[Scarblac]

Because the continued survival of civilization depends on leaving fossil fuel in the ground. If the transition isn't fast enough then we will have horrible, lethal shortages, but that's still better than the worst climate scenarios.

[NoLinkToMe]

Closing Groningen didn't leave fossil in the ground. It took LNG from US and gas from Norway out of the ground instead.

The decision to stop using fossil fuels is not tied to the decision to stop one of the sources of fossil fuels. They're divorced.

Stopping fossil fuels requires investments in alternatives, and price mechanisms that disfavour fossils. Absent those mechanisms, closing one source of fossil just shifts demand to another source of fossil, which is exactly what happened.

Meanwhile closing the gas source cost the NL a few hundred billion euros, the amount of money it needs to transition to renewables. Instead it is spending that on US LNG and Norwegian gas.

The field shouldn't have been closed in 2023, it should've remained open until e.g. 2030 and all proceeds earmarked for massive energy transition subsidies. Instead we're just importing expensive fossil now and have insufficient money to meet our green ambitions.

[Scarblac]

> Closing Groningen didn't leave fossil in the ground. It took LNG from US and gas from Norway out of the ground instead.

That was getting out of the ground and burned by someone anyway.

[slashdev]

That may or may not be true. But it won't stay in the ground as long as there is money to be made by extracting and consuming it.

Right now all that's happening is the US is extracting that natural gas, and the middle east extracting that oil, and Europe is importing it. Which pollutes more and costs more. Just develop your domestic supplies.

I don't follow your logic.

[Scarblac]

The only direct thing we (the Netherlands) can do to prevent carastrophic climate change is to leave fossil fuels on our territory in the ground. Everything else is indirect.

[Sabinus]

No, the only direct thing the Netherlands can do is decarbonise the economy.

Shifting sources of carbon to outside the country is just passing the buck.

[Scarblac]

Decarbonising is indirect. Once it gets out of the ground, it will be turned into CO2 by someone, somewhere.

[kyboren]

I know this is an unfathomable concept, but to actually "leave fossil fuels [...] in the ground" you have to stop using fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels someone else refused to leave in the ground means--surprisingly--that fossil fuels weren't left in the ground after all.

And it turns out that we actually live on a shared planet with a common atmosphere; sourcing your fuels from abroad does nothing to prevent climate change. But it does mean that you are unable to secure some of the most fundamental inputs to your economy.

[slashdev]

Plus you have no control over the standards for extractions (e.g. methane leaks), and shipping it causes more pollution.

They're actually worse off, and they pay more for it instead of creating jobs and keeping the money in their own economy. Meaning less money for e.g. green programs to move away from fossil fuels.

It's just a losing proposition in every way.

[Scarblac]

> I know this is an unfathomable concept, but to actually "leave fossil fuels [...] in the ground" you have to stop using fossil fuels.

Obviously not, as we're closing these fields and haven't stopped yet. Someone will have to stop using it, yes.

[Tostino]

That is because that money is allowed to be made by externalizing the cost to future generations.

People hate migrants enough as it is. Climate crisis migrations will make these "little" war migrations seem quaint.

[nandomrumber]

> That is because that money is allowed to be made by externalizing the cost to future generations.

I don’t understand why you wrote this in response to the comment you replied to.

No matter which way you slice it, the UK and Europe using the oil from wells physically closer to them has to be less energy intensive that shipping oil / gas from far away.

What bearing does externalising anything have on that fact.

[Tostino]

Demand isn't static.

Economics 101: if Europe taps new wells, global supply increases. Higher supply drives down prices. Lower prices induce more consumption.

We wouldn't just be cleanly swapping imported fuel for domestic fuel 1:1; we'd be making it cheaper to burn more fossil fuels globally. The marginal emissions saved on shipping are completely wiped out by the net increase in total carbon burned.

The only reason expanding that supply looks like a "win" on a balance sheet today is exactly because the long-term climate cost of burning that newly available fuel is still being passed on to the future.

[nandomrumber]

> long-term climate cost of burning that newly available fuel is still being passed on to the future.

That’s not science.

That’s wishful thinking.

We can’t actually know the long term climate-costs of burning fossil fuels.

It’s unfalsifiable.

We don’t have a second identical Earth we can use as a control.

Expending the fossil fuel supply today (months) reduces the impact of global oil / gas shocks to people suffering high prices today.

Waiting for your team to invent new battery and storage technology, and littering the countryside with wind turbines and replacing the entire existing vehicle fleet does nothing to help people now.

[Tostino]

Your initial claim was that Europe should start opening more wells for domestic production.

If they started right now, that would help with this current oil/ gas shock in the market? They wouldn't come online until far after this is over.

You know you're being disingenuous. This is not a discussion you're having in good faith so I'm going to just going to end it here.

[slashdev]

I agree, but that's the world we live in.

[nandomrumber]

You’re willing to sacrifice the lives of at least some poor people who exist now, or are likely to exist in the near future, for a theory that is unfalsifiable.

That’s not since.

That’s brainwashing, and it’s not even good brainwashing.

[myrmidon]

> You’re willing to sacrifice the lives of at least some poor people who exist now, or are likely to exist in the near future, for a theory that is unfalsifiable.

What exactly do you mean with "unfalsifiable"? We actually measure atmospheric CO2, sea level and temperature; that's plenty falsifiability to me. And the greenhouse effect itself is not even in question.

Fossil emissions are sacrificing people not just from climate change in the future, but right now from air pollution, too (about 5M deaths per year actually, according to https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38030155/).

[nandomrumber]

Climate science wants us to ignore the geological record and ignore geological processes.

A cubic kilometre of lava at 1200 degrees C is enough energy for thirty (30!) hurricanes.

It’s entirely possible that sea temperature rise is a result of geologic processes at or near the sea bed, and when you warm a liquid dissolved gasses are liberated.

But climate science wants us to ignore all that and place the blame entirely on human caused CO2 emissions and cow farts, while we are literally living through and ice age.

[myrmidon]

I'm not sure what your position is.

If you think that the greenhouse effect is real (CO2 contributes to warming), why would human emissions not have any effect? we currently emits tons of it per year and person for a substance only in the 400ppm range-- even if you split a single humans emissions over a whole cubic kilometer it makes a substantial concentration difference already.

> It’s entirely possible that sea temperature rise is a result of geologic processes at or near the sea bed, and when you warm a liquid dissolved gasses are liberated.

No, this is not remotely plausible, because we have a pretty solid understanding of how much heat is transferred from the earths interior (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget), and this is completely negligible (and off by many orders of magnitude) compared to the oceanic warming that we already observe (for a 0.5K increase in oceanic surface temperature you'd need thousands of times the total heat that we get from the planet itself).

[slashdev]

> It’s entirely possible that sea temperature rise is a result of geologic processes at or near the sea bed, and when you warm a liquid dissolved gasses are liberated.

You're mistaking possible for probable. There's no evidence to suggest that's the case, and lot's of evidence that it's from climate change. In science you follow the evidence, not your pet theory.

> But climate science wants us to ignore all that and place the blame entirely on human caused CO2 emissions and cow farts, while we are literally living through and ice age.

I don't think you understand either science or ice ages.

[xorcist]

What exactly is your argument here? That organic chemistry is all wrong and oxidization is unfalsifiable, or that the fossil industry itself is fudging the numbers to make it look life we're oxidizing less organic matter than we think?

[no-name-here]

“Fossil fuel air pollution responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide”: https://hsph.harvard.edu/climate-health-c-change/news/fossil...

[Scarblac]

It means having to make serious decisions on imperfect information, yes. But that's life.