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What does it take to succesfully transition to a green energy economy?
- Thread starter Marc v E
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Ahhh the experimental, synthetic gene therapy was never the correct response and never could have been....
Three Seconds Until Midnight | Dr. Steven Hatfill (TPC #1,211)
Dr. Steven Hatfill is a specialist physician and a virologist with a military background and separate master's degrees in microbial genetics, radiation biochemistry, and experimental pathologyand therumble.com
I don't know about New York, but I remember December 2015 when I was drinking coffee outside at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton - in my shirt sleeves. It was bizarre compared to a 2003 sabbatical in Princeton in that same time of the year when it was ice cold.
The weather is increasingly variable, but at times also very hot indeed. Last summer my wife and I were cycling/camping in the North East of France, and it was very hot but mostly very dry. The trees were yellow and some of them were clearly dying, and this in a region that is not normally extremely hot. The grass on the camp sites was mostly yellow, or even gone.
All of this is only anecdotal, of course, but the anecdotes are beginning to add up.
2003, of course, was the year that Parisians cooked their grandparents. I worked harvest in the northern Rhone that year and it was miserably hot and humid, enough so that even with a relatively early harvest, the wines ended up rather hot and flabby. much in the manner of Australian Shiraz.
Our 2021 and 2022 vintages here were problematic because of the cold temperatures and rain, contrasting with 2020 which was warm and the grapes were exceptionally ripe.
Weather variability from year to year and region to region is a fact of life.
Coldest and wettest winter in California since the 1970's. Means nothing when it come to climate trends.
This. Climate =/= weather.
That is absolutely true, and I have a bucket full of past climate data to underscore this. Weather is indeed not the same as climate. At the same time, extreme outliers are occurring more and more often. In the Netherlands, temperature records have been broken almost every summer in recent years. All ten warmest years since 1901 were during the last two decades.
Average temperatures in the Netherlands: https://www.knmi.nl/kennis-en-datacentrum/uitleg/warmste-jaren
Big oil has lived on subsidies forever from US congress, and pays alot of money back to Congress to remain in power, all passed back to the consumer, the planet and the rest of earth's inhabitants. It is rather expensive and rather messy. Whatever route we take different than oil and coal will require big changes and costs associated with it. It's the endgame we're looking for, one of which has a much bigger upside and future than simply burning fossil fuels.
I think we should move away from fossil fuels too, but exactly what subsidies are you referring to?
It's a good thing there's no subsidies for wind, solar, and EV technologies.
Right now, wind and solar no longer need subsidies in the Netherlands. North Sea wind turbine park permits are auctioned to the highest bidder. Subsidies for domestic PV panels have been abolished years ago, and from what I remember never existed for PV panel parks. We still have some subsidies for EVs, but those will also end soon. What is subsidized is home insulation, heat pump installation, public charging posts for EVs etc. All of these in combination with legislation for mandatory building standards for new homes, mandatory use of heat pumps instead of natural gas heating unless impossible to implement, certification of home energy efficiency standards to guarantee a transparent housing market, and much more. And all done at a European scale to create a level playing field and guarantee a large enough market for such technologies.
Well, what does he know about climate? He's an economist. 
RandomEar
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You can troll all you want, it doesn't change reality. The question of man made climate change is settled beyond reasonable doubt. Far, far beyond. The fact that you can find individuals or organisations amongst the 8 billion people on this planet who don't understand climate change, are ignorant or try to oppose the idea out of self interest or because they are malicious has no bearing on that.
"Scientific consensus" is almost a contradiction in terms. Just because supposedly 97% of scientists say they believe something is not proof it is true. I would like to see some scientific proof starting with some models that have some proven reliable predictive value before spending trillions of dollars. I know some research scientists and job one is applying for government grants for research. If you want a grant, going against the political consensus is not a good idea. The "consensus scientific models" said 400 ppm CO2 in Hawaii was the "tipping point" and once past that it was too late. Since China and India and Africa are going to accelerate their CO2 emissions regardless of what Europe and North America do CO2 levels are going to continue to increase. If you accept the "scientific consensus" then run away climate change is inevitable and logically spending trillions to limit CO2 when other countries are increasing theirs makes no sense. The trillions would be better spent on preparing for climate change. My opinion is that we don't have enough information to make multi trillion dollar decisions one way or another and most of these green technologies, if they make sense, will be better off without all the subsidies and regulations.
There's been some interesting work done on the risk management side. PM me if you'd like to be pointed to some of it.
It is actually more than 97%. Moreover, the ex post evaluation linked to earlier demonstrated that the various models predicted reality pretty well.
As for other countries' contributions, we in Europe and the US should realize that climate change happens now because of our accumulated previous emissions, not theirs.
Doing something about emisions now is a lot cheaper than dealing with the mess later on. That research has already been done.
As for research grants, the real world is different. It is a competitive market with not only many applicants but also many different grant giving institutions in many different countries and many different journals.
The anti science scepticism most of all reminds me of the aversion of some audiophiles when asked for controlled double blind testing.
As for other countries' contributions, we in Europe and the US should realize that climate change happens now because of our accumulated previous emissions, not theirs.
Doing something about emisions now is a lot cheaper than dealing with the mess later on. That research has already been done.
As for research grants, the real world is different. It is a competitive market with not only many applicants but also many different grant giving institutions in many different countries and many different journals.
The anti science scepticism most of all reminds me of the aversion of some audiophiles when asked for controlled double blind testing.
Depends on how the question is framed and who is responding.
That "97%" trope is repeated so often, I'm reminded a lot of Stephen Jay Gould's essay on the comparisons of Eohippus's size to fox terriers.
As was said before, there are few things in science about which the view is more unanymous. So, to disagree takes very good credentials/arguments/facts. I see none - just spurious question marks to throw a spanner in the works.
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