"Today, we have a different kind of fuel problem – we have to stop burning it, we have to stop releasing the carbon dioxide that is cooking the planet. That means thinking about RADICAL EFFICIENCIES ..."
If you want to talk efficiencies with respect to fuel and energy use, then climate alarmists need to skip the worst performing wind and solar (~40% and ~25%) and go nuclear (~90%). The fact they refuse to do so indicates they're not interested in facts and efficiencies but in virtue signaling.
A point to make about the analogy with aircraft is that at first when innovation got going flying was reserved for the ultra-rich and people who worked for the government. A ticket in 1939 from London to Brisbane would cost the same as an average person's annual wage. It was not until 50+ years from its initial flight that flying reached a cost that Mr/Mrs average could afford.
The same can be said of Passive House. If you have enough money, then yes you too can have a passive house designed and built to your personal requirements. However, that is not the case with the average person and there are far more average than ultra-rich.
Passive House is stuck in the quandary:-
1) Do it fast - incredibly expensive - average person will not be interested.
2) Do it slow - affordable but very slow - can't achieve anything meaningful by 2050.
Grok, you and I both know that there's a 0.00% chance of us cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030. It's failure is guaranteed because it's absolutely unrealistic for a goal.
But, but, but, the Environmentalists tell us they CAN! After all, look at ALL the windmills and PV installations! Lloyd tells us this all the time!
Oh wait - England is having second thoughts and Germany is reactivating coal generation (the politicians are getting the message that they won't be politicians for long with "intermittency" and sky high costs being blamed on them), India and China are building 2 coal plants A WEEK for the foreseeable future, and France is building new nukes...
...and Sweden just said "no way, Jose, with the RE - that's useless and too expensive so we're going all in on nukes...Wait, WHAT? Yeah, common sense is starting to sprout in that a modern society REQUIRES dispatchable energy upon demand.
And VB, did you read that the massive PV installs in the American deserts are starting to create groundwater issues - talk about destroying the "most vulnerable amongst us"!
The bottom line is that people have had it with the 50 years of lying predictions and seeing that said politicians, driven by the "RE Faithful", are making their lives artificially miserable for something they haven't been able to provide. They are starting to vote their own self-interest as they aren't interested in Live Worse and Have Less - and worse for their children.
And yes, 0% is unrealistic unless you force it and kill billions of people at the same time. Where TH's Nelson666 when you need him to hear his hands clapping at that.
These artificial timelines are stupid - it's just the Progressive/Socialists trying to create a "war mentality crisis" where one doesn't exist (and they do so on so many fronts it's exhausting which is another reason people are rebelling against them and their "ideas").
50% is impossible. The US can't even string up a single transmission line over a couple hundred miles in 14 years (permitting issues - I have the link somewhere) and I've seen we'd need 47,000 miles to just START "Electrify EVERYTHING".
This is all because the SMAHT People want to ignore the hard intermediate steps that are necessary. Turn that 7 years (that's all we got until 2030) into 70 and I'd start to say "perhaps".
I get you riled up because you—like I—understand the lunacy of repeating a talking point without a detailed, fully funded game plan to turn it into reality.
Everything about the Paris Climate Agreement is a farce—from the 1.5°C "tipping point" threshold, to the arbitrary commitments agreed to by individual countries, to the preoccupation of wealth transfer from rich industrialized nations to developing economies via "mitigation efforts", and everything inbetween. China emits MORE carbon pollution than the entirety of all other industrialized nations COMBINED. India is rapidly developing as well, and has sucked up as much Russian oil and natural gas as possible post-Ukraine invasion as well as buying up Australian coal for their new power plants. To ignore those two massive polluters NOW on the premise that Western nations must "atone" for past historical privilege is convoluted rationale at best and an outright lack of understanding at worst.
As I've said on TreeHugger many, many times before, *IF* the climate "crisis" was *THE* existential threat to humanity and the entirety of the planet's species, THEN YOU DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE—REGARDLESS OF COST—TO STOP ALL NEW CARBON EMISSIONS BEFORE ENGAGING IN MITIGATION EFFORTS. Lloyd's fond of saying every gram of carbon matters, but policy wonks refuse to go carbon-free as a first-order actionable step.
Ask yourself, Why is that?
It's because they KNOW it's not a feasible goal, certainly when we in the U.S., Canada, and the EU can't dictate energy policy to that of behemoths like China and India. And since they show no inclination to go carbon-free IMMEDIATELY in an effort to save the planet, one of two things can be deduced from their inaction: either (1) the climate crisis isn't worth national self-destruction resulting in a vastly poorer, chaotic, and less-free citizenry, or (2) we've been lied to and the climate crisis isn't the threat it's purported to be.
And no, I have not read that the AmWest desert PV farms are now polluting the groundwater. I *do* know that we're just about on the cusp of all those PV panels that have been installed over the past 25 years reaching the end of their expected lifespans and we're going to have to deal with a literal tsunami of renewable energy waste. I wonder how the MSM will spin that to convince the RE pundits to not just "deal with it" but expand its use exponentially?
Well, you sure as heck aren't going to get funding from poor people—that goes without saying.
At some point in the not-too-distant future the wheels will fall off of 50+ years worth of kicking the can-of-unfunded-liabilities down the road. Growth in spending exceeds growth in revenue; and growth in low-paying jobs impedes the kind of high-paying jobs necessary from which to tax for politicians' pet projects. This is neither a uniquely American problem, or a continue-business-as-usual problem. And I honestly believe that it will come to a head when AI is implemented and 800+ MILLION jobs globally will be eliminated.
When the poor and un(der)educated have no money and no possibility of upward mobility, what do policy wonks think will be an appropriate course of action to correct the discourse it will sow?
So they found you again at last Lloyd, shame. Pity for the rest of us you've had to turn the comments off but I don't blame you. It was nice while it lasted.
What makes you think comments are turned off. One of Lloyds strengths is that he always allows comments. If fact I am not sure who they are but I was invited here by Lloyd.
It's going to be a long long time gradually replacing our existing infrastructure of buildings with 15-minute communities of Passive-House buildings (and gradually implementing all the other needed advanced green infrastructure). We (including you, Lloyd) need to do and to tenaciously promote less heating and cooling (none between 13C-30C, https://greenbetween.home.blog), less driving, less flying, less meat-eating, and less population growth (2 children max) to bridge the gap.
Well, you've already met your last goal - less than 2 children/Mom. Most of the developed world is well below replacement of 2.1 - average is around 1.7. South Korea is a suicide cult at around 0.8, Japan isn't much better, and Russia is a basket case. China is also in demographic decline - serious decline.
What I still can't wrap my head around is WHY do people want to relive the Middle Ages of only being in a very small village their entire lives (reborn as 15 minute cities with all of the surveillance tech to ENSURE that's as far as you can ever go)?
What "people want" is to minimize greenhouse gas emissions to minimize the global warming disaster. If the goal is to be achieved, many different solutions - short-term, medium-term, long-term - will contribute. Some current pleasures will be impacted, temporarily or permanently, in order to minimize the far greater unpleasantries of global warming.
The challenge: Increase the number of people committed to minimizing greenhouse gas emissions. Reduce the number of people accepting continuing greenhouse gas emissions.
The challenge: Promptly minimize greenhouse gas emissions while progressing on ongoing optimization of solutions to minimize impact on pleasures.
"What "people want" is to minimize greenhouse gas emissions to minimize the global warming disaster."
What you forgot is "only certain" as a modifier to "people want". Your sentence has the "broadcast nuance" that EVERYONE wants that - and it is a very high priority as well. Sorry to be Debbie Downer, while polls (of which I read a lot) show such a sentiment, those polls that also dive deeper to see how much they are willing to spend in support of it, the results pretty much show "Not Much".
And I will tell you that not everyone agrees that "the goal" MUST be solved in 7 years - or even longer. And to your last paragraph: to accomplish that, the hysteria and hyperbole needs a severe ratcheting down. I've been around since before the first earth day. Without going long, not one single apocalyptic doomsday prophesy has come true since 1970. Not a single one. Even the vaunted computer models have been pretty much wrong.
And most people do NOT wish to give up their standard of living while India and China are thumbing their noses at us and we see the dictators and malcontents in the UN see this as a massive grift with others seeing this as a wonderful opportunity for Power grabs over others.
What HAVE we seen? With higher CO2 levels, agriculture is flourishing and all things being equal (let's leave out bad governance/wars that use food as a weapon), people are eating better.
That's to 2005 and this downtrend has only gotten worse in the last. Remember, replacement fertility rate is 2.1. EVERY single region is below that. Can't grow population when deaths exceed births.
And yes, the same article references the same UN estimate you quoted, so I'm not going off half-cocked.
"That's to 2005 and this downtrend has only gotten worse in the last." Thats the problem with using out of date numbers and not understanding how they are derived. You are missing up predictions with snapshots.
Approx 40% of the world's population is under 18. That means they have not bred yet. However, they will even if it's at only 1 per couple that's still a vast number of people that will be born over the next 20 years. Whereas the mass die off of the baby boomers commenced 10 years ago and is accelerating rapidly. So yes, deaths for a while will exceed births but as the youngsters start to breed and the boomers finish dying off the numbers will definitely switch around and a population boom will commence. Thats also assuming 1 which is probably to low.
Points taken. That said, I've not seen any polls/posts that have indicated any kind of uptick in fertility rates. In fact, the big outlier, Africa, continues a downward spiral. And that Magic Number still remains 2.1 even with, all things being equal, better standards of living thanks to capitalism.
"...if it's at only 1 per couple that's still a vast number of people that will be born over the next 20 years"
Yes, but that's one birth per two deaths (given those deaths will most likely occur later) which means a halving of that population.
In other news, nice to see you migrated here, Bob!
"Yes, but that's one birth per two deaths (given those deaths will most likely occur later) which means a halving of that population." Yes, but given that a generation is approx. 30 years the population will reduce but over a very long time
When my father was born the world population was approx. 2 billion - when he died it was 8. Even at 2:1 ratio to get back to that 2 billion will take about 250 years. Remember that we don't die when we reproduce which people forget when doing that simple 2:1 calculation. With the earthly population being so young (and a life expectancy of about 80 years) it will take a very long time for the first/second generation to disappear from the numbers. Realistically 2:1 is unreasonable 2:1.5 or 2:1.7 seems much more likely as a settled rate. At that rate it will take even longer to get back to the world's population of 1920, and nobody thought there were not enough people around then. The countries that are below that are there because of conditions specific to them rather than a general condition.
If YOUR preference is to do no heating or cooling between 13°C-30°C, drive less, do less flying, eat less meat, and limit your progeny to two kids maximum, do it.
If, OTOH, choose to do none of that, it's NONE of your business and illogical to impose coercion tactics to force me to comply.
"Today, we have a different kind of fuel problem – we have to stop burning it, we have to stop releasing the carbon dioxide that is cooking the planet. That means thinking about RADICAL EFFICIENCIES ..."
If you want to talk efficiencies with respect to fuel and energy use, then climate alarmists need to skip the worst performing wind and solar (~40% and ~25%) and go nuclear (~90%). The fact they refuse to do so indicates they're not interested in facts and efficiencies but in virtue signaling.
A point to make about the analogy with aircraft is that at first when innovation got going flying was reserved for the ultra-rich and people who worked for the government. A ticket in 1939 from London to Brisbane would cost the same as an average person's annual wage. It was not until 50+ years from its initial flight that flying reached a cost that Mr/Mrs average could afford.
The same can be said of Passive House. If you have enough money, then yes you too can have a passive house designed and built to your personal requirements. However, that is not the case with the average person and there are far more average than ultra-rich.
Passive House is stuck in the quandary:-
1) Do it fast - incredibly expensive - average person will not be interested.
2) Do it slow - affordable but very slow - can't achieve anything meaningful by 2050.
"We have eight years to cut our carbon emissions in half"
Another prediction to track!
Software Elegance - Do accomplish the desired function with the least amount of lines of code - nothing more, nothing less.
Grok, you and I both know that there's a 0.00% chance of us cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030. It's failure is guaranteed because it's absolutely unrealistic for a goal.
But, but, but, the Environmentalists tell us they CAN! After all, look at ALL the windmills and PV installations! Lloyd tells us this all the time!
Oh wait - England is having second thoughts and Germany is reactivating coal generation (the politicians are getting the message that they won't be politicians for long with "intermittency" and sky high costs being blamed on them), India and China are building 2 coal plants A WEEK for the foreseeable future, and France is building new nukes...
...and Sweden just said "no way, Jose, with the RE - that's useless and too expensive so we're going all in on nukes...Wait, WHAT? Yeah, common sense is starting to sprout in that a modern society REQUIRES dispatchable energy upon demand.
And VB, did you read that the massive PV installs in the American deserts are starting to create groundwater issues - talk about destroying the "most vulnerable amongst us"!
The bottom line is that people have had it with the 50 years of lying predictions and seeing that said politicians, driven by the "RE Faithful", are making their lives artificially miserable for something they haven't been able to provide. They are starting to vote their own self-interest as they aren't interested in Live Worse and Have Less - and worse for their children.
And yes, 0% is unrealistic unless you force it and kill billions of people at the same time. Where TH's Nelson666 when you need him to hear his hands clapping at that.
These artificial timelines are stupid - it's just the Progressive/Socialists trying to create a "war mentality crisis" where one doesn't exist (and they do so on so many fronts it's exhausting which is another reason people are rebelling against them and their "ideas").
50% is impossible. The US can't even string up a single transmission line over a couple hundred miles in 14 years (permitting issues - I have the link somewhere) and I've seen we'd need 47,000 miles to just START "Electrify EVERYTHING".
This is all because the SMAHT People want to ignore the hard intermediate steps that are necessary. Turn that 7 years (that's all we got until 2030) into 70 and I'd start to say "perhaps".
See, VB, you wound me up again!
I get you riled up because you—like I—understand the lunacy of repeating a talking point without a detailed, fully funded game plan to turn it into reality.
Everything about the Paris Climate Agreement is a farce—from the 1.5°C "tipping point" threshold, to the arbitrary commitments agreed to by individual countries, to the preoccupation of wealth transfer from rich industrialized nations to developing economies via "mitigation efforts", and everything inbetween. China emits MORE carbon pollution than the entirety of all other industrialized nations COMBINED. India is rapidly developing as well, and has sucked up as much Russian oil and natural gas as possible post-Ukraine invasion as well as buying up Australian coal for their new power plants. To ignore those two massive polluters NOW on the premise that Western nations must "atone" for past historical privilege is convoluted rationale at best and an outright lack of understanding at worst.
As I've said on TreeHugger many, many times before, *IF* the climate "crisis" was *THE* existential threat to humanity and the entirety of the planet's species, THEN YOU DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE—REGARDLESS OF COST—TO STOP ALL NEW CARBON EMISSIONS BEFORE ENGAGING IN MITIGATION EFFORTS. Lloyd's fond of saying every gram of carbon matters, but policy wonks refuse to go carbon-free as a first-order actionable step.
Ask yourself, Why is that?
It's because they KNOW it's not a feasible goal, certainly when we in the U.S., Canada, and the EU can't dictate energy policy to that of behemoths like China and India. And since they show no inclination to go carbon-free IMMEDIATELY in an effort to save the planet, one of two things can be deduced from their inaction: either (1) the climate crisis isn't worth national self-destruction resulting in a vastly poorer, chaotic, and less-free citizenry, or (2) we've been lied to and the climate crisis isn't the threat it's purported to be.
And no, I have not read that the AmWest desert PV farms are now polluting the groundwater. I *do* know that we're just about on the cusp of all those PV panels that have been installed over the past 25 years reaching the end of their expected lifespans and we're going to have to deal with a literal tsunami of renewable energy waste. I wonder how the MSM will spin that to convince the RE pundits to not just "deal with it" but expand its use exponentially?
Oh, and where is all that money coming from?
Sure -> Eat the Rich!
Well, you sure as heck aren't going to get funding from poor people—that goes without saying.
At some point in the not-too-distant future the wheels will fall off of 50+ years worth of kicking the can-of-unfunded-liabilities down the road. Growth in spending exceeds growth in revenue; and growth in low-paying jobs impedes the kind of high-paying jobs necessary from which to tax for politicians' pet projects. This is neither a uniquely American problem, or a continue-business-as-usual problem. And I honestly believe that it will come to a head when AI is implemented and 800+ MILLION jobs globally will be eliminated.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42170100
When the poor and un(der)educated have no money and no possibility of upward mobility, what do policy wonks think will be an appropriate course of action to correct the discourse it will sow?
Yep, Soylent Green.
So they found you again at last Lloyd, shame. Pity for the rest of us you've had to turn the comments off but I don't blame you. It was nice while it lasted.
What makes you think comments are turned off. One of Lloyds strengths is that he always allows comments. If fact I am not sure who they are but I was invited here by Lloyd.
On the last 'Carbon upfront' post, from Lloyd
'Comments have been turned off because I am tired of being called a commie and after writing this post I think it might be true'
Thread now muted.
It's going to be a long long time gradually replacing our existing infrastructure of buildings with 15-minute communities of Passive-House buildings (and gradually implementing all the other needed advanced green infrastructure). We (including you, Lloyd) need to do and to tenaciously promote less heating and cooling (none between 13C-30C, https://greenbetween.home.blog), less driving, less flying, less meat-eating, and less population growth (2 children max) to bridge the gap.
Well, you've already met your last goal - less than 2 children/Mom. Most of the developed world is well below replacement of 2.1 - average is around 1.7. South Korea is a suicide cult at around 0.8, Japan isn't much better, and Russia is a basket case. China is also in demographic decline - serious decline.
What I still can't wrap my head around is WHY do people want to relive the Middle Ages of only being in a very small village their entire lives (reborn as 15 minute cities with all of the surveillance tech to ENSURE that's as far as you can ever go)?
What "people want" is to minimize greenhouse gas emissions to minimize the global warming disaster. If the goal is to be achieved, many different solutions - short-term, medium-term, long-term - will contribute. Some current pleasures will be impacted, temporarily or permanently, in order to minimize the far greater unpleasantries of global warming.
The challenge: Increase the number of people committed to minimizing greenhouse gas emissions. Reduce the number of people accepting continuing greenhouse gas emissions.
The challenge: Promptly minimize greenhouse gas emissions while progressing on ongoing optimization of solutions to minimize impact on pleasures.
"What "people want" is to minimize greenhouse gas emissions to minimize the global warming disaster."
What you forgot is "only certain" as a modifier to "people want". Your sentence has the "broadcast nuance" that EVERYONE wants that - and it is a very high priority as well. Sorry to be Debbie Downer, while polls (of which I read a lot) show such a sentiment, those polls that also dive deeper to see how much they are willing to spend in support of it, the results pretty much show "Not Much".
And I will tell you that not everyone agrees that "the goal" MUST be solved in 7 years - or even longer. And to your last paragraph: to accomplish that, the hysteria and hyperbole needs a severe ratcheting down. I've been around since before the first earth day. Without going long, not one single apocalyptic doomsday prophesy has come true since 1970. Not a single one. Even the vaunted computer models have been pretty much wrong.
And most people do NOT wish to give up their standard of living while India and China are thumbing their noses at us and we see the dictators and malcontents in the UN see this as a massive grift with others seeing this as a wonderful opportunity for Power grabs over others.
What HAVE we seen? With higher CO2 levels, agriculture is flourishing and all things being equal (let's leave out bad governance/wars that use food as a weapon), people are eating better.
"What "people want" is to minimize greenhouse gas emissions to minimize the global warming disaster."
The caveat: you do you, I do me. If they're diametrically opposed, that's not your concern or problem because I am not you, and vice versa.
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900
The median UN global projection is for the population to grow from the current 8 billion to 10 billion over the next 50 years.
While it may not be a popular site here, look at the Fertility Chart here: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/04/05/population-bombing/
That's to 2005 and this downtrend has only gotten worse in the last. Remember, replacement fertility rate is 2.1. EVERY single region is below that. Can't grow population when deaths exceed births.
And yes, the same article references the same UN estimate you quoted, so I'm not going off half-cocked.
"That's to 2005 and this downtrend has only gotten worse in the last." Thats the problem with using out of date numbers and not understanding how they are derived. You are missing up predictions with snapshots.
Approx 40% of the world's population is under 18. That means they have not bred yet. However, they will even if it's at only 1 per couple that's still a vast number of people that will be born over the next 20 years. Whereas the mass die off of the baby boomers commenced 10 years ago and is accelerating rapidly. So yes, deaths for a while will exceed births but as the youngsters start to breed and the boomers finish dying off the numbers will definitely switch around and a population boom will commence. Thats also assuming 1 which is probably to low.
Points taken. That said, I've not seen any polls/posts that have indicated any kind of uptick in fertility rates. In fact, the big outlier, Africa, continues a downward spiral. And that Magic Number still remains 2.1 even with, all things being equal, better standards of living thanks to capitalism.
"...if it's at only 1 per couple that's still a vast number of people that will be born over the next 20 years"
Yes, but that's one birth per two deaths (given those deaths will most likely occur later) which means a halving of that population.
In other news, nice to see you migrated here, Bob!
"Yes, but that's one birth per two deaths (given those deaths will most likely occur later) which means a halving of that population." Yes, but given that a generation is approx. 30 years the population will reduce but over a very long time
When my father was born the world population was approx. 2 billion - when he died it was 8. Even at 2:1 ratio to get back to that 2 billion will take about 250 years. Remember that we don't die when we reproduce which people forget when doing that simple 2:1 calculation. With the earthly population being so young (and a life expectancy of about 80 years) it will take a very long time for the first/second generation to disappear from the numbers. Realistically 2:1 is unreasonable 2:1.5 or 2:1.7 seems much more likely as a settled rate. At that rate it will take even longer to get back to the world's population of 1920, and nobody thought there were not enough people around then. The countries that are below that are there because of conditions specific to them rather than a general condition.
Thanks for the welcome.
If YOUR preference is to do no heating or cooling between 13°C-30°C, drive less, do less flying, eat less meat, and limit your progeny to two kids maximum, do it.
If, OTOH, choose to do none of that, it's NONE of your business and illogical to impose coercion tactics to force me to comply.