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A comment on Massachusetts Sues Exxon over Climate Change, Accusing the Oil Giant of Fraud. Parent comment

Re:Massachusetts Sues Exxon over Climate Change, Accusing th... by donatj on Sunday October 27, 2019 @08:19AM (#21369259)
It’s not just consumers, it’s the entire fabric of modern society.

The machinery that makes everything in modern life work runs on fossil fuels, and up until recently there wasn’t another viable option. Even so, with limitations on batteries it’s debatable how viable our options are now. Moving massive payloads takes exponentially more energy than a moving a single driver. Society is built on moving things.

Every part of the building you are in now, every piece of food you eat got there via fossil fuels.

Like it or not we’re stuck with fossil fuels for the foreseeable future unless the entire fabric of society changes, and I’m not putting my money on that.

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Re:Massachusetts Sues Exxon over Climate Change, Accusing th... by ageofwant on Sunday October 27, 2019 @08:37AM (#21369338)
We have modern nuclear technology that can replace all coal plants in a decade if we decide to do that.

But we wont.

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Re:Massachusetts Sues Exxon over Climate Change, Accusing th... by dmos62 on Sunday October 27, 2019 @08:50AM (#21369390)
The "but we won't" insights are spiteful and not that insightful. Here's another one: we could go back to pre-industrial lifestyles.
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Re:Massachusetts Sues Exxon over Climate Change, Accusing th... by ageofwant on Sunday October 27, 2019 @09:38AM (#21369598)
The natural nitrogen cycle can optimistically support 4B people. That means 3.5B people need to die for that to even become a workable solution. But but magic tech will save us all ! We have magic tech today, we don't use it.
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Re:Massachusetts Sues Exxon over Climate Change, Accusing th... by dmos62 on Sunday October 27, 2019 @11:12AM (#21370201)
> 3.5B need to die.

Well more actually, unless noone is born in that time, if you want to be glum about it.

I hadn't even heard about the nitrogen cycle. Thanks!

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Re:Massachusetts Sues Exxon over Climate Change, Accusing th... by metiscus on Sunday October 27, 2019 @09:29AM (#21369553)
Not without a large depopulation event of some kind.
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Re:Massachusetts Sues Exxon over Climate Change, Accusing th... by smt1 on Sunday October 27, 2019 @09:26AM (#21369537)
I don't think they could be replaced that fast with nuclear. According to Bill Gates at a speech he gave @ ARPA-E, the limitation of mass nuclear right now is the number of heavy forges left in the world.

I think you could scale up a mixture of solar-PV, wind + some nuclear that fast however, because the manufacturing needs are not as bad.

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Re:Massachusetts Sues Exxon over Climate Change, Accusing th... by vixen99 on Sunday October 27, 2019 @09:29AM (#21369554)
No, not likely. Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald, the environmental and human rights organization. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.
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Re:Massachusetts Sues Exxon over Climate Change, Accusing th... by elliekelly on Sunday October 27, 2019 @09:14AM (#21369495)
And oil company lobbyist fear-mongering is at least part of the reason we won’t make that switch.
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Re:Massachusetts Sues Exxon over Climate Change, Accusing th... by jklinger410 on Sunday October 27, 2019 @11:07AM (#21370171)
You aren't educating anyone on this forum with this perspective.
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