# What can be done (climate change debate)? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 10, 2014, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384 "2014-03-10T21:18:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/221 "2014-03-23T16:24:52Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > This is a hijack. > > Drop it. > > The discussion is “what could be done?” not “is anyone psychologically prepared to do it correctly?”. > > [/Moderating] Wait. Do you think the OP meant simply what can physically be done? That’t would be rather easy: outlaw cars, mandate everyone become vegetarian and build nuclear reactors in every city. Surely, the solution has to be a _practical_ one, no? Doesn’t any reasonable solution have to take into account the likelihood of it being done? And in the end, if we’re asking humans to make a change, isn’t it fair to assess how receptive they may be to making the changes a solution asks of them? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/222 "2014-03-23T16:52:02Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Wait. Do you think the OP meant simply what can physically be done? That’t would be rather easy: outlaw cars, mandate everyone become vegetarian and build nuclear reactors in every city. Surely, the solution has to be a _practical_ one, no? Doesn’t any reasonable solution have to take into account the likelihood of it being done? And in the end, if we’re asking humans to make a change, isn’t it fair to assess how receptive they may be to making the changes a solution asks of them? If you think that that was Chief Pedant’s point–rather than what appeared to be nothing more than “it’ll never happen” threadshitting–then you or he can make that point more clearly and explicitly. If you or he wish to debate the “it’ll never happen” scenario, then you are free to open a new thread. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/223 "2014-03-23T17:38:08Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > Wait. Do you think the OP meant simply what can physically be done? That’t would be rather easy: outlaw cars, mandate everyone become vegetarian and build nuclear reactors in every city. Surely, the solution has to be a _practical_ one, no? Already posted practical solutions and with practical **examples**. What I see posted here are just absurd “solutions” that no one has proposed. > [@magellan01](#): > > Doesn’t any reasonable solution have to take into account the likelihood of it being done? And in the end, if we’re asking humans to make a change, isn’t it fair to assess how receptive they may be to making the changes a solution asks of them? As noticed, not the subject of the thread, it is really ridiculous to continue to ignore what scientists agree are the most likely things to happen. (Ocean rise, ocean acidification, more intense droughts and floods in specific areas, change of weather patterns, ecosystem stress) [http://www.aip.org/history/climate/impacts.htm](http://www.aip.org/history/climate/impacts.htm) What many contrarians do take to ridiculous levels are the uncertainties of other issues (How many hurricanes, if clouds will cause more warming, the stress of warming on plants and people, warfare due to those changes and water scarcity, etc) and they pumped them up as if that was a good reason to not do a thing. Anyone can notice that the intention is to ignore the most likely things to come. The items that are uncertain that could happen are in reality \*\*further \*\*incentives to control our emissions, simply because I do remember that many papers and studies point to the strong possibility that many of those unknowns will actually make things worse. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/224 "2014-03-23T18:18:33Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > We’re going to want [a lot more energy](http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/world.cfm) for a long, long time. I’m with you. But the first paragraph says the world is facing a 56% increase in energy demand over the next 30 years. That isn’t as daunting as you make it appear. For instance, consider [Japan’s development of its solar industry](http://i0.wp.com/cleantechnica.com/files/2013/09/130911_japan_10_gw_milestone.jpg). Just eyeballing the graph, it appears that they have increased their solar output about 10-fold in 8 years, and the growth is accelerating. Many places around the world show the exact same trend, and grid parity for solar power is only just now starting to shade in. We’re in for further increases in demand for solar. Understand that it doesn’t work the way the fossil fuel industry works. The solar industry is more like a Sigma equation, while drilling is more of a linear endeavor. Say company X invests capital in an oil well, company Y invests the same capital in a solar panel factory. X’s oil well will generate a stream of oil for say 10-20 years, tapering off at the end (basically a reverse Sigma). By contrast, Y’s solar panel factory will generate an increasing amount of energy- adding so many megawatts per year, every year. Say 5 years pass, and both companies want to grow. Company X drills another well, company Y builds another factory. Right off the bat, company X has increased their output by perhaps only 1.5x, since the first well is tapering off. Company Y doubles the base value in the sigma equation. Which one is getting ahead? It will simply be too much effort to keep drilling wells when each solar panel itself is like an easier, longer-lasting energy ‘well’. > [@](#): > > [Here’s the graph](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/World_energy_consumption%2C_1970-2025%2C_EIA.png) you need to solve for, and it’s the one that suggests to me which of us likes to indulge in rhetoric more. So this graph doesn’t seem to jibe. Even with drilling in the arctic, it isn’t clear how world oil production can continue to increase at the rate shown, nor do their projections for the growth of renewable energy seem to fit with observed trends. (Speaking of drilling in the Arctic, we know that there were no ice caps during the Carboniferous period, and that we are re-creating those conditions by increasing CO2 levels, so ‘uncertainty’ about the effects of AGW only goes so far.) Anyway, I like **Magellan** ’s idea that more people become vegetarian or vegan. Those diets require significantly less energy to support, and if we but spread the word, some (but not all) people will do it voluntarily. Talk to some 20-years olds, they are doing it already. I don’t know if Al Gore is a vegetarian though. And speaking of farming, meet the [solar water pump.](http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/20/sunedison-builds-solar-water-pumps-india/) These operate off the grid, so no need to ‘rebuild the grid’ to run these. The article doesn’t mention, but these also replace diesel-powered water pumps, sure to be a hit in Yemen, or really, anywhere. Just one example of how fossil fuel use can be pushed out of an industry that, today, is ‘dependent on fossil fuels.’ Finally, I don’t see why the middle class of the future has to be as inefficient as the American middle class of the 50s. That was actually extremely wasteful, and at least some people have or can learn from it. Projections seem to assume new middle class citizens will have the same footprint, when many people’s footprints can shrink. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2014, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/225 "2014-03-23T18:24:55Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Anyway, I like **Magellan** ’s idea that more people become vegetarian or vegan. Those diets require significantly less energy to support, and if we but spread the word, some (but not all) people will do it voluntarily. Talk to some 20-years olds, they are doing it already. I don’t know if Al Gore is a vegetarian though. One nit here: magellan01 was referring to “mandate everyone become vegetarian” not a choice, so a ridiculous solution then. But yes, once we understand that it should be a recommended choice then becoming vegan helps a lot, and BTW there are reports that Gore is a vegan now or has reduced his meat consumption a lot. > **[Al Gore Goes Vegan](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/al-gore-vegan_n_4340462)** > > Al Gore Goes Vegan ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/226 "2014-03-24T00:47:26Z")
Well, I didn’t want to go into speculating about why he framed it that way. Vegetarianism is a good idea in the context of AGW, so I left it at that. Good thing Al Gore is a vegan now- I guess there really is hope! I want to clear up my math argle-barlgle above. All I’m getting at is that a solar company produces power generating capacity, while an oil well generates a diminishing amount of fuel. After 30 years, a 1 GW factory will have produced 30 GW of generating capacity- it is a higher order equation compared to the output of an oil well. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/227 "2014-03-24T01:13:38Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > [Here’s the graph](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/World_energy_consumption%2C_1970-2025%2C_EIA.png) you need to solve for, and it’s the one that suggests to me which of us likes to indulge in rhetoric more. What I find curious, not to mention deeply ironic, is that someone who tells us repeatedly and frequently how **utterly useless** we are at predicting anything has posted a graph that apparently represents, with the indisputable certainty of miraculous clairvoyance, **exactly** how our consumption of oil, gas, and coal will play out into the future. :rolleyes: What makes it even more ironic is that the uncertainties around how and when we will seriously start mitigating emissions is actually one of the biggest variables in long-term climate modeling (arguably, by far the biggest). So much so that the IPCC has proposed four radically different scenarios – the four [Representative Concentration Pathways](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_forcing_agents_CO2_equivalent_concentration.png) representing different stabilization forcings – on which comparative climate modeling is based. Because basically the most critical key factor that science totally cannot predict is what kind of political dumbasses were are going to be electing in the future and what they will or will not be able to accomplish. As the IPCC describes these scenarios, “The goal of working with scenarios is not to predict the future but to better understand uncertainties and alternative futures, **in order to consider how robust different decisions or options may be under a wide range of possible futures** ”. One other thing. If the graph you posted – which basically represents pretty much a business-as-usual scenario – happens to be more or less correct, then it’s more or less tracking the scenario called RCP8.5. This is the worst-case scenario. Have another look at the graph I just linked. It would be hard indeed to find any serious climate scientist to argue that a net increased forcing of 8.5 W/m^2 by 2100 would be anything short of a complete climate and ecological catastrophe. At some point that kind of trend must show a dramatic peak/decline. The question is when, and will it by then be too late because of the inherent long climate response times and self-sustaining positive feedbacks. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > They are wild ass guesses, yes. Worse, they are couched in terms that are risibly weasel-worded for drama… > > … It’s my impression both you and Gb are deeply moved by Names instead of data. That’s not really what my point was. My point was that we have on one hand 300+ well-qualified specialists in the relevant aspects of the impacts of climate change drawing their conclusions from many thousands of peer-reviewed publications. We have, on the other side, your **opinion**. Which you’re entitled to, but in the realm of credibility, I’ll go with the consensus of those who have dedicated their careers to studying the issues. That’s why I’m moved by Names. And it’s not “instead of data”, it’s “instead of unsupported opinion”. The data is in the report and the cited papers, along with frank and careful statements of uncertainties. The problem with the denialist mantra is that the need for action isn’t based on the certainty of any particular single impact, but on the persuasiveness of the evidence in aggregate. Yes, impact #1 might not be as bad as predicted (or it might be worse). Ditto for impact #2. And #3. By the time you get to impact #3,742 it should be pretty clear that the aggregate risks are such that we need to stop pissing around with this uncontrolled major experiment on our planet. Even a small percentage of those risks, were they to occur, have the potential to impose some of the greatest costs in life and treasure that civilization has ever faced. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/228 "2014-03-24T04:51:17Z")
> [@ralfy](#): > > Not just operating cars but manufacturing cars, and not just cars but most products, and not just manufacturing but also food production, and just the developed world but the global economy, and not just oil providing energy but also petrochemicals. [http://www.buzzle.com/articles/what-do-we-use-oil-for.html](http://www.buzzle.com/articles/what-do-we-use-oil-for.html) “Today, the oil consumption in US by sector is as follows: Transportation: 66% Industrial: 25% Residential: 4% Commercial: 2% Electric power: 3%” I can’t be bothered to find anything more authoritative but this is consistent with my recollection. Using oil for making plastic doesn’t really put the carbon in the air does it? It stays in the plastic. My understanding is that only new sources of CO2 really count. Thats why animal farts are not a big deal because they are only recycling CO2 that is already cycles through the system. When we dig up coal and oil and natural gas, then we are introducing CO2 into the system that wasn’t there before and the overall level of CO2 rises and so does the temperature. > [@](#): > > It is irrelevant to wonder about the costs of mitigating climate change through the use of renewable energy because of peak oil. Put simply, with a lack of oil, the world will be forced to use renewable energy whether it wants to or not. I’ve heard about peak oil since the 1970’s. I don’t think we are going to hit the downslope of peak oil before we reduce our oil consumption. All that shale oil in the bakkan, all that sour crude in venezuela, all that bitumen out of canada. We knew it was there in the 1970’s, we just didn’t count it as oil reserves because it wasn’t commercially extractable. Then oil prices jumped up to about 100 and stayed there and before you knew it, our oil reserves jumped up too as all these previously nonviable sources became commercially viable. There are places where we can get more oil at prohibitive costs by today’s standards. What will happen is the price of oil will rise high enough for people to buy electric cars, even without any subsidy. In fact recent events tell us that gas prices approaching $5 might be the point where people just say fuck it and buy a car that they can plug into their wall. Hydro is at grid parity right now but we have pretty much dammed up anyplace where dams make sense. Wind power is almost at grid parity right now and will almost certainly be there in the next ten years or so just through better engineering and materials. We might be able to abandon coal altogether when we get wind online but we won’t be able to replace natural gas. Nuclear is fine but where do you build them and how do you transport and dispose of the waste? Solar will not reach grid parity without some sort of breakthrough so we can’t really count on it. So assuming that all we get is the wind and some nuclear, where does that leave us? > [@GIGObuster](#): > > Already posted practical solutions and with practical **examples**. What I see posted here are just absurd “solutions” that no one has proposed. What solution was that? Are we still talking about the trillion dollar a year solution? Half the world GDP is generated in the EU, US and China. If the US had to bear its GDP share of the trillion dollar load, it would be ~$200 billion/year assuming we only bear our proportionate share of the cost. Do you see any chance of that happening? You might as well hope for cold fusion. The people who would be paying that trillion dollars a year for the mitigation are not going to see a trillion dollar a year loss without the mitigation; the people who will see huge losses don’t have a trillion dollars a year to spend (hell I don’t know it anyone does). Most of the world is at grid parity with wind power and the US will be there soon. Once electric cars start to make sense, we will see huge drops in oil consumption. Also build more nuclear power plants. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/229 "2014-03-24T05:05:39Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > What solution was that? > > Are we still talking about the trillion dollar a year solution? Yes, and you continue to ignore the 4 trillion that conservatively speaking will be the cost of doing nothing as Nordhaus reported. Not really a conservative nor a sensible idea. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/230 "2014-03-24T05:14:34Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > …and BTW there are reports that Gore is a vegan now or has reduced his meat consumption a lot. And just when I thought that Al Gore couldn’t get any more super awesome-er! And from the pictures I’ve seen of Al Gore, I think it’s more like he started eating vegetarians. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/231 "2014-03-24T05:25:36Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > And just when I thought that Al Gore couldn’t get any more super awesome-er! > > And from the pictures I’ve seen of Al Gore, I think it’s more like he started eating vegetarians. Actually it makes even more silly the ones that continue to claim that this is important: to make fun of him when he is not the source of information about the issue nor the only one to consult. This criticism of that tactic was posted many times before: > **[Is Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth accurate?](https://skepticalscience.com/al-gore-inconvenient-truth-errors.htm)** > > \While there are minor errors in An Inconvenient Truth, the main truths presented - evidence to show mankind is causing global warming and its various impacts is consistent with peer reviewed science.\ > [@](#): > > Note: the vilification of Al Gore is best understood in the context of personalisation. When opponents attack something abstract - like science - the public may not associate with the argument. By giving a name and a face and a set of behavioural characteristics - being a rich politician, for example - it is easy to create a fictional enemy through inference and association. Al Gore is a successful politician who presented a film, his training and experience suitable to the task. To invoke Gore is a way to obfuscate about climate science, for which Gore has neither responsibility, claim nor blame. ---
**Author:** ![Frank\_Merton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Frank\_Merton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank_Merton)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/232 "2014-03-24T05:39:21Z")
I suspect Al Gore is vilified because he appears to have made a political career of not practicing (except by means of Clintonesque wordplay) what he preaches. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/233 "2014-03-24T06:09:16Z")
> [@Frank\_Merton](#): > > I suspect Al Gore is vilified because he appears to have made a political career of not practicing (except by means of Clintonesque wordplay) what he preaches. He actually does, (Become carbon neutral) and putting his money at that, but the problem was that critics ignore that bit about being carbon neutral and claim stuff that Gore was not proposing: that we all should become monks, or hippies and failing to do that he is therefore not doing what he preaches. That is not what he was proposing as a solution. He is not proposing that we should ditch the modern world, but since that does not fit what many contrarians claim (that the change will be disastrous just by the cost alone or that the ones proposing solutions want to end progress) the straw has to fly. The point I mentioned also is valid: using Gore to personalize the issue betrays also the continuing attempt of contrarians at making this just a political issue. It is an attempt to discredit the solutions. It is one of the items that has to be confronted as part of the overall solution, because as conservative scientists report, politics should not be used to deny the issue. > **[“Why Don’t You Bash Al Gore?”](https://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/why-dont-you-bash-al-gore/)** > > Since I took the plunge and started publicly criticizing certain climate change contrarians, notably certain Utah politicians and Christopher Monckton, people on the other side of the fence have of… > [@](#): > > 1. Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”, is not that bad, frankly. > > Yes, there are a couple errors. Yes, in a few cases he focuses on “worst-case scenarios,” rather than communicating the full range of risk. But the fact is that he got the most important points right, and the problems aren’t that serious from the perspective of most scientists who have examined the movie. Tim Lambert collected reactions from a number of scientists about a list of nine alleged errors in the movie, for example. While they didn’t always agree about the status of individual “errors,” there was general agreement that the list was too long. In most cases, it was questionable whether they were really errors at all. > > In the cases where Gore presented “worst-case scenarios” instead of depicting the full range of risk, try to look at it from the perspective of the scientists involved. The vast majority of scientists are saying, “Human-induced climate change is very likely to be a very big problem, and somewhat likely to be a very, very big problem.” Are they supposed to get all worked up when a popularizer like Gore goes around saying it will be a very, very big problem? The reaction of most scientists has been exactly what it should be. ”Well, maybe he overstated his case somewhat, but he got the gist right.” > > Now, contrast this with someone like Christopher Monckton, who goes about proclaiming that climate change is a “non-problem,” and to support his case he completely misrepresents the scientific literature he cites. Whom do you think scientists are going to want to spend their time criticizing? > > And no, I didn’t vote for Gore. ---
**Author:** ![ralfy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ralfy/32/600_2.png) [@ralfy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralfy)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/234 "2014-03-24T07:09:46Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > [http://www.buzzle.com/articles/what-do-we-use-oil-for.html](http://www.buzzle.com/articles/what-do-we-use-oil-for.html) > > “Today, the oil consumption in US by sector is as follows: > Transportation: 66% > Industrial: 25% > Residential: 4% > Commercial: 2% > Electric power: 3%” > > I can’t be bothered to find anything more authoritative but this is consistent with my recollection. From what I remember, a third of transportation consists of freight trucks and shipping, which for me is part of industrial. Also, factor in a growing global middle class, many of whom will also want electric cars, solar panels, etc. According to the IEA, the energy equivalent needed will be at least one Saudi Arabia every seven years. This does not include availability of other resources, from water: “‘The real threat to our future is peak water’” > **[The real threat to our future is peak water | Lester Brown](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/jul/06/water-supplies-shrinking-threat-to-food)** > > As population rises, overpumping means some nations have reached peak water, which threatens food supply, says Lester Brown to phosphorus: “Peak phosphorus” > **[Peak phosphorus](http://www.resilience.org/stories/2007-08-13/peak-phosphorus/)** > > Phosphorus is one of the three major nutrients required for agriculture. Applying Hubbert analysis reveals that production of phosphates probably reached a world peak in 1989. to uranium: “How Long Before Uranium Shortages?” [http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5060](http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5060) and so on. > [@](#): > > Using oil for making plastic doesn’t really put the carbon in the air does it? It stays in the plastic. Plastic damages the environment. Also, for peak oil plastic involves petrochemicals. > [@](#): > > My understanding is that only new sources of CO2 really count. Thats why animal farts are not a big deal because they are only recycling CO2 that is already cycles through the system. When we dig up coal and oil and natural gas, then we are introducing CO2 into the system that wasn’t there before and the overall level of CO2 rises and so does the temperature. Indeed, and peak oil leads to that as we have to use unconventional oil. On top of that, the latter has low energy returns, which means we have to burn even more. > [@](#): > > I’ve heard about peak oil since the 1970’s. I don’t think we are going to hit the downslope of peak oil before we reduce our oil consumption. All that shale oil in the bakkan, all that sour crude in venezuela, all that bitumen out of canada. We knew it was there in the 1970’s, we just didn’t count it as oil reserves because it wasn’t commercially extractable. Then oil prices jumped up to about 100 and stayed there and before you knew it, our oil reserves jumped up too as all these previously nonviable sources became commercially viable. There are places where we can get more oil at prohibitive costs by today’s standards. What will happen is the price of oil will rise high enough for people to buy electric cars, even without any subsidy. In fact recent events tell us that gas prices approaching $5 might be the point where people just say fuck it and buy a car that they can plug into their wall. Oil demand will continue increasing, and likely at a faster pace, as most people worldwide join the middle class. At the same time, CO2 emissions will rise as the world uses more unconventional oil. However, as oil prices go up, the global economy will weaken considerably, and that will mean not only expensive goods but also expensive electric cars, solar panels, etc. Given that, more will likely move from petrol vehicles to electric cars to public transport to localization. > [@](#): > > Hydro is at grid parity right now but we have pretty much dammed up anyplace where dams make sense. > > Also, this is greatly affected by global warming, and the components needed to store, deliver, and use electricity generated requires oil-based manufacturing and transport systems. > > Wind power is almost at grid parity right now and will almost certainly be there in the next ten years or so just through better engineering and materials. > > We might be able to abandon coal altogether when we get wind online but we won’t be able to replace natural gas. > > Nuclear is fine but where do you build them and how do you transport and dispose of the waste? > > Solar will not reach grid parity without some sort of breakthrough so we can’t really count on it. > > So assuming that all we get is the wind and some nuclear, where does that leave us? We will be forced to use all of these energy sources, but because they have low energy returns plus concerns similar to peak oil they will not allow the global economy to continue. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/235 "2014-03-24T12:37:59Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > What I find curious, not to mention deeply ironic, is that someone who tells us repeatedly and frequently how **utterly useless** we are at predicting anything has posted a graph that apparently represents, with the indisputable certainty of miraculous clairvoyance, **exactly** how our consumption of oil, gas, and coal will play out into the future. :rolleyes: Fair enough. 🙂 Although I did have Emanuel as support. 😉 I assume you are talking about this [graph, more or less.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/World_energy_consumption_projection_1995-2011.png) The key point I’m trying to make with that graph is that over the next two decades, a rise in renewables does not diminish consumption of fossils. The nature of energy and overpopulation and wanting to live better is that we will will consume all the energy we can make, from all sources, until we are all living maximally well. I think this is a key point not really understood by folks who seem to think renewables replace fossils at a world level. They don’t. If we do even better with renewables, we still won’t reduce the total consumption of fossils, and we are agreed (aren’t we? ) that current level of fossil fuels is problematic. As to using predictions, I do personally think that the lag in build-out capacity for the renewable grid is fairly predictable. Nantucket’s Cape Wind is sort of a poster child for that kind of lag, as is the proposal-to-online time for a typical nuclear plant. So predicting 20 years out for energy sources doesn’t seem to me to be very speculative. YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/236 "2014-03-24T12:48:33Z")
> [@Frank\_Merton](#): > > I suspect Al Gore is vilified because he appears to have made a political career of not practicing (except by means of Clintonesque wordplay) what he preaches. It’s hypocritical to vilify Al “Strawman” Gore unless you yourself are living a sacrificial life. We are all Al Gores. We all want to live robustly. It’s true that if we all lived as robustly as Al Gore, there would not be enough energy to go around. It’s true that consuming far more than your share of “green” energy, and paying carbon indulgences because you can afford them is not a scalable solution. It may be true that it’s not even reasonable to argue that you can live as robustly as Al Gore lives and make any acceptable rationalization of how that’s OK. But it’s just not fair to demonize the guy living a life that we would all live if we could. I don’t think Mr Gore should ride his bicycle to work (except from a health perspective 😉 ) and I’m not gonna ride mine. I’m gonna live in as big a house as I want; have a second home if I want; stay at the Ritz if I want; and fly in my private G5 instead of Spirit coach to wherever I feel like going if I want. I’m gonna consume big until I croak because I do not trust the rest of the world to consume small. Therefore why I should I be the one sacrificing? So how in the world can can I vilify Mr Gore anymore than I would vilify a Tanzanian for wanting a Mercedes S Class instead of a bicycle rickshaw? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/237 "2014-03-24T14:27:20Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > The key point I’m trying to make with that graph is that over the next two decades, a rise in renewables does not diminish consumption of fossils. And that once again is describing the problem, not a solution. Clearly one key thing to do is to deal with the ones in power that are preventing a key part of the solution. To add the real price to the emissions we make. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/238 "2014-03-24T15:12:46Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > and I’m not gonna ride mine. I’m gonna live in as big a house as I want; have a second home if I want; stay at the Ritz if I want; and fly in my private G5 instead of Spirit coach to wherever I feel like going if I want. I’m gonna consume big until I croak because I do not trust the rest of the world to consume small. Therefore why I should I be the one sacrificing? If there ever was a time to use the old “if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem” this one is. The new approach to this is to take into account that following the worse scenario does not lead to less sacrifice for the ones not doing anything now, but to more people demanding (and eventually getting) that the rich and everyone else do a part to then deal with the worse consequences of not having done the correct thing early. As [Dr. Denning](http://www.atmos.colostate.edu/faculty/denning.php) told the Heathland Institute: > **[Scott Denning: Reaching Across the Abyss](https://skepticalscience.com/scott-denning-reaching-across-abyss-iccc6-heartland-conference.html)** > > Going virtually unnoticed in the climate science world (except for skeptic blogs and certain fair minded mainstream scientists), from June 30 - July 1, 2011, an international conference on the subject of climate change took place in Washington DC,... > [@](#): > > From here, Professor Denning goes into the climate science basics that most reasonable skeptics can agree on. In short, CO2 warms the planet, humans are emitting massive amounts of CO2, CO2 sticks around for a hundreds of years, and since we know the climate has changed in the past, we know the climate is sensitive to changes in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. All, which when combined with the fact that billions more will be emitting much more CO2 over the next few decades, gives the audience the unchallenged knowledge that the Earth will be going under significant change, unparalleled in recorded human history. People will develop policy to deal with these changes. > > The point to Denning’s talk was to lay out a challenge for those who advocate for the free market. And that challenge is to develop effective solutions that match the breadth the problem ahead of us. According to one of his final slides: > > ``` > Who will advocate for effective solutions? > > ``` > > To which he emphatically answered, in a questioning voice: > > ``` > "Do you think Greenpeace is going to advocate for this?!? Is that what you are waiting for?!? Evidentially..." > > ``` Evidently that is, I’m on the record of not agreeing with Greenpeace on many issues, but what you suggest we do is to be heroes for the status quo, problem with that is that you are not fixing the issue, you only fix and entrench the ones delaying the solutions and making things worse. What we will get in the end is to have all follow desperate or real freedom limiting solutions when the problem gets worse. Because the ones that could have guided us for more market based solutions will be seen as the ones that not only caused it, but actively worked to prevent the solutions for being implemented early. For all the ones that think this idea of refusing to look at solutions is a good effort, in reality this idea will get us the opposite of what they want. [Nice Job Breaking It, “Heroes”.](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NiceJobBreakingItHero) ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2014, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/239 "2014-03-24T18:12:03Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Yes, and you continue to ignore the 4 trillion that conservatively speaking will be the cost of doing nothing as Nordhaus reported. Not really a conservative nor a sensible idea. Is that 4 trillion/year? Who would bear the cost of that 4 trillion, or would we just learn to live with higher sea levels? > [@ralfy](#): > > From what I remember, a third of transportation consists of freight trucks and shipping, which for me is part of industrial. And that would be mitigated by electric automobiles too right? > [@](#): > > According to the IEA, the energy equivalent needed will be at least one Saudi Arabia every seven years. This does not include availability of other resources, from water: Yes but much if not most of that energy need will be met with things other than oil (like coal and gas and nuclear) > [@](#): > > “‘The real threat to our future is peak water’” etc. Yes but those are garden variety resource issues, not global warming issues. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2014, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384/240 "2014-03-25T01:29:32Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > If there ever was a time to use the old “if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem” this one is. I and my Strawman, Al Gore, are definitely part of the problem. I keep trying to admit that and you keep throwing out there as if I have been trying to deny it. For Pete’s sake GIGObuster: I am Al “Strawman” Gore. (figuratively). Of the 7 billion others on this planet, so are another 6.9 billion or so. It isn’t that I’m opposed to a solution, per se. It’s that I’m opposed to the idea that enough people are going to sacrifice in a meaningful enough way to make any solution viable. We may be able to ameliorate relatively well (or not) as we go along and find out what actually besets us versus what is predicted. What we won’t do is decrease our use of fossil fuels in anywhere near a reasonable time span, nor sacrifice collectively in any meaningful way for future generations. The current US budget deficit (along with many other countries) is a reasonable proxy for just how selfish we are in living for today and leaving tomorrow’s population to fend for itself, be it money or ecology. It’s a bummer, I know, to be so fervent preaching Hell and Salvation, and then finding out no one is interested in paying the cost of Salvation. The road to Hell is just too comfortable, and the path to it is paved with good intentions of finding salvation instead, but no actual sacrifice to effect those intentions. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-be-done-climate-change-debate/683384.md?page=13)