Cop 29

[Croolis]

Agreed. remind me...just how much energy did we get from renewables over the last week or so? Note to self....buy more candles.

Let me press some buttons for you:

https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/historical

Historical screen working OK, live screen seems to be having some problems this second.

Lots more gas than wind. EDIT: Over the last week, that is. If you choose a 90 days or more timescale, there's more wind than gas.

At the moment. First time I've looked at that site in years. The mix is quite different from when I last looked IIRC. We need more nuclear. It's very ughhh, don;t like the waste aspects of it. The cost is just something that needs to be borne. The ridiculous time it takes to get new plants online needs to be improved. Unsure about this small modular nuclear thing that's been bandied about more recently.

 

[Delaney]

You mean the guy with 12? kids, who runs a rocket company and also sells luxury EV cars, now including the Cybertruck which is massively un-green, who also actively campaigned to prevent hi-speed rail in California with a promise of some nonsense so he could sell more cars?

Unless you want your offspring to fry from climate change instigated by the sun imploding, you should be thankful someone is building rockets.

 

[RobinBHM]

Unless you want your offspring to fry from climate change instigated by the sun imploding, you should be thankful someone is building rockets.

climate is caused by man not the sun

A billionaires ego won’t improve things

 

[RobinBHM]

In terms of electricity production, renewables generated more than fossil fuels over the last year.

37% renewables
28% fossil fuels

https://grid.iamkate.com/

 

[Croolis]

Another thing with all this, of course, is that energy production, which everyone loves to talk about because it's relatively simple to do so, is only part of the problem. Concrete production, chemical production, planetary surface albedo change, nitrogen. plastics, could go on and on.

We could invent fusion power tomorrow and we'd still be in it up to our necks.

 

[Agent_zed]

Unless you want your offspring to fry from climate change instigated by the sun imploding, you should be thankful someone is building rockets.

Are you joking????

Let's assume you are being serious..

So we currently know of no known life on any planet within our solar system. The next nearest solar system is Proxima Centauri which is the nearest star to our sun at 4.22 light-years away.

That means you'd have to have a spaceship travelling at light speed for 4.22 years!

Light speed is 3x10(8) m/s (300000000m/s) the fastest space vehicle (unmanned probe) is going 635,266km/h ( 176,462m/s). Note the difference in speed, (my maths isn't great so hopefully this is correct). It's about 2000x slower than lightspeed.

So we should be able to get to a solar system that we don't know supports life in about 8440 years with current speeds of an unmanned probe. We haven't even managed to go to Mars which is 6 months away

I'm sure my great x I can't even work out how many generations that would be grandkids (which won't be on a tiny spacecraft as it won't be taking the entire of the human race with it) will thank Elon Musk.

So far most of Elon's rockets have rapidly self disassembled so the idea that SpaceX is suddenly going to be able to build a lightspeed capable spaceship in the next 100 years is amusing.

Perhaps instead of his massive waste of resources for a vanity project he could spend money on sustainable energy, recycling, education, health, public transport, re-greening, stopping deforestation etc etc.

Oh yeah he isn't interested in any of those things because then he would have to actually spend money on useful things. Instead he is going to continue fleecing the US government and preventing public transport so he can sell cars, whilst pretending he is some super genius. He is a business man, he isn't a genius. The only things that have been successful were designed before or without his input. Everything that he has pushed - the cybertruck, hyperloop, the tunnel road thing, have been failures.

According to scientists our sun will die in about 5 billion years time so we might have some time to figure stuff out if we can stop morons like Musk destroying the environment to make money.

We have ONE PLANET!!!!!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

According to scientists our sun will die in about 5 billion years time ...

According to scientists we'd be heading into an ice age by now.

 

[Agent_zed]

According to scientists we'd be heading into an ice age by now.

You do realise that Musk employs scientists don't you. Who do you think is doing the research and calculations?

So do we distrust scientists that say the things we don't want to hear but trust the ones that work for the richest man in the world?

It's always funny when I see unquestioning blind trust put into Musk as though he isn't using the same science as everyone else. If he was some religious leader offering a non-science solution to the worlds problem I could understand, but he is using Rocket Scientists to make rockets (badly as most of them have exploded).

For fun let's not listen to 'scientists', let's listen to the fossil fuel industry back in the 1977. What's that they say? oh burning loads of fossil fuels is likely to cause global climatic change.... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/

 

[Chris152]

For fun let's not listen to 'scientists', let's listen to the fossil fuel industry back in the 1977. What's that they say? oh burning loads of fossil fuels is likely to cause global climatic change.... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/

That's pretty shocking. Not surprising, but definitely shocking. And still ordinary lay persons seem happy to wind-up confusion/ disinformation.

 

[Spectric]

That means you'd have to have a spaceship travelling at light speed for 4.22 years!

Not if you fold time because then you have warp drive !

 

[Agent_zed]

Not if you fold time because then you have warp drive !

That is the only theoretically/imaginary? way to travel such distances, but seeing as Musk can't even make a truck that doesn't have bits that fall off or completely fails if it drives through water, despite 'knowing more about manufacturing than anyone alive', I'm not going to wait with much hope for that to happen.

Can you imagine being stuck on a spacecraft for months/years with that silly person. He'd probably claim to know more about piloting a spacecraft than any other person alive and drive you through a planet.

 

[RobinBHM]

According to scientists we'd be heading into an ice age by now.

I dont think that is true

we are currently in an ice age

Earth is currently in an ice age called the Quaternary Ice Age which began around 2.5 million years ago and is still going on. We are currently in an interglacial stage of this ice age.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

We were told by scirentists in the '70s that earth was going to get colder, we were heading into an ice age. Conveniently forgotten.

 

[Amplidyne]

Even the experts are saying that the COP process is no longer fit for purpose.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2lknel1xpo.amp

 

[Croolis]

I dont think that is true

we are currently in an ice age

Earth is currently in an ice age called the Quaternary Ice Age which began around 2.5 million years ago and is still going on. We are currently in an interglacial stage of this ice age.

Don't forget it's all a bit relative. And here's the important stuff in regard to the CO2 stuff (and never forget it's not just about CO2), from wikipedia:

One theory holds that decreases in atmospheric CO2, an important greenhouse gas, started the long-term cooling trend that eventually led to the formation of continental ice sheets in the Arctic.[13] Geological evidence indicates a decrease of more than 90% in atmospheric CO2 since the middle of the Mesozoic Era.[14] An analysis of CO2 reconstructions from alkenone records shows that CO2 in the atmosphere declined before and during Antarctic glaciation, and supports a substantial CO2 decrease as the primary cause of Antarctic glaciation.[15] Decreasing carbon dioxide levels during the late Pliocene may have contributed substantially to global cooling and the onset of Northern Hemisphere glaciation.[16][17] This decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations may have come about by way of the decreasing ventilation of deep water in the Southern Ocean.[18]

CO2 levels also play an important role in the transitions between interglacials and glacials. High CO2 contents correspond to warm interglacial periods, and low CO2 to glacial periods. However, studies indicate that CO2 may not be the primary cause of the interglacial-glacial transitions, but instead acts as a feedback. The explanation for this observed CO2 variation "remains a difficult attribution problem".[19]

But this is all at absurdly long timescales. Though in fact, from the entire world history perspective, the above descrobes changes over pretty short timescales. While we are altering things at insanely, absurdly short timescales.

Once upon a time, the Earth was a big ball of lava. And then a cooler scabby bit formed on the outside. And then a nasty, CO2 heavy wispy bit of gas hung around the scabby outside. Then, through some crazy miracle, microbes and plants and stuff grew into the soupy oceans and spread over the exposed rocks. After a lot of million years, these plants (and other processes) sucked up lots of the CO2 and locked it up as rocky stuff as they decayed. A very, very small proportion of this didn't really turn into rock for a lot of reasons, but other things. Things that like to burn if you dig them up and give them the chance. But that very small proportion still represented a world changing amount of contained nasty gas. And so, of course, an endless stream of bleeding i-d-i-o-t-s started digging it up and burning it as quickly as they possibly could, because putting their microwave meals in a plastic tray and smearing chemicals over themselves seemed like a much better idea than living in the dynamically created green paradise that they used to have. And now they're all wondering why they're so fooked, even when they can be bothered to think about it at all. THE END.

Genius .

 

[Croolis]

We were told by scirentists in the '70s that earth was going to get colder, we were heading into an ice age. Conveniently forgotten.

Must. Resist.

 

[RobinBHM]

We were told by scirentists in the '70s that earth was going to get colder, we were heading into an ice age. Conveniently forgotten.

yes that is a commonly used climate change myth, which has been disproven, but climate change deniers like Richard Tice still push it.

evidence shows it to be not true

A review of the climate science literature from 1965 to 1979 shows this myth to be false. The myth's basis lies in a selective misreading of the texts both by some members of the media at the time and by some observers today. In fact, emphasis on greenhouse warming dominated the scientific literature even then.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/262209...e climate,the scientific literature even then.

https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...s-they-predicted-global-cooling-in-the-1970s/

 

[RobinBHM]

Even the experts are saying that the COP process is no longer fit for purpose.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2lknel1xpo.amp

Did you read the article?

They are saying that the urgency now is so great that COP is too slow

The UN’s climate talks have made significant progress in recent years, despite the fact that unanimous agreement is needed among almost 200 countries to take action.
The Paris climate agreement, signed in 2015, outlines a long-term plan to rein in rising temperatures, as countries strive to keep that rise under 1.5C this century.


They have also agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, and to treble renewable power by 2030.
But while the authors of this letter recognise these achievements,

they feel that the slow-moving COP process is “no longer fit for purpose” in dealing with a fast-moving climate crisis.