Environment & Energy

OKIsItJustMe

(21,875 posts)

7. No one forgot about it - you may want to read the article

Tue Dec 2, 2014, 11:00 PM

Dec 2014

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change

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We decided to combine our energy innovation study’s best-case scenario results with Hansen’s climate model to see whether a 55 percent emission cut by 2050 would bring the world back below that 350-ppm threshold. Our calculations revealed otherwise. Even if every renewable energy technology advanced as quickly as imagined and they were all applied globally, atmospheric CO[font size=1]₂[/font] levels wouldn’t just remain above 350 ppm; they would continue to rise exponentially due to continued fossil fuel use. So our best-case scenario, which was based on our most optimistic forecasts for renewable energy, would still result in severe climate change, with all its dire consequences: shifting climatic zones, freshwater shortages, eroding coasts, and ocean acidification, among others. Our reckoning showed that reversing the trend would require both radical technological advances in cheap zero-carbon energy, as well as a method of extracting CO[font size=1]₂[/font] from the atmosphere and sequestering the carbon.

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What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change�Today�s renewable energy technologies won�t� [View all] OKIsItJustMe Nov 2014 OP

Cheerful. Jackpine Radical Nov 2014 #1

Good article pscot Nov 2014 #2

Ban fossil fuels, ban factory farm meats... hunter Nov 2014 #3

Add the banning of monocrop industrial agriculture. GliderGuider Nov 2014 #4

carbon tax won't work? GreenGreenLimaBean Nov 2014 #5

Big Fusion Reactor PeterClark Dec 2014 #6

No one forgot about it - you may want to read the article OKIsItJustMe Dec 2014 #7

Co2 scrubbers, I wondered about that nearly 10 yrs ago FogerRox Dec 2014 #8

A number of schemes have been suggested, including GMO trees OKIsItJustMe Dec 2014 #10

I wonder if fusion-powered CO2 scrubbers would help with this problem: GliderGuider Dec 2014 #9

�How do windmills, solar panels and even fusion power change this trajectory?� OKIsItJustMe Dec 2014 #11

Which goes against every institution we've built The2ndWheel Dec 2014 #12

�If more and more people start having fewer kids, how does society continue to function?� OKIsItJustMe Dec 2014 #14

Something is going on The2ndWheel Dec 2014 #17

Workforce growth is about 1.1% in the US FogerRox Dec 2014 #28

Education alone works in limited cases, like Sub-Saharan Africa. GliderGuider Dec 2014 #13

Isn�t wealth also linked to education? OKIsItJustMe Dec 2014 #15

Wealth requires more than education GliderGuider Dec 2014 #16

Surely they are linked though OKIsItJustMe Dec 2014 #18

The UN is now projecting a world population of 11 billion by 2100 GliderGuider Dec 2014 #19

�Prediction is Difficult, Especially the Future� - Niels Bohr OKIsItJustMe Dec 2014 #20

That's true. OTOH, what we are seeing could be just a natural slowdown in reproduction GliderGuider Dec 2014 #21

Years ago, I worked briefly with a mouse plague researcher OKIsItJustMe Dec 2014 #22

Was that Calhoun, or someone else? GliderGuider Dec 2014 #23

(It was someone else) OKIsItJustMe Dec 2014 #24

On paper it would work, as OK said, FogerRox Dec 2014 #27

The Direct Drivers of Mass Extinction: GliderGuider Dec 2014 #29

Yup. FogerRox Dec 2014 #31

Fusion has always been 20 years away. Odin2005 Dec 2014 #25

Too bad climate change isn't... nt GliderGuider Dec 2014 #26

going to renewables is of course a sustainable way to go vs fossil fuels use. But that still leaves Bill USA Dec 2014 #30