Are we all fucked?

[Pedrito]

It's not that Greta doesn't make valid points, it's just she's an insufferable pain in the hole like all of her ilk.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Like Bono as portrayed by South Park!

[Pedrito]

Do you want the biddy?

[Blackout]

Ah yes, verbalise using comics created by 1st year art degree students. Nobody can come back from that. You got me.

Careful now, if he hears you he may decapitate you after ingesting his Antifa super soldier serum.

[astfgyl]

No takers on the old Grand Solar Minimum so

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

There's no secrecy around solar minimums and maximums. Here's an interesting video from the PBS Spacetime channel I recently recommended:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztninkgZ0ws

I think it's important to get one's head around the fact that scientists (not speaking about the presenter, obviously) with this depth of understanding of cosmological climate influence still take human-driven climate change extremely seriously.

[astfgyl]

There's no secrecy around solar minimums and maximums. Here's an interesting video from the PBS Spacetime channel I recently recommended:

I think it's important to get one's head around the fact that scientists (not speaking about the presenter, obviously) with this depth of understanding of cosmological climate influence still take human-driven climate change extremely seriously.

Cool, I'll get a look at that for definite. I know the idea of solar cycles is nothing new, but a lot of it seems to be disregarded in general discussion. Regarding climate change, there is no doubt in my mind that humans can affect it through deforestation and other agricultural and geological endeavours. I mean, nobody knows what effect something like taking oil out of the ground has on things and it's probably immeasurable but who knows if the oil itself serves some geological purpose beyond just hiding underground. Coal mining may be something similar. Not saying it is, but not something I see much about one way or the other. I guess my point around the solar cycles (which I reckon must have a far more rofound effect on global temperatures than anything we can do, or even fully understand) is that all of the climate predictions (or more precisely, warming) disregard this effect for the presumption that things will follow a definite trend given our behaviour and I think that is actually far from a given with all the outside sources of potential change. In no way am I saying we shouldn't follow green policies anyway. I'm all for that, to at least try leave a clean earth for our descendants, but I think modelling (climate in this case, but in general with extremely complex systems) is far from an exact science and shouldn't be the religion it seems to be. Surely the whole pursuit of scientific understanding should be to prove oneself wrong as well as right, and we should never discount that there may be massively overlooked variables which have a huge effect on the overall outcome. I wonder how many climate models factor in solar cycles?

[astfgyl]

There's no secrecy around solar minimums and maximums. Here's an interesting video from the PBS Spacetime channel I recently recommended:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztninkgZ0ws

Watched this last night. Decent little video and a couple of elements of the earth's rotation I hadn't considered in it. The only thing is that he takes the energy output of the sun to be an absolute constant throughout the many millions of years in question, or if not constant, negligible. That's the thing I was saying was missing from the modelling but I also don't know what difference it makes beyond the one thing I was reading about it. Great YT channel all the same, love the PBS stuff.

[astfgyl]

Here's something around greenhouse effect from 40 years ago showing how fossil fuel companies were well aware of the issue but not prepared to do anything about it, unsurprisingly.

Long one though: http://www.climatefiles.com/exxonmobil/1982-memo-to-exxon-management-about-co2-greenhouse-effect/

Good bit in this link about potential solutions too: https://www.drawdown.org/

[astfgyl]

https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/17/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/

Bit of reading about our oul pal Thunberg here. Then again it isn't like we don't all know she is a front for something far more powerful than a young kid.

Edit: Not saying I agree with everything raised in the article, just the obvious point that Thunberg is simply the public face of the usual profit-driven shite that has been going on forever. Loads of little things to disagree with in there, too.

[Kurt Cocaine]

Nothing we didn't already know, but.....

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/29/wealth-inequality-unequal

[astfgyl]

https://gript.ie/warning-irelands-obsession-with-renewable-energy-will-lead-us-to-disaster/

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Given that it's Gript, I wouldn't at all be surprised if they totally invented the "hidden identity" of the author, but even still, the renewable energy aspect of the Texas power outage was a con:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/climate/texas-blackouts-disinformation.html

[astfgyl]

Given that it's Gript, I wouldn't at all be surprised if they totally invented the "hidden identity" of the author, but even still, the renewable energy aspect of the Texas power outage was a con:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/climate/texas-blackouts-disinformation.html

Given that it's the NYT, I would be equally surprised if it wasn't dressed up to suit their agenda either but both sides are worth reading. I would have thought myself that renewable is the way forward, and haven't changed my mind. Anyway, even if it was only 7% of Texas' supply at the time, what would have been the situation if it was 100%? It's worth considering at least. What I took from the gript article (and yes they do have a certain bias, but find me one news source that doesn't) was that the need to diversify the type of renewable sources is a valid discussion. Not a new one, mind, but worth having before we cover the whole place in wind farms. Solar is a bit of a non-starter in this country for obvious reasons but it is still worth having, to supplement the other sources. Hydro is another but of course not without its' environmental impact either. I also reckon a bit of nuclear energy would help but again not without issues and hazards (fukushima is still not sorted for example).

I think with a lot of things like wind energy it has become a bit of a religion and it's not great when anything is deified or cannot be subject to question and as was pointed out in the NYT article (somewhat ironically, but still a good point) the politicising of something like energy supplies is certainly not good for the eventual outcome.

There's also this quote which is a good point from the Gript story: "As an aside, one of the great ironies is that China continues to manufacture 80% of the world's panels in factories powered by reliable coal fired electricity!", which shows a bit of the silliness inherent in a place as insignificant in size and population as Ireland meeting all their targets while the largest polluters in the world carry on doing what they do. I mean the point of the article seems to lean toward nuclear being the best way to keep prices low and thus benefit all instead of simply those who can afford it, so I don't think it makes a bad point.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

You're an awful one for the what-if-isms! Whoever wrote the Gript piece is playing on a con to boost a position, it's pointless saying, "But what if it wasn't a con??" The Texas power outage was not related to renewable energy, thus the piece is propaganda BS. That it was printed on a site where I have only ever seen propaganda BS is incidental.