Prager: Paris Climate Agreement

Discussion in 'The Thunderdome' started by Tenacious D, Jun 2, 2017.

  1. Tenacious D

    Tenacious D The law is of supreme importance, or no importance




    Yes!
     
  2. justingroves

    justingroves supermod

    John Ward told me to use natural gas, so I'm using natural gas

     
    NYY, NorrisAlan, warhammer and 2 others like this.
  3. Volst53

    Volst53 Super Moderator

    [uck fay] electric heat.

    Just doesn’t feel warm
     
    NorrisAlan likes this.
  4. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    If we want the warming to end, human civilization must be carbon neutral. we can't do things the same way AND accomplish that.
     
  5. TennTradition

    TennTradition Super Moderator

    Not doing things the same way also doesn’t mean ending all oil and gas production. Furthermore, the earth can sequester a certain level of carbon emissions on its own. The fossil emissions number doesn’t have to be zero. And it won’t be for a very very long time.

    We do not have solutions for petrochemicals, jet fuel, etc to allow for no hydrocarbon extraction. There will be parts of the barrel that drive its production.

    However, I do see oil production peaking - perhaps as early as 2030.
     
  6. doolmeonce

    doolmeonce Member

    Radiant. Had no idea what I was missing until we moved to an old home.
     
  7. Tenacious D

    Tenacious D The law is of supreme importance, or no importance

    IP, isn’t this an honest to goodness game-changing development? I get that we still have to remove more carbon than we introduce, but just having the ability to even somewhat mitigate those existing and future amounts seems about as close to a viably promising solution as one could hope to find.

    You seem to be less optimistic about this discovery, or don’t believe it to be a significant disruptor / reversal of climate change, but I could be misreading that.

    What do you think about this?
     
  8. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    The Earth has been sequestering a certain level of carbon long before we got here. It's all that oil and coal we've been burning, in part. That number may not be zero for a very long time, but until the ppm are decreasing the warming WILL continue. And would for a very long time even if the the PPM stayed flat. Carbon neutral only solves the issue by allowing the natural sequestration rate to decrease the carbon in the atmosphere.

    Us not presently having solutions does not in any way, shape, or form alter what I said. It's the hard reality. And that's why this development wouldn't solve the problem.
     
  9. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    Sounds like "no." I think it is a major one, but the game stays the same just with this added to the tool box. I could see this actually having a net negative impact on efforts because there is a W. Bush "Mission Accomplished!" attitude about it. It's very much in the vein of turning corn into ethanol, if we are still going to be driving around on gasoline, flying with jet fuel, and even entertaining still burning natural coal.

    I'm positive about the development, I am terribly pessimistic about our ability to capitalize on it. And that pessimism has been immediately reinforced by the reactions here, including smartest guy on the forum talking about how we can't stop all fossil fuel use right now (true) in reply to me stating we would need to for this sort of technology to truly work.

    And again, I say that because the energy going into this capture needs to emit less carbon than what is being captured. What we have here is a potential "battery" for renewables, but the reaction to it seems to be to use it as a way to prop up existing coal infrastructure by mixing it in.
     
  10. TennTradition

    TennTradition Super Moderator

    My point is that the levels can drop from where they are today even with some continued use of oil and gas. If you tell me that number is so small it doesn’t matter, then fine if that’s right. But going to zero actually doesn’t seem necessary. I do know that the Rey rooms required to achieve even a 2 degree scenario are reasonably large.

    Also I think that carbon capture will be used to allow for continued hydrocarbon production to meet these areas that don’t have clear replacements. I’m not a believer that CCS will be a widespread solution that will enable hydrocarbon growth. But it’s been another reason why saying they must (let alone will) go to zero doesn’t seem right to me.

    Lacking options for some areas may not address the must go to zero but I do believe it addresses the why it won’t withik our lifetimes. And our children. Ignoring the chemical value of these hydrocarbons seems like a gap in saying their extraction must go to zero.
     
  11. TennTradition

    TennTradition Super Moderator

    This is just another form of carbon capture but in this case you aren’t storing it underground. You are putting it in a recycle that only does good if you aren’t adding more fossil-fuel CO2 to the loop (and instead are reducing the fossil input by the amount used to create the ‘coal’. Obviously I get that.

    But I didn’t read you to be as much saying that you must do that to make this work. I read it to say you must go to zero hydrocarbon production in order to stop warming. I’m saying I don’t think zero is required for that (let alone a possible scenario in the world as we know it) due to natural sequestration. It is just a low number + that which is captured and sequestered underground + that which is essentially sequestered in chemicals (though this presents some long-term consideration on end use and whether this just adds more CO2).

    This technology doesn’t fail because hydrocarbon don’t go to zero. It fails because it isn’t scalable for energy markets and coal is an largely non-dispatchable power source, as such it’s a bad renewables enabler.
     
  12. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    Show me the Keeling curv peaking, and fine. Until that point, emissions must be reduced.
     
  13. TennTradition

    TennTradition Super Moderator

    I take two things from this:

    The Keeling curve must peak for warming to stop (I would say it’s a necessary but not sufficient condition).

    Based on prior statements, emissions must go to zero to get this effect (We know the Keeling curve can peak without eliminating hydrocarbons).

    This isn’t convincing me that stating hydrocarbons must be eliminated to stop warming isn’t an overreach.
     
  14. kptvol

    kptvol Super Moderator

    What if we were to sacrifice IP to the carbon gods?
     
  15. JohnnyQuickkick

    JohnnyQuickkick Calcio correspondent

    It’s at least worth a try imo. What’s the down side?
     
  16. Tenacious D

    Tenacious D The law is of supreme importance, or no importance

    I'm probably the smartest person in the room, not only from a scientific and mathematical perspective, but all others, too. It's why my posts are so necessarily long, so as to get all of my smart out, and in a way that you average people have any chance of understanding it. Now, having unanimous agreement on this, here's how I read this, and would welcome being educated on my ELI5 assessment:

    1. Scientists say that carbon has been introduced into the atmosphere as a natural byproduct of man's burning fossil fuel and coal.

    2. As carbon is a greenhouse gas, it has gradually increased the warming of our planet to dangerous levels, and which has caused climate change.

    3. To this point, the only means of preventing any furtherance of these ill-effects has been to restrict the use of these fossil fuels and coal, with an eye on outright banning them, sometime in the future.

    4. This new technology not only allows us to actually physically remove carbon from the atmosphere, but seems both inexpensive and entirely scalable.

    5. Removing this carbon from the atmosphere will at least somewhat mitigate the negative impact of our continued use of fossil fuels and coal, even if it remains at its current level. Of course, simply re-using the "coal" harvested from the atmosphere will only reintroduce the amount of carbon in the air, and require that much further efforts to again remove it, and at a bigger / higher / stronger / faster rate.

    6. Simply, so long as we continue to pump more carbon into the atmosphere at a higher rate than it can be mined / removed, both the greenhouse gas effect and the ensuing climate change which it is believed to be causing, will only be lessened or slowed, but neither resolved nor reversed.

    7. However, if the removal of carbon from the atmosphere exceeds our continued introduction of it - be it from a reduction in carbon emissions (i.e. fossil fuels and coal) to outpacing its output via removing it with this new technology, or some combination of both - then both the greenhouse gas effect and the ensuing climate change which it causes to occur, can be both resolved and reversed, and with the speed of which being negatively correlated between the rate at which it is removed vs. reintroduced.

    Summary: If we can leverage this new technology to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than is introduced - regardless as to whether that's at its current or reduced levels - the effects of climate change can be both reversed and resolved.

    Have I understood this? Have I missed something? I'm pretty sure I nailed it, and don't know that there's anyone here who's smart enough to even check my work, tbh.
     
  17. TennTradition

    TennTradition Super Moderator

    I didn’t carefully parse each section but that is the gist. I would add that unless we are going to implement direct air capture, you have to rely on natural sequestration (like trees to roots) to lower CO2 levels which is a slow process but would happen.

    Also, we already know how to pull CO2 out of emissions streams and sequester it underground. So we have that. The issue is expense and scale. What is nice about something like this if you could scale it (I have doubts), it creates a loop of reuse rather than having to continually sequester more and more CO2 underground.
     
  18. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    if not emissions are zero, hydrocarbons would be fine. the carbon cycle does it's own thing from completely natural releases of co2. depending on it to just make up the difference is precisely what got us to this point.
     
  19. Tenacious D

    Tenacious D The law is of supreme importance, or no importance

    This seems odd.

    I thought this was about climate, “saving erff” and such - and not just social justice warriors marching beneath the banner of science.

    “That action must be powerful and wide-ranging. After all, the climate crisis is not just about the environment. It is a crisis of human rights, of justice, and of political will. Colonial, racist, and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fueled it. We need to dismantle them all. Our political leaders can no longer shirk their responsibilities.”

    I honestly appreciate when people just admit what they want, so kudos on that point, but it’s exactly shit like this that causes millions of people to dismiss this silliness, and anyone who preaches it, outright.

    Link: https://www.project-syndicate.org/c...erence-madrid-by-greta-thunberg-et-al-2019-11
     
  20. kptvol

    kptvol Super Moderator

    One of the guys in the comment section says climate change isn’t real. Seems legit.
     

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