Politics Thread!

[zip accident]

On the one hand, the problem that the planet is retaining too much of the solar energy raining down upon it. So much heat energy, it's slowly boiling the planet.

Water boils at 100 degrees celcius, the average temperature is currently probably something like 20 degrees celcius, and the highest so far is 60 degrees celcius, there's plenty of variation to go. When the deep seas rise above 4 degrees celcius it will be time to think about worrying.

Oops, no too high, average temperature 15 degrees celcius.

[KlaxonCow]

Water boils at 100 degrees celcius

At one atmosphere of pressure.

Apparently, atop Mount Everest, you can get it down to around 60 degrees. In the hard vacuum of space, water'll "insta-boil" on you, because zero pressure.

(Obviously, "boiling the planet" was metaphorical and, sure, a tad hyperbolic.)

[gilesgoat]

Water boils at 100 degrees celcius

At one atmosphere of pressure.

Apparently, atop Mount Everest, you can get it down to around 60 degrees. In the hard vacuum of space, water'll "insta-boil" on you, because zero pressure.

(Obviously, "boiling the planet" was metaphorical and, sure, a tad hyperbolic.)

There's a very interesting video by Anton Petrov on YT where some scientists asked the question "if Earth could ever become something like Venus" .. and the answer is "it ALMOST DONE IT 3 times in the past !" .. long story made short "it does not need to get super hot to become like that" ( irreversibly ) because there's a "runaway effect" where "the most dangerous thing ever" is not CO2 but water vapour that incredibly has a greenhouse effect that is MUCH STRONGER than CO2/Methane/etc.

If water vapour/clouds in the sky goes beyond a certain threshold it stars an ever increasing effect where temperature and pressure will raise up "exponentially" creating catastrophic consequences but that's very unlikely that's ever going to happen on Earth .. unless of course we make it happen.

[Vargol]

A Venus like atmosphere is a practical certainly , I am talking a couple of billion years or so down the line.
As the sun ages it with kill of the plant life and evaporate the oceans (it doesn't need 100 degrees centigrade to evaporate them)
leading to a runaway greenhouse effect and kicking the planet down the same path Venus took until the Sun expands and turns the planet into cinders.

[gilesgoat]

A Venus like atmosphere is a practical certainly , I am talking a couple of billion years or so down the line.
As the sun ages it with kill of the plant life and evaporate the oceans (it doesn't need 100 degrees centigrade to evaporate them)
leading to a runaway greenhouse effect and kicking the planet down the same path Venus took until the Sun expands and turns the planet into cinders.

Well yes when the sun will start expanding near the end of its life.

[KlaxonCow]

Yeah, water vapour is a worse greenhouse gas than both carbon and methane.

And the "runaway greenhouse effect" is where water vapour in the atmosphere traps heat. But because it's warmer, the Sun evaporates more of the ocean, so there's more water vapour in the atmosphere. Which traps even more heat. That causes even more evaporation. That traps even more heat. Which causes more evaporation.

That there's a "tipping point" somewhere on that graph, where it becomes self-perpetuating and then it'll simply become impossible to stop.

In a sense, we go after CO2 because that's the one we at least have some control over. Certainly, humans can and should stop producing more atmospheric CO2 - because, as I regularly discuss on "the future of energy" thread, there are (arguably superior) alternatives to CO2-based technologies.

But the ultimate worry is that if we can't cap the global temperature and they keep getting worse, we'll eventually reach that "tipping point" temperature, where it becomes self-perpetuating and "runaway". Because, at the point, we can't do anything. You can't fight the planet itself. It's all vastly too big and way, way, way beyond anything we little humans can do about it.

I mean, keeping global temperatures down is to keep the place hospitable for life, so we can continue existing. So we should be doing this for its own sake. But there is also that "tipping point" - if we completely fail to do anything useful, which is, unfortunately, the current trajectory that the world has chosen thus far - where the water vapour takes over, it becomes self-perpetuating and then it cannot be stopped.

And, again, the ultimate stupidity of it all is that none of it is necessary. We have the technologies already that can replace fossil fuels. They're all there and available right now. So we can reach "net zero" and stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere, to stop temperatures getting worse.

In fact, fossil fuels will run out. Eventually, we're going to end up on these renewable technologies anyway, simply because there won't be any CO2-based choices left. So it's "double stupid" because we're resisting transition to the tech that we ultimately MUST eventually move to.

All we are doing is giving multi-billionaires the opportunity to tap the few remaining billions or trillions of dollars' worth of stuff that's still down there (for the handful of decades that it's available and, frankly, that these fat old white men - who're the ones running this show - have left to live). It's nothing more than already rich people remaining stupidly rich for the short amount of time they have left on the planet. And you can't take it with you, so what the fuck is the point?

(I still say that our billionaire classes have an undiagnosed gambling problem. Like, when poor people bet their house and car and the shirt off their back, just for the momentary thrill of potentially getting a win on the horses, we try to intervene. They are a gambling addict and they need help with their mental health problems. But when you're a multi-billionaire and you obsessively chase after the "buzz" and the thrill of making another million or two - which is a meaningless blip compared to their wealth, so it's not like it's rational for them to be so obsessively buying up companies and asset stripping them and causing such destruction in their path - then rather than be referred to "gambler's anonymous" and be offered professional help with their mental health problems, we praise them and compile "the rich list" to celebrate their broken brains and call them stupid things like "captains of industry" and act like their God-kings amongst men.

When they are, in fact, suffering from a mental health problem and we should be offering them professional help. Yes, up to a point, more money makes sense. To buy a house and a car and ensure you have enough to survive your time to the grave. We're all playing that game. But these people have long, long, long since won that "basic survival" game and they just keep going. A billion is a ridiculous sum of money that - "Brewster's Millions" style - you could not come anywhere close to legitimately spending in a whole lifetime. But they keep on going. They keep obsessing over getting to the top of "the rich list" or what should be recognised, with the amounts they have, as being the "there's something wrong with their mental health list", if they're at that level AND STILL GOING.)

[Vargol]

A Venus like atmosphere is a practical certainly , I am talking a couple of billion years or so down the line.
As the sun ages it with kill of the plant life and evaporate the oceans (it doesn't need 100 degrees centigrade to evaporate them)
leading to a runaway greenhouse effect and kicking the planet down the same path Venus took until the Sun expands and turns the planet into cinders.

Well yes when the sun will start expanding near the end of its life.

Well yes, but by the time the Sun gets to us well already be Venus 2.0 and possibly a super Venus.
The plants dying thing is estimated to around 750 million years way is more due to changes in the Sun's spectrum as it ages.
The Sea evaporation ~ 1 billion years.
Sun starting to expand is 5 billion years away.
The Sun swallowing the Earth still around 8 billion years

[rowan]

And, again, the ultimate stupidity of it all is that none of it is necessary. We have the technologies already that can replace fossil fuels. They're all there and available right now.

You grossly ignore or oversimplify some realities.

Do the technologies exist? Yes, some of them do.
Do they exist in the quantities needed? No, not remotely.
Can it all be ramped up quickly? Apologies, I did no research but I would doubt it.
Can people afford to install them? The majority not.

Maybe I misunderstand your writings but somehow your ... frustration at the pace of change comes across as this all being stuff that could easily be solved tomorrow.

[Dio]

Hard to present that argument when you admit you don't know the key answer.

The thesis is that it could happen with more will, and that in even the medium term it actually costs less. From what I know, it's likely that it's true, but political will doesn't want to do it - partly because of entrenched interests, partly because there is a limited amount of short-term pain, and partly because some people are just arseholes who have some combination of 1. think it can be wished away, 2. just plain don't believe it or 3. simply don't care as long as they benefit.

[PFVA]

And around here:
Now the bank employees are protesting and they are doing it simultaneously with the Spanish.

[rowan]

Hard to present that argument when you admit you don't know the key answer.

The thesis is that it could happen with more will, and that in even the medium term it actually costs less. From what I know, it's likely that it's true, but political will doesn't want to do it - partly because of entrenched interests, partly because there is a limited amount of short-term pain, and partly because some people are just arseholes who have some combination of 1. think it can be wished away, 2. just plain don't believe it or 3. simply don't care as long as they benefit.

Yeah that's fair enough.
A TLDR of my post is along the lines of "Unfortunately money makes the world go round. I wish it didn't but it does. And there is a LOT of inertia as a result".

[KlaxonCow]

The thesis is that it could happen with more will, and that in even the medium term it actually costs less. From what I know, it's likely that it's true, but political will doesn't want to do it - partly because of entrenched interests, partly because there is a limited amount of short-term pain, and partly because some people are just arseholes who have some combination of 1. think it can be wished away, 2. just plain don't believe it or 3. simply don't care as long as they benefit.

Yes, exactly this.

But my frustrations at it all won't let me put it so calmly and reasonably as that, so I thank Dio for rephrasing it for me.


I guess the example here is Australia:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... olar-power

‘Go hard and go big’: How Australia got solar panels onto one in every three houses
[...]
For a brief period over several weekends this spring, the state of South Australia, which has a population of 1.8 million, did something no other place of a similar size can claim: generate enough energy from solar panels on the roofs of houses to meet virtually all its electricity needs.

This is a new phenomenon, but it has been coming for a while – since solar photovoltaic cells started to be installed at a rapid pace across Australia in the early 2010s. Roughly one in three Australian households, more than 3.6m homes, now generate electricity domestically. In South Australia, the most advanced state for rooftop solar, the proportion is nearly 50%.

So, you know, you ask whether it can be scaled up.

Oz has scaled it up to 3.6 million homes - 1 in 3 of all Aussie homes, and 1 in 2 if you're in South Australia.

That one wasn't even political will. Indeed, most of the growth occurred under their previous pro-coal Liberal government (for clarification, Australian "Liberal Party" is equivalent to UK Tories and American Republicans) who absolutely were not encouraging it whatsoever. It was very much "grass roots" - which is why, when I talk about that, I don't think it's infeasible. Because Oz already did it - or, at least, a third of the way there in about 10 years.

China is also way out ahead. They have a third of the world's total solar capacity. It was around 250GW in 2020 - which, for context, is equivalent to 80 Hinkley Point C nuclear power stations. And, yeah, imagine how much and how long it would take to commission and build 80 Hinkley Point nuclear power stations. China's already done that 4 years ago and has been accelerating ahead.

Another one to keep your eye on, in light of recent news about the steelworks in Wales, is that Sweden actually did front up 3 billion euros to invest in a hydrogen-powered blast furnace that feeds an electric arc furnace, so that they can produce carbon-free virgin steel (the trade union plan that the UK government and Tata Steel rejected in the UK). So, as I say, keep your eye on that one and compare its future fortunes to the steelworks in Port Talbot. Let's see who made the right decision. My money's squarely on Sweden.

Heck, even within the UK itself, there's amazing stuff going on up in the Orkneys, who're already more than 100% renewably powered. In fact, they produce too much and it's causing headaches for them in how to deal with the excess:



So, the contention that it could happen if the will was there is not faith, you understand - hey, I'm an atheist and I don't do faith - but it is an extrapolation of these (currently too isolated) examples of where it's already going down. And, like, some of these are already impressive scale, such as 3.6 million homes and rising in Oz, so they are scaling up, seemingly quite easily, as there's not been any talk, thus far, of shortages or anything in that success story.


And the thing with renewables is that they pay for themselves. Short term initial costs, yes. But, in the long term, they pay for themselves in savings and selling excess generation, and so you actually, in the long term view, paid nothing for them. They're free, in "total cost of ownership" terms. In the even longer term, they'll keep making savings and selling the excess beyond their "pay back period", so you could even say that, in terms of the complete life cycle, they actually have a negative price.

So I would agree with you, if you're suggesting that governments should get involved to provide subsidies, incentives, interest-free "loans" and stuff to get the ball rolling, to overcome the hump of people being able to afford to install.

But, like, due to the "negative price in the long term", there is the notion that the same calculation works for governments too, in a "wider economy" way. They spend taxpayer money to help people install. But then those households have reduced energy costs. More money in their pockets to spend domestically. Less leaning on the benefits system. It can also work at that scale too - that if the government forked out on insulation and renewables for folks, it would boost the economy and keep it boosted, feeding back into tax receipts. It's more indirect, but the same basic idea holds that, in the long term, the taxpayer ends up paying nothing for it and then goes into profit thereafter.

[KlaxonCow]

But, also, I want to re-iterate the most important "show stopper" point, which trumps everything else.

Fossil fuels will run out.

So, you know, it doesn't matter how much humanity might love oil, gas and coal, it's fundamentally unsustainable. One day, sooner than you think, those options will be taken off the table and the only options remaining will be renewables (and nuclear).

And while the economics once favoured fossil fuels, they rapidly and increasingly won't and don't.

We're currently in a cost of living crisis, thanks to sky-rocketed energy costs, that's down to fossil fuel supply issues from the succession of problems from Covid lockdowns to Russia's invasion of Ukraine to conflict in the Middle East (where the Houthis attacking Red Sea traffic is sending sea traffic around the horn of Africa instead - particularly oil or LPG tankers, as you can't risk those being hit, as they are explosive).

Fossil fuels require a physical product - oil, gas and coal - to be physically transported from one place to another. It, unfortunately, originates in some rather dodgy places or has to be shipped through or via some other dodgy places. Geopolitics affects fossil fuel pricing, basically.

Whereas, when the pandemic happened, the wind and solar farms carried on. When Putin invaded Ukraine, the Sun still rose the next day and the winds kept blowing. As Houthi rebels attack Red Sea traffic, the Sun still keeps rising and the wind blowing.

While other forms of energy have been horridly unstable and have risen drastically, wind and solar became the cheapest forms of energy generation and their cost has just kept getting cheaper. They didn't skip a beat in the midst of these storms.

The "energy security" of renewables is essentially perfect. The transport costs are zero - it comes to you, quite naturally, with every sunrise.

Solar and wind are the cheapest forms of energy right now. They have been for a number of years now. And they keep getting cheaper - from both technological improvement and economies of scale.

The ONLY economic advantage fossil fuels still cling onto is being the incumbent technology. The infrastructure is already there. If this were a level playing field and we were creating our infrastructure from scratch, there's no contest - renewables win. And, indeed, in China and some developing nations, who are building up new infrastructure, they are just skipping the fossil fuel phase entirely.

(This is a bit like how, in Africa, cellular telecommunications - mobiles and such - have taken over. They've skipped landlines. Because that stuff is now the much more expensive and complex option. They've just gone straight to cellular towers and even the poorest, surprisingly, have smartphones - but that's because it's not really a luxury item for them, it's the be-all and end-all of their communication infrastructure. It's that or nothing at all.)

But the crucial economic point is to understand that the "do nothing" option, to carry on with fossil fuels, is not a neutral "null hypothesis" here.

Fossil fuels run out, so their costs will rise - and keep rising, exponentially - as the resources deplete and dwindle, and eventually go extinct country-by-country.

There's only decades of oil left. But understand that you'll be economically priced out of it, long before it fully dies out. The price at the petrol pump will force you to buy an EV soon enough, even if you, like Jeremy Clarkson, absolutely adore the sound of a purring internal combustion engine and deny climate change outright. Doesn't matter. You won't be able to afford it, so you'll have to make the switch.

It's an inevitable foregone conclusion. The world will eventually have no oil, natural gas nor coal left. The only options on the table will be renewables and nuclear (which may or may not include nuclear fusion - but we all know how that works, being "10 years away" forever).

That is happening. There is no way around that. Finite things that you burn will run out. Or, if you like, non-renewable things don't renew, and it's right there in the name.

The transition is happening, by hook or by crook. The only real choice is whether we voluntarily get a head start on this now, while the fossil fuel infrastructure we currently have and necessarily depend on remains relatively cheap...

...or do we wait for economic disaster, hardships and even death, before we kick our arses into gear, when leaning on the fossil fuel infrastructure (which we initially have to do, because it's the only infrastructure we've currently got) is cripplingly inaffordably expensive?

What I'm getting at is that whilst, right now, the fossil fuel option seems like the cheaper one - because fossil fuel infrastructure is the incumbent and has the advantage that all the infrastructure is already in place, making it the "do nothing" option - it is, in the wider picture and the longer term, a massive false economy.

Building infrastructure ain't cheap. It was not cheap and easy to build up the fossil fuel infrastructure we've already got. We just don't think of it, as it's already being paid for in the past.

So switching to renewable infrastructure is going to carry an initial cost. But, you know, it won't be anywhere near the initial cost that was paid to build our current fossil fuel infrastructure. And it's a "bump" that, once we've gotten over, will pay for itself and bring us into profit thereafter.

But, bottom line, there's only an illusion of choice here. Fossil fuel will run out. Fossil fuels will become inaffordably expensive before then. Even if we ignore / deny climate change, there is only one reasonable socio-economic choice here. And it's not whether we make the transition, it's only when are we going to do it.

And economics dictates that, while we have to lean on fossil fuels to make the transition, right now is going to be cheaper and more painless, in the long run, than waiting for disaster and economic collapse to spur us into action.

It's going to happen. You can painlessly voluntarily begin that journey now, or you can wait for disaster and economic ruin to force you to do it. That's really the only choice available.

[Little stoned kiwi]

You know it's not going to happen painlessly though, don't you?

[Dio]

He only talked about painlessly beginning the journey, and I think the power grid part of it will indeed be fairly painless.

Going beyond electricity and making inroads into concrete, agriculture and aviation is where the stickier questions lie.