Climate change and human responsibility

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Weitz

Probably because everything in this country is getting more and more expensive. This will just add to it. Might make sense to explore cost effective replacements prior to outright banning them?

I’m not sure how this adds to things getting more expensive any more than exploring alternatives does, it just delays the inevitable. It’s not like he’s planning on banning them tomorrow.

My money would be on the fact that an upcoming ban would, you guessed it, start the exploration of cost effective replacements.

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I’m not sure how this adds to things getting more expensive any more than exploring alternatives does, it just delays the inevitable. It’s not like he’s planning on banning them tomorrow.

My money would be on the fact that an upcoming ban would, you guessed it, start the exploration of cost effective replacements.

A year in a half is pretty quick turn around for almost every thing you buy needing to change.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Weitz

A year in a half is pretty quick turn around for almost every thing you buy needing to change.

Not when it’s been in the works in different places around the word for several years already. Source whichever alternative is most cost effective. It’s not like Canada has to invent these things.

There are already lots of places that don’t use plastics straws, cutlery, containers, bags, etc. I’m not sure a year and a half is a big deal.

[Fuzz]

Some interesting facts on the magnitude of the promises being made to de-carbonization:

To produce the electric power needed to offset the lost fossil fuel energy, Canada would have to build 2.5 hydro power dams the size of British Columbia’s $13-billion Site C project somewhere in the country “every year for the foreseeable future” leading up to the proposed 2050 carbon reduction targets...
...
On a global basis, the magnitude of the implied decarbonization effort illustrated in the graph takes us beyond the possible and into the world of junk science fiction. In 2018, world consumption of fossil fuels rose to 11,865 million tonnes of oil equivalent (mtoe). To get that down to near zero by 2050 as proposed by the zeroists would require a lot of alternative energy sources.
University of Colorado scientist Roger Pielke Jr. did some of the rough numbers. “There are 11,161 days until 2050. Getting to net zero by 2050 requires replacing one mtoe of fossil fuel consumption every day starting now.” On a global basis, such a transition would require building the equivalent of one new 1.5-gigawatt nuclear plant every day for the next 30 years.

We are not building nuclear...

If not nuclear, then maybe solar? According to a U.S. government site, it takes about three million solar panels to produce one gigawatt of energy, which means that by 2050 the world will need 3,000,000 X 11,865 solar panels to offset fossil fuels. The wind alternative would require about 430 new wind turbines each of the 11,865 days leading to 2050.

Spoiler!

https://business.financialpost.com/o...to-time-travel

[zamler]

Nice to see actual math being done. We have a serious (maybe impossible) challenge ahead of us to replace even half the fossil fuel usage.

[Fuzz]

I'm not even sure the current rate of renewable transition is even decreasing our fossil fuel use at all. I have to assume growth of energy usage is outpacing it's deployment. I wonder if there is a graph for that...


These plans by 2030 or 2050 are feel good and all, I'm just not sure we have the technology to meet them.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I'm not even sure the current rate of renewable transition is even decreasing our fossil fuel use at all. I have to assume growth of energy usage is outpacing it's deployment. I wonder if there is a graph for that...

It's not even decreasing for electricity:



https://www.iea.org/geco/electricity/

[Fuzz]

Source:

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-pr...energy-sources

From 2010-2017 renewables grew by 1800 TWH. Global energy production grew by 9500TWH. So it isn't even close. Not only are we not replacing fossil fuels with renewables, we aren't even deploying renewables faster than fossil fuels (7400TWH). Yes, fossil fuels are decreasing in total percentage(95.1% to 94.2%) but that doesn't help at all if consumption increases.

It just shows these proclamations are pretty big fantasies.

[The Fonz]

How can we decrease emissions when “environmentalists” are opposed to every method that does so?

Natural gas (~45% less CO2 emmitted per kWh produced vs coal)
Nuclear energy (~95% less CO2 emmitted per kWh produced vs coal)
Genetic engineering
Conventional agriculture (no-till)
Etc
Etc
Etc

[Leeman4Gilmour]

Originally Posted by accord1999

It's not even decreasing for electricity:

I was curious to see how we measured against these numbers and was pleasantly surprised to learn this (Canada's electrical generation by source):



As far as electricity production goes, we're not the most evil people in the world

[La Flames Fan]

On the heels of 2018's heat wave in Europe, comes another for 2019....it will feel like 47C in Paris.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-across-europe

Speaking of Nuclear, when temperatures rise the water isn't cool enough to cool reactors and plants either need to shut down or reduce output. Fun.

[Dirty Mr. Clean]

Great youtube series on this subject:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...fHsWPfAIyI7VAP

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by La Flames Fan

Speaking of Nuclear, when temperatures rise the water isn't cool enough to cool reactors and plants either need to shut down or reduce output. Fun.

The impact isn't that large, much less than the impact of heat waves on wind such as in the UK:
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...n-into-reverse


And in an emergency, where the alternative is a blackout, the regulations can be lifted. Often it's a not for protecting the nuclear reactor, but to protect the river environment from high temperatures from the exhausted water. Luckily for Europe, summer is not its peak demand period so it usually has enough reserve.

Nuclear plants could also be designed to handle higher environmental temperatures; the largest power plant in the US is Palo Verde Nuclear, which is near Phoenix, Arizona.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_V...rating_Station

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Leeman4Gilmour

I was curious to see how we measured against these numbers and was pleasantly surprised to learn this (Canada's electrical generation by source):

Yep, Canada's fortunate that it has lots of good hydro resources and was able to take advantage of it before modern circumstances made building hydroelectric dams almost as hard as building nuclear power plants or oil pipelines.

As far as electricity production goes, we're not the most evil people in the world

Though there are some extreme environmentalists who also hate hydro now.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by Leeman4Gilmour

I was curious to see how we measured against these numbers and was pleasantly surprised to learn this (Canada's electrical generation by source):


As far as electricity production goes, we're not the most evil people in the world

There's a reason that certain provinces call electricity "hydro." And also the same reason I think for a lot of misunderstanding, for lack of better word, from other provinces when criticizing Alberta.

It's easy to say "go green, reduce your reliance on coal and natural gas" when you can produce 95% of your electricity by hydro. But in Alberta most citizens would rather not freeze to death because we don't have that hydro capacity and can't rely on wind and solar in winter.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by accord1999

Yep, Canada's fortunate that it has lots of good hydro resources and was able to take advantage of it before modern circumstances made building hydroelectric dams almost as hard as building nuclear power plants or oil pipelines.

Though there are some extreme environmentalists who also hate hydro now.

I wouldn’t say that hating hydro is an extreme position. There are significant and lasting methane emmissions associated with large scale Hydro. These emmissions are currently untracked to the degree necessary to draw definitive conclusions.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.theg...e-change-study

A recent analysis of CH4 fluxes from hydroelectric reservoirs showed that 10% of reservoirs have emission factors (gCO2e per kilowatt hour) larger than the CO2 emissions from natural gas combined cycle plants (Hertwich 2013), although the authors did not consider carbon burial offsets. Although dams are responsible for high rates of carbon burial (Clow et al. 2015), it has been argued that at least a portion of this burial would still be occurring farther downstream, perhaps even in coastal waters, in the absence of dams (Mendonça et al. 2012). The role of dams in re-locating sediment carbon pools may be significant in determining total carbon burial (Mendonça et al. 2012) as well as the fraction of carbon that is emitted as CH4. For example, faster-moving, more oxygenated “lotic” waters typically support more rapid decomposition and CO2 production but less CH4 production. Similarly, at the coast, high concentrations of SO42– generally prohibit high CH4 emissions. Accounting for the short and long-term fate of carbon in reservoir sediments is an important next step in global carbon budgeting exercises.

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/...11/949/2754271

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

There's a reason that certain provinces call electricity "hydro." And also the same reason I think for a lot of misunderstanding, for lack of better word, from other provinces when criticizing Alberta.

It's easy to say "go green, reduce your reliance on coal and natural gas" when you can produce 95% of your electricity by hydro. But in Alberta most citizens would rather not freeze to death because we don't have that hydro capacity and can't rely on wind and solar in winter.

~65% of electricity generation here in Ontario is Nuclear. Hydro a mere 24%. (Today’s numbers, not averaged over winter).

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by Scroopy Noopers

~65% of electricity generation here in Ontario is Nuclear. Hydro a mere 24%. (Today’s numbers, not averaged over winter).

It's 90% in BC, 95%+ in Quebec and Manitoba.

[La Flames Fan]

Originally Posted by Dirty Mr. Clean

Great youtube series on this subject:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...fHsWPfAIyI7VAP

Well I went down a rabbit hole. Good series. Just presenting facts and calling out the stupid and erroneous people.

I wish more people would watch it, but they won't because facts don't matter to them.

[Scroopy Noopers]

edit. Nope.