Yes look the bottom line for me is I agree theres room for nuclear, solar, and wind power, so I’m not going to argue the point too much. For me it’s not an either / or thing. But heres a couple of points (because I like having the last say.)
There’s some hype about renewables, but growth of solar power is already exponential, it’s just it’s started from a low base. Costs are getting close to competitive with coal and gas. Wind power is already the cheapest form of energy.
So I think the optimism is realistic and the optimism about electric cars is also realistic. Tony Seba goes over the top (someone always will) but the fundamentals look sound to me.
You do realise you complain about people speculating about “if and when things improve for solar power etcetera ” and you then do the same speculating about nuclear power! I guess theres hypocrisy on both sides of the nuclear debate, and like I said I have had to walk back from my own biases.
But right now solar and wind power have an advantage in that they are quicker to build. It’s up to the nuclear industry to up its game. The ball is in their court. And remember, they have been promising better designs for decades and progress has been rather slow….
Yes I agree criticising subsidies for nuclear power while promoting subsidies for solar power is a double standard. People seem to divide into armed camps over the nuclear issue for some reason. But then again, the things do occasionally blow up in a spectacular way, and this may be the underlying reason.
nigeljsays
Mr. Know It All @96
“Here’s an infinitely more important point for alan2102: Solar has a 100% power shutdown every single night! ”
In reality nobody is really proposing energy grids based entirely around solar power. Most proposals include a mix of solar power, wind power and storage. These are already being used to replace single coal fired power stations and at highly competitive cost as I mentioned previously with some source material.
And concentrated solar power systems can provide electricity for several hours after sunset.
“But the fact that Nuclear power is slow to build is crucial, given the climate change problem.” The time required to build can be cut to a very few years if we need to do that and it could be done safely enough if the government decides it is important.”
If, when, maybe…..
““Why nuclear power will never supply the world’s energy needs.””
“Fact is, it is already supplying a good sized chunk of it.”
Only about 11%. And the future doesnt look great for nuclear power. But it’s mostly up to the industry to up their game. The safety regulations obviously annoy you, but frankly only a moron would compromise those to save costs.
“The capital gains on such items as real estate are not capital gains – they are merely losses in the value of the US dollar. A home today is worth no more than it was in 1950 when it was built – the dollar has become worth less. ”
Nonsense I’m afraid. Other products have not made the same gains in price so the dollar is obviously not the mechanism. No economics text I know of makes your claims.
nigeljsays
alan2102 @98
I suspect theres quite a good correlation between psychopaths and libertarians. All these personality types are a bit of a problem.
The following research study finds 1 in 5 ceo’s (chief executives) are psychopaths:
We need to educate children to recognise these people and strategies to deal with them.
Capitalism has the virtue that it generates innovation and progress, but capitalism is a huge problem because its eating up the environment and causing excessively high levels of inequality, etc. Capitalism could possibly work much better and more fairly if we want, but it needs a huge change in attitudes, values and goals and tougher financial laws etc.
Remember America is just one country. Scandinavia make capitalism work better I think.
Killiansays
Nuclear:
* Nothing about it is sustainable. Why build it? That is poor design. Don’t build things that might kill you or future mini-yous.
* It’s not necessary. The world is running out of nearly everything, depending on the number of years you choose to look down, but already water, sand, functioning forests, multiple metals, etc., etc., uh… fish… animals… bugs… Simplification is the only choice. This is not debatable, though almost all of you will.
* Tipping points. What happens if rapid climate change, ecological destruction and resource mismanagement/depletion continue as it seems to be and we get the expected collapse as a result? Whom, exactly, keeps all the nuclear reactors going with no intact society?
So long as you refuse to consider the only plausible solution, simplification, you will fail to understand the solutions.
Killiansays
So… let me get this straight: People becoming aware of the risk makes them cooperate and… solve the problem?
Who’d’a thunk it?
Oh, me? No… I couldn’t… well, maybe… OK, fine, yes, I have been saying that for a decade or so. Well… 7 years? 8? 9? I forget. But Regenerative Governance was born in 2011/2012… so… And the World Simulation idea all the way back in 2008…
Yeah, I am making a point: Listen. String Theory says I’ve been right all along. Listen.
“When human activity leads to drastic environmental deterioration, through global warming, cooperation becomes the winning strategy,” Nowak says.
Of course, they lose the thread:
“You could give people, cities or countries financial incentives to work together on a problem”
So I suggested government grants for local energy back in 2008 or 9. (I’ve posted the link many times.) Once the idea of Fee and Dividend came to my awareness, that became the perfect way to fund this: Tie the dividend to sustainability projects. The entire nation could be on “renewables” in five or ten years. If you could get regenerative design attached, all-renewables and all-regen ag in the same time frame, or close to it.
and, if they succeed, they get these incentives and can move to bigger and more complex problems
They meant simpler, more need-based problems… didn’t they? Of course they did!
The financial incentives hinge on the actions of the players, whether they are people or countries. “Cooperation leads to more valuable games, defection to less valuable ones, and can be designed to occur quickly enough to make a difference,” Nowak says. “This new approach is a game changer.”
Defection equals collapse, or that 5% chance of extinction. Do we really need any other incentive? If string theory can be used to point out the obvious to people who can only see the obvious, then the risk can become widely understood, widely accepted, and then widely acted on.
But what do I know?
alan2102says
93 Carrie says: “I am ignoring the rest of what you wrote.”
Yes, that’s what you do, isn’t it? Ignore.
alan2102says
96 Mr. Know It All says: “Solar has a 100% power shutdown every single night”
Yeah. So what? Wind picks up at night. And also in winter. When solar is not as good. But that’s just one thing of many. You clearly have not kept up with the unfolding story. You’re making anti-renewables arguments from ~2005, and they don’t work anymore. You’re like Carrie. You’re ignorant. Perhaps not your fault, but you could remedy it. Read up. Watch videos. Acquire knowledge.
“Solar PV was not commercially viable in the 3 decades following WW2.”
Yes, of course; the issue is WHY it was “not viable”? Why did it not get developed? The point was: it was a CHOICE.
Nothing (including nuclear, fossil fuels, whale oil, or anything else) is commercially viable before it is developed to the point of commercial viability — and that involves lots of investment with little or no return.
You speak of the “non-viability” as though it were a fact of nature, unalterable. Again, like Carrie.
KIA 96: Inheritance taxes should be eliminated for the most part, and should be very small to zero for even the wealthiest. They earned their money – it is theirs to pass on to their heirs as they see fit.
BPL: The heirs did NOT earn it. It should therefore be taxed as unearned income.
KIA 96: If you want money, get off your butt, invent something useful, or start a successful business (like Trump), take some risks (like Trump), and watch the money roll in as people flock to buy your product.
BPL: Terrible example. Trump inherited a pile to begin with, has experienced six bankruptcies, and would be worth more today if he had simply put his original inheritance in the bank.
nigeljsays
“So long as you refuse to consider the only plausible solution, simplification, you will fail to understand the solutions.”
Nobody here appears to be doing this. Its been obvious for decades that population growth has to stop, gdp growth cant continue indefinitely, we have to use less resources, and waste less, etcetera. This would have to be the broad definition of simplification.
The question is how much makes sense, and whats the best way to do it, what is realistically achievable, and how do we promote it.
nigeljsays
“So long as you refuse to consider the only plausible solution, simplification, you will fail to understand the solutions.”
To clarify, nobody here appears to be ignoring the need for simplification. Its a debate about how its done.
64 Mal, the CF&D/BAT proposal is not a global deal to cap emissions let alone a formula to cap warming below 2C. It’s holy neoliberalism writ large. Try not to frame everything within the myopic repub/demo delusion of the USA either. The world is a lot bigger than that.
You have a valid point, but you’re unaware of previous discussion on that topic on RC. I won’t apologize for not including everything I’ve ever said about it in my most recent comment; if every RC commenter did that, comments would quickly grow to, erm, unwieldy length. I always sort of hope (yes, even after 30 years on the Internet) curious readers would follow the links I provided. I’ll recapitulate the argument here for you, with minimal links. Please read my whole post before responding, and bear in mind that none of the ideas are mine. I’m only confident of what I’ve learned from actual experts, and that tentatively and provisionally, like the experts themselves are. Scientifically meta-literate nonspecialists can easily find the same sources.
First, we apparently agree that AGW is an urgent global problem, and that the cost is already being paid in money and human tragedy, in the USA as well as abroad. If the anthropogenic transfer of fossil carbon to the atmosphere continues at its current rate, I envision multiple scenarios in which global catastrophe ensues within the lifetimes of my dear niece and great-nephew, if not my own. For that to be averted, global fossil carbon emissions must decline substantially, well before the end of this century. They need not decline to zero by then, but the steeper the decline, the better for everyone now living and yet to live.
Next, ‘neoliberalism’ holy or un- aside, AGW is a “drama of the Commons” whatever else it might be. That is, it’s an aggregate result of individual choices by every producer and consumer in the global free* market for energy. Accordingly, only collective intervention in the market, carefully aimed at replacing fossil carbon with carbon neutral energy sources, can avert global tragedy. If the late E. Ostrom is right, the transition to a carbon-neutral global economy is most likely to be gradual, facilitated piecemeal by “polycentric” collective actions (also bearing in mind that taxes and regulations on a specific good both have the effect of raising its production and/or consumption costs, thereby putting downward pressure on demand). Please read Ostrom’s paper before responding to this point. She knew way more than either of us about climate-change economics.
Of course, the world is a lot bigger than the USA. Yet we are still the second-largest annual emitter; unilateral actions to reduce our own emissions would thus have a disproportionate direct impact. Also, regardless of how we got it, US consumers still have considerable global buying power; by unilaterally charging ourselves a minimum effective carbon price for goods and services, whether domestic or imported, we can have a disproportionate influence on the ‘free’ choices of our international trading partners.
My point: in the USA, collective actions are taken by vote (directly or by representatives), and US voters can only vote on actions by our own local, state and federal governments. Under our current political system, political victories are always relative to potential worse outcomes (i.e. if not Clinton then Trump). Money is all too often the deciding factor, but not every time. Margins of victory are often slim, so that relatively few votes are needed to flip them. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, of course, but it’s reasonable to hope a few dedicated, politically savvy activists can eke out a plurality. As I see it, we need fewer than 535 climate realists in Congress to make headway 8^}.
Now, I may or may not be politically savvy, but it’s critical IMO to recognize that my friends and neighbors have agency, i.e. aren’t just mindless minions of the Koch Club. Vengeful fantasies must be set aside: assume few if any of the non-Trumpist majority of eligible voters are interested in political upheaval. Whatever happens will happen under the rule of law, and nothing will happen without a voting plurality of ‘the people’. It’ll be a lot easier IMUMO to send the lesser of two weevils to Congress in a few key elections than to overhaul our entire political system, before climate change brings our economy crashing down around our ears and much undeniable tragedy with it! OTOH I don’t mind if fossil-fuel billionaires get stuck with stranded assets, if it will help win the vote.
It’s not going out on a limb to predict that a plurality of US voters would vote, directly or indirectly, for some kind of cost-effective national decarbonization policy. Here’s where I’m out on a limb: I think we would prefer a simple, revenue-neutral carbon tax like CF&D/BAT over more complicated interventions. Politically savvy people like David Roberts disagree with me on the latter. YMMV.
* free, that is, to externalize every private transaction cost it can get away with.
To clarify, nobody here appears to be ignoring the need for simplification. Its a debate about how its done.
Killian will no doubt speak for himself on this, but I think you’re not using ‘simplification’ in the same way he means it. As best as I can judge from context, you’re basically talking about conservation rather than simplification–oversimplifying for (first-order) clarity, an end to an economy premised upon disposability, but not an end to technological complexity.
Speaking strictly for myself, I think that something of the sort is the most likely path to social survival. It’s the core of the disagreements Killian and I have had over time.
Mr. Know It Allsays
102 – nigelj
“Nonsense I’m afraid. Other products have not made the same gains in price so the dollar is obviously not the mechanism. No economics text I know of makes your claims.”
Be more selective in your reading. Economics exists to make astrology look good. Fact is, a house cannot have a “capital gain”. If you sell it, you still have to buy another house to live in, and all the rest of the houses in that market will be equally more expensive, so you had no gain. Sorry. Also, many, perhaps all, products go up in price as the dollar value goes down.
nigeljsays
Carbon fee and dividend is essentially a consumption tax, and these things are proven to be effective, and are reasonable answers to tragedy of the commons problems and the limitations of the capitalist system.
A consumption tax may be in the neoliberal play book, and neoliberalism is not really my thing, but is it likely that every single neoliberal idea is a bad thing? This is childish thinking.
The carbon tax has been designed to try to please all sides of the debate to get enough support. Welcome to the real world where you have to convince people of ideas.
If you don’t like it (Carrie) what is your better answer?
Some left-handed support for the potential utility and desirability of a carbon tax is coming from members of the majority caucus in the House, including Steve Scalise, whose near-martyrdom in the GOP baseball team shooting has reportedly earned him some moral suasion amongst fellow pachyderms.
Specifically, they’re pushing a resolution–not legislation–that says a carbon tax is a Bad Idea that will hurt ordinary folk (as if they cared!) and American competitiveness, and that we should stick with the latest 19th-century technology, so we can be all modern. Apparently they think that if any given proposition can be articulated by Congress, it thereby becomes true.
But that does suggest that their oligarchic paymasters in Big Fossil think that CF & D is sufficiently threatening to try to defend against at least with some low-cost measures. I mean, they already bought Congress, so the incremental expense is pretty low.
AB: probably didn’t grow at a significantly different absolute rate. When one is starting at a way low level a 10,000% increase is a yawner. Go ahead, find the numbers. (Now, past performance is totally irrelevant to future probabilities. I’m just saying that your argument is flawed – and your “Randoid” is way better than my “Randian” since it illustrates the inhumanity of the subspecies) BTW, did you know that Rand was way way way into sadomasochism? TOTAL destruction of herself and those she was intimate was her “thing”, BIG TIME. (Read her books. Her sexuality is splayed all over the pages.)
Alan: American society encourages and even forces non-psychopaths to behave in a psychopathic manner
AB: True. A neighbor of mine (who I didn’t know) has a car with extremely expensive tires. She got a flat that couldn’t be fixed, so she was faced with a bill that was going to nuke her finances. I get my gasoline essentially for free (fuel saver points by buying groceries) so I pulled a five gallon container out of my trunk (the limit is 20 gallons so I put the excess in containers) and poured it in her gas tank so she’d be able to survive the hit. She was dumbfounded. As a young girl the concept that anybody would do something non-psychopathic for someone they didn’t know was alien. Thirty years ago a similar youth would have been thankful but not dumbfounded. And Republicans say that Liberals are destroying America.
———–
Carrie: especially those that can actually permanently destroy radioactive nuclear waste.
AB: and plutonium and bomb-grade uranium, especially while providing low-grade heat instead of electricity.
———–
Mr KillingInaction: Equal opportunity is a conservative belief
AB: Uh, then why should Donald Drumpf be born with a platinum spoon in his mouth and have you not rant about “equal opportunity”?
Mr KillingInaction: The capital gains on such items as real estate are not capital gains – they are merely losses in the value of the US dollar.
AB: Uh, like I said, we should calculate gains after inflation and tax them every year or five whether or not a sale occurs. Do you agree?
My KillingInaction: They earned their money – it is theirs to pass on to
AB: Anyone they wish to, either for doing something or nothing. There is NO death tax anywhere. You can convert your wealth to gold and bury it in your grave with NO tax involved (other than sales tax, I suppose).
The question is NOT about taxing a person with wealth, it is about taxing somebody when they have income. Since conservatives abhor unequal opportunity, then they surely would abhor somebody getting something for nothing, and then go apoplectic if the lucky couch-sitting do-nothing didn’t have to pay tax on their windfall. As if being born to a billionaire isn’t advantage enough without eliminating the do-nothing’s income taxes. (And note, billionaires rarely pay much tax during their life. Capital gains can be rolled over and eventually converted to inheritance in a more-or-less tax-free way so NO, the wealthy don’t pay their OWN taxes, let alone the leeches they spawn’s taxes)
I ask you, what is it about the spawn of an oligarch that makes you feel that the spawn should pay no taxes on their totally undeserved and unearned income?
Mr KillingInaction: Stop coveting the money that
AB: one’s parents earned, eh?
My KillingInaction: that free everything society you are pushing already exists – it’s in
AB: Scandinavia. And you should be ashamed of yourself for bringing up the “go the capitalists’ way or get out of the capitalists’ country” argument. That’s putrid, dude.
———-
Alan: Yes, we all have cell phones with the computing power of a 1970 mainframe
AB: that were developed by inventors, not capitalists. Note that the Bell Labs and NASA era was the most productive era for advancements ever seen, and that advancement was done cheaply. If AT&T hadn’t been broken up and NASA degraded we’d be far better off. Once capitalists got their paws on things advancement’s exponential curve took a huge hit and the expense skyrocketed.
————
nigelj: Wind power is already the cheapest form of energy. So I think the optimism is realistic and the optimism about electric cars is also realistic.
AB: Actually, wind power is best used to provide BOTH electricity and synfuel. Producing synfuel/biofuel cars that get 200MPGe is easy enough, and planes and ships have similarly easy improvements.
————
Killian: Whom, exactly, keeps all the nuclear reactors going with no intact society?
AB: Makes me think of the “Dome” on Runit Island. The USA dumped all the waste from their tests in a non-lined nuke-built crater and then capped it with 18″ of concrete. Now the US maintains that there is no value in cleaning up the dome because the area around the dome is just as polluted as the dome’s inside (since it leaks through the coral). Maybe, maybe not, but one nice, strong typhoon will help spread all that deadly plutonium et al throughout the Pacific.
And, of course, it’s not like the waste pools at reactors are hardened. A freedom-fighter with a small plane could take one out easily, which would truly bum out everyone in the region (waste pools are more dangerous than the reactors themselves because uranium is not even close to the levels of toxicity and radiation of waste. Without a system that induces chain reactions, uranium is merely dangerous, as opposed to a friggin’ nightmare.
———–
BPL: The heirs did NOT earn it. It should therefore be taxed as unearned income.
AB: Which begs the question: should sitting on the couch doing nothing be taxed at a higher, lower, or the same rate as actual work?
—-
nigelj: Its been obvious for decades that population growth has to stop, gdp growth cant continue indefinitely, we have to use less resources, and waste less, etcetera.
AB: Ah, but population growth gives relative advantage and theoretically provides for one’s old age. Same with the rest. Given that the decisions are made by psychopaths who don’t give a dang about anything that happens once they die (but having their spawn be “on top” at the psychopath’s death is the definition of “winning”), you’re pounding sand.
I note the most prolific developer in Miami was approached by a climate change journalist who asked if the developer was including anything in his developments that would lessen the damage that would be caused to them by Miami’s inevitable sea level rise. The developer said that he’d be dead by then so it didn’t matter. Uh, dude, you’ll be dead long before you spend what you’ve already “made”, so why build anything at all?
The same journalist talked to a Miami real estate agent and asked if agents should be required to tell the truth about the risk to offered property by sea level rise. She was horrified. “That would kill the market!!!!!”
Yeah, truth, honor, and lasting productivity are anathema to folks who are engaged in KillingInaction. They’re definitely NOT conservatives at all, but Randoids.
Gnahahaha 38’D See, that’s what I realized a long time ago: Not reason or sustainability, but funny money rules over politics. Hail capitslism. Bon voyage.
Killiansays
If one supports nuclear, one does not “get” or accept or understand simplicity/simplification. You do not. None of those suggesting nuclear continue do, else, you would not be supporting nuclear.
These two things are mutually exclusive. Simplicity/simplification = No nuclear.
You do not know what defines simplicity/simplification.
Put in a rather different way, simplicity is antifragile. Do you think Taleb would consider nuclear antifragile?
Killiansays
Re #111 nigelj said To clarify, nobody here appears to be ignoring the need for simplification. Its a debate about how its done.
False. You are engaging in False Equivalence. Essentially, because you have seen me talk about the word, you think you know what it means. However, much of what you suggest does not even approach simplification. Ergo, you do not know what it means. You are, in fact, promoting/suggesting “solutions” that are incompatible with simplification. A short list:
None of those fit with simplification. and there are more.
So, let’s say you claim to know what bigotry is and say you do not support it, only discuss how to deal with it, but then you suggest banning people from certain countries because of their religious views. Said person is a bigot, not an anti-bigot.
You are anti-simplicity, not an advocate. Whether you understand or accept this is irrelevant to whether it is true or not.
Well, at least Trump managed to cover the ‘take some risks’ part… ;-)
Al Bundysays
Though your post is spot on,
Nigelj: in the USA collective actions are taken by vote
AB: not even close. In the USA collective action is induced by advertising, be it through cash or entertainment (ergo Drumpf)
And your solutions are weak. Carbon taxes are grand, but feebates strike terror in the hearts of psychopathic CEOs.
And folks, yesterday’s comments were laced with opinion and speculation. For example, I’ve only designed a vehicle that achieves ungodly performance, 2/3rds efficiency, and a halving of air and rolling restance as compared to a Prius. So, it’s informed speculation, not fact. (Though I’ve never not achieved that which others have said was impossible. Never.)
Nigelj: in the USA collective actions are taken by vote
AB: not even close. In the USA collective action is induced by advertising, be it through cash or entertainment (ergo Drumpf)
Tsk – you’re putting my words in nigelj’s mouth. He’s too nice a guy to object, but I’m not and I do. Whatevs, you realize “voting” and “advertising” aren’t mutually exclusive, don’t you?
AB:
I’ve only designed a vehicle that achieves ungodly performance, 2/3rds efficiency, and a halving of air and rolling restance as compared to a Prius. So, it’s informed speculation, not fact. (Though I’ve never not achieved that which others have said was impossible. Never.)
Achieve superluminal velocity. Do I need to explicitly say it’s impossible? That would be godly performance!
alan2102says
117 Al Bundy says: “Carrie: “Global Nuclear Output 1987 = 300 GWe vs 2017 351 GWe
Alan: Meanwhile, renewables… AB: probably didn’t grow at a significantly different absolute rate. When one is starting at a way low level a 10,000% increase is a yawner. Go ahead, find the numbers.”
1. Between 2016 and 2017 total installed solar pv went from ~300GW to ~400GW. That is, in ONE year, not 30 years. That margin of change will increase, every year, from here on, unless a black swan supervenes.
2. I don’t agree that percentage increases from low levels are a “yawner”. They tell us the trajectory of things, which is all-important. What determines our future is not the absolute-number snapshots, frozen in time, but the trajectory — the degree and rate of change. This is true of renewables adoption, and climate change, and many other things. What is scary about climate change is not the absolute-number snapshots of our situation at this moment, frozen in time, but the trajectory of things; i.e. WHERE WE ARE HEADED, not where we are at this moment.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @117
I agree the GOP in the USA is unfortunately edging ever closer to unashamed libertarianism of the Ayn Rand variety. Its a sort of siege mentality as they see the world changing in ways that are discordant with their ‘belief’ structure.
I’m not a huge enthusiast of biofuels, because at best they are carbon neutral only, they create vast corn plantations crowding out other crops, and complicated processes related to wind power. We have better options for vehicle transport with using electric cars.
Unfortunately by subsidising corn plantations this has now become embedded and is the reason the GOP favour these subsidies because it’s their rural voting base. And another thing, the entire electoral system favour’s rural America, a ridiculous distortion in the system
I think the only real case for biofuels is air travel, because there are no other viable options likely for some time. However this requires their use be mandated by government and the GOP wont like that. Sigh.
Mr. Know It Allsays
Taxes will not reduce CO2 output unless they are very high. Several years ago, the price of gas got up to about $5/gallon in Cal, and was 4+ everywhere else. Didn’t make a dent in consumption.
If electricity to power AC spews CO2, why don’t we have awnings or shutters on every residential home window, or at least on the big windows to cut solar gain in summer? And why don’t we see examples every day of insulated shutters or other devices for the inside of those windows to reduce heating energy requirements in winter? Can states pass legislation removing obstacles to installing these types of devices; such obstacles may be in the form of HOA rules, local ordinances, etc. Many states claim to be big greenies – how many have passed such legislation? Don’t wait on the feds; this can be accomplished this week at the state/local level, then those of you who covet the money rich people have can produce products to install in tens of millions of homes and which will actually make an impact on energy usage, while you rake in the profit from your products – you’re not all dummies so I know you can do it. Winter is coming and with it those evil gas-fired fireplaces and furnaces, and that evil gas and coal fired electric heat! Where are the products from the environmental leaders that will save the climate FOR THE CHILLLLLDREN! Are we a bunch of statists waiting for the goobermint to save the planet? Or can we put on our big boy pants and start making some concrete progress?
Trump pulled us out of the climate agreement (OK, we were never officially in it, but that’s a technicality). So, since AGW is threat number 1 per those on the left, what has the rest of the world done to clean up their own emissions? Nothing? That’s right, little to nothing. I give them an F. What grade do you give them? I know you give Trump an F – but why didn’t the rest of the world do something without us?
118 – Nemesis
Elon isn’t a dummy. He knows who controls the subsidies and government contracts now so he will donate to them. Why donate to election losers? That’s just throwing money away.
117 – Al Bundy
Equal opportunity does not mean we all start at the same place financially. We don’t. Those who had smart parents will start at a better place. But we all have the opportunity to achieve without limit. Trump was given what, 5 million or so, now he’s worth 1000 times that amount, far more than he’d have earned in the bank contrary to what BPL says. People like Trump, who take risks, sometimes lose, thus he’s had bankruptcys – I assume the bankruptcy was a subsidiary or separate business entity, and not his entire estate. I’d start a separate business for each skyscraper, golf course, casino, hotel, that I built to limit my losses to just that portion of my portfolio. How he did it I don’t know, but he’s been fantastically successful by any measure, both in business and in his short political career. He beat a career politician with an entire national political machine behind her, his first time at bat. He plays to win and he does EXACTLY that!
Carriesays
117 Al Bundy, I’ll give that post 10 out of 10. It’s good to be superseded by a better model.
I will continue to support all the climate scientists who say climate models do not represent reality, that they are not certain and do not know. Which is pretty much all of them all the time.
[Response: Different kinds of calculation. The Hansen et al 2011 values are from an inverse calculation, while the values used in CMIP5 simulations are from forward models driven by more up-to-date emissions data. The uncertainties in both are relatively large. – gavin]
“Why nuclear power will never supply the world’s energy needs.”
……………………
Enjoy your last word while I keep laughing out loud at your classic humor. :-)
Carriesays
nigelj,
Welcome to the real world where YOU Nigel have to convince people of YOUR ideas.
Carriesays
124 alan2102 “That margin of change will increase, every year, from here on”
That’s what many said about Nuclear way back in the olden days. It never happened.
That’s what they said about Solar Thermal a few years ago, about Population increase decades ago. Never happened.
Things do change. Often they are the things we didn’t expect to change when making prior forecasts of change. :-)
Good to be hopeful, Great to be positive. Much better and necessary to be pragmatic and practical and learn from History for it always ‘repeats’ in exactly the same ways.
Al Bundysays
Sorry, Mal and Nigel about mixing you two up.
Alan, thanks for the data. I should have looked it up myself instead of putting it on you (I was feeling lazy)
Unfortunately, Keeling is not bending down so the trajectory doesn’t look good, especially since humanity is awakening the feedback beast and fossil infrastructure and reserves are still going strong.
Nigelj, yeah, corn kernels are training wheels. It’s time to take them off. Cellulose is the real bike ride. It’s starting to come online. We’ll see whether cellulose ends up best burned directly (more efficient) or liquified/gasified (more portable) Both are biofuel. Of course, in our infinite “wisdom” we’re turning US forests into pellets to send to England so as to let England notch a “win” in their Paris playbook. Humans usually play for the metric instead of for the goal the metric attempts to measure.
Assuming my SCC engine works and doubles real world efficiency, and cellulose (slash, post-consumer, carbon sequestering grass, & stover) are used, then would your opinion of liquid biofuels change? (And Mal, tisn’t godly, just the rejection of archaic systems. 62% with an obscenely complicated and expensive engine is current tech. Mine does similar functions but without all the parts, which allows for scaling down to cars, planes, and ships. The simplification ought to bump the efficiency a fair bit, which is why I say 66%)
When I speak I assume the above. I don’t see the point of burning slash and stover outside of a power plant. 0% efficiency is pretty bad, eh?
On wind and synfuel: I dislike the idea of curtailment. OTOH, a process that sits idle much of the time (wind2syn) isn’t optimal, either.
And it’s not just planes. There is an incredible amount of CH4 infrastructure to feed, including bazillions of gas furnaces, stoves, and water heaters.
Nemesissays
Addendum to my comment at #118
Too many people are not interested in studying how politics/capitalism works, why should I be interested. Clinton, Obama, Trump, Musk et al, all the same, hooked on funny money, no clue how real life works. The show is getting more than funny.
I think the only real case for biofuels is air travel, because there are no other viable options likely for some time.
The surprising thing to me is the rate of progress on electric aviation. I had thought that it would be decades before we saw anything flying on electricity that wasn’t essentially a novelty/research project. However, I was wrong about that. The first commercial e-planes are coming on the market now, the ‘market’ in question being pilot training planes. In that niche, the electrics are much cheaper and are low noise besides. (Important for using small urban airfields.) On the other hand, range restrictions are not problematic in that context. The first one just received its US airworthiness certificate:
More surprising to me is the development of e-planes intended to do commercial passenger flight.
Start-up Zunum (backed by Boeing and Jet Blue) is developing a small regional jet using a hybrid drivetrain. The Economist reports that they are aiming to be in service by 2022. (!) Airbus is aiming for 2030 for its 100-seat hybrid, a modification of an existing plane. (Flight testing is planned for 2022.)
As in the case of the trainers, the expected advantages are low operating cost, much lower emissions, and much lower noise.
Of course, that’s not going to clean up aviation’s emissions by 2030, which would be ideal. We’d be doing well to have ground transport mostly emissions-free by then. Whether a bio/synfuel aviation mandate could be implemented first, I don’t know. But maybe–I think we are going to see a tipping point in public opinion on climate before then (though I expect that will seem naive to some here.)
Nuclear energy does not feature amongst most people’s highest concerns.
The highest energy related concerns are those of price and security of energy
supply.
•
Public opinion on nuclear energy seems to change slowly and is not
normally volatile. Not surprisingly however, dramatic events (e.g. the Three
Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents) can cause a rapid drop in public
support, which only recovers slowly.
•
The data clearly show that countries that already include nuclear power in
the energy mix have publics that are more knowledgeable on the issues and
are more supportive. Which comes first is not clear.
•
There are large sections of the public with no firm views for or against
nuclear energy in many countries. If governments want to introduce or
continue to use nuclear power in the energy mix, the attitudes of this middle
ground will be critical.
•
There is a clear correlation between knowledge and support. Large parts of
the public are still unaware of (or choose not to believe) the potential benefit
of nuclear energy to reduce the emissions of climate change related carbon
dioxide.
•
The factors that reduce public support for nuclear energy are concerns with
respect to terrorism, radioactive waste disposal and the misuse of nuclear
materials, in that order. The concern with respect to terrorism still seems to
be strong, well after the events of 11 September 2001.
•
When the climate change benefits of nuclear energy are explained, the
support for nuclear energy amongst respondents increases signify-cantly.
Similarly, if the radioactive waste disposal issue was satisfactorily resolved,
support would again significantly increase.
[GenIV HTGRs are not only capable of disposing of permanently eradicating radioactive waste incl nuclear weapons grade waste for safe non-radioactive storage, the HTGR-PMs are also 100% meltdown proof safe and are of no use to Terrorists. Kills two-birds with one stone (make that a Pebble). But this does not matter nor interest most people in the least – even well informed and educated people about climate change issues, GHGs and the scientific method. ]
The public gains most of its information on energy and nuclear power from
the media, but does not trust it. Scientists and environmental protection or
consumer organisations are the most trusted groups. National governments
are, in general, even less trusted on these issues than the media. This
presents a clear problem to governments who wish to educate and influence
their publics.
alan2102says
102 nigelj says: “In reality nobody is really proposing energy grids based entirely around solar power. Most proposals include a mix of solar power, wind power and storage.”
Yes, of course. And demand management. And other technologies. And “choreography” (see Amory Lovins’ work). We are swimming in solutions, and the only way that anti-renewables ideologues can stay afloat is by ignoring them all and pretending that this is still ~2005. Year by year, they are becoming a joke.
Kevin McKinney @126, thank’s for the information. I was unaware of light panes being electrified, although I had vaguely heard of the hybrid technology. The last time I looked at the aviation issue was probably a year or two ago, and things have clearly moved on. Things are changing so fast!
A case in point. I just came across this a few minutes ago on new carbon ion battery technology.
I’m also inclined to think public opinion will reach a tipping point on climate change. All sorts of things reach tipping points. There’s a good book on the issue called not surprisingly “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell.
I think the public often takes time to digest and accept new science and its implications. We all have some scepticism to some degree, and it takes time to work through issues to become personally convinced.
Allied to this we have the IPCC relentlessly staying with their conclusions despite the denialist attacks and the public probably see this and its implications that scientists are very sure of their position. In addition we have had the large jump in recent temperatures, and the surprising fall in the costs of renewable electricity. This taken together suggests to me we could see a tipping point in public opinion on the science, the need for change, and uptake of renewable electricity and electric cars. Call me naive as well if people want.
Whether it comes in time to be useful to the climate problem is the question. This is where I’m less optimistic.
nigeljsays
I don’t see a case for abandoning capitalism completely. There’s nothing about capitalism that stops people having smaller families, consuming less, and selecting environmentally friendly products, or pushing for stronger environmental laws etc.
Fred Magyarsays
nigel @ 125 says:
I think the only real case for biofuels is air travel, because there are no other viable options likely for some time. However this requires their use be mandated by government and the GOP wont like that. Sigh.
I have two points to make; one regarding carbon neutrality of biofuels and two about the apparent general misconception regarding jet turbines and whether or not they require combustion of some form of liquid hydrocarbon to function.
I worked as a subcontractor commercial deep sea diving on Petrobras oil rigs back in the late 70’s and early 80’s and ironically owned a 100% ethanol powered VW Fox at the time, I was also enrolled as a student at the University of Sao Paulo in Bio Sciences and got to know quite a bit about Brazil’s sugarcane ethanol production… Fast forward to the present: Growing sugarcane for ethanol production today has a much higher EROEI than corn ethanol and there are some very interesting developments in sustainability and CO2 sequestration in this area happening in Brazil and elsewhere.
Disruptive Innovation Festival – DIF
Published on Dec 7, 2015
Leontino Balbo Jr has developed an approach to organic sugar cane production with the potential to disrupt the whole agricultural sector itself.
In 1986, Leontino began experimenting with “ecosystems revitalising agriculture”, a new approach that he believed could increase crop yields, reduce pest numbers and restore natural capital, all while reducing reliance on natural resources.
29 years later, Leontino’s sugar cane farm, based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, has enjoyed unprecedented success with his work becoming a paragon of regenerative agriculture. A hypothesis has transformed into measurable results, with Leontino claiming to be able to produce higher yields, while not raising production costs, using only one third of the resources and providing a swathe of environmental benefits.
Very interesting electric VTOL jet plane prototype from a start up company called Lillium. https://lilium.com/
Electric Jet Engines
The electric jet engines work like turbofan jet engines in a regular passenger jet. They suck in air, compress it and push it out the back. However, the compressor fan in the front is not turned by a gas turbine, but by a high performance electric motor. Therefore, they run much quieter and completely emission-free.
The times they are a changing! And not a moment too soon ;-)
alan2102says
111 nigelj says: “nobody here appears to be ignoring the need for simplification. Its a debate about how its done.”
Yes.
If we are to be authentic simplicity advocates, the dramatic simplifications that are now built-in (or that are rapidly BEING built-in) to our high-tech world deserve careful attention.
One example: electric vehicles are far, FAR more simple than ICE vehicles, with ~5% of the moving parts, in addition to much less power requirement to move them (with all that that implies: the complexity as well as general harm of power production). If EVs (and especially EVs with autonomous capabilities) could suddenly replace all ICEVs, our society would be radically simplified overnight, with whole industries shutting down or being drastically downsized: auto manufacturing, parts production and retailing, fossil fuel production and distribution, highway and parking lot production and maintenance, etc. — a long list. (And: thank God! What a totally wonderful thing! Dismantling the whole disastrous ICEV episode is one of the biggest single steps we can take toward sanity and regeneration.) Indeed, if you pay attention to the Seba vid that I posted, this is where we are surely headed — whether or not on the optimistic timeline that he suggests. Anyone who advocates simplification should be a fanatical supporter of all this. It will be one of the biggest simplification initiatives of all time, in addition to having numerous other benefits.
Another example: large-scale, mechanized agriculture is vastly more simple than, say, everyone tending their own permacultural operation. That’s one of the things I like about it: I don’t have to undertake the great complexity and time-intensivity of running my own food production system. My life, and the lives of many millions around me, are greatly simplified by large-scale, mechanized agriculture, by virtue of which we save (collectively) scazillions of hours of tedious work, as well as the need to cognitively map and execute a wide variety of tasks — many of which we might be ill-suited for or uninterested in. Here again, an advocate of simplicity should be well-aware, and lavishly appreciative, of the great simplification built-in to this system of agriculture.
The same point applies to technology in general, most of the time. Advanced technology simplifies things by rendering trivial, or automatic, things that formerly took lots of time and energy. A complex set of organizational books can be maintained by a computer in a few seconds of CPU time and with a few dollars worth of hard disk space. Formerly, the same operations required teams of people working full time — and full time on leaden, soul-rotting tedium, at that. The onrushing automation and AI revolution, along with 3D printing and other technologies, will have an effect like computers or mechanized agriculture: rapid dramatic society-wide SIMPLIFICATION, such that all kinds of outputs can be produced at very low or perhaps even zero marginal cost, and with human drudgery eliminated or greatly reduced, and with fossil fuel (and overall net energy) as well as other material requirements greatly reduced, and so on. The coming era has huge promise for simplification advocates.
I trust the foregoing can be read without coming to the false conclusion that I am saying that everything about large-scale agriculture, high technology and automation, practiced in any of the numerous and diverse ways and contexts in which they can be practiced, is good. Of course I am not saying that. I am also not saying that everyone is ill-suited for or uninterested in becoming a committed permaculturist. Rather, some people might be very well-suited for it and interested in it, and that is fine. Generally, I did not say that Nirvana is breaking out and that endless dazzling progress sweeping us all into utopia is underway and inevitable; in contrast, rather, I believe that there are many thorny challenges in the offing and that we could quite easily fuck everything up (just as we already have, in some respects) and doom ourselves to misery and oblivion. Generally, please note that I only said what I said; this will greatly enhance understanding. Thank you.
2. I don’t agree that percentage increases from low levels are a “yawner”. They tell us the trajectory of things, which is all-important. What determines our future is not the absolute-number snapshots, frozen in time, but the trajectory — the degree and rate of change. This is true of renewables adoption, and climate change, and many other things. What is scary about climate change is not the absolute-number snapshots of our situation at this moment, frozen in time, but the trajectory of things; i.e. WHERE WE ARE HEADED, not where we are at this moment.
I don’t always agree with alan2021, but I do here. He succinctly makes a point we might prefer to overlook: civilization will not be saved from climate change in one fell swoop. In my educated non-expert opinion, the current trajectory of climate change pretty much guarantees not just mounting personal and local tragedy, but some degree of global economic depression before the end of this century. That portends a proportional measure of misery and tragedy for multitudes of people now living. If it’s to be mitigated at all, it will be by polycentric, piecemeal decrements in the rate of fossil carbon emissions from all anthropogenic sources, within the next few short decades.
Heroic fantasies of sweeping economic revolution in the time we have left to cut our carbon emissions are IMUMO just that. YMMV, but I don’t want violence, especially since fossil-carbon billionaires have more and bigger guns on their side. My point is that realistically, the USA will achieve substantial actual emissions reduction only under our existing legal framework; for one thing, that will nominally keep the guns pointed away from climate realists. Incremental decarbonization will occur by lawful, contested collective intervention in the extant free* market for energy, whether through marginal carbon taxes from minimal to confiscatory, or more or less draconian anti-carbon regulations including outright abolition.
IOW the war on AGW will be electoral, not armed. But official AGW-denial is currently rather better funded than evidence-based climate policy is. What Is To Be Done? (trigger warning for Marxophobes**). AFAICT, any actual emissions decrement at the margin will require cooperation with the Koch Club’s business competitors. I’m not exactly comfortable with that myself, but I prefer it to the steadily worsening storms, floods, droughts, wildfires, crop failures, epidemics etc. and the ensuing mass dislocation, migration, starvation, sickness and violent global social upheaval I foresee otherwise! That’s why I’m focused on US voters, and seeking alliances with carbon-neutral energy capitalists: I have to start somewhere. What others do is entirely up to them.
Among white workers, this negative energy [of economic resentment] has been manipulated to great political effect by a conservative trifecta in media, private interest and celebrity that we might call Fox, Koch and Trump.
…
Still, millions of white working-class people have refused to be played. They have resisted the traps of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and nationalism and voted the other way — or, in too many cases, not voted at all. I am far less interested in calls for empathy toward struggling white Americans who spout or abide hatred than I am in tapping into the political power of those who don’t.
In the here and now, I’m interested in the political power of those who further resist the trap of science denial, but in too many cases don’t vote at all.
* you do too know what I mean.
** relax: I’m not advocating replication of Lenin’s social engineering experiment, which obtained demonstrably net-negative results by ‘environmental’ and citizen satisfaction measures, in the 72 years before its subjects voted to terminate it.
Al Bundysays
Kevin,
Whether electric, biofuel, or hybrid (I think hybrids with an external boost for takeoff and PV covered wings to aid cruising), the biggest issue is to get rid of jets. Shrouded props and significantly slower cruising speeds allow for much more space per passenger and far greater efficiency and safety.(Props also allow for SCC engines)
Note that folks hate flying not for the time in the air but because jets require sardining.
Al Bundysays
Pennsylvania senator Scott Wagner is running for governor on the platform that body heat is the cause of global warming. He just called an 18 year old girl “naive” for suggesting that his stance might have something to do with the 200k he got from fossil fuel corps.
Talk about the pot calling the snowflake black!
Of course Wagner was cheered. Yep, voting is going to work someday. In Miami “someday” might be when all the trees die from saltwater intrusion. I don’t know what catastrophe will be needed for Pennsylvania, but in the USA folks only wake up when TSHTF, and with climate, that’s decades too late. We need an ice free arctic ocean, a dozen class 6 hurricanes, and the Mother of all Heat Waves that wipes out US agriculture for a year. THEN folks might not cheer about “body heat”.(OK, I’m being a tad jaded.)
Carriesays
126 Mr. Know It All says:
“Taxes will not reduce CO2 output unless they are very high.”
Correct. The fee dividend proponents put that at USD100 per ton CO2 vs the $40 as a starting point they now suggest. Pushes gas way above $5 per gallon. It’s a myth and unnecessary. But lots of money to be made by some players. Just not the everyday person who’ll end up paying through the nose for the ‘luxury’ of being a ‘consumer’.
“Or can we put on our big boy pants and start making some concrete progress?”
No. You’re being as unrealistic and pollyannish as the latest Greenpeace member. Our power as individuals is ensconced inside Government institutions, laws and regulations. Been that way since we lived in tribal camps.
“So, since AGW is threat number 1 per those on the left”
Actually world wide it isn’t #1. Social justice and equity and wages is. The “left” is as recalcitrant as everyone else is regards rational action and policies to stop global warming. Please note that US Democrats do not rate as being “left”. They belong firmly in the right of center box socially and economically and politically.
“Elon isn’t a dummy.”
True but he is a low life bully narcissist and an internet troll. iow has distinct personality issues like all neoliberals, randians & libertarians.
“But we all have the opportunity to achieve without limit. ”
That’s bullshit which has been proven repeatedly by in depth scientific literature. Please wake up from the delusional ‘American Dream’ and get real. iow educate yourself better, Crack a book or a research paper or even better go spend a month in a poor village somewhere. They’re all over the USA so you don’t need to travel far. :)
Carriesays
112 Mal Adapted, thanks for that, good response and I can’t really add anything to make it better.
133 Nemesis, Funny money? I think I’ll get hilarious again sooner than later. We’ll be dancing in the streets like it’s 2008 all over again. :)
135 Carrie, nice copy and paste, good job! PS But no one is listening :)
137 nigelj says:
“Things are changing so fast!”
Hold onto your undies the winds of change is about to really start blowing soon enough. Maybe not quite what you expected, but hey, change is change.
138 nigelj says:
“There’s nothing about capitalism that stops people having smaller families, consuming less, and selecting environmentally friendly products, or pushing for stronger environmental laws etc.”
If this is what you think is true then you have not looked at all the facts properly nor through the right kind of lenses. May I suggest a months vacation in Quetta or anywhere in Yemen? The Niger delta maybe good too. Then a week to recover in Hollywood CA. That might do the trick.
139 Fred Magyar, good points. The right type (species?) of sugar cane and proper ag practices sequesters a huge amount of carbon in the soil. Win-Win. been known for more than a decade and still Govts do not act to get best practice on the farms. Never heard of that jet engine, thanks for sharing!
Too easy.
Carriesays
Killian this may be up your ally.
A lecture from International Conference on Negative CO2 Emissions, Gothenburg, Sweden, May 22-24, 2018
Fred Magyar @139 I didn’t realise the progress being made with air travel and batteries. I think the problem with corn and sugar cane and cellulose based biofuels is land area. There’s very little spare usable land left on this fine planet. We have a growing population, demands to use land for forestry carbon sinks and biofuels, and I dont think they can all be scaled up.
Someone is going to have to prioritise best use, and this is why I think biofuels may be a limited answer to climate change with just selective and sensible applications where other alternatives are limited. I’m aware of other biofuels grown in laboratories from algae but none of this looks easy to scale up to me. I just have an instinctively sceptical reaction to biofuels, and must try to not be a slave to this.
zebrasays
alan2102 #140, Mal #141,
Projecting in a realistic timeframe, which I see as about 300 years, with 150 years as the likely point where the technological shift could become global…
what do you do with all the people?
So, no taxi drivers and no Jiffylube mechanics, and no subsistence farmers and no cashiers and baggers, and no code-monkeys, and far fewer doctors and lawyers, and so on. OK then…what’s a human to do?
The missing piece, as I’ve pointed out in the past, is the social transition that must occur, to a much lower, stable, global population.
And as I’ve also pointed out in the past, there is real potential for synergy.
All the stuff that alan likes is and can be driven by the desire to reduce labor costs. But the current world of massive labor oversupply potential, in combination with the resource demand potential, acts as a brake on progress as we all would like to see it.
In an environment with a low, stable, population relative to global resource availability, “simplification”, as described, is the inevitable rational economic choice. No guns, no moralistic ranting; it’s just what would work best.
nigeljsays
alan2102 @140, the nissan leaf just won most reliable car of the year in my country (NZ). I agree electric cars are definitely the way of the future, even if there wasn’t a climate problem (which there certainly is). People forget exhaust emissions still cause lung problems, even with the best of efforts to filter out noxious substances.
Simplification is indeed a subtle thing. Another example: Smartphones are incredibly complicated and require a complex chain of manufacturing operations, but small enough to make efficient use of resources, and they replace several other devices.
I’m a fan of permaculture, but I agree it doesn’t have to be done using small scale farms.
I understand your point about humans specialising and not having to do everything themselves like running a farm etc. I do however think there are limits to the process. Some people are now clueless at how do do anything, apart from their main job! We buy a lot of labour saving devices that are superfluous, or offer only small benefits. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle between the extreme scenarios.
But I think you might get some angry push back for your comments from one or two people!
Carrie @92
Yes look the bottom line for me is I agree theres room for nuclear, solar, and wind power, so I’m not going to argue the point too much. For me it’s not an either / or thing. But heres a couple of points (because I like having the last say.)
There’s some hype about renewables, but growth of solar power is already exponential, it’s just it’s started from a low base. Costs are getting close to competitive with coal and gas. Wind power is already the cheapest form of energy.
So I think the optimism is realistic and the optimism about electric cars is also realistic. Tony Seba goes over the top (someone always will) but the fundamentals look sound to me.
You do realise you complain about people speculating about “if and when things improve for solar power etcetera ” and you then do the same speculating about nuclear power! I guess theres hypocrisy on both sides of the nuclear debate, and like I said I have had to walk back from my own biases.
But right now solar and wind power have an advantage in that they are quicker to build. It’s up to the nuclear industry to up its game. The ball is in their court. And remember, they have been promising better designs for decades and progress has been rather slow….
Yes I agree criticising subsidies for nuclear power while promoting subsidies for solar power is a double standard. People seem to divide into armed camps over the nuclear issue for some reason. But then again, the things do occasionally blow up in a spectacular way, and this may be the underlying reason.
Mr. Know It All @96
“Here’s an infinitely more important point for alan2102: Solar has a 100% power shutdown every single night! ”
In reality nobody is really proposing energy grids based entirely around solar power. Most proposals include a mix of solar power, wind power and storage. These are already being used to replace single coal fired power stations and at highly competitive cost as I mentioned previously with some source material.
And concentrated solar power systems can provide electricity for several hours after sunset.
“But the fact that Nuclear power is slow to build is crucial, given the climate change problem.” The time required to build can be cut to a very few years if we need to do that and it could be done safely enough if the government decides it is important.”
If, when, maybe…..
““Why nuclear power will never supply the world’s energy needs.””
“Fact is, it is already supplying a good sized chunk of it.”
Only about 11%. And the future doesnt look great for nuclear power. But it’s mostly up to the industry to up their game. The safety regulations obviously annoy you, but frankly only a moron would compromise those to save costs.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/nuclear-power-in-the-world-today.aspx
“The capital gains on such items as real estate are not capital gains – they are merely losses in the value of the US dollar. A home today is worth no more than it was in 1950 when it was built – the dollar has become worth less. ”
Nonsense I’m afraid. Other products have not made the same gains in price so the dollar is obviously not the mechanism. No economics text I know of makes your claims.
alan2102 @98
I suspect theres quite a good correlation between psychopaths and libertarians. All these personality types are a bit of a problem.
The following research study finds 1 in 5 ceo’s (chief executives) are psychopaths:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos-are-psychopaths-australian-study-finds/
We need to educate children to recognise these people and strategies to deal with them.
Capitalism has the virtue that it generates innovation and progress, but capitalism is a huge problem because its eating up the environment and causing excessively high levels of inequality, etc. Capitalism could possibly work much better and more fairly if we want, but it needs a huge change in attitudes, values and goals and tougher financial laws etc.
Remember America is just one country. Scandinavia make capitalism work better I think.
Nuclear:
* Nothing about it is sustainable. Why build it? That is poor design. Don’t build things that might kill you or future mini-yous.
* It’s not necessary. The world is running out of nearly everything, depending on the number of years you choose to look down, but already water, sand, functioning forests, multiple metals, etc., etc., uh… fish… animals… bugs… Simplification is the only choice. This is not debatable, though almost all of you will.
* Tipping points. What happens if rapid climate change, ecological destruction and resource mismanagement/depletion continue as it seems to be and we get the expected collapse as a result? Whom, exactly, keeps all the nuclear reactors going with no intact society?
So long as you refuse to consider the only plausible solution, simplification, you will fail to understand the solutions.
So… let me get this straight: People becoming aware of the risk makes them cooperate and… solve the problem?
Who’d’a thunk it?
Oh, me? No… I couldn’t… well, maybe… OK, fine, yes, I have been saying that for a decade or so. Well… 7 years? 8? 9? I forget. But Regenerative Governance was born in 2011/2012… so… And the World Simulation idea all the way back in 2008…
Yeah, I am making a point: Listen. String Theory says I’ve been right all along. Listen.
“When human activity leads to drastic environmental deterioration, through global warming, cooperation becomes the winning strategy,” Nowak says.
Of course, they lose the thread:
“You could give people, cities or countries financial incentives to work together on a problem”
So I suggested government grants for local energy back in 2008 or 9. (I’ve posted the link many times.) Once the idea of Fee and Dividend came to my awareness, that became the perfect way to fund this: Tie the dividend to sustainability projects. The entire nation could be on “renewables” in five or ten years. If you could get regenerative design attached, all-renewables and all-regen ag in the same time frame, or close to it.
and, if they succeed, they get these incentives and can move to bigger and more complex problems
They meant simpler, more need-based problems… didn’t they? Of course they did!
The financial incentives hinge on the actions of the players, whether they are people or countries. “Cooperation leads to more valuable games, defection to less valuable ones, and can be designed to occur quickly enough to make a difference,” Nowak says. “This new approach is a game changer.”
Defection equals collapse, or that 5% chance of extinction. Do we really need any other incentive? If string theory can be used to point out the obvious to people who can only see the obvious, then the risk can become widely understood, widely accepted, and then widely acted on.
But what do I know?
93 Carrie says: “I am ignoring the rest of what you wrote.”
Yes, that’s what you do, isn’t it? Ignore.
96 Mr. Know It All says: “Solar has a 100% power shutdown every single night”
Yeah. So what? Wind picks up at night. And also in winter. When solar is not as good. But that’s just one thing of many. You clearly have not kept up with the unfolding story. You’re making anti-renewables arguments from ~2005, and they don’t work anymore. You’re like Carrie. You’re ignorant. Perhaps not your fault, but you could remedy it. Read up. Watch videos. Acquire knowledge.
“Solar PV was not commercially viable in the 3 decades following WW2.”
Yes, of course; the issue is WHY it was “not viable”? Why did it not get developed? The point was: it was a CHOICE.
Nothing (including nuclear, fossil fuels, whale oil, or anything else) is commercially viable before it is developed to the point of commercial viability — and that involves lots of investment with little or no return.
You speak of the “non-viability” as though it were a fact of nature, unalterable. Again, like Carrie.
KIA 96: Inheritance taxes should be eliminated for the most part, and should be very small to zero for even the wealthiest. They earned their money – it is theirs to pass on to their heirs as they see fit.
BPL: The heirs did NOT earn it. It should therefore be taxed as unearned income.
KIA 96: If you want money, get off your butt, invent something useful, or start a successful business (like Trump), take some risks (like Trump), and watch the money roll in as people flock to buy your product.
BPL: Terrible example. Trump inherited a pile to begin with, has experienced six bankruptcies, and would be worth more today if he had simply put his original inheritance in the bank.
“So long as you refuse to consider the only plausible solution, simplification, you will fail to understand the solutions.”
Nobody here appears to be doing this. Its been obvious for decades that population growth has to stop, gdp growth cant continue indefinitely, we have to use less resources, and waste less, etcetera. This would have to be the broad definition of simplification.
The question is how much makes sense, and whats the best way to do it, what is realistically achievable, and how do we promote it.
“So long as you refuse to consider the only plausible solution, simplification, you will fail to understand the solutions.”
To clarify, nobody here appears to be ignoring the need for simplification. Its a debate about how its done.
Carrie:
You have a valid point, but you’re unaware of previous discussion on that topic on RC. I won’t apologize for not including everything I’ve ever said about it in my most recent comment; if every RC commenter did that, comments would quickly grow to, erm, unwieldy length. I always sort of hope (yes, even after 30 years on the Internet) curious readers would follow the links I provided. I’ll recapitulate the argument here for you, with minimal links. Please read my whole post before responding, and bear in mind that none of the ideas are mine. I’m only confident of what I’ve learned from actual experts, and that tentatively and provisionally, like the experts themselves are. Scientifically meta-literate nonspecialists can easily find the same sources.
First, we apparently agree that AGW is an urgent global problem, and that the cost is already being paid in money and human tragedy, in the USA as well as abroad. If the anthropogenic transfer of fossil carbon to the atmosphere continues at its current rate, I envision multiple scenarios in which global catastrophe ensues within the lifetimes of my dear niece and great-nephew, if not my own. For that to be averted, global fossil carbon emissions must decline substantially, well before the end of this century. They need not decline to zero by then, but the steeper the decline, the better for everyone now living and yet to live.
Next, ‘neoliberalism’ holy or un- aside, AGW is a “drama of the Commons” whatever else it might be. That is, it’s an aggregate result of individual choices by every producer and consumer in the global free* market for energy. Accordingly, only collective intervention in the market, carefully aimed at replacing fossil carbon with carbon neutral energy sources, can avert global tragedy. If the late E. Ostrom is right, the transition to a carbon-neutral global economy is most likely to be gradual, facilitated piecemeal by “polycentric” collective actions (also bearing in mind that taxes and regulations on a specific good both have the effect of raising its production and/or consumption costs, thereby putting downward pressure on demand). Please read Ostrom’s paper before responding to this point. She knew way more than either of us about climate-change economics.
Of course, the world is a lot bigger than the USA. Yet we are still the second-largest annual emitter; unilateral actions to reduce our own emissions would thus have a disproportionate direct impact. Also, regardless of how we got it, US consumers still have considerable global buying power; by unilaterally charging ourselves a minimum effective carbon price for goods and services, whether domestic or imported, we can have a disproportionate influence on the ‘free’ choices of our international trading partners.
My point: in the USA, collective actions are taken by vote (directly or by representatives), and US voters can only vote on actions by our own local, state and federal governments. Under our current political system, political victories are always relative to potential worse outcomes (i.e. if not Clinton then Trump). Money is all too often the deciding factor, but not every time. Margins of victory are often slim, so that relatively few votes are needed to flip them. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, of course, but it’s reasonable to hope a few dedicated, politically savvy activists can eke out a plurality. As I see it, we need fewer than 535 climate realists in Congress to make headway 8^}.
Now, I may or may not be politically savvy, but it’s critical IMO to recognize that my friends and neighbors have agency, i.e. aren’t just mindless minions of the Koch Club. Vengeful fantasies must be set aside: assume few if any of the non-Trumpist majority of eligible voters are interested in political upheaval. Whatever happens will happen under the rule of law, and nothing will happen without a voting plurality of ‘the people’. It’ll be a lot easier IMUMO to send the lesser of two weevils to Congress in a few key elections than to overhaul our entire political system, before climate change brings our economy crashing down around our ears and much undeniable tragedy with it! OTOH I don’t mind if fossil-fuel billionaires get stuck with stranded assets, if it will help win the vote.
It’s not going out on a limb to predict that a plurality of US voters would vote, directly or indirectly, for some kind of cost-effective national decarbonization policy. Here’s where I’m out on a limb: I think we would prefer a simple, revenue-neutral carbon tax like CF&D/BAT over more complicated interventions. Politically savvy people like David Roberts disagree with me on the latter. YMMV.
* free, that is, to externalize every private transaction cost it can get away with.
nigel, #111–
Killian will no doubt speak for himself on this, but I think you’re not using ‘simplification’ in the same way he means it. As best as I can judge from context, you’re basically talking about conservation rather than simplification–oversimplifying for (first-order) clarity, an end to an economy premised upon disposability, but not an end to technological complexity.
Speaking strictly for myself, I think that something of the sort is the most likely path to social survival. It’s the core of the disagreements Killian and I have had over time.
102 – nigelj
“Nonsense I’m afraid. Other products have not made the same gains in price so the dollar is obviously not the mechanism. No economics text I know of makes your claims.”
Be more selective in your reading. Economics exists to make astrology look good. Fact is, a house cannot have a “capital gain”. If you sell it, you still have to buy another house to live in, and all the rest of the houses in that market will be equally more expensive, so you had no gain. Sorry. Also, many, perhaps all, products go up in price as the dollar value goes down.
Carbon fee and dividend is essentially a consumption tax, and these things are proven to be effective, and are reasonable answers to tragedy of the commons problems and the limitations of the capitalist system.
A consumption tax may be in the neoliberal play book, and neoliberalism is not really my thing, but is it likely that every single neoliberal idea is a bad thing? This is childish thinking.
The carbon tax has been designed to try to please all sides of the debate to get enough support. Welcome to the real world where you have to convince people of ideas.
If you don’t like it (Carrie) what is your better answer?
#112–
Some left-handed support for the potential utility and desirability of a carbon tax is coming from members of the majority caucus in the House, including Steve Scalise, whose near-martyrdom in the GOP baseball team shooting has reportedly earned him some moral suasion amongst fellow pachyderms.
Specifically, they’re pushing a resolution–not legislation–that says a carbon tax is a Bad Idea that will hurt ordinary folk (as if they cared!) and American competitiveness, and that we should stick with the latest 19th-century technology, so we can be all modern. Apparently they think that if any given proposition can be articulated by Congress, it thereby becomes true.
But that does suggest that their oligarchic paymasters in Big Fossil think that CF & D is sufficiently threatening to try to defend against at least with some low-cost measures. I mean, they already bought Congress, so the incremental expense is pretty low.
Carrie: “Global Nuclear Output 1987 = 300 GWe vs 2017 351 GWe
Alan: Meanwhile, renewables
AB: probably didn’t grow at a significantly different absolute rate. When one is starting at a way low level a 10,000% increase is a yawner. Go ahead, find the numbers. (Now, past performance is totally irrelevant to future probabilities. I’m just saying that your argument is flawed – and your “Randoid” is way better than my “Randian” since it illustrates the inhumanity of the subspecies) BTW, did you know that Rand was way way way into sadomasochism? TOTAL destruction of herself and those she was intimate was her “thing”, BIG TIME. (Read her books. Her sexuality is splayed all over the pages.)
Alan: American society encourages and even forces non-psychopaths to behave in a psychopathic manner
AB: True. A neighbor of mine (who I didn’t know) has a car with extremely expensive tires. She got a flat that couldn’t be fixed, so she was faced with a bill that was going to nuke her finances. I get my gasoline essentially for free (fuel saver points by buying groceries) so I pulled a five gallon container out of my trunk (the limit is 20 gallons so I put the excess in containers) and poured it in her gas tank so she’d be able to survive the hit. She was dumbfounded. As a young girl the concept that anybody would do something non-psychopathic for someone they didn’t know was alien. Thirty years ago a similar youth would have been thankful but not dumbfounded. And Republicans say that Liberals are destroying America.
———–
Carrie: especially those that can actually permanently destroy radioactive nuclear waste.
AB: and plutonium and bomb-grade uranium, especially while providing low-grade heat instead of electricity.
———–
Mr KillingInaction: Equal opportunity is a conservative belief
AB: Uh, then why should Donald Drumpf be born with a platinum spoon in his mouth and have you not rant about “equal opportunity”?
Mr KillingInaction: The capital gains on such items as real estate are not capital gains – they are merely losses in the value of the US dollar.
AB: Uh, like I said, we should calculate gains after inflation and tax them every year or five whether or not a sale occurs. Do you agree?
My KillingInaction: They earned their money – it is theirs to pass on to
AB: Anyone they wish to, either for doing something or nothing. There is NO death tax anywhere. You can convert your wealth to gold and bury it in your grave with NO tax involved (other than sales tax, I suppose).
The question is NOT about taxing a person with wealth, it is about taxing somebody when they have income. Since conservatives abhor unequal opportunity, then they surely would abhor somebody getting something for nothing, and then go apoplectic if the lucky couch-sitting do-nothing didn’t have to pay tax on their windfall. As if being born to a billionaire isn’t advantage enough without eliminating the do-nothing’s income taxes. (And note, billionaires rarely pay much tax during their life. Capital gains can be rolled over and eventually converted to inheritance in a more-or-less tax-free way so NO, the wealthy don’t pay their OWN taxes, let alone the leeches they spawn’s taxes)
I ask you, what is it about the spawn of an oligarch that makes you feel that the spawn should pay no taxes on their totally undeserved and unearned income?
Mr KillingInaction: Stop coveting the money that
AB: one’s parents earned, eh?
My KillingInaction: that free everything society you are pushing already exists – it’s in
AB: Scandinavia. And you should be ashamed of yourself for bringing up the “go the capitalists’ way or get out of the capitalists’ country” argument. That’s putrid, dude.
———-
Alan: Yes, we all have cell phones with the computing power of a 1970 mainframe
AB: that were developed by inventors, not capitalists. Note that the Bell Labs and NASA era was the most productive era for advancements ever seen, and that advancement was done cheaply. If AT&T hadn’t been broken up and NASA degraded we’d be far better off. Once capitalists got their paws on things advancement’s exponential curve took a huge hit and the expense skyrocketed.
————
nigelj: Wind power is already the cheapest form of energy. So I think the optimism is realistic and the optimism about electric cars is also realistic.
AB: Actually, wind power is best used to provide BOTH electricity and synfuel. Producing synfuel/biofuel cars that get 200MPGe is easy enough, and planes and ships have similarly easy improvements.
————
Killian: Whom, exactly, keeps all the nuclear reactors going with no intact society?
AB: Makes me think of the “Dome” on Runit Island. The USA dumped all the waste from their tests in a non-lined nuke-built crater and then capped it with 18″ of concrete. Now the US maintains that there is no value in cleaning up the dome because the area around the dome is just as polluted as the dome’s inside (since it leaks through the coral). Maybe, maybe not, but one nice, strong typhoon will help spread all that deadly plutonium et al throughout the Pacific.
And, of course, it’s not like the waste pools at reactors are hardened. A freedom-fighter with a small plane could take one out easily, which would truly bum out everyone in the region (waste pools are more dangerous than the reactors themselves because uranium is not even close to the levels of toxicity and radiation of waste. Without a system that induces chain reactions, uranium is merely dangerous, as opposed to a friggin’ nightmare.
———–
BPL: The heirs did NOT earn it. It should therefore be taxed as unearned income.
AB: Which begs the question: should sitting on the couch doing nothing be taxed at a higher, lower, or the same rate as actual work?
—-
nigelj: Its been obvious for decades that population growth has to stop, gdp growth cant continue indefinitely, we have to use less resources, and waste less, etcetera.
AB: Ah, but population growth gives relative advantage and theoretically provides for one’s old age. Same with the rest. Given that the decisions are made by psychopaths who don’t give a dang about anything that happens once they die (but having their spawn be “on top” at the psychopath’s death is the definition of “winning”), you’re pounding sand.
I note the most prolific developer in Miami was approached by a climate change journalist who asked if the developer was including anything in his developments that would lessen the damage that would be caused to them by Miami’s inevitable sea level rise. The developer said that he’d be dead by then so it didn’t matter. Uh, dude, you’ll be dead long before you spend what you’ve already “made”, so why build anything at all?
The same journalist talked to a Miami real estate agent and asked if agents should be required to tell the truth about the risk to offered property by sea level rise. She was horrified. “That would kill the market!!!!!”
Yeah, truth, honor, and lasting productivity are anathema to folks who are engaged in KillingInaction. They’re definitely NOT conservatives at all, but Randoids.
Dear folks, what do you make of this?:
Uh oh:
“Elon Musk Has Donated 10 Times As Much To Republicans This Cycle”
https://youtu.be/xmDMCow-ngE
Gnahahaha 38’D See, that’s what I realized a long time ago: Not reason or sustainability, but funny money rules over politics. Hail capitslism. Bon voyage.
If one supports nuclear, one does not “get” or accept or understand simplicity/simplification. You do not. None of those suggesting nuclear continue do, else, you would not be supporting nuclear.
These two things are mutually exclusive. Simplicity/simplification = No nuclear.
You do not know what defines simplicity/simplification.
Put in a rather different way, simplicity is antifragile. Do you think Taleb would consider nuclear antifragile?
Re #111 nigelj said To clarify, nobody here appears to be ignoring the need for simplification. Its a debate about how its done.
False. You are engaging in False Equivalence. Essentially, because you have seen me talk about the word, you think you know what it means. However, much of what you suggest does not even approach simplification. Ergo, you do not know what it means. You are, in fact, promoting/suggesting “solutions” that are incompatible with simplification. A short list:
* Nuclear
* Renewables greatly expanded
* Capitalism
None of those fit with simplification. and there are more.
So, let’s say you claim to know what bigotry is and say you do not support it, only discuss how to deal with it, but then you suggest banning people from certain countries because of their religious views. Said person is a bigot, not an anti-bigot.
You are anti-simplicity, not an advocate. Whether you understand or accept this is irrelevant to whether it is true or not.
BPL, #109—
Well, at least Trump managed to cover the ‘take some risks’ part… ;-)
Though your post is spot on,
Nigelj: in the USA collective actions are taken by vote
AB: not even close. In the USA collective action is induced by advertising, be it through cash or entertainment (ergo Drumpf)
And your solutions are weak. Carbon taxes are grand, but feebates strike terror in the hearts of psychopathic CEOs.
And folks, yesterday’s comments were laced with opinion and speculation. For example, I’ve only designed a vehicle that achieves ungodly performance, 2/3rds efficiency, and a halving of air and rolling restance as compared to a Prius. So, it’s informed speculation, not fact. (Though I’ve never not achieved that which others have said was impossible. Never.)
Al Bundy:
Tsk – you’re putting my words in nigelj’s mouth. He’s too nice a guy to object, but I’m not and I do. Whatevs, you realize “voting” and “advertising” aren’t mutually exclusive, don’t you?
AB:
Achieve superluminal velocity. Do I need to explicitly say it’s impossible? That would be godly performance!
117 Al Bundy says: “Carrie: “Global Nuclear Output 1987 = 300 GWe vs 2017 351 GWe
Alan: Meanwhile, renewables… AB: probably didn’t grow at a significantly different absolute rate. When one is starting at a way low level a 10,000% increase is a yawner. Go ahead, find the numbers.”
1. Between 2016 and 2017 total installed solar pv went from ~300GW to ~400GW. That is, in ONE year, not 30 years. That margin of change will increase, every year, from here on, unless a black swan supervenes.
2. I don’t agree that percentage increases from low levels are a “yawner”. They tell us the trajectory of things, which is all-important. What determines our future is not the absolute-number snapshots, frozen in time, but the trajectory — the degree and rate of change. This is true of renewables adoption, and climate change, and many other things. What is scary about climate change is not the absolute-number snapshots of our situation at this moment, frozen in time, but the trajectory of things; i.e. WHERE WE ARE HEADED, not where we are at this moment.
Al Bundy @117
I agree the GOP in the USA is unfortunately edging ever closer to unashamed libertarianism of the Ayn Rand variety. Its a sort of siege mentality as they see the world changing in ways that are discordant with their ‘belief’ structure.
I’m not a huge enthusiast of biofuels, because at best they are carbon neutral only, they create vast corn plantations crowding out other crops, and complicated processes related to wind power. We have better options for vehicle transport with using electric cars.
Unfortunately by subsidising corn plantations this has now become embedded and is the reason the GOP favour these subsidies because it’s their rural voting base. And another thing, the entire electoral system favour’s rural America, a ridiculous distortion in the system
I think the only real case for biofuels is air travel, because there are no other viable options likely for some time. However this requires their use be mandated by government and the GOP wont like that. Sigh.
Taxes will not reduce CO2 output unless they are very high. Several years ago, the price of gas got up to about $5/gallon in Cal, and was 4+ everywhere else. Didn’t make a dent in consumption.
If electricity to power AC spews CO2, why don’t we have awnings or shutters on every residential home window, or at least on the big windows to cut solar gain in summer? And why don’t we see examples every day of insulated shutters or other devices for the inside of those windows to reduce heating energy requirements in winter? Can states pass legislation removing obstacles to installing these types of devices; such obstacles may be in the form of HOA rules, local ordinances, etc. Many states claim to be big greenies – how many have passed such legislation? Don’t wait on the feds; this can be accomplished this week at the state/local level, then those of you who covet the money rich people have can produce products to install in tens of millions of homes and which will actually make an impact on energy usage, while you rake in the profit from your products – you’re not all dummies so I know you can do it. Winter is coming and with it those evil gas-fired fireplaces and furnaces, and that evil gas and coal fired electric heat! Where are the products from the environmental leaders that will save the climate FOR THE CHILLLLLDREN! Are we a bunch of statists waiting for the goobermint to save the planet? Or can we put on our big boy pants and start making some concrete progress?
Trump pulled us out of the climate agreement (OK, we were never officially in it, but that’s a technicality). So, since AGW is threat number 1 per those on the left, what has the rest of the world done to clean up their own emissions? Nothing? That’s right, little to nothing. I give them an F. What grade do you give them? I know you give Trump an F – but why didn’t the rest of the world do something without us?
118 – Nemesis
Elon isn’t a dummy. He knows who controls the subsidies and government contracts now so he will donate to them. Why donate to election losers? That’s just throwing money away.
117 – Al Bundy
Equal opportunity does not mean we all start at the same place financially. We don’t. Those who had smart parents will start at a better place. But we all have the opportunity to achieve without limit. Trump was given what, 5 million or so, now he’s worth 1000 times that amount, far more than he’d have earned in the bank contrary to what BPL says. People like Trump, who take risks, sometimes lose, thus he’s had bankruptcys – I assume the bankruptcy was a subsidiary or separate business entity, and not his entire estate. I’d start a separate business for each skyscraper, golf course, casino, hotel, that I built to limit my losses to just that portion of my portfolio. How he did it I don’t know, but he’s been fantastically successful by any measure, both in business and in his short political career. He beat a career politician with an entire national political machine behind her, his first time at bat. He plays to win and he does EXACTLY that!
117 Al Bundy, I’ll give that post 10 out of 10. It’s good to be superseded by a better model.
I will continue to support all the climate scientists who say climate models do not represent reality, that they are not certain and do not know. Which is pretty much all of them all the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuO26oJQLVs
To beat the crickets chirping
[Response: Different kinds of calculation. The Hansen et al 2011 values are from an inverse calculation, while the values used in CMIP5 simulations are from forward models driven by more up-to-date emissions data. The uncertainties in both are relatively large. – gavin]
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/04/unforced-variations-apr-2016/#comment-649296
I see CO2 was only 404.33 ppm then.
Ah, the good ol’ days.
102
nigelj says:
16 Jul 2018 at 3:52 AM
Mr. Know It All @96
“Here’s an infinitely more important point for alan2102: Solar has a 100% power shutdown every single night! ”
In reality nobody is really proposing energy grids based entirely around solar power.
……………………….
Some days nigelji you truly crack me up. Why?
88 nigelj says:
13 Jul 2018 at 1:49 AM
https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html
“Why nuclear power will never supply the world’s energy needs.”
……………………
Enjoy your last word while I keep laughing out loud at your classic humor. :-)
nigelj,
Welcome to the real world where YOU Nigel have to convince people of YOUR ideas.
124 alan2102 “That margin of change will increase, every year, from here on”
That’s what many said about Nuclear way back in the olden days. It never happened.
That’s what they said about Solar Thermal a few years ago, about Population increase decades ago. Never happened.
Things do change. Often they are the things we didn’t expect to change when making prior forecasts of change. :-)
Good to be hopeful, Great to be positive. Much better and necessary to be pragmatic and practical and learn from History for it always ‘repeats’ in exactly the same ways.
Sorry, Mal and Nigel about mixing you two up.
Alan, thanks for the data. I should have looked it up myself instead of putting it on you (I was feeling lazy)
Unfortunately, Keeling is not bending down so the trajectory doesn’t look good, especially since humanity is awakening the feedback beast and fossil infrastructure and reserves are still going strong.
Nigelj, yeah, corn kernels are training wheels. It’s time to take them off. Cellulose is the real bike ride. It’s starting to come online. We’ll see whether cellulose ends up best burned directly (more efficient) or liquified/gasified (more portable) Both are biofuel. Of course, in our infinite “wisdom” we’re turning US forests into pellets to send to England so as to let England notch a “win” in their Paris playbook. Humans usually play for the metric instead of for the goal the metric attempts to measure.
Assuming my SCC engine works and doubles real world efficiency, and cellulose (slash, post-consumer, carbon sequestering grass, & stover) are used, then would your opinion of liquid biofuels change? (And Mal, tisn’t godly, just the rejection of archaic systems. 62% with an obscenely complicated and expensive engine is current tech. Mine does similar functions but without all the parts, which allows for scaling down to cars, planes, and ships. The simplification ought to bump the efficiency a fair bit, which is why I say 66%)
When I speak I assume the above. I don’t see the point of burning slash and stover outside of a power plant. 0% efficiency is pretty bad, eh?
On wind and synfuel: I dislike the idea of curtailment. OTOH, a process that sits idle much of the time (wind2syn) isn’t optimal, either.
And it’s not just planes. There is an incredible amount of CH4 infrastructure to feed, including bazillions of gas furnaces, stoves, and water heaters.
Addendum to my comment at #118
Too many people are not interested in studying how politics/capitalism works, why should I be interested. Clinton, Obama, Trump, Musk et al, all the same, hooked on funny money, no clue how real life works. The show is getting more than funny.
nigel, #125–
The surprising thing to me is the rate of progress on electric aviation. I had thought that it would be decades before we saw anything flying on electricity that wasn’t essentially a novelty/research project. However, I was wrong about that. The first commercial e-planes are coming on the market now, the ‘market’ in question being pilot training planes. In that niche, the electrics are much cheaper and are low noise besides. (Important for using small urban airfields.) On the other hand, range restrictions are not problematic in that context. The first one just received its US airworthiness certificate:
https://electrek.co/2018/04/27/all-electric-trainer-plane-airworthiness-certification-faa-us/
More surprising to me is the development of e-planes intended to do commercial passenger flight.
Start-up Zunum (backed by Boeing and Jet Blue) is developing a small regional jet using a hybrid drivetrain. The Economist reports that they are aiming to be in service by 2022. (!) Airbus is aiming for 2030 for its 100-seat hybrid, a modification of an existing plane. (Flight testing is planned for 2022.)
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/08/the-electric-aircraft-is-taking-off/
As in the case of the trainers, the expected advantages are low operating cost, much lower emissions, and much lower noise.
Of course, that’s not going to clean up aviation’s emissions by 2030, which would be ideal. We’d be doing well to have ground transport mostly emissions-free by then. Whether a bio/synfuel aviation mandate could be implemented first, I don’t know. But maybe–I think we are going to see a tipping point in public opinion on climate before then (though I expect that will seem naive to some here.)
Public Attitudes to Nuclear Power (pre-Fukushima)
https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2010/6859-public-attitudes.pdf
Nuclear energy does not feature amongst most people’s highest concerns.
The highest energy related concerns are those of price and security of energy
supply.
•
Public opinion on nuclear energy seems to change slowly and is not
normally volatile. Not surprisingly however, dramatic events (e.g. the Three
Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents) can cause a rapid drop in public
support, which only recovers slowly.
•
The data clearly show that countries that already include nuclear power in
the energy mix have publics that are more knowledgeable on the issues and
are more supportive. Which comes first is not clear.
•
There are large sections of the public with no firm views for or against
nuclear energy in many countries. If governments want to introduce or
continue to use nuclear power in the energy mix, the attitudes of this middle
ground will be critical.
•
There is a clear correlation between knowledge and support. Large parts of
the public are still unaware of (or choose not to believe) the potential benefit
of nuclear energy to reduce the emissions of climate change related carbon
dioxide.
•
The factors that reduce public support for nuclear energy are concerns with
respect to terrorism, radioactive waste disposal and the misuse of nuclear
materials, in that order. The concern with respect to terrorism still seems to
be strong, well after the events of 11 September 2001.
•
When the climate change benefits of nuclear energy are explained, the
support for nuclear energy amongst respondents increases signify-cantly.
Similarly, if the radioactive waste disposal issue was satisfactorily resolved,
support would again significantly increase.
[GenIV HTGRs are not only capable of disposing of permanently eradicating radioactive waste incl nuclear weapons grade waste for safe non-radioactive storage, the HTGR-PMs are also 100% meltdown proof safe and are of no use to Terrorists. Kills two-birds with one stone (make that a Pebble). But this does not matter nor interest most people in the least – even well informed and educated people about climate change issues, GHGs and the scientific method. ]
The public gains most of its information on energy and nuclear power from
the media, but does not trust it. Scientists and environmental protection or
consumer organisations are the most trusted groups. National governments
are, in general, even less trusted on these issues than the media. This
presents a clear problem to governments who wish to educate and influence
their publics.
102 nigelj says: “In reality nobody is really proposing energy grids based entirely around solar power. Most proposals include a mix of solar power, wind power and storage.”
Yes, of course. And demand management. And other technologies. And “choreography” (see Amory Lovins’ work). We are swimming in solutions, and the only way that anti-renewables ideologues can stay afloat is by ignoring them all and pretending that this is still ~2005. Year by year, they are becoming a joke.
………………..
On fully dispatchable renewables, or “baseload renewables”:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-changing-shape-of-wind-and-solar-in-australias-grid-25455/
Kevin McKinney @126, thank’s for the information. I was unaware of light panes being electrified, although I had vaguely heard of the hybrid technology. The last time I looked at the aviation issue was probably a year or two ago, and things have clearly moved on. Things are changing so fast!
A case in point. I just came across this a few minutes ago on new carbon ion battery technology.
https://chargedevs.com/newswire/zapgos-carbon-ion-tech-combines-power-density-of-supercapacitors-and-energy-density-of-batteries/
I’m also inclined to think public opinion will reach a tipping point on climate change. All sorts of things reach tipping points. There’s a good book on the issue called not surprisingly “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell.
I think the public often takes time to digest and accept new science and its implications. We all have some scepticism to some degree, and it takes time to work through issues to become personally convinced.
Allied to this we have the IPCC relentlessly staying with their conclusions despite the denialist attacks and the public probably see this and its implications that scientists are very sure of their position. In addition we have had the large jump in recent temperatures, and the surprising fall in the costs of renewable electricity. This taken together suggests to me we could see a tipping point in public opinion on the science, the need for change, and uptake of renewable electricity and electric cars. Call me naive as well if people want.
Whether it comes in time to be useful to the climate problem is the question. This is where I’m less optimistic.
I don’t see a case for abandoning capitalism completely. There’s nothing about capitalism that stops people having smaller families, consuming less, and selecting environmentally friendly products, or pushing for stronger environmental laws etc.
nigel @ 125 says:
I have two points to make; one regarding carbon neutrality of biofuels and two about the apparent general misconception regarding jet turbines and whether or not they require combustion of some form of liquid hydrocarbon to function.
I worked as a subcontractor commercial deep sea diving on Petrobras oil rigs back in the late 70’s and early 80’s and ironically owned a 100% ethanol powered VW Fox at the time, I was also enrolled as a student at the University of Sao Paulo in Bio Sciences and got to know quite a bit about Brazil’s sugarcane ethanol production… Fast forward to the present: Growing sugarcane for ethanol production today has a much higher EROEI than corn ethanol and there are some very interesting developments in sustainability and CO2 sequestration in this area happening in Brazil and elsewhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-pr0cYzuDQ
20 min. video but quite eye opening.
Very interesting electric VTOL jet plane prototype from a start up company called Lillium. https://lilium.com/
Electric Jet Engines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz9c_Ifa3sU
The Lilium Jet – The world’s first all electric VTOL jet
The times they are a changing! And not a moment too soon ;-)
111 nigelj says: “nobody here appears to be ignoring the need for simplification. Its a debate about how its done.”
Yes.
If we are to be authentic simplicity advocates, the dramatic simplifications that are now built-in (or that are rapidly BEING built-in) to our high-tech world deserve careful attention.
One example: electric vehicles are far, FAR more simple than ICE vehicles, with ~5% of the moving parts, in addition to much less power requirement to move them (with all that that implies: the complexity as well as general harm of power production). If EVs (and especially EVs with autonomous capabilities) could suddenly replace all ICEVs, our society would be radically simplified overnight, with whole industries shutting down or being drastically downsized: auto manufacturing, parts production and retailing, fossil fuel production and distribution, highway and parking lot production and maintenance, etc. — a long list. (And: thank God! What a totally wonderful thing! Dismantling the whole disastrous ICEV episode is one of the biggest single steps we can take toward sanity and regeneration.) Indeed, if you pay attention to the Seba vid that I posted, this is where we are surely headed — whether or not on the optimistic timeline that he suggests. Anyone who advocates simplification should be a fanatical supporter of all this. It will be one of the biggest simplification initiatives of all time, in addition to having numerous other benefits.
Another example: large-scale, mechanized agriculture is vastly more simple than, say, everyone tending their own permacultural operation. That’s one of the things I like about it: I don’t have to undertake the great complexity and time-intensivity of running my own food production system. My life, and the lives of many millions around me, are greatly simplified by large-scale, mechanized agriculture, by virtue of which we save (collectively) scazillions of hours of tedious work, as well as the need to cognitively map and execute a wide variety of tasks — many of which we might be ill-suited for or uninterested in. Here again, an advocate of simplicity should be well-aware, and lavishly appreciative, of the great simplification built-in to this system of agriculture.
The same point applies to technology in general, most of the time. Advanced technology simplifies things by rendering trivial, or automatic, things that formerly took lots of time and energy. A complex set of organizational books can be maintained by a computer in a few seconds of CPU time and with a few dollars worth of hard disk space. Formerly, the same operations required teams of people working full time — and full time on leaden, soul-rotting tedium, at that. The onrushing automation and AI revolution, along with 3D printing and other technologies, will have an effect like computers or mechanized agriculture: rapid dramatic society-wide SIMPLIFICATION, such that all kinds of outputs can be produced at very low or perhaps even zero marginal cost, and with human drudgery eliminated or greatly reduced, and with fossil fuel (and overall net energy) as well as other material requirements greatly reduced, and so on. The coming era has huge promise for simplification advocates.
I trust the foregoing can be read without coming to the false conclusion that I am saying that everything about large-scale agriculture, high technology and automation, practiced in any of the numerous and diverse ways and contexts in which they can be practiced, is good. Of course I am not saying that. I am also not saying that everyone is ill-suited for or uninterested in becoming a committed permaculturist. Rather, some people might be very well-suited for it and interested in it, and that is fine. Generally, I did not say that Nirvana is breaking out and that endless dazzling progress sweeping us all into utopia is underway and inevitable; in contrast, rather, I believe that there are many thorny challenges in the offing and that we could quite easily fuck everything up (just as we already have, in some respects) and doom ourselves to misery and oblivion. Generally, please note that I only said what I said; this will greatly enhance understanding. Thank you.
alan2021:
I don’t always agree with alan2021, but I do here. He succinctly makes a point we might prefer to overlook: civilization will not be saved from climate change in one fell swoop. In my educated non-expert opinion, the current trajectory of climate change pretty much guarantees not just mounting personal and local tragedy, but some degree of global economic depression before the end of this century. That portends a proportional measure of misery and tragedy for multitudes of people now living. If it’s to be mitigated at all, it will be by polycentric, piecemeal decrements in the rate of fossil carbon emissions from all anthropogenic sources, within the next few short decades.
Heroic fantasies of sweeping economic revolution in the time we have left to cut our carbon emissions are IMUMO just that. YMMV, but I don’t want violence, especially since fossil-carbon billionaires have more and bigger guns on their side. My point is that realistically, the USA will achieve substantial actual emissions reduction only under our existing legal framework; for one thing, that will nominally keep the guns pointed away from climate realists. Incremental decarbonization will occur by lawful, contested collective intervention in the extant free* market for energy, whether through marginal carbon taxes from minimal to confiscatory, or more or less draconian anti-carbon regulations including outright abolition.
IOW the war on AGW will be electoral, not armed. But official AGW-denial is currently rather better funded than evidence-based climate policy is. What Is To Be Done? (trigger warning for Marxophobes**). AFAICT, any actual emissions decrement at the margin will require cooperation with the Koch Club’s business competitors. I’m not exactly comfortable with that myself, but I prefer it to the steadily worsening storms, floods, droughts, wildfires, crop failures, epidemics etc. and the ensuing mass dislocation, migration, starvation, sickness and violent global social upheaval I foresee otherwise! That’s why I’m focused on US voters, and seeking alliances with carbon-neutral energy capitalists: I have to start somewhere. What others do is entirely up to them.
Now for a fresh-today snapshot of a US media pundit’s opinion (my italics):
In the here and now, I’m interested in the political power of those who further resist the trap of science denial, but in too many cases don’t vote at all.
* you do too know what I mean.
** relax: I’m not advocating replication of Lenin’s social engineering experiment, which obtained demonstrably net-negative results by ‘environmental’ and citizen satisfaction measures, in the 72 years before its subjects voted to terminate it.
Kevin,
Whether electric, biofuel, or hybrid (I think hybrids with an external boost for takeoff and PV covered wings to aid cruising), the biggest issue is to get rid of jets. Shrouded props and significantly slower cruising speeds allow for much more space per passenger and far greater efficiency and safety.(Props also allow for SCC engines)
Note that folks hate flying not for the time in the air but because jets require sardining.
Pennsylvania senator Scott Wagner is running for governor on the platform that body heat is the cause of global warming. He just called an 18 year old girl “naive” for suggesting that his stance might have something to do with the 200k he got from fossil fuel corps.
Talk about the pot calling the snowflake black!
Of course Wagner was cheered. Yep, voting is going to work someday. In Miami “someday” might be when all the trees die from saltwater intrusion. I don’t know what catastrophe will be needed for Pennsylvania, but in the USA folks only wake up when TSHTF, and with climate, that’s decades too late. We need an ice free arctic ocean, a dozen class 6 hurricanes, and the Mother of all Heat Waves that wipes out US agriculture for a year. THEN folks might not cheer about “body heat”.(OK, I’m being a tad jaded.)
126 Mr. Know It All says:
“Taxes will not reduce CO2 output unless they are very high.”
Correct. The fee dividend proponents put that at USD100 per ton CO2 vs the $40 as a starting point they now suggest. Pushes gas way above $5 per gallon. It’s a myth and unnecessary. But lots of money to be made by some players. Just not the everyday person who’ll end up paying through the nose for the ‘luxury’ of being a ‘consumer’.
“Or can we put on our big boy pants and start making some concrete progress?”
No. You’re being as unrealistic and pollyannish as the latest Greenpeace member. Our power as individuals is ensconced inside Government institutions, laws and regulations. Been that way since we lived in tribal camps.
“So, since AGW is threat number 1 per those on the left”
Actually world wide it isn’t #1. Social justice and equity and wages is. The “left” is as recalcitrant as everyone else is regards rational action and policies to stop global warming. Please note that US Democrats do not rate as being “left”. They belong firmly in the right of center box socially and economically and politically.
“Elon isn’t a dummy.”
True but he is a low life bully narcissist and an internet troll. iow has distinct personality issues like all neoliberals, randians & libertarians.
“But we all have the opportunity to achieve without limit. ”
That’s bullshit which has been proven repeatedly by in depth scientific literature. Please wake up from the delusional ‘American Dream’ and get real. iow educate yourself better, Crack a book or a research paper or even better go spend a month in a poor village somewhere. They’re all over the USA so you don’t need to travel far. :)
112 Mal Adapted, thanks for that, good response and I can’t really add anything to make it better.
133 Nemesis, Funny money? I think I’ll get hilarious again sooner than later. We’ll be dancing in the streets like it’s 2008 all over again. :)
135 Carrie, nice copy and paste, good job! PS But no one is listening :)
137 nigelj says:
“Things are changing so fast!”
Hold onto your undies the winds of change is about to really start blowing soon enough. Maybe not quite what you expected, but hey, change is change.
138 nigelj says:
“There’s nothing about capitalism that stops people having smaller families, consuming less, and selecting environmentally friendly products, or pushing for stronger environmental laws etc.”
If this is what you think is true then you have not looked at all the facts properly nor through the right kind of lenses. May I suggest a months vacation in Quetta or anywhere in Yemen? The Niger delta maybe good too. Then a week to recover in Hollywood CA. That might do the trick.
139 Fred Magyar, good points. The right type (species?) of sugar cane and proper ag practices sequesters a huge amount of carbon in the soil. Win-Win. been known for more than a decade and still Govts do not act to get best practice on the farms. Never heard of that jet engine, thanks for sharing!
Too easy.
Killian this may be up your ally.
A lecture from International Conference on Negative CO2 Emissions, Gothenburg, Sweden, May 22-24, 2018
Negative emissions from soil management by Pete Smith .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5b9BtWWTR0
Main page with other lectures
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCirbz-iLdizsK2G7lmOgodw
or jump into James Hansen
Negative CO2 emissions – why, when and how much?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fATw6T4xM7M
Fred Magyar @139 I didn’t realise the progress being made with air travel and batteries. I think the problem with corn and sugar cane and cellulose based biofuels is land area. There’s very little spare usable land left on this fine planet. We have a growing population, demands to use land for forestry carbon sinks and biofuels, and I dont think they can all be scaled up.
Someone is going to have to prioritise best use, and this is why I think biofuels may be a limited answer to climate change with just selective and sensible applications where other alternatives are limited. I’m aware of other biofuels grown in laboratories from algae but none of this looks easy to scale up to me. I just have an instinctively sceptical reaction to biofuels, and must try to not be a slave to this.
alan2102 #140, Mal #141,
Projecting in a realistic timeframe, which I see as about 300 years, with 150 years as the likely point where the technological shift could become global…
what do you do with all the people?
So, no taxi drivers and no Jiffylube mechanics, and no subsistence farmers and no cashiers and baggers, and no code-monkeys, and far fewer doctors and lawyers, and so on. OK then…what’s a human to do?
The missing piece, as I’ve pointed out in the past, is the social transition that must occur, to a much lower, stable, global population.
And as I’ve also pointed out in the past, there is real potential for synergy.
All the stuff that alan likes is and can be driven by the desire to reduce labor costs. But the current world of massive labor oversupply potential, in combination with the resource demand potential, acts as a brake on progress as we all would like to see it.
In an environment with a low, stable, population relative to global resource availability, “simplification”, as described, is the inevitable rational economic choice. No guns, no moralistic ranting; it’s just what would work best.
alan2102 @140, the nissan leaf just won most reliable car of the year in my country (NZ). I agree electric cars are definitely the way of the future, even if there wasn’t a climate problem (which there certainly is). People forget exhaust emissions still cause lung problems, even with the best of efforts to filter out noxious substances.
Simplification is indeed a subtle thing. Another example: Smartphones are incredibly complicated and require a complex chain of manufacturing operations, but small enough to make efficient use of resources, and they replace several other devices.
I’m a fan of permaculture, but I agree it doesn’t have to be done using small scale farms.
I understand your point about humans specialising and not having to do everything themselves like running a farm etc. I do however think there are limits to the process. Some people are now clueless at how do do anything, apart from their main job! We buy a lot of labour saving devices that are superfluous, or offer only small benefits. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle between the extreme scenarios.
But I think you might get some angry push back for your comments from one or two people!
C 127: climate models do not represent reality, that they are not certain and do not know. Which is pretty much all of them all the time.
BPL: Look again.
http://bartonlevenson.com/ModelsReliable.html