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Where Australia's electricity comes from
This widget is updated every couple of minutes and shows why Australia is such a huge GHG emitter.
Are Warmers confident that they can solve global warming without the cooperation of Non-warmers?
Are Warmers confident that they can solve global warming without the cooperation of Non-warmers?
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This is not a black and white issue the effect of global warming is proportional to our emissions.
The inertia between co2 and warming is such that the next thirty or forty years of warming are already locked in . Many metrics point to looming major change ahead that we are not prepared for now let alone what will result if we dont change course in that time. We can not solve global warming we can just hope to avoid the worse possible future. The wind is slowly backing The realists are gaining ground on those who are resisting change. We can but hope this continues.
Personally I think the delay has been to long
I am in the process of reducing my personal emissions as low as I can get them and setting up somewhere comfortable, isolated and safe for the long bumpy ride ahead .
Faster would still be better, but the main battle is won, even if that is not visible to everyone yet. CO2-is-life has lost.
It is a fascinating question and interestingly phrased
I would make two comments It is quite clear that people who actively deny or seek to endlessly “concern troll” the scientific literature/consensus have absolutely no idea that they come from such a small constituency – seemingly exclusively drawn from the US right wing think tanks.
Their comments online show a devastating lack of self-awareness, as Victor points out the argument has been won and in fact the world moves on (and continues to warm)
And secondly and perhaps more interestingly it is clear (to me) that climate change hits at the very idea of “American exceptionalism” and hence their ability to solve the problem all on their own. Maybe climate change is simply a proxy argument that highlights America’s ever increasing “irrelevance” to the rest of the world
an experience that, coming from the UK, allows us a unique insight into
"Are Warmers confident that they can solve global warming without the cooperation of Non-warmers?"
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Assuming that 'warmers' are those who accept the scientific consensus on the reality, causes and potential seriousness of global warming and that 'non-warmers' are those who reject some or all of these things, then yes, global warming is still solvable.
Momentum in important decision making tends to eventually swing in the direction informed by the evidence, marginalising those who reject the evidence and rendering their cooperation unnecessary. For example, NASA didn't need the cooperation of the Flat Earth Society to put people on the moon.
I think that the foundations of climate science denial are built on the belief that to accept climate responsibility will lead to an unacceptable and damaging economic burden - and economic fears are still more immediate, pervasive and influential than any climate fears. Power to choose our direction is disproportiately in the hands of commerce and industry and that sector has been disproportiately opposed to strong climate policy; those choices are not dependent on the validity of climate science but on perceptions of how climate policy impacts costs and profitability more directly and economic conditions indirectly. In many ways economies are seen as far more fragile and in need of protection than our physical environmental systems.
I am coming to think that the most significant thing RE can do is shake that foundation of belief that climate responsibility is an unbearable economic burden - irrespective of whether RE can ultimately achieve all that we require. The assured support, based on economic fear, for the fossil fuel status quo and it's politics of denial, doubt and delay is being eroded. The political impact may initially exceed those on emissions, yet with the status quo disrupted the opportunity for more transformative policy can be opened up.
One thing I don't completely agree with is that business is strongly opposed to mitigation. The fossil fuel dependent businesses, yes. But that isn't necessarily energy distributors and generators - a lot of which are making the shift to renewables. It's more the coal companies, oil companies and, say, aluminium smelters that consume vast amounts of energy.
Businesses want some certainty more than being opposed to mitigation. Many of them are dealing with climate change in their own way. It's the flip-flopping by government that businesses don't like - at least here in Australia. (Here businesses and the main business groups were quite prepared to accept the carbon pricing system, and did. What they don't like is having to switch from a carbon price to no carbon price and back again. It badly affects their ability to plan.)
The last thing most businesses would want is delay by government to the point that it had to suddenly place onerous burdens on businesses and taxpayers. That could be disastrous for many businesses. They'd rather gradual change and consistent policies.
IOW, even if renewables don't quite have grid parity in some cases at the moment, that still doesn't make new coal stations a reasonable option even on purely economic grounds.
So to argue for more coal and less renewables, deniers are now going to have to admit they are wanting the costlier option, and admit the "effing hippies" are wanting the option that makes more business sense.Sou, I have to disagree. Generalising is always going to be, to some extent, wrong, but I think opposition to strong climate action still dominates within the organisations that collectively represent and lobby for the interests of commerce and industry - such as, in Australia, the Business Council of Australia and Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. I think these do reflect the priorities as well as views of the broader business community.
Whilst statements of climate science denial and direct opposition to climate action have become untenable and some positive sounding statements in favour of it in principle have been seen I think that in practice opposition persists in the business community's most influential lobbying efforts. It can include open support for the fossil fuel industry, as in the key climate policy objective (!) of "Drive growth in our energy resources development and export" (BCA) which may reflect an excess of influence of that sector but may also be a backhanded recognition that the flow of royalties from it's continuing growth insulates the wider business community from taxation demands - and opposition to greater taxation demands has stronger support than climate action does. But obstructionism can also be disguised and hidden within their lobbying priorities and in the many caveats that come between their stated, in principle support and the policy requirements for their support in practice. Certainly the submissions such organisations continue to make contain so many opportunities to justify opposing strong climate action as to render their statements of support for it meaningless in practice.
I tend to cynicism when such business and industry representative bodies make formal statements of acceptance of the need for strong action and claim to desire consistent policy whilst they simultaneously find fault with most policy in practice and have histories of active support of strong lobbying in opposition and obstruction of those counted as the most effective, like carbon pricing. If energy producers are coming to embrace the transition - and I'm not convinced the statements along those lines are very heartfelt - again I suspect it's because of RE intrusion is seen as likely to accelerate and have widespread community support and this will happen regardless of any opposing lobbying efforts. But I seriously doubt those opposing efforts have stopped - rather, the focus is turning to network reliability and RE is being re-cast as the villain in that narrative.
I just found the edit option!
Tesla has hinted that they will have an inverter that allows you to feed power from your car back into the grid .https://electrek.co/2016/09/21/tesla-energy-executive-talks-next-gen-inverter-hints-at-upcoming-vehicle-to-grid-capacity-for-tesla/
It is one more way to compensate for the intermittent generation of solar and wind.
it is also a move forward for the smart grid . As we shift to transport based on electricity we will also create a massive battery bank to help manage the peaks and troughs in generation from wind and solar .
Not every country has the hydro resource we have here in NZ. Tidal power has not really worked anywhere as yet due to long term reliability issues. Geothermal shows promise if you have the geology . Nuclear is a little to expensive when you add in the risks and decommissioning. Anything that makes wind and solar more able to power our civilizations is a step towards our future .
I suspect that because of the strong overlaps and political identification of support for climate action with preference for RE versus identification and support for nuclear overlap with opposition to strong climate action within mainstream politics, the largest body of political support for nuclear for climate has not been able to be mobilised in an effective manner whilst the strongest existing pro-RE support base for climate action has resisted it's inclusion; a lose-lose combination for the sincere advocates of nuclear for climate. Despite my own misgivings about massive global expansion of nuclear it may well prove an important element of a global solution should the hopes for RE to fully replace FF's fail to be realised. The collapse of obstructionism morphing into actual commitment to fixing the problem by that "side" of politics is probably a prerequisite to mobilising the existing latent support nuclear for climate options require to be achieved and lead to more effective advocacy for it. But that collapse and conversion will also support enable RE growth at scales, with levels of foresight and planning that are unachievable within a mire of deeply conflicted climate and energy politics.
I agree with the people who say we should still aim for it. The reasoning is that no matter what target we aim for we are likely to overshoot, because of bureaucratic/political inertia and vested interests. People will naturally tend to take the results of the science and then mangle it to better fit their preconceptions.
There was a good example of this recently when the UK government was given a report on the fracking industry. The report made it very clear that fracking was only a responsible option under very strict conditions (which it spelled out). The minister more or less ignored the conditions and claimed the report had said fracking was a responsible option. No worries, mate. You can see where that is heading.
Anyway, if we aim for 1.5 and overshoot we may still end up under 2. If we aim for 2 and overshoot, things will be a lot rougher. So even if 1.5 is (to use the technical term) bullshit, it may still be very useful bullshit.
H'mmm. Good question. But as you can see from the above examples, there are other strategies available than relying on the voluntary cooperation of the willfully ignorant.
Current emissions could already warm world to dangerous levels: study
The actual paper is over here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature19798.html
The short version is that for longer term stability we need to continue negative emissions until the CO2 level drops back below 350 ppm.
CitizensChallenge - Perhaps I should have said to prevent catastrophic climate change or constrain the damage?
Jgnfld - I think the tobacco, HFC's and asbestos examples haven't had the breadth and depth of political resistance and reluctance that Fossil Fuels have managed to secure on their behalf. The scale of use, the celebrated economic benefits (as long as the externalised costs are not counted) and depth of economic dependence that has developed that makes going "cold turkey" economically dangerous means that we have Presidents and Prime Ministers, Political Parties and Parliaments, Industry Associations and Captains of Commerce devoted to opposing strong climate policy in ways that those other problems did not. As long as obstructionism has that level of organised and effective support it will be as much luck as the intent of those who do want it to achieve a low to zero emissions transition - ie only extraordinary advances in low emissions technologies that make it the universally cheapest option will take the energy transition out of the hands of policy makers.
Except I think that such advances as we're already seem will help undermine the economic alarmist foundations that the reluctance and resistance is built upon. And we have to expect climate consequences to become more common and obvious which will make doubt, denial and delay less politically tenable.
Andrew Frreedman on Mashable - http://mashable.com/2016/09/26/2-million-years-climate-history/#Y2vqgkHpdkqr
Craig Welch on NatGeo - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/09/global-warming-study-13-degrees-is-wrong-climate-change/
Gavin Schmidt on RealClimate (not directly about the paper) - http://www.realclimate-backup.org/index.php/archives/2016/09/why-correlations-of-co2-and-temperature-over-ice-age-cycles-dont-define-climate-sensitivity/?wpmp_switcher=desktop
The arguments of Gavin Schmidt are strong and convincing. The computation of the climate sensitivity was only a side thought of this paper. The main work was something else, they say quite good and innovative and too technical to be of interest to the press. The reviewers were likely experts on that and not on how to estimate climate sensitivity.
Does that make sense?
The reason to normally use the ECS in the public debate is that the CO2 concentration 2600 AD will be lower than 2100 AD. We do not have the economic fossil fuels reserves to keep the CO2 concentration high the entire time (millennia) the ice sheets are melting. (There will be a lot of melting in our life time, which is a problem for sea level rise, but not yet that much for making the Earth darker and absorb more sun.) Plus people find it hard to think beyond 2100; society will be very different then. If you think very long-term and beyond 2100 the climate sensitivity to use would be somewhere between ECS and ESS. The ESS and the peak CO2 concentration combined would be a too high estimate because the CO2 concentration will go down.
looking at this sort of issue - i.e. an outlier paper written I presume in good faith
and then stepping back a bit
isn't this what you should expect - with all the many scientific papers written about climate science, some outliers
after all the earths temperature does not progress in straight lines, why should science
surely - and in deference to the "not even wrong" meme these "wrong" papers simply add to the cannon of knowledge that humanity accumulates about our planet and as such have a place
even if it forces us to restate what we do know
We witnessed the same reaction to Hansen et al 2016 with many respected commentators dissing or discounting his effort.
This is not necessary a bug just an indication of their effort to be truly impartial.
Such outlying papers are valuable within the scientific community to air alternative ideas but outside of it they have the ability to be used against the scientific community by the denialists
presumably this is a particular feature of climate science - in that it is being done under such a microscope that the natural ebb and flow of ideas is distorted