All the rivers
More than 20 rivers have burst their banks in Italy, leaving 13 people dead and forcing thousands from their homes after six months’ rainfall fell in a day and a half.
More bodies were found on Thursday after almost every river flooded between Bologna and the north-east coast 115km (70 miles) away. Some 280 landslides have taken place.
…
Many factors contribute to flooding, but a warming atmosphere caused by climate change makes extreme rainfall more likely. Already, the world has warmed about 1.1C since the industrial era began, and temperatures will continue to rise unless governments around the world make steep cuts to emissions.
Which they’re not going to do.
Any government that “made (needed) steep cuts to emissions” would be overthrown within a short period of time as economies crashed and people starve. Pre carbon technologies cannot support the billion or so people aspiring to “modern” lifestyles. Let alone eight billion total. Including our ability to read and comment on this very blog.
Post warming economies cannot do so either. The only realistic thing to do is find ways to cut emissions, but we aren’t going to. Those 8 billion people are going to starve sooner or later. The economic sector is banking on later.
We have to move past our current thinking both socially and economically. We have to learn how to live differently. We are not going to do that.
Comments like #1 show why we will not solve this problem. The moment someone suggests anything other than just changing a technology here and there, someone will come in and say “people will starve”. That is a seriously fucked perspective, because people will starve if global warming reaches the proportions projected. We blew it when we had time. Now that we don’t have time, we cannot take baby steps, and we cannot go on doing what we are doing.
Getting buy in has proven impossible. That’s the only way to get drastic changes, as we saw in WWII. If we could get people to treat this as being in the category of WWII in scope (it’s actually much, much larger, and many more people will die), we might get some changes. But I don’t see that happening.
Brian, are you sure you don’t believe that because it’s what the fossil fuel interests have ben telling us forever?
Having installed 7Kw of solar panels and a new electric heat pump on our future home, the cost was surprisingly modest, about $20,000. Renewables are very doable now and I’ve noted more and more utilities building them instead of more fossil fuel using generating plants. So I guess I am still optimistic about the future, even though we should have started far, far earlier. (Like 1988, when it was absolutely clear that human-produced CO2 was warming the planet. Grumble.)
The top two stories on our local government-funded TV News last night.
1. South Australia’s centre left and centre right join up to urgently increase fines for inconvenient protests from $500 to $50,000 or 6 months in jail. This was in response to an extinction Rebellion protest.
Followed by
2. The latest UN report on the rapid advance of climate change.
I wasn’t present at the protest, but from the news reports I have seen, far more inconvenience was caused by the Police. A lone protester (a woman in her 70s) suspended herself from a bridge above a main CBD thoroughfare. Instead of managing the traffic around the woman, the police blocked all six lanes and the tram line.
J.A.#4: so-called “renewables” are not a solution. The only real solution is reducing consumption. Solar panels and windgen-magnet production create toxic landscapes that are massive (just not here in the USA or in Europe, so it’s not seen), and the mining and transport of the materials needed to produce them just put the carbon right back into the air with the added bonus of ripping apart ecosystems. The only real solution is reducing consumption.
https://www.brightgreenlies.com/
People are starving NOW. People are facing water shortages NOW. Economies are crashing NOW. Governments are being overthrown NOW.
If we keep refusing to fundamentally change the way our modern societies function, shortly we won’t have any options at all. We can try or not to dig ourselves out of the hole we’ve dug, but the hole has already been dug.
I DESPISE the “renewable natural gas” (that still releases greenhouse gas emissions) and “dishwaters use less water” (but more electricity) and “we’re offering great rebates for electric cars to help!” (but only on new cars, and don’t think too hard about mining procedures, and no we won’t upgrade electrical grid infrastructure or do anything to reduce the need for commuting) and other bullshit greenwashing advertising/campaigns out there. Any real solutions/adaptations will be forced on us. We have the capacity to do better… but we don’t, so it’s likely that we won’t.
Quite honestly, the most frightening aspect is that the heating is affecting access to resources, especially water. Flooding does have its benefits when it’s part of a natural cycle, as in the Red River Valley of the North, or the Nile Delta, where the floods leave behind nutrients on agricultural land that would otherwise be overused and end up not being arable. But the floods, such as in Italy, in Pakistan last year, and in England before that, do not do much to restore the natural water table as the water rushes down towards the sea. And the water that’s flooding there is not falling in places that also need it, such as Syria and Jordan and other areas of the Levant that are arable.
War is fundamentally a struggle over resources. And the conflicts over resources are going to escalate. The Russian invasion of the Ukraine is just one of the wars that will be sending missiles and rockets into the cities and towns. And war manufacturing feeds the economic cycle, so all the Net Zero goals of the governments trying to comply (or pretending to comply) with the IPCC goals will be obliterated by conflict. This will further exacerbate the movement of people seeking a safe place, where they can work and feed themselves. And the movements to restrict refugees are based on resource conflict as well. What we see at the US Southern border and on the shores of Dover is a trickle of the flood of people that will be seeking some sort of promised land that doesn’t exist, or won’t for long.
So, yes, James, we can try to greenify as much as we want. But as long as Raytheon stands to profit from the resource conflicts, you may as well drive that big diesel truck you’ve been eyeing with the lifts and the bull balls on the trailer hitch.
I listen to a lot of music to avoid having to think about this all the time. I can recommend some tunes if you’d like.
[…] a comment by Mike Haubrich on All the […]
J.G. @6, agreed about also reducing consumption of electric power and there has been progress made as households now use less power today than in the past. Energy efficiency has been promoted in many ways, from lighting to insulation to HVAC systems as well. Transportation is the biggest problem now, and sadly we have gone backwards in terms of favoring bigger, less fuel-efficient vehicles. At least being able to telecommute to a job is an option available to more of us, but not everyone obviously.
Regarding renewables, while solar panels do have a carbon footprint, the payback on that is two years. After that, they can function for over 25 years providing carbon-free electricity. Regarding mining, did you know that 75% of all the aluminum ever produced is still in use, thanks to recycling? Copper is also recycled. The production of solar panels is not a huge environmental problem, nor are wind turbines for that matter. The carbon footprint of making concrete on the other hand is huge and reducing consumption of it is needed, unless ways of lowering the CO2 emitted from its production are found.
Lowering CO2 in the atmosphere is the goal and renewable sources of energy are going to be needed given we’re not going to revert to a pre-industrial era way of life. Not that we can’t do with less travel or fewer nice things made halfway around the world, but we can still have a decent standard of living.
An afterthought, but one thing we could do that would lower carbon emissions right now is end Bitcoin mining. Not that it’ll happen until that particular bubble bursts, like the NFT craze has.
I used to think Agent Smith had it right in The Matrix when he compared humanity to a virus, but the more I think about it, the more I think we’re like a cloud of locusts. As individuals, we can be decent enough and relatively harmless, but evaluated objectively as the massive gang that we actually are, humans are devastatingly efficient at destroying everything we touch, including ourselves. Solving this existential crisis requires modifying humans’ fundamental nature. Good luck with that.
[feeling extra grumpy today]
JA@10:
I’m really tired with arguing about carbon. It’s not the only issue. Entire regions in China have become uninhabitable because of the West’s eager desire for what we think are “renewable” energy solutions. The projected needs for mining for lithium batteries for the next decade are an order of magnitude (at least) from current levels, assuming the same rate of increasing consumption. So, okay, let’s assume the premise, that switching to solar and windgen will reduce carbon emissions–presumably to the point that we won’t break the 1.5ºC trigger point*. And? Meanwhile, huge portions of the earth have been destroyed and will only get worse, because “renewable”. Such a fine word, but so deceptive. We’ll escape the carbon catastrophe in the air, but we’ll have destroyed the land and the oceans in the process. The only real solution is reducing consumption. And I guarantee you that our consumption will reduce, either by planning and regulation, or by nature exerting her muscle against us.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/14/toxic-mine-spill-chinese-pollution
*And we’re not going to avoid that scenario. We’re well on our way to tripping over the 1.5ºC trigger and will clearly surpass it soon. Promoting so-called renewables is just making the solution harder to achieve. The only solution is reducing consumption.
J.G. @13,
Extrapolating from one of China’s terrible mining practices is not the whole picture. Lithium mining for instance, which is largely done in Chile and Australia, is not going to poison the planet and thankfully is scalable, as demand is pushing up prices which is funding the re-opening of former mines in the U.S. Now if we would incentivize the recycling of lithium batteries, like we do for lead-acid batteries (97% of which are recycled), we would be able to build battery systems that would store power from wind and solar for when it’s needed, allowing us to decommission fossil fuel plants.
Anyway, here’s more about the current state of lithium mining:
The search for new geologic sources of lithium could power a clean future – (Science News)
The issue you seem to have with me is that I’m not recognizing the impact of making renewables our main source of power. I do support responsible mining and production practices, and agree with you that we need to not support unethical producers. I do think it can be done, along with also making our own use of power more efficient, which I already mentioned that we’re doing.
The problem I have with your declaration that we must reduce consumption is that it’s just a non-starter. You need to say how that’s going to be accomplished and what will get us to actually do it. Otherwise it just gives rhetorical ammo to the POV expressed in post #1 here. One of the reasons I did install solar and a heat pump that is powered by it is to show to others that yes, I am putting my own money where my mouth is. That ultimately does more to help tip the political scales in favor of reducing CO2 emissions, which is the #1 threat to the planet’s environment now.