Climate change. Are we doing the right thing?

[Dashenka]

Climate change is happening. Apart from a few die-hards, everybody will agree. But while everybody agrees that it is happening, there is a few different ideas as to the how, what and why.

I believe climate change has been happening since the birth of our planet. The balance of nature is one of imbalance. When temperatures rise, ice melts, cooling down the oceans raising the sea level. Because of the impact of our oceans on the entire earth’s climate, a cooling down of the oceans will cool down the entire planet as ice forms again. The ice will reflect the light and warmth will get trapped in our atmosphere, warming it all up again.

Obviously this process takes a pretty long while but the closer we get to the turning point, the worse things will get. I’m no expert so I don’t know when that turning point will be but led me to a question I’ve been asking myself recently and one that I really don’t have the answer for yet.

Are we doing enough of the right things?

If we accept that the climate will change and that temperatures will continue to rise and sea levels continue to rise, is everything we’re doing now, not just a conscious matter so that we can say to generations to come, we have done everything we could.

I am willing to believe and accept that ‘we’ have an impact on the balance of nature as mentioned before but I do not for a minute believe that ‘we’ can stop global warming. It is happening, it has been happening since long before we even evolved from primates and it will continue to happen long after we as a species have gone.

I’m not against reducing our carbon footprint nor am I against the multitude of measures countries have put in place to battle excessive consumption and wastefulness. I’m all for it in fact. My wife and I have recently had a new house built and it’s almost entirely neutral to the environment. But when we were building it, I noticed something both hilarious and worrying. The roof of the house is covered in solar panels and I sat down and had a think as to how those solar panels started life.

A lot of different components have to be mined, smelted, crafted, etc from all corners of the world. The materials are shipped around the world with ships using diesel, put together in one factory and from there, they’re shipped to other countries again. Once they arrived in my country, they had to be distributed to suppliers, using trucks running on diesel. From there they had to be taken to my house on a truck running on diesel. To install them, they had six workers, who all came to work in cars, probably running on petrol or diesel and they needed a crane to install them. You guessed it, the crane runs on diesel.

That is a lot of effort to provide one household with solar panels. And that is just the panels, not the batteries, the wiring and all the other ‘environmental friendly’ things we have in our house. Which had me think that all those solutions are good for your savings as you save money from generating your own power, water, etc. But the costs to install it and run it and to have enough of it, not to have to rely on power companies to back up are so high that I think it would take tens of years before you notice a financial benefit.

So that is the financial benefit nulled and the environmental impact for one household to have solar panels is quite high. The same thing can be said about electric cars (EV’s). The process of making one and getting it to the clients has a huge impact on the planet and most people charge their cars at least partly from gas and coal plants. Batteries are a dirty business as well and all for what?

One of the major side effects of ‘going green’ is that a lot of things are becoming really expensive. Electric cars are a lot more expensive than their ICE counterparts. Solar panels are a big investment compared to calling the power company and ask them to flick a switch so you can have power and the major consumers use too much to be fully green. (Factories, airports, etc.) Then there is space. Countries like The Netherlands and Belgium don’t have the land space to generate enough power from the wind and the sun to supply their entire countries. Bigger countries, like the UK probably have the space but the solar output will be a lot less than for example California or Spain so they would need more.

Electric cars, renewable energy, culling of lifestock, etc, etc, are very expensive, very drastic measures that impact almost everybody on the planet alive right now. But will they stop the oceans from rising? Will they stop the draughts we’re experiencing all over the world?

I don’t think they will.

So why aren’t we battling the effects of global warming? Why aren’t we raising our dikes and levees? Why aren’t we irrigating Australia, California and Southern Europe? Why aren’t we arming ourselves to hurricanes and droughts? Why aren’t we planting trees to combat erosion?

Nature will always prevail and will always find a way. Animals go extinct, such is the tragic circle of life. Dinosaurs went extinct, woolly mammoths and sabercats followed and polar bears will eventually go as well. But nature finds a way.

I feel we are protecting something that doesn’t need protection but forgetting to protect our future. Our children and their children.
And that is a thought that terrifies me.

[GloomCookie]

So, here's the thing. Yes, climate change is happening, and it is going in directions that we really don't want them to go in some ways, but in other ways might not be so bad. The bottom line is we don't have enough data. Simply put, we have spotty data from a few points around the globe that we're then trying to extrapolate across the entire globe. We know the climate is changing, but the long-term effects are speculative at this point. There's a ton of data missing from the equation because accurate meteorological data only goes back so far, and we're not measuring the entire globe equally. It's only been the past few decades that NASA and other space agencies have been looking at the entire planet as a whole and making that information available.

The reason climate change is scary is because we've built our entire civilization on knowing where best to plant crops to get yields that are sustainable, where to find cheap fuels, and where to get materials for the lowest possible cost. That right there is what will ultimately direct human endeavors more than any government mandate, incentive, or program, it's that cost factor, and that's something that will always be in flux, but things like solar panels and electric vehicles are coming down in price by the day. They're not on par with gasoline vehicles yet, and the availability of gasoline to the average consumer means that I know I can make a drive to visit my parents and never be more than at most 15 miles from a gas station on the longest stretch of road, while I'm not entirely clear where the nearest EV charging station is, or if it's compatible.

Logistics are what drive humans to do the things that we do. It's why our cities appear where they do, why people live where they do, and why some regions are prosperous and others not so much (there are weird paradoxes in areas with an over abundance of resources but we won't got there right now). For example, in the United States we have the Mississippi River, which connects so much of the interior to the Gulf of Mexico that Thomas Jefferson was willing to drop $10 Million to Napoleon in order to purchase the city. Everyone was aware that the key to developing the interior was unrestricted access to the river, and keeping that access open was absolutely vital to national interests.

Fuel and other infrastructure had to be developed. Considering the internal combustion engine is less than 150 years old, that infrastructure came in and supplanted the network of rails that united the country since it's inventions in the 1800s, which had to be developed and built from scratch. Post-WWI, the US Army wanted to drive trucks from one end of the country to the other, and it took them 62 days. (Link to article: https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/1919-transcontinental-motor-convoy#:~:text=In%20the%20summer%20of%201919,3%2C251%20miles%20in%2062%20days.). We can now drive from Houlton, Maine to San Diego, California (two points as far away as I could find) in 49 hours.

The point I'm making is that you are absolutely right that it takes a lot of materials and resources to make solar panels and batteries, but we will develop the infrastructure for it over time. It's inevitable because it's coming. But, you are also right that there are other areas we can improve, and it does tie back into logistics. Specifically, shipping.

The two largest contributors to greenhouse gases in the US are from electricity generation (25%) and transportation (27%) (Link: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions). This is one of those rare cases where fixing one of our problems will fix another indirectly, and that is by setting up the infrastructure for solar and wind power and the batteries we need for that, we will also start curbing transportation's contributions as well. Those two sectors alone could half total US greenhouse emissions, with other sectors like agriculture and residential use coming down as well. In other words, this is 100% the correct move to be making in order to curb emissions.

[Jerram]

I'm not overly worried byglobal cooling global warming climate change.  I've seen the "last chance to stop it before the End of the World" come and go many, many times in last decade or so.  The issue is so politicized that science has taken a back seat to partisan bickering.  Being hectored by a teen aged, depressed girl is not persuasive.  I live in a desert area where, over the last 12,000 years, the region has gone through a lake - marsh - dry lakebed (playa) cycle about 20 times, none of which were caused by industrial capitalism.  In the 1970s we were waiting for the coming ice age and there were plans to spread dark particulates over places like Greenland to increase global warming.

"renewable" or "green" are political and advertising terms, large scale solar farms are a blight if you have to live next to one.  the electricity to recharge electric cars doesn't grow on trees, I think it is mined from coal burning plants.  Gasoline is, I think, second only (by many orders of magnitude) to nuclear power in terms of energy density. 

we are well past the point where nuclear power can be had safely, but noooooo, the answer is more bird choppers.

[midnightblack]

The Earth's climate is an extremely complex dynamical system  that interacts both with other terrestrial and extraterrestrial systems. The climate's ever-changing evolution is the result of these interactions. Many are barely understood, if at all, and many are completely beyond our means to control. Cosmic radiation, solar activity and gravitational perturbations due to other planets in the solar system (Jupiter being the main culprit), the planet's own geological activity and oceanic dynamics to name a few. The very emergence of photosynthetic bacteria billions of years ago changed the planet's climate in dramatic ways, turning the world for entire geological epochs into a frozen wasteland or a sulfurous, greasy pit. 

At present, it is clear that the climate continues to change, but I think it's still fairly difficult to understand towards what and more importantly, why. What I believe is certain however is that our current lifestyle in the developed world is simply unsustainable in the long term and likely damaging, not the point where it would make the planet uninhabitable as a whole, but specifically would make the planet uninhabitable for us. As a very profound man once said, the planet isn't going anywhere. We are. It should be noted that there exists a historical precedent on a related matter, namely the Montreal Protocol. The very first time in the history of the UN when the assembly unanimously ratified a treaty, as it became abundantly clear that continuing to damage the ozone layer will lead to the planet being sterilized by cosmic radiation in a manner of centuries.

[RedRose]

I'm wondering how much is our fault.
And among this, I'm very much so
This doesn't mean not trying, on our level. That said when I hear my country wants to ban a/c in homes (for those, the majority, who still doesn't have one), I'm thinking I'd rather ban corporations from doing the aforementioned than punishing people who're saving to afford it etc.

[Jerram]

...The very first time in the history of the UN when the assembly unanimously ratified a treaty, as it became abundantly clear that continuing to damage the ozone layer will lead to the planet being sterilized by cosmic radiation in a manner of centuries.

complex and chaotic, casting doubt on long term predictions based on current data and computing power.  Where is the "coming ice age"?  That was back in the 70's. "At least a matter of centuries" is safe enough to prevent prediction failure, like the yearly 50,000 climate refugees the UN predicted.

Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/

my favorite, from above, is "2009: UK prime minister says 50 days to ‘save the planet from catastrophe’"

I'm not too worried.

[GloomCookie]

I think the issue isn't that catastrophe is coming within our lifetimes, but more that catastrophe will happen eventually if we're not careful. We're doing some damage, though the exact metrics can be argued and debated. What is important is that we look at what we're doing to the planet and make sure we're not throwing these systems out of balance because we're short sighted.

It's super easy to point at the political groups who say "DOOM IN X YEARS" and laugh at them, but the climate is indeed changing and that will continue. How we choose to respond to it is the difference between the apocalypse they keep predicting from happening in a few hundred years to being able to somewhat sustain ourselves over the coming centuries. Acid rain used to be a thing, and now it's not because we curbed that. What else do we need to fix in order to keep from screwing our planet further? We banned DDT and other deadly substances, and that's gone a long way to fixing things. What other relatively minor things can we do to fix our planet without going crazy?

[Jerram]

DDT basically eradicated malaria in the US, and is still a cost effective choice over more toxic replacements for controlling insect vectors of serious diseases in the third world.  This is a nuanced issue.

The DDT facts – examining the evidence after 50 years
https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/ddt-facts-examining-evidence-50-years/

This shows the real problem.  There are going to be trade offs.  If you want to feed an ever growing world population and lift the third world out of poverty, feeling good about "green" economic solutions is not going to work.  How do you propose making India, China or an emerging third world nation make the changes (meaning sacrifices to the third world countries trying to establish a modern economy) that first world "world is ending" fans embrace?

[midnightblack]

complex and chaotic, casting doubt on long term predictions based on current data and computing power.  Where is the "coming ice age"?  That was back in the 70's. "At least a matter of centuries" is safe enough to prevent prediction failure, like the yearly 50,000 climate refugees the UN predicted.

Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/

my favorite, from above, is "2009: UK prime minister says 50 days to ‘save the planet from catastrophe’"

I'm not too worried.

If by the "matter of centuries" quote you are referencing the Montreal Protocol in particular, on that specific point there is no doubt to be had. You can consult specifics here to begin with, but to point things out shortly, the matter is that industrial activities producing ozone-depleting substances were eroding the atmosphere's layer of ozone at a very fast rate. That ozone is largely responsible for the absorption of high energy photons, be they those radiated by our sun or coming from other cosmic sources. Without that ozone layer, those high energy photons reach the surface in far greater quantity. They are extremely harmful to almost all forms of terrestrial biology so it would have simply been suicidal to continue on that path. Unless you think it's a good idea for everyone to move underground because the surface of the planet has essentially been turned to that of Mars. Maybe still suitable for bacteria and roaches, but certainly not for us.

Regarding the current situation,  the phenomenon of the climate changing as a whole is a lot more complex and difficult to predict accurately given the chaotic nature of the system. The hallmark feature of chaotic motion is that small uncertainties in  a system's initial conditions add up to a completely divergent evolution over long enough time. That and today's social environment which is quite different from that of the 70s and 80s in regard to every single unqualified moron having the right to speak his mind, sometimes much louder than the people who are qualified to speak seriously about a given topic, leads to a lot of ambiguity when it comes to politics and decision making (there are other factors of course; just pointing out the obvious ones). However, what is abundantly clear is that our lifestyle is simply unsustainable in the long term. The Earth doesn't have infinite resources and unless for some obscure reason we want to insist on making things difficult for ourselves, it would be wise to look into ways that will make our lives and the lives of those that will lead on from us easier, safer and more sustainable.

[Jerram]

It's not abundantly clear to me that the current lifestyle is unsustainable, no matter how many buzzwords the climate people hit given the complex equations and incomplete data and chaotic nature of climate and resulting 50-year record of Fail. 

What is likely in the next thirty years is that atomic energy in one form or another will become viable over the current political objections. 

What is certain is that India and China will not be compliant with the Paris accords for many reasons. 

What I'm not sure is why anyone has the moral authority to decide that less industrialized emerging countries must stop short at some arbitrary "sustainable" lifestyle to "save the planet" tm, c, pat.pending.

[TheGlyphstone]

You must find it incredibly ironic that China is the world's largest producer and market for solar/wind energy, with plans to add even more.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-30/china-set-to-double-last-year-s-record-solar-panel-installations#:~:text=China%20currently%20has%20the%20world's%20largest%20renewable%20power%20fleet%20with,reach%20the%20target%20years%20early.

[GloomCookie]

The thing I think is being misconstrued here is the initial investment into solar and wind power vs. sustained costs for coal and gas.

I'm going to use figures for my state in Arkansas to keep them as reasonably consistent as I can, given the wide variability between states.

For a 5kW system the cost, after tax credits, is around $9,386 (1), which will produce on average 12 hours of power per day or around 60kWh (I know these numbers aren't precise but we're going for the broad average here). At $0.1175/kWh(2), that means every day the panel generates $7.05. To pay off the panel at that rate would take 1,332 days (rounded up), or 3 years 8 months 12 days.  Keep in mind that solar panels have a life span on average of between 25 to 30 years (3), so even if we doubled the amount of time it takes to pay off a solar panel, we're still at over 17 years of that solar panel generating a profit. Because remember, the solar panel has been built, it has been installed, and it requires no maintenance other than maybe a cleaning once or twice a year.

Now let's look at coal and natural gas. You need 1.12 pounds (0.51 kg) of coal per kWh or 7.4 cubic feet (0.21 cubic meters or 209.55 liters) of natural gas per kWh, meaning that to produce our estimated 60kWh per day to match the solar panel, we would need 67.2 pounds (30.48 kg) of coal or 444 cubic feet (12.57 cubic meters or 12572.7 liters) of natural gas. Extrapolated out over the expected life of the solar panel, that requires 306.6 tons (278.14 metric tons) of coal or 67,525 cubic feet (1912.10 cubic meters or 1,912,095.1 liters) of natural gas.

Since the power plants are going to produce that power regardless, let's take that $7.05/day number and extrapolate that out. The amount of power you generate from that small 5kW solar panel, over 25 years, would cost you $64,331.25 over the course of the life of the system if you had to buy from traditional power plants.

Now, I'm no economist, but investing $9,386 now and leaving me with $54,945.25 in savings seems like a winner to me.



Now, before someone comes at me about why I chose to bring cost into this, my reasoning is such. The initial investment of $9,386 factors into everything from mining the materials, shipping them overseas, refining, manufacturing, packaging, shipping, installation, etc. without having to look at metrics that don't directly compare or numbers that don't factor nicely. Same with the cost to run a power plant. The amount of money I pay per kWh of electricity factors those same metrics into a solid number that we can compare directly. The fuel source, regardless of whether it's nuclear, coal, natural gas, superman turning a generator as fast as he can, whatever it is costs $0.1175/kWh. The total system costs at the end of a 25 year period is something we can directly compare.

[Depraved Lucidity]

There is enough data about Climate change to act, the problem is, the problems multifaceted and there's human greed involved as well. A friend of mine who works in disaster management and actually has all the data said that the movie "Don't Look Up" is pretty much how things are in real life, and that it in fact, doesn't go far enough, because we as a species are dumber than the humans in the movie, especially in regards to climate change. There isn't an easy fix to things. It's not one thing that will fix it. Car's are an issue, but a larger issue are farms for raising cows in mass numbers and other livestock that do produce more greenhouse gases than cars. Green stuff is also not moving a long as fast as we would want and, urgh. There's so much that needs to happen. I'm more hopeful than they are and have more faith in us as a species, and I can't remember everything, I might need to ask him again of the challenges that face us.

[GloomCookie]

I'm going to challenge the point that humans are stupid. Humans are complex creatures, and while we like to think a clear and present danger like climate change is a problem we should all address, the problem is much more nuanced than that.

For one thing, we were told recycling was doing our part for the environment, and that our plastics were going to actually be recycled. That was a massive lie. Our plastic was being shipped to China where low wage workers sifted for the good stuff and still discarded the rest until China basically stepped in and said "You as a company might be making a profit but you're costing us the government because the workers are getting sick." So that ended that and now it's a problem. Again. Before we were basically making do and telling ourselves putting our recycling in the green or blue bin by the street was doing our small part for the environment and that we didn't need to look any further into the matter, because unfortunately that plastic bottle that once held juice just isn't a big enough issue on its own to top other concerns like inflation and the war in Ukraine, things that are a clear and present danger right now.

I like to think humans are good at solving problems, and climate change is one of those problems that needs to be overcome. We just need it to be the top priority for a change, something that is kinda hard to do at the moment. But we'll get there. I'm sure of it.

[Iniquitous]

I'm going to challenge the point that humans are stupid. Humans are complex creatures, and while we like to think a clear and present danger like climate change is a problem we should all address, the problem is much more nuanced than that.

For one thing, we were told recycling was doing our part for the environment, and that our plastics were going to actually be recycled. That was a massive lie. Our plastic was being shipped to China where low wage workers sifted for the good stuff and still discarded the rest until China basically stepped in and said "You as a company might be making a profit but you're costing us the government because the workers are getting sick." So that ended that and now it's a problem. Again. Before we were basically making do and telling ourselves putting our recycling in the green or blue bin by the street was doing our small part for the environment and that we didn't need to look any further into the matter, because unfortunately that plastic bottle that once held juice just isn't a big enough issue on its own to top other concerns like inflation and the war in Ukraine, things that are a clear and present danger right now.

I like to think humans are good at solving problems, and climate change is one of those problems that needs to be overcome. We just need it to be the top priority for a change, something that is kinda hard to do at the moment. But we'll get there. I'm sure of it.

A person is smart. People are lazy, dumb, and greedy.  The issue of climate change is not going to be resolved until we have killed ourselves.  Either the species that survives resolves the issue or nothing survives and the planet is barren until it cycles back to being hospitable for life once more.

Right now it is not an IMMEDIATE issue (it is, really, but not to the people that make the decisions) and they don't care that storms are getting stronger, areas are increasing in temperature and will cause some places to become inhospitable to life, that ocean currents are slowing down, that the oceans are rising and displacing people.  It is not a big enough issue, it takes too much work and money, and it will cause some people to lose money.

[Vekseid]

So, here's the thing. Yes, climate change is happening, and it is going in directions that we really don't want them to go in some ways, but in other ways might not be so bad. The bottom line is we don't have enough data.

This is misinformation, GloomCookie, and I will ask you to cease spreading it.

Simply put, we have spotty data from a few points around the globe that we're then trying to extrapolate across the entire globe.

We have ice core data from the Arctic, Greenland, the Tibetan plateau, and lake beds going back nearly a million years.

We have sea bed cores going back 300 million years.

Put simply, our record going back ~50,000 years is incredibly multifaceted and disputing that mountain of data is in flat Earth territory. Our record going back nearly a million years is still very rich, and arguing 'maybe this lake will be different!' does not need to be taken seriously. Of course we want to understand more, get more data, calibrate our current data better, but the major story paints a relatively complete picture of the northern hemisphere, plus Antarctica.

We know the climate is changing, but the long-term effects are speculative at this point.

We are well aware of some of what at least one of the provable long-term effects - increased ocean acidification - means, and it is bearing out as we speak. As the link states, it is often considered a separate problem entirely as oceanic biosphere collapse is a catastrophe in its own right.

Meanwhile things like saline poisoning, poleward shifts and increased intensity of hurricanes, etc. can be studied as they happen. The consequences of these aren't really in dispute - if an aquifer gets poisoned it can't be drunk from. If a more powerful hurricane hits a place unprepared for those sorts of winds, the damage is much more catastrophic.

There's a ton of data missing from the equation because accurate meteorological data only goes back so far, and we're not measuring the entire globe equally. It's only been the past few decades that NASA and other space agencies have been looking at the entire planet as a whole and making that information available.

We have several 'surface' cores going back roughly a million years, from the 'three poles' ice sheets and a few ancient lakes.

We have a fuckton of ocean bed cores. These give different sorts of data, yes, but they tell us the story of what happens to oceans under the strain we are putting them under.

They acidify. Corals bleach, stuff dies en masse, sometimes leading to anoxic events.

The reason climate change is scary is because we've built our entire civilization on knowing where best to plant crops to get yields that are sustainable, where to find cheap fuels, and where to get materials for the lowest possible cost.

You forgot saline intrusion, hurricane intensity and shifting poleward, wet bulb events, mass wildfires, among others.

This is more than just a resource extraction issue. Some places will become inhospitable to human ability to operate without immense support structures. The resources to make such support structures ubiquitous simply do not exist.

[midnightblack]

It's not abundantly clear to me that the current lifestyle is unsustainable, no matter how many buzzwords the climate people hit given the complex equations and incomplete data and chaotic nature of climate and resulting 50-year record of Fail. 

Well, even without going as far as into the climate dynamics itself, it should be fairly obvious that one day we will run out of oil (in about 50 years at the current rates of usage and given the known reserves), metal deposits (in about the same time-span, given consumption rates and known deposits) and we will suffocate under our own plastic waste that keeps piling up sky-high with no evident solution as of yet. Not sure how and why exactly this basic picture would look as anything but unsustainable. These are three basic problems that require fairly urgent solutions even before we consider the overall climate matter.

[Oniya]

Well, even without going as far as into the climate dynamics itself, it should be fairly obvious that one day we will run out of oil (in about 50 years at the current rates of usage and given the known reserves), metal deposits (in about the same time-span, given consumption rates and known deposits) and we will suffocate under our own plastic waste that keeps piling up sky-high with no evident solution as of yet. Not sure how and why exactly this basic picture would look as anything but unsustainable. These are three basic problems that require fairly urgent solutions even before we consider the overall climate matter.

Seems to me that transitioning away from petroleum would go some distance towards solving two of those (as plastic is made from petroleum by-products), as well as reducing the impact that fossil fuels have on the 'overall climate matter'.

[Jerram]

it should be fairly obvious that one day we will run out of oil (in about 50 years at the current rates of usage and given the known reserves), metal deposits (in about the same time-span, given consumption rates and known deposits) and we will suffocate under our own plastic waste that keeps piling up sky-high with no evident solution as of yet. ...

sources for all three claims?

[Vekseid]

sources for all three claims?

The second as far as I can tell comes from a misleading reading of what you might call 'corporate reserves'. They often don't probe the full extent of materials available to them, because this would increase their land valuation and property tax burden accordingly. This is especially true for uranium supplies.

I'm sure it's a concern to some degree as getting to some materials requires ever more destructive mining techniques. I figure we'll be taking apart space rocks before this becomes a problem.

[Oniya]

The 50 years for oil tracks back to an annual report done by BP, however this article that mentions it was written in 2019  - https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/fossil-fuels-run/

I perused the current report, but it's not quite as clearly number-crunched.  (There are charts galore showing current production and consumption of various energy sources, but I can't find the estimated total reserves.)

[Jerram]

The second as far as I can tell comes from a misleading reading of what you might call 'corporate reserves'. They often don't probe the full extent of materials available to them, because this would increase their land valuation and property tax burden accordingly. This is especially true for uranium supplies.

I'm sure it's a concern to some degree as getting to some materials requires ever more destructive mining techniques. I figure we'll be taking apart space rocks before this becomes a problem.

is this true for mining leases on BLM land?

[Jerram]

The 50 years for oil tracks back to an annual report done by BP, however this article that mentions it was written in 2019  - https://mahb.stanford.edu/library-item/fossil-fuels-run/

I perused the current report, but it's not quite as clearly number-crunched.  (There are charts galore showing current production and consumption of various energy sources, but I can't find the estimated total reserves.)

here's another analysis

The Facts about the Natural Petroleum Reserves Remaining in the World
http://www.actforlibraries.org/the-facts-about-the-natural-petroleum-reserves-remaining-in-the-world/

Natural petroleum reserves remaining in the world
=================================================
According to the Oil & Gas Journal (a reliable primary source for worldwide reserves) worldwide reserves were 1.27 trillion (1,270,000,000,000) barrels of oil. These estimates are 53 billion (53,000,000,000) barrels of oil higher than the previous year, showing new discoveries, improving technology, and changing economics.

At 2003 consumption levels, the remaining reserves represent 44.6 years of oil (from U.S. Energy Information Administration, International Energy Annual 2002). However, it is not true that the world will be out of oil in about 45 years, a theory that had emerged since 1970s. In fact, the natural petroleum reserves remaining in the world have remained relatively constant over the past few decades because of new discoveries of more oil deposits and improved methods to extract oil deposits. Also, increasing oil prices causes marginal non-economically recoverable reservoirs to be developed economically, adding to the current reserve base.

[Vekseid]

is this true for mining leases on BLM land?

The BLM fee structure still incentivizes not prospecting everywhere, and not staking everything your prospecting finds.

[Dashenka]

I think this debate so far proves the point I was trying to make.

It's not about pollution or people stupid or us killing ourselves to safe the planet.

Midnightblack mentioned it. The planet isn't going anywhere. Planet Earth has done fine without us and will do so until long after we are nothing but a statistic, like dinosaurs and the Roman empire.

Climate change, global warming, rising sealevels, I think, is a completely natural thing and the impact humans have on that is very limited. So us trying to stop it, is a battle we cannot win. So debates about reducing plastics or banning a/c or all driving electric vehicles are irrelevant, for this particular issue.

I have a very close friend who graduated on a respectable Dutch university on the topic of water management. Obviously the Dutch are world leaders when it comes to battling the ocean and the sea and she got invited by MIT for a project to 'save' the coast of Texas and in particular, the Galveston and Trinity Bay. Her team had come up with a very clever way (something the Dutch have had in place for 60 odd years) which could keep the water out when needed while still preserving the salt water ecology.

The plan was deemed too expensive and complicated and concrete levee was deemed far more interesting. Long story short, she and her team made some calculations and the outcome was that with a rise of just 10 cm (about 3 or 4 inches) the damage from tropical storms to the Houston area would quadruple. She also showed me a calculation (not by her) about what would happen if all the ice melts. Let's say I needed a stiff drink after that.

So we have plenty of data to warn us for the rising sea levels and also about the fact that the earth is warming up. Al Gore made a little film about it and although I completely disagree with most of what he said and mostly the way he said it, there are some very valuable lessons to be taken from it.

I think humans are very intelligent. We're the dominant species on this planet and the time it took us to become that shows our genius as well. We can solve the climate problems and we can secure our own future on this planet or another. I have no doubt about this. I'm just wondering why we're spending billions and billions of currency on things that, in the long run, won't solve the climate problem.


Why aren't we preparing for the inevitable rising of the sealevel? Why aren't we creating more fertile land to grow our crops on? We have the skills.

I think iniquitous is right. For the people in power, it's not an immediate threat. So what if the sea level rises in fifty years? It's not our problem. But the thing is, those are not the people I tend to listen to or take too seriously. It's not that politics are not mentioning the inevitable lurking disaster, it's that I don't hear anybody talk about it. Not even 'the greens'. All they do is run around shouting how much pollution we cause and that we can't eat or buy anything anymore and that we have to give up every luxury we have.

So am I being paranoid? Fearing something that is unlikely to happen? Or is there something else in play?