Global warming strikes again...

[Broken_Erika]

Wow, it rained for 5 minutes.

It's just raining enough to keep the humidity high.

 

[EnglishEdward]

On that warm Gulf Stream and the amount of heat it transports out of the Gulf of Mexico to Europe....

When that heat stays in the Gulf and bordering Ocean... would that not cause even more severe hurricanes ?
Those hurricanes get their energy from warm water, the warmer the more energy that hurricane picks up while moving and hoovering above that water.?

There seem to be two main factors for change here arising from global warming:

(a) increasing dilution of cold seawater by an increase in melting ice
reducing the strength of the North Atlantic Deep Water system.

I suspect that' impact more upon the North Atlantic Drift
system than the Gulf Stream proper.

(b) increased temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea
raising air temperatures

I do not believe that the temperature of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea will simply
rise indefinitely or that all the additional heat can be transported away by hurricanes.

So there will likely be a continuing transfer of hot seawater from there into the Atlantic.

The question to me is where will it go, if the weakening of the North Atlantic Deep Water system
reduces the volume of cold water going south and therefore of warm water that may go north.

Perhaps it will get stuck in the mid Atlantic for a few years, perhaps it will travel east, rather
than north east, towards Spain and Morocco. If so, Spain may get more rain, Ireland less rain?

 

[Joij21]

Ehh it doesn't really matter, even a Marxist society would be no better off at solving this. Just look at China and their insistence on using fossil fuels to expand their GDP.

Besides the developing world wants to get rich quick as well. Fastest way to get rich is industrializing through the use of fossil fuels. Russia and Saudi Arabia are waiting for the global south to industrialize so the can improve their own GDP by exporting their oil reserves to said developing nations.

 

[El_Machinae]

Yeah, we're definitely screwed if China mimics our behavior. Luckily, they're spending reasonable amount of effort to improve the carbon intensity of their economy. Obviously, the solution won't be "the poor must remain poor".

 

[Joij21]

Yeah, we're definitely screwed if China mimics our behavior. Luckily, they're spending reasonable amount of effort to improve the carbon intensity of their economy. Obviously, the solution won't be "the poor must remain poor".

But that still doesn't solve the problem of Russia and Saudi Arabia having zero incentive not to sell their oil. Not to mention that Russia in particular wants the Arctic to melt in order to gain access to the Northwest Passage for military and economic reasons.

 

[El_Machinae]

Of course they have incentive to sell. The only way to prevent them from selling is to drive the price below the extraction cost, sanctions, or to intentionally pivot to alternatives to reduce demand. Alberta oil sands are betting on increased demand and price, so whatever our wealthiest neighbour is doing, it's not creating a sane policy up here.

Dealers are always happy to sell, despite negative externalities. I'm not sure how having a lifestyle that depends on fossil fuels, and refusing to pivot to alternatives, erodes Saudi Arabia's or Russia's influence, though.

But yeah, if China mimics our lifestyle and buys from Russia, Russia will definitely benefit, and we're screwed. Luckily, China is investing such that (hopefully) they don't mimic the footprint I feel entitled to.

 

[Joij21]

intentionally pivot to alternatives to reduce demand.

They are anticipating the West as a market to get greener. For the coming years they'll be looking towards the Global South with the anticipation that these nations will undergo a dirty fossil fuel driven period of economic growth before transitioning to a greener Western style growth. We simply are not the intended customers.

sanctions

Suddenly you create a more antagonistic Arabia and Russia even more willing to defy the West which they would see as trying to prevent their right to enriching themselves. They most likely will (and are) interfere in policy within the Global South, which they can use to convince these nations to vote against sanctions being placed against them within the United Nations.

drive the price below the extraction cost

Doesn't matter if it's cheap in the West, the main buyers will be the Second and Third World.

 

[El_Machinae]

They are anticipating the West as a market to get greener. For the coming years they'll be looking towards the Global South with the anticipation that these nations will undergo a dirty fossil fuel driven period of economic growth before transitioning to a greener Western style growth. We simply are not the intended customers.

Surely those people have permission to the same carbon footprint we had (at least the same amount that we had over the last two decades)?

Doesn't matter if it's cheap in the West, the main buyers will be the Second and Third World.

That's a function of alternatives. We have zero expectation that should remain poorer than we are, but GDP can uncorrelate with carbon emissions if there are alternative sources of energy (which is the true desired product).

In fact, an entity with a lot of wealth and a very high footprint would have been advised to create those alternatives if they were worried that poorer people would mimic their behavior. I live in a society that actually cannot understand the Econ 101 effect of a carbon tax, though, and that chose to borrow money in order to get better at exporting. And our customers were singularly "oh, the solution is to do what I want and hope the poor don't mimic us".

 

[Joij21]

but GDP can uncorrelate with carbon emissions if there are alternative sources of energy (which is the true desired product).

Which is why I suspect nations like Saudi Arabia and Russia will help develop these nations in such a way that makes them dependent on fossil fuels in order to create a market from which to sell. They know the West simply does not care about the Second and Third World, and they also know that many of these nations have a serious distrust towards the West in return. In essence they will dictate energy policy for these nations while leaving the West and their ideas of a greener path well out of it.

 

[El_Machinae]

Oh, that's true. If the West never decides to get ahead of the ball and sacrifice present consumption for the future, we're doomed if the poor chose to do what we do.
But, again, the actual solution is to invent/create alternatives that drive down the price below the extraction price. And, in the in the interim, create alternatives that reduce demand. It's not like we're making thing better by taking everything Alberta offers and burning it. They'll just borrow against that income anyway.

Who knows, maybe India will be able to sell Thorium nuclear reactors.

 

[Joij21]

But, again, the actual solution is to invent/create alternatives that drive down the price below the extraction price.

An old trick of many oil lords is when the price is too low just start a war.

 

[El_Machinae]

Saudi Arabia is a poverty bomb waiting to go off, regardless! Drastically cranking up global poverty with climate change will be a confounding factor on that. But yeah, outcompeting them will also confound that.

Driving down international prices with alternative supply (or demand) brings a lot of the high-cost production off the table. I am not going to calculate if we can survive OPEC selling all of their on-book reserves, but I'm pretty sure that we cannot survive both them and every other high-cost producer doing so.

 

[Joij21]

Driving down international prices with alternative supply (or demand) brings a lot of the high-cost production off the table.

That's only if the West shares it's green tech IPs with the developing world.

Saudi Arabia is a poverty bomb waiting to go off, regardless!

Saudi Arabia's monarchy will not remain in power by the time this century comes to a close, that doesn't mean they wouldn't try to stall development in Africa away from green projects and instead encourage fossil fuel reliant ones. The monarchy isn't really intelligent to begin with, it's a medieval system of personal short term interest that has somehow managed to hold out into the modern age.

Russia on the other hand has everything to gain from a planet that has undergone the most severe changes of climate change. A melted arctic with military and economic value giving it a new coastline to build new seaports, thawed out soil that can expand it's agricultural capacity to compete against North America, more temperate lands for people to live and develop industry, non frozen seas year round on it's currently existing ports. This all while Russia's primary enemies; Europe and North America, which have far too many port cities (while Russia barely has any) that will be sunk under rising sea levels, and have more southernly agricultural/forest regions that will dry out/burn up. Russia's current northern wasteland status gives it a free cop out from any consequences of climate change and all benefits. Yes it's a nihilistic way of making policy but Russians have a nihilistic way of thinking when it comes to governance.

 

[El_Machinae]

That's only if the West shares it's green tech IPs with the developing world.

Yeah, that would only happen if people could be convinced to participate in their own defense rather than help shuttle money to the ultra-rich who're best at obfuscating mainstream economic theory and mainstream climate theory.

But, again, we buy time by changing our consumption patterns from what we pray the poor can never mimic.

 

[Joij21]

But, again, we buy time by changing our consumption patterns from what we pray the poor can never mimic.

Which then leads to people just intentionally keeping the poor poor, and in turn the poor resent those above them with disdain. Also going green can be an expensive thing that the already well off to do can afford while the poor can't. These same well off to do who made their wealth through fossil fuels. So they may see it as they have to go dirty before they become wealthy enough to go green.

 

[El_Machinae]

It's a big leap to assume that reducing consumption necessarily increases the poverty of the poor. Though, I guess, I can see why someone would think that.
There are whole swaths of destructive consumption that be eliminated without damaging the income of the poor, as long as you pivot what you're buying. We live in a world where most of the income from consumption ends up in the bank accounts of other destructive consumers. It's hard to see how me cranking the AC and taking extra long showers helps pull the developing world out of poverty faster, but it's obvious that I could trim those two things and shuttle some of the savings to the poor for a huge net benefit.

Of course, that would require that I'm willing to participate in my own defense.

We get a terrific discount our consumption, though, given that we're willing to foist the negative externalities of that consumption onto the future poor. I know we've been trained to think that our consumption is how other people climb out of poverty (and in many ways it's true), but consumption patterns merely change when we change our consumption patterns from destructive to less destructive.

I do want to point out that eveything you've said indicates that you believe that either (a) nothing can be done to slow the damage or (b) we have no obligation to try. That's just wrong, but it's obviously going to trigger a self-serving bias.

 

[Joij21]

t's a big leap to assume that reducing consumption necessarily increases the poverty of the poor. Though, I guess, I can see why someone would think that.
There are whole swaths of destructive consumption that be eliminated without damaging the income of the poor, as long as you pivot what you're buying. We live in a world where most of the income from consumption ends up in the bank accounts of other destructive consumers. It's hard to see how me cranking the AC and taking extra long showers helps pull the developing world out of poverty faster, but it's obvious that I could trim those two things and shuttle some of the savings to the poor for a huge net benefit.

Of course, that would require that I'm willing to participate in my own defense.

We get a terrific discount our consumption, though, given that we're willing to foist the negative externalities of that consumption onto the future poor. I know we've been trained to think that our consumption is how other people climb out of poverty (and in many ways it's true), but consumption patterns merely change when we change our consumption patterns from destructive to less destructive.

I do want to point out that eveything you've said indicates that you believe that either (a) nothing can be done to slow the damage or (b) we have no obligation to try. That's just wrong, but it's obviously going to trigger a self-serving bias.

I'm not talking about an increase in Western consumption, I'm talking about the fact that people in the Third World don't have ACs or showers but very much want those same things. Instead they live in mud huts or shanty towns in the tropics where the only fresh water comes from a well half a kilometer away where they have to go on foot with a bucket and pull the water out by hand. Forget about staying cool except lying in the shade. Nevertheless they want to see their lives improve and become easier like ours, and have the same luxuries we enjoy.

Would you deny them these things simply to save the planet all while hypocritically keeping these things to yourself? They would see this as a neo-imperialist Westerner who despises them and just wants to kick them down, never allowing them to become rich like said Westerner. They see how we got rich off of fossil fuels, and they want to replicate that so they can become like us.

 

[Akka]

Yeah, we're definitely screwed if China mimics our behavior. Luckily, they're spending reasonable amount of effort to improve the carbon intensity of their economy. Obviously, the solution won't be "the poor must remain poor".

Little reminder that China is already having one and a half the carbon emissions per capita of France, Italy or UK.

 

[Samson]

Little reminder that China is already having one and a half the carbon emissions per capita of France, Italy or UK.

That depends on how you do the accounting. If a Kg of coal is mined in Australia, burned in China to make a mobile phone that is bought in the UK who "pays" the CO2 bill?

 

[Akka]

If you argue for reindustrialization in First World countries and creating jobs at home with industry being subject to more strict regulations, rather than subsidize the next authoritarian superpower, wasting incredible amount of resources and creating incredible pollution in idiotic merchandize transportation, supporting oversea slave work and scaling back globalization, then trust me I'm with you.

But the fact that France/Italy/UK are at ONE THIRD of US/Australia/Canada carbon emissions, tells me it's probably first and foremost about incredibly wasteful behaviour and maybe lack of regulations.