Why the human race will never solve the climate crisis.

[Binkie The Clown]

You can see it everywhere, even right here on DU. Almost everyone has some favorite issue they think is more important than climate change. Until the human race as a whole realizes that there are no issues as important as climate change, we will never solve it. And that, my friends, is never going to happen.

[brooklynite]

1. So your view is that we can only deal with one issue at a time?

[CrackityJones75]

6. Right?

Hey this covid thing… We are going to have to put that on the back burner for a while.

[brooklynite]

15. More to the point, since we don't all agree that COVID is most important...

…we can’t solve that either?

[Kaleva]

35. We don't see much evidence of people walking and chewing gun at the same time

Post after post about what people are doin to lessen their chances of being infected but rare are the posts where a member describes how they moved to higher ground, bought some land they intend to move to or have already moved to, learning new skills or other activities where the goal is to adapt to climate change.

[genxlib]

2. I am equally pessimistic

We won't solve it because it would require a vast amount of community caring and compromise.

Covid has shown us that we don't have the will for that.

We are left to adapt and it will be both expensive and tragic.

We can always hold out hope for a scientific magic bullet but I don't even think we can count on that. Even if we come up with the magic potion that could make it all go away, 1/3 of the population will go down fighting it with their last breath. Covid has shown that too.

[DanieRains]

3. Elysium

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)

[Roisin Ni Fiachra]

4. Greed, and the stupid it fosters, will prevent any significant action on climate change.

"Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money."
- Alanis Obomsawin

[CrackityJones75]

5. Of course humans will solve it.

It may be after catastrophic results but yes humans will live through it. Or possibly rather live with it.

[ananda]

7. Water, wind, and fire...

For some reasons, all the fires out west and other
places are really disturbing more than anything
and more than ever.

But the wind and water is disturbing too.

[Klaralven]

8. All you need to do is convert a system sourcing 160,000 billion KWhr / year to something else

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption

And consumption is rising pretty steadily.

[Xoan]

17. Easy, peasy!!

[Lancero]

38. Amusingly, your own link lays out plans on how to do that. Pity that the issue is...

A complete lack of will to actually do so.

[Chainfire]

9. People with lots of money make the decisions

they make their money by polluting. They feel like that they and their children will be well positioned to survive climate change, and they don't give a rat's ass about the rest of us. That is why we won't deal with climate change.

We know what needs doing, we just don't have the will to do it.

[marie999]

10. Greed is one reason.

Others are human nature not doing anything meaningful until it is too late. 3rd world countries wanting to have what the industrial countries have such as electricity. 3rd world countries use older cars because they can not afford new ones especially electric cars. Climate change will not cause the extinction of the human race. After the population gets low enough, the Earth will be able to regenerate itself.

[modrepub]

11. Reflections Of A Late Middle Age Man

Was a grad student in the late 80s/early 90s when "Global Warming" was the hot topic. It didn't take me long to believe the connection between burning fossil fuel (CO2 injection) and warming global temperatures. The main topic at that point was, would cloud cover in a warming world counter the radiative impacts (it wouldn't).

The actual "science" or more accurately physics was worked out in the late 19th century. It was our lack of a more fuller understanding the global carbon cycle that we lacked. And that wasn't possible until Plate Tectonics became a truly viable theory in the late 1960s; I maintain Plate Tectonics is as controversial as Evolution because of its link to Climate Change via the carbon cycle. With this theory, scientists were able to piece together the Earth's climate history and provide a positive link between atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperatures. Warmer epochs in Earth's history correspond to higher global temperatures and periods of glaciation occur when CO2 levels are relatively low.

I had this epiphany back then that we'd have a hard time taking any action because of the radical life-style changes we'd have to take to mitigate the situation. In a gross sense, the folks who controlled the oil/coal/natural gas reserves were not going to just walk away from all of the money they had tied up in these reserves. Surprisingly, the oil companies investments in global atmospheric circulation models for exploring for new oil reserves helped scientists fine-tune their models to look at future climate scenarios. It's also the reason most oil companies don't argue much against the impacts of fossil fuel burning (now these arguments are left to fringe science and politicians).

Unfortunately, the current outlook is not good. But to be honest, the Earth has functioned quite well with much higher CO2 levels. Whether we will or not is another story. We have to innovate our way out of this. I have hope that other bright folks are going to enable us to continue moving forward with other forms of energy, better storage ideas and more reasonable consumption patterns.

What frustrates me most is political resistance to change (on the large scale), the doomsayers who's arguments have left most folks uncaring (why do something when we're doomed anyway) and most folks inability to make some simple changes that collectively would help us address this issue. I'm hopeful people will still keep trying in spite of the circumstances.

[fescuerescue]

12. we pretty much have to live like the Amish

worldwide to get this solved. (not the religious part, but the energy use part)

and I doubt even anyone on this site wants to do that.


It'll happen though. After life changing catastrophically, that's exactly where the survivors will be.

[Kaleva]

34. A net zero lifestyle isn't something most here would want.

[Niagara]

43. They're not perfect, but the Amish use resources like diesel and gas.

They use wringer-style washing machines and most have modern refrigeration which is typically powered by gas.


They may not own a vehicle, but most depend on long-distance rides by the English. My grandfather use to drive them around on occasion.



Depending on the ordnung, they use cell phones too. Cell phones are made from metals and petroleum.



Most Amish farm to make a profit, so they use pesticides too. Pesticides release harmful emissions on the climate.

[lagomorph777]

13. The climate crisis will solve humans.

Any species that manage to survive will breathe a sigh of relief when we're gone.

[Klaralven]

18. Cheap sources of hydrocarbons will exhaust before climate change becomes the limiting factor

The drop in hydrocarbon energy availability will split humanity into a small higher-tech percentage using nuclear power plus renewables, and a larger percentage that sinks back into a low-population pre-industrial existence after a period of war, famine and disease.

[lagomorph777]

19. That's way outside mainstream scientific thinking.

As are most of your posts.

[dumbcat]

22. Interesting ...

I had never thought about it that way, but it makes a lot of sense. There will be a lot fewer folks with a viable source of energy, and then the rest will be back at subsistence level farming and hunter/gathering. I'll have to think on that for a while.

[Klaralven]

37. Before there was the IPCC there was the Club of Rome and "Limits to Growth"

Validation

In 2008, physicist Graham Turner at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia published a paper called "A Comparison of 'The Limits to Growth' with Thirty Years of Reality".[12] It compared the past thirty years of data with the scenarios laid out in the 1972 book and found that changes in industrial production, food production, and pollution are all congruent with one of the book's three scenarios—that of "business as usual". This scenario in Limits points to economic and societal collapse in the 21st century.[43] In 2010, Nørgård, Peet, and Ragnarsdóttir called the book a "pioneering report". They said that, "its approach remains useful and that its conclusions are still surprisingly valid ... unfortunately the report has been largely dismissed by critics as a doomsday prophecy that has not held up to scrutiny."

...

In 2020, an analysis by Gaya Herrington (Sustainability and Dynamic System Analysis Lead at KPMG in the United States but in a personal capacity) was published in Yale's Journal of Industrial Ecology.[51] The study assessed whether, given key data known in 2020 about factors important for the "Limits to Growth" report, the original report's conclusions are supported. In particular, the 2020 study examined updated quantitative information about ten factors, namely population, fertility rates, mortality rates, industrial output, food production, services, non-renewable resources, persistent pollution, human welfare, and ecological footprint, and concluded that the "Limits to Growth" prediction is essentially correct in that continued economic growth is unsustainable under a "business as usual" model.[51] The study found that current empirical data is broadly consistent with the 1972 projections, and that if major changes to the consumption of resources are not undertaken, economic growth will peak and then rapidly decline by around 2040.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth#Validation

[Binkie The Clown]

39. "Once, in the past, somebody was wrong. Therefore everybody is always wrong."

So since climate change is not real, or at least not serious, we don't have to worry about it. Therefore nothing will be done, as I stated in my OP

[Klaralven]

41. Actually, in the past the Club of Rome was right, and "Limits to Growth" has been vindicated.

Civilization is using up a variety of resources. As they exhaust, "progress" will grind to a halt and then reverse.

The atmosphere as a place to dump waste CO2 is only one of the resources we are using up. It's not at all clear that global warming is the thing that will cause disaster first.

[Elessar Zappa]

14. I view voting rights as more important

because without them, Republicans will be “elected” and we know they won’t address climate change.

[lagomorph777]

16. Voting rights are critically important. Nothing can be solved without fixing that.

Ultimately, the climate problem will solve itself, if we choose not to address it. And we won't like how that goes. If we don't fix voting rights, we won't have any say in climate.

[Elessar Zappa]

21. Exactly!

We gotta have the right people in office.

[Binkie The Clown]

40. If the U.S. could solve the problem unilaterally, then you might be right. But it's a global problem

Fixing a local American voting rights problem will have no effect on the rest of the world, and the rest of the world is the huge majority of people.

[lagomorph777]

44. The US can't fix climate alone, but we sure can break it alone.

We have to repair our democracy, or the world is screwed.

[Kaleva]

36. Neither party seems focused on preparing the citizens to adapt.

[hunter]

20. The obvious solution is nuclear power.

Alas, there's this entirely bizarre consensus that hybrid natural gas / wind generation is somehow better.

Natural gas is going to destroy the world as we know it because it is cheap and people falsely believe it is clean.

[lagomorph777]

23. Not many here are promoting fossil fuels.

In real life, the solution will be renewables and better storage.

Nuclear is OK for space applications but not suitable here on Earth.

[hunter]

24. What better storage?

Solar and wind energy can go out for weeks at a time over very large regions. The wind stops blowing and the skies are overcast.

Batteries will never fill those gaps.

Sadly, wind and solar power systems are simply not viable without natural gas "back up" power. In places that have aggressively pursued wind and solar energy systems gas has become the predominant energy source.

I used to be an anti-nuclear activist but I think the human race has worked itself into a corner. Feeding and comfortably housing nearly eight billion people requires concentrated energy sources.

We can't keep using fossil fuels. If we do billions of people will suffer and die.

And we can't all move back to the country and farm as our eighteenth century ancestors did because there are too many of us.

The only drop-in replacement for fossil fuels is nuclear power.

[lagomorph777]

25. Multiple storage options are coming online or in development.

Gravity storage (either traditional hydro, or large solid masses on cables)
Iron-air battery (1/10th of the cost of lithium)
Flywheel
Compressed air
Hydrogen
Heated graphite blocks

Your claim that the both wind and solar can go out for weeks at a time over large regions is somewhat dubious. These tend to be complementary. Also, grids are growing longer links, including international and HVDC links.

Also, wind and solar are being complemented with other renewables, such as tidal, wave, and geothermal.

[cinematicdiversions]

26. Nuclear is much more suitable than the current alternatives

Would we rather be Finland with clean nuclear or Germany with dirty coal?

[lagomorph777]

27. False dichotomy.

We'd rather be Iceland, with 85% renewables.

[Celerity]

31. Iceland (which I have been to multiple times) is a micro-state with extraordinarily unique

advantages on a multiplicity of levels, especially compared to the gaping maw that is the modern American energy consumption-driven zeitgeist.

[Kaleva]

33. Iceland has geothermal which provides energy 24/7

[Celerity]

28. The EROI (energy return on investment) for renewables is very poor versus nuclear

Any attempts at solutions that don't include advanced tech nuclear are doomed to fail, barring some paradigm-changing breakthrough in fusion or some other previously unknown energy production.

The wonderful DU'er NNadir, an actual physicist, has written volumes on this.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/~NNadir

The emergent next gen nuclear technologies are also far more safe all-around than the previous gens.

[Elessar Zappa]

29. Exactly, we must open our minds to nuclear.

[Steelrolled]

42. Could you image if we had an Apollo-like program for Nuclear Power 2.0 starting in the mid-2000s?

One with modern design, much greater standardization for lower cost and improved safety, and regulatory approval processes commensurate with the risk of delay?

One that would have inspired young engineers, construction works, managers, et al?

One with a parallel Power Grid 2.0 with greater capacity for EVs, more electric heating, and for distributed wind/solar power sources?

One with a level of federal spending on the main project, plus billions for "supporting" (aka pork) projects, that could have gained bipartisan support, and would have been loved by Wall St?

One, which by year 2021, would be well on its way to eliminating all coal plants, and most natural gas plants, and at the same time further reducing energy imports?

Sadly, anti-science had the bigger voice.

I would like to think we could still do it, but I can't.

[greenjar_01]

30. Deep

[SunImp]

32. We also have an endless amount of Fake Doctors, Scientists, Professors, Politicians, etc who keep

feeding people lies.

Link to tweet