Poll

Do we need aggressive climate change policy?

Absolutely!
Maybe something modest.
No clue.
Not yet. Let's wait and see for a bit.
Nope. This will be resolved on it's own through economic forces / This isn't an issue for humanity..

Author Topic: US Climate Change Policy  (Read 45946 times)

nereo

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #200 on: February 25, 2019, 02:37:31 PM »
I can't point to data either way, but can tell you that a crap-ton of people die every year from events linked to drought (yes, droughts are correlated to heat) and heat-stress.

Fair enough.  18 people died in Chicago this year alone due to the extreme cold.  I'm not sure I've heard too many similar stories of people dying when it's warm outside in Chicago.
I mean, I guess there is this, which was the first result in a simple google search:
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2018/06/29/heat-wave-chicago/

This article discusses a heat wave in Chicago that lead to approximately 700 deaths in a week. That's a bit more than 18.
We'll just add this to the pile of bizarrely false claims made upthread.
Surprising that no one mentioned the focus on a location known for cold winters in an attempt to prove that severe cold kills more people than severe heat.  If we were really being intellectually honest we'd look at deaths due to heat across the planet and compare to those to deaths from extreme cold.  As an example, the 2010 Eurasian heat wave was responsible for over 14,000 deaths in Russia alone.  I'm having a hard time finding extreme cold events that killed anywhere near this many.

You guys are wasting your breath.  You all know that, right?
Sadly yes, at this point it seems so.  Given the number of false claims raised and then abandoned when ample evidence has been presented to refute, I don't expect any changes, but I hope this will serve as a record for anyone else who might stumble upon this thread thinking that polar bears are doing just great or that climate predictions have somehow been drastically overestimating effects, neither of which is true.

MasterStache

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #201 on: February 25, 2019, 02:41:24 PM »
You guys are wasting your breath.  You all know that, right?

Welcome to the post-fact world.  Reality doesn't matter anymore, only perception.  If you can convince enough people to support your crazy idea, you can make it "reality" no matter how obviously wrong it is.  In AlexMar's reality, climate change is a Chinese Hoax and, we have always been at war with Eastasia.  Ignorance is strength, remember?

You're all trying to use logic and facts to refute a person's deeply held beliefs.  Beliefs which are not based on logic and facts cannot be changed with logic and facts.  It's an exercise in futility to even try.
You are right. But it is so goddamn frustrating.

I guess what I was trying to get at is that we need a different approach.  As soon as it's clear that he doesn't care about the facts of the issue, and is arguing based purely on an emotional commitment to an irrational position for which no actual evidence exists, then maybe it's time to switch tactics and appeal to emotion instead.

I think it's absolutely valid to point out all of his errors, just in case he is genuinely misinformed.  For people who have just been living in a bubble of lies, sunlight works.  Expose them to the real world, and a rational person has to come around.  But in this case, that clearly isn't working.  AlexMar has consistently refused to engage on any of the factual issues, has deliberately distorted and misled on the logical issues, repeatedly presented easily debunked talking points as if they were facts, and seems to believe that the entire scientific establishment must be stupid for not seeing what he knows in his heart to be true.  So reality doesn't matter to him anymore, I think we can all agree. 

That doesn't mean his mind can't be changed, it just means it can't be changed the normal way we arrive at truth.  He needs to be cajoled or deceived into believing the truth, just like he was cajoled and deceived into believing lies in the first place.  Maybe he needs to be treated the same way he has treated everyone in this thread, mocked and humiliated into acquiescence if that's all that he knows how to process and respond to.  Maybe we need an appeal to his illogic, like the classic "god wants you to be a good steward of the earth" argument that has been so successful in getting evangelicals to support environmental cleanup efforts. 

I don't claim to know what will work best on a crazy person, I just think that facts aren't it.  And for professional fact-finders like you and me, yes that's horribly frustrating.

It's likely best to just not engage anymore at all. The cognitive dissonance in some is so overwhelming there simply is no hope. 

LennStar

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #202 on: February 25, 2019, 02:47:17 PM »
More people die of cold weather than warm weather.
Thats another one of those bullshit denier's points to distract people, and btw. factually wrong.
It's just that you don't see people dying from hot weather. You see them dying from e.g. heart attacks.
And than, after already more people died from heat, you can include the millions that die because their crops withered away.

Quote
But I also don't buy in to the radical interpretations of it.
The most radical interpretation is that there is no climate change. Or that everything is wrong just because one of thousands of predictions  is a bit late (if it is at all, see next point).

Quote
we STILL haven't seen any acceleration in sea level rise
We have. But you are looking away from it. Compare the rise speed 100 years ago and now. As I said, they are 10 times bigger now.
And yes, not everything happens exactly as predicted. Surprised? We are talking about the most complex system we have ever researched. New details are added constantly. The factors on the system (human activity) change constantly. No climate model 20 years ago was able to predict what the US fracking boom (or the 2008 crash) would mean, simply because there was no fracking at that time, not because the model was wrong.
 
Quote
AOC just warned us not to have kids (seriously) because they will suffer due to climate change.
They will, one way or the other. If you take the consequence of not having kids or not is everyone's own mind, and if you laugh about that, I find it frankly quite stupid. Not as stupid as trying to diverse with that, though.

Quote
but we saw a little ice age in Europe in the 1400's (going from memory here, dates could be off) that started quite abruptly, so without added greenhouse gases we could  be cooling - or not.  Who knows?
@RetiredAt63 for you to read: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47063973
America colonisation ‘cooled Earth's climate’
I made an article
https://steemit.com/science/@LennStar/human-made-climate-change-may-be-older-than-you-think
 mentioning the several factors that together made the apruptness of the "Little Ice Age".

 


RetiredAt63

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #203 on: February 25, 2019, 03:04:00 PM »

@RetiredAt63 for you to read: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47063973
America colonisation ‘cooled Earth's climate’

Except that the cooling started around 1250, long before there was any European presence in central America.  I'm not counting the cod fishermen in Newfoundland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Therefore, any of several dates ranging over 400 years may indicate the beginning of the Little Ice Age:

    1250 for when Atlantic pack ice began to grow; cold period possibly triggered or enhanced by the massive eruption of Samalas volcano in 1257[17]
    1275 to 1300 based on the radiocarbon dating of plants killed by glaciation
    1300 for when warm summers stopped being dependable in Northern Europe
    1315 for the rains and Great Famine of 1315–1317
    1550 for theorized beginning of worldwide glacial expansion
    1650 for the first climatic minimum.

The Little Ice Age ended in the latter half of the 19th century or early in the 20th century.


I am not a big fan of Wikipedia for science, but it is a good place to start.

What is also interesting is that the end of the little ice age corresponds to the first  wide-scale use of fossil fuels (coal).  I'm not saying one caused the other, but it is an interesting data point.


scottish

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #204 on: February 25, 2019, 03:36:01 PM »
I have a question.

There are about 1B people in developed countries (mostly Europe and North America).   We have a huge pollution footprint.   Even if we're able to reverse the trend and start creating less carbon, how will we account for the other 6B people who are creating more pollution while trying to reach our standard of living?

I see the resolution has several detailed objectives:
Quote
    building smart power grids (i.e., power grids that enable customers to reduce their power use during peak demand periods);
    upgrading all existing buildings and constructing new buildings to achieve maximum energy and water efficiency;
    removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation and agricultural sectors;
    cleaning up existing hazardous waste and abandoned sites;
    ensuring businesspersons are free from unfair competition; and
    providing higher education, high-quality health care, and affordable, safe, and adequate housing to all.

but none of these will help developing nations in becoming more environmentally friendly.

nereo

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #205 on: February 25, 2019, 05:15:17 PM »

There are about 1B people in developed countries (mostly Europe and North America).   We have a huge pollution footprint.   Even if we're able to reverse the trend and start creating less carbon, how will we account for the other 6B people who are creating more pollution while trying to reach our standard of living?

This is a huge and legitimate area of concern, and one of the aspects that the Paris climate accord was designed to address.

One of the ideas is that adoptation of cleaner tech by the developed nations will result in much lower emissions by the developing world through efficiencies of scale and tech transfer.  As examples, the price of solar continues to decline, and its often cheaper for a poorer country to buy clean power from its developed neighbor than to build powerplants on their own.  Car fuel efficiency is another example - used cars from richer nations (with stricter fuel standards) find their way to developing nations, as does the technology involved in getting 35+mpg.
Still, there's big gaps to fill. Deforestation of virgin forests progresses because many of those doing the cutting have no practical choice other than starvation. This is what's going on in the Amazon rainforests.

On a positive note, if you consider the US, China, Japan, Canada and the EU - you are at roughly 2/3rds of total greenhouse emissions. So in theory standards implemented and enforced in just those markets would go a great way towards solving the input side of the problem, and by-and-large these countries all have economies strong enough to make major changes.  Whether its politically possible remains another quesiton.

AlexMar

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #206 on: February 25, 2019, 05:26:10 PM »
More people die of cold weather than warm weather.
Thats another one of those bullshit denier's points to distract people, and btw. factually wrong.
It's just that you don't see people dying from hot weather. You see them dying from e.g. heart attacks.
And than, after already more people died from heat, you can include the millions that die because their crops withered away.

Quote
But I also don't buy in to the radical interpretations of it.
The most radical interpretation is that there is no climate change. Or that everything is wrong just because one of thousands of predictions  is a bit late (if it is at all, see next point).

Quote
we STILL haven't seen any acceleration in sea level rise
We have. But you are looking away from it. Compare the rise speed 100 years ago and now. As I said, they are 10 times bigger now.
And yes, not everything happens exactly as predicted. Surprised? We are talking about the most complex system we have ever researched. New details are added constantly. The factors on the system (human activity) change constantly. No climate model 20 years ago was able to predict what the US fracking boom (or the 2008 crash) would mean, simply because there was no fracking at that time, not because the model was wrong.
 
Quote
AOC just warned us not to have kids (seriously) because they will suffer due to climate change.
They will, one way or the other. If you take the consequence of not having kids or not is everyone's own mind, and if you laugh about that, I find it frankly quite stupid. Not as stupid as trying to diverse with that, though.

Quote
but we saw a little ice age in Europe in the 1400's (going from memory here, dates could be off) that started quite abruptly, so without added greenhouse gases we could  be cooling - or not.  Who knows?
@RetiredAt63 for you to read: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47063973
America colonisation ‘cooled Earth's climate’
I made an article
https://steemit.com/science/@LennStar/human-made-climate-change-may-be-older-than-you-think
 mentioning the several factors that together made the apruptness of the "Little Ice Age".

I don't know many crops that do well in the snow.  Do you?

As for 10X faster sea level rise - it just so happens we have sea level trends from over 100 years ago!

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8724580

Please point out the 10X acceleration in sea level rise.  Of course, the 9 inches over the next 100 years (which just so happens to trend the last 100 years, too) is a far cry from the 5 feet all the smart scientists on this thread swear by.  Notice the complete and utter lack of a J curve.  There is no curve upward, no acceleration, period.  Facts are facts.  Which is why it's all about "oh, any day now, the tipping point is coming... oh it passed already?  A new tipping point!  Oh that one passed too? Then a new tipping point!  Red tide happened, didn't you see that?  Just like it did hundreds of years ago, but now it's like, global warming... Watch out!  It's coming, next year, next 5 years, you'll see!!!  Aggressive action is needed right now!  I read skeptical science, so I'm an expert!"

But you know, they are entitled to their religious beliefs as much as anyone else.  I mean, just because we haven't seen the sea level rise predicted over the last 30 years happen and countless failed models, and trends suggesting it's not actually happening, doesn't mean it won't... any day now... Just keep believing folks! It'll happen!  Send your wealth to the UN for immediate distribution to combat Global Warming.  You can do it!!  Of course, those doomsday believers all jump in private jets and drive cars every day... They don't actually believe this bullshit themselves.  But it sure is effective marketing.  Just look at the people here!

Ciao.

MasterStache

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #207 on: February 25, 2019, 05:31:05 PM »

There are about 1B people in developed countries (mostly Europe and North America).   We have a huge pollution footprint.   Even if we're able to reverse the trend and start creating less carbon, how will we account for the other 6B people who are creating more pollution while trying to reach our standard of living?

This is a huge and legitimate area of concern, and one of the aspects that the Paris climate accord was designed to address.

One of the ideas is that adoptation of cleaner tech by the developed nations will result in much lower emissions by the developing world through efficiencies of scale and tech transfer.  As examples, the price of solar continues to decline, and its often cheaper for a poorer country to buy clean power from its developed neighbor than to build powerplants on their own.  Car fuel efficiency is another example - used cars from richer nations (with stricter fuel standards) find their way to developing nations, as does the technology involved in getting 35+mpg.
Still, there's big gaps to fill. Deforestation of virgin forests progresses because many of those doing the cutting have no practical choice other than starvation. This is what's going on in the Amazon rainforests.

On a positive note, if you consider the US, China, Japan, Canada and the EU - you are at roughly 2/3rds of total greenhouse emissions. So in theory standards implemented and enforced in just those markets would go a great way towards solving the input side of the problem, and by-and-large these countries all have economies strong enough to make major changes.  Whether its politically possible remains another quesiton.

Yeah developing countries contribute very little in terms of carbon output. It's the developed nations that are far out in front with their carbon output.

RetiredAt63

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #208 on: February 25, 2019, 06:25:57 PM »
I don't know many crops that do well in the snow.  Do you?

Actually, for areas that are adapted to it, winter is very useful.  It gives enough winter chill for plants that need it.  It limits many insect pests to one generation per year instead of 2 or 3 in warmer climates.  Frost movement aerates soil.  Snow insulates soil, moderating temperatures, and stores winter precipitation - for many areas winter mountain snow is summer water.  I am guessing you don't live in a cold winter area or you would not be making silly jokes about crops in snow.

Of course most of Europe was not adapted to the cold winters.  It wasn't Narnia, they didn't have winter 12 months of the year. But the growing seasons were certainly affected.  They had crop failure after crop failure.  England stopped growing wine grapes.  Grain crops suffered most in cold wet summers.   Badly nourished people fell victim to plagues - the Black Death was from 1347 to 1351.  The Thirty Years War is thought to be a direct result of poor crops.

https://www.history.com/news/little-ice-age-big-consequences

LennStar

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #209 on: February 26, 2019, 12:28:09 AM »
I mean, just because we haven't seen the sea level rise predicted

I have no idea why you come back to this point again and again. If I write a book with one typing error, will you go and on that I can't type. too?

But just for you I looked it up. If you take the years between 1901 und 2010, the average was 1.7 millimeter. If you take only 1993 to 2010, you have an average of 3,2 millimeters. Or double the speed as before (And probalby 10 times more today in a year than in 1900 as I said, or maybe I have even confused that with something else and it's only 4 times, does not matter, right?). So your "30 years ago they said the rise would accelerate" is hit bulls eye.

And here is the graph with predictions and measurements.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Slr_prediction_med.jpg

nereo

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #210 on: February 26, 2019, 05:39:34 AM »

As for 10X faster sea level rise - it just so happens we have sea level trends from over 100 years ago!

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8724580

Please point out the 10X acceleration in sea level rise.
You don't seem to understand the data or the science you are linking.  From that very data source, you can see that sea level has risen at the Key West tidal station over the last century. The authors were interested in average increase over that time period, so they did exactly that, and snapped a line to the data.  So at the very least we can all agree that sea level has risen in that one spot.  For fun, you can also plot changes to the trend over various time frames.  Well... maybe you can't, but I can!  So I did just this looking at annual changes and a loess smoother. Attached below!  If you look at the last three decades you'll see the curve is getting steeper.  That's acceleration! 

But wait - much like the entire US is not represented by Miami, the entire ocean is not represented by Key West.  Perhaps you were unaware of this, but sea level is not uniform across the globe. From that same NOAA data set you can view the average sea level change cross all of the eastern Atlantic tide gauges.  Notable that Key West (due to its location) has among the LEAST sea level change of all US stations.  Two important things to note - ALL stations are reporting increasing sea level and most of the mid Atlantic stations are reporting double what Key West observes.

But wait, there's more!  While we Americans like to think that the US is all that matters, it turns out that most of the ocean is not within our sovereign waters.   Thankfully other people have also studied sea level change on a global scale - and they've made their data publicly available too (and it's Open Source!  Horray!).  Here's a recent (2018) paper which used altimeter data cross-validated with the same tidal data you linked to determine that, yes, globally sea level is both rising and accelerating over the past 30 years.


THe authors summarize the data here: Using the altimeter record coupled with careful consideration of interannual and decadal variability as well as potential instrument errors, we show that this rate is accelerating at 0.084 ± 0.025 mm/y2. (emphasis my own)


FrugalToque

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #211 on: February 26, 2019, 06:46:01 AM »
It's a great time for climate change trolls, isn't it?

You know, the kind who point out one tiny subset of data: "the ocean is cooling around the U.K.", "Ice in this part of the world is increasing", "If you look at year X and year Y, the world got cooler" and ignore the overall data and the longterm trends.

Lovely bunch, them, playing their fiddles while the world melts.

nereo

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #212 on: February 26, 2019, 06:58:36 AM »

Lovely bunch, them, playing their fiddles while the world melts.

What gets me is that many of us on this thread live in places like New England, Canada, the Pacific NW and Europe - yet we seem far more concerned about the impacts climate change poses to Florida than someone who actually lives in Florida.

GuitarStv

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #213 on: February 26, 2019, 07:34:01 AM »
What's the best way to appeal to emotion without logic?

Should we build an argument that carbon dioxide is sexually violating unicorns?  Draw parallels between religious manuscripts and climate change?  Delve into the false fields of homeopathy, astrology, and phrenology?

If so, how do we do that without losing all credibility with people who are capable of rational thought?

LennStar

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #214 on: February 26, 2019, 07:56:12 AM »
What's the best way to appeal to emotion without logic?

Should we build an argument that carbon dioxide is sexually violating unicorns?  Draw parallels between religious manuscripts and climate change?  Delve into the false fields of homeopathy, astrology, and phrenology?

If so, how do we do that without losing all credibility with people who are capable of rational thought?
God has given us the Earth. How dare we destroy his most beautiful work?!?

GuitarStv

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #215 on: February 26, 2019, 08:08:55 AM »
What's the best way to appeal to emotion without logic?

Should we build an argument that carbon dioxide is sexually violating unicorns?  Draw parallels between religious manuscripts and climate change?  Delve into the false fields of homeopathy, astrology, and phrenology?

If so, how do we do that without losing all credibility with people who are capable of rational thought?

God has given us the Earth. How dare we destroy his most beautiful work?!?

I think you're forgetting that God explicitly told us to beat nature down, and do whatever the fuck we want with the critters.

Quote
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” - Genesis 1:26

Keeping nature natural isn't subduing it and dominating living things.

nereo

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #216 on: February 26, 2019, 08:14:38 AM »
...
If so, how do we do that without losing all credibility with people who are capable of rational thought?
God has given us the Earth. How dare we destroy his most beautiful work?!?
I tried this approach with a relative who is both devoutly religious and deeply skeptical of anthropogenic change.  His response was "if god didn't want us to burn fossil fuels, why did he put all this coal for us to find?"
We've since found some common ground that water, air etc should be clean and that we can (and should avoid) over-harvesting God's bounty, and in general be good stewards of the land.

Boofinator

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #217 on: February 26, 2019, 08:55:10 AM »
As for 10X faster sea level rise - it just so happens we have sea level trends from over 100 years ago!

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8724580

Please point out the 10X acceleration in sea level rise.  Of course, the 9 inches over the next 100 years (which just so happens to trend the last 100 years, too) is a far cry from the 5 feet all the smart scientists on this thread swear by.  Notice the complete and utter lack of a J curve.  There is no curve upward, no acceleration, period.  Facts are facts.

Yes, facts are facts. If you fit a quadratic curve to the data (which you would need to do in order to calculate acceleration as any freshman physics student could attest), you would see that the rate of sea level rise has increased from 1.78 mm/yr in 1913 to 3.04 mm/yr in 2019. This is a 70% increase per 100 years. So if the next 100 years trends like the last 100 years, we will in fact see an increase in sea level of over 14 inches in the next century.

That being said, this exercise was extremely pedantic, because scientists have already thoroughly studied the data for us and presented conclusions to us. We have the IPCC results and, as noted previously, independent analysis by Berkeley Earth (again, funded by Koch brothers in the hope of disproving global warming). These results give a range of values based on the amount of emissions, and the average global results are surprisingly fairly in line (at the low end) with my crude calculations for one small location on Earth (Key West).

Let me repeat that a constructive discussion could be had on what we should do politically about global warming. A productive discussion cannot be had between facts and alternative facts.

sol

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #218 on: February 26, 2019, 09:15:54 AM »
What's the best way to appeal to emotion without logic?

Should we build an argument that carbon dioxide is sexually violating unicorns?  Draw parallels between religious manuscripts and climate change?  Delve into the false fields of homeopathy, astrology, and phrenology?

If so, how do we do that without losing all credibility with people who are capable of rational thought?

I can think of a few possibilities, off the top of my head, and none of them involve violating unicorns.

An appeal can be emotional without being illogical, in some cases.  The aforementioned appeal to scripture, for example, is an attempt to capitalize on religious affiliation to encourage responsible environmental stewardship, in much the same way that religious affiliation is often used to encourage other pro-social behaviors like respecting your neighbor's property instead of stealing it.  Both of them are emotional attempts to say "you should behave in this way because it is right and just."

My local Native American groups make a similar argument about good resource management being necessary to their long term survival.  The land is on loan from their descendants, who will also have to live here someday, and they're not strong believers in the sustainability of modern urban living.  They lived here for thousands of years before we covered the hillsides with houses and roads in the past century, and they believe that someday all of those houses and roads will be gone and they will still be here, eating the same native plants and catching the same native fish.  Their argument is one based on their history and identity being tied to a physical place, in a way that it rarely is for white Americans who are more mobile, and who tie their identity to something other than a home.

Then there's the seatbelt argument that somebody made earlier in this thread:  you wear your seatbelt every time you drive even though you expect to NOT crash, because the consequences of being wrong are so dire.  This argument is partly logical, but I think it's also strongly emotional.  Considering the whole range of possible outcomes every time you go for a drive, it's the absolute worst possible one that you guard against because you don't want to die a horribly violent death, and because the guarding is relatively painless compared to bleeding out in a fiery crash.  I think this is why some climate change "enthusiasts" (even some in this thread) tend to exaggerate the consequences of climate change.  Fear works to motivate good behavior.  That's an emotional appeal.

Social in-group belonging is a strong motivator, but unfortunately this one works in both directions.  There are people who proudly use recyclable grocery bags when they drive their Prius to the grocery store, because it makes them feel good to be responsible and they get social brownie points from their equally environmentally conscious neighbors.  Everyone gets to feel warm and fuzzy for doing their part, and if you're not doing your part you get the side-eye.  But there are equally strong (if not stronger) in-groups for people like AlexMar, who get social brownie points for rolling coal on a Tesla, or wearing a MAGA hat made in China.  People feel rewarded for following the trend of their local friends and family, whichever way they lean, so this particular emotional motivator can work both ways.

Conspiracy arguments are similarly double-sided.  One side believes climate change is a Chinese hoax perpetrated on honest hard-working Americans in order to suppress American corporate profitability, and the other side believes American corporations have colluded with government officials to plunder and pollute in the mindless pursuit of higher profits.  Both of these arguments are attractive to a certain kind of person.  They're also not mutually exclusive.

I'm sure you can come up with a few more examples, if you sit in your chair for the next five minutes and think hard about it.  Convincing people to do the right thing can take lots of different forms, and the scientist's approach we've seen for the first few pages of this thread is certainly ONE of them, but it's probably not the most useful for people who are not scientists themselves, or otherwise open to facts changing their hypotheses.  AlexMar's repeated lies about sea level rise, for example, have convinced me that he's entirely immune to observable reality.  Burying him in correct measurements isn't going to matter to him at all, because his mind is already made up no matter what the data say.  I suspect there are millions of people like him in America.

LennStar

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #219 on: February 26, 2019, 09:30:42 AM »
...
If so, how do we do that without losing all credibility with people who are capable of rational thought?
God has given us the Earth. How dare we destroy his most beautiful work?!?
I tried this approach with a relative who is both devoutly religious and deeply skeptical of anthropogenic change.  His response was "if god didn't want us to burn fossil fuels, why did he put all this coal for us to find?"
We've since found some common ground that water, air etc should be clean and that we can (and should avoid) over-harvesting God's bounty, and in general be good stewards of the land.
If God did not want us to sin, why did He created us to be sinners (and punished for sinning)?
Clearly God wants us to show him that we can make ourselfs better. Stop ddoing things like destroying His creation.

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #220 on: February 26, 2019, 09:32:45 AM »

Let me repeat that a constructive discussion could be had on what we should do politically about global warming. A productive discussion cannot be had between facts and alternative facts.

While we are waiting for other posters to recant previous erroneous statements, let's continue with the OP topic at hand.

What appropriate policies should the US put in place to address a changing climate?  Granted under the current denialist leadership even sensible solutions may be a non-starter, but suppose in 22 months our government comes back into line with the consensus from both the global scientific community and our own federal scientists?

While I dislike governmental regulations in general, it seems to me that little is accomplished under 'market forces' without them (as examples - fuel efficiency in vehicles).
I think an oft-neglected source of emissions is poorly insulated buildings.  Our building codes (namely minimum insulation and air-infiltration standards) have not kept pace with modern construction materials and techniques.  Rather than using just a 'stick' approach (regulations) I'd like to see a lot more incentives to offset the costs of ultra-efficient building design, including deep-energy retrofits on existing structures.  We've had federal subsidies on EVs of $7,500 and on PV panels- that seems like a good start to encourage builders to spend an extra few $k to better insulate and seal buildings.  Plus, it's pretty verifiable with energy usage and simple air-flow tests.

...just a thought...

Glenstache

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #221 on: February 26, 2019, 10:14:20 AM »

Let me repeat that a constructive discussion could be had on what we should do politically about global warming. A productive discussion cannot be had between facts and alternative facts.

While we are waiting for other posters to recant previous erroneous statements, let's continue with the OP topic at hand.

What appropriate policies should the US put in place to address a changing climate?  Granted under the current denialist leadership even sensible solutions may be a non-starter, but suppose in 22 months our government comes back into line with the consensus from both the global scientific community and our own federal scientists?

While I dislike governmental regulations in general, it seems to me that little is accomplished under 'market forces' without them (as examples - fuel efficiency in vehicles).
I think an oft-neglected source of emissions is poorly insulated buildings.  Our building codes (namely minimum insulation and air-infiltration standards) have not kept pace with modern construction materials and techniques.  Rather than using just a 'stick' approach (regulations) I'd like to see a lot more incentives to offset the costs of ultra-efficient building design, including deep-energy retrofits on existing structures.  We've had federal subsidies on EVs of $7,500 and on PV panels- that seems like a good start to encourage builders to spend an extra few $k to better insulate and seal buildings.  Plus, it's pretty verifiable with energy usage and simple air-flow tests.

...just a thought...

Building insulation upgrades and code revisions would be great, though I suspect the latter would be fought... but probably not by Dow Corning.  Energy savings from reducing heat loss usually far outstrip the benefits of swapping out the heat source.

I think that education is important also. Having people come out of K-12 with a basic understanding of climate science will allow them to make better-informed political and personal decisions.

GuitarStv

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #222 on: February 26, 2019, 10:21:13 AM »

Let me repeat that a constructive discussion could be had on what we should do politically about global warming. A productive discussion cannot be had between facts and alternative facts.

While we are waiting for other posters to recant previous erroneous statements, let's continue with the OP topic at hand.

What appropriate policies should the US put in place to address a changing climate?  Granted under the current denialist leadership even sensible solutions may be a non-starter, but suppose in 22 months our government comes back into line with the consensus from both the global scientific community and our own federal scientists?

While I dislike governmental regulations in general, it seems to me that little is accomplished under 'market forces' without them (as examples - fuel efficiency in vehicles).
I think an oft-neglected source of emissions is poorly insulated buildings.  Our building codes (namely minimum insulation and air-infiltration standards) have not kept pace with modern construction materials and techniques.  Rather than using just a 'stick' approach (regulations) I'd like to see a lot more incentives to offset the costs of ultra-efficient building design, including deep-energy retrofits on existing structures.  We've had federal subsidies on EVs of $7,500 and on PV panels- that seems like a good start to encourage builders to spend an extra few $k to better insulate and seal buildings.  Plus, it's pretty verifiable with energy usage and simple air-flow tests.

...just a thought...

The fixed cost parts of my water, gas, and electricity bills tend to be higher than the parts that I have control over for much of the year.  I could double my electrical or water usage while barely increasing my bill 10%.  Why conserve if there's no benefit in doing so?

If you want to create an incentive for conservation, make some rules about charging people for energy where you pay more higher prices as you use more and there are no fixed costs.  Let the free market sort the problem out for you.  If it costs more to waste, people will be more concerned about doing so.

nereo

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #223 on: February 26, 2019, 11:14:22 AM »

The fixed cost parts of my water, gas, and electricity bills tend to be higher than the parts that I have control over for much of the year.  I could double my electrical or water usage while barely increasing my bill 10%.  Why conserve if there's no benefit in doing so?

If you want to create an incentive for conservation, make some rules about charging people for energy where you pay more higher prices as you use more and there are no fixed costs.  Let the free market sort the problem out for you.  If it costs more to waste, people will be more concerned about doing so.
The problem as I see it is that energy efficiency isn't very high on people's priority list when buying a home - perhaps precisely because sizable changes in energy usage are met with only modest increases in electric bills (or what you call 'hydro bills'). And homes are built on spec, which means builders construct to the minimum code in order to maximize profits.  Regardless, as a species we've never been terribly good at weighing short-term vs long-term savings (with our tendancy always to go towards the longer-term).  People will take a $3,000 upfront savings over utility bills that would be $50 cheaper, even though the ROI would be about 5 years and a more comfortable home to boot. 

LennStar

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #224 on: February 26, 2019, 11:18:57 AM »
GuitarStv, WTF are your contracts?
Even 50% fixed costs is high.


Let me repeat that a constructive discussion could be had on what we should do politically about global warming. A productive discussion cannot be had between facts and alternative facts.

While we are waiting for other posters to recant previous erroneous statements, let's continue with the OP topic at hand.

What appropriate policies should the US put in place to address a changing climate?  Granted under the current denialist leadership even sensible solutions may be a non-starter, but suppose in 22 months our government comes back into line with the consensus from both the global scientific community and our own federal scientists?

While I dislike governmental regulations in general, it seems to me that little is accomplished under 'market forces' without them (as examples - fuel efficiency in vehicles).
I think an oft-neglected source of emissions is poorly insulated buildings.  Our building codes (namely minimum insulation and air-infiltration standards) have not kept pace with modern construction materials and techniques.  Rather than using just a 'stick' approach (regulations) I'd like to see a lot more incentives to offset the costs of ultra-efficient building design, including deep-energy retrofits on existing structures.  We've had federal subsidies on EVs of $7,500 and on PV panels- that seems like a good start to encourage builders to spend an extra few $k to better insulate and seal buildings.  Plus, it's pretty verifiable with energy usage and simple air-flow tests.

...just a thought...
Using the sun is really nice, but getting a "real" house is more important. It is possible today to have an house that uses nearly no energy (compared to older ones).
Of course that does not work with what I (as never been in US) think of as a normal US house. You know, build from wood planks etc.

If you are new to this type of thing, look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-energy_house before going to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house
and for fun you can have a look at earthships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship

MasterStache

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #225 on: February 26, 2019, 12:05:27 PM »

Let me repeat that a constructive discussion could be had on what we should do politically about global warming. A productive discussion cannot be had between facts and alternative facts.

While we are waiting for other posters to recant previous erroneous statements, let's continue with the OP topic at hand.

What appropriate policies should the US put in place to address a changing climate?  Granted under the current denialist leadership even sensible solutions may be a non-starter, but suppose in 22 months our government comes back into line with the consensus from both the global scientific community and our own federal scientists?

While I dislike governmental regulations in general, it seems to me that little is accomplished under 'market forces' without them (as examples - fuel efficiency in vehicles).
I think an oft-neglected source of emissions is poorly insulated buildings.  Our building codes (namely minimum insulation and air-infiltration standards) have not kept pace with modern construction materials and techniques.  Rather than using just a 'stick' approach (regulations) I'd like to see a lot more incentives to offset the costs of ultra-efficient building design, including deep-energy retrofits on existing structures.  We've had federal subsidies on EVs of $7,500 and on PV panels- that seems like a good start to encourage builders to spend an extra few $k to better insulate and seal buildings.  Plus, it's pretty verifiable with energy usage and simple air-flow tests.

...just a thought...

I can give you an example of what not to do. Our "wonderful" governor decided, during a fantastic solar boom our state was experiencing, to freeze RPS requirements for utilities. Well that pretty much brought solar in particular to a screeching halt. It was done all in the name of "lowering energy bills." I was trying to track it down but a study was conducted. Turns out the average savings was $5/year per household. Um what??

I was taking some local college renewable energy courses at the time. This also happened to be when I installed solar on my own house. Some of the guys I was in class with worked at a couple different large energy companies that focused on renewables. Needless to say they had to start searching out of state for projects.

Our same governor did just veto a new proposed bill that would have reduced RPS requirements even further. Looking forward to moving to an area that is more friendly to renewable energy.

GuitarStv

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #226 on: February 26, 2019, 12:16:32 PM »
GuitarStv, WTF are your contracts?
Even 50% fixed costs is high.


Let me repeat that a constructive discussion could be had on what we should do politically about global warming. A productive discussion cannot be had between facts and alternative facts.

While we are waiting for other posters to recant previous erroneous statements, let's continue with the OP topic at hand.

What appropriate policies should the US put in place to address a changing climate?  Granted under the current denialist leadership even sensible solutions may be a non-starter, but suppose in 22 months our government comes back into line with the consensus from both the global scientific community and our own federal scientists?

While I dislike governmental regulations in general, it seems to me that little is accomplished under 'market forces' without them (as examples - fuel efficiency in vehicles).
I think an oft-neglected source of emissions is poorly insulated buildings.  Our building codes (namely minimum insulation and air-infiltration standards) have not kept pace with modern construction materials and techniques.  Rather than using just a 'stick' approach (regulations) I'd like to see a lot more incentives to offset the costs of ultra-efficient building design, including deep-energy retrofits on existing structures.  We've had federal subsidies on EVs of $7,500 and on PV panels- that seems like a good start to encourage builders to spend an extra few $k to better insulate and seal buildings.  Plus, it's pretty verifiable with energy usage and simple air-flow tests.

...just a thought...
Using the sun is really nice, but getting a "real" house is more important. It is possible today to have an house that uses nearly no energy (compared to older ones).
Of course that does not work with what I (as never been in US) think of as a normal US house. You know, build from wood planks etc.

If you are new to this type of thing, look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-energy_house before going to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house
and for fun you can have a look at earthships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship


Through Toronto Hydro, looking at my electricity bill is usually something like this:

Fixed charges:
Delivery: 61$
Regulatory charge: 3.28

Stuff I control:
Peak Usage:9$
Mid-Peak Usage: 8$
Off-Peak Usage:20$



Looking at my gas bill it's similar, the more you use the less you get charged (bulk gas consumption discount).  I never use more than the lowest bracket though (even in winter), so am always charged the maximum amount for usage.  In the summer we use very, very little gas.  Basically just the hot water . . . so a 35$ bill might be 3-5$ of usage.

nereo

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #227 on: February 26, 2019, 12:21:32 PM »

Using the sun is really nice, but getting a "real" house is more important. It is possible today to have an house that uses nearly no energy (compared to older ones).
Of course that does not work with what I (as never been in US) think of as a normal US house. You know, build from wood planks etc.

I'm not entirely sure what you are saying here, LennStar - that you can't have a house with low energy requirements if it is made from wood?? 
I've seen quite a few LEEDs-certified  homes that used stick-frame construction with modern framing techniques, and many more that have a net-zero energy budget with PVs.
Or maybe I'm not understanding what you are saying...  Also what do you mean by a "real" house?

Boofinator

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #228 on: February 26, 2019, 12:31:08 PM »
While we are waiting for other posters to recant previous erroneous statements, let's continue with the OP topic at hand.

I kept hoping AlexMar would move in this direction, because maybe he might be able to convince people using economics. My prodding has not yet paid off.

People bring up the huge economic expense of trying to tackle the problem, and I agree to some extent, but at the same time the economy exists to fulfill our needs first, then our wants (and climate stabilization is politically approaching the level of need (at a glacial pace)). To start with specifics:

1) There are parts of the climate change problem that could be treated as short-term investments, and these should be implemented as soon as possible. If there is a positive overall return on investment (such as higher building insulation, programmable thermostats, etc.) these should be made into law (similar to the CAFE standards). This should be a no-brainer bipartisan solution (just like the car companies are currently advocating for higher standards).* The only people who would argue against this approach would be shills for the real estate and/or energy companies or deluded laissez-faire extremists.

2) I'm not sure gas (or carbon) taxes work politically due to their regressiveness. The best way to add a gas tax (or similar fossil fuel tax) would be either to make it revenue neutral through a dividend check (there has been bipartisan support for this) or to increase minimum wage so that those most affected can at least still afford to travel to work. Others have suggested using the proceeds of such a tax to fund liberal carbon policies, however I feel this would be political suicide (I'm a fan of compromise).

3) I think nuclear is probably a medium-term solution to back up more renewables. Natural gas of course the short-term solution. Long-term solutions still in development.

These are the strategies I favor, but I also realize they are something of a pipe dream.

*My current employer (very ironically) has no programmable thermostats in the buildings and the heating setpoints are higher than the cooling setpoints. To me this is the height of hypocrisy and absurdity given their messaging.

nereo

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #229 on: February 26, 2019, 12:56:22 PM »
Where I have the most uncertainty is how best to approach carbon sequestration (the "other" side, while also addressing curbing emissions).

Without a market for carbon offsets it seems unlikely that carbon sequestration efforts will have any economic incentive for the private sector.  Its also an area where there are a plethora of pilot-scale ideas but little in the way of testing and verifying large-scale concepts.  It seems we need to have some sort of governmental funding to push some of this tech beyond the proof-of-concept stage and towards proof-of-feasibility implementation, but that of course is filled with political minefields.  Anytime you are trying out new concepts there's going to be a lot of promising ideas that don't pan out in the end, which detractors will scream about "wasting tax-payer dollars".  At the same time we spent $2.5B to put one smallish rover on Mars for a - seems to me that's a reasonable amount to start with to develop such tech here in the US - at present we seem to be spending ~$40MM/year on grants for carbon sequestration, which seems like an insanely small amount.

I suppose more "X-prize" like competitions will spur some innovation, but only from already well-funded companies.

pecunia

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #230 on: February 26, 2019, 12:59:29 PM »

- SNIP -

3) I think nuclear is probably a medium-term solution to back up more renewables. Natural gas of course the short-term solution. Long-term solutions still in development.

These are the strategies I favor, but I also realize they are something of a pipe dream.

*My current employer (very ironically) has no programmable thermostats in the buildings and the heating setpoints are higher than the cooling setpoints. To me this is the height of hypocrisy and absurdity given their messaging.

If a concentrated effort was made to build low waste safe generation 4 nuclear reactors using Thorium as fuel, there would be enough fuel to last essentially forever.  These new designs cannot melt down, They do not take enormous amounts of land like windmills and solar cells.  They are not an intermittent source of energy like wind and solar.  They do not contribute to global warming.  They can be built in any corner of the earth.  The power can be used to either power electric cars.  High speed trains can also be a pollution fee form of travel that can use this power.

And unlike the 200 mile per gallon carburetor I used to read about as a kid, these reactors could be reality if WE could conquer FUD.

You can turn the thermostats down and shiver in the dark or use available technologies to solve problems.

Maybe even AlexMar would agree.

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #231 on: February 26, 2019, 01:11:56 PM »

- SNIP -

3) I think nuclear is probably a medium-term solution to back up more renewables. Natural gas of course the short-term solution. Long-term solutions still in development.

These are the strategies I favor, but I also realize they are something of a pipe dream.

*My current employer (very ironically) has no programmable thermostats in the buildings and the heating setpoints are higher than the cooling setpoints. To me this is the height of hypocrisy and absurdity given their messaging.

If a concentrated effort was made to build low waste safe generation 4 nuclear reactors using Thorium as fuel, there would be enough fuel to last essentially forever.  ...
You can turn the thermostats down and shiver in the dark or use available technologies to solve problems.

I would support the construction of more advanced nuclear reactors including using federal funds to help overcome the considerable construction costs - but comments like 'shiver in the dark' I find to be particularly unhelpful.  Efforts to use electricity more responsibly shouldn't be mocked, nor should we attempt to solve our problems by generating ever-large quantities of electricity.  There's an enormous amoutn of energy waste already, and plugging those gaps allows us to both spend less *and* be more comfortable in our homes and cars while we switch to lower-carbon fuels.

Boofinator

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #232 on: February 26, 2019, 01:34:30 PM »
You can turn the thermostats down and shiver in the dark or use available technologies to solve problems.

Maybe you misunderstood. I shiver in the summer (68F setpoint) and sweat my ass off in the winter (74F setpoint). Shit like that provably makes no sense: http://comfort.cbe.berkeley.edu/. That, along with keeping the temperature at 74F all night and weekend means they are wasting at least half their energy costs.

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #233 on: February 26, 2019, 02:14:52 PM »
I'm not entirely sure what you are saying here, LennStar - that you can't have a house with low energy requirements if it is made from wood?? 
You can, but mostly it's not done.
There are actually concepts of wood-only plus energy houses.

Quote
It seems we need to have some sort of governmental funding to push some of this tech beyond the proof-of-concept stage and towards proof-of-feasibility implementation
There was a big project here at a coal power plant.
it has been shut down by the company. It is just too expensive. Coal cannot compete with other energy productions if they have to get the CO2 out.
Also where the hell do you store it? Yes, there are places. But not enough. Also the CO2 will come out eventually, so the best you can do with this is buying time. For the same cost you could possible tackle production better. And of course - if it ever happens that the stored CO2 comes out through an accident, you might kill a lot of people in the area.

Quote
If a concentrated effort was made to build low waste safe generation 4 nuclear reactors using Thorium as fuel, there would be enough fuel to last essentially forever.
Same goes for the deadly waste though.

On this topic I really hope fusion finally comes out of the "we have it in 20 years" loop it's running in for half a century now. Fusion would still be a cluncky and not especially clean (radioactivity wise) thing, but all parts are controllable. 

pecunia

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #234 on: February 26, 2019, 02:17:33 PM »

I would support the construction of more advanced nuclear reactors including using federal funds to help overcome the considerable construction costs - but comments like 'shiver in the dark' I find to be particularly unhelpful.  Efforts to use electricity more responsibly shouldn't be mocked, nor should we attempt to solve our problems by generating ever-large quantities of electricity.  There's an enormous amoutn of energy waste already, and plugging those gaps allows us to both spend less *and* be more comfortable in our homes and cars while we switch to lower-carbon fuels.

Not too worry - Just like the construction of any new generating station there will be capital costs to be paid back by the rate payer.  You will still have your incentives to save energy.  On the other hand if energy is plentiful it can be used for so many good things.  It can desalinate water for coastal cities perhaps pumping water to make deserts bloom.  A hungry world can be fed.

Some of the discussion here has talked abut the changes that comfortable people can make such as making their buildings more energy efficient.  I think there are big chunks of the rest of the world that just want electric light and saving the planet from global warming is probably not uppermost on their minds.  They will be solving that problem of not having that electric light.  They can either solve it with new coal plants or by other methods.  I think the biggest bang for the buck in alleviating the issue of future global warming is by giving these people an easy choice for clean energy.


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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #235 on: February 26, 2019, 02:30:37 PM »
I think to address this issue, we really will have to commit to it like we once did as a country to WWII, or to the space program. I think both political/programmic and hopefully scientific advances will be made.
I think everyone who recognizes there is a problem agrees that the amount of c02 emissions for developed countries has to go down signficantly. We need to do better with conserving the way we use existing fuel. I also agree that we will need to transition away from fossil fuels. Most likely that is nuclear power until we have something better. That also means nuclear power plants should have been starting to have built, like years ago.
 
And 2nd if there is a way to scrub c02 from the atmosphere or sequester it in the oceans we need to develop that technology, like yesterday. It's far easier to not emit it in the first place. The carbon in the form of many different molecules as highly diffused in both the atmosphere and ocean so I don't even know if it's possibly from an economic or energy-cost side, but if is, it could be critical. 

Science has shown that the ocean has absorbed more c02 than predicted. That was good in the sense it delayed runaway greenhouse warming. The problem is that the ocean is at the limit and we are seeing and soon going to see even more adverse consequences from this very soon.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181029165534.htm

The only thing I can suggest to people like Alex Mar, is to get educated about the subject. Go to a place like Science Daily, type in "climate change". Read the abstracts and then read the original articles. And repeat. Or just read the latest IPCC report.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2019, 02:44:20 PM by partgypsy »

pecunia

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #236 on: February 26, 2019, 02:32:13 PM »

"If a concentrated effort was made to build low waste safe generation 4 nuclear reactors using Thorium as fuel, there would be enough fuel to last essentially forever."

Same goes for the deadly waste though.

On this topic I really hope fusion finally comes out of the "we have it in 20 years" loop it's running in for half a century now. Fusion would still be a cluncky and not especially clean (radioactivity wise) thing, but all parts are controllable.

Don't you think people can handle a small amount of nuclear waste?  Some nuclear waste lasts a long time, but not forever.  The waste from coal plants such as heavy metals in the water and soil is forever.  The waste is dispersed rather than being in a small protected area.

New generation 4 fission reactors are based on science that we know now.  It is based on science that works.  It is not just a hope.  Since fusion reactors have not been developed yet, you do not know their potential drawbacks.  Since such a plant does not yet exist, we really do not know their control mechanisms.  Fission plants, on the other hand, have many operating years of experience all over the world.

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #237 on: February 26, 2019, 02:35:10 PM »

I would support the construction of more advanced nuclear reactors including using federal funds to help overcome the considerable construction costs - but comments like 'shiver in the dark' I find to be particularly unhelpful.  Efforts to use electricity more responsibly shouldn't be mocked, nor should we attempt to solve our problems by generating ever-large quantities of electricity.  There's an enormous amoutn of energy waste already, and plugging those gaps allows us to both spend less *and* be more comfortable in our homes and cars while we switch to lower-carbon fuels.

Not too worry - Just like the construction of any new generating station there will be capital costs to be paid back by the rate payer.  You will still have your incentives to save energy.  On the other hand if energy is plentiful it can be used for so many good things.  It can desalinate water for coastal cities perhaps pumping water to make deserts bloom.  A hungry world can be fed.

Some of the discussion here has talked abut the changes that comfortable people can make such as making their buildings more energy efficient.  I think there are big chunks of the rest of the world that just want electric light and saving the planet from global warming is probably not uppermost on their minds.  They will be solving that problem of not having that electric light.  They can either solve it with new coal plants or by other methods.  I think the biggest bang for the buck in alleviating the issue of future global warming is by giving these people an easy choice for clean energy.
Well as this is a US Climate Change policy my comments were on policies which would be enacted within the US, not the developing world.  As noted upthread about 2/3rds of the global emissions come from a few larger developed countries, with >40% coming from just the US and China together.

That said I would like to help with cleaner energy production globally.  With regard to feeding the world's hungry, currently we don't have a problem growing enough food, we have a distribution problem, exacerbated by a poverty problem (people too poor to pay for food from a largely capitalistic food supply).

Quote
it has been shut down by the company. It is just too expensive. Coal cannot compete with other energy productions if they have to get the CO2 out.
Also where the hell do you store it? Yes, there are places. But not enough. Also the CO2 will come out eventually, so the best you can do with this is buying time. For the same cost you could possible tackle production better. And of course - if it ever happens that the stored CO2 comes out through an accident, you might kill a lot of people in the area.
Well the core idea of carbon sequestration is that it *doesn't* come back out, at least not in millennial timescales. I'm not sure I follow your arguments that 'if it comes out you might kill a lot of people' - the carbon is *already* out. 

pecunia

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #238 on: February 26, 2019, 02:38:51 PM »
I think to address this issue, we really will have to commit to it like we once did as a country to WWII, or to the space program. I think both political/programmic and hopefully scientific advances will be made.
I think everyone who recognizes there is a problem agrees that the amount of c02 emissions for developed countries has to go down signficantly. I also agree that we will need to transition from fossil fuel to nuclear power until we have a better plan. That also means nuclear plants need to have been starting built, again yesterday.

And 2nd if there is a way to scrub c02 from the atmosphere or sequestur it in the oceans we need to develop that technology, like yesterday. It's far easier to not emit it in the first place, but anything that can help will be important.

Science has shown that the ocean has absorbed more c02 than predicted. That was good in the sense it delayed runaway greenhouse warming. The problem is that the ocean is at the limit and we are seeing and soon going to see even more adverse consequences from this very soon.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181029165534.htm

Some article -   Sounds rather extreme.  Are there secondary effects?  There is a big dead zone in Lake Michigan.  I guess there is no oxygen so nothing can live.  The oceans produce most of our oxygen.  Could CO2 eventually cause dead zones in the ocean?

partgypsy

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #239 on: February 26, 2019, 02:46:51 PM »
I think to address this issue, we really will have to commit to it like we once did as a country to WWII, or to the space program. I think both political/programmic and hopefully scientific advances will be made.
I think everyone who recognizes there is a problem agrees that the amount of c02 emissions for developed countries has to go down signficantly. I also agree that we will need to transition from fossil fuel to nuclear power until we have a better plan. That also means nuclear plants need to have been starting built, again yesterday.

And 2nd if there is a way to scrub c02 from the atmosphere or sequestur it in the oceans we need to develop that technology, like yesterday. It's far easier to not emit it in the first place, but anything that can help will be important.

Science has shown that the ocean has absorbed more c02 than predicted. That was good in the sense it delayed runaway greenhouse warming. The problem is that the ocean is at the limit and we are seeing and soon going to see even more adverse consequences from this very soon.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181029165534.htm

Some article -   Sounds rather extreme.  Are there secondary effects?  There is a big dead zone in Lake Michigan.  I guess there is no oxygen so nothing can live.  The oceans produce most of our oxygen.  Could CO2 eventually cause dead zones in the ocean?

They already are causing dead zones in the ocean. As others have pointed out, acidification of the ocean affects the very lowest levels of the ocean's food chain. I don't need to spell out what that means.

Boofinator

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #240 on: February 26, 2019, 03:18:07 PM »

I would support the construction of more advanced nuclear reactors including using federal funds to help overcome the considerable construction costs - but comments like 'shiver in the dark' I find to be particularly unhelpful.  Efforts to use electricity more responsibly shouldn't be mocked, nor should we attempt to solve our problems by generating ever-large quantities of electricity.  There's an enormous amoutn of energy waste already, and plugging those gaps allows us to both spend less *and* be more comfortable in our homes and cars while we switch to lower-carbon fuels.

Not too worry - Just like the construction of any new generating station there will be capital costs to be paid back by the rate payer.  You will still have your incentives to save energy.  On the other hand if energy is plentiful it can be used for so many good things.  It can desalinate water for coastal cities perhaps pumping water to make deserts bloom.  A hungry world can be fed.

Some of the discussion here has talked abut the changes that comfortable people can make such as making their buildings more energy efficient.  I think there are big chunks of the rest of the world that just want electric light and saving the planet from global warming is probably not uppermost on their minds.  They will be solving that problem of not having that electric light.  They can either solve it with new coal plants or by other methods.  I think the biggest bang for the buck in alleviating the issue of future global warming is by giving these people an easy choice for clean energy.
Well as this is a US Climate Change policy my comments were on policies which would be enacted within the US, not the developing world.  As noted upthread about 2/3rds of the global emissions come from a few larger developed countries, with >40% coming from just the US and China together.

That said I would like to help with cleaner energy production globally.  With regard to feeding the world's hungry, currently we don't have a problem growing enough food, we have a distribution problem, exacerbated by a poverty problem (people too poor to pay for food from a largely capitalistic food supply).

Quote
it has been shut down by the company. It is just too expensive. Coal cannot compete with other energy productions if they have to get the CO2 out.
Also where the hell do you store it? Yes, there are places. But not enough. Also the CO2 will come out eventually, so the best you can do with this is buying time. For the same cost you could possible tackle production better. And of course - if it ever happens that the stored CO2 comes out through an accident, you might kill a lot of people in the area.
Well the core idea of carbon sequestration is that it *doesn't* come back out, at least not in millennial timescales. I'm not sure I follow your arguments that 'if it comes out you might kill a lot of people' - the carbon is *already* out.

I think he was referring to an acute outgassing similar to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster

Abe

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #241 on: February 26, 2019, 05:14:01 PM »
Regarding developing countries, for a second: wind and solar can be competitive with coal and natural gas. All have capital investments to initially build the plants / windfarms / solar arrays. Most of the installation cost for all four types is labor, which is very cheap in developing countries. Solar used to suffer from high equipment costs, but China fixed that problem with massive panel factories. In the long term, the zero fuel cost acts as a hedge against fluctuations in world fossil fuel and natural gas prices, when comparing to CNG or coal. It is also a hedge against rising labor costs (coal miners, well drillers). These hedges are the main reason both India and China (which both have large low-grade coal reserves, but limited CNG reserves) are pushing renewable energy.

Of course, the major cost of clean energy is storage at night. However, this can be mitigated with a centralized distribution system in the lower-resourced societies since the wind is always blowing somewhere at night (especially offshore), and energy usage drops drastically at night. Also, both China and India are uniquely positioned to use hydroelectric "batteries" in the Himalayas.

LennStar

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #242 on: February 27, 2019, 01:24:17 AM »
I think he was referring to an acute outgassing similar to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster

Yeah. Something like this could happen to every CO2 storage. Of course that are worst case things, but you can't insure against them. You are dead then.

And of course the same applies to Nuclear Power Plants. Nothing is 100% secure, and I don't want another Fukushima. And while Thorium reactors are a lot safer in that respect, they also use the most dangerous stuff, and albeit I always say people worry way too much about terrorism - if there is a real attack by a dozen well trained and equipped terrorists, they will succeed in getting material that could kill tens of thousands, if not millions, if placed in e.g. central New York.

And for feasability: Reactors need water - lot of it - to run, and current "third world" countries aren't exactly overflowing with water in most cases.
France had to shut down a lot of reactors in the last summer (again) because they heated the rivers too much and would have killed all life in there.
Funnily enough, in the winter they had problems with water too.
AND for such big producers, you need a lot of infrastructure to bring the electricity to the thousands of small villages, over long distances. That is costly (compare with how Africa basically jumped landline phone to mobiles, because that is cheaper to install).

Last year Germany had 38% regenerative energies in power production. And my area produced 56% of the electricty we use here from wind.

nereo

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #243 on: February 27, 2019, 05:15:59 AM »
The reality is there's no impact-free and perfect source of energy, and power generation must always be put into the context of comparing the various alternatives.  I've seen too many wind projects get shut down because detractors find them ugly, so instead more fossil fuels get burned (which are also ugly, pollute a heck of a lot more... but they tend not to be near rich people's eyesight).

Grid energy storage is still a monumental challenge to powering everything on solar and turbines.  Gen-IV nuclear reactors IIRC don't have the cooling water requirements of older nuclear reactors.  They've been proven but not implemented on a commercial scale, so the first few are bound to be costly as kinks are worked out.  The major safety advantage as I see it is that, unlike with Fukushima a disrupted reactor will just passively power down on its own.

As for carbon sequestration - to me it's a rather straightforward dilemma:
We've got two sides to anthropogenic climate change - global emissions and the increased carbon that's already in the atmosphere and environment (410ppm and rising).  Even if we rapidly curb emissions we are still left with all the carbon we've already pumped into the system, and that won't go away on its own.  In fact, climate change will continue for decades even if we magically halt atmospheric CO2 at 450.  So we need strategies to draw down and store (sequester) that carbon... which is what coal and petrolium deposits were in the first place.  Forests do this pretty naturally (that's how coal was first formed) but take enormous amounts of land.  Worth noting that New England and Siberia continue to be carbon sinks.  Anyway, there's a whole suite of concepts out there, many of which have been lab or bench tested on very moderate scales which could help draw-down and sequester that CO2.  Sure, we have to make sure sequestration methods are safe, but the alternative is to keep that in the ecosystem which we already know isn't particualrly safe for us.
It's a much longer-term view and solution, but one we shouldn't ignore as we continue to reduce global greenhouse emissions.

pecunia

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #244 on: February 27, 2019, 05:31:05 AM »

-SNIP -

Yeah. Something like this could happen to every CO2 storage. Of course that are worst case things, but you can't insure against them. You are dead then.

And of course the same applies to Nuclear Power Plants. Nothing is 100% secure, and I don't want another Fukushima. And while Thorium reactors are a lot safer in that respect, they also use the most dangerous stuff, and albeit I always say people worry way too much about terrorism - if there is a real attack by a dozen well trained and equipped terrorists, they will succeed in getting material that could kill tens of thousands, if not millions, if placed in e.g. central New York.

And for feasability: Reactors need water - lot of it - to run, and current "third world" countries aren't exactly overflowing with water in most cases.
France had to shut down a lot of reactors in the last summer (again) because they heated the rivers too much and would have killed all life in there.
Funnily enough, in the winter they had problems with water too.
AND for such big producers, you need a lot of infrastructure to bring the electricity to the thousands of small villages, over long distances. That is costly (compare with how Africa basically jumped landline phone to mobiles, because that is cheaper to install).

Last year Germany had 38% regenerative energies in power production. And my area produced 56% of the electricty we use here from wind.

Carbon Dioxide storage - Tons and tons of low volume stuff that must be stored forever.  Nuclear power has a much smaller tonnage of stuff that can be the most heavy dense stuff around that must be stored forever or until recycled back into fuel.  Yeh - I'd think storing all that Carbon Dioxide may be the bigger problem.

Fukushima - I read one person died due to radiation induced sickness.  Most died due to being evacuated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties

Like any other industrial disaster, it seems like people could learn from it, apply the lessons and move on.  I don't think there is any other area of human endeavor where they just decided to "give up."  The overall safety record of nuclear power is still very very good.  It is safer than wind and solar per present statisitics.

Good chemical or biological bombs placed strategically in New York could probably do a good (bad) a job or better than a dirty nuclear bomb for less effort,  We aren't giving up on our chemical industries or researching biology.

You can build nuclear reactors to use little water for cooling.  I believe Fort Saint Vrain in colorado was air cooled like the gas turbines that replaced it.  You can also have closed loop cooling where a given amount of coolant remains on site like your car radiator.  It's just been cheaper to use a river, lake or ocean as the heat sink.

I would hope that they would be building transmission infrastructure in Africa for reliability.  As has been stated the wind does not always blow, the sun does not always shine and river levels can abate.  There are times where power must be obtained from elsewhere.  Distributed small scale sources are limited in capacity.  The economy of scale will dictate that some central station power plants will need to be built.  Power needs to be transported from where it is produced to where it is needed.

This article says we can learn from Germany, but retain nuclear power.  This seems like a sensible course.  The wind is can be an unreliable source of electricity.

https://www.americanexperiment.org/2018/12/german-co2-emissions-remain-stubbornly-high/


LennStar

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #245 on: February 27, 2019, 07:33:02 AM »
Fukushima - I read one person died due to radiation induced sickness.
The overall safety record of nuclear power is still very very good.  It is safer than wind and solar per present statisitics.
I know that sometimes there are work accidents and people die at solar modules or falling from wind turbines... but I don't think we have even reached the thousands, let alone the hundred thousands range of deaths O.o

Don't mix up "people died looking at the reactor" with "people died 20 years later due to increased cancer rates".

For example, for Tschernobyl only 50 "liquidators" died from direct radiation. But estimates are that about 50'000 died from later damage (give or take a factor of 3 depending on whom you ask).

And then there is the radiation that was spread around. Even today in some areas of Germany you are advised to not eat (more than a few) mushrooms you take from the woods, because of that radiation.

Quote
It's just been cheaper to use a river, lake or ocean as the heat sink.
But even with that nuclear power plants are already more expensive than regenerative energies, even if you add storage costs - as long as you also add the real cost of nuclear waste handling etc.
That is the main reason why nearly no new reactors are build.

Yeah, the article... I could tell a long story about that. Let's just say that there is a big fight over coal, just now again, because of jobs. Was the topic of January here. (https://news.google.com/search?for=kohlekommission&hl=de&gl=DE&ceid=DE%3Ade)
And the Energiewende was stalled for similar political reasons. Big companies, that once openly said that >10% regenerative (and a few years earlier 1%) is impossible and such did not try to transform themselves.
We did not even reach the already low "corridor" for new wind power because of the changes made. 

But even with that, and nuclear phasing out, Germany is still Europe's biggest energy exporter (mostly to nuclear France ironically).

btw. if you are interest in current prices for energy in Germany, here is the spot market (current 46,75€, means 4,675 cent per kWh is what you pay the power plant) https://www.eex.com/en/


nereo

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #247 on: February 27, 2019, 08:08:27 AM »
There are lots of reasons to be wary of nuclear plants (either Gen III or newer Gen IV). 
But the question remains what do power sources do we use to power the grid?  Wind is among the cheapest (in locaitons where wind is relatively constant) but production drops during non-windy periods, and turbines have faced stiff opposition in many places throughout the US.  PVs are good when the sun is up, and Germany is a good model at how much electricity can be generated on solar alone.  To date energy storage methods are woefully inadequate and prohibitively expensive in most areas, so relying on wind and solar alone isn't going to cut it.

New Hydro can cost more than new nuclear plants, and has its own environmental footprint.  LNG is big in the US now because its cheap here and cleaner than coal, but of course carries a big carbon footprint.

In sum, while I enthusiastically support building a ton more turbines and expanding solar (particularly throughout the SW), we'll still need energy plants of some sort to balance the load on the grid in addition to tackling this energy storage problem.  So what do we go with?  Nuclear?  Or LNG? or residual fuel? Or...  Of the options that remain, Gen IV nuclear reactors to me have the best tradeoffs.

pecunia

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #248 on: February 27, 2019, 08:15:51 AM »
Per this article electricity in France is 139.07 vs 214.89 Euros in Germany.  France is largely non polluting nuclear.

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=Germany&country2=France

It is smart for the French to import cheap power and export expensive nuclear power to Germany.  I guess both Germany and France have non polluting forms of energy. 

Sorry - I didn't see how to translate the link from Deutsch.

"or example, for Tschernobyl only 50 "liquidators" died from direct radiation. But estimates are that about 50'000 died from later damage (give or take a factor of 3 depending on whom you ask)."

I don't think they've died yet.  Give it another 20 years from 1986 and then blame it on the radiation.  Per the following, the numbers are all over the board depending on whose estimate you use.   They figure maybe 4,000 died, but it is hard to isolate these deaths from other environmental exposure.  Smoking?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster

It was a bad thing, but again learn from it and move on.

"And then there is the radiation that was spread around. Even today in some areas of Germany you are advised to not eat (more than a few) mushrooms you take from the woods, because of that radiation. "

Have you ever questioned that maybe, just maybe, they are being ultra-conservative in their warnings?  Have you ever heard of hormesis?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis

A little bit of sunshine is good.  Too much bad.  Some people have tried to show that just a little radiation may actually be good for you, but have been silenced.  I wonder what the actual dose you would receive from those mushrooms and how many mushrooms would you have to eat for how many years before there was even a measurable effect.  Maybe, there is a greater risk of mercury from those coal plant emissions than from those mushrooms.

"But even with that nuclear power plants are already more expensive than regenerative energies, even if you add storage costs - as long as you also add the real cost of nuclear waste handling etc.  That is the main reason why nearly no new reactors are build. "

It's kind of odd.  They built a lot of them in the 1960s and early 1970s and they were not so expensive to build then.  Perhaps onerous requirements have been applied.  Perhaps expertise has been lost.  They seem to be able to build them in China but not in the West.  The Finns have had trouble completing one, the French are having difficulties (same bad design) and there are 4 units in the American South that are having difficulties. 

Storage costs are currently not too much in the US as the fuel is stored in casks outside the plants.  Money has been paid by the plants for many years to the government for permanent storage, but politics has prevented this.  Billions of dollars were spent on a facility in Nevada, but it was cancelled.  I suspect that the fuel will be recycled in future years rather than stored.  There is great energy remaining in spent fuel.

In the US we have cheap natural gas and nuclear cannot compete with the construction or operating costs.  However, natural gas contributes to greenhouse warming.  New nukes could be used as renewable backup / replacement from wind / solar rather than natural gas to alleviate further greenhouse gas emissions.

This greenhouse gas stuff is frightening.  Germany is doing a lot.  The US is doing much less.  How was the Energiewende sold to the German people? 






Barbaebigode

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Re: US Climate Change Policy
« Reply #249 on: February 27, 2019, 08:23:18 AM »
I view the nuclear waste storage almost as a solution instead of a problem. If only we had a way of storing the pollution generated by burning fossil fuels like we do with nuclear.