Re:CO2 in the atmosphere just exceeded 415ppm for the first ...
by filleokus on Monday May 13, 2019 @11:00AM
(#19899916)
For the record I live in Sweden, which has a per capita carbon foot print of around 4.5 ton vs 16.5 for the US. That's a massive difference. We are blessed with rivers which we can destroy for hydro and some rusting nuclear plants. US has a carbon intensity per kWh of ≈ 439 g, and Sweden ≈ 45 g.
I'm not sure about how that chart is constructed, but for me it's obvious that we need to lower the carbon intensity of electricity production right now. That would "eliminate" 32% of the chart, and I guess also have a dent in the other pies.
I don't see how stopping consuming or fundamentally changing society is a better or even faster way to achieving our goals.
I think it's absurd to talk about trying to radically change society before you stop burning fossil fules for electricity.
Cutting emissions dramatically and immediately is by deploying nuclear, and by electrifying your rail lines.
Even if we move to 100% electric cars powered by renewables tomorrow, that’s 43% of CO2 output. After decades, we are not even at the point where we can do that much, by the way. Grid-scale battery storage is an essential part of the equation, and we are not there yet.
We are still at the beginning stages of even thinking about the other 57%. Electrifying the national freight rail grid would be massively expensive. (Keeping overheard catenary well maintained is so expensive that Maryland’s commuter rail is moving to diesel locomotives for Baltimore to DC service, even though the corridor was electrified more than a century ago.) There are no commercially available electric trucks yet.
That stuff can’t wait for later. To limit temperature increases to 2C, we need to immediately cut global CO2 by three times as much as the US’s total CO2 output. Meanwhile, in the last couple of decades, China has added more than a US worth of CO2 output. If India develops similarly, we’ll add another US and a half. Europe and the US going to zero output won’t cancel out those increases. Even the communist party’s goal in China only calls for 20% electric cars by 2025.
The reliable models we have show that if we don’t cut emissions dramatically and immediately, we will need to go to negative emissions in the short term. That’s another generational problem. Carbon recapture is in its infancy. Look how long it took to perfect solar.