2020 officially saw a record number of $1 billion weather and climate disasters.

Nabber

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117759714#Comment_117759714

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117765937#Comment_117765937

You're back, care to answer on the follow up question?

Tyrone212

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117766443#Comment_117766443

I never once questioned that record so I don't know what the hell you're on about nor am I interested. If you're trying to have a dig at someone else quote them, not me, thanks.

Oneiric 3

One of the benefits of less carbon in the air is less trees and plant life (which all depend heavily on co2 for growth) and less trees and plant life = less forests and less plant growth = less fires. Also, there also will be less crop growth which will help reduce the global population substantially.

Win Win.

Nabber

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117767899#Comment_117767899

Joking aside, I do agree we need to change a lot of what we as a species do.

But what people like Banana 'Harvard' Republic and Akrasia fail to acknowledge is that currently theer is no alternative other than Nuclear to support our energy needs and that carbon energy has made life on earth better, significantly better over the past 100 years. Unfortunately disproportionately better for others, but that's another story.

What's the solution?

What's an ideal climate?

What will extreme weather look like without AGW?

These are questions you rarely see answered if ever. Should a house on flood plain expect flooding if we fix the climate issue? Should a house on an eroding cliff expect erosion to stop? Should a house in a dry arid forest expect that there will be no more forest fires?

According to some in here, we were in the garden of Eden up till 1880.....

Gaoth Laidir

I'd love to know where Banana got his 50 degrees from today. There's enough of that in the media without having to make it up here too. I don't suppose he'll reply to that.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117769660#Comment_117769660

Thats Bananas for you🙄

Nabber

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117769660#Comment_117769660

He’s gone till there I page or two more replies. Then he’ll slide back in with a like here and there and a trolling post that adds little or nothing to the conversation.

Hopefully not the case this time and we get constructive responses, but that is how I seen the poster operate maybe change is possible

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117768863#Comment_117768863

There is alternatives. We could replace all electrical generation with renewable and Nuclear. We have the technology, it’s just a question of economics, and the fact that we are still subsidizing fossil fuels to the tune about trillion dollars a year is an absolute disgrace. Renewable energy will replace polluting energy when it is cheaper, and when you factor in the cost of climate change it’s been cheaper for decades

Nabber

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117771142#Comment_117771142

Think we may have covered this before, but at what cost is renewable energy coming at?

Green energy in it's current state destroys habitats and is wholly reliant on carbo fuels for production, installation and maintenance. I'd like to see a move away from carbon energy for many reasons. I don't believe carbon will fulfill further energy needs or requirements, it's dirty, it's finite.

There are many other reasons to move away from carbon based fuels that are not related to it's environmental impact. Green energy is not the answer however, certainly not with todays tech, so combined investment into Nuclear, Carbon and Green energy is required. Turing of carbon based energy production is not going to happen today, tomorrow or in the next 30 years.

A solution that surpasses fossil fuel as an energy store is lacking, a consistent reliable production of energy is lacking. There have however been great advancements in alternatives, our focus should be to further clean up carbon based energy production in parallel to Nuclear and Green investment.

Akrasia I still feel you have the blinkers on and are unwilling to comprise on the doom and gloom prediction you value so highly, with zero comprise on the need for Carbon fuels... Which funnily enough power R&d for Climate science and alternative power sources production (more irony). It's simply not possible to move our energy needs to green energy today or in the next 20 years (unless there is significant break through, fusion reactor reaching Q=2 for example). Alternatively reducing carbon footprint of the planet is the next step, but that wont happen, hasn't happened.. Even with the threat of the collapse of humanity, people don't want to devolve and gave up their luxuries, I don't blame them. You yourself are an example of this, using Boards.ie, powered by carbon fuel, using a device manufactured, mined and assembled from across the planet.

So lets focus on figuring new power sources, except that carbon output wont change until a suitable alternative is found and leave the land of unicorns and fairies behind us. A green utopia is not the answer to todays problem.

Banana Republic 1

https://theconversation.com/hydrogen-uk-government-sees-future-in-low-carbon-fuel-but-whats-the-reality-166244

https://theconversation.com/blue-hydrogen-what-is-it-and-should-it-replace-natural-gas-166053

https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/cold-fusion.htm

..

Oneiric 3

Programmed bot returns ^

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117772619#Comment_117772619

Climate change will destroy many more habitats than wind farms, solar PV and Nuclear

the whole point of switching to carbon neutral energy is that over time the reliance on carbon based fuels is eliminated. The energy to produce the steel, transport materials, run processe etc can never be carbon neutral until we migrate the infrastructure. This will take investment and regulations and market mechanisms to reduce the impacts of the transition and hopefully avoid falling into the many pitfalls of the inevitable corruption and misinformation that will try to exploit the transition

I’m no utopian. The road to carbon neutrality will be paved with snakes and snake oil salesmen. None of this negates the need to act to limit warming as to as low as we can.

I’m not blinkered, I am looking at the warnings delivered in clear uncertain terms by the scientists who have very carefully assessed the situation. Humanity Must get to carbon neutral energy as soon as possible. Preferably keeping to well below 2c but that boat may have already sailed. We are reliant on Carbon based fuels today, this needs to be forcibly changed.

The continued existence of fossil fuel subsidies is proof that the world leaders are not doing everything in their power to transition away. We’re beyond the age of weaning, we need to ramp up the pace. Every single fossil fuel burning power plant or bus or plane or train or central heating system purchased today commits another decade of CO2 production

we need to build carbon neutral infrastructure in advance of the switch over. We cannot just wait it to happen on its own

Akrasia

Here are the things I believe we (Europe) should be doing right now (this is on top of what we’re already doing)

These are just some examples that show that we could be doing so much more to tackle this crisis than what we are doing. There will be costs associated with all of these, but the cost of not acting on climate change are much much higher, so even if it was hundreds of billions a year, it would be cheaper to borrow that now and pay it off than to not borrow it and pay the cost of climate change at 1.5c and well beyond. The clock is ticking, every year we delay, we're adding more and more fuel to the fire.

1. Increase carbon tax to €100 per tonne and remove exemptions for transport, aviation, shipping and the Cruise industry. And use the proceeds of that tax to spend on projects to restore and conserve natural ecosystems that act as carbon sinks and improve biodiversity. This can be spent partially on European conservation projects and partially by directly investing in projects in the developing world (not least because we’d get a better return on investment) This should be overseen by an EU or UN body specifically tasked with restoring natural systems to improve biodiversity, and reduce impacts of human emissions.
2. Regulate and tax manufacturers and service providers to make it much more expensive to produce and sell single use and difficult/impossible to recycle products and services. This could be done by refundable deposit style taxes on plastics and valuable/toxic/polluting resources Manufacturers can get those taxes refunded if they can certify that they have taken back the product and recovered/recycled the materials. We should focus on making a circular economy, no more awful, cheap nasty disposable single use plastic trinkets clogging our landfills and oceans with plastics, and our atmosphere with pollution. implement ‘right to repair’ legislation, and prosecute manufacturers of they are found to be deliberately manufacturing their products to prematurely fail
3. Introduce a minimum engineering standard similar to the CE mark, but for quality engineered products. If a product is manufactured and sold in the EU it should be of merchantable quality (low volume craft products can be excluded)
4. Phase out domestic Oil and Gas heating. No installations in new builds with no replacement boilers on sale from 2030 - Oil and gas central heating to be replaced by electrical heating systems, or heat pumps, with full grants available to increase insulation in homes, starting with the worst performing homes
5. Construct electricity interconnectors to provide more grid stability
6. Make passive homes or  Net Zero Energy Buildings (ZEB) the minimum standard for all newly constructed or full refurbishment of domestic properties
7. Require all rental properties to meet passive heating and cooling or ZEB standards by 2030 with very rare exceptions for listed buildings
8. Hugely invest in electric charging networks, it should be impossible to travel more than 20-30km without encountering a charging point except in very rural areas with very low populations. But even in these places, there should be a strategy to subsidise or fully fund charging networks for EVs to facilitate locals, businesses and tourists
9. Scrappage scheme for ICE engines starting in 2022. note I did not say ice vehicles. I said ICE engines. If there is a 3-5k scrappage allowance for all ICE engines in motor vehicles, this could be used to help pay the cost of converting an ICE car to run as a BEV. ICE cars can be converted to BEV for about 6k by an Irish based company and this cost would surely come down in price with scale and demand. Given that electric engines cost a lot less than petrol engines and cost a lot in repairs, repurposing older ICEs to be BEV would extend the useful lives of these vehicles, and also plug a big gap in the 2nd hand market for lower priced BEVs while we wait for the 2022 range of new ICE cars to drop in value.
10. Give grants to farmers and landowners to use sustainable farming methods, and to plant crops that both promote biodiversity and sequester carbon. Restoring wetlands, restoring native woodlands, planting hedgerows, reducing pesticide use etc
11. Ban all construction of Gas or Coal fired power stations and require all electricity generation to be carbon Neutral by 2035 - Make it a requirement that these generation methods are fully compliant with our other sustainability and biodiversity goals, eg, you can't just chop down a native woodland and replace it with spruce forests, and burn them.
12. All imports into Europe's single market should be assessed and given a carbon rating, and a carbon tax should be imposed on these goods at the point of crossing the EU border. Included in this, will be the carbon cost of transportation
13. Public authorities shall be Obliged to provide water stations supplying free and accessible drinking water at all public amenities and in all public buildings. The public will be able to refill their re-usable water bottles rather than having to purchase new disposable containers.
14. All drinking containers other than fully biodegradable and sustainably produced containers should be sold with a refundable deposit that is returned to the consumer when they recycle the container. The shop that sold the container, or sells containers of that type shall be obliged to accept it back and return the deposit

Banana Republic 1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782000#Comment_117782000

I agree on those however I’m not sure taxing individuals when they have no alternatives is the right move. Yes tax but have alternatives imbedded.

I understood avaiation fuel was going to be taxed as part of the EU new green deal?

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782369#Comment_117782369

The solution is going to be made up of several parts including but not limited to (in no particular order)

1. Regulations
2. Market forces
3. Incentives
4. Government investment
5. Grants and Subsidies
6. Public education
7. Public buy in

5 6 and 7 are intertwined. For it to work, we need stable governments who can implement the transition without being voted out of office. Therefore, we will need carbon taxes to be balanced out with tax reductions and even things like helicopter payments to completely offset the increased taxation .

This will require long term borrowing, so the public education aspect requires concerted effort to negate the inevitable industry lobbying who will try to bring down governments who are serious about challenging the status quo.

The fossil fuel sector will do everything they can to stop the transition. They will pump the blogosphere so full of the same old debunked arguments. We just need the leaders to push through

Danno

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117782000#Comment_117782000

1. Increase carbon tax to €100 per tonne and remove exemptions for transport, aviation, shipping and the Cruise industry. And use the proceeds of that tax to spend on projects to restore and conserve natural ecosystems that act as carbon sinks and improve biodiversity. This can be spent partially on European conservation projects and partially by directly investing in projects in the developing world (not least because we’d get a better return on investment) This should be overseen by an EU or UN body specifically tasked with restoring natural systems to improve biodiversity, and reduce impacts of human emissions.Increase taxes, whopeee!
2. Regulate and tax manufacturers and service providers to make it much more expensive to produce and sell single use and difficult/impossible to recycle products and services. This could be done by refundable deposit style taxes on plastics and valuable/toxic/polluting resources Manufacturers can get those taxes refunded if they can certify that they have taken back the product and recovered/recycled the materials. We should focus on making a circular economy, no more awful, cheap nasty disposable single use plastic trinkets clogging our landfills and oceans with plastics, and our atmosphere with pollution. implement ‘right to repair’ legislation, and prosecute manufacturers of they are found to be deliberately manufacturing their products to prematurely fail Increase taxes, Whopee! Can't wait to spend more tax on my already overtaxed income.
3. Introduce a minimum engineering standard similar to the CE mark, but for quality engineered products. If a product is manufactured and sold in the EU it should be of merchantable quality (low volume craft products can be excluded) Protectionism, Dev would be proud of you.
4. Phase out domestic Oil and Gas heating. No installations in new builds with no replacement boilers on sale from 2030 - Oil and gas central heating to be replaced by electrical heating systems, or heat pumps, with full grants available to increase insulation in homes, starting with the worst performing homes Excellent move, can't wait to be gouged by the ESB et all for their ever increasing wages. Competition in the home heating industry is a pipe dream.
5. Construct electricity interconnectors to provide more grid stability Here I can absolutely agree, Hey France, got some nuclear surplus - send her over here... oh, Germany - flooded again I see? Send that excess hydro into Waterford - they've the AC on there all day as the sun is shplittin the stones on Tramore beach.
6. Make passive homes or Net Zero Energy Buildings (ZEB) the minimum standard for all newly constructed or full refurbishment of domestic properties Absolutely, when you guys fetch €50 a bag of coal or €5 a litre of kerosene - it's high time to make the consumption small.
7. Require all rental properties to meet passive heating and cooling or ZEB standards by 2030 with very rare exceptions for listed buildings Whoa, up go the rents again!
8. Hugely invest in electric charging networks, it should be impossible to travel more than 20-30km without encountering a charging point except in very rural areas with very low populations. But even in these places, there should be a strategy to subsidise or fully fund charging networks for EVs to facilitate locals, businesses and tourists LOLs! This is fantasy. Your beloved EU missed the boat - All EVs should have interchangeable batteries. i.e. I pull into my local Esso and my dead battery is changed in 1 min to a fully charged one. Think how pallets are used - that is efficiency.
9. Scrappage scheme for ICE engines starting in 2022. note I did not say ice vehicles. I said ICE engines. If there is a 3-5k scrappage allowance for all ICE engines in motor vehicles, this could be used to help pay the cost of converting an ICE car to run as a BEV. ICE cars can be converted to BEV for about 6k by an Irish based company and this cost would surely come down in price with scale and demand. Given that electric engines cost a lot less than petrol engines and cost a lot in repairs, repurposing older ICEs to be BEV would extend the useful lives of these vehicles, and also plug a big gap in the 2nd hand market for lower priced BEVs while we wait for the 2022 range of new ICE cars to drop in value. Interesting idea, one that could work long term - but we need a proper battery interchange structure, currently there is not enough time to "wait" 1hr whereas a petrol/diesel fill is 4 to 5 mins tops and gives you twice of not thrice the range. Think again!!!
10. Give grants to farmers and landowners to use sustainable farming methods, and to plant crops that both promote biodiversity and sequester carbon. Restoring wetlands, restoring native woodlands, planting hedgerows, reducing pesticide use etc We've already reduced the amount of farmers in Ireland - your policy would drive more away from the land and drive agri more towards corporation style farms as they have in the USA. This policy would undoubtedly achieve it's aims west of the Shannon, but in the fertile east we'd have mega-farms and mega-windfarms.
11. Ban all construction of Gas or Coal fired power stations and require all electricity generation to be carbon Neutral by 2035 - Make it a requirement that these generation methods are fully compliant with our other sustainability and biodiversity goals, eg, you can't just chop down a native woodland and replace it with spruce forests, and burn them. Gas is the lesser evil - in the absence of nuclear it should be Irish policy to develop this further.
12. All imports into Europe's single market should be assessed and given a carbon rating, and a carbon tax should be imposed on these goods at the point of crossing the EU border. Included in this, will be the carbon cost of transportation Good luck with the ladies on securing your vote - a massive price hike for pennies goods, amongst others would be met with apathy.
13. Public authorities shall be Obliged to provide water stations supplying free and accessible drinking water at all public amenities and in all public buildings. The public will be able to refill their re-usable water bottles rather than having to purchase new disposable containers. How about fixing the water issues where it is consumed most - in the home? If lycra-clad Dave on his incredibly razor thin bike out for his 100k loop wants to rock up to banagher on a Sunday morning expecting my taxes to pay for his cool water, well he can cycle over to the Shannon and drink there.
14. All drinking containers other than fully biodegradable and sustainably produced containers should be sold with a refundable deposit that is returned to the consumer when they recycle the container. The shop that sold the container, or sells containers of that type shall be obliged to accept it back and return the deposit Your last point, and the only one I can agree with 100%. See will Dave above come with his 27th iteration of his RiverRock bottle to the local river for a fill and a swig. I wager that would be a hard sold deal.

Akrasia

I’m guessing you don’t like taxes

would you like to explain how an economy without taxes would work?

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117783291#Comment_117783291

Sorry but when did it become ok to falsify quotes?

Danno

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117783310#Comment_117783310

Show me one example of where I falsify quotes? I took your 14 points, one by one and obliterated ~12 of them because of how in practice how said solutions would fail, in my opinion. But again, please point to any example of how I've altered anything you've posted in my response?

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117783315#Comment_117783315

Apologies you didn’t misquote me, you were just trying to compensate for the awful new boards quote function.

in the old platform I would have responded to your points individually but it’s too awkward now so in summary, I don’t think you obliterated any of my points. You did not consider any of them carefully. Read them again, this time try to imagine the best way they could be implemented instead of assuming they would be cocked up.

I’m not an alarmist. The accepted scientific consensus is, without immediate action we will most likely see 3c of warming by the end of the century. More than twice the warming we’ve already caused, with a disturbingly high chance of much greater than 3c of warming. We’re talking potentially civilization ending impacts here. And your response is we can’t upset mammies who want to shop at pennies.

it’s pathetic that you’re in such denial of the scientific evidence

the pennies shoppers would be much more upset at the collapse of civilization than the horror of having to pay slightly more for better quality more durable clothing

Akrasia

It’s raining on the summit of Greenlands glaciers. First time ever recorded, but nothing to see here, perfectly normal, etc etc etc

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/20/rain-falls-peak-greenland-ice-cap-first-time-on-record-climate-crisis

Gaoth Laidir

I'm not an alarmist.....

....

We’re talking potentially civilization ending impacts here

Jesus, the contradiction is stark. Absolutely headbanger stuff.

JRant

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117783923#Comment_117783923

From the article

“What is going on is not simply a warm decade or two in a wandering climate pattern. This is unprecedented. We are crossing thresholds not seen in millennia, and frankly this is not going to change until we adjust what we’re doing to the air.”

How can they know this has never been seen in millennia? I didn't think records went back this far?

Danno

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117783923#Comment_117783923

Greenland ice sheet ‘summit’ plunged to record low July temperature. So what? - The Washington Post

Just 5 short years ago... and to quote the "science" within that article “I wouldn’t start screaming Greenland is cooling down,” added Marco Tedesco, a Greenland expert based at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

Therefore it is equally legitimate to say “I wouldn’t start screaming Greenland is warming up” - right? You cant have your toast buttered on two sides and all that.

Spudmonkey

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117783315#Comment_117783315

Obliterated? No, you complained about taxes for the most part.

The carbon tax should absolutely 100% be a thing. In fact other taxes are actually subsidising it in places. I can go into McDonald's and buy a burger for a euro while next door in lidl a bunch of carrots costs the same. A burger has a carbon cost of ~4kg of CO2, 1kg of carrots something like .1kg of CO2. At the moment we're indirectly paying an anti-carbon tax. Just swap the bloody thing around.

Gaoth Laidir

A burger has a carbon cost of ~4kg of CO2

Are you sure about that? What size burger are we talking about?

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117784143#Comment_117784143

how Many record low temperatures have been set in Greenland vs record high temperatures in the past few decades? It’s even referred multiple times in that article you linked to.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117784132#Comment_117784132

Scientists have been studying Greenland ice sheets for almost a century. They know how old the ice is, and thousands of years worth of ice accumulation has already melted from the tops of these glaciers

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2742-6.epdf?sharing_token=3zawWBWg81wRrMhA0YJ1udRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NQx7E2TSFdLGg3oobgIHfTx_JhlA71HNcMXX-9mG30_BGJhQpJAG1XPjyJf8HTmEtaWLEsbJ_EIHUukyLNLSmVs7ZsLKdqjmi9j9-uO2TzLRK19GvgW4J3Yda2zf80aeW8QI8ypAhUwfRqt0nyalEc9dSY2GIep2Y_O4VCjtJcEjGd8jgy_aeyqIUoGHFRgeQ%3D&tracking_referrer=www.nationalgeographic.com

Gaoth Laidir

Just for some context, below is the temperature trace at Summit Camp this month. The Guardian article above referred to "exceptionally hot three days" (probably copied and pasted from their stock phrases for European heatwaves), yet it would seem they just cherrypicked the fraction of the time on the 14th that it went above 0. The average high for this time of the year is around -12 C. The rest of the month it's been well below, but don't tell the public that.

The station has only been operational since 1989, but don't tell the public that either.

The rain fell during an exceptionally hot three days in Greenland when temperatures were 18C higher than average in places. As a result, melting was seen in most of Greenland, across an area about four times the size of the UK.

They said there was melt across most of Greenland. That would also appear to be untrue.

Gaoth Laidir

Past year's temperature curve at Summit Station.