Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 12051 Location: zombie horde wonderland
Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 4:23 pm Post subject: Re: 90% cut of carbon concentrations in the atmosphere by 20
Sort of irrelevent since it isn't going to happen. No way will people actually care enough to do anything significant about it. _________________ "...powerdown so soft and fluffy you'll think you're living in a pillow..." - jboogy
Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 4:27 pm Post subject: Re: 90% cut of carbon concentrations in the atmosphere by 20
And it can only be done with nuclear ....
Read the following article by two distiniguished researchers at Oak Ridge. It was read in the American Philosophical society a few years ago.
http://www.aps-pub.com/proceedings/1452/Perry.pdf
Nuclear energy and breeder reactors are the only sane energy solution to GW and PO (electrification of the transport sector etc) _________________ "Nuclear power has long been to the Left what embryonic-stem-cell research is to the Right--irredeemably wrong and a signifier of moral weakness."Esquire Magazine,12/05
The genetic code is commaless and so are my posts.
And the science is clear. We need not a 20% cut by 2020; not a 60% cut by 2050, but a 90% cut by 2030.
I googled for a source for this and couldn't find one. Anyone know where that comes from?
DK
Probably from thin air. _________________ "Production of useful work is limited by the laws of thermodynamics, but the production of useless work seems to be unlimited."
Joined: Aug 07, 2005 Posts: 302 Location: Columbia, MO
Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 9:03 am Post subject: Re: 90% cut of carbon emissions to the atmosphere by 2030
tinosorb wrote:
dooberheim wrote:
In which Monbiot says:
Quote:
And the science is clear. We need not a 20% cut by 2020; not a 60% cut by 2050, but a 90% cut by 2030.
I googled for a source for this and couldn't find one. Anyone know where that comes from?
The explanation is on p. 8 of the linked document:
"between 2010 and 2040 we can estimate that only 2.8 GtC per year will be absorbed by natural processes on land on in the oceans, and this is the upper limit to the amount of of anthropogenic emissions we can allow without increasing atmospheric concenrations of greenhouse gases to rise above current levels."
Table 1 provides per capita allowable emissions based on estimated populations to meet this goal.
Actually I found British per capita CO2 emissions to be more like 9.4 metric tons per person:
Also, the 0.33 tons figure was for a population of over 8 billion, not the current pop of 6.5 billion. So it's more like a 97% cut in emissions for most of the first world to allow a steady state CO2 concentration of 440 ppm.
Since the population of the first world will never accept a standard of living like that of the Ivory Coast or Cameroon, seems we'll just have to learn to deal with it. I'm not looking forward to it - at least I'm well away from hurricane country. Drought, on the other hand....
The most important thing one can do for the environment is remain childfree.
Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 9:40 am Post subject: Re: 90% cut of carbon emissions to the atmosphere by 2030
Monbiot's speech at the Climate demo on Dec 3 outside the US embassy in London, which included the 90% cut quote, was published in full on the Energy Bulletin site - sorry I've no link.
The central focus of the speech (which I heard) was on the need for Contraction & Convergence, which is the climate policy framework whereby global emissions Contract to respect the Earth's capacity, while all nations' emissions entitlements Converge to per capita parity.
This framework is the formal demand of the Africa Group within the UN FCCC negotiations and has been formally proposed by the European Parliament as the EU's position.
For people in wealthy countries to say merely that "It'll never happen" is not simply grossly defeatist and directly complicit in the increasingly genocidal impacts of climate destabilization, it's also plain ignorant of society's utter dependence on the climate.
If people can't grow enough food because of unstable weather, then you can't buy it, and you and your community will starve.
In short, if we fail to agree C&C and to achieve the necessary cuts in greenhouse gas output, then an exponentially destabilizing global climate is going to destroy this society and its capacity to continue those emissions.
One way or other, the cuts will be made.
So I'm not really interested in what people here think other people will or won't do, I'm interested in what we ourselves can and will do to advance the requisite global aggreement.
regards,
Backstop _________________ "The best of conservation . . . is written not with a pen but with an axe."
(from "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold, 1948.
Joined: Aug 07, 2005 Posts: 302 Location: Columbia, MO
Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 1:07 pm Post subject: Re: 90% cut of carbon emissions to the atmosphere by 2030
The link to the speech is in my original post.
I agree with the need for C & C. I personally improve my carbon signature every year, and encourage others to do the same. However, the magnitude of the cuts we are talking about will require (in developed and developing countries):
-Rationing of gasoline, heating oil, and the like to a few gallons per year per capita,
-80-90% cuts in electricity use, and a massive push toward nuclear and renewables which will have it's own significant carbon footprint,
-Establishment of local, low tech food production to the exclusion of all other forms of food production,
-Getting undeveloped nations to reject the idea of growth or development,
-And finally the rationing of human life in the form of enforcing a one-child-per-couple rule.
all within 25 years. Given the degree of consumption, and the desire of people to continue to do so, and the desire of their leaders to stay leaders, I can't imagine that as a reasonable scenario. And ironically it is the people in the most developed countries who will be able to withstand the climate changes the longest (while consuming more and more resources to do so).
So we are left with preparing to deal with the exponentially destabilizing global climate as best we can. I agree climate will do more than it's fair share to contribute to die-off. IMO, it is simply more likely that the stabilization point will come significantly after we have overshot the aforementioned goals for 2030.
Joined: Dec 03, 2004 Posts: 1136 Location: Seattle, Wa.
Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 1:36 pm Post subject: Re: 90% cut of carbon emissions to the atmosphere by 2030
There is a certain moment in a chess game long before you lose where you resign seeing that all the available strategies to escape lead to a check mate.
We may be foolish enough to decide to burn dirty non-conventional fossil fuels to keep the status quo going only to be wacked by more severe effects of GW. We really know we have reached certain carrying capacity limits when all our solutions lead to a check mate of our way of life.
Contraction and powering down of our energy usage to a sustainable level will then be finally understood as the only available strategy.
We may very well need to get spanked into awareness with the negative consequences of some additional dead end solutions like burning dirty non-conventional hydro-carbons in order to move toward sustainability.
It is the end game now. Our king (the modern consumerist American dream) is trapped. We have to resign our way of living to a more sustainable model. The problem is that our planet to date has been so resilient in tolerating human abuse of the biosphere. It seems we have stretched this resiliency to a breaking point.
Evolution and natural selection accelerate often at stress points. Species existing at the extreme edge of their ranges where survival is hardest adapt or perish. When they do adapt they evolve. Polar bears recently evolved from grizzlies to become marine carnivores in the extreme high artic, the limits of grizzly habitat.
Humans have created a stress point in their environment where they are now, like the polar bear in the high arctic, forced into evolving (culturally) or going extinct. It seems that it was inevitable that we would take ourselves to this breaking point since change and evolution seems to happen with the tension of imbalance.
Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:00 pm Post subject: Re: 90% cut of carbon emissions to the atmosphere by 2030
dooberheim wrote:
I agree with the need for C & C. I personally improve my carbon signature every year, and encourage others to do the same. However, the magnitude of the cuts we are talking about will require (in developed and developing countries):
-Rationing of gasoline, heating oil, and the like to a few gallons per year per capita,
-80-90% cuts in electricity use, and a massive push toward nuclear and renewables which will have it's own significant carbon footprint,
-Establishment of local, low tech food production to the exclusion of all other forms of food production,
-Getting undeveloped nations to reject the idea of growth or development,
-And finally the rationing of human life in the form of enforcing a one-child-per-couple rule.
all within 25 years. Given the degree of consumption, and the desire of people to continue to do so, and the desire of their leaders to stay leaders, I can't imagine that as a reasonable scenario. And ironically it is the people in the most developed countries who will be able to withstand the climate changes the longest (while consuming more and more resources to do so).
So we are left with preparing to deal with the exponentially destabilizing global climate as best we can. I agree climate will do more than it's fair share to contribute to die-off. IMO, it is simply more likely that the stabilization point will come significantly after we have overshot the aforementioned goals for 2030.
Dooberheim -
I'm glad we agree over C&C and it's good to read of yet another American voluntarily cutting their carbon signature.
However, I'm also glad to say that your assumptions re the practical outcomes of C&C are substantially pessimistic (and I'm no cornucopian).
First, George Monbiot would readily affirm that, in speaking to a British audience, the cut of 90% of GHG emissions refferred to industrialized nations (Annex I at the UN) and not to developing countries (Annex II). In converging over a period of years to per capita emissions parity with developing nations, there will be spme growth in the latter's emissions before they too begin to contract their output.
Second, the target level of GHG emissions should not be confused with energy-usage 25 years hence, for all the many forms of non-fossil energy are currently only a small fraction of global energy supply. The potential for the latter's development is very great - for example EU funded research back in the '80s reported that Wave Energy off Europe's western seaboard has the potential to supply 80% of the EU-15 nations' electricity.
Third, back in the mid-nineties Global Commons Institute (who originated and promote C&C globally) formally proposed the need for countries' surplus emissions allocations under C&C to be tradeable internationally, thereby both easing the rate of change for Annex I countries, while also generating ring-fenced income for Annex II countries to invest in sustainable energies rather than developing further fossil-fuel dependence.
From this perspective, none of the energy usage projections you wrote above is remotely accurate, and thus the conclusion that C&C is politically unfeasible is also similarly invalid.
This is not in any way to understate the difficulties of what we face, particularly given the damnably unpredictable impacts of extreme weather events on food production and on major population centres, both of which are beginning to disrupt nations' productivity.
But, with a can-do outlook and effective global leadership we have a clear prospect of currently wealthy populations seeing that all parties' welfare depends on the equitable resolution of fossil fuel dependence. From that point we have at the least a very good chance of hugely reducing the traumas of the coming transition.
regards,
Backstop _________________ "The best of conservation . . . is written not with a pen but with an axe."
(from "A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold, 1948.
Joined: Aug 07, 2005 Posts: 302 Location: Columbia, MO
Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2006 3:10 am Post subject: Re: 90% cut of carbon emissions to the atmosphere by 2030
backstop wrote:
But, with a can-do outlook and effective global leadership we have a clear prospect of currently wealthy populations seeing that all parties' welfare depends on the equitable resolution of fossil fuel dependence. From that point we have at the least a very good chance of hugely reducing the traumas of the coming transition.
Backstop sir:
And the crux of the problem is leadership, isn't it? In this country (and probably in yours - are you British?) we elect leaders that mirror our values as a society - Bush is a shining example. When our ambassador to a climate change conference does nothing but obstruct progress in the name of preserving our short term economy, what can you say? And since a vast majority of Americans (and probably most other developed nations) have no idea what it means to live with a sub-ton CO2 footprint, education and leadership, IMO, is simply an insurmountable obstacle to achieving these goals.
It would be wonderul if we turned our energy mix around to renewables. But are you factoring in the carbon footprint of the construction that would be required to build (and maintain, in the face of a stormier owrld) these wave power facilities? Or other unconventional energy sources? In terms of current energy generation mix and usage, the steps I outlined above probably aren't that far off the mark (I do tend toward pessimism in some ways), considering most of the facilities to make these unconventional power sources work don't exist yet.
It doesn't mean we shouldn't try, and do the best we can. My carbon footprint, for example, is still around four tons/year, and it will be difficult to make a lot of improvements and still maintain a job and even my relatively few conveniences (like a refrigerator and computer). I'm still dependent on the grid for most of my food and power, and don't have the land or money to do much about that in the near term. And I'm doing pretty well in terms of people in developed countries and very well relative to most Americans. But given the inertia in the system and the magnitude of restructuring necessary, I'm less optimistic than you are that we can keep our CO2 levels below 440, or even 500 ppm.
The next five years will be crucial. If we have another few bad hurricane seasons, and people start to widely recognize the loss of polar and glacial ice, we might have a chance in 2008 to elect leaders that will take the problem seriously. It will be interesting to see what happens.
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