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the dark side of cobalt
Marco:
If the US, EU and Japan force the issue and say "net zero emissions or zero trade" the world follows.
Infraviolet:
" so from pure economics you will never get to net zero without force."
Firstly, we don't need to reach net zero, just to eventually get emissions down to a level which doesn't add much on top of naturally occuring emission levels (volcanoes and such).
Secondly, fossil fuels are in limited supply, all the low hanging fruit has already been extracted, prices can only rise over time. A truly effective replacement with properly adequate performance will win out in a free market, eventually.
We can solve all the environmental issues without resorting to tyranny, but there are too many would-be-tyrants and tyranny-sympathisers who are desperate to get a chance to enact tyranny regardless of whether it would help the climate. The solution to the climate is in engineering, not societal change and force, the solution to authoritarian "green" policies is mass public non-compliance.
Zero999:
--- Quote from: Marco on July 15, 2023, 03:48:21 pm ---If the US, EU and Japan force the issue and say "net zero emissions or zero trade" the world follows.
--- End quote ---
They won't. The US will elect a president who won't allow it and EU citizens are already increasingly voting for Euroskeptic parties. I don't know about Japan, but I doubt it would happen there either. They've got too much common sense. I generally look to Japan as an example of competent governance.
Marco:
--- Quote from: Infraviolet on July 15, 2023, 04:46:56 pm ---We can solve all the environmental issues without resorting to tyranny
--- End quote ---
We have a time horizon of less than a decade, transition will never make sense to most of us (certainly not nuclear, which only ever got created because our tyrants wanted nukes).
vad:
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on July 15, 2023, 02:55:30 pm ---
--- Quote from: vad on July 15, 2023, 01:34:48 pm ---Let's say you decide to reduce energy consumption by a factor of 5, to get rid of dependency on fossil fuel energy sources. This would involve constructing houses that require 5 times fewer materials for building
--- End quote ---
This sort of "cheese grate" approach where you grate off some fixed % from everything is absolutely stupid because you end up making sacrifices that are large, but do not produce significant gains.
For example, over the lifecycle of a house, energy spent burning fossil fuels to heat the house greatly outweighs the construction materials, so better insulate the house better to begin with. Or, a simple heating system change from fossil fuels to heatpump reduces energy use not by factor of five but pretty close, because a heatpump itself is a stored solar energy harvester.
--- End quote ---
Well, a hypothetical flat 5 times reduction was a first-order approximation. We are not going to discuss a detailed 1,000-page energy reduction budget in this forum, are we? However, I agree that some categories would require milder reductions in energy consumption. Perhaps cutting military energy expenses by more than half would increase the risk of imminent colonization by Russia to a level greater than the risk of Earth turning into Venus in the next 100,000 years. Reducing food consumption to 500 kilocalories per adult per day is also too aggressive. Therefore, energy budget for other categories would have to be reduced by a factor of 10, 20, or even 100, to stick to the 5 times overall reduction. In such a scenario, there might not be any energy budget left to produce heat pumps, and heating tiny dens with renewable sources such as tree logs through campfires would be the only option.
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on July 15, 2023, 02:55:30 pm ---
Also we don't need such factor of 5 in reduction of energy consumption. We are quickly approaching a situation where half of our energy need is already supplied by renewables directly.
--- End quote ---
Oh, I apologize. You must be better informed than the IEA, who states, and I quote: ”Fossil fuels accounted for more than 81% of production in 2019, as in previous years.” Or perhaps you were referring to electricity generation specifically, rather than total energy production?
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