WTF Climate Change News

[Dakota Tebaldi]

This good for 4 or 8 years?

That's up to us.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

That's up to us.

 

[danielravennest]

This good for 4 or 8 years?

The climate accord is more symbolic than concrete action. It tells the world we are serious about it again. The action will come from federal budgets and laws.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

It tells the world we are serious about it again

This good for 4 or 8 years?

 

[Free]

This good for 4 or 8 years?

 

[Archer]

This young lady is on fire.

 

[danielravennest]

This good for 4 or 8 years?

My personal opinion is the death of fossil fuels is inevitable. For example, through Oct 2020, coal dropped 37% since Trump took office, despite his efforts to support it. In the same period, renewables of all kinds grew 30%. The change is being driven by economics. Government policy can slow or accelerate the change, but it will happen regardless.

By economics, I mean that power companies want to cut costs like any other business, and solar, wind, and batteries are now much cheaper than coal, and about even to natural gas. But gas isn't getting cheaper, while renewables are. So eventually they will beat it too. For vehicles, the running cost of electric is lower, while the purchase price is a little higher. In a few years the purchase price will be competitive for the average new car. So a lot more people will choose them. If the government reinstates the EV tax credit, the crossover will just come sooner.

 

[Beebo Brink]

| EarthSky

A crack on the Antarctic ice shelf grew dramatically in late 2020 into 2021. Scientists are watching to see if the rapidly accelerating crack will cause the shelf to rip apart before Antarctica's sunlit summer season - going on now - comes to an end.

earthsky.org

 

[Beebo Brink]

I found this article especially harrowing, at an emotional level, because it's a personal issue I've dealt with for so many years. When personal effort isn't enough to change our fate, when no one reacts with sufficient alarm to an overwhelming emergency, what do you do? How do you live your life?

The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try.

A climate scientist spent years trying to get people to pay attention to the disaster ahead. His wife is exhausted. His older son thinks there’s no future. And nobody but him will use the outdoor toilet he built to shrink his carbon footprint.

www.propublica.org

 

[Sid]

Don't read the reactions.
They are depressing.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The Financial Times on the impact the climate crisis is having on Wall Street. I'm particularly interested in the weight they give to the speech Mark Carney, then Governor of the Bank of England, gave in 2015 on the subject -- I thought at the time that it was going to be considerably more important than most government initiatives, and it seems the article's author shares my view.

FT: Wall Street’s new mantra: green is good

 

[Beebo Brink]

World Losing Ice 57 Percent Faster Than In the 1990s, Study Finds

e360.yale.edu

During the same period, ice loss from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets and mountain glaciers raised the global sea level by 1.36 inches. “The ice sheets are now following the worst-case climate warming scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” Slater said in a statement. “Sea level rise on this scale will have very serious impacts on coastal communities this century.”

 

[Beebo Brink]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Economics' failure over destruction of nature presents ‘extreme risks’

New measures of success needed to avoid catastrophic breakdown, landmark review finds

www.theguardian.com

Full 600 page report and summaries here:

Final Report - The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review

Final Report of the Independent Review on the Economics of Biodiversity led by Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta.

www.gov.uk

Headline messages (10 page pdf)

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/957629/Dasgupta_Review_-_Headline_Messages.pdf

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

My personal opinion is the death of fossil fuels is inevitable. For example, through Oct 2020, coal dropped 37% since Trump took office, despite his efforts to support it. In the same period, renewables of all kinds grew 30%. The change is being driven by economics. Government policy can slow or accelerate the change, but it will happen regardless.

Yes, the death is invevitable because of peak oil. When fossil fuels get expensive the pressure will be finally there to move on to another type of energy source.

You might now discuss if we are still before or after peak oil, fact is that it will happen. And the problem is not that there might be not much oil left in 50+ years, but when oil really gets expensive in let's say 5-10 years.

By the way the death of fossil fuels does not mean the death of ICEs in vehicles. I simply don't see the electrification in trucks, tractors, ships, air planes, heavy duty construction/agricultural machines coming. These are all types of machinery which want to get refilled quickly in order to be able to work within economic parameters.

So it's either synthetic fuels for them with ICEs or hydrogen with fuel cells and buffer battery.

The problem with synthetic fuels as well as hydrogen is the poor power efficiency, so high prices. But what we always want is cheap energy.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Yes, the death is invevitable because of peak oil. When fossil fuels get expensive the pressure will be finally there to move on to another type of energy source.

You might now discuss if we are still before or after peak oil, fact is that it will happen. And the problem is not that there might be not much oil left in 50+ years, but when oil really gets expensive in let's say 5-10 years.

By the way the death of fossil fuels does not mean the death of ICEs in vehicles. I simply don't see the electrification in trucks, tractors, ships, air planes, heavy duty construction/agricultural machines coming. These are all types of machinery which want to get refilled quickly in order to be able to work within economic parameters.

So it's either synthetic fuels for them with ICEs or hydrogen with fuel cells and buffer battery.

The problem with synthetic fuels as well as hydrogen is the poor power efficiency, so high prices. But what we always want is cheap energy.

Tesla motors has already been working on/released a long-ish haul truck that's electric. And considering that car companies are moving away from gas burning vehicles even now, I think it will be sooner than you think.

In the US, the oil industry is dying.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

What's dying is your fracking industry; the oil industry is alive and kicking, and will for a long time to come.

Have you ever read experience reports of drivers let's say using a Tesla Model X with a tow-bar and pulling a caravan with it? Towing a 1400 kg caravan with this doubles the energy consumptions and greatly reduces its range.

That's the problem with electrical trucks: you really do need a fat and heavy battery, and are limited to quite a short range. So it might be a thing for short distance trucking, if you are willing to spend the money and take the bet that the battery will last as long as a diesel engine, which is 1 million miles and more.

For long distance trucking though electrical trucks powered by batteries only are not a good option; there's a reason why companies like Nikola, Hyundai, GM, Mercedes and others are either researching or already producing fuel cell powered electrical trucks, because they do offer longer range at less refueling time. And you don't need to drive around such a thick battery pack like in Tesla's semi.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

What's dying is your fracking industry; the oil industry is alive and kicking, and will for a long time to come.

Have you ever read experience reports of drivers let's say using a Tesla Model X with a tow-bar and pulling a caravan with it? Towing a 1400 kg caravan with this doubles the energy consumptions and greatly reduces its range.

That's the problem with electrical trucks: you really do need a fat and heavy battery, and are limited to quite a short range. So it might be a thing for short distance trucking, if you are willing to spend the money and take the bet that the battery will last as long as a diesel engine, which is 1 million miles and more.

For long distance trucking though electrical trucks powered by batteries only are not a good option; there's a reason why companies like Nikola, Hyundai, GM, Mercedes and others are either researching or already producing fuel cell powered electrical trucks, because they do offer longer range at less refueling time. And you don't need to drive around such a thick battery pack like in Tesla's semi.

Or freight companies will have to make greater use of rail links (or waterways).

Twenty years ago I would have said that banning the sale of domestic cars with petrol and diesel engines was a pipe-dream but it's happening in the UK, France, and several other countries too, over the next ten or twenty years.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

What's dying is your fracking industry; the oil industry is alive and kicking, and will for a long time to come.

Have you ever read experience reports of drivers let's say using a Tesla Model X with a tow-bar and pulling a caravan with it? Towing a 1400 kg caravan with this doubles the energy consumptions and greatly reduces its range.

That's the problem with electrical trucks: you really do need a fat and heavy battery, and are limited to quite a short range. So it might be a thing for short distance trucking, if you are willing to spend the money and take the bet that the battery will last as long as a diesel engine, which is 1 million miles and more.

For long distance trucking though electrical trucks powered by batteries only are not a good option; there's a reason why companies like Nikola, Hyundai, GM, Mercedes and others are either researching or already producing fuel cell powered electrical trucks, because they do offer longer range at less refueling time. And you don't need to drive around such a thick battery pack like in Tesla's semi.

My husband works for a company handling their NQA [so nuclear quality], but one of the branches he works with started being primarily for oil, because its pipe stress - the oil industry is dying. I've also got friends with engineering spouses who worked in oil, and had to switch to something else, because the jobs. are. not. there.

Just like coal jobs.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

The oil industry in the USA is dying is not equal to that the global oil consumption is on the decline. On the contrary, the global oil demand until 2030 is forecasted as increasing. We are going to continue to use oil for a long long time.

The global car fleet was around 1.3 billion in 2015; the global car production capacity around 67 million - meaning replacing the whole fleet would take at the moment roughly 20 years. If you got an all electrical capacity, which is not the case. Tesla produced last year around 500.000 cars, and might be in the one million capacity range within 2-3 years.

To cite the standard book on that topic, the "World Energy Outlook" from the IEA 2020 edition:

Oil demand recovers from its historic drop in 2020, edging ahead of pre-crisis levels by 2023 in the STEPS. Nevertheless, compared to the WEO‐2019 STEPS projection demand is 2 mb/d lower in 2030 and plateaus thereafter. Vehicle turnover slows, with 9 million consumers deferring car replacements in 2020, but sales of electric vehicles remain resilient. While road transport accounted for 60% of oil demand growth in the last decade, petrochemicals account for 60% in the next decade, largely as a result of rising demand for plastics, notably for packaging materials. The dramatic changes in consumer behaviour in 2020 have a limited overall effect on oil demand in the long run, although aviation takes a while to recover to pre-crisis levels.

Outlook for energy demand – World Energy Outlook 2020 – Analysis - IEA

World Energy Outlook 2020 - Analysis and key findings. A report by the International Energy Agency.

www.iea.org