revax

Even for Humans, some regions of the world will be simply to hot to be continuated habited.

>Nuclear serves as a baseload and backbone

Not in France, the nuclear plants here can do some load following (to some extent).

>You will not find pro-nuclear supporters upset with France's decision to reduce their dependence on nuclear. In fact you will often find support.

I cannot agree here, there is a growing movement mainly lead by Jean-Marc Jancovici deploring the shutdown of safe and profitable nuclear power plant.

The main argument being when you already have a low carbon energy production, the money invested in the construction of new renewables power plant will better used in home insulation subsidies or subsidies for a heat pump.

It is overall a net exporter but in winter when there is no wind, Germany rely more on its neighborhood.

Average are misleading.

Accord to the Paris climate agreement the USA need to reduce their greenhouse gas emission by 75% by 2050 in order to stay in the +2°C scenario.

Its about a 4% drop each year for 30 years. Or a Coronavirus every 2 years.

I don't know for the rest of the world, but in France you can indicate your mail being private by adding a prefix to the subject of your mail with "Privé". Then the "secrecy of correspondence"[1] apply. Some company restrict the usage of private messages using the company-provided mail, but it is not the default case.

The company cannot access those messages without your consent or without a suspicion of a crime (like a leak of data).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence

Source in French with some court's judgement : https://www.arobase.org/entreprise/email-personnel.htm

Doesn't the (big) capacitors inside stay charged for a couple of hours after the TV being disconnected?

Well, ISP design their network for the average broadband used (plus a safety margin) and not for the worst case scenario.

Just like the electricity utility companies cannot provide everyone at the same time with the maximum power they are allowed to use.

>For example, in ideal conditions a tree might accumulate 20kg of CO2 in 40 years.

Are you sure it is not 20kg of CO2 every year for 40 years? After all, dry wood is half carbon approximately.

Almost the entirety of emissions are made up of 5% when you decompose by sector.

There is no silver bullet for reducing your carbon footprint. You should lower emissions for all industries at the same time.

What does a "renewable energy project" means?

On your first point, that is not quite correct. While the CO2 released will eventualy come back, it takes an enormous amount of time. It may be a cycle but what matters is the CO2 concentration in the athmosphere or more precisely the radiative forcing at a given time.

Only some sands are suitable for construction.

Dubai import most of their sand despite being in a desert.

In French we have two words, "électrisation" for non-lethal shock and "électrocution" for when death occurs.

Also his whole course on climate change on youtube. I'd never imagined JMJ linked here.

With a traditional grazing system he's right. You don't need any fertilizers, cows will just eat grass. Of course you can't feed billions of people with it nor you will be able to eat meat every day.

But even if you are carbon neutral over time, the methane released will still have a negative effect as it trap more energy than CO2.

https://www.nzagrc.org.nz/faq-1,listing,464,how-do-livestock...

You are right saying that the carbon cycle is a closed cycle, there is no net change over time in carbon dioxide concentrations (as you are not using fossile fuels or burying grass). But during the 12 years lifespan of methane you will have considerably more radiative forcing.

Well, methane is one the reasons why livestock and paddy fields emit so much greenhouse gases. These two examples are not insignificant.

That why we look at the "global warming potential" [1]. But even with a time horizon of 100 years, methane is still 30 times potent than CO2. How can it be irrelevant?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential

It can be, but it in fact not. And if it is, at what price?

Don't misunderstand me, I want a low-carbon aviation, I'm all for it. But even if you cut the emissions by a factor 2 of each newer aircrafts, what's the point? The numbers of flights is expected to double in less than 20 years. Global emissions won't reduce at all.

https://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2018-10-24-02.aspx

IMHO, we need more regulations (e.g. ban domestics flights if high-speed trains are a viable alternative) rather than technological solutions.

It is 2.8% of global emissions but it is much more if you look only in europe or the US. If I remember correctly it should be around 6% in the EU.

Also the production of hydrogen is far from being low-carbon.

Yes there are some ways to produce hydrogen from electricity with electrolysis but at the moment 90% of hydrogen use natural gas or other hydrocarbons and release enormous amount of CO2.

Does your current price of PV include storage?

Also the PV cells made mainly from China are currently manufactured using coal power plant. But what would be the price of photovoltaics if only renewable energies were used? My guess is it will be much higher.

You overestimate how much energy you get from cranking