Reduce your impact

[aricooperdavis]

https://theconversation.com/amp/climate-scientists-concept-of-net-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap-157368. Try this.

The concept of Net Zero is indeed problematic because (as the linked article states) it doesn't tackle the root of the problem, which is that we need to stop emitting greenhouse gasses if we want to limit warming to 1.5°C, not just rely on technologies of the future to suck carbon out of the atmosphere. As the linked article closes: "If we want to keep people safe then large and sustained cuts to carbon emissions need to happen now".

Is that what you meant, cap n chris?

 

[cap n chris]

Loki can use an implied acronym in their tagline but I can't use the same one in my bodytext. Weird.

 

[cap n chris]

The concept of Net Zero is indeed problematic because (as the linked article states) it doesn't tackle the root of the problem, which is that we need to stop emitting greenhouse gasses if we want to limit warming to 1.5°C, not just rely on technologies of the future to suck carbon out of the atmosphere. As the linked article closes: "If we want to keep people safe then large and sustained cuts to carbon emissions need to happen now".

Is that what you meant, cap n chris?

If you mean "Environmental policies which are going to have an equivalent impact to global genocidal reduction of human population(s) will keep people 'safe'", then yeah I'd agree that sounds akin to what's being posited while also being plausibly woke.

 

[aricooperdavis]

Loki can use an implied acronym in their tagline but I can't use the same one in my bodytext. Weird.

Loki's tagline isn't directed at another forum user. I don't think it's a problem that the acronym could be offensive, but the forum rules don't allow direct personal insults. End of discussion here please, PM me if you want, but let's be civil to each other and keep this thread on topic.

 

[aricooperdavis]

The BBC has dedicated a section of their website to climate stories as COP is happening, and one of the links that I found interesting was this 2020 article about what changes we can make personally that can have the biggest impact on our emissions. It's summarised by this graphic:

I was quite surprised to see how substantial improved cooking equipment can be, and wonder what exactly that might entail?

 

[JasonC]

I was quite surprised to see how substantial improved cooking equipment can be, and wonder what exactly that might entail?

Microwave instead of oven? Stop barbequeing?

If you mean "Environmental policies which are going to have an equivalent impact to global genocidal reduction of human population(s) will keep people 'safe'", then yeah I'd agree that sounds akin to what's being posited while also being plausibly woke.

I'm genuinely at a loss to know what your position is , Cap'n. Are you saying current 'carbon reduction' policies don't go nearly far enough ? (true).
Or that it's too late, we're all f***ed so we might as well enjoy what good time we have left? (arguably true, but even a hopeless battle is worth fighting). Or something else?

 

[petecaves]

You need a motorbike in the family. ;-)

This works very well. At least in theory. Sadly mine is refusing to start.

 

[Loki]

This works very well. At least in theory. Sadly mine is refusing to start.

There are some very cool looking electric motorcycles out there at a fraction of the cost of electric cars.

 

[aricooperdavis]

There are some very cool looking electric motorcycles out there at a fraction of the cost of electric cars.

This does appeal but I'll have to wait for the used market to flesh out a bit, and used batteries can be a bit of a gamble. We have a second hand hybrid and have been very lucky that the battery has maintained most of its capacity (particularly given that it's NiMH). But given that motorbikes are generally used for short distance travel they do seem like a great candidate for being battery powered.

 

[Fjell]

In conjunction with the ongoing conflab, the Economist had a long series of articles this week on the issue, as is their wont.
First major point was that the 1.5deg limit has already been lost, the carbon budget for that will be far exceeded. It is 7 years since Paris, and time moves on. So it is more a case of decided what people will actually do. Everything needs to be on the table. People need to stop opposing things like nuclear power and seriously discuss how geoengineering will/might be globally approved and funded. A more depressing point was that Africa has a miniscule carbon footprint and yet richer countries are constantly celebrating what they did to keep them there.

For the UK it is really quite straightforward at a strategic level. In 20-25 years there will be almost no hydrocarbon reserves left in Europe. Unless the UK becomes self sufficient in energy we will be completely dependant on supply chains thousands of miles long. Not just for cheap consumer goods, but to not actually die in large numbers. This is how it has been sold in the Tory party, ably assisted by a certain V. Putin. Not a Damascene Conversion or something. The obvious issue being it will take 20+ years to build and until then we will need fossil fuels and glueing yourself to roads won’t change that. This is the original rationale why the French went nuclear in the 70’s, and want to replace them going forward. Some EU countries still oppose this and they are just bonkers given they have built no alternative. The point is to start and that is not buying (coal-fired) electric cars, it’s building power generation. Anyone who opposes building power generation is 100% part of the problem.

 

[pwhole]

I saw an interview with a guy on Look North or similar a few years ago,who was proposing 'mining' the deeply-buried coal seams under the North Sea coast using remotely-controlled flexible drills that could extract the hydrocarbon 'juice' from the coal but leave the solid matrix in place - not fracking as such, but similar, I guess. The benefits were that there would be less subsidence (though I think the seams are over two miles down anyway), no risk to humans (and it's not practically possible to have humans mining coal at that depth), and the extract is already partly 'purified' by dint of the solids being left behind. I haven't heard anything about this idea since - has anyone else? Also does anyone know if New Crofton Colliery near Wakefield is still going ahead? It's all gone very quiet lately.

http://www.newcroftoncoopcolliery.co.uk/

I had a look at the table of net exporters of natural uranium - interesting, with Kazakhstan, Canada and Namibia being far and away the bulk of it. However, we also export it - I had no idea. Can we safely assume that supplies of uranium will be stable for the 20+ years required to make the crossover? As that will be essential if we are to go that route.

https://www.worldstopexports.com/uranium-exports-by-country/

1. Kazakhstan: US$1.1 billion (33.7% of natural uranium exports)
2. Canada: $954.7 million (30.1%)
3. Namibia: $535.5 million (16.9%)
4. Niger: $252.1 million (8%)
5. United States: $210.8 million (6.7%)
6. France: $59.7 million (1.9%)
7. United Kingdom: $33.4 million (1.06%)
8. Ukraine: $33.0 million (1.04%)
9. South Africa: $12.2 million (0.4%)
10. Czech Republic: $3.1 million (0.1%)
11. Germany: $2.2 million (0.069%)
12. Iran: $2.1 million (0.067%)
13. Netherlands: $165,000 (0.005%)
14. Sweden: $43,000 (0.001%)
15. Egypt: $28,000 (0.0009%)

By value, the listed 15 countries shipped 99.9993% of global natural uranium exports in 2021.

Among the above countries, the fastest-growing natural uranium exporters since 2020 were: Czech Republic (up 196,541%), France (up 7,587%) and South Africa (up 42.9%).

Those countries that posted declines in their export sales of natural uranium were led by: Netherlands (down -98.8%), Sweden (down -93.3%), Egypt (down -89.4%), Ukraine (down -58.9%) and Kazakhstan (down -37.5%).

Enriched Uranium Exports by Country​

Below are the 15 countries that exported the highest dollar value worth of enriched uranium during 2021.

1. Netherlands: US$827.2 million (29.1% of enriched uranium exports)
2. Germany: $727.1 million (25.6%)
3. France: $636.6 million (22.4%)
4. Kazakhstan: $406.1 million (14.3%)
5. United States: $130.5 million (4.6%)
6. China: $64.1 million (2.3%)
7. Niger: $44.6 million (1.6%)
8. South Korea: $858,000 (0.03%)
9. Japan: $350,000 (0.01%)
10. Belgium: $238,000 (0.008%)
11. Sweden: $149,000 (0.005%)
12. Spain: $29,000 (0.001%)
13. Malaysia: $10,000 (0.0004%)
14. Czech Republic: $8,000 (0.0003%)
15. United Kingdom: $4,000 (0.00014%)

By value, the listed 15 countries shipped 99.9999% of globally exported enriched uranium in 2021.

Among the above countries, the fastest-growing enriched uranium exporters since 2020 were: Kazakhstan (up 5,572%), Belgium (up 1,600%), Japan (up 414.7%) and the United Kingdom (up 33.3%).

Those countries that posted declines in their export sales of enriched uranium were: Spain (down -99.9%), mainland China (down -64.2%) and the United States of America (down -29.1%).

 

[Fjell]

Australia has the biggest reserves, but they are currently underexploited. The UK has various agreements with them in place and I think that is regarded as the primary security for committing to nuclear. 5 Eyes etc. Australia, US and the UK just signed a military pact that will (amongst many other things) see Australia getting nuclear subs for the first time to counter China.

Coal-bed methane has been around a long time, but it just never gets going as it is difficult and the gas price has been too low for decades. People lose their minds about mining coal and we will just keep importing it instead. For the avoidance of doubt the UK cannot afford to make steel for the foreseeable future using electric arc, we will have to import all our steel if we don’t use coal. That just means someone else burning coal. People witter about hydrogen, but there isn’t any. There isn’t any because we don’t have cheap electricity to make it cleanly.

 

[Fjell]

People also lose their minds about “fracking”. I honestly don’t know where those rednecks found the letter K in the word ”fracture”, but hey we’ve all watched Winters Bone, right? People who do it for a living frac wells, and have been doing so for about 60 years. Big ones too, not those micro ones in shale gas wells.

The environmental impact of shale gas is nothing to do with fraccing the wells, it is the act of actually drilling thousands of wells. The impact is the same regardless of fraccing, and it’s millions of truck movements that is the issue. It is not viable in England.

In northern Holland lies the Groningen field, Europes biggest. It (was) the backbone of the European grid. There are wells scattered in and amongst cute villages. The point being they produced a thousand times more each than shale gas wells, so there weren’t very many of them and they lasted for many decades, not months to a year. It is now shut down due to some local subsidence, but it was supposed to produce to 2070 and that is currently a big issue for Europe, let alone the Netherlands (who are in the shit too).

 

[Speleofish]

If you want a really worrying overview of the consequences of climate change on global habitability, likely movement of populations etc, read 'Nomad Century' by Gaia Vince. The implications are that only a few parts of the northern hemisphere and very little of the southern hemisphere will be habitable by humans all year round, which means an awful lot of people will be trying to occupy a rather small space which is unlikely to happen peacefully.
The book itself is a little repetitive and her proposed solutions seem unlikely to be acceptable (or enactable) even though they would probably be the least worst of all the options. Nonetheless, it's well worth reading - probably the most thought-provoking book I've read this year.

 

[BradW]

Given the discussion in recent days, this is a good watch.

 

[AR]

https://theconversation.com/amp/climate-scientists-concept-of-net-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap-157368. Try this.

Thanks - this basically covers things I've read elsewhere, namely that far too much of biofuels is greenwashing that's either based on destruction of natural forest or using land that should be growing food, and that carbon capture on any significant level is wishful thinking. The key point, as has been said already is that the only real option is to shift off fossil fuel use as fast as possible, in every way we can.

Nuclear is something we _should_ have invested in two decades ago, I remember the late Tam Dalyell going on about the need to replace the UK's nuclear power capacity at the time but he was ignored - Tony Blair was dithering because "ooh, people don't like radiation" and then he decided he wanted to go and play at war with his best friend George so that was all the money gone. In answer to pwhole's query about the UK exporting uranium, that's from reprocessing of "spent" fuel rods, which still contain plenty of viable fuel but need reconcentrating to make it usable again.

As for improving/saving lives, I think the most critical one has already been put up on this thread - what happens if climate change renders large areas of the planet effectively unviable for habitation, which is mass migration and resulting conflict that will look like the nastiest parts of the Thirty Years War writ large across far wider areas.

 

[petecaves]

We should have been using planning laws to cut down our reliance on fossil fuels for about 30 years now. You want to build houses? Ok, but they must be properly insulated, and have solar panels on the roof. That would have been a very good start.

Proper public transport would be useful too. Instead of integrating it as far as possible and shifting freight onto rails we decided to try and run it all for profit.

The biggest problem we face is that solutions generally require a bit of longer term thinking and our politicians have only the ability to think (if you can call it that) about 15 minutes into the future.

 

[Chocolate fireguard]

We should have been using planning laws to cut down our reliance on fossil fuels for about 30 years now. You want to build houses? Ok, but they must be properly insulated, and have solar panels on the roof. That would have been a very good start.

Proper public transport would be useful too. Instead of integrating it as far as possible and shifting freight onto rails we decided to try and run it all for profit.

The biggest problem we face is that solutions generally require a bit of longer term thinking and our politicians have only the ability to think (if you can call it that) about 15 minutes into the future.

It's not just the politicians.
Like everyone else they want to keep their jobs.
And they all know that if they proposed any measures that would really work to reduce this country's carbon emissions they would be booted out by the electorate.
That's also true in places like China and Russia. Even dictators can't afford to upset too many people for too long.
Mother Nature is going to have to sort this out. It's just a shame that animal species other than humans will suffer.
But I suppose the plants will do OK in their new-found space.
Perhaps they will get things back to roughly where they were before we buggered them up.

 

[cavemanmike]

The planet will survive long after we have gone.
We (as a human species) are just specks of dust in this universe

 

[pwhole]

I did a bit of work on this job this week, and it was a real eye-opener on the ramifications of - well, everything. This is a couple of miles from the Hanson cement works at Ketton:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-63526476

The line will be out for some time, and the cost of the repairs will be staggering, when you add in the endless vans of guys driving to fix it (24/7) and dealing with the traffic en-route, renting the field for an emergency compound, the re-routing of the rail traffic around it (it's a main line for freight and passengers), the road closure - it just goes on and on. The only good news is that there wasn't a train due, otherwise it would have been horrendous. Needless to say, we've seen even more careless driving there and back each time on the A1, with giant trucks being every fourth vehicle - in our big van full of just-in-case tools, that hardly got used. The train line is arguably more important than the road that goes underneath it, but both are now out for quite a while.