ORF, undoubtedly the climate has got warmer, but there is a proportion of this down to natural events. Back in Victorian times the Thames in London would freeze up in winter, which would suggest that temperatures where colder then. In the grand scheme of things it’s not too long ago.
Dip back even further in time, there is evidence that the Romans grew grapes as far north as Hadrian’s Wall on the England Scotland border, suggesting that it must have been pretty warm then. I doubt you could do that even now.
It’s unfortunate but even now, we still have to generate electricity by fossil fuels. It’s is the only source able to give a reliable back up to the grid, whilst providing the balance to allow for the fluctuating supply you get with solar and wind.
Without coal, oil or gas generation, you can’t use solar or wind, it’s as simple as that.
That’s now, in 10 years that will definitely not be the case as the tech is being developed to provide alternative electricity storage and smart grids. Tesla have already proven what can be done right there in Aus.
Coal generation is nothing like as dirty as it was. All new build stations, and many of the older ones have been retrofitted with things like FGD plants which remove around 98% of the sulphuric dioxide produced. The byproduct is gypsum used in house building, so cleaner emissions and a building product from the waste.
Many other stations have other technologies to reduce or remove the other nasty stuff.
Here in the UK we developed our biggest coal fired station Drax, to run on waste wood instead.
The US paper industry left a large amount of waste wood behind that rotted in the ground producing methane, a greenhouse gas 4 times more damaging than carbon dioxide.
The waste is converted into pellets and then shipped to the UK for burning. As new trees have to be planted to replace those chopped down, the process is essentially carbon neutral, albeit over the period life of the tree say 30 years.
The process is also removing a large source of methane.
The next stage for Drax is to make carbon capture a reality, if they do that, and they are close, then they will produce 7% of the UK power totally carbon free.
The technologies are extremely transferable, they can be used anywhere, and will get us through the hump until total renewable energy generation, storage and smart grids are commercially developed.
As Lienking points out, there is no way a government will get actively involved in things like this, these projects generally take longer than a parliament anyway, so it’s far to long term for politicians.
This will be market led.
That’s not unique, look at the space industry. NASA have paid lip service to developing a new vehicle since the Shuttle retired.
Along came the privateers in SpaceX and Blue Origin, and all of a sudden the US government is backing NASA to develop it SLS rocket with unprecedented funding.
Things is SpaceX Falcon Heavy can lift more load than SLS, is about a third of the cost, and is extremely reusable. Crucially it has already flown.....remember Starman earlier this year? And SLS is still at least a year away. There won’t be many launches for the SLS.
Don’t expect governments or their agencies to do anything other than make a mess.
If there is money to be made, commercial organizations will get involved, and there is huge money to be made in cleaning the planet up and developing high efficiency clean equipment.
It’s a good industry to be in these days.