If you think it can’t be done, go argue with them. They are taking comments on their plans.
PSU,
Of course it can be done but companies do not opt for the most expensive least profitable way of doing things.
1 Like
A more fundamental problem with deadline-ism is that it might incite cynical, cry-wolf responses and undermine the credibility of climate science when an anticipated disaster does not happen. The imagery of deadlines and countdown clocks offers an illusory cliff-edge after which the world heads inevitably to its imminent demise. It promulgates the imaginary of extinction and the collapse of civilization. The impacts of climate change are more likely to be intermittent, slow and gradual.
DB2
======================================================================
I do not agree and neither does the UN IPCC! We already know that we are not going to meet 1.5°C limit without more emphasis on elimination of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels should be dropping by 5% per year to meet the 1.5°C limit.
IPCC 2022 says following:
B.6 If global warming transiently exceeds 1.5°C in the coming decades or later (overshoot), then many human and natural systems will face additional severe risks, compared to remaining below 1.5°C (high confidence). Depending on the magnitude and duration of overshoot, some impacts will cause release of additional greenhouse gases (medium confidence) and some will be irreversible, even if global warming is reduced (high confidence).
Jaak
The above statements depend on the world becoming carbon neutral.
No, they don’t. They’re the models the UN uses assuming we don’t become carbon neutral. They’re the hottest scenarios, the ones that assume that we don’t do materially better than we’re doing right now.
Those models have us ending up at about 2.7 degrees warmer. We’ve already done enough to take 4-5 degrees off the table. We haven’t done nearly enough to get below 2 degrees.
That’s why we’re not heading towards doom, or apocalypse, or extinction. Hitting 2.7 will be much worse than hitting 2 degrees (much less 1.5), which is why the UN and other climate scientists still talk about the urgency of further action. But it doesn’t involve billions of climate-related deaths or extinction or the end of human civilization.
Even in that hottest scenario, there will be lower poverty and less hunger than there exists today. The average human will be better off than the average human today. There will still be lots of misery and suffering caused by that increased heat - but that misery and suffering will be very unevenly distributed around the globe, and it will not be so large that it will outweigh the improvements in living conditions caused by background economic growth.
Again - this is under all the paths, even the very hottest ones where we basically don’t do anything more than keep doing what we’re doing.
Albaby
11 Likes
You do not know that climate change will not cause massive global deaths in the billions.
And you do not know that climate change will cause massive global deaths in the billions.
Mexican stand off*
A Mexican standoff is a confrontation in which no strategy exists that allows any party to achieve victory. Any party initiating aggression might trigger its own demise. At the same time, the parties are unable to extricate themselves from the situation without suffering a loss – effectively, a situation of mutual zugzwang.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_standoff#:~:text=A%20M….
What happens to humans at 90% relative humidity and 100 Fahrenheit for days?
Here in Texas we call that summer.
Methinks y’all need to get out more. 
3 Likes
You do not know that climate change will not cause massive global deaths in the billions.
—
And you do not know that climate change will cause massive global deaths in the billions.
Over the warming 1980 to 2016 period climate related losses and deaths declined.
Empirical evidence of declining global vulnerability to climate-related hazards
Formetta and Feyen
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378019300378
Highlights:
- We quantified the dynamics of socio-economic vulnerability to climate-related hazards.
- A decreasing trend in both human and economic vulnerability is evident.
- Global average mortality and loss rates have dropped by 6.5 and nearly 5 times, respectively, from 1980 to 1989 to 2007–2016.
- Results also show a clear negative relation between vulnerability and wealth.
DB2
3 Likes
Of course it can be done but companies do not opt for the most expensive least profitable way of doing things.
If nuclear is the most expensive least profitable method, then Duke is proposing to do just that.
PSU
The belief that 84% of global energy supplied by oil and gas can be replaced by so-called ‘green energy’ is a fantasy
Found an interesting article from 2009 on the scale of things:
www.newsweek.com/id/189293
By all means, swap out your regular light bulbs for compact fluorescents, take the bus, weatherize your home and install solar panels on your roof…But while you’re doing all that to reduce the world’s energy use and cut emissions of greenhouse gases, keep this in mind: even if we scale up existing technologies to mind-bending levels, such as finishing one nuclear plant every other day for the next 40 years, we’ll still fall short…
[Caltech energy chemist] Lewis’s numbers show the enormous challenge we face. The world used 14 trillion watts (14 terawatts) of power in 2006. Assuming minimal population growth (to 9 billion people), slow economic growth (1.6 percent a year, practically recession level) and—this is key—unprecedented energy efficiency (improvements of 500 percent relative to current U.S. levels, worldwide), it will use 28 terawatts in 2050. (In a business-as-usual scenario, we would need 45 terawatts.) Simple physics shows that in order to keep CO2 to 450 ppm, 26.5 of those terawatts must be zero-carbon.
That’s a lot of solar, wind, hydro, biofuels and nuclear, especially since renewables kicked in a measly 0.2 terawatts in 2006 and nuclear provided 0.9 terawatts. Are you a fan of nuclear? To get 10 terawatts, less than half of what we’ll need in 2050, Lewis calculates, we’d have to build 10,000 reactors, or one every other day starting now. Do you like wind? If you use every single breeze that blows on land, you’ll get 10 or 15 terawatts. Since it’s impossible to capture all the wind, a more realistic number is 3 terawatts, or 1 million state-of-the art turbines, and even that requires storing the energy—something we don’t know how to do—for when the wind doesn’t blow. Solar? To get 10 terawatts by 2050, Lewis calculates, we’d need to cover 1 million roofs with panels every day from now until then. “It would take an army,” he says. Obama promised green jobs, but still.
DB2
3 Likes
PSU,
Let me give you one “outcome” that is the more likely thing to happen at Duke with their plans.
In the early 1990s in West Hartford a wealthy area of Connecticut a landlord wanted to redo a theater in downtown and turn it into very expensive shops and offices. The parking lot out back was large but not large enough to accommodate the extra cars. The town demanded plans for the parking lot. The landlord came up with a second level parking garage over the main parking lot. The plans were handed over to the town planners and zoning. The counsel allowed the project on the theater to go forward. The landlord never came through with the actual construction of the second level parking.
That is why saying there are plans will open government doors but not commit a company to spending a dime.
Duke is not committed to spending a cent so far other than the cost of having plans drawn up.
1 Like
That is why saying there are plans will open government doors but not commit a company to spending a dime.
https://www.ncleg.gov/Sessions/2021/Bills/House/PDF/H951v6.p…
That is why saying there are plans will open government doors but not commit a company to spending a dime.
Sure, because the Utilities Commission has not started rulemaking as required by the legislation.
PSU
Sure, because the Utilities Commission has not started rulemaking as required by the legislation.
PSU
When is the date for that rulemaking? Is there a date for the rulemaking?If it bleeds, it leads.
That was 1980s. Today it’s -
If it scares, it blares.
3 Likes
Found an interesting article from 2009 on the scale of things:
====================================================
Pure junk!
Jaak
Found an interesting article from 2009 on the scale of things:
—
Pure junk!
Link? (Or a reasoned rebuttal)
DB2
1 Like
If it bleeds, it leads.
—
That was 1980s. Today it’s -
If it scares, it blares.
www.realclearscience.com/blog/2022/06/07/how_the_tv_show_cop…
Yet despite the fact that the United States is now unquestionably safer from crime than it was thirty years ago, when surveyed, Americans overwhelmingly believe the opposite. Every year since 1989, as part of its polling on crime, Gallup has asked respondents a simple question: “Is there more crime in the U.S. than there was a year ago, or less?” In each year except for 2001, the Americans polled said there was “more” crime by an average margin of close to 50 points! A significant reason for this massive misperception is the media…
DB2
3 Likes
When is the date for that rulemaking? Is there a date for the rulemaking?
Found an interesting article from 2009 on the scale of things:
—
Pure junk!
Yeah, you never know about the crazy Caltech scientists. And as for Ken Caldeira? He’s from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and then the Carnegie Institution.
www.technologyreview.com/2018/03/14/67154/at-this-rate-its-g…
Fifteen years ago [in 2003] Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution, calculated that the world would need to add about a nuclear power plant’s worth of clean-energy capacity every day between 2000 and 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change. Recently, he did a quick calculation to see how we’re doing.
Not well. Instead of the roughly 1,100 megawatts of carbon-free energy per day likely needed to prevent temperatures from rising more than 2 °C, as the 2003 Science paper by Caldeira and his colleagues found, we are adding around 151 megawatts…At that rate, substantially transforming the energy system would take, not the next three decades, but nearly the next four centuries…
Caldeira stresses that other factors are likely to significantly shorten that time frame (in particular, electrifying heat production, which accounts for a more than half of global energy consumption, will significantly alter demand). But he says it’s clear we’re overhauling the energy system about an order of magnitude too slowly…
DB2
2 Likes
Not well. Instead of the roughly 1,100 megawatts of carbon-free energy per day likely needed to prevent temperatures from rising more than 2 °C, as the 2003 Science paper by Caldeira and his colleagues found, we are adding around 151 megawatts…At that rate, substantially transforming the energy system would take, not the next three decades, but nearly the next four centuries…
Please DrBob2. You are better than this. At least I hope you are. In 2003, the amount of new carbon-free energy being added was a rounding error. It was effectively zero. But that rate of increase has not been static. The rate has been increasing exponentially. At the same time the price has been decreasing exponentially, which drives adaptation, which drives down the price.
You know that, right?
3 Likes
Please DrBob2. You are better than this. At least I hope you are. In 2003, the amount of new carbon-free energy being added was a rounding error.
Please reread more carefully. The article was from 15 years later, 2018, and the growth had been substantial. It was at the 2018 rates that it would take four centuries.
It will probably be less than that, but maybe not. Remember that over the 10 years from 2009 to 2019, the share of global energy from fossil fuels decreased from 80.3% to 80.2%.
www.reuters.com/business/environment/global-fossil-fuel-use-…
DB2
Running to stay in place
1 Like
Anderson et al. note that most plans to meet Paris decarbonization targets depend upon negative emission technologies, carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. If one looks at the situation without these as yet non-existent techniques, the authors estimate that an annual decarbonization rate of 10% per year is required.
A factor of two: how the mitigation plans of ‘climate progressive’ nations fall far short of Paris-compliant pathways
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14693062.2020.1728209?s…
DB2
Fifteen years ago [in 2003] Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution, calculated that the world would need to add about a nuclear power plant’s worth of clean-energy capacity every day between 2000 and 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change. Recently, he did a quick calculation to see how we’re doing.
Not well. Instead of the roughly 1,100 megawatts of carbon-free energy per day likely needed to prevent temperatures from rising more than 2 °C, as the 2003 Science paper by Caldeira and his colleagues found, we are adding around 151 megawatts…At that rate, substantially transforming the energy system would take, not the next three decades, but nearly the next four centuries…
Caldeira stresses that other factors are likely to significantly shorten that time frame (in particular, electrifying heat production, which accounts for a more than half of global energy consumption, will significantly alter demand). But he says it’s clear we’re overhauling the energy system about an order of magnitude too slowly…
DB2
============================================================
LOL! Your experts are using wrong terminology!
megawatt are a unit of power, megawatt-hour is a unit of energy
In 2018 the world was not overhauling the energy system as fast as it doing in 2022. These experts should do another update using 2022 data.
Jaak
Jaak
1 Like