Imagine if diverting rivers, moving roads and rerouting the M25 through a tunnel under the new runway were the only contentious issues regarding this insane decision to construct a third runway...
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Climate Crisis
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Posted 4 years ago #
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The survey suggests demand for action to tackle the climate crisis is becoming part of a mainstream view. Of the 2,000 people surveyed, 71% said they wanted their MP to support ambitious plans to protect the natural environment and tackle climate change, and a majority wanted to see strong new environmental laws.“
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/19/britons-want-faster-action-climate-poll
Well yes, but no doubt ‘as long as it doesn’t inconvenience me much’.
But, definitely good if ‘something must be done’ is going “mainstream”.
It’s also reasonably for people to think it needs be a lot more than getting individuals to recycle a bit more and drive a bit less.
Posted 4 years ago # -
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Even so, the trains unfortunately don’t sit well with the Scottish Government’s current climate emergency – which itself must not be a temporary political fad.
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Posted 4 years ago # -
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The world is increasingly at risk of “climate apartheid”, where the rich pay to escape heat and hunger caused by the escalating climate crisis while the rest of the world suffers, a report from a UN human rights expert has said.
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Posted 4 years ago # -
EcoFascism is a concept I wish I hadn't had to learn about, but...
Posted 4 years ago # -
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G20 nations have almost tripled the subsidies they give to coal-fired power plants in recent years, despite the urgent need to cut the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis.
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Posted 4 years ago # -
It's infuriating how these unprecedented temperature rises are broadcast as "fun in the sun" pieces instead of the alarming symptoms that they are.
Posted 4 years ago # -
There wasn't much fun to be seen in west Edinburgh on Monday...
Posted 4 years ago # -
How could a news industry with a reporting frequency of hours or days report the climate, only measurable over a decade?
The most important data are these, but I can tell you the figure for this time next year right now and it's 416.9ppm give or take. So not news. I've no idea what the weather will be like in a year.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@PS. That depends on your point of view. We donned wellies, Waterproofs and umberellas for the school run and went wading. The kids had a ball and will be telling the stories for months.
Our only disappointment is that we didn't have a canoe so had to go the long way round.
Posted 4 years ago # -
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I cannot really understand why those in power have refused to act. After all, it is their world, too. I know politicians are relentlessly lobbied by the extractive industries, that there is a revolving door from politics and the civil service to the oil and aviation industries. But when our society and ecosystem collapses around us, none of us will be able to eat, drink, or breathe money.“
Posted 4 years ago # -
Read a VERY depressing twitter thread earlier re: what benefits those with power & money who are deeply invested in the carbon bubble.
Let's just say, it's not an urgent and just transition to a different social & economic world system. Excitingly you could potentially kill millions by siimple inaction and then Enforcing Our Borders with increasing brutality. But that would never happen in response to increasing numbers of refug--- Oh, wait, no, the Med is a wet tomb for people Europe is happy to see die rather cause us political and social inconvenience already. And we're the liberal ones.
Posted 4 years ago # -
That article is nuts.
Tata plans to refine the carbon emissions to make a high-grade liquid version of carbon dioxide which will help make sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda.
The whole point of baking soda is that it releases carbon dioxide. If you take flue gas and trap the carbon as baking soda and then bake with it you might as well not have trapped it. And the mismatch in scale between total emissions and the baking soda market....
CCS has to operate by storage and the storage has to be stable on a geological scale. Even pumping carbon dioxide back into empty oil wells would be constructing time bombs for future generations.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Without reading the article I thought "they can't really be suggesting selling it all as baking soda, it's obviously just a clever way of capturing as a solid rather than a gas."
Then I read the article. Oh. Pretty standard for the pie-in-the-sky everything-will-be-okay-I-promise CCS industry I guess.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@jonty
Liquified or, better, gaseous carbon dioxide is easy to pipe around but obviously difficult to contain.
The only obvious way to lock up carbon industrially is as calcium carbonate but good luck making that on the scale required and pumping a slurry of it offshore.
CCS is the unicorn of energy policy. Naturally the UK of GB&NI will pursue it.
Posted 4 years ago # -
would be constructing time bombs for future generations.
Future generations are in a hole dug for them by us and by every generation since Watt's condenser, we've been intentionally or not kicking the can down the road for centuries, longer probably. Medium term solutions such as CSS are probably the best option we're not going to be able to turn back the clock and get the world to stop using oil/coal just because "we've" spotted a flaw in the model "we" developed 250 years ago.
Put off armageddon till next week hopefully by then we'll have a better solution, accepting this week isn't going to help anyone.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Imagine a future where the Great British Bake Off is our biggest source of exported emissions though.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Medium term solutions such as CCS
If it was a practical solution that might be right, but I can see no prospect of it being one. When there's a full-scale full-cycle plant working somewhere I'll certainly rethink that.
Posted 4 years ago # -
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The reaction from some politicians to even the most modest steps to tackle climate change – like the workplace parking levy – has been shameful, but we cannot wait for someone else to make the problem go away, writes Kenny MacAskill.
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Posted 4 years ago # -
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The reaction from some politicians to even the most modest steps to tackle climate change – like the workplace parking levy – has been shameful, but we cannot wait for someone else to make the problem go away, writes Kenny MacAskill.
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Posted 4 years ago # -
Or we could just do something sensible like forcing people to drive less? That would cut emissions overnight. But no, the focus is on the supply side: gotta keep the car makers, steel makers and petroleum refineries in business by keeping demand high...
Posted 4 years ago # -
“If it was a practical solution that might be right, but I can see no prospect of it being one.“
The only viable ‘offer’ is ‘plant more trees’.
Presume there is research on what types of vegetation grow the most mass in the shortest time and what are better at keeping the carbon captured because the timber can be used for long lasting products and/or more likely to continue as forest floor litter or soil?
Posted 4 years ago # -
The only viable ‘offer’ is ‘plant more trees’.
Also, as far as I can see, only a medium term solution. 200 years those trees will die and if we don't burn them for firewood (releasing the carbon again) they'll decay to methane and be a worse problem.
I'm not sure what the global market is for expensive furniture or paper for long term archiving but I'm guessing its even smaller than baking soda.
If it was a practical solution that might be right
CSS is probably not the solution but as part of it, maybe, I was more commenting on the aversion to kicking the can.Posted 4 years ago # -
“Or we could just do something sensible like forcing people to drive less? That would cut emissions overnight. But no, the focus is on the supply side: gotta keep the car makers, steel makers and petroleum refineries in business by keeping demand high...”
All true and now there are whole themes on ‘it shouldn’t be up to individuals’, which may take the pressure off people who ‘want to do the right thing’ but makes little difference to shifting responsibility to Govs and Cos.
Governments have been ‘captured’ by what are variously thought of as multinational companies, neoliberal economics, or supercapitalism.
The EU is still largely in favour of economic growth, but tries to add some effective regulation to restrain the worst excesses.
Of course the turbocapitalist UK politicians want fewer regulations and lower taxes for already well off individuals and corporations for no real reasons beyond ‘its unfair to overtax wealth creators’ and ‘lower tax rates might actually increase tax income’.
As I’ve said before, Climate Change and the carbon issues need to be considered alongside resources generally, mining products, rainforests, biodiversity, drinkable water etc. etc.
Anyone who believes more economic growth is the ‘answer’, especially if undertaxed and unwisely distributed, is wrong.
Politicians are squabbling about delivering the ‘will of the people’ while those with genuine power get on with self-interested ‘business as usual’.
Posted 4 years ago # -
“Also, as far as I can see, only a medium term solution. 200 years those trees will die and if we don't burn them for firewood (releasing the carbon again) they'll decay to methane and be a worse problem.”
That’s only partly true
It’s clear that a lot of carbon is captured in soil and related organisms. Soil degradation and removal by rain and water are real problems.
Trees are valuable in themselves, but I wonder what is ‘optimal’ in terms of making sure it’s not more unsuitable ‘tax efficient’ trees in the wrong place!
I think that is mostly a past problem.
Is a field best for carbon capture as a meadow cut back every year to prevent scrub/trees, cropped with vegetables for human consumption or coppiced willow (or other trees), or gradual growing tall trees??
Posted 4 years ago # -
It’s clear that a lot of carbon is captured in soil and related organisms. Soil degradation and removal by rain and water are real problems.
I genuinely don't understand the mechanics\economics of using trees for sequestration but captured in the soil also doesn't sound like a very long term solution if this land is later (at any point in a geological age) cultivated.
Posted 4 years ago # -
“I genuinely don't understand the mechanics\economics of using trees for sequestration”
Me neither.
“but captured in the soil also doesn't sound like a very long term solution if this land is later (at any point in a geological age) cultivated.”
I don’t think you understand soil.
(Not saying I do.)
http://www.fao.org/soils-portal/soil-management/soil-carbon-sequestration/en/
Posted 4 years ago #
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