""We are letting every issue we have with capitalism, every injustice, and every problem in the world overwhelm the actually critical work of dealing with carbon. ""
Exactly. You've put into words what I've been feeling. We need to focus. We can't become distracted by other important problems, urgent as they may be.
"Transition the energy sector to all renewable energy, then extract and store carbon from the atmosphere, and you solve the problem, whether or not you meet all these social justice goals." This a blind spot that many people speaking about the approaching challenges have yet to understand in how the system is interrelated. Energy/ economy/ human population are all highly correlated at nearly 1:1:1. And there are material limits to the scale of rebuildable energy infrastructure that is possible. In hoping for a seamless electrification of everything and transition to 100% rebuildable energy as fossil Carbon leaves us by decision and depletion, we are going to come up way short. Things will be much smaller and simpler again in the near future. We will need a whole new way of organizing society to equitably share what surplus can remain and maintain social cohesion.
It's not that I don't see the interrelationships... they are there. But relationshps are not dependencies. We don't have to solve every social, economic, and political problem to solve climate change. If we make climate solutons dependent on that, we are headed for catastrophe.
If you have any evidence that renewables cannot replace carbon from the standpoint of capacity, I'd like to see it. We won't come up short. There are challenges like storage, but you are saying we won't have enough capacity, but given current efficiencies and the new effiiciencies coming on line, especialy in solar cells, the capacity will be there.
Climate change solutiosn are not dependnet on social change, but I do think that the solutions themselves will lead to such changes... but that's a different argument.
Even after all we have done until now, wind and solar are only 6% of total primary energy and we are still building more new Carbon energy generation to keep up with economic growth. There are emerging studies by prominent minerals experts, most notably Simon Michaux, that have concluded that we lack the available reserves to complete even the first generation of wind and solar that would be necessary to replace the required half of the current 18 TeraWatt average we are blowing through now. Let alone having enough left to add to recycling it all again when it wears out in 30 years. And only 20% of current energy use is electric so we also at the same time would have to retrofit or replace all of the built out infrastructure that is currently not electric. See this recent slide show lecture for example. https://youtu.be/MBVmnKuBocc
If we had Youtube in the 1970s, I'd be able to share back with you dozens of similar videos with qualified experts all saying that we were going to run out of oil in ten years or so based on proven reserves. Look where we are now. Arguments based on the current situation are always specious because they don't take into account research, exploration, and so on. Things look a little different, for example, after the announcement of the rare earth minerals found in Sweden recently, and we don't even know what new technologies will develop for production, nor do we know what new efficiencies can be gained in electric appliances, equipment, and vehicles. It is a fallacy to say that because we don't have what we need today we will never have it.
It seems to me we are very early in the changeover to renewables, so of course we are only 6% and of course certain places are ahead of others. How coudl it be any different? Minnesota is now 54% renewable for its electricity. Texas is 44% wind power. Plus, less and less new carbon generation is being built for one key reason--it is now cheaper to build renewable generation and far cheaper to run it.
One more thing. Let's just say you were right and we can never replace our energy needs with renewables. Then what? What would be your strategy for solving the climate change problem?
I would also offer anyone to look through the numerous charts and links on my open to the public facebook page which I use as a website to archive this essential information. https://www.facebook.com/scott.endler
Another common blind spot we see is the conflation of the terms "energy" and "electricity". But electricity is only 20% of primary energy. So if Texas achieves 50% of electricity from wind and solar, that is 10% of total energy. And then there is also the matter of a further 30%? of total energy that we don't directly account for in the US that comes in the form of embodied energy in steel, aluminum, and all sorts of minerals and manufactured goods that we import from other countries. The most recent research indicates that we will be materials constrained from replacing even half of the current 18 Terawatts we are consuming and at the same time undergo the electrification of everything. Even for the current requirements let alone support further growth at 3% which would require another doubling of energy/ materials in 25 years. Which is the timeframe for replacing all of the rebuildable energy hardware from the first build out, But the debt based economic system only functions to pay back the interest if growth exceeds the interest rates. Climate change is "A" problem. But it is not "THE" problem. And not even the one that will hurt us humans the most first. Since we are now at the plateu of growth due to energy/ materials constraints, we will soon have rolling world sovereign debt defaults and a collapse of the financial system. What will we do when 30% of the world's workers have no "job", no money, no food? We are going to need a whole new way of organizing society to equitably share whatever surplus can remain in order to maintain social cohesion and avoid a Mad Max scenario. There are many brilliant thinkers that have been writing about this new systems understanding for several years now. The most concise and easy to understand is the program that Nate Hagens is teaching and has condensed into his one hour short video lecture which I know I have presented to you before when you were writing on Medium and will post again below. His 5 hour long course is even much more complete but is still quicker to learn than reading a book. View on 1.5 speed to save time. Richard Heinberg at Post Carbon Institute has also been going great work for a long time. We are headed for a future of less energy and materials consumption. And therefor less GDP and and end of growth. False hope of a new techno-utopia from wind and solar only serves to distract us from taking the pragmatic steps to focus what we have left on the things we (they) will really need to degrow consumption and eventually human population back to levels that can be sustained on muscle powered organic farming and natural flows from the Sun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbbfqyJ9elY&list=PLdc087VsWiC4AdSNFNq1a_n_O18Cko8Cr
Yeah, well, I guess all that equitable sharing will be exquisite as the planet burns because climate is just A problem that happened to occur. This is exactly the problem. Sovereign debt, UBI, degrow... as if those are solutions for reducing carbon emissions by the 76% IPCC says we need to achieve. The real question is: How will all this get those emissions down? By shrinking the economy by 76%? Like, that's a world everyone wants to live in...
On the other hand, I saw you are a fat bike rider on your Facebook page. I poke aroudn on fatbikes in the winter, but love to ride summer on a mountian bike. A littel common ground there.
There is apparently no way to post images in these threads so here is a link to my photos which shows the high correlation of energy to the 8x increase in human population and energy to economy. We are near the peak of fossil Carbon energy. Then What?
Bicycles are one of humankind's greatest inventions! And will serve us well as we move back to a muscle powered world over the next century. I appreciate your efforts in all that you are doing and don't mean to be constantly contrary to the Green New Deal-ect. But pragmatic new examination of the data show that the scale of 18 TeraWatts and the 100x increase in global GDP that it has facilitated will not be even half maintained by additions of wind and solar as fossil Carbon leaves us by decision and depletion. Whatever distributed solar PV we can build out will be much better than nothing and are possible to install and maintain at a human worker scale. But we are headed for a future with less. Which doesn't have to be a disaster if we could finally wise up and accept this reality to develop a whole new way of organizing society. Here is another assessment of mineral availability, by an admittedly growth hawkish investment speaker. But the data is similar to what Michaux and others have presented. https://youtu.be/sgOEGKDVvsg here is an interview of Richard Heinberg and William Rees together where they will explain that climate change is one symptom, along with energy, minerals, top soil, ancient water, fishery depletion/ ocean acidification/ sixth mass extinction/ ect which are all symptoms of our dilemma caused by the main issue which is human biological overshoot. https://population-8-billion.simplecast.com/episodes/population-8-billion-the-dilemma-of-sustainability-X13aehXB
""We are letting every issue we have with capitalism, every injustice, and every problem in the world overwhelm the actually critical work of dealing with carbon. ""
Exactly. You've put into words what I've been feeling. We need to focus. We can't become distracted by other important problems, urgent as they may be.
Thanks for your clarity.
Thanks Tree. It's good to know other intelligent people see the problem.
"Transition the energy sector to all renewable energy, then extract and store carbon from the atmosphere, and you solve the problem, whether or not you meet all these social justice goals." This a blind spot that many people speaking about the approaching challenges have yet to understand in how the system is interrelated. Energy/ economy/ human population are all highly correlated at nearly 1:1:1. And there are material limits to the scale of rebuildable energy infrastructure that is possible. In hoping for a seamless electrification of everything and transition to 100% rebuildable energy as fossil Carbon leaves us by decision and depletion, we are going to come up way short. Things will be much smaller and simpler again in the near future. We will need a whole new way of organizing society to equitably share what surplus can remain and maintain social cohesion.
It's not that I don't see the interrelationships... they are there. But relationshps are not dependencies. We don't have to solve every social, economic, and political problem to solve climate change. If we make climate solutons dependent on that, we are headed for catastrophe.
If you have any evidence that renewables cannot replace carbon from the standpoint of capacity, I'd like to see it. We won't come up short. There are challenges like storage, but you are saying we won't have enough capacity, but given current efficiencies and the new effiiciencies coming on line, especialy in solar cells, the capacity will be there.
Climate change solutiosn are not dependnet on social change, but I do think that the solutions themselves will lead to such changes... but that's a different argument.
Even after all we have done until now, wind and solar are only 6% of total primary energy and we are still building more new Carbon energy generation to keep up with economic growth. There are emerging studies by prominent minerals experts, most notably Simon Michaux, that have concluded that we lack the available reserves to complete even the first generation of wind and solar that would be necessary to replace the required half of the current 18 TeraWatt average we are blowing through now. Let alone having enough left to add to recycling it all again when it wears out in 30 years. And only 20% of current energy use is electric so we also at the same time would have to retrofit or replace all of the built out infrastructure that is currently not electric. See this recent slide show lecture for example. https://youtu.be/MBVmnKuBocc
If we had Youtube in the 1970s, I'd be able to share back with you dozens of similar videos with qualified experts all saying that we were going to run out of oil in ten years or so based on proven reserves. Look where we are now. Arguments based on the current situation are always specious because they don't take into account research, exploration, and so on. Things look a little different, for example, after the announcement of the rare earth minerals found in Sweden recently, and we don't even know what new technologies will develop for production, nor do we know what new efficiencies can be gained in electric appliances, equipment, and vehicles. It is a fallacy to say that because we don't have what we need today we will never have it.
It seems to me we are very early in the changeover to renewables, so of course we are only 6% and of course certain places are ahead of others. How coudl it be any different? Minnesota is now 54% renewable for its electricity. Texas is 44% wind power. Plus, less and less new carbon generation is being built for one key reason--it is now cheaper to build renewable generation and far cheaper to run it.
One more thing. Let's just say you were right and we can never replace our energy needs with renewables. Then what? What would be your strategy for solving the climate change problem?
I would also offer anyone to look through the numerous charts and links on my open to the public facebook page which I use as a website to archive this essential information. https://www.facebook.com/scott.endler
Another common blind spot we see is the conflation of the terms "energy" and "electricity". But electricity is only 20% of primary energy. So if Texas achieves 50% of electricity from wind and solar, that is 10% of total energy. And then there is also the matter of a further 30%? of total energy that we don't directly account for in the US that comes in the form of embodied energy in steel, aluminum, and all sorts of minerals and manufactured goods that we import from other countries. The most recent research indicates that we will be materials constrained from replacing even half of the current 18 Terawatts we are consuming and at the same time undergo the electrification of everything. Even for the current requirements let alone support further growth at 3% which would require another doubling of energy/ materials in 25 years. Which is the timeframe for replacing all of the rebuildable energy hardware from the first build out, But the debt based economic system only functions to pay back the interest if growth exceeds the interest rates. Climate change is "A" problem. But it is not "THE" problem. And not even the one that will hurt us humans the most first. Since we are now at the plateu of growth due to energy/ materials constraints, we will soon have rolling world sovereign debt defaults and a collapse of the financial system. What will we do when 30% of the world's workers have no "job", no money, no food? We are going to need a whole new way of organizing society to equitably share whatever surplus can remain in order to maintain social cohesion and avoid a Mad Max scenario. There are many brilliant thinkers that have been writing about this new systems understanding for several years now. The most concise and easy to understand is the program that Nate Hagens is teaching and has condensed into his one hour short video lecture which I know I have presented to you before when you were writing on Medium and will post again below. His 5 hour long course is even much more complete but is still quicker to learn than reading a book. View on 1.5 speed to save time. Richard Heinberg at Post Carbon Institute has also been going great work for a long time. We are headed for a future of less energy and materials consumption. And therefor less GDP and and end of growth. False hope of a new techno-utopia from wind and solar only serves to distract us from taking the pragmatic steps to focus what we have left on the things we (they) will really need to degrow consumption and eventually human population back to levels that can be sustained on muscle powered organic farming and natural flows from the Sun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbbfqyJ9elY&list=PLdc087VsWiC4AdSNFNq1a_n_O18Cko8Cr
Yeah, well, I guess all that equitable sharing will be exquisite as the planet burns because climate is just A problem that happened to occur. This is exactly the problem. Sovereign debt, UBI, degrow... as if those are solutions for reducing carbon emissions by the 76% IPCC says we need to achieve. The real question is: How will all this get those emissions down? By shrinking the economy by 76%? Like, that's a world everyone wants to live in...
On the other hand, I saw you are a fat bike rider on your Facebook page. I poke aroudn on fatbikes in the winter, but love to ride summer on a mountian bike. A littel common ground there.
There is apparently no way to post images in these threads so here is a link to my photos which shows the high correlation of energy to the 8x increase in human population and energy to economy. We are near the peak of fossil Carbon energy. Then What?
. https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5293515997394136&set=a.1474844829261291
.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=2296655157080250&set=a.917299975015782
.
Bicycles are one of humankind's greatest inventions! And will serve us well as we move back to a muscle powered world over the next century. I appreciate your efforts in all that you are doing and don't mean to be constantly contrary to the Green New Deal-ect. But pragmatic new examination of the data show that the scale of 18 TeraWatts and the 100x increase in global GDP that it has facilitated will not be even half maintained by additions of wind and solar as fossil Carbon leaves us by decision and depletion. Whatever distributed solar PV we can build out will be much better than nothing and are possible to install and maintain at a human worker scale. But we are headed for a future with less. Which doesn't have to be a disaster if we could finally wise up and accept this reality to develop a whole new way of organizing society. Here is another assessment of mineral availability, by an admittedly growth hawkish investment speaker. But the data is similar to what Michaux and others have presented. https://youtu.be/sgOEGKDVvsg here is an interview of Richard Heinberg and William Rees together where they will explain that climate change is one symptom, along with energy, minerals, top soil, ancient water, fishery depletion/ ocean acidification/ sixth mass extinction/ ect which are all symptoms of our dilemma caused by the main issue which is human biological overshoot. https://population-8-billion.simplecast.com/episodes/population-8-billion-the-dilemma-of-sustainability-X13aehXB