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The Forum > Article Comments > Paris climate agreement is a triumph of hope over facts > Comments

Paris climate agreement is a triumph of hope over facts : Comments

By Tom Switzer, published 4/1/2016

The prestige of the international community is not great enough to achieve a communal spirit sufficiently unified to discipline recalcitrant nations.

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Some folks clearly think increased energy provision requires more fossil fuel to be burned. WRONG! Others seem to think, increased economic performance is related to increasing population. WRONG!

China grew dramatically with actual population reduction as part of policy, by around 11% per year.

And could have done even better if they'd embraced cheaper than coal carbon free or carbon neutral alternatives, that didn't include flooding valleys and arable land.

Economic growth that pulled more than a million out of poverty, all while maintaining that impressive double digit economic growth.

We for our part aren't able to emulate that performance, given we are welded to extreme exploitive capitalism and boom bust economic Ideology.

A bit like the landed gentry/tweedle dum and tweedle dumber,(better people/piss pots) slowly going broke sitting on a veritable fortune in a stately home.

Because they can't conceive of commoners wandering all about the estate or that the hired help may have better brains/ideas than the born to rule privileged with their locked and bolted mindset/ pickled brains?

Ideas they won't/can't accept,and that won't allow thinking outside the square or not doing the same thing you've always done, all while expecting different outcomes. i.e. " I say, carbon causing global warming? What a load of cobblers".
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Monday, 4 January 2016 1:20:32 PM
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Plantagenet

In the 70s, I was quite aware of climate change, it seemed then to be something to worry about in the future.
Particularly over the last three years lots of material has been read, including stuff denier groups put out. Denier stuff only says this or that is wrong without providing anything new; ultimately what the deniers posit is found to be wrong.

On the science front there seemed to be tension between groups of scientists; those quite conservative and those expressing stronger opinions, that seemed to me to be the case three years ago. Meanwhile the economy was moving along as usual and denier groups funded by fossil fuel companies were getting much traction.

The scientists who are saying that human extinction will happen in 30 years are still considered too be many steps too far; though, mainstream science from what I have gleaned has moved to what would have been seen to be a more radical view a few years ago. The reason being that knowledge has increased.

Over the decades the economy has waxed and waned, there has been no change in climate change to fit in with the hypothesis that economic improvement will take care of climate change.
The level of CO2 has continually been going up since measuring began at Mauna Lao in the 1950s. Since the advent of multinational companies and globalisation with the development of an increasing wealthy 1%, the trickle down theory needs to be put to bed.

A business as usual approach will lead to an increase in temperatures and an increasing death rate.Thousands have died in 2015 from near wet bulb conditions; that is, due to high temperatures and high humidity. A healthy adult cannot survive high bulb conditions in the outside environment.
Posted by ant, Monday, 4 January 2016 1:58:30 PM
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Rhosty, we could not emulate China's 10% growth rate because we were
already at the standard of living to which China was aiming.
It is like technology development, the further you go the harder it
gets to produce gains equal to previous gains.
The government, if it is really interested in reducing coal & oil use,
which is what CO2 reduction is really all about, needs a project to
move away from oil quickly and to use the coal to build a new energy system.

My program would be like this.
A first step would be to stop immigration immediately.
A second step is abandon all programs aimed at growth.
It will not happen anyway, so why waste effort trying.
Even defense is now starting to worry about liquid fuel availability.
We need to replace all oil enabled transport with electric transport,
cars, trains, trams and trolley buses.
We have enough coal to get us away from oil and then prepare for the loss of coal.
There are only a very few countries with the coal resources we have
and we need to make sure we keep for our use enough to complete the
change to whatever we build. I doubt anyone has even looked at this.

These are the questions we should be asking now !
How much coal is used to build a nuclear power station ?
How much coal is used to build a wind turbine ?
How much coal is needed to build a tidal power system ?
How much coal is needed to build an enhanced national grid ?
How much coal is needed to build an electrical transport system ?
How much coal is needed to build other liquid fuel systems eg algae ?

It is what we employ politicians to do.

We must leave oil & coal before oil & coal leave us.
Posted by Bazz, Monday, 4 January 2016 2:03:06 PM
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Hi ant

Rather than man caused climate change (which I also think doesn't exist) I think major hydrocarbon pollution in India and China is a real worry - especially from vehicles and factories. Also Indonesia, smog in Jakarta and burnoffs in Sumatra and Borneo, is another worry.

Such pollution blows-flows out of these countries on winds and water. These countries have particularly high and rapidly growing populations.

Australia may not be as effected by the pollution from India and China but certainly population shifts from them will impact Australia.

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Monday, 4 January 2016 2:55:19 PM
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ant,

"high bulb conditions" is a meaningless phrase. "Near wet bulb conditions" are not necessarily dangerous. I think the phrase you're looking for is "high wet bulb temperature".

I suggest you improve your understanding by reading http://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9552.full

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Bazz, just because the gains may be less than we want doesn't mean we should give up.

The amount of coal required to build new energy systems is trivial, and falling as technology improves and as energy supply shifts away from coal.

We don't need to stop immigration, and I'd much rather see it increased. I don't know whether it will ever increase to the point where nuclear power becomes the best option from an economic point of view. Meanwhile we need to invest heavily in wind and solar infrastructure and an upgraded grid. We need plenty of solar thermal with molten salt storage. We need to start synthesising fuel at times when there's excess energy.

And we need to invest in research into molten oxide electrolysis, so that steel can be made without coal and (due to lower transport costs) more cheaply here than overseas. This would devastate the coal industry, but would trigger a great boom in the iron ore industry and (because of cheaper steel) the building industry.
Posted by Aidan, Monday, 4 January 2016 3:35:32 PM
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Bazz. Why do you believe that the chinese are smarter than us, and why do we need to use coal to build anything? And how come you know all the reasons we can't beat countries like an increasingly powerful China

One notes that the visionary building tesla electric cars, uses solar power to power mega factories; and we could given the political will given how much we have here, use cheaper than coal thorium to resuscitate our own manufacture.

And what prevents us exploiting homemade biogas, made and used onsite to both power our homes 24/7 and given the employment of ceramic fuel cells, with a world beating 80% energy coefficient; power our homes for around quarter of the current price, all while providing endless free hot water and a salable energy surplus?

We just don't need a scenario where the richest multinationals escape their tax liability, 60 billion plus per, as well as run up record foreign debt, while they turn us into a nation of tenants in our own land.

The world's cheapest energy, and given the political will we can make it here, will virtually compel the high tech manufacturers from around the world to relocate here, and genuine tax reform and massive simplification will add to the number of compulsive reasons for them to relocate and pay their tax liability here.

And given those changes, also invite almost every self funded retiree to do likewise?

Thus massively increasing wealth and jobs growth; and tax receipts right here, along with similar massively increased discretionary spend, the growth engine of the domestic economy.

We need to back those reforms with a massive rollout of new homes in new towns, the product of long overdue decentralization. And sensible reforms to negative gearing.

Which will force down the price of housing, where currently, the only folks getting wealthy or adequately housed, are old farts and over abundant greed driven realtors!

One cannot borrow their way to wealth, nor can we lift ourselves up by the bootstraps, while pursuing policies deliberately designed to create poverty and an unemployed labor pool!?
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Monday, 4 January 2016 4:42:13 PM
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