changes to the economy that would lower consumer
> demand and reduce energy and material throughput, policies for income/wealth
> redistribution, major lifestyle changes or strategies to reduce human
> populations.

The broadside attack on capitalism is going to be the undoing of the climate
advocacy movement. Neoliberalism has become the global consensus, and it’s not
going anywhere. Neoliberals and outright conservatives have been in charge of
the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Australia, the United States,
etc., for decades. Even “socialist” Macron has reinvented himself as a neo-
liberal. People remember the depredations of socialism and the stagnation of
“democratic socialism” and don’t seem eager to repeat them. (Greta Thunberg’s
home country of Sweden cut spending as a percentage of GDP by almost 20 points
since 1990, slashed corporate taxes, deregulated and privatized, etc.).

Telling people we need a command economy to effectively combat climate change
is a non-starter. “Major lifestyle changes” or ghastly thoughts like “reducing
human population” will result in climate advocates being pilloried.

There are basically three possible outcomes:

1) We don’t change, technology doesn’t save us, and climate change turns out
to be not as bad as some people feared. (A recent UNDP report estimated that a
“high warming” scenario would case Bangladesh’s GDP growth rate to decrease
from 6% to 4% by 2100. Bangladesh would be vastly better off taking that hit
than departing from neoliberal economic policies.)

2) We don’t change, but technology reverses climate change.

3) We don’t change, technology doesn’t save us, and contrary to consensus
science, runaway greenhouse effects kill us all.

------
fallingfrog
He’s not wrong. If governments were to deliberately starve their economies of
fossil fuels on the scale we need you’d see the same response as in Chile or
France except much bigger and more violent- the government that does that,
collapses within a fortnight.

------
caramelsuit
Matt Ridley rendered his entire argument specious and kinda stupid years ago:
[https://youtu.be/0BM_p5fWoI0](https://youtu.be/0BM_p5fWoI0)

------
leroy_masochist
This essay, which purports to be telling hard truths about climate change,
only mentions nuclear energy in passing, as part of a laundry-list of options
it deems not good enough.

Some "realist" this guy is.

------
kleton
What happened to iron fertilization of the ocean?

------
KG_5
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA)

~~~
carapace
(Just FYI, I automatically downvote links that have no context or
description.)

"Jancovici : Can we save energy, jobs and growth at the same time?"

08/01/2018

Jean-Marc Jancovici

Jancovici's conference in ENS School of Paris - 08/01/2018

> The depletion of natural resources, with oil to start with, and the need for
> a stable climate, will make it harder and harder to pursue economic growth
> as we know it. It has now become urgent to develop a new branch of economics
> which does not rely on the unrealistic assumption of a perpetual GDP
> increase. In this Colloquium, I will discuss a "physical" approach to
> economics which aims at understanding and managing the scaling back of our
> world economy. Biography : Jean-Marc Jancovici, is a French engineer who
> graduated from École Polytechnique and Télécom, and who specializes in
> energy-climate subjects. He is a consultant, teacher, lecturer, author of
> books and columnist. He is known for his outreach work on climate change and
> the energy crisis. He is co-founder of the organization "Carbone 4" and
> president of the think tank "The Shift Project".

~~~
dredmorbius
Thank you.

------
carapace
So much I want to say here...

I'm part of the choir to whom the author is preaching but I find this weak
tea. (Although he's not preaching, he's RFC'ing his assumptions.)

If we grant that _fusion_ isn't around the corner (and I don't, see "Fusion in
a magnetically-shielded-grid inertial electrostatic confinement device"
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.01788](https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.01788) abstract:
"Theory for a gridded inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion system
is presented that shows a net energy gain is possible if the grid is
magnetically shielded from ion impact. A simplified grid geometry is studied,
consisting of two negatively-biased coaxial current-carrying rings, oriented
such that their opposing magnetic fields produce a spindle cusp. Our analysis
indicates that better than break-even performance is possible even in a
deuterium-deuterium system at bench-top scales. The proposed device has the
unusual property that it can avoid both the cusp losses of traditional
magnetic fusion systems and the grid losses of traditional IEC
configurations." So that's neat.)

If we grant that we must massively reduce our energy consumption that is not
necessarily mean lower Q-of-L. Our systems are _hugely_ wasteful (count the
number of LEDs in your house tonight. A first-world household burns so much
energy so pointlessly. The not-really-off nature of modern electronics is a
small part of it. Bad insulation. Pilot lights. Refrigerators that open like
cabinets rather than drawers. Incandescent "light" bulbs that put out more
heat than light: they're literally _heaters_ that also give off light. I could
go on and on and on...)

Bottom line: if we took physics seriously and gave a shit about efficiency we
could cut our emissions in half overnight without any major technology change
in production. (Although we should still do that too.)

Also, ever since the 70's people have studied e.g. passive solar design for
buildings. We can easily make our cities more efficient and more ecological
with just a little cleverness. (Remember that time when we _accidentally_
built a solar furnace in London: [https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-
news/london-skyscrap...](https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/london-
skyscraper-can-melt-cars-set-buildings-fire-f8C11069092) ) The _power_ is
_there_ we just have to use it wisely. "It's raining soup, grab a bucket!"

And with _applied ecology_ (e.g. "Permaculture", regenerative agriculture,
urban "food forests", etc.) we should be able to recycle wastes and produce
food _in situ_ in urban and suburban areas in densities great enough to
sustain _Arcologies_ (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology)
) integrated ecological city-buildings that provide high quality-of-life in an
ecologically harmonious and sustainable way. (The beginnings of this are
already happening in parts of asia. ( E.g. [https://www.quora.com/How-is-
China-able-to-provide-enough-fo...](https://www.quora.com/How-is-China-able-
to-provide-enough-food-to-feed-its-population-of-over-1-billion-people-Do-
they-import-food-or-are-they-self-sustainable) ))

~~~
dredmorbius
"RFC'ing"?

~~~
carapace
Sorry, "Request for Comments":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments)

~~~
dredmorbius
Right, that was a chief possible match, though a somewhat odd comparison in my
opinion.

------
ronilan
In part two is an 11 steps plan:

 _11\. A global population strategy to enable a smooth descent to the two to
three billion that could live comfortably indefinitely within the biophysical
means of nature._

Another anti-humanist Malthusian loony. It’s probably the effect of
Vancouver’s dump weather. Ignore.

~~~
tpolzer
It has nothing to do with being a "Malthusian loony".

Which of these do you prefer:

\- >10 billion people living on this planet, depleting resources so that
inequality levels will rise while total (real) wealth will decline.

\- A lot less people than now living on this planet in a way that we can
actually permanently get close to the current western standard of living for
~all of them.

~~~
pdonis
_> Which of these do you prefer_

Neither. You, like the author of these articles, left out the third choice:

\- Continue to improve technology so it can continue to supply increasing real
wealth with a smaller ecological footprint.

This has already been happening for pretty much the entire history of
technology. The computers we are using to have this conversation consume
orders of magnitude less power for orders of magnitude more computing
operations than the ones people used to have similar conversations a couple of
decades ago. The cars we drive are much more efficient and emit much less. The
widespread availability of telecommunications and the Internet reduces the
need for people to physically go somewhere in order to get something done.

People can adapt to change if they are given the tools.

~~~
dredmorbius
By what specific mechanisms does, has, and can technology deliverthose
increases?

What are the net gains provided by millionsfold increases in compute capacity
and performance? How much such gains remain?

------
EGreg
NUCLEAR REACTORS will be needed soon to desalinate water. May as well learn to
build them safely! Especially don’t make them giant targets for terrorists and
hackers.

BUT ALSO we need to end factory farming and transition the vast majority of
cars to electric. The main reason they are still locked exclusively into
hydrocarbons is the massive subsidies the US government has given to fossil
fuels. Otherwise we could have had great battery tech 30 years ago after Suez
Crisis and OPEC would jolt markets awake and people would clamor for
alternatives.

~~~
9HZZRfNlpR
What are those subsidizes? If you don't count the negative impact of releasing
carbon, then the subsidies are a myth.

~~~
EGreg
Just the oil ones

[https://www.eenews.net/assets/2017/10/02/document_gw_01.pdf](https://www.eenews.net/assets/2017/10/02/document_gw_01.pdf)

But these days other countries are far worse in fuel subsidies

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/united...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/united-
states-spend-ten-times-more-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-than-education/)

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planetzero
It makes me wonder if the slaughter of so many people by different horrible
governments in history actually helped prevent climate change from happening
sooner.

------
chrisco255
When the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
flip negative, and the deep, multi-decade solar minimum we are about to enter
kicks in (it already has begun), we will see temps lower globally (and
especially in the northern hemisphere). But of course, with this, we will be
dealing with a set of problems much more difficult than warming. Warming is
good for crops and humanity. Cold temperatures, shortened growing seasons, and
the like are much more difficult to deal with.

~~~
climatechange11
Appreciate the unpopular "opinion".

The world oscillates. It has so for a long, long time. We should stop
polluting not with some agenda to think we'll have an effect on global
temperature, but to stop poisoning ourselves.

~~~
usrusr
How do you suppose formerly trapped carbon will oscillate back into the
earth's crust?

