As above. Are there solutions for global climate change/warming that will spare us or future generations the worst effects and what are they?
Do we have realistic technological solutions or can we realistically expect them to be created within the relevant timeframe?
I feel the argument is a waste because the will to the right thing does not exist. We are going to burn pollutants out of factories and SUV ourselves into the future.
Much could be done. I had a thread about grease cars. Not the final solution but if some people dom it it is a step. Then solar energy panels are improving. However the ability to buy them is diminishing.
We can not worry about China.If they get afraid they can change the rules immediately. They don’t have to defeat huge lobbies to get it done.
But we won’t do it.
The short answer is yes: the risk of catastrophic global climate change can be substantially reduced and the risk of more moderately significant change can be decreased also. Some is possible with implementation of extant technologies and some would require the development and implementation of new technologies. Clearly we have the time to develop those new technologies if we make it a priority and start now. Greater delay increases the risk and decreases our capability to reduce the risks effectively. Links to references have been provided in many a past thread elaborating on the actions required and the results realistically expected.
Gonzo pessimistically cuts to the chase: do we have the will?
can we stop or reverse ACC? I very much doubt it. Can we mitigate the effects it will have? I think we can. Of course, that will, as usual, further widen the gap between the haves and the have nots. Here is hoping that we will see the suffering of those who cannot afford to offset the effects and take care of their needs.
A quibble: if GCC goes as reasonably expected or worse, then the have nots will be impacted much more severely than the haves. There are some possible mildly offsetting positives for the US (increased agricultural output in our part of the world, for example) but much more severe effects without mitigating positives for places like Africa and third world coastal communities. We will also have the resources to deal with some of the effects (even though at great costs), whereas the have nots will not have those options. Mitigating the risks of the worst case scenerios helps us all and is in both our selfish interests and the interests of the poorest among us.
I don’t believe that the effects can be altered (i.e. stopped or reversed to any significant degree) without crippling the worlds economy…and I don’t believe anyone is going to serious do that. The current efforts I see going on, especially in Europe are, IMHO, misguided. They aren’t doing nearly enough (many are struggling to simply meet the Kyoto Accords…and this seems to be merely the first step, not the end goal), and they aren’t going to be able to get the major world pollutors onboard for even that much…much less the short term economic suicide it would REALLY take, especially by the US and the developing industrial countries like China and India. It ain’t happening. At best you’ll get some half assed concessions by the US and less than that from China…and none of it will be enough. At worst you’d cripple your economy and STILL have global warming effects, thus hitting you when you are even weaker and less able to respond.
That said, I DO think that the effects can be ‘significantly mitigated’…by pushing forward. I think we are ALREADY on the road to huge reductions in CO2. The price of oil continues to go up…good. Push it harder upward and you will see some new technologies that become viable. The eco-nut cases in the US have started to relax their death grip on the throat of nuclear power in the US…great! Get those hippies out of the fucking way! 
Build a shit load of new, smaller, safer reactors everywhere…just try and match the percentage of nuke power plants in France for gods sake! We ought to be able to do THAT at least, no? New technologies seem poised to take over for fossil fuels…solar, bio-fuels, nuclear.
I’m sure I’m going to get rolley eye’s here, but market forces are pushing us to a new model of personal transport ALREADY…let it. Realize that people are NOT going to give up their cars…at least not in the US. So, find a more carbon neutral alternative. By all means, push alternatives like hydrogen…encourage companies to invest even more money in the search for a viable alternative. But realize that its going to be a slow process…you are never going to get the majority of American’s on board to junk their cars. The capital investment for the average person is too high too get rid of them tomorrow…even if we HAD a viable solution, which we don’t. Telling people to cut back doesn’t seem to work…so switch direction to something that DOES. Instead of rail at them for being selfish and stupid…which only antagonizes people.
And then prepare for what’s to come. Try and nail down a reasonable set of scenerio’s, that realistically run the course from best to worst case. And use that to plan and prepare for whats coming. We CAN prepare for THAT…we CAN mitigate significantly the effects of most of the realistic things I’VE seen that will most likely happen in the next century or so (I’m not talking about the 100 foot sea rise scare stuff obviously).
-XT
Here’s an article that suggests five specific actions.
I think you exaggerate the economic damage - and I also think the effects of global warming will be much worse for the economy.
Agreed, although I think that the anti-nuclear nuts are more a force of their own, and not just “eco-nuts.” Plenty of overlap, but the anti-nuke types would still be around even if the fanatic greens dropped dead.
Agreed, more or less, although I think that people need to be pushed; market forces are slow and undirected. People are not going to give up cars and other luxuries short of outright disaster. And people who don’t have those things won’t stop trying to get them. Swtiching to, say, electric cars using electricity generated by nuclear power might be achievable in the long run; nothing short of massive disaster is going to make everyone go to bicycles.
I believe this is a much over-played card in the hands of socialists and environmentalists.
Does global warming exist? Perhaps.
Does man have an influence? Perhaps.
Does it matter a rat’s ass? No.
Any influence we have on global warming is insignificant. Besides fossil fuels will be gone (as a viable fuel source) within 50 to 100 years.
The supply-and-demand economy in which we live will necessitate alternate fuels within a generation. Leave the politics out of it. We will need to change to something else in the near future, but let the free market decide what’s best.
Fair warning…I’m completely drunk. Those of you who know me will probably want to skip this post as it might make even less sense than my USUAL posts do. Which is saying somthing.
I don’t think we can know whats an exaggeration and whats not…as you can never get a straight answer from anyone saying it will cost $Z world wide, broken up into $Y, $X, … $B and $A for the following countries. This will need to be done for YYYY years and will cause around $Q in final disruption. We will be able to track and measure our progress to our goal in YYYY years by looking at these data points which will show the following percentage decreases on the following factors on both our 1 year, 5 year and 10 year graphs…so we will be able to definitively show how things are progressing and what the sacrifice has achieved. And after paying for all that, after YYYY years we will achieve our goals, which are…
Since I’ve never seen anyone willing to lay it out so we can at least LOOK at what the disruption may be, what it will cost, for how long, and what its impact on our various economies will be, its hard to judge if ANYTHING is an exaggeration.
That said, I don’t think what I wrote there is an exaggeration…I think its a conservative understatement. Even if we went with just the Kyoto Accords and the US jumped on whole hog, that would cause an economic disruption, especially in the short term. What would it be? Not sure…I’ve heard various figures tossed around, but interestingly (and even though I started a thread to ask this very question in the past), hard answers are hard to come by. I’m going to use a number that has no basis in reality, just for the sake of arguement…feel free, anyone, who has a figure grounded in reality, to trot it out.
I’m going to say that the economic drawback to the US for the entire cycle of the Accords, factoring in all the various disruptions, layoffs, logistics (having to buy new cars, shut down existing powerplants while building new ones, etc) would cost: $1 Trillion US dollars over all. Perhaps broken up into handy $10 Billion dollar yearly blocks (or maybe less tasty $100 Billion dollar blocks, depending on how long we have to stretch things out). Again, the number is just one I made up based on some of the stuff I’ve read in the past.
But lets say its a trillion for the sake of arguement. What does the US get for its trillion dollar investment? Do we get a world of rapidly declining CO2, a world back in balance, a world without a Santa Clause? If I’m reading things right, we get none of those things (and I wanted a pony for Christmas too! Bah!). What we MIGHT get is some undefined slowing of the release of CO2, and perhaps a slow down of the amount of energy being dumped into our atmosphere by our friend the sun…a slowing down of global warming. Maybe. How much slow down? Unknown.
But the fun doesn’t stop there. Again, if I’m understanding things (never a good bet, but lets go with it provisionally for now) the Kyoto Accords are only the FIRST STEP. This seems to imply that, after we get that first step up and everyone on board, we then lead them to the SECOND STEP. No, normally when you want to get people on board with something they would generally not like to do, you make the first step a relatively easy one…this brings in all the fish. Especially if you are vague about what exactly the steps cost, how long they take, how many there are, etc. A master planner will Make the first step a relatively light one, and someone who is REALLY on top of the game will make the second step only gradually more difficult. Set the dangle the bait, feel the fish bite the hook then wham…set it. Then give the fish some slack to come to grips with this new development. Once you’ve got the hook set and the fish tired, THEN you can really pile things on. (if this fish analogy makes no sense, then don’t worry…it doesnt’ make sense to me now either. There WAS a train of thought there, but it must have gone down another track…)
Anyway, I don’t see how you can exaggerate on what the economic disruptions would be to try and reverse the trend of an entire planet from behavior we’ve been doing for well over a century now…and for things that are critical, absolutely necessary to our way of life now. The kinds of social and economic changes would take decades or centuries to shift a path that is felt is needed to change global weather trends on a world wide scale if they were done ‘naturally’ (i.e. if we simply let the market decide). If you want to change these things over night, or in a few years or a decade or so its going to have a major economic impact…a very big NEGATIVE impact, at least in the short term. There simply is no way to get around that. And you are talking about taking a large economic impact right when the earth will in theory be going nuts all around us with big storms, sea levels rising, shifting weather patterns, etc. Yikes!
Had a bit more to say, but totally lost my train of thought now when I just fell asleep for 20 min. there. I’m sure anyone still reading at this point is jumping for joy! 
I can’t really think of any other anti-nuke groups who aren’t part of the eco scene in one way or another. At least not who have the power to fight proposed plant construction in the courts, and to publically drag things out long enough to make a nuke plant un-viable from a cost perspective…when they can get built at all. What other groups did you have in mind? I’m curious.
Well, in general I’m against monkeying with the market as it ususally has unexpected (and bad) consequences. However, what you COULD do is simply increase the price at the gas at the pump (gradually) on the one had while encouraging private industry even more to develop viable alternatives. Of course, increasing the price of gas at the pump would mainly hurt the poor and lower middle classes, and hurt the working classes not quite as badly, but bad enough…something to consider. It would also be politically unpopular.
As for the encouragement of industry, what I’d do were I king Xenophon II was to set up a bunch of X-Prize competition to private industry with some serious prizes for the company/=ies would could meet the requirements of the prize. I can think of half a dozen prizes off the top of my head that would push companies to a frenzy development…and could potentially have us come out of the competition with an entirely new paradigm for CO2 neutral personal transport and logistics, for zero carbon energy generation.
Even once you have a new system however (and I think THAT we should be doing as rapidly as possible), its still going to take years, more like decades to fully cut over to the new system on the scales we are talking about. And this will have disruptions of its own short term (but not as many as if you attempted to force through changes at a rapid rate to a reluctant and resentful populace). In the end I think we’d come out of all this with a completely different system that would be as close to zero emmissions as possible, one that will be safe and clean (and no caffeine!)
-XT
Why do you think that the goal of stopping ACC is an issue of trying to force people off of fossil fuels?
For one example, it’s already hard enough for farmers to be self-sufficient in Africa. Now given that it’s most probable that large quantities of Africa will become increasingly arid and the soil to crack, then we’re looking at mass famine (beyond what there already is in Africa.) Another example that’s closer to home would be the California’s Central Valley where the majority of the US’ non-tropical produce is farmed (and in fact a large amount is also exported.) If this area begins to dry, that will have a massive effect on the economy. Whether that would involve creating massive pipes to bring in water, or uprooting agriculture elsewhere, who knows, but it will cost billions either way. Pretty much, crops throughout the world are looking to potentially have to uproot to other locations. This might be a boon for other nations and a curse for others, but there’s no knowing how that’s going to play out. Whether the US will be able to maintain its world agriculture position could significantly influence it’s place in the world. In the short term though, as local markets production places dry up or switch to different crops, it will take a large toll on the market and the cost of moving crops and finding and planting in new areas will be a large drain on the world economy. So you’re looking at the potential for a world-wide depression, which if it happens will almost certainly effect impoverished nations the worst and, again, create famine.
The economic effects are indeed overstated. As I’ve said before, one of my clients is a government agency that encourages businesses to take a more environmental stance. The upshot of following the recommendations is that businesses saving energy and reducing CO[sub]2[/sub] become more efficient and actually save money. I.e. profitability increases. To date, for every £1 of government investment in this scheme, we are saving UK businesses about £10. Everyone’s a winner.
Personally, I have embraced nuclear power as the only thing that’s going to help us. We need to come up with some very clever solutions to disposing of/storing the waste. We also need to continue ploughing a vast amount of time and money into getting fusion up and running.
Really all you have to do is dissolve it into a lot of water and then dump it in a few places in the ocean. There’s less nuclear material in the world after it’s been used for creating energy than there was when it was dug up. We’re not creating radioactive materials in a particle accelerator to power nuclear plants or anything. All keeping it clumped together does is keeps it accessible if we want it again (while creating a hazard.)
Fine…state them clearly then. Whats it going to cost realistically to halt or reverse global warming? How long will it take to impliment? How long will it take to start showing results? How long will it take to reverse the effect? When can we expect to see those results…and how will we know when they are achieved?
You want to say that the economic effects are overstated…well, thats a lot of hot air without anything to back it up. I’ve asked this question repeatedly, and I’ve looked for a realistic answer online on and off for years. Every thing I’ve ever seen is either vague hand waving or its too simplistic and detached from reality to be viable. So, here is your chance…lets see some specifics here. Whats it going to take…specificially…for the world to halt global warming? Whats it going to cost…specificially, short term, medium term and long term…to halt global warming? What is our money going to buy…specificially…and how will we be able to track the progress to know we are having an effect? IOW, whats the time table here…years? Decades? Centuries? More?
-XT
Odd that you missed the major report on the economic implications of climate change!
Could be…maybe be. I’ve skimmed it before (I haven’t had time to dig in to the whole thing so I might have missed what I’m looking for). There are no specifics that I saw. Whats the 1% of global GDP per year based on…how is it derived, how solid is the number, is it likely to fluxuate? How solid is the estimated 20% of GDP or more (and is this per year or overall)? 1% of GDP per year for how long? Oh yeah, and how much of that 20% of GDP are we STILL likely to get, even if we impliment this 1% per year plan? Surely its not 0%…as this is unlikely to be a silver bullet fix that will happen instantaneously. I assume that this figure includes things like flooding and storm damage, crop failures and other things of this nature…which we are most likely STILL going to get, 1% of GDP spent a year or not. So…how much?
BTW, estimated GDP is around $61,000,000,000,000 or aprox $61 trillion. One percent of that (a year) $610,000,000,000 or $610 billion. That seems a bit…low ball, considering the scope of the supposed problem and the fact we would need to radically change how we generate power and personal transport in nations like the US. I can’t believe that this covers all the various dislocations that would be involved…unless we are talking about very large time spans. I imagine that, if the number is actually based on anything at all, its an average. A country that has little carbon foot print atm would probably be paying a lot less of its GDP per year to fix a problem it doesn’t really have…while a nation like the US is going to be paying a lot more (2% per year? 5%? More?).
The US’s bill, btw, would be around $120,000,000,000 or $120 billion (if in fact we only have to pay the 1%…you can do the math if its more than 1%, which I suspect would be the case)…per year. All of Europe’s part of the bill would come in around $130 billion. Even at this cost which I find pretty low considering the scope (if there are details about how these figures were arrived at, I’d appreciate pointing them out. I must have missed them when I skimmed this before, and all your links are in PDF…I don’t have a reader where I’m at this weekend), I still don’t think that the impact is overstated. $120 billion a year is quite a bit of money even for the US…and for how long exactly? A decade? A few decades? Longer? And is this 1% figure likely to remain stable…even if it is accurate and takes all the various disruptions into account? :dubious:
Where does it address what I’m actually asking?
-XT
You appear to have strong opinions on the matter. Stern presents a range of scenarios, and goes into detail regarding his costings. Perhaps you should read the fucking thing, and then get back to us (seeing as how you’ve been searching for answers for years and could only be bothered skimming the Stern report). Perhaps there’s a podcast you could download if the words are too big.
Which part of “I don’t have a PDF viewer” did you not understand? Or are any of those words too big for you?
Or is it too much trouble? I don’t recall seeing answers to my specific questions when I skimmed the report before, but if they are there, and if its not too much trouble for you, maybe you could cite the highlights? If not, why not STFU and I’ll get back to you when I can read the thing instead of posting another content free post like the above? Ehe?
-XT
Adobe Acrobat Reader and Foxit Reader are both free to download. I’d recommend Foxit - it’s a lot less resource hungry and doesn’t take over your computer in that horrible way Acrobat does. I didn’t really mean to come over so snarky, so apologies from me, but the Stern report is a sober and thoughtful analysis that is well worth spending some time on. If you really can’t get a PDF reader to work on your machine (and that is surprisingly common grrrr bad memories) I’m more than happy to convert it to a text file and email you a copy.
Deal?