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Ken Fabian

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Everything posted by Ken Fabian

  1. I think he merely baits his opponents - usually well below his rhetorical weight - with a keen sense of what buttons to press and coming off as sane and reasonable in comparison to what his trolling stirs up. When I listened to him discussing climate issues - issues I do follow keenly - the accurate content and evidence of actual understanding just wasn't there. From very misleading "facts" to outright wrong. And as Politically Correct in his own way with those talking points as any Left Warrior's conformity of Left rhetoric; you'd have thought getting worked up about climate change at all was Left idiocy - backed by using the wrong talking points of Right idiots. Any sense this was someone who really knows what he's talking about or should be listened to as a great intellect - or at all - was gone.
  2. In my experience it isn't usually the trees that burn or that are the principle hazard, it is leaf litter and undergrowth (that will include seedling/sapling trees); it takes the right (wrong?) conditions for forest canopy fires, ie trees to burn. Reducing the undergrowth reduces opportunities for fires to find their way into canopies (laddering), although if conditions are severe enough they can do it regardless and (with Australian and I suspect SW USA vegetation) readily cross large gaps in canopy. They can also burn across areas where hazard reduction fires have been recently done. Early European explorer accounts of the area I live in cited very large, mature trees with grassy areas underneath, but these were not natural; they were the consequence of centuries of humans using fire as land management tool. After 2 centuries of tree harvesting and clearing the numbers of trees is greater, but they are smaller and with denser undergrowth. Thinning of larger trees is probably not going to help and that is what I think of for "thinning"; others might think of it undergrowth removal I suppose. Short term removal of trees leaves a load of dead tree tops unless those get cleaned up, which makes the exercise more difficult. Longer term the breaks in forest canopies from tree harvesting become areas of maximum undergrowth. Hazard reduction burning is done in large part because physical removal is not viable - too much of it and too much of it inaccessible. When drought has been ongoing the opportunities to do that hazard reduction burning safely is reduced. And warmer temperatures also reduce those safe opportunities. I think raised dewpoint temperatures are critical in that; the old style light it and leave it "burning off" by Australian farmers that aped Aboriginal practices relied heavily on cool overnight conditions laying down natural fire retardant - dew and frost - that meant the fires reliably (mostly) went out by themselves. With global warming there will be less of those opportunities, ie more vigilance, labour and equipment to be safe.
  3. No, it is closer to 1/3 making most of the global warming; it isn't a direct relationship. Rather it is a direct relationship between total fossil fuel use and climate change - and fossil fuel use can be avoided. From original thread, not copied over -
  4. I think using zero emissions energy decouples global warming from population. Not entirely but the biggest part of it. Population matters but I think global warming is not an unavoidable consequence of high population - and it is unhelpful as well as wrong to presume it. Unhelpful because believing it true means believing there is no solution that doesn't involve significant population reduction and there aren't any nice ways that can happen quickly and even the ways to do it as a global priority by controlling birth rates still risk crossing over into crimes against humanity territory. Unhelpful because it supports the argument that the cure will be - must be - worse than the disease and committing - really committing - to fixing the problem must lead to global tyranny that regulates fertility. But it is an avoidable consequence of high population and committing - really committing - to fixing the climate problem can accommodate the natural human urge and desire to have children and climate policy can butt out of people's family lives. There will be issues arising from high populations and continued population growth but they don't have to be climate issues. A high population using clean energy can make less emissions and global warming than a low population using dirty energy and (as others have noted) education, access to medical services and contraceptives have proven effective at reducing birth rates - even within communities with religious prohibitions against them - so economic development that is based around clean energy looks like a win-win.
  5. Maybe I'm a bit sensitive - I'd encountered people making the "cure worse than problem" argument citing renewable waste recently. As an argument for not making and selling and using things that are in demand citing future waste obviously doesn't work very well anyway - and their position ultimately depended on presuming climate impacts from fossil fuels to be exaggerated. Sigh. Even so I think too few people, even reasonably well informed ones, realise just how much problem waste fossil fuel use produces - and it is worth highlighting how much less the total volumes using renewable energy can be expected to make. Dealing with waste too often has come as an afterthought, or perhaps as and after the waste problems present themselves. I would expect manufacturing wastes at large scale to present as a problem quite quickly and safe disposal becomes a working necessity, with relatively few high volume sources making it hard to ignore. End use waste becoming the user's problem presents less directly or immediately. RE will be at scales that are off the scale if they are to work for 10 billion people, so yes we will need to deal with the wastes responsibly. I see building an abundance of clean energy as the best thing we can do and it surprises and astonishes me that wind and solar have emerged as a cost effective action - such that we can and are using them in serious volumes. If renewable Hydrogen is to have a significant role it requires that clean energy growth and more, so committing to more solar and wind right now makes sense. And this appears to be happening and is cause for cautious optimism that, despite appearances, that we can make a real difference. From 1.7% of global electricity in 2010 Wind and Solar have grown to 8.7% of a larger total in 2020; by any measure that is extraordinary growth, but I think we ain't seen nothing yet, because crossing a crucial tipping point on costs (in most places during that decade) has not fully flowed through. How much energy storage can grow is a question but batteries are emerging as serious contributors. I note that about 20 times more electricity supply batteries (grid and domestic) have been built in Australia since 2016 than predictions at the time. Power companies that previously assumed a growing role for gas as backup are choosing to use batteries and are questioning those plans. Ongoing R&D and support for pilot programs for many other contributing technologies and options is essential because Wind and Solar can't do it all. Hydrogen is one. Energy storage of all kinds is another - battery R&D has gained it's own momentum and high levels of commercial funding. So is growing interconnections across ever wider electricity grids something I think worthwhile - whether it is Africa to Europe, Australian to SE Asia (SunCable tm) or the UK linked to Iceland hydrothermal power (due for completion soon?).
  6. But I don't think it is that good a point, which is why I urge you - and urge Studiot too btw - not to buy into the alarmist fears of renewable energy wastes. Maybe the big bold heading "a serious waste problem" was a copy and paste, not you warning of the dangers of committing to renewable energy - but I think it deserved some qualifications, if only to make clear your opinion. I don't necessarily follow links, but I was aware of that study on battery waste in Australia and see it as evidence the problems with waste are not being ignored. And maybe the strength of my response was less about you and more about the widespread use of those alarmist fears to undercut confidence in committing to clean energy. We probably agree on more than we disagree; just more likely to get exchanges of views where we disagree. It seems to me we have passed the point where weighing up our future options is the best use of our resources - we have options that work, if imperfectly, and pathways that are clear for the near term, even if less clear for the longer term. (A general observation, not specific to any posts). Battery electric looks like the current best option for transport but any commitment to it doesn't lock us into anything we cannot change; it looks flexible to me and that flexibility looks more important than waiting on a clear and unambiguous overarching "plan". If Hydrogen does emerge as cost effective for transport that will be good but holding out on commitment to low emissions transport whilst we wait for it will squander the opportunities we have now.
  7. "True costs" of batteries... compared to what? The whole climate issue is about including true costs that otherwise don't get counted. Replacement costs vs the utility? I think Li-ion is doing well on that scale and battery tech is still a work in progress. My understanding is that most of the earliest Tesla's still have the original batteries and most can expect a longer working life with less maintenance than ICE drivetrains. But I don't expect Li-ion to stay the same or to be the only viable chemistry. It is disappointing that you aren't putting those numbers into perspective. I think there is a strong thread of alarmist fear about the resource requirements and wastes of renewable energy that is being encouraged by opponents of climate accountability and supporters of fossil fuels and I don't think it is warranted; I urge you not to buy into it. It is not that there are not problem wastes from RE but that the problem wastes from fossil fuel burning are so, so, so abundant as well as intractable. Australia makes 12.5 million tons a year of serious problem waste in the form of coal ash - 125x expected battery waste in a heavily RE and battery dependent 2036 - and 4,000 times as much CO2 as that. Neither waste is amenable to recycling - I am not convinced including fly ash in concrete can be scaled sufficiently, nor that it won't leave an enduring legacy of heavy metals contaminated concrete. CCS (with 2-3 tons of CO2 for each ton of FF burned) can't scale up and is just Greenwash. There is recognition of the need for solutions to RE waste - and supporters of fossil fuels won't stop reminding us. Renewable energy industry overall tends to accept the need to develop recycling/safe disposal and appears open to inclusion of pre-payment for disposal in initial purchase. I don't think recycling/safe disposal is even possible for fossil fuels wastes but the industry fiercely opposes any accountability. I would note that EV and large scale batteries are very unlikely to enter ordinary waste streams and it is small consumer item batteries that are a fire risk. No vehicle recycler is going to be stupid enough to put them in the crusher (well, let's hope not) and no ordinary landfill will accept them. We will deal with the wastes - that will be in much reduced volumes compared to FF's and, foreseeing the issues, will probably do so better at it than we've handled problem wastes in the past.
  8. I do think Hydrogen has intrinsic and intractable issues around efficiency in some of the steps. We have losses from electrolysis, losses from storage energy requirements, inefficient burning, inefficient fuel cells. If we include a step to and step back using ammonia we get two more conversions that will have losses. Hypothetically a lot of energy from compressing and condensing can be recovered but in practice is not so easy. The on-site production and storage for industrial applications are able to avoid high pressure storage but transport fuel and transportable fuel requires it. It is the industrial uses that are crucial, without ready alternatives that look the easiest to do and the uses like transport that are more difficult and include inefficiencies that cannot be avoided do have alternatives.
  9. If they were "little things" - rather than turned way up past 11 - I could look past the overly dramatic tone. The DeGrasse Tyson "Cosmos" was like that. And I might look past it if the content was up to my grade - which isn't claiming my knowledge is exceptional, just that of an interested adult. Like Peterkin says, for the target audience it probably works well. I am not the target audience. I enjoyed watching "SolarMax" for example - a doco on solar science and the solar cycle. I got my Sagan in book form mostly - and yes, a great science educator. Attenborough is good too, although I am not a fan of presenters pretending to see the CGI reconstructions of extinct animals; it isn't the CGI that looks fake, just the presenter's pretense. Again a matter of tastes perhaps. People hold up Gravity as being very realistic but it made serious mistakes that undid my perceptions of it being realistic - you can't tow another spacesuited person like towing a boat on a line... ie wobbling around behind them; if they tried that they would end spinning around each other at the ends of their tether, probably in both senses of the phrase. Better to lash their suits together and move as a single mass. No reason not to do it like that; it could've offered opportunities for lewd innuendo depending on the position, except that the moviemakers didn't seek good information about how one suit with jets could be used to do a rescue. And spotting a space station and boosting in that direction wouldn't work either; the suits needed some kind of course planning software and again there was no reason not to have done it that way, with opportunity for explanation for why you can't just aim and boost. But for the ignorance and misunderstandings and lack of research of the film makers. For sure I was enthused during my youth by science fiction as well as the Moon Landing and space exploration that was going on at the time but the more I know the less likely I think these space programs will be stepping stones to making the grand space dreams - the fiction - come true. The universe and solar system are awesome and those kinds of entertainment probably did prompt the enjoyment I get in learning more about them. If it encourages people to do science, I think it is positive but if it merely encourages unrealistic fantasies about space and new iterations of science fiction based on science fiction I am not so sure.
  10. I remain somewhat skeptical of the hype and cynically think that choosing H2 on the big things like transport is most popular within industries that do those things because it means Delay. There are good reasons to pursue renewable Hydrogen for some critical applications but too many other applications aren't going to work until and unless a low cost supply chain is established - that not yet being an inevitability and for which there are other, more immediately available options. Building the abundance of clean energy needs to be the priority; it doesn't depend on H2 but H2 depends on it. Heat pumps using clean electricity look much better for building heating in most locations - with energy efficiencies above unity that no alternatives can match; in most climates that can be air source aka reverse cycle A/C that can be retrofitted. Ground source heat pumps are easier with new construction - as is district heating and energy efficient building design - but worth doing even as retrofits. Heat pumps offer a superior and potentially total heating solution whereas adding H2 to gas and convert later to 100% H2 option kicks the emissions can down the road. Not necessarily a wasted effort to add H2 to existing gas where efforts continue to replace it but it isn't a solution. Lots of steel processing can already use electric arc furnaces and other electricity based processes. The smelting part is still crucial but is not the largest part of steel making; the total demand for Hydrogen for that is significant but not likely to be enormous. The long range trucking, shipping and air travel applications sound good but I'm not convinced the substance is there; the industries like it in direct proportion to how long it is likely to take. Trucks and shipping can do battery electric for short/medium range right now. I'd like to see more done with swappable batteries for trucks - and there are serious attempts to try that. Rail, including for freight, maybe even especially for freight, seems well placed to use a combination of direct electric and battery electric - battery electric rail isn't even a new thing, just previously a niche thing. Freight trains often make a lot of stops or spend a lot of time in sidings, where batteries can be recharged - or dedicated battery wagons could be shunted in and out, or stretches of electrified track can allow recharging without stopping and steep ascents/descents can be electrified. Transportable H2 might benefit from conversion to ammonia and back again but Hydrogen already has serious energy efficiency problems - losses at the electrolyser, losses when burned for heat (then heat to electricity) or losses when used with fuel cells. Converting to ammonia and back again will add more losses into that chain. I had thought gas power plants that can convert to H2 might be feasible with on-site electrolysers and low pressure storage - but being able to run the electrolysers intermittently is currently not cost effective, even with very low (otherwise surplus) electricity. The kinds of applied science that can develop better electrolysers can also develop better batteries (and supercapacitors); battery storage isn't a stationary target and still has room for significant improvements. Around here we are getting large scale batteries as much because system planners are kicking decarbonisation down the road as because of deep planning - smallish amounts can smooth the RE output and respond rapidly to sudden system needs and put back the need for bigger and more enduring investments that are likely to face rising emissions reductions requirements. Predictions of less than a decade ago for a few MWh of grid connected batteries by now are being exceeded by around 20x.
  11. I'd put documentary above SF - they at least attempt (the ones I'm tempted by) to be factual, but I find I struggle to keep watching the doco's too; the last time I tried the overly dramatic background music and awestruck narration was just too much. And I was familiar with most of the content, so not much that was new. SF unfortunately presents a fantasy vision of Humans in Space that references the F of other SF far more than it references S. They get so much so wrong that I can't look past the mistakes. Whether back in my youth, when a space monster blocked the air intakes of the ship of Lost in Space - the Robinsons were going to asphyxiate (even then we thought it was stupid) - or my failed attempt to watch "Expanse", that others consider very good. Having the SF standard tyrannical and corrupt UN running Earth badly in Expanse was mildly irritating but I know most people who like SF will be Americans who have been taught to dislike and distrust the UN, so it hits their buttons (but annoy me) and there is an independent and powerful Mars (colonising Mars is inevitable, right?); these are the kind of tropes that get used to suit viewer tastes I don't share. But it was the water shortage on Ceres that lost me. Seriously? They are a major mining operation but they don't know you can heat carbonaceous chondrite material and get water? And don't they do recycling? There are some SF writers (of novels) that I enjoy a lot but very little of TV or cinema SF can grab me; it is the ones that don't take themselves seriously, that are unashamedly fantasy or comedy or both that are most likely to appeal to me.
  12. Just asking. Isn't Au (gold) a precious metal? It is good to see progress on better electrolyzers and I hope it flows through to renewable Hydrogen production. It won't become widely used without better electrolyzers. I see iron smelting and chemical feedstocks as the uses of most significance. I am less optimistic for H2 as transport fuel and as transportable fuel; iron production and chemical feedstocks can operate with on-site production and storage at low(er) pressure and therefore cheaper than bringing it from somewhere else. Battery electric looks better for vehicles - overall much higher energy efficiencies and piggy backs onto existing energy distribution networks. Hydrogen as transport fuel needs economy wide infrastructure built from zero. One more halving of battery costs will make existing type EV's unstoppable. One more doubling of energy density will make EV's unstoppable - and open up aviation to battery electric. Achieve both and it is game over for fossil fuels. Hydrogen won't be in that game. I'm cynical and think that, important as clean iron smelting and fertiliser production is too much is being made of Hydrogen - and the reason it has such widespread political support is that it can't do much any time soon. Those looking for empty gestures to follow up their empty gestures on zero emission targets like renewable Hydrogen sometime in the future, but so does the fossil fuel industry, that currently make most Hydrogen like it; it uses empty gestures on Carbon Capture and Storage to justify competing (with aid of subsidies from sympathetic politicians) against emerging clean Hydrogen and other clean energy.
  13. The more sophisticated the technology becomes the less likely that any repairs in flight by non-specialists will be possible. Reliability is the key, not repairability. Having a pilot along in an automated space vehicle because some passengers feel safer becomes a question of psychology and behavior of the passengers. The solution for the passengers will be confronting and overcoming fears of automated/remote flight control rather than the solution being the company's via the inclusion of an unnecessary pilot that will eat up payload and profitability whilst being unlikely to be able to save anyone.
  14. And I think there is nothing inevitable about it, nor see that space tourism, even as some kind of interim step, will deliver overall benefits to humanity. If you don't want people to argue about other issues around space tourism in this thread you need to avoid including big picture opinions that others can legitimately disagree with.
  15. Beecee, SpaceX demonstrated that crew are not necessary to fly a rocket carrying passengers, as is routinely done for rockets that don't carry passengers. Why aren't you celebrating this as a success? Actually this made me recall The Right Stuff, where the rocket scientists were planning pilot-less rockets but there were objections. Mostly around public perceptions - test pilots who actually get to fly them made for better PR than sending chimpanzees. Or scientists. Or pilots that had nothing to do. I don't know if that reflected the actual arguments that led to having pilots and giving them some controls to operate - as well as a viewport. But it does seem like it was always a choice, not a necessity. It may not be pilots or engineers that space tourist flights cannot do without - it could be the flight attendants.
  16. Isn't one of the objectives to increase the delivery capability by avoiding the need for a crew? Isn't this an example of demonstrating that they are not required? If there is a problem maybe it won't be a pilot needed, but an engineer - or, I suppose, a pilot-engineer but I think the principle lesson that should be taken from examples of repairs done in space is to improve equipment reliability, not insist on taking a crew capable of doing repairs. Equipment reliability is paramount and anticipation of what can go wrong is an essential element of that. But, as an opinionated aside - I'm of the view that insisting on crews reduces overall capabilities of most space mission objectives... apart from the ones where the ability to take people is a principle mission objective... I suppose like space tourism, except space tourism without a crew can take more paying passengers. Which objective I don't see as either a great leap forward or in any way a necessary stepping stone to less self indulgent and more significant objectives.
  17. Part one is plant growth that takes up CO2. Part two is storing what is grown to prevent the decomposition that returns that CO2 to the atmosphere. That will be the case whether it is trees, grass, algae or cyanobacteria. Part two looks like the intractable part. Increased overall biomass within the carbon cycle stores carbon without it being stored in long term sinks - but making such an increase permanent looks difficult. Biofuels can theoretically be carbon neutral - the CO2 is taken up and burned again as fuel, to be taken up again. It can displace fossil fuel burning and prevent CO2 levels rising but won't reduce the levels of CO2 already there. I don't know if cyanobacteria are candidates for biofuel production I think shifting to low emissions/zero emissions has to be the highest priority - preventing the emissions rather than relying on taking up the CO2 after.
  18. I expect that most people who don't want to pay taxes for taxpayer funded community education still like being part of a community that gets educated - they just want businesses and people other than themselves to pay for it, ie they want to get the benefits without paying for it. Businesses are advantaged by the availability of educated employees - as they benefit from healthy employees. Similarly they also benefit from employees of other companies being well paid, via strong consumer demand - but not want to pay their own well. I suspect the wealthy get more overall benefits from the services governments support through taxes than any other demographic - law and order to protect their wealth, infrastructure to support their business activities, educated workers, healthy workers. Programs that reduce inequality don't only divert money from the successful (deserving) to the unsuccessful (undeserving) they also reduce the risks of crime and social disruptions that, if allowed to grow can lead to riots, terrorism and militant uprisings. Education is a key pathway to sustainably reducing poverty across generations and that not only benefits the individuals and their families directly but benefits their neighbors and businesses and their owners and the State and Nation. I think the illusion that governments are like companies and running them like businesses would do it better is widely promoted and feeds popular opposition to taxpayer funded education and other "social" programs - but governments are not companies; where companies fire unproductive employees and costs are avoided they stay on the government's books whether they are productive or not and those kinds of costs resist being avoided.
  19. The Vat - I'm happy to discuss these issues - and any issues with my arguments, but Doogles circling back to the same arguments won't keep me engaged here a lot longer. After having not really tried - a large part of mainstream politics trying really hard to not try - we get declarations of defeat. Makes me think of The Simpsons - "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas". Except that despite beginning as a combination of empty gestures and give em enough rope - getting government support because they were not expected to work and rocked no boats - wind and solar have exceeded all expectations and I think that success is the reason nations are now willing to at least say they are committed to zero emissions. Actual policies that have real ambition are only just emerging, so declarations of defeat look premature as well as being self-serving arguments by opponents of emissions accountability. Yes, there has been population growth and economic growth and growth of energy demand. Of course emissions are continuing to rise; most of the highest emissions nations have sought to do the least they can. They have almost always put near term economic growth and growth of energy availability and reliability and least cost (whilst excluding climate costs) ahead of emissions reductions. Less than 1 year ago the USA had a President and Congress that were fiercely opposed to climate action. My own nation still has fierce supporters of fossil fuels in charge of climate policy and demand others have a plan, with costings ("you care so much, you fix it" - and "NOT like THAT") whilst not doing their best to not have a plan. Less than 1 decade ago wind and solar were still more expensive than equivalent fossil fuels almost everywhere, but now they are not. Now more new solar and wind is being built each year than all new fossil fuel energy combined, much greater than new demand is growing but not yet enough to prevent new growth of fossil fuels in the presence of strong support for fossil fuels by people who don't care about global warming; the consequences of crossing that tipping point on costs take time to flow through but nothing is going to be the same. Even recent past performance of low emissions alternatives cannot give a clear idea of how they will perform in the future.
  20. Yes it is not just a dirty energy problem but that is the biggest part - and we have solutions that work now and can be made to work better; I think the growth of clean energy should be the principle response whilst still adequately supporting efforts to reduce GHG emissions from other activities like agriculture. Aiming to eliminate or at least greatly reduce methane as well as CO2 emissions from rice, livestock and other agriculture is necessary and whilst it can help to encourage less meat or rice eating, like with population control I don't see regulation of consumer food choice as a viable option. I do see carbon pricing rather than direct regulation as a regulatory mechanism - and more to encourage producers to use the options R&D develop rather than than to influence consumers directly; carbon pricing works when there are existing alternatives and the level of pricing imposed make the alternatives commercially viable. Greater policy ambition becomes acceptable option if Doubt, Deny, Delay style "climate policy" loses it's popular appeal and power to demotivate; people accept some level of sacrifice for the common good if it is clear and uncontroversial that it will do some good but even those who care will struggle to do so when led to believe such actions are pointless - as opponents of climate accountability encourage people to believe. I see the population issue being used like that - encouraging the view that climate action is pointless and or is some kind of slippery slope to tyranny. I think we are on a slipperier slope to tyranny by failing to address this profoundly serious problem than by seeking to evade and delay - tyranny becomes most popular when things are going from bad to worse. Nations of the world do make efforts to address population growth through their UN memberships and participation - they lead the UN, not the UN leading them. What policy responses nations make are entered into freely. Any regulation is their own, not the UN's, even where the UN (because nations want it) provides aid and assistance. I suspect that delay on doing the things we can do near term - like shifting to clean energy - may be a more serious risk of rising methane concentrations than near term agriculture emissions, because of warming feedbacks leading to large releases of "natural" methane. That being one of those hard to pin down "tipping points".
  21. Doogles - If the assumption is that fossil fuel burning is unavoidable then consumption of them and emissions appear directly linked to population - and in 1993 I expect that was an underlying assumption. It is only recently that it has been seen as both necessary and possible to shift to zero emissions - which makes un-linking of global warming solutions from population possible. It doesn't un-link other problems with large and growing populations but I suspect that an NAS report on population, if commissioned now, would acknowledge that global warming is primarily a dirty energy problem that can be treated apart from population.
  22. Doogles - I don't agree that the principle cause of the global warming problem is overpopulation; whilst true that less people relying on fossil fuel burning reduces the climate problem the same number of people using clean energy reduces the problem a lot more and doesn't risk crimes against humanity like population control does. It is a simplistic but incorrect view to blame overpopulation and that leads to the incorrect conclusion that effective climate action is not possible or else will require tyrannical levels of control over peoples lives, ie climate activism will lead to crimes against humanity. Wrong. A transition to zero emissions is the principle way on offer to fix global warming for the population we have and expect to have. We will do that at scales beyond anything before or else fail. Whatever climate policies we have must include the reasonable aspirations and expectation people have to have kids, even whilst promoting smaller numbers of them and providing easy access to contraception makes a lot of sense. Doogles - The last link is full of baseless claims. My response is that climate science got to where it could confidently say CO2 is causing global warming legitimately. The National Academy of Sciences report "Understanding Climatic Change: A Program for Action" in 1975 proposed a program for action (go figure) to develop sufficient quantitative understanding that predicting the course of climate change and a decade later that was showing that we didn't have to worry about imminent global cooling, but the reason why was just as bad or worse. At that time they already had a good qualitative understanding, like knowing what principle climate processes were in play. Climate change science had bipartisan support; back then if there were a real problem, people in positions of trust and responsibility wanted to know. Only later did a lot decide they preferred not to know. Doogles, try the US National Academy of Sciences or read the State of the Climate reports or the IPCC AR6 report. Try to read with the understanding that what they publish comes from competent, honest professional scientists doing their jobs. It really is the best available knowledge and no-one is making it up. And consider that police and intelligence services are competent professionals too, fully capable of uncovering patterns of falsification and exposing conspiracy where it exists. i don't doubt they have been asked, but their assessment was and is that global warming science and global warming are true.
  23. No, the IPCC reports were more conservative in the past, not less, with more care to emphasise uncertainty over confident and unequivocal statements. The hockey stick "controversy" was never a real controversy and Mann's early modeling has been confirmed as close to the mark. Multiple independent studies confirm the fundamental nature and existence of global warming, including hockey stick like change. Al Gore - not a scientist - speaking of worst case possibilities that haven't eventuated is not good reason to doubt the veracity of mainstream climate science - not when the most likely possibilities have eventuated, and those are as serious as was claimed. Questioning whether climate change has a net positive or net negative or where some kind of sweet spot between harms and benefits might lie has been tried. But you will struggle to find conservationists/environmentalists - and a great many ordinary people - for whom the remnant natural ecosystems and species have high value who will accept economic modeling that says the losses will be worth it. Adding 4 or 5 C degrees to already very hot and dry regions that experience serious droughts and heatwaves will have very serious consequences - adding that much to any region will have profound and serious and not entirely predictable outcomes. That kind of not being predictable doesn't make it more likely that no harms will occur greater, just makes the seriousness of the worst ones greater. Cost vs benefits studies have also been done in purely economic terms and the answer from credible ones appears to be the same; the disruptions from change will have costs impacting people now living, in their lifetimes, that no far future "better climate state" after they are gone can compensate for. And the potential for extreme outcomes with catastrophic outcomes remain real and in risk assessment terms, very high. So, if you find one claim - say that fires can't be clearly tied to climate change - does that make all the claims that have turned out right, like ice loss, ocean heat content rise, temperature rise, more frequent and severe heatwaves, more new hot temperature records broken and less new cold records - do you count the one claim as significant but all the rest not?
  24. I'm not sure it works like that. It isn't a new species until there is a population. An individual with the characteristics of a new species isn't a new species it is a variant within the existing species. That may seem a technicality but I don't think so; he/she needed to successfully breed within that existing population and the subsequent new species will be descendants of a lot of other individuals besides that one even if the whole new species counts that individual as a progenitor. Whether the traits are recessive or dominant will matter too; an individual with traits of the yet to come new species could need the combination of recessive mutations already part of the population, originating from an individual who did not have those traits; the population has the genes. I'm inclined to think two healthy humans could go on to found a viable population if they were lucky and began free of deleterious mutations. Incest taboos would have to be set aside. Australia's problem rabbit population began with the release of 13 individual rabbits; they went on to populate and overpopulate a continent. I seem to recall an island overrun with moose or elk or something that began with 5 individuals. These may not do well in competition with other related populations - they may well be outcompeted and displaced by healthier, better adapted populations - but may do well in isolation. But perhaps founder effect will see important traits emerge that ultimately let them outcompete the species they came from - maybe low probability, but possible.
  25. It is not that renewable energy tech has no problem waste, but that fossil fuel use makes so, so, so much problem waste - without any real way to reduce it. Even leaving aside CO2, the waste from fossil fuels is enormous, such as 1 billion metric tons a year of heavy metals contaminated coal ash alone. But there is no leaving aside CO2; that is the point of shifting away from fossil fuels. We might visit municipal landfill sites and think that is a lot of waste but coal ash (fly ash) waste pits and ponds are much larger - just out of sight and usually off limits to the public. And leaving enduring problems. The wind power (and solar and battery waste) problem looks small in comparison; the RE industry would have to try hard at being dirty to come anywhere close. The renewable energy sector in most developed nations support the development of recycling as safe waste management - even willing to include pre-payment provisions in purchase contracts to support it. The fossil fuel sector still fiercely opposes any accountability for their waste.
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