Energy Discussion

[taxi1]

I'm guessing no one alive today though will witness consequences. True?

I think you and I are seeing it right now. Our kids and grandkids will be living it.

There's no 100% in life, but just this past week the North Shore of Alaska, currently in 24/7 winter darkness, saw 40 degree Fahrenheit temps. Highest temperature ever in the darkness period in 100+ year records, broke the record for high temperature in December by 6 degrees. That is freakishly high. The weather two summers ago in the Northwest was a freak thing too.

We are now hitting records yearly at a way higher than random pace. Uncorrelated to skyrocketing CO2? Possible, but smart money says they are related.

Kind of like how home run records started falling once PEDs hit the locker room. Something changed.

We are definitely see ocean acidification too. No confusion on that.

 

[sevenhelmet]

We are just running one big-@ss experiment with our planet's dynamic system, raising the CO2 way faster than any geologic record indicates it ever has before. Basically, saying “I wonder what this button does?” And then holding it down. We know that CO2 and temps and ocean Ph correlate, maybe weakly but possibly strongly with an intolerably high probability.

Humans have a long history of failing to take the long view, so I don't expect us to do much about this other than burn baby burn. As noted above, most of the carbon offset stuff is just a feel-good story.

We are going to find out what happens when you dump CO2 into the atmosphere at a quantity not seen in tens of millions of years, and at a rate never seen.

The PETM is the best analogy we have, and it doesn’t bode well.

This is the point of view I take issue with, regarding the climate change alarmist crowd. These arguments often make it sound like the human race is destroying the planet for shits and giggles, which is demonstrably not the case. Guilt trips and shame will not solve this, and may actually be counterproductive to a sustainable future for the human race, by breeding resistance to any real solution. We are currently feeding people by the billions, and providing energy to a majority of them. But we can’t do it with these methods forever- sooner or later we’ll have to pivot to something new.

Politics and economics do play a role, and can shift the slope of the curve, but at the end of the day we using up resources and producing pollution for our own survival. Fossil fuels (which enabled our meteoric population gains to begin with) are the only source of energy which can ensure the needs of the human race are met. That’s the crux of the issue. New tech is needed to solve this issue in a way that doesn’t involve mass famine or war. We need something abundant, reliable, energy-dense, and cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels. It will probably require several methods, as no single source meets our energy needs as well as fossil fuels, currently. We have to look at the whole energy/material cycle objectively when reviewing any real or proposed “solution”.

In short, fossil fuels got us here. They can get us to the next step somewhat gracefully if we use them to our advantage.

 

[taxi1]

Fossil fuels (which enabled our meteoric population gains to begin with) are the only source of energy which can ensure the needs of the human race are met. That’s the crux of the issue.

They (fossil fuels) are also the ones that are going to ensure we (our kids' kids and their kids) are likely going to face an existential crisis. That's the dilemma.

Still, it's the rare case where anticipating isn't better than reacting. The DoD is getting out ahead on this. Can't afford to lose a Tyndall AFB a year.

Even simple things like being honest about rates and risk for insurance in coastal zones...it's like pulling teeth.

 

[Brett327]

So the DOD found another another way to spend billions of dollars other than on people, platforms and weapons. Not news. ?

Yes, DoD will spend billions of dollars to prevent the loss of trillions of dollars worth of critical infrastructure.

 

[Brett327]

likely going to face an existential crisis.

This phrase gets thrown around a lot. I have yet to have someone explain the process where climate change results in the extinction of human civilization. It's hyperbole, which contributes to the credibility problem that climate change activism suffers from, which is counterproductive.

 

[taxi1]

This phrase gets thrown around a lot. I have yet to have someone explain the process where climate change results in the extinction of human civilization.

I”m hyperboling some, but it probably won’t be the climate change that causes the ultimate havoc. It will be our response to it. To the extent that humans are capable of fouling our own nest (nuke, chem, bio, catastrophic wars) climate change greatly increases their probability.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see that sea level rise will drive mass migrations, and we know how migration drives instability just with Syrian refugees crossing into Europe. Now go up in scale. Bangladesh has 10 times the population of Syria, and most of the country sits at sea level. It is not if, it is when they start migrating. Probably next door. Could they destabilize India? Stable genius nuclear power? Heck yeah. Nothing good will come of that.

Plenty of other examples.

 

[Brett327]

It doesn’t take much imagination to see that sea level rise will drive mass migrations, and we know how migration drives instability just with Syrian refugees crossing into Europe. Now go up in scale. Bangladesh has 10 times the population of Syria, and most of the country sits at sea level. It is not if, it is when they start migrating. Probably next door. Could they destabilize India? Stable genius nuclear power? Heck yeah. Nothing good will come of that.

Plenty of other examples

None of this equals an extinction level event, which is my point. Let's all ratchet down the rhetoric a notch or two, shall we? Like I said, it's counterproductive to real buy in by those who are rightly skeptical of such claims.

 

[taxi1]

None of this equals an extinction level event, which is my point. Let's all ratchet down the rhetoric a notch or two, shall we? Like I said, it's counterproductive to real buy in by those who are rightly skeptical of such claims.

Ok Brett. For you I will replace existential crisis with global shitstorm.

 

[Randy Daytona]

With any luck by then we will have dropped the guilt trips and virtue-signaling, and actually have spent the time and sweat to develop energy tech that is sustainable, and has the availability and power density to meet our needs. Maybe with some good ole nuclear fission (leveraging newer designs) to help us along the way.

If not, we'll be looking at a very different future, likely with very different- i.e. lower- global population levels. How that affects our kids will depend on the geopolitical details of that change, and where they live.

Not energy, but rather agriculture, as western governments discuss confiscating farmer’s lands all in the name of climate change.

Curbing the environmental impact of agriculture will put farmers from the Netherlands to New Zealand out of business. They’re resisting. ​

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1601246301462601732

 

[Notanaviator]

None of this equals an extinction level event, which is my point. Let's all ratchet down the rhetoric a notch or two, shall we? Like I said, it's counterproductive to real buy in by those who are rightly skeptical of such claims.

Both of y’all would like Termination Shock. Neal Stephenson has some great stuff, but this was an enjoyable read that deals with exactly the lines between “not great byproducts of” and “everyone killed each other off”

 

[sevenhelmet]

Not energy, but rather agriculture, as western governments discuss confiscating farmer’s lands all in the name of climate change.

Curbing the environmental impact of agriculture will put farmers from the Netherlands to New Zealand out of business. They’re resisting. ​

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1601246301462601732

View attachment 37034

A classic example of response (and subsequent backlash) being worse than the problem it was intended to solve.

Other examples:
-mandating replacement of quality equipment with unproven and unstandardized technologies.
-bulldozing forests to make way for wind farms
-blanket approving “green initiatives” with little to no accountability. If it has green in the title, it must good!
-subsidizing solar companies that fail to provide results, while standing in the way of modern nuclear plant development.

I think some of the “ZOMG, climate!” crowd is just playing another kind of popularity contest, where the most hysteria wins. When they carry policy and otherwise intelligent people along with them, they do real damage.

The real irony is, they hurt their own cause.

 

[sevenhelmet]

I”m hyperboling some, but it probably won’t be the climate change that causes the ultimate havoc. It will be our response to it. To the extent that humans are capable of fouling our own nest (nuke, chem, bio, catastrophic wars) climate change greatly increases their probability.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see that sea level rise will drive mass migrations, and we know how migration drives instability just with Syrian refugees crossing into Europe. Now go up in scale. Bangladesh has 10 times the population of Syria, and most of the country sits at sea level. It is not if, it is when they start migrating. Probably next door. Could they destabilize India? Stable genius nuclear power? Heck yeah. Nothing good will come of that.

Plenty of other examples.

This is highly speculative (“for want of a nail, the war was lost”), and well beyond the scope of setting appropriate, reasonable policy toward energy and farming.

Hysterics inevitably result in extreme policies and extreme backlash. Neither is going to have the effect you want, and may actually increase the chance of bad outcomes.

 

[taxi1]

This is highly speculative

Which part? That Bangladesh will have lots of climate refugees? That is going on right now, today.

Are people more knowledgeable than me thinking about this sort of thing? Yes they are.

Cherry picking from the doc...

...nearly 160 million people live in Bangladesh, nearly half of them at sea level...Al-Qaeda and affiliates of ISIS are currently active in Bangladesh...80 million people fleeing an uninhabitable portion of their country...nowhere to go...India, is a nuclear armed country persistently in conflict with Pakistan...steps the U.S. can take in an area where future intervention is highly likely...Recommendation: (A) Develop Bangladesh Relief Campaign Plan as notional plan for preparing for broader climate change-related requirements.

 

[Randy Daytona]

From Ian Bremmer

 

[number9]

From Ian Bremmer

View attachment 37036

Ok, now adjust that graph for population.