Climate change and human responsibility

[curves2000]

I look at the way we are trending as a society and the products and services we are all purchasing and how this is all counter to what we are suppose to be doing with climate change. Almost NOTHING these days lasts for any reasonable length of time or is reasonably serviceable/repairable. Technology, appliances, cars, clothing, construction materials, homes, furniture's and so much more. This is becoming a large problem across the world.

We have an explosion in tourism all over the place, people doing insane things for social media posts.

We have everything moving to battery powered but absolutely no plan on how to acquire the materials. People are sometimes shocked to learn what the mining operations look like for these materials and it's going to get worse.

Everything we want these days is getting delivered, people have no patience.

I know government's have all these aspirational goals but the reality is, we are all trending in the wrong direction. We have billions of people who don't have the luxury of a daily, hot shower. They want a protein rich diet, they want their technology, they want their cars, travel, larger homes. They want the western quality life. This is all suppose to happen how?

It's almost like we are trying to do too much in too many directions and we are failing, which is why nobody really hit's their targets?

[GGG]

I think everyone is moving in so many directions and all succeeding wildly better than anyone predicted 10 and 20 years ago.

We have already taken the worst doomsday cases of global warming off the table. The adoption of solar and it being cheaper and more distributed is a huge boon for development. And it’s still following Moores law.

We also have the ability to stop the climate effects of global warming by geoengineering whenever we want to. We don’t know all of the affects but as a final option to cool the earth it’s available.

Tech is delivering solutions in a timely manner quite nicely.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by curves2000

.

Everything we want these days is getting delivered, people have no patience.

I don't see this as a bad thing. The biggest gripe I have with car culture is not that there are gas cars on the road, but rather we build copious amounts of infrastructure unsustainably to accommodate them.

If we can remove non-critical car journeys from roads, everyone is better off for it. Taxpayers, governments, environmentalists, and the end consumer who doesn't need to be inconvenienced going shopping all the time, especially when most things can either be carried on a bike, walked with a backpack, or delivered in a reasonably sized van.

As a new parent, I love having things shipped to my house. Waaaaaaay better than the alternative.

Reduce reasons to drive, improve public transit and microtransit options, and cities will benefit greatly.

[curves2000]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

I don't see this as a bad thing. The biggest gripe I have with car culture is not that there are gas cars on the road, but rather we build copious amounts of infrastructure unsustainably to accommodate them.

If we can remove non-critical car journeys from roads, everyone is better off for it. Taxpayers, governments, environmentalists, and the end consumer who doesn't need to be inconvenienced going shopping all the time, especially when most things can either be carried on a bike, walked with a backpack, or delivered in a reasonably sized van.

As a new parent, I love having things shipped to my house. Waaaaaaay better than the alternative.

Reduce reasons to drive, improve public transit and microtransit options, and cities will benefit greatly.

In theory I agree, but is what is playing out? Everybody getting basic things delivered all the time, but people are still out all the time.

My parents and other older people point this out all the time. "Why is there all this random traffic in the middle of day?" "Why are all the shops, supermarket, pharmacy, cafe's all busy?" "Anybody working? Why is everybody out?"

I do virtually no online shopping except for an item or two a year. Friends of mine who buy virtually everything online, get Skip the dishes daily and are out all the time are prime examples.

Everything has become a throw away culture, cheap, fast, easy, return whatever, buy it in 3 different sizes and colours and return the rest.

So many things to me just seem so wasteful personally

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by curves2000

In theory I agree, but is what is playing out? Everybody getting basic things delivered all the time, but people are still out all the time.

My parents and other older people point this out all the time. "Why is there all this random traffic in the middle of day?" "Why are all the shops, supermarket, pharmacy, cafe's all busy?" "Anybody working? Why is everybody out?"

I do virtually no online shopping except for an item or two a year. Friends of mine who buy virtually everything online, get Skip the dishes daily and are out all the time are prime examples.

Everything has become a throw away culture, cheap, fast, easy, return whatever, buy it in 3 different sizes and colours and return the rest.

So many things to me just seem so wasteful personally

Oh, that's all me. I drive around to 3 different stores looking for something, get frustrated when it is out of stock or not available, go home and order it from Amazon like I should have in the first place. Sometimes delivery is better for the environment.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by curves2000

In theory I agree, but is what is playing out? Everybody getting basic things delivered all the time, but people are still out all the time.

My parents and other older people point this out all the time. "Why is there all this random traffic in the middle of day?" "Why are all the shops, supermarket, pharmacy, cafe's all busy?" "Anybody working? Why is everybody out?"

I do virtually no online shopping except for an item or two a year. Friends of mine who buy virtually everything online, get Skip the dishes daily and are out all the time are prime examples.

Everything has become a throw away culture, cheap, fast, easy, return whatever, buy it in 3 different sizes and colours and return the rest.

So many things to me just seem so wasteful personally

Yeah perhaps some of this true, but you're arguing two different things. The convenience of home shipping has disrupted retail economics, and that convenience shows no signs of abating. I'm not talking about Amazon, but other companies are offering free shipping, there are delivery vans for groceries everywhere, STD bikes all over the place, it's a complete industry shift.

I don't think the "no patience" thing is necessarily bad either. Standards get adjusted over time. It's part of growth in capitalist and global markets where consumers are king.

Now the efficacy of products and their wastefulness, that's another issue. I agree that people are throwing items away at incredible rates. But I think that's a reflection of cultural expectations as highly consumptive creatures, which I see inevitably shifting towards more sustainability (because we have to). For example, throwaway fashion is becoming more of an obvious issue with designers trying to address it. Also, things like circular economies are growing at the grassroots level. There's a great CBC Podcast called Ideas with an episode that covers the growth of circular marketplaces and how it's benefitting people.

Investing in quality products has always been a state of mind and an approach to consumerism that isn't actively taught or embraced at the scale we need (in addition to the benefits of minimalism, right to repair, reuse principles, etc.). But you can't convert everyone to that mindset. We're better off taking a "net zero" approach on consumption so that throwaway products can return to the earth sustainably and safely.

I saw a great documentary yesterday on the benefits of jute as a replacement for some plastics. I hope the global economies shift towards alternative options like this as standards and not exceptions.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by GGG

I think everyone is moving in so many directions and all succeeding wildly better than anyone predicted 10 and 20 years ago.

We have already taken the worst doomsday cases of global warming off the table. The adoption of solar and it being cheaper and more distributed is a huge boon for development. And it’s still following Moores law.

We also have the ability to stop the climate effects of global warming by geoengineering whenever we want to. We don’t know all of the affects but as a final option to cool the earth it’s available.

Tech is delivering solutions in a timely manner quite nicely.

I don't think most people are seeing the incredible progress already being made because they only see what's beside them. Canada's culture is very wasteful but that's more a Canada/US thing and not happening everywhere and it's not necessarily an aspiration for other nations.

[Fuzzy14]

I don't think most people are seeing the incredible progress already being made because they only see what's beside them. Canada's culture is very wasteful but that's more a Canada/US thing and not happening everywhere and it's not necessarily an aspiration for other nations.

Doesn't help that all we get in the news is talk of how the earth will end 30 minutes from now. Very little talk about the progress being made.

[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by GGG

I think everyone is moving in so many directions and all succeeding wildly better than anyone predicted 10 and 20 years ago.

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".

We have already taken the worst doomsday cases of global warming off the table.

Entirely untrue.

The adoption of solar and it being cheaper and more distributed is a huge boon for development. And it’s still following Moores law.

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.

We also have the ability to stop the climate effects of global warming by geoengineering whenever we want to. We don’t know all of the affects but as a final option to cool the earth it’s available.

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.

Tech is delivering solutions in a timely manner quite nicely.

I don't think most people are seeing the incredible progress already being made because they only see what's beside them. Canada's culture is very wasteful but that's more a Canada/US thing and not happening everywhere and it's not necessarily an aspiration for other nations.

Doesn't help that all we get in the news is talk of how the earth will end 30 minutes from now. Very little talk about the progress being made.

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!

language

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?

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy14

Doesn't help that all we get in the news is talk of how the earth will end 30 minutes from now. Very little talk about the progress being made.

Some people thrive on the doomsday narrative.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

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!

language

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

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

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!

language

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?

Have you ever read the Wizard and the Prophet? It’s a really neat history on the food crisis and how the different philosophies of people are applied.

[Bill Bumface]

Some interesting (and optimistic) reads:

We Can Already Stop Climate Change If We Want To

I thought most of us were going to die from the climate crisis. I was wrong.

[edslunch]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

Some interesting (and optimistic) reads:

We Can Already Stop Climate Change If We Want To

I thought most of us were going to die from the climate crisis. I was wrong.

I found the first one in particular very informative, thought the author is a bit over-optimistic: "We could easily stop climate change right now if we wanted."

[Mathgod]

These takes sound nice, but they seem to be dependent on the assumption that everything will go smoothly and there won't be any major obstacles, snags, or unintended consequences along the way.

"worst case scenarios already implausible" The lack of specificity on this perhaps caused some confusion. Yes, the absolute worst scenarios (ie: 6+ degrees of warming) have been taken off the table. But I still consider anything above 2 degrees to be the realm of worst case scenarios (fully aware that there is a large scope of different scenarios contained within that realm). Even getting slightly above 2 degrees is very problematic, as evidenced by the bat#### crazy things we're already seeing, such as rampant wildfires on an unprecedented scale, the Colorado River rapidly shrinking, and increased droughts around the world. And we're only flirting with 1.5 now. What's more, there's reason to believe that the current climate models actually underestimate the amount of damage that is likely to be caused at each level of future warming.

"better transmission can mitigate a lot or even most of that issue globally" Ok, but that's expensive and difficult; who is going to pay for all the new transmission lines and systems, and are those people going to be willing to pay the taxes required to build up that infrastructure? And that's in addition to the cost of the solar panels themselves. Then there's still the issues of land use (how much farm land and/or forests will be displaced?) and responsible disposal (panels contain heavy metals). Look, I'd love it if solar panels were a panacea to climate change. But there's reasons why they aren't a simple one-for-one replacement of fossil fuels as an energy source. If they were, it seems they'd already be more widely used than they are today.

"So we need an interim solution, which is to cool the Earth through aerosols—probably SO2— for just $700M (dirt cheap)." Being extremely dismissive of the possibility of major unintended consequences of geoengineering, is not going to help anyone. Having an honest discussion about it is how we build public trust and social license for something like this. Again, I think deliberate spraying of SO2 into the atmosphere is a bad idea, unless we get to a point where things are so dire that the risks of not doing it outweigh the risks of doing it. I think a better idea is to move so swiftly and emphatically on the energy transition that we won't need to resort to geoengineering.

"irrational fears of acid rain" Acid rain concerns are most certainly not irrational; it does cause harm to ecosystems, crops, and infrastructure. Answers on this are a quick google search away: "acid rain effects on crops" or "acid rain effects on ecosystems".

"they’re just posing and don’t really care about climate change." Completely preposterous, and quite frankly a disgusting accusation. Makes it hard to take someone seriously when they make vile accusations against people they disagree with.

"emissions going down in UK, US, etc" True, but the issue at hand is global emissions. Yes, any and all reductions in emissions should be applauded, and any country taking major action to reduce their own emissions should be celebrated. But the ultimate goal is to get global emissions down as sharply and as quickly as can be feasibly done.

"green energy becoming cost competitive" True, and carbon pricing has, and continues to, play a key role in this.

"we overestimate how many people die in earthquakes, etc" That's a red herring and a distraction, and barely even relevant to the topic at hand. When people talk about bad climate scenarios, the major concern they point out is not the amount of people who die directly in floods per se. Our methods of responding to disaster events has gotten much better in recent decades, and it largely explains why far fewer people die in them compared to earlier decades/centuries. While every death of this kind is nevertheless a tragedy, this isn't the central concern regarding climage change.

One of the most concerning problems (perhaps the most concerning) that climate change presents is potentially hundreds of millions of people who would be displaced by its causes, leading to major social and political upheaval, and inevitably lead to violence and the rise of more Trump-style and Bolsonaro-style fascist movements around the world in retaliation to the mass migration taking place. All we have to do is look at how much discontent there has been in response to the Syrian, Ukrianian, and Central American immigration crises, and how much discontent there has been in response to the inflation of the past few years, and how many people have flocked to right-wing reactionary movements in response. How much worse will it get when these situations ramp up many fold?

Climate change (even assuming it's held to 2 degrees) will mean it's harder to reliably grow crops and avoid crop failures, in a world where the population is still increasing. The combination of mass migration, rising population, instability in food production, rivers drying up, and some costal areas being consumed by the ocean, almost certainly means there will be land/resource disputes, as countries scramble to secure what they can. I have a hard time seeing how this won't result in wars. Wars directly attributable to climate change.

"some people thrive on the doomsday narrative" LOL of course you have to accuse people you don't agree with of having some sort of nefarious agenda. You could have offered a reasonable response like Street Pharmacist and others, but nope, instead you go below the belt and accuse me of having an ulterior motive. Speaks volumes.

[DoubleK]

This popped in my feed and I thought I would share it here.

It applies Maslow's hierarchy of needs to the supply of electricity.

The developed world can talk about the top of the pyramid as they have largely satisfied the bottom two levels. It's the top two that are up for discussion.

When one thinks of the developing world, it's a bit of a different story and it's worse in Sub-Saharan Africa where approximately 80% of the people without access to electricity live.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

This popped in my feed and I thought I would share it here.

It applies Maslow's hierarchy of needs to the supply of electricity.

The developed world can talk about the top of the pyramid as they have largely satisfied the bottom two levels. It's the top two that are up for discussion.

When one thinks of the developing world, it's a bit of a different story and it's worse in Sub-Saharan Africa where approximately 80% of the people without access to electricity live.

This is bang on. Also important to remember that climate change is due to the cumulative emissions up to now and these countries contributed none of it (just 3% of all emissions to date), yet are expected to dig themselves out of poverty without emitting. The developed world must play a role. Africa contains 18% of the world's population and generates only 3% of electricity. Hundreds of millions are without any electricity. Africa also is disproportionately affected by climate change with tropical storms, floods, and droughts. They have the most to lose from climate change and have contributed the least. The developed world needs to play a role here.

Electricity is key for cooling and clean cooking. Burning wood/dung for cooking is associated with really poor health outcomes. Solar matches cooling needs fairly well, but until 2030 or so, Africa can and should use the natural gas resources they've discovered locally to back up some of the best renewable resources on the planet. Using that will only raise their total emissions to date to 3.5% of cumulative emissions and provide a reliable and cheap grid.

[Azure]

The bigger problem is that because countries like Canada with incredible energy expertise like to sit around and act like a bunch of useless morons, China and other less favourable countries are filling the void in Africa with helping them transition out of 3rd world status.

But hey, that natural gas so evil amirite fellow anti-oil, glue myself to the street protester friends?

[Ozy_Flame]

Did someone pee in your cornflakes this morning?

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Did someone pee in your cornflakes this morning?

Is that why he always posts like that? Damn, he really needs to reduce his urine intake... or hell, at least eat Frosted Flakes so his breakfast isn't a completely miserable affair.