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We need to first get serious about definitions and goals. The first step is to move away from calling it climate change to climate affectation. Climate change is a trap prone opening where people ask: do you believe in climate change? If answering in the negative, you are branded anti-science when your answer meant that you do not believe in significant anthropogenic climate change or some variant therein, which allows for healthy debates. If we can start from here we can start to have discussions. Next, we need to lay out what we can and want to do: reduce CO2, capture CO2, or not care about CO2 and put a sun visor up in space. Then we need to identify what is politically feasible, not some Kyoto or Paris accords nonsense, we are talking people are going to do it; a good example is CO2 reduction enforcement in China, no matter what we say the other countries are doing, China does not care more than lip service, just like USSR and India, about the environment at their developmental stage. If you are not willing to go to war (economically or confrontationally) with China to make them follow the world rules, then everything everyone else does is worthless. If you want an example of the timidity you start at, look to Iran and its flouting of rules it agreed to abide to on nuclear weapon development and this is a country with a stated goal of destroying other countries. Next, an honest discussion about energy sources. Solar and wind need to be dropped as energy sources, it is perfect for people on their houses, but solar kills natural landscapes and wind kills birds. The battery storage is not going anywhere and we are not providing an answer with these technologies to base generation. Nuclear energy may not be economically viable, but it is the one that is environmentally viable and should be given the subsidies we funnel to the companies; looking at you Solyndra. Finally, as a thought experiment, what is the unaffected climate change that would have occurred and if we go below that rate with our actions, do we undo that? |
Recently France had to temporarily shut off 5GW(8% of total) of power due to weather conditions:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-electricity-heatwa...
Also the LCOE of nuclear is way to high. Currently a combination of renewables and gas plants is the fastest and cheapest way to reduce emissions.
Past a certain point it won't help, but given how batteries are getting cheaper at an exponential rate, we may not reach it before they become commercially viable.