What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change—Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t…

[OKIsItJustMe]

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

[font face=Serif][font size=5]What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change[/font]
[font size=4]Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us. So what will?[/font]

By Ross Koningstein & David Fork
Posted 18 Nov 2014 | 20:00 GMT

[font size=3]Google cofounder Larry Page is fond of saying that if you choose a harder problem to tackle, you’ll have less competition. This business philosophy has clearly worked out well for the company and led to some remarkably successful “moon shot” projects: a translation engine that knows 80 languages, self-driving cars, and the wearable computer system Google Glass, to name just a few.

Starting in 2007, Google committed significant resources to tackle the world’s climate and energy problems. A few of these efforts proved very successful: Google deployed some of the most energy-efficient data centers in the world, purchased large amounts of renewable energy, and offset what remained of its carbon footprint.

Google’s boldest energy move was an effort known as RE<C, which aimed to develop renewable energy sources that would generate electricity more cheaply than coal-fired power plants do. The company announced that Google would help promising technologies mature by investing in start-ups and conducting its own internal R&D. Its aspirational goal: to produce a gigawatt of renewable power more cheaply than a coal-fired plant could, and to achieve this in years, not decades.

Unfortunately, not every Google moon shot leaves Earth orbit. In 2011, the company decided that RE<C was not on track to meet its target and shut down the initiative. The two of us, who worked as engineers on the internal RE<C projects, were then forced to reexamine our assumptions.

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[Jackpine Radical]

1. Cheerful.

[pscot]

2. Good article

[hunter]

3. Ban fossil fuels, ban factory farm meats...

... shut down the current economic system, implement massive reforestation programs and universal sex education and birth control.

Otherwise we simply have to gracefully accept and adapt to whatever horrors nature unleashes on us.

That's not the same as abandoning all hope. Reducing fossil fuel use and shutting down the worst of them -- tar sands, coal, and fracking -- is still a good idea.

But even if, in some alternate history where practical fusion power and super-batteries had been discovered the 'sixties, and/or nuclear power aggressively pursued, we still wouldn't be living in any sort of 21st century utopia, and might even have increased our rate of environmental destruction.

The math is brutal.

[GliderGuider]

4. Add the banning of monocrop industrial agriculture.

It's amazing how tight the corner that we've jammed ourselves into really is.

[GreenGreenLimaBean]

5. carbon tax won't work?

they lost me when they said taxing carbon won't work because production could move somewhere else. I think that's why they invented treaties.

[PeterClark]

6. Big Fusion Reactor

Let's not forget about the big fusion reactor in the sky: the Sun. It uses nature's own design for a fusion reactor, namely, spherical symmetry and gravitational confinement.

It delivers energy to the surface of the earth at the rate of about 1 kW per square meter. All we have to do is convert it to electricity, and we already know how to do that.

[OKIsItJustMe]

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

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

[font face=Serif][font size=3]...

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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[FogerRox]

8. Co2 scrubbers, I wondered about that nearly 10 yrs ago

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. A number of schemes have been suggested, including GMO trees

http://www.globalccsinstitute.com/publications/modelling-bio-sequestration-reduce-greenhouse-gas-emissions

However, the scale of the solution would need to be similar to the scale of the problem (i.e. huge.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/sucking-carbon-dioxide-out-of-the-air-neat-idea-but-infeasible/2012/04/05/gIQA3t8rxS_blog.html

[GliderGuider]

9. I wonder if fusion-powered CO2 scrubbers would help with this problem:

The 2100 human population of 11 billion is from the UN's latest estimates. Human biomass is estimated at an average of 50 kg per person. Domesticated animal biomass is twice that of humans since we got rid of draft animals. Before then (i.e. 1900) it was about three times as much. Wild animal biomass today is 10% of what it was before we came on the scene in large numbers. Wild animals appear headed for near-total extermination by the end of the century.

How do windmills, solar panels and even fusion power change this trajectory?

[OKIsItJustMe]

11. “How do windmills, solar panels and even fusion power change this trajectory?”

They don’t.

Education on the other hand, can. As I have documented in the past, and you refuse to acknowledge, higher levels of education tend to promote lower total fertility rates.

Similarly, higher levels of education seem to promote lower levels of carbon emissions, interest in conservation, etc.

[The2ndWheel]

12. Which goes against every institution we've built

Everything that we do is geared toward more people doing more things. More customers, more tax payers. It even takes more education to lower fertility rates.

It's sort of like people who save money instead of spending it. That can work great for the people who save their money while others spend it. When more and more people start not spending their money, that doesn't do much to help the economy, and savers get punished.

Higher educated, wealthier people can have fewer kids. Works great, as long as there are people having more kids out there. If more and more people start having fewer kids, how does society continue to function?

[OKIsItJustMe]

14. “If more and more people start having fewer kids, how does society continue to function?”

It will certainly need to go through an adjustment. However, you can see the effects already (or at least I can.)

Checking the 2012 estimate from the Census bureau, I see:

__Age__|____Pop_____
  0 to  9 | 40.526 million
20 to 29 | 42.771 million
45 to 54 | 43.955 million


Clearly, something is going on!

[The2ndWheel]

17. Something is going on

We haven't hit that inflection point yet though. We're still adding people, however it's being done. Both to the US, and the world as a whole.

The question will be the level of adjustment. All of our modern institutions are built for more people doing more things. That's the easy setting. Like a bank, you just add a few zeros, and everything is fine. Might even be able to get away with fewer people, if they're doing more. That one is tricky though, since there only so many hours in a day, and only so much a person can do.

If we have more people doing less, that can probably only result in trouble. Fewer people doing less would be sort of, well, what's the point of society as we've come to know it?

It's be an interesting century no matter what happens.

[FogerRox]

28. Workforce growth is about 1.1% in the US

Expected to decline to .7% to .8% by 2050.

[GliderGuider]

13. Education alone works in limited cases, like Sub-Saharan Africa.

In most other cases changes in fertility rates are more strongly linked (in various ways) to changes in wealth. See the OP I just put up: http://www.democraticunderground.com/112778586

[OKIsItJustMe]

15. Isn’t wealth also linked to education?

Chicken? Egg?

Certainly, a lower number of children tends to mean an increase in wealth for all individuals in the family. (It takes money to raise a child. Fewer children, with constant income, implies more money per child.)

[GliderGuider]

16. Wealth requires more than education

It requires material resources and energy. What activists hope is that education can be separated from industrialization. If its effect can be applied on its own, we can reduce fertility without having to go down the traditional demographic transition route of industrialization. As I show in my other post, that's possible to some degree in some cases.

There's no evidence yet that education without industrialization can reduce fertility rates below replacement levels. We hope it's true, but there is no evidence for that. All the nations that have achieved that milestone are industrialized as well as educated.

[OKIsItJustMe]

18. Surely they are linked though

“There's no evidence yet that education without industrialization can reduce fertility rates below replacement levels.”

Are you certain of that?

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Fertility-rate-in-India-drops-by-19-in-10-yrs/articleshow/12487718.cms

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Fertility rate in India drops by 19% in 10 yrs[/font]

Kounteya Sinha, TNN | Apr 1, 2012, 04.47AM IST

[font size=3]NEW DELHI: India's total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children expected to be born per woman during her reproductive years — has fallen by19% over the past decade. Among bigger states, the percentage decline in TFR during this period the last decade varied from as high as 28% in Punjab to 5.6%in Kerala.

…

On average, an illiterate woman in India is bearing 1.2 children more than a literate woman (3.4 against 2.2). The TFR among women who have studied till at least class X was as low as 1.9. This further dips to 1.6 among women who have studied till class XII.

The link between female education and fertility is clearly brought out by the SRS data. For instance, even in Bihar, the state with the worst overall TFR of 3.7, women who are educated up to Class X or beyond have a TFR of 2.0 or less. On the other hand, even in Maharashtra, which has an overall TFR of 1.9, women who had no education had a TFR of 6.0.

According to the SRS 2010, ten states have achieved replacement level fertility of 2.1 and below. However, 10 big states still have a higher TFR than this. These include Bihar (3.7), UP (3.5), MP (3.2), Rajasthan (3.1), Jharkhand (3),Chhattisgarh (2.8), Assam and Gujarat (2.5), Haryana and Odisha (2.3). What's worrying is that these states together account for nearly half of India's population.

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[GliderGuider]

19. The UN is now projecting a world population of 11 billion by 2100

Some countries will contribute more to that rise than others. Some regions withing each country will contribute more to it than others. But those people are coming from somewhere. They will be coming from the less-developed nations of the world. Education will ameliorate some of the problem in some places.

[OKIsItJustMe]

20. “Prediction is Difficult, Especially the Future” - Niels Bohr

A lot can happen in 85 years. A few years before, UN projections had called for a levelling off in 2050.

http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/pdf/popfacts/PopFacts_2013-10_new.pdf

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Explaining differences in the projected populations between the 2012 and 2010 Revisions of World Population Prospects:
The role of fertility in Africa[/font]

...[/font]

[GliderGuider]

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

Last edited Thu Dec 4, 2014, 10:10 AM - Edit history (1)

Like that exhibited by all plague species right before their population crashes.

Here's an explanation of the phenomenon in terms of mice: http://www.cse.csiro.au/news/documents/Mouse_Plagues.pdf

My working hypothesis is that humans are a similar plague species, and that we're experiencing similar demographic events to mice. I share the views of David Attenborough, for example, as expanded in this blog post:

http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2013/01/are-humans-a-plague-on-the-earth.html

[OKIsItJustMe]

22. Years ago, I worked briefly with a mouse plague researcher

It was fascinating. I believe I’ve pointed to his research in the past.

In his experiments the die-off's occurred, even under controlled conditions, with no food shortage and no predation. The mice simply stopped breeding It appeared that at least part of it was simply cyclical.

He also found that if the alphas were removed from the colony prior to the cyclical collapse, a plague could be averted, for a time (as if the alphas led the collapse.)


I don’t think this is the same thing.

[GliderGuider]

23. Was that Calhoun, or someone else?

Why do you think the human situation is not the same? The conditions you describe - food surplus and no predation - are identical. Similarly, many here would argue that it's our alphas (corporate leaders and politicians) that are driving the overshoot, and argue for their removal in order to prolong the human experiment.

I don't think that our crash will mirror that of a mouse utopia detail for detail. After all, we are a hyper-amplified species in almost every respect, and such quantitative differences can't help but affect the qualitative progress of the collapse. On the other hand, we are still a natural species, and so can be expected to follow the typical trajectory in general.

Our brains evolved to be limit-removal mechanisms. That means that they evolved as growth-enablers, and are quite poor at degrowth-related thoughts and actions. This is what has allowed us to drive as deep into overshoot as we apparently have. During our growth, every time we hit a limit we figured out a way around it so we could keep on going. That's the whole point of technology.

I also see evidence of this evolution in the operation of our steep psychological discount rates for risk assessment, under which distant, abstract risks are very heavily discounted relative to concrete, near-term risks. Like the classic "environment vs. jobs" conundrum.

[OKIsItJustMe]

24. (It was someone else)

I think that our fertility rate declines (where they are occurring) are more intentional. (I realize you don’t believe there is such a thing as intention.)

The Chinese government mandated a “one child” policy, with limited success.

Indira Gandhi tried a sterilization program. That was a tremendous failure.

Here, in the US, we have no such policies in place. On the contrary, couples are encouraged (through tax deductions and other means) to have children. We simply have chosen to have fewer.

More educated parents tend to have fewer children than less educated parents do. (A trend that has been observed for several decades.)

[FogerRox]

27. On paper it would work, as OK said,

Scale of solution would have to equal the scale of the problem. Co2 that is.

[GliderGuider]

29. The Direct Drivers of Mass Extinction:

► Invasive Species
► Pollution
► Over-Exploitation
► Climate Change
► Habitat Loss

Habitat loss is a direct result of human activity, including human overpopulation, urbanization, agriculture and the spread of domesticated livestock (which could arguably be called invasive species.)

CO2 scrubbers (if they worked) would address only one of those five drivers. They would do nothing to address the other factors, all of which are the result of human activity. That was the point of my comment.

The only way the mass extinction would stop is if there was a human die-off that greatly reduced our level of impact on the biosphere.

[FogerRox]

31. Yup.

[Odin2005]

25. Fusion has always been 20 years away.

[GliderGuider]

26. Too bad climate change isn't... nt

[Bill USA]

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

us with a huge amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We still have to figure out a way to get the CO2 already in the atmosphere - at a density which will continue raising Worldwide average temps* - down to levels that won't cause rising temps.



[div class="excerpt" style="border: 1px solid #000000;"]* in the time it will take to get to zero additions to atmospheric CO2, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will have reached the self sustaining temperature rise concentration