Global Warming - We're F*****

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Reply 20

skeptical_john

Original post by catmckie

Sadly, the government won't acknowledge it until it starts to affect their own salaries.

Or votes. Look at the urgent reaction and defenses built for floods in the south compared to those in cumbria.

Reply 21

I feel myself

Original post by oShahpo

Yea lol, screw our children man, those kids had it coming, them and their Pokemon Go and their silly internetz.

Bad troll on a serious thread.

Reply 22

oShahpo

Original post by I feel myself

Bad troll on a serious thread.

Yea right, because your point "It's not happening in my life time, why should I care?" is a very serious and respectable point indeed.

Reply 23

ckfeister

Original post by Plagioclase

What.

Its possible to turn CO2 (carbon dioxide) + CH4 (methane) into H20 (water) + 02(oxygen) but its unknown how they going to react it... but I think in future they will have this idea into use.

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 24

Rather_Cynical

If at any point in political office, you admit that anthropogenic climate change is real and imminent threat to the nation's interests, then you are forced to take the position of addressing the issue.

The problem is, most forms of large-scale proposals cost insane amounts of capital and almost any kind of energy-reduction measures will invariably result in reduced competitiveness and economic growth. The prosperity of nations is deeply intertwined with its energy consumption - without electrical/chemical energy, it's hard to do any form of industrial manufacturing or basic services like sanitation and distribution of utilities and food-storage.

Plagioclase would most likely argue for renewables, but that kind of "energy revolution" will cost in the region of many years of GDP worth of wealthy countries like the UK. The country would simply go broke, unless solar panels and batteries became so cheap that it's basically free - not to mention the quantity of land needed to guarantee power to the country.

Clean-coal is possible, but the fact that coal is still finite and the pollutants are one of the primary causes of death in the modern world is highly worrying - a stop-gap solution at best.

Nuclear Fission reactors are based on old designs and it's politically sensitive to invest in better versions. Fusion is still about 50-70 years away from reaching commercial market, and ten years away from achieving net energy gain.

Reply 25

kate37

Hoping to dedicate my life to helping to stop (??) climate change. Doesn't seem to me that enough is being done so why not try do it myself.

Reply 26

Plagioclase

Original post by ckfeister

Its possible to turn CO2 (carbon dioxide) + CH4 (methane) into H20 (water) + 02(oxygen) but its unknown how they going to react it... but I think in future they will have this idea into use.

That's completely unrealistic. It is never going to happen on a great enough scale to be significant in a short enough time-span.

Reply 27

Rather_Cynical

Original post by kate37

Hoping to dedicate my life to helping to stop (??) climate change. Doesn't seem to me that enough is being done so why not try do it myself.

I'd say there are two main ways to go about it - either politically, or with science. I've had a try at an Environmental Science degree and unfortunately it only gives me the skillset to model climate rather than actively combat climate-change. I'm personally switching my degree route to Nuclear Engineering.

If you went into renewable energy as a Masters and figured out how to make solar panels cheaper than dirt (quantum dots), or store grid-sized quantities of energy in a way that isn't infeasible, it should give you opportunities to dedicate your life to climate change.

Chemical Engineering would be a decent choice of course.

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 28

Rather_Cynical

Original post by Plagioclase

That's completely unrealistic. It is never going to happen on a great enough scale to be significant in a short enough time-span.

I don't know about the specific technology that the other person is talking about, but one way to use excess energy with a solar panel system that occasionally produces too much is to sequester carbon. I think it's worth doing some back of the envelope calculations to have an idea of feasibility.

Reply 29

kate37

Original post by Rather_Cynical

I'd say there are two main ways to go about it - either politically, or with science. I've had a try at an Environmental Science degree and unfortunately it only gives me the skillset to model climate rather than actively combat climate-change. I'm personally switching my degree route to Nuclear Engineering.

If you went into renewable energy as a Masters and figured out how to make solar panels cheaper than dirt (quantum dots), or store grid-sized quantities of energy in a way that isn't infeasible, a degree like Chemical Engineering or Material Science should open the doors for dedicating your life to addressing such a global issue.

I'm not sure what route I want to go down. For A-Level I am taking Geography, Politics and Biology, so may go down the Politics route? I don't see myself in Physics or Chemistry but I would find renewable energy interesting.. Not 100% certain about the route I'll be going down, but I guess I will decide before Uni.

Reply 30

ckfeister

Original post by Plagioclase

That's completely unrealistic. It is never going to happen on a great enough scale to be significant in a short enough time-span.

Nothing impossible, if you asked people 10 years before electricity excisted would they say yes or no.

Reply 31

Rather_Cynical

Original post by kate37

If you take Mathematics instead of Politics, you have both social science routes and natural science routes to take. Biology would be important to keep if you plan on doing Medicine or Pharmacy or Nursing, but for other disciplines it might be better to select something else. I'm assuming you won't suddenly drop 1-2 grades if you switched though!

EDIT - I think Engineering routes require Physics, but if you change your mind later on you can always complete a Foundation Year. University of Manchester does a Foundation Year + integrated Masters course (5 year) on Chemical Engineering and Materials Engineering.

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 32

tanderson596

In the long run, we're all dead.

- John Maynard Keynes

Reply 33

Plagioclase

Original post by Rather_Cynical

A Royal Society report on this a couple of years ago suggested that in comparison with alternatives like solar radiation management through stratospheric aerosols, BECCS or CCS at source, direct CO2 sequestration would be prohibitively expensive. Unless some incredibly cheap and energy efficient pathway is developed that vastly exceeds our expectations, it is very unlikely that direct CO2 capture will make any significant contribution to attempts to slow the rate of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere this century.

Original post by ckfeister

Nothing impossible, if you asked people 10 years before electricity excisted would they say yes or no.

The fact that it's not impossible doesn't mean it's likely if there's good reason to believe that it won't be. I could give you a very long list of other not-impossible-but-unlikely methods of geoengineering like sending billions of mirrors into space at lagrange points in the Earth's orbit.

(edited 7 years ago)

Reply 34

Ladymusiclover

Slightly off topic but I learnt today how important the Congo's rainforest basin is to forming our winds and storms etc. But due to high levels of felling of these trees for hardwood it's affecting our weather patterns.

Reply 35

Rather_Cynical

I remember reading Freakonomics about those kinds of ideas, stratospheric aerosols is certainly interesting but could easily have unintended consequences - by limiting solar flux, you'd increase the amount of time to grow food for instance. It'll be important if the climate issue is politically too stagnant and it's already too late to save ourselves, but the first thing to do is to reduce CO₂ concentration.

Carbon sequestering will become more important as we approach carbon-neutrality, since James Hensen models that even if you had a magic button to completely stop carbon emissions tomorrow the climate would still be negatively affected. If we reached the goal of 60% of all energy comes from renewables and 40% of all energy comes from nuclear, we'd want to produce a little more energy to do some climate change reversing.

Reply 36

Gnat

Original post by oShahpo

Yea right, because your point "It's not happening in my life time, why should I care?" is a very serious and respectable point indeed.

That guy's point is what pretty much everyone believes tho lol.

Reply 37

Plagioclase

Original post by Rather_Cynical

I'm not saying that SRM is a good idea, I think it's an absolutely terrible idea and it would epitomise our failure to be responsible stewards of the planet if we ever had to resort to it. But at least SRM is actually economically feasible whereas sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere isn't, certainly not on the kind of global scale that would be required to make a difference. The kind of investment necessary would be of the order required to prepare for a major international war and given the total lack of serious international will to tackle climate change, unless something absolutely massive happens, this investment isn't going to exist.

Reply 38

richpanda

Dead by 50 crew checking in. Why would I care? Everyone will be too busy with VR to notice.

Reply 39

anosmianAcrimony

Original post by ckfeister

Its possible to turn CO2 (carbon dioxide) + CH4 (methane) into H20 (water) + 02(oxygen) but its unknown how they going to react it... but I think in future they will have this idea into use.