There is no better time to discuss the effects of carbon combustion on climate than now. That would be true even if two Category 5 hurricanes hadn’t hit the US within the span of two weeks, with a third in the Atlantic approaching Category 5 strength. Because the warming of the planet represents an existential threat to every living creature on the planet (including humans), right now.
It will take decades, if not centuries, to reverse the changes to the atmosphere and oceans, even if all carbon combustion were ceased immediately:
Assuming easy carbon removal from the atmosphere is a high-stakes gamble, scientists say.
"The models generating possible trajectories of climate change mitigation bet on planetary-scale carbon removal in the second half of the century," said Katharine Mach, a senior research scientist at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. "For policymakers trying to limit the worst damages from climate change, that bet is reckless."
The researchers don't reject carbon capture, instead arguing that there are important near-term opportunities for carbon removal at modest scale, often with other benefits for nature and people, and critical needs now for developing the technologies of the future. But heavy reliance on biomass energy with carbon capture and storage could require tremendous land areas. For example, relying on the technology to achieve a temperature increase of 2 C or less could require an amount of productive land equivalent to about 25 to 80 percent of total global cropland, up to about 8 percent of all of the land on Earth.
"This puts climate change mitigation, global food security and biodiversity protection on a collision course with no easy off-ramps," says Field.
It is likely that we will be experiencing catastrophic effects of climate change due to carbon combustion for generations, and we need to accelerate efforts to limit the harm to the planet, by eliminating the combustion of carbon based fuels as sources of power. The means to do this is already available— switching to all renewable energy production, and all electric vehicles.
One argument used by carbon profiteers and science deniers against switching to all renewable power sources has been the claimed relative expense of renewables. This claim was always specious, since carbon (and nuclear) are only ‘cheap’ because of massive subsidies, and purposely disregarding all associated costs:
Early Fossil Fuel & Nuclear Energy Subsidies Crush Early Renewable Energy Subsidies
A new study with terrific charts, “What Would Jefferson Do? The Historical Role of Federal Subsidies inShaping America’s ERnergy Future,” released by the venture capital firm DBL Investors, attempts to quantify and contrast those government investments. The researchers looked at the vast array of federal incentives — tax credits, land grants, tariffs, R&D, and direct investments — and found that renewables have received far less support than any other sector:
As a percentage of inflation-adjusted federal spending, nuclear subsidies accounted for more than 1% of the federal budget over their first 15 years, and oil and gas subsidies made up half a percent of the total budget, while renewables have constituted only about a tenth of a percent.
… even if you threw all these other investments together, the subsidies for fossil resources and nuclear would far surpass anything in renewable energy. According to the report, the American oil, gas and nuclear industries have cumulatively taken in more than $630 billion, with most of those government subsidies created in the earliest days of those sectors in order to build them up.
But even if we set aside the uneven playing field, tipped in favor of carbon combustion and nuclear sources, it turns out that renewables are just plain cheap (from CarbonBrief):
The UK government today awarded contracts worth £176m to 11 low-carbon electricity schemes, with offshore wind the big winner. These projects will generate nearly 3% of UK electricity demand.
Two offshore wind schemes won contracts at record-lows of £57.50 per megawatt hour (MWh). This puts them among the cheapest new sources of electricity generation in the UK, joining onshore wind and solar, with all three cheaper than new gas, according to government projections.
The offshore wind schemes are also close to being subsidy-free: the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) expects wholesale power prices to average £53/MWh in the period from 2023 to 2035, covering the bulk of their 15-year contract period…
This illustrates the most striking thing about the CfD auction results so far: wind and solar have consistently delivered far lower prices than expected. Indeed, BEIS had set a price target for offshore wind of £85/MWh in 2026, far higher than the contracts awarded today.
In late 2016, BEIS projections suggested offshore wind projects coming online in 2025 would cost around £100/MWh – far more than new gas and comparable with new nuclear. At the time, BEIS said onshore wind and large solar farms would be the cheapest new power sources.
How realistic is it to rely on renewable energy to meet all energy needs?
Ask Denmark:
Wind power generates 140% of Denmark's electricity demand.
So much power was produced by Denmark’s windfarms on Thursday that the country was able to meet its domestic electricity demand and export power to Norway, Germany and Sweden.
or Scotland:
Scotland’s wind turbines provided more electricity than the country needed four days in a row.
cotland’s wind turbines have generated more electricity than the country used for a record four days in a row.
The total amount of wind energy produced on Christmas Eve was also the highest ever, with more than 74,000MWh sent to the National Grid – equivalent to the average daily electricity needs of 6.09 million homes.
And, as energy use fell on Christmas Day, wind turbines provided 153 per cent of Scotland’s electricity needs….
“Given these figures, now is the time for serious consideration to be given to using more of this excess renewable electricity to help de-carbonise other areas of society, such as powering electric vehicles or heating our homes and businesses using non-fossil fuel technologies.”
or Costa Rica:
Costa Rica boasts 99% renewable energy in 2015.
Almost all of Costa Rica's electricity came from renewable sources this year, making it one of a few countries in the world to eschew fossil fuels in energy generation, the state electricity agency said Friday.
The Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) said in a statement it achieved "99 percent renewable electricity generation" this year.
It also said for 285 days this year the country managed to power its grid on 100 percent renewable sources.
And we learned earlier this week that there is no reason not to require all automobiles on the road to be electric (from Ars Technica):
China has become the latest country to publicly discuss plans to ban the production and sale of gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles. In July, both France and the UK published plans to phase out sales of conventionally powered vehicles by 2040. China will now add another nail to the coffin of the internal combustion engine. However, unlike the French or British plans, in this case there's no target date—yet.
What’s standing in the way?
The legalized corruption of the carbon combustion and nuclear industries, and their best friends in the GOP:
RNC Chairwoman's Thoughts On The Paris Agreement
On Thursday, President Trump took another important step in delivering on his promise to put American jobs first by withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord…
When President Obama signed the accord he committed an additional $3 billion to the UN Green Climate Fund—a fund which Russia, India, and China have contributed nothing. U.S. taxpayers should not be forced to submit to another far-left attempt to subsidize global green energy.
President Trump recognizes this deal for what it is: bad policy that sacrifices American interests with no real return on investment.
Saving the earth from destruction is a ‘far left attempt to subsidize global green energy’, apparently. And ‘global green energy’ would be a bad thing, at least to the carbon profiteers and science deniers.