View Single Post
Old 01-03-2024, 12:54 AM   #3231
Street Pharmacist
Franchise Player
 
Street Pharmacist's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Salmon with Arms
Exp:
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathgod View Post
If by that you mean we as a species are destroying the world's ecosystems and exacurbating climate change at record pace, then yes, "succeeding wildly".







Entirely untrue.







Just because its adaptation is increasing rapidly now, doesn't mean it will keep increasing at such rates in future years/decades. There are issues with solar power such as: 1) resource availability to build the panels, 2) land availability to put the panels, 3) lack of sufficient means of storing energy when more power is being produced than the grid can use, and 4) our ability to responsibly dispose of panels once they are past their useful life.



I'm not saying we can't overcome these problems on the scale that solar is currently being deployed. But when we're talking about scaling up to the kinds of numbers needed to get to net zero, these problems suddenly become very daunting.







Geoengineering is supposed to be an ultra ultra ultra last resort we go to if/when we're truly stuck and simply can't afford not to do it. We do it as the least disastrous of two disastrous options (when they're all we have left).



We don't know what the consequences of geoengineering will ultimately be; the best we have are educated guesses. While they almost certainly won't be as bad as the worst climate change scenarios, they could still be tremendously harmful in ways we don't foresee beforehand.











Next time, can you avoid resorting to making a horrendous strawman? No one has ever said the earth is ending 30 minutes from now (or anything to that effect). I've never said anything like that, and no major news outlet has said anything like that either. I've already TWICE pointed out that I'm not a doomer and I reject doomerism... hopefully this is the last time I have to make that clear.



Hopefully you can understand why these kinds of strawman arguments are so frustrating to deal with, as they obfuscate the conversation and make it very hard for people to understand the actual positions and arguments that people are discussing.



As for the rest of your comment, I'd say you've got it backwards. When it comes to people of wealth and privelige, usually all you ever hear from them is all the progress being made, and almost nothing about the true nature of the mess we're in. And that's among those who even accept the science to begin with.



It's worth repeating, multiple things can be true at the same time. The progress being made toward clean energy is significant, and yes, in some contexts, could be described as tremendous. Yet, it is still insufficient.



Case in point, Saudi Arabia is hell bent on keeping Asia, Africa, and basically the entire developing world hooked on fossil fuels for many decades to come. How are solar panels going to magically solve this problem?





NSFW!






So maybe you can begin to understand why I'm skeptical that technological advancement is moving at a fast enough pace to get us out of this mess?
I think you and I are largely on the same side here, but I'm not sure what your argument is sometimes. I get frustrated by countries and companies that try to inject FUD into the debate. But they do that because they're losing and they can see the writing on the wall. The transition is happening in earnest and it can't be stopped by Saudia Arabia at this point no matter how much they try to get Africa to be hooked on fossil fuels.

1) we absolutely have pushed the worst case scenarios to highly implausible at this point. There's lots of data for this. You can definitely argue that it's not enough, but that's still a solid win.

2) I don't know what your point on solar is but you're off the mark here. Current solar production is actually already ahead of growth requirements for IEA's net zerob by 2050 scenario. Solar PV is a giant success story, full stop. And there are no realistic material constraints for the future growth required (I can provide very solid references for this). We have not solved weekly or seasonal storage yet, but better transmission can mitigate a lot or even most of that issue globally. I mean, 400GW of solar PV were installed in 2023. That's massive considering it was 16GW in 2010. And the number of new solar plants in the pipeline is going up.

3) for every Saudia Arabia trying to sell fossil fuels to Sub-Saharan Africa, you have China selling solar panels and batteries. The developed world needs to be involved here, but Saudi's plan is pretty unrealistic
Street Pharmacist is offline   Reply With Quote