WTF Climate Change News

[WolfEyes]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

‘Biggest clean energy disaster in years’: UK auction secures no offshore windfarms

No new offshore windfarms will go ahead in the UK after the latest government auction, in what critics have called the biggest clean energy policy failure in almost a decade.

None of the companies hoping to build big offshore windfarms in UK waters took part in the government’s annual auction, which awards contracts to generate renewable electricity for 15 years at a set price.

The companies had warned ministers repeatedly that the auction price was set too low for offshore windfarms to take part after costs in the sector soared by about 40% because of inflation across their supply chains.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Texan grid operator ERCOT paid during the last heat wave this year a bitcoin miner 31.7 million US$ in energy credits, more than they would have mined, to shutdown its crypto mining farm so that the electrical power becomes available for air conditioning.

https://www.virtualverse.one/forums/threads/the-russia-ukraine-war-has-begun.10892/page-144#post-228456

 

[Beebo Brink]

Thank you for that video, Wolf. I can't say I learned anything new, but it's reassuring to have my perspective confirmed by someone with significantly more direct scientific knowledge of human ecology than I possess.

I suspect that either Rees or one of his close cohorts used to post on Democratic Underground, where concepts such as carrying capacity and overshoot were discussed in depth. Like Rees, I believe that overshoot is our fundamental issue (with climate change as a symptom), and maxxing out carrying capacity is a natural, deeply ingrained behavior in all species, including humans. Curbing that instinct is difficult and requires a paradigm shift in the way we see ourselves in relation to nature.

The point Rees made about indigenous cultures learning to value natural balance due to previous experiences of overshoot also overlaps with some of Jared Diamond's writings. Humans will human, until reality slaps us upside of the head. Industrial nations have been fucking around and are about to find out. It's going to be a very painful lesson.

 

[WolfEyes]

Thank you for that video, Wolf. I can't say I learned anything new, but it's reassuring to have my perspective confirmed by someone with significantly more direct scientific knowledge of human ecology than I possess.

This is why I posted it. This has been my perspective for decades.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

A short story, in which the British PM Rishi Sunak invites an AI system to solve global heating. Like Black Mirror but funnier.

The AI that solved climate change

The Prime Minister thought he had found the key to world survival – or was he just a middle-aged man in a shirt having a go on the latest ChatGPT?

www.newstatesman.com

Evernote link

 

[Beebo Brink]

This is why I posted it. This has been my perspective for decades.

This video has been in the back of my mind since yesterday, so much to think about. On reflection, I realized what was new for me was the way Rees made a clear distinction between ecology and economics. Then he explained how they both diverge from reality by overlooking the other discipline, when they should be intricately related. Economics is like a black hole in my knowledge set, so his insights were useful to my understanding of how so many people are so deeply invested in a perpetual growth paradigm that seems bonkers to me.

Rees also helped clarify why I've been so leery of electric vehicles. I jumped off the EV bandwagon a few years ago, but had trouble articulating the reasons why I felt so uneasy about that "solution." If you define the problem as CO2 emissions, then yes, it makes sense to replace ICE (internal combustion engines) with EV vehicles. But if you define the problem as overshoot, then EV is simply another road to business-as-usual with humans disrupting the ecology of the planet by plundering scarce resources to support an unsustainable lifestyle (universal personal transportation for any whim).

A more sustainable solution is to reduce consumption, use mass transit, and reduce distribution distances for goods. But this solution requires a massive overhaul of our entire infrastructure, not to mention of our lifestyles. There is no (current) motivation to make such sweeping, expensive -- and frankly painful -- changes to our way of life. We'll get there eventually, of course, but only when the conversion is made for us by the collapse of the entire system as we know it.

 

[Free]

I would hope no one is. But humor is where you find it.

 

[Beebo Brink]

 

[WolfEyes]

I would hope no one is. But humor is where you find it.

It's not humor when you are being laughed AT.

 

[Free]

It's not humor when you are being laughed AT.

I laugh AT myself all the time. I'm hilarious.

 

[WolfEyes]

I don't buy the "first time in recorded history" part. Recorded history has existed far longer than recorded weather history. The meteorological records start in 1927, or, at best, goes back to 1880.

 

[WolfEyes]

I laugh AT myself all the time. I'm hilarious.

It's ok to laugh at yourself. It's not ok to laugh at others at their expense.

I laugh with you, not at you.

 

[Free]

It's not ok to laugh at others at their expense.

Can Trump and his ilk be an exception to this rule?

 

[WolfEyes]

Can Trump and his ilk be an exception to this rule?

They're not human so... yeah.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

I laugh AT myself all the time. I'm hilarious.

I'm the best entertainment i know.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Why is there so much misinformation running around? Did these people sleep through science class?

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Rees also helped clarify why I've been so leery of electric vehicles. I jumped off the EV bandwagon a few years ago, but had trouble articulating the reasons why I felt so uneasy about that "solution." If you define the problem as CO2 emissions, then yes, it makes sense to replace ICE (internal combustion engines) with EV vehicles. But if you define the problem as overshoot, then EV is simply another road to business-as-usual with humans disrupting the ecology of the planet by plundering scarce resources to support an unsustainable lifestyle (universal personal transportation for any whim).

The thing about electrical vehicles is that they are not a solution to the problem of traffic jams everywhere, they are just one possible solution for making traffic possible with less CO2 emissions as well as using something else than gasoline/diesel for it.

EVs though come with their own set of problems, mostly since they are in average much heavier then ICE cars - when deployed in millions - the wear and tear on our infrastructure would increase enormously. Also the recycling of old batteries into power banks for homes really is bad.

The more underlying problem is the car itself, the public space it occupies and how North American cities are nowadays designed around cars and nothing else. Also in North America this illogical love for HUGE cars most people never will really need takes its toll on the cities. Most North American cities are totally car dependant, and you cannot exist in those without it. Though - and this was new to me - most North American cities in the past were designed for trains, and looked much more like European cities back then than today.

But starting with the 1940s somethingish most cities were rebuilt for cars, and well - down went everything else in North America.

The problem is that in the states with Elon Musk crippling public infrastructure projects with his bullshit projects like the Las Vegas Loop, Hyperloop and so on and conservatives framing the shift from cars to other means of transportation as "they hate the freedom cars offer" remodeling cities is nearly impossible.

Here's also an interesting video from an Hungarian guy calling himself "Adam Something", who showcases how North American cities looked before cars became a thing, and afterwards.


And here's a Canadian guy who moved five years ago to the Netherlands, where he plans to stay forever and raises his kids, about stroads in North America, comparing it of course with the Netherlands.

So - cars will always be a thing in North America, regardless its engine and power source, as long as cities are not being rebuild at large scale, because in too many cases you cannot live without one. North America is literally mostly build around and for cars.

 

[WolfEyes]

Why is there so much misinformation running around? Did these people sleep through science class?

Someone doesn't understand how displacement, and a few other things, work.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Someone doesn't understand how displacement, and a few other things, work.

Someone who seems never to have heard of land ice and snowlines, either.

ETA

What's Causing Sea-Level Rise? Land Ice Vs. Sea Ice – Science Lesson | NASA JPL Education

Students learn the difference between land ice and sea ice and make a model to see how the melting of each impacts global sea level.

www.jpl.nasa.gov