Thread

1. blondie9x · 1790689817 · focus · HN ↗

   It feels like the Earth’s oceans are at a tipping point and can no longer continue to absorb this amount of heat and acidification from the carbonic acid levels increasing when CO2 breaks down.

   <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.noaa.gov&#x2F;education&#x2F;resource-collections&#x2F;ocean-coasts&#x2F;ocean-acidification" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.noaa.gov&#x2F;education&#x2F;resource-collections&#x2F;ocean-co...

   This year it feels like the ocean is losing its ability to breathe in a sense <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scienceblog.com&#x2F;the-ocean-stopped-breathing-off-panamas-shores&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scienceblog.com&#x2F;the-ocean-stopped-breathing-off-pana...

   When do we get to full stop on the combustion of fossil fuels to protect humanity’s future?

   1. smj-edison · 1790692223 · focus · HN ↗

      Honestly burning natural gas is much better than producing electricity with coal, and we can retrofit existing coal generation plants with natural gas and be like 85% cleaner. I&#x27;m kind of fed up with the absolutist takes of &quot;don&#x27;t use any fossil fuels,&quot; since that&#x27;s just completely unreasonable in the next 10-20 years. Setting up power plants takes massive investment, and excluding AI-driven demand, there&#x27;s not much money in power generation.

      Solar has been making incredible progress, and works in sunny locations, but it&#x27;s not a general purpose solution. Nuclear is getting there, but it&#x27;s still too expensive and over regulated. I can&#x27;t say much about wind as I haven&#x27;t looked into it enough to say. Both thermal and hydro are location dependent, so good when it works but not a general purpose solution.

      So that leaves coal and natural gas. We have a lot of both, but switching over to natural gas to coal by retrofitting existing power generation would make a massive difference imo.

      At the end of the day, we want diversity in the power grid, not just one thing for every place, since every place is different&#x2F;has its own history.

      1. sfn42 · 1790695284 · focus · HN ↗

         Gas produces about 40-50% less CO2 per unit of electricity produced, than coal. Not 85%.

         As far as I&#x27;m concerned, a planet that is able to support human civilization ranks just a bit higher on the priority list than a diverse power grid and economic viability.

         1. smj-edison · 1790696076 · focus · HN ↗

            Economic viability is how we support human civilization, no? Economics is literally observing how humans interact and prioritize scarce resources like time and materials. So being not economically viable means it not happening.

            Is your goal to reduce global temperatures? If so, it needs to be a sustainable effort. You don&#x27;t get sustainable effort without economic viability.

            If your goal is to dramatically reduce temperatures in the next 5 years, why not dump SiO2 in the atmosphere? That would bring the temperature down pretty fast by reflecting out sunlight in the upper atmosphere.

            But if your goal is long-term change, we need an approach that works long-term.

            Edit: sorry I forgot to mention your point on coal vs natural gas efficiency, I didn&#x27;t realize it was not that much gain. I still think it&#x27;s worth it though, since it&#x27;s still making progress.

            1. boplicity · 1790698771 · focus · HN ↗

               The problem is if you spend the next 5 years building new fossil fuel capabilities, the economic payoff won&#x27;t be for at least 10 to 15 years more years. We absolutely should not be burning natural gas at that point. Not only would it cause continued havoc on our environment, zero emissions alternatives are already extremely cost competitive in most parts of the world. We should spend the next 5 years, instead, building for the future, not sinking our money into assets that will only cause further harm without providing any real cost savings.

               Large scale battery storage, by the way, is already a mostly solved problem, and possible to do at a cost competitive price.

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