Climate Change
The recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (Global Warming Must Not Exceed) has underlined the importance of acting on climate change. I don't think there will be meaningful change on this question in the near future.
Why, you might ask. A combination of things: (a) the utility of fossil fuels (FF); (b) the lack of viable alternatives; and (c) human nature.
When I speak of utility with regard to fossil fuels I mean several things. One of these is cost. Both the Brent Crude and West Texas Crude prices are well south of $100 a barrel. Gas prices where I live are less than $3 a gallon. This cost just doesn't provide any motivation to make any change. I suspect the cost would have to be north of $5 for folks to begin to even talk about it. And with the fracking boom in North America I don't see a significant rise in cost in the near future.
FF utility extends beyond cost. It's energy density (essentially available energy per unit volume) is excellent. Storage and transport are relatively safe. Contrast this with hydrogen for example. Gasoline is much safer and does not require compression to achieve comparable energy density.
But wait a minute, I hear you say. What about Green Energy (GE)? Wind and Solar. GE is indeed a valuable component and we should have lots more of it. But it doesn't go anywhere near far enough. The problem is we can't store anywhere near enough of it. Wind and Solar are not on all the time and so you would have to store that energy for use. Despite a large amount of research, this problem is far from solved. Indeed, the current technologies for batteries involve use of rare earths like lithium. These pose all the same problems that fossil fuels do.
I'll note in passing that Electric Cars don't solve anything if the electricity generation is via FF.
For me one of the stupid things we are currently doing is turning off Nuclear Power (NP). NP isn't zero carbon (mining and transport) but it is pretty close. Humans are irrationally worried about safety. And yet the vast majority of NP plants have operated safely for decades. The problems with Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were created by human error. And Fukushima Daiichi was sited rather poorly. Indeed NP is the safest source of energy available (see What Is The Safest Form Of Energy).
And we could improve on the current light water technology used for NP by looking at technologies like molten salt which has fail-safe characteristics. At least in the US there is no serious effort in this area. It is completely criminal that we don't pursue this.
The real problem, of course, is people. Humans have enough problems planning for next week, let alone three decades from now. Americans are notoriously poor at planning for their own retirements, an event that has a very high likelihood of actually coming to pass. It is not surprising that planning for climate change never ranks very high. And there are some interesting issues around this. One is the prediction for 1.5 or 2 degrees C of temperature rise. That doesn't sound like much. Changes of two degrees happens pretty much every day most places. Can't be a big deal right? The problem here is that this is two degrees (on average) for the entire planet. The net increase in energy is truly difficult to comprehend. That extra energy is going to go places and do very bad things.
It doesn't help that there is a section of our society that thinks education is evil, that college educated people aren't to be trusted, and science is wrong. Never mind that these things are responsible for all their creature comforts. And of course those that think God wouldn't do this to us. At least the Christians and Jews should be aware that, according to their holy texts, this has happened before.
I don't think humans, as a class, have the ability to see the danger until it gets much, much more real for them. By which time, things might be very bad. One thing that occurs to me has to with migration. Migration into Europe and the US has had significant effects on politics. This is with thousands of people migrating. Wait until climate change makes some parts of the globe uninhabitable through some combination of heat, drought, crop loss. Then millions of people with be migrating. Then we will be using weapons at the border.
Seeing as the playoffs are on, I'll use a baseball metaphor. We're being served a 50 mile an hour fast ball right down the heart of the plate and we're going to whiff.
Why, you might ask. A combination of things: (a) the utility of fossil fuels (FF); (b) the lack of viable alternatives; and (c) human nature.
When I speak of utility with regard to fossil fuels I mean several things. One of these is cost. Both the Brent Crude and West Texas Crude prices are well south of $100 a barrel. Gas prices where I live are less than $3 a gallon. This cost just doesn't provide any motivation to make any change. I suspect the cost would have to be north of $5 for folks to begin to even talk about it. And with the fracking boom in North America I don't see a significant rise in cost in the near future.
FF utility extends beyond cost. It's energy density (essentially available energy per unit volume) is excellent. Storage and transport are relatively safe. Contrast this with hydrogen for example. Gasoline is much safer and does not require compression to achieve comparable energy density.
But wait a minute, I hear you say. What about Green Energy (GE)? Wind and Solar. GE is indeed a valuable component and we should have lots more of it. But it doesn't go anywhere near far enough. The problem is we can't store anywhere near enough of it. Wind and Solar are not on all the time and so you would have to store that energy for use. Despite a large amount of research, this problem is far from solved. Indeed, the current technologies for batteries involve use of rare earths like lithium. These pose all the same problems that fossil fuels do.
I'll note in passing that Electric Cars don't solve anything if the electricity generation is via FF.
For me one of the stupid things we are currently doing is turning off Nuclear Power (NP). NP isn't zero carbon (mining and transport) but it is pretty close. Humans are irrationally worried about safety. And yet the vast majority of NP plants have operated safely for decades. The problems with Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were created by human error. And Fukushima Daiichi was sited rather poorly. Indeed NP is the safest source of energy available (see What Is The Safest Form Of Energy).
And we could improve on the current light water technology used for NP by looking at technologies like molten salt which has fail-safe characteristics. At least in the US there is no serious effort in this area. It is completely criminal that we don't pursue this.
The real problem, of course, is people. Humans have enough problems planning for next week, let alone three decades from now. Americans are notoriously poor at planning for their own retirements, an event that has a very high likelihood of actually coming to pass. It is not surprising that planning for climate change never ranks very high. And there are some interesting issues around this. One is the prediction for 1.5 or 2 degrees C of temperature rise. That doesn't sound like much. Changes of two degrees happens pretty much every day most places. Can't be a big deal right? The problem here is that this is two degrees (on average) for the entire planet. The net increase in energy is truly difficult to comprehend. That extra energy is going to go places and do very bad things.
It doesn't help that there is a section of our society that thinks education is evil, that college educated people aren't to be trusted, and science is wrong. Never mind that these things are responsible for all their creature comforts. And of course those that think God wouldn't do this to us. At least the Christians and Jews should be aware that, according to their holy texts, this has happened before.
I don't think humans, as a class, have the ability to see the danger until it gets much, much more real for them. By which time, things might be very bad. One thing that occurs to me has to with migration. Migration into Europe and the US has had significant effects on politics. This is with thousands of people migrating. Wait until climate change makes some parts of the globe uninhabitable through some combination of heat, drought, crop loss. Then millions of people with be migrating. Then we will be using weapons at the border.
Seeing as the playoffs are on, I'll use a baseball metaphor. We're being served a 50 mile an hour fast ball right down the heart of the plate and we're going to whiff.
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