[RD] Global Warming/Climate Change:What are your thoughts II?

[Old Hippy]

Clean coal is such an olive branch, which is why I mentioned it.

I can see you fail to understand the gesture.

J

I understand the gesture, something to do with the middle finger

I see you fail to understand the state of clean coal technology it is like solar 20 /30 years ago untried and untested, debacle best describes the worlds 1st carbon capture power station

http://http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/the-fallout-from-saskpowers-boundary-dam-ccs-debacle-54803

it would be good to have clean coal but it has been made a political football with billions wasted on research around the world just to forestall having to do something about carbon

 

[El_Machinae]

Clean coal is such an olive branch, which is why I mentioned it.

I can see you fail to understand the gesture.

J

The problem with being intentionally laconic, J, is that sometimes people can't pull out what you mean. Not sure if you know, but your tone is often dismissive.

Clean coal is being funded around the world. It's a very hard technology, obviously. But the breakthroughs I see come out of gov't labs. Would you like the funding to increase? Who pays? How? We're certainly not harnessing market forces on this front. Which coal players are actively investing?

Oh, another middle ground that occurs to me is nuclear. Lots of greenies want nuclear ramped up. And as a nod to what 'others' are doing, both China and India are working on thorium test projects.

I think nuclear more suffers from NIMBY than anything. I know of lots of greens that like it. Not the cost, but that's something that would come down with political will.

 

[Lexicus]

Did anyone worry about the cost when we were building stuff to fight the Nazis and Japanese? If the answer is no, why should we worry about the cost of dealing with global warming, a more implacable and deadly foe than either Germany or Japan?

 

[El_Machinae]

Did anyone worry about the cost when we were building stuff to fight the Nazis and Japanese? If the answer is no, why should we worry about the cost of dealing with global warming, a more implacable and deadly foe than either Germany or Japan?

Except it's not the same. AGW causes poverty, there's no doubt about that. But the question is whether more wealth (net) is built by allowing AGW to happen. IF the Bangladeshi are being impoverished by loss of shoreline (they are) and IF there are sufficient profits created by which to compensate them, then it might be better to allow AGW to happen.

By analogy, allowing mercury into the ocean was more than offset by the benefits of burning coal, especially in the early stages. The quality of life improvements from coal were so strong. Not everyone was properly compensated, but there was a rather good effort.

The problem with my first paragraph is that there will be no mechanism by which to compensate the victims ahead of time. The people who benefited from causing AGW will fight tooth and nail to prevent their wealth being taxed to pay for their theft. It's why we need the property rights to be created ahead of time, in the early stages of the theft. Backdating the debts to 1992 is vastly easier in 1997 than it will be in 2005 or in 2020.

It's an open question if there will be more wealth created (net) by allowing ppm to get to 550 ppm. The odds of a catastrophe are obviously higher, but they're unknown. The second question is whether the victims will be compensated by the decision.

Going Manhattan on AGW might not be the wisest decision. It's easily the most moral, since it wipes away future unfunded obligations. But it might not be the wisest. Everyone who's artificially poor because we weaned off of fossil carbon too soon will also be the victims of opportunity cost.

It's why I tend to be pro Natural Gas. There's enough room in the buffer for natural gas, it's the easiest to be ecologically friendly, and it delivers a lot of energy per unit of fossil carbon.

 

[metalhead]

Heavy subsidies and/or tax incentives for local, on-property generation of electricity through wind/solar would be a huge step forward. So much fossil fuel energy is lost turning the fuel into electricity, and then a non-negligible amount more is lost in transmission. Industry probably can't rely on local solar or wind power for their energy needs, but hopefully feasible long distance superconductive transmission cables can come online in the near future.

Banning coal is a realistic goal, simply because tech can easily make burning coal unnecessary. "Clean coal" is dressing up old technology in a new package, but it's probably not going to become a reality. Better to just obsolete coal altogether.

 

[El_Machinae]

That said, I don't really know what OJH meant by 'clean coal'. I assumed he meant carbon capture and storage. It's like biofuels. It's an experiment that needs to be tried. Ain't easy, but it's a huge source of potential success.

Unsurprisingly, CCS funding is well-supported by most mainstream AGW advocates. It's the funding that's hardest, since there's no real Pigiouvian mechanism to get it sufficiently funded.

 

[Lexicus]

It's an open question if there will be more wealth created (net) by allowing ppm to get to 550 ppm.

It is not even remotely an open question. Allowing climate change to continue apace will cause the collapse of civilization and possibly the extinction of the species.

EDIT: And natural gas infrastructure has apparently been leaking methane at a rate that may have actually net-accelerated climate change by offsetting the lower emissions of natural gas relative to other fossil fuels.

 

[El_Machinae]

I see you've drawn your line in the sand, but you should know that I follow the discussion very aggressively. You should know that the data don't support your response. Heck, there's a strong variance of predictions at 1000 ppm. Though your second sentence seems to be pulling on information you saw regarding 'business as usual' scenarios, and not the 550 ppm scenarios.

Remember, ppm affects both factors at the margin. Each additional ppm increases damages exponentially. Each ppm increases wealth exponentially. We're quite aways from where each additional ppm increases wealth less than it increases damages.

Eeking out additional growth per ppm is something we should be focusing on as well. That's the most important ratio during these stages, because that's where the wealth to transition comes from. We cannot afford fusion pilot plants if we don't allow the engineers to drive to work.

 

[Lexicus]

I'm sorry, I shouldn't have implied climate change is the only factor here. The sheer ecological impact of the 7 billion humans in an urban industrial civilization is also causing a mass extinction that is exacerbated by climate change.

Anyone who thinks civilization will survive through the course of a sixth mass extinction is kidding themselves. Anyone who thinks humans will even live through it is being, in my opinion, dangerously optimistic.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The idea that Al Gore made this a political issue is complete nonsense, particularly in light of the fact that Exxon's scientists knew about it by the early 80s and kept it quiet so they could keep selling oil.

Don't get me wrong, I had no intention of pinning what I said on Al Gore.

When you think about what policies might have to go into effect to meaningfully influence climate change, one would anticipate tremendous lobbying/influencing factors placed on policy makers even if Al Gore had instead become a professional athlete and never said a word on the political scene.

As a result, one might also anticipate party stances on politicizing the topic regardless, talking about impact to jobs/using it to slander apparent conscientiousness/etc similar to now.

 

[Bootstoots]

Coal with CCS would be great, if it's implemented successfully. There's not much sign of that right now though - most if not all of the industrial-scale projects that are using it are only doing it for enhanced oil recovery using CO2 injection. There is this plant, which will open later this year, but quoting the article, "Kemper is the most expensive power plant ever built for the watts of electricity it will generate".

The costs should come down in the future, but even in a very optimistic scenario, it is not profitable to build a coal plant with CCS when you can just build a coal plant without it, so the normal market mechanisms do not favor CCS. What we'd have to do is tax and regulate new coal plants without CCS so highly that CCS becomes the more profitable alternative. Many people would advocate banning them entirely, but I'm fine with the tax and regulation approach too.

So clean coal as an olive branch is a good start, but in order to actually be implemented, it has to be coupled with strong incentives to switch to CCS. Is this something you'd support, J?

 

[onejayhawk]

The problem with being intentionally laconic, J, is that sometimes people can't pull out what you mean. Not sure if you know, but your tone is often dismissive.

Clean coal is being funded around the world. It's a very hard technology, obviously. But the breakthroughs I see come out of gov't labs. Would you like the funding to increase? Who pays? How? We're certainly not harnessing market forces on this front. Which coal players are actively investing?

Oh, another middle ground that occurs to me is nuclear. Lots of greenies want nuclear ramped up. And as a nod to what 'others' are doing, both China and India are working on thorium test projects.

I think nuclear more suffers from NIMBY than anything. I know of lots of greens that like it. Not the cost, but that's something that would come down with political will.

I tried greater detail, but that was getting nowhere. Clean coal is treated as oxymoronic. It should not be. Dismissive we have.

I understand the gesture, something to do with the middle finger

When it comes to power generation in this country, when was the last coal plant built? When was the last power plant, of any kind, built in California? Why is Texas the cutting edge in wind power, not the left coast?

If you will not even talk to the people you disagree with, how can you expect them to cooperate? Now that they have the political whip hand, why would you expect better treatment than you gave them?

J

 

[Old Hippy]

I tried greater detail, but that was getting nowhere. Clean coal is treated as oxymoronic. It should not be. Dismissive we have.



When it comes to power generation in this country, when was the last coal plant built? When was the last power plant, of any kind, built in California? Why is Texas the cutting edge in wind power, not the left coast?

If you will not even talk to the people you disagree with, how can you expect them to cooperate? Now that they have the political whip hand, why would you expect better treatment than you gave them?

J

been talking since 1993
wished clean coal worked, but...

Dismissive works both ways, clean coal have had 30 years to "talk" about renewables instead they have been the prime example of wasted money and political name calling, about clean energy, solar will never work, wind power is not going to work etc. etc. etc.
locally they gave a $500m subsidy to clean coal back in 1993 to get it up at at test plant
yes everyone was happy a better world etc. etc. etc.
any clean coal power available ...NO
yet one state here (Australia) has just closed its last coal power station and uses wind and solar and gas and has had several days when all the states electricity has been provided by renewables, at present it aims for 33% going to 50% by 2050
a starting point for discussion will be when you accept your own starting terms for discussion and talk about clean energy that works,

 

[onejayhawk]

It's a matter of definitions. Draw up any standard of particulate scrubbing and it can be met. However, no standard gets approved. Also, coal gasification works just fine. You also get nowhere with that. As el Mac said, the objective is to outlaw coal. That is not a reasonable stance.

J

 

[Old Hippy]

the objective is to lower carbon emissions, so far coal power stations have failed to deliver upon promises made for clean coal
maybe because the coal lobby and governments have over promised on clean coal which is an unreasonable stance on clean coal lobbyists part not the renewable energy lobbyist part, your blaming everybody else for being unreasonable when clean coal's claims failed to meet their own published and government subsidised targets

like I've said clean coal would be good, but you can't expect renewable energy ''converts'' to make it work and build it for you

 

[El_Machinae]

As el Mac said, the objective is to outlaw coal. That is not a reasonable stance.

It is, but not if you distort it. If you twist someone's words to be unintelligent, then you're neither applying the principle of charity nor moving a conversation forwards. We live in a world where coal needs to be phased out. If some technology appears that prevents that need, then obviously things change.

What's lacking is a funding mechanism by which the technologies are created. The coal suppliers have incentive to fund the research. And the users of carbon have an obligation to fund the research (out of a portfolio of efforts).

Why are you talking about particulate scrubbing? Aren't you referring to carbon capture and sequestration? It's the sequestration that's the hard part, these days. The capture is being worked on in labs around the world. I read stories on it on a fairly regular basis (though it's obviously very hard to do)

 

[El_Machinae]

That said, I do have a great deal of sympathy for the reticence. Especially among Americans. As time goes on, it feels like it's increasingly hard to afford to wean. All the proposed solutions look they'll affect things regressively. Even if the voter understands that they're foisting poverty onto others, they don't see a solution. And it's not easy, I get it.

I mention 1992 commonly

Ostensibly, there's 50% more wealth available that can be shuttled into weaning today than there was in 1992. Now, a 2.0% compounding growth rate doesn't justify delaying, since the damages (on a risk-based analysis) are compounding faster than that. But the average person feels like they cannot afford a regressive solution any more than they could in 1992. There's a very good reason for that. They didn't really see any of those gains. Maybe a bit, but not enough to feel like weaning is affordable.

But it is. Somehow, the gains have been privated and the obligations socialized. Sound familiar?

 

[Flying Pig]

I must admit, I'm pleasantly surprised to see that US GDP per capita has just about doubled with no change in the environmental impact per person. It puts a bit of a hole in the argument that dealing with climate change means forgoing growth.

 

[El_Machinae]

Yeah, the graph just needs to tilt clockwise to get to where we need to be.

 

[kiwitt]

I genuinely believe the root cause of climate change is the exponential rise of of the human population over the last few decades. We continue to use centuries old technology for our power, transportation, survival, but multiplied exponentially.

So in a sense, mankind may well be the blame for climate-change, but in reality it is the size of mankind that is the root cause. The WWF did a report that we humans are using more resources than the planet can sustain, and the consequences of this is everywhere, to be seen.

The population of the world will have tripled in my lifetime, and if they then all want to live like western consumers of craptastic/disposable goods, the only people getting rich will be the owners of these corporations, while the world goes further in to ruin and misery.

We need to put an end to the rampant consumerism, that had started since post-WWII and turn it on its head. There is more to life than the next fashion item or consumer trend. Once the rest of world copies the western 'disease', like China and India are already doing with their rising millionaires and middle-class consumers, the future of the world looks very dire indeed.

I suspect the future vision of the world as portrayed in Bladerunner street scenes won't be too far off, i.e. 'Hell of Earth' and lots of rain caused by higher temperatures evaporating oceans increasing lots of precipitation, etc.

Long-term we need to curb population growth, but as most economic growth is predicated on that continuing, I don't see that happening soon, if at all.