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2014 saw no rise in CO2 emissions.

Of course, since years of rapid CO2 rise with no corresponding temperature increases (including historical records as far back as we can look) have shown clearly CO2 is not a factor in climate change, that doesn't matter much...

I think that melting glaciers and Groenland have something to oppose to your magistral demonstration.

BTW, weak solar activity with rising temperatures has proven that there is a great inertia in temperature change.

But let's deny all this and keep polluting the world that we prepare for our child...

If you actually read the news, you'll see that the organisation is still recommending that we reduce CO2 emissions further, and that we ban the worst-polluting types of coal-fired power stations ASAP.

And oh look, now you're bringing out climate denier argument #30 (without even giving any references). For a full rebuttal, see here.

You're making extraordinary claims, you're going to need some extraordinary evidence to back it up. And I don't believe you have it.

2014 saw no rise in CO2 emissions.

Of course, since years of rapid CO2 rise with no corresponding temperature increases (including historical records as far back as we can look) have shown clearly CO2 is not a factor in climate change, that doesn't matter much...

And the IEA is a good objective source as they have to answer to all.

http://www.iea.org/Textbase/np...

IEA REPORT – 2015 - Projected Costs of New Generation Sources:

(USING 10% Discount rate for all sources); NUCLEAR AVG $110/MWH
ONSHORE WIND $100/MWH
OFFSHORE WIND $200

Transmission infrastructure or storage costs for renewables are not considered, however local grid connections and lines are. Nuclear waste decommissioning costs are considered.

It's not up to anyone to deny global warming (or "Climate Cringe" us it's not called) it's up to those who believe in it to prove it's true.

The arctic sea ice all grew back - how does that happen in a "warming world"

Source: NASA.
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...

And it did this when Co2 was rising. If it was true that the loss of ice would make the world warmer because less is reflected back what does it mean now it's all back? Cooler yet maybe?

CO2 stopped rising:
http://www.iea.org/newsroomand...

NOAA data shows cooling not warming:
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...

NASA PR guys mislead if not flat out lie:
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...

For most of earths history it's been about 8 degrees warmer. In historical context we're in a temperature trough and have nowhere to go but up:
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...

The polar bears are fine. One nutjob saw two cubs swimming and that was enough to start that alarmism. The latest monograph on the bears shows their population is increasing. It was down by 2/3 till we stopped most hunting, but look at what's still taken. Anyway the ice is back so who cars?
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...

Sadly this means that nutjob Cruz is right and Obama and Sanders are dead wrong, although I suspect they really mean "fight pollution" but it's better for optics for the worst polluters to say "we're fighting climate cringe" than "yeah we still pollute like crazy. Notice the regulatoin address pollution andnohtin gelse.

Don't tell me it's warming, show me your evidence and I'll tell you if it's warming or not. Notice they never post temperatur graphs any more? Just weasel words like "10 of the warmest years occured in the past 20 years" - that's equally true with descending temperatures too. What they don't say is "each year is warmer than the previous one". Alti they's using outliers here, who cares about transitory peaks the trend is what matters and that's downward.

"Ocean acidification killed off more than 90 per cent of marine life 252 million years ago, scientists believe"
Nonsense published in The Independent in April 2015.

In an attempt to frighten people about rising CO2 and ocean acidification The Independent ran a story postulating ocean acidification could have been responsible for massive die-offs we know as major extinction events. This is unlikely. Translate "scientists believe" as "a couple of guys had a crazy idea and wrote it up.". In a climate of increasing CO2 this might resonate with some, but rising CO2 has now stalled.

Global energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide stalled in 2014
Preliminary IEA data point to emissions decoupling from economic growth for the first time in 40 years
http://www.iea.org/newsroomand...

If it was so acid why didn't the coral die out? It's by far the most sensitive to pH. The fact is, coral has survived 7000 ppm CO2 in the past much higher than the 400ppm of today.

http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

How? It has genes it can switch on that let it ignore heat and pH, that's why. Have they not surveyed all the literature?

Mechanisms of reef coral resistance to future climate change
In less than 2 years, acclimatization achieves the same heat tolerance that we would expect from strong natural selection over many generations for these long-lived organisms.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...

Palau's coral reefs surprisingly resistant to ocean acidification
January 16, 2014 - Marine scientists working on the coral reefs of Palau have made two unexpected discoveries that could provide insight into corals' resistance and resilience to ocean acidification.
http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ....

JJ Scheel (1968:Page 25) proved in the 1950s aquatic life doesn't care about pH at all which you can prove to yourself at home. Transfer any fish from water of pH 9 to water of pH 4.5 and back again - they simply don't care about pH. One of the great aquarium myths along with "nitrates are deadly" (Not with an LD of 2200 ppm for marine larvae they're not) and "Plant bulbs" are essential (no, intensity matters, spectrum not one bit).

It's a widely held myth they do but again, the literature suggests otherwise and I've verified it's right on countless occasions and you can too.

Mythbusters rates this one: utter nonsense. Supervolcanoes blocked out the sun. When you have no light, warmths or plant life, pH of the water, irrelevant to aquatic life, is the least of your problems. Every species alive today survived this, there's no reason to think they won't if it were to happen again - which is isn't.

Refs:
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...
http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ....
http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...
https://books.google.ca/books?...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

8th December 2010 13:24 GMT - A group of top NASA and NOAA scientists say that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

Why did Earth’s surface temperature stop rising in the past decade?

"Since the turn of the century, however, the change in Earth’s global mean surface temperature has been close to zero."
"Since 2000, temperatures have been warmer than average, but they did not increase significantly." Data courtesy of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.

http://www.climate.gov/news-fe...

A hypothesis that the heat was sequestered in the ocean abyss was proven incorrect by NASA in October of 2014 - "the cold waters of Earth's deep ocean have not warmed measurably since 2005", according to a new NASA study, leaving unsolved the mystery of why global warming appears to have stopped in 1998. It started in 1978. But there really has been no warming this century.

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014...

"97%+ of geologists agreed the continents were stable. It was Settled Science. Hundreds of research papers supported it. Overwhelming consensus. And wrong. And, oddly (not really, if you think about it a moment), it was not a geologist but a meteorologist, Alfred Wegener, who ultimately showed all the mutually agreeing geologists they had it all wrong; the continents move." - Dr. Michael K. Oliver

Global energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide stalled in 2014
http://www.iea.org/newsroomand...

Sea ice is increasing
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...

https://web.archive.org/web/20...

http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...

OP is less aware of the science than Cruz is. How is that even possible?

From the International Energy Agency - https://www.iea.org/newsrooman...

15 December 2014 Paris

Global demand for coal over the next five years will continue marching higher, breaking the 9-billion-tonne level by 2019, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its annual Medium-Term Coal Market Report released today. The report notes that despite China's efforts to moderate its coal consumption, it will still account for three-fifths of demand growth during the outlook period. Moreover, China will be joined by India, ASEAN countries and other countries in Asia as the main engines of growth in coal consumption, offsetting declines in Europe and the United States.

From the Department of Natural Resources & Mines - Qld - http://www.dlg.qld.gov.au/reso...

India already imports 20 per cent of its coal requirements and shipped in 152 million tonnes of coal last year.

However rising electricity demands are putting an increasing strain on local production, with state-run Coal India Limited (CIL) asked to up its output by importing more of the commodity to mix with domestic supply.

The demand for coal in India is expected to come in at 551.60 million mt in 2015, however supplies are predicted to amount to just 466.89 million mt, leaving an 84.71 million mt shortfall.

From 2010 to 2040, India’s net coal-fired electricity generation is expected to grow by a total of 910 terawatt hours, more than doubling from the 2010 total, while coal consumption for electricity generation will double.

Here is a map of the countries that subsidize fossil fuels:

http://www.iea.org/subsidy/index.html

They tend to be oil-producing countries with otherwise-weak economies.

Prices determine resource allocation. If you increase gasoline taxes, you discourage gasoline use. This has a variety of ripple effects, including to increase the value of urban relative to suburban real estate (and increase urban rents), and encourage investment in wind, solar, etc. There are winners and losers.

(I believe we should increase fossil fuel taxes; it's the textbook way to price in externalities. It is exactly what a free-market approach to the environment looks like.)

You can do the math yourself with a little search. Here is the 2012 report from the International Energy Agency, you have the numbers for year 2010 breakdown by energy production source. World Energy Outlook 2012, (IEA), current report is accessible for a fee.

For example, solar power from PV panels is 32 TWh, solar power by concentrating solar rays is 2 TWh, wind is 342 TWh, Hydro is 3 431 TWh (page 216). Nuclear is 2 756 TWh, fossil fuels is 14 446 TWh (page 182). Note: This is only the usage for electrical power generation, since other usages of fossil fuels are responsible for air pollution you should take this into account when using pollution numbers.

âoeAnd worldwide subsidies for fossil fuels remain six times higher than economic incentives for renewables.â
http://www.iea.org/newsroomand...

If we stopped that then we would see a cleaner energy mix, the west's subsidies of fossil fuels helps bring down fossil fuel prices for everyone.

I agree that increasing renewables will stabilise the price of fossil fuels whilst most are predicting sharp rises in fossil prices, but then Russia and the middle east hold over 2/3rds of the worlds gas supply so we should be careful not to be too dependant on gas, the UK only has 3 years worth of reserves left now / we are importing about half of our gas.

Half the worlds population won't leave poverty anytime soon if we keep controlling the markets with futures and companies like Nestle and Lever who don't give a crap if people die due to their products and practices. We control 'developing' countries with WTO rules and world bank loans, whilst we don't practice what we preach (subsidies).

Whether or not the grids curtail solar and wind energy is typically a governmental choice rather than a grid operator choice. If your objective is to cut CO2 and fossil imports then it makes sense to take every bit of renewable energy available and only fire up the fossils to fill the gaps. The situation may reach a point where the govt will have to pay some generators to maintain idling equipment as a backup. As wind and solar reach the point where they can exist without subsidy, those subsidies can be moved to geothermal and battery/energy storage R&D.

That is amusing. Building a couple hundred more nukes in the US is not feasible. The same people that create climate hysteria also perpetuate and amplify nuclear hysteria.

At best a few reactors will be added at a couple sites in one or two red states. 15 years from now we'll be burning slightly less coal and a great deal more natural gas, and we'll have slightly fewer than the present 108 40+ year old zombie nukes. Unless one melts down, in which case we'll shut them all and burn even more gas.

And coal's footprint will shrink drastically

LOL. No it won't. We'll just have the Chinese burn it for us. Keeping your stores stocked with low cost goodies ultimately requires vast quantities of cheap power, and the Chinese will burn as much coal as it takes while you feather your environmental nest.

Whatever the climate is going to do given continued CO2 emission it is going to do, and we will adapt. Just as we and all the other species have done before. Coal is the fastest growing energy source on Earth. For every ton of CO2 you manage to shift of Asia, Africa, S. America, etc. they'll another for good measure, no matter how much it offends Western sensibilities.

The article ultimately points to an IEA website for the data on subsidies. If you look there (http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/resources/energysubsidies/ ), much of the subsidies are in the form of fuel price subsidies in developing countries (see http://www.iea.org/subsidy/ind... ). According to a 2009 IEA document (http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/media/weowebsite/energysubsidies/second_joint_report.pdf ), this accounts for $312 billion a year. The rest is attributed to "tax expenditures, under-priced access to scarce resources under government control (e.g. land) and the transfer of risks to governments (e.g., via concessional loans or guarantees. These subsidies are more difficult to identify and estimate compared with direct consumer subsidies." If you take away fuel subsidies in India, for example, many people could not even cook their food, much less get around. In many countries eliminating fuel subsidies would result in mass hardship and even civil disruption. Blithely assuming such subsidies can be eliminated is not a practical solution.

http://www.eia.gov/

also the IEA(not to be confused with the eia above))

https://www.iea.org/co2highlig...

I'm with Musk on this one. It's really easy to underestimate the growth of emerging technologies.

In the 2000 World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency forecasted that the installed capacity of PV solar cells in Europe in 2010 would be 1.6 GW (see page 294). To hedge their bet, they also included an "alternative policy scenario" where PV capacity reached 2 GW in 2010, corresponding to an average capacity growth rate over 1997 levels (0.5 GW) of 11.3% per year. So, what really happened? In 2010, there was 28 GW of PV capacity in the EU. And just last year Europe installed another 22 GW.

Sometimes, revolutions happen.

Anyhow, screw future generations, I've got mine. They can just adapt to the new normal, they'll never miss what they never had in the first place

" US emissions have now fallen by 430 Mt (7.7%) since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions." Global carbon-dioxide emissions increase by 1.0 Gt in 2011 to record high
curse you, rest of the world! Funny how the country the rest of the world trash-talks for not ratifying Kyoto, is the one leading the world in CO2 reduction. Next thing you know somebody will tell you that Anthony Watt drives an electric car, oh wait he does.

You really need to read more about coal and lignite vs anthracite etc. Coal is filthy regardless of which kind you use but some are worse than others. Lignite (aka brown coal) is just about the worst kind of coal you can burn. Scrubbers are not perfect and cannot remove all the impurities from burning lignite.

Looking at these stats: http://www.iea.org/stats/electricitydata.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=DE

There is more energy being generated in Germany burning natural gas (probably Russian) than all the renewables combined. Most electricity comes from burning coal and the fraction is only going to increase after the nuclear reactors get shut down. Or didn't you read about the plan for building new coal power plants in Germany?

The international energy agency estimates that 80.5% of households worldwide have electricity. I don't think half of those having Wifi is completely implausible.

To quote the International Energy Agency:

for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.

in a country where most homes are still heated by either steam boilers or coal/wood burning stoves

According to the International Energy Agency: http://www.iea.org/stats/electricitydata.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=HU, Hungary's heating is produced using mostly natural gas (76%) and electricity using nuclear plants (43%). Coal only constitutes 18% of electricity generation and 13% of heat generation. Only 1% of electricity is reused for heating.

60% of Hungarians live in urban areas, where natural gas is used almost exclusively (predominantly in direct (convection) or central (radiator) heating). Coal stoves are a thing of the past (most have been replaced by gas convection in the eighties). In rural settings where gas is not available or economical (to lay pipelines for) some wood burning stoves are still used but it's a minority. Not sure what you mean by steam boiler (surely not nuclear plant turbines), as they can only be found as protected cultural heritage like historical trains/riverboats. Modern central heating rarely involves a phase transition as it's rather dangerous, next to being inefficient. If you meant electric boilers, some are used in smaller apartments but it's a minority as well due to limited capacity and relative cost.

I'm not even sure why this blurb made it to Slashdot, it's just a PR stunt (we think of the children!) by a bank that has come under pressure by the new nationalist government for being thoroughly corrupt like most other central banks. If anything this should be interesting in the larger EU context where the neoliberal European Parliament is attacking the country for its new constitution (the last of the eastern block to update it post communism), where the management of the central bank has to swear on the constitution (to work in the interest of the people, not their bonuses etc.), like all other civil servants have had to do for ever. I mean, heaven forbid bankers should ever be held accountable for any wrongdoing..

Apart from the BRICS and ALBA countries, Hungary is one of only two in the "civilized" world (together with Iceland) to actually try to keep its sovereignty, try to withstand the IMF and currency/bond market manipulation attacks and not become the next Greece (or Ireland, or Portugal, or Spain, or Italy, or ..).

Citation? When I look at the EPA's GHG inventory for the US, on page 5 I see that Electricity Generation leads with 2.2Pg (Pg = petagram = 10e15 grams). Next is Transportation at 1.7Pg. After that Industrial at .7Pg. All of CH4 (as CO2 equivalent) is .7Pg, all of N2O is .3Pg. Volcanos worldwide are .2Pg.

And, page 9: "Transportation End-Use Sector. Transportation activities (excluding international bunker fuels) accounted for 33 percent of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in 2009. Virtually all of the energy consumed in this end-use sector came from petroleum products. Nearly 65 percent of the emissions resulted from gasoline consumption for personal vehicle use." .65 times 1.7Pg = 1.1Pg, or 20% of our total CO2 (not CO2-equivalent) emissions. In the US, cars are number two, after electricity generation. What are these "lots of other things" that would be better for us to cut, and how much are their yearly emissions?

World emissions are at about 30 Pg, so US automobiles alone account for about 3.7%, ignoring cars in all other countries. World-wide, "road transport" produces 5Pg of CO2 (p. 10), or 1/6 of the total, with no breakdown into personal and not. It is possible that US personal car use alone is not in the top ten of world-wide sources of CO2, but I'd like to see a reference for that or an explanation. World wide, 41% is "electricity and heat". The next big category is "transport" at 23%, then "industry" at 20%, "other" at 10%, and "residential" at 6%. Obviously, there's some category shuffling going on here (transport includes ships and airplanes, too), but if you carved out the world-wide top two (ignoring our contribution to "transport"), our 3.7% for personal autos looms decently large against the remaining 40%. It's bigger than ships, world-wide, it's bigger than airplanes, world-wide.

This might have something to do with why people who worry about global warming don't much like big, wasteful automobiles. They have the secondary problem of making the road a scarier place for people who might like to drive smaller cars or take a motorcycle, scooter, or bicycle. And in theory, yes, we could switch to a GHG-free fuel for our cars and then people could choose them just as huge as SUVs today. But here on Planet Earth, for the next ten years or so, that is not much of an option. An E-vehicle can be more efficient, but right now a whole lot of "E" comes from coal-fired power plants, so it's best to keep them small, and use them where they win biggest (start/stop driving so they can use regenerative braking).

Whoops, forgot that link: Saving Oil in a Hurry.

Then, towards the end, he will surprise you by a bunch of unsophisticated statements like nuclear has no foreign imports requirements for Japan (even though it has both Uranium import and waste export requirements).

Idou, I find people who value "sophistication" over accuracy and correctness, to be rather tiresome. As to the imports, it's worth noting that vastly less infrastructure is needed to import and export (and the exporting part is optional!) nuclear plant fuel than fossil fuel or electricity infrastructure. In a strategic sense, there is far less risk from blockades and trade wars than with other means of importing energy.

Strategically, exporting used fuel rods is a far less urgent problem. They can always pile them up somewhere for a few decades (or as I mentioned before, get fuel rod reprocessing to work), if there are obstacles.

Or that there are no credible alternatives to nuclear, even when nuclear only accounts for like just 13% world electrical power production after 50 years.

What holds collectively doesn't necessarily hold for a small part. Googling around, I see that Japan has almost 30% of its power generation in nuclear power. That same linked chart shows that there's more than a third in additional generation capacity currently planned or under construction. So you're off by over a factor of two. I wonder why you even bothered to make this ingenuous, but easily defeated argument.

Now, replacing 30% of your country's electricity producing infrastructure is a bit complicated, especially given the desire to make it as independent of importation as possible. Let's look at those global statistics and see what the world uses which Japan could replace its nuclear power with.

First, the world generates two thirds (67%) of its power from fossil fuels, most from coal (40%) and most of the rest from natural gas (21%). Either one is dependent on imports. So right away we see the huge flaw with treating Japan like the rest of the world.

The last big item is hydroelectric power. I imagine there is some hydro power left in Japan, but I doubt it'll cover the gap. Note at this point, that fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydroelectric make up 97% of the world's generating capability. The logic that claims Japan can abandon nuclear power because the world only has 13% of its power generation in nuclear, ignores that virtually all of the rest of the power generated is by means that have serious risks for Japan (import risks from fossil fuels) or are already probably fairly well developed (hydro power).

Note that aside from hydro, renewables barely register. They make up a considerable portion of some European countries's power generation, but not the world in general. Solar and wind use a lot of real estate, a particular problem in Japan, and are intermittent power sources. If one wants to replace a base load (always on) power source like nuclear, you need either batteries or a reciprocating power source, that can be started and stopped quickly, like hydro or natural gas.

Geothermal power is a decent base load power source (it does have a non-renewable portion that depletes over time), but to get a lot of it, you need to drill pretty deep and pretty extensively or have the luck of being on a huge heat source like Iceland or Yellowstone.

So once again, I don't see ithe power sources that will replace nuclear power in Japan.

Then he will pop up again weeks later as if the thread never took place. It is a big time sink . . . you have been warned . . .

As opposed to you? In my defense, nothing happened to warrant a change of opinion.

Firstly, The size of the country shouldn't really matter much. It's all about how you plan your society and your industry.

You may have freedom of movement, but paying for the gas is not an entitlement.

Secondly, I don't think you really have a choice anymore about the cost of fuel. According to the International Energy Agency's 2010 report we already hit peak oil in 2006. http://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/weo2010sum.pdf

So even without removing oil's subsidize the cost is going to rise and rise as demand continues to grow.

Crude oil output reaches an undulating plateau of around 68-69 mb/d, by 2020, but never regains its all-time peak of 70mb/d reached in 2006.

Page 8 here: http://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/weo2010sum.pdf

So ya, there will still be some oil somewhere, but can we pump out enough to keep our current economies going? No probably not. It needs to be replaced with something.

If you read Jeremy Rifkin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Rifkin) he figures that the financial collapse of 2008 was actual triggered by oil reaching its all time high a few months previous. It's when everyone realized that the game was over and they couldn't keep discounting the future so much. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Rifkin

Crude oil output reaches an undulating plateau of around 68-69 mb/d, by 2020, but never regains its all-time peak of 70mb/d reached in 2006.

I'm from Belgium and on my electric bill there is a list of energy sources from which my electricity is made of. Nuclear only has a 2% portion.

Perhaps for your particular region, but an anecdote is not data. This 2004 report shows that 55% of Belgian electricity is generated by nuclear, a later study shows close to the same. Just because your bill claims a 2% mix doesn't mean that is representative of the energy mix in your country.

But what about the nuclear waste that has to be stored for a few thousands of years (although this is only a theoretical assumption).

You really think nuclear physicists don't know how to calculate half lives of fission products? If they didn't, they certainly couldn't operate nuclear reactors. Since there are operating reactors in the world it appears that we are actually capable of performing such calculations.

Something is seriously wrong with the US if it cannot generate new nuclear power for less than a range of $0.17-$0.34 per kWh. The IEA 2010 Projected Costs of Electricity Generation surveys costs around the world. The range is given for 5% and 10% discount rates

Sth Korea: $0.029 - $0.042 per kWh

France: $0.056 - $0.092

Russia: $0.043 - $0.068

For some reason, the IEA estimates for the cost of new nuclear in the US are comparable to these figures. All estimates include spent fuel management and decommissioning.

Nuclear Costs around the world

The IEA report also finds that with a $30 per tonne CO2 price nuclear is, in general, price competitive with everything, including coal. For the Asian region, it finds nuclear significantly cheaper than any other option. In general, it is competitive with or cheaper than on-shore wind - the cheapest renewable.

2010 Projected Costs of Electricity Generation

Hence the "invade" part, to get it cheaper...

You're probably just kidding, but..

Because oil is fungible that still wouldn't make any difference. Even now It's not like a gallon of gas made from oil from the U.S. is any cheaper than when it's made from oil elsewhere. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration the U.S. imported 51% of the oil consumed in the U.S. in 2009 It follows that the U.S. already produces half it's own oil.Even if we invaded Canada and 'took' their oil, the consumer would still have a price based on the world market. I suppose the government could try to dictate the price of oil. But I don't think that's even possible (never mind constitutional) with our insatiable demand. In all reality supply has some debatable limit and is beyond our control.

Also according to the E.I.A. we get our oil from all over the world. In other words, it takes the world to feed our demand. You have a big field, we want some. You're close, we want some.

Gas goes up, the economy goes down. Gas goes down, the economy goes up. There are more factors, but gas is fundamental to modern life. Cheap energy means lots of cheap stuff and cheap distribution.

I found many of these reports full of information
.
Perhaps you might argue that I should not be inebriated when I reply, as I do not think my post is directed towards you but I'm going to hit post anyway because I've already typed all of this out.

Wiki refs a Texas Transportation Institute study that says 5.7 billion U.S. gallons were lost due to congestion in 2007. This works out to 371,819 barrels/day of oil, which would be 1.9% of the 19,278,000 barrels per day we used in July 2010, or 4% of the finished motor gasoline. These numbers from the DOE's Energy Information Administration. I always thought traffic congestion must gobble up some huge amount of fuel, but it's actually more like the output of a few offshore oil fields. Still worth addressing, but I think encouraging HOV lanes and the like are more the idea.

The International Energy Agency published a good doc on Saving Oil in a Hurry (pdf). Lots of pertinent info therein.

Clearly this technology is meant for a future war, but where are we planning to fight our next war?

- uranium was thought to be pretty much endless, so why do more research into thorium? (yes, U is getting in short supply now)

The uranium fuel cycle requires refinement of U235 (which also happens to be the first step to making an atomic a bomb) and leads down a path which creates weapons-grade plutonium (an alternate material for making an atomic bomb). The thorium fuel cycle does not have this problem.

- nuclear power still has the stigma of 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl attached to it. It'll be tough to get public opinion on that changed,

Measured by deaths per GW-years of electricity generated (p. 241, fig 7.2.7), nuclear power is the safest form of electricity generation man has invented. And yes, that stat includes Chernobyl. In terms of injuries per GW-years (p. 248, fig 7.3.4), nuclear is about the same as gas, oil, and hydro (coal is the safest). The public perception that nuclear power is dangerous is a myth perpetuated primarily by anti-nuclear and anti-development (mostly environmental) interests who quickly realized their main causes could be severely undercut by the establishment of nuclear power as a clean and cheap form of energy.

especially with advances in fuel cell and solar technologies

Solar is just about the worst energy-producing technology currently at our disposal. In a global survey of installed power systems, its cost per MWh (p. 122, fig 1) is roughly 10x-15x more than coal. Even wind does significantly better at 3x. Yeah it's great to dream, but solar is probably going to need another 50+ years of research and development before it's able to take over our wide-scale power generation needs economically.

Based in Russia?
Address from http://www.iea.org/about/contact.asp:
9, rue de la Fédération
75739 Paris Cedex 15, France
Telephone:
Fax: (33 1) 40 57 65 00/01
(33 1) 40 57 65 59

Even if it were initially more expensive (which it is not), it would still be worth perusing, because only through nuclear energy can we hope to break the bounds of limited energy, create a world of plenty, journey to the stars and beyond.

It seems to me that you are ignorant. Please read this for instance. From the article:

Mankind’s total primary energy supply (TPES) was 433 Ej in 2002, including non-commercial biomass, equivalent to a continuous power consumption of 13.75 TW. This compares to the solar radiation intercepted by the Earth of 173,000 TW, of which 120,000 TW strike the Earth’s surface (the difference being reflected by the atmosphere directly to the outer space). Solar energy is thus the primary energy source on our planet’s surface – and exceeds 8,700 times our current primary energy supply. In other words, the Earth receives from the sun each hour as much energy as mankind consumes in a year. The IEA projects a TPES of about 688 Ej in 2030, equivalent to 21.8 TW of power (IEA 2004). Solar energy would still be 5,500 times greater.

At the same time, the majority of the population is not willing to pay the 20% (or more) hit to GDP it would take to prevent more CO2 from going into the atmosphere.

Cite. please. NRDC estimates the cost doing nothing could be as high as 3.6% of GDP. The IEA estimates the cost of a 50% reduction in CO2 would run about 1.1% of world GDP over the next 30 years.

Or perhaps because they do understand it? Compared to wind energy, the initial cost are twice as much, operating costs thrice as much and fuel costs infinitely more. And that was 6 years ago, wind has come down since, while nuclear remains the energy of the future...

In a global survey of energy costs (PDF warning) looking at construction, operating, and fuel costs; nuclear costs about US$31-$53 per MWh. Wind ranges from about US$45 in the US to over $140 in the Czech Republic, about $65 per Mwh overall. The U.S. figures are lower because the U.S. amortizes wind farms' construction costs over 40 years, while the rest of the world does it over 30 years. So $60/MWh is probably a more realistic figure, putting Wind at about twice the cost of Nuclear.

Oh, and besides high costs and 8-12 years of construction time, nuclear energy has to deal with safety, waste and proliferation. Somehow it's just not what investors are looking for right now.

Most of these concerns are entirely political. The huge construction time is due to excessive regulation due to (mostly) unfounded fears over nuclear power's safety. Nuclear power is the safest form of electricity generation man has invented (PDF, page 240-241). Even including Chernobyl, it has the fewest number of fatalities per GWh of electricity generated. (The most dangerous widely-used power source is actually hydro, with large numbers of fatalities associated with dam failures.) In 50+ years of commercial nuclear power generation in the U.S., there has not been a single fatality despite providing ~20% of our electricity. There have already been a few wind power maintenance-related fatalities despite their almost non-existent contribution to the power grid.

Nuclear waste is also a red herring. A 750 MW nuclear plant (about the electricity needed to power a city of a half million) produces about enough spent fuel in a year to fit in one or two bathtubs. Add in incidental irradiated material (concrete, etc) and it's about enough to fill your bathroom. That's all the waste there is for providing electricity to half a million people for a year

In comparison, a 750 MW coal plant will burn about 3-5 million tons of coal a year, producing 5-10 million tons of CO2, and releasing about 20% of the particulate matter into the atmosphere including a lot of radioactive trace elements. In fact, these trace radioactive materials contain more energy than the coal itself (that is to say, burning coal automatically produces more radioactive waste per MWh generated than nuclear). If you're truly worried about radioactive waste being released into the environment, you should be screaming for all the coal plants to be replaced by nuclear plants ASAP so at least the radioactivity is contained instead of released into the atmosphere.

Furthermore, a great deal of the spent fuel can actually be reused. Conventional nuclear plants only use about 5% of the energy contained in the fuel. The rest is treated as waste because...

Proliferation is the only real concern. Extracting the remaining ~95% of the energy from nuclear fuel thus far requires the use of breeder reactors, which unfortunately produce weapons-grade plutonium as a byproduct. There are some new reactor designs which try to minimize this (as well as an old design canceled in the 1970s).

The fact remains that there's a lot of free energy out there.

It ain't free. In a 2005 accounting of global energy sources (PDF), all of the "free" energy sources are more expensive than coal in terms of $ per MWh. Wind cost about 1.5x as much as coal/gas/nuclear (the U.S. wind plant figures on page 55 look good simply because the U.S. rates wind plants with a 40 year lifespan, vs 20 years for the rest of the world). About $45/MWh for wind vs. about $30/MWh for coal and nuclear. Solar is a whopping 5x-10x as expensive per MWh.

The problem with the wind and solar is that they are very sparse. While their fuel costs are nil, to capture the same amount of energy as a coal plant produces, they require a much larger investment in infrastructure to gather up that sparse energy. Once you amortize the cost of that infrastructure across the plant's expected lifetime, the energy they produce ends up being more expensive than non-renewables. I'm sure the cost will come down eventually, but switching totally over to wind and solar right now would cause a shock to the global economy on par with the oil price increases in 2008. Hydro, geothermal, and biofuels (which is really using plants as your solar collectors) look like much better candidates long-term.

Denmark generates 19% of _ALL_ its electrical energy requirements using wind.

And just that is enough to quadruple the retail costs, relative to the US.

"Key World Energy Statistics 2008-"
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/publications/free_new_Desc.asp?PUBS_ID=1199

US residential: 10.27 c/kWh
Denmark residential: 38.15 c/kWh

You can't put a nuclear plant next to each village, but you can put a combination of windmills, geo-thermal, solar panels, and waste incinerators (with their heat used for both electricity generation and heating industrial or other buildings, rather than just for heating rivers) in or in the neighbourhood of places where the electricity is actually needed.

No you can't. All the renewables so far - wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal - are very sensitive to geographic location. Some places don't have sufficient wind, sun, rivers, and/or volcanic activity for the respective renewable to be economically viable at that location. For example, if you put windmills in places where it makes economic sense as the U.S. has been doing (PDF, page 55), then it ends up costing about the same as coal and nuclear. But if you start putting them everywhere you can because you want to be green like Europe does, they can end up costing 2x-4x as much per kWh as coal and nuclear.

The only renewable that doesn't suffer from this problem is hot dry rock geothermal, where you drill 3-10 km underground and tap the heat energy that's omnipresent at those depths. It's promising, but still in the early R&D phase.

Also, wind and solar are variable and unpredictable, and thus unsuitable for providing base load power. You'd need either hydro or geothermal to provide base load power, or massive, massive batteries/pumped reservoirs to even out the power generation from wind and solar.

In defense of the 'nutter', nuclear power is so expensive it's not really worth investing in, unless you are planning to build some nukes.

Nuclear power is the cheapest power source, cheaper than all but the cheapest coal plants, cheaper than hydro and wind, much cheaper than solar.
Swedish power company's power generation costs
IEA survey on electricity generation costs (PDF, page 46 fig 3.10, page 57, fig 4.6 and 4.7)

Nuclear is also the safest in terms of fatalities per MWh generated (yes, even including Chernobyl).
Stats on all significant power generation accidents 1969-1996 (PDF, page 240, fig 7.2.6)

There are lots of other neat stats in the two PDFs, including injury rates (nuclear is about the same as hydro, only coal is safer), wind generation is much cheaper in the U.S. (maybe because the U.S. is only building it when it makes economic sense instead of where ever environmentalists want it?), solar costs almost 10x as much as other power sources

He's mocking how little oil drilling in the restricted areas would return. And he's absolutely right about that.

That demonstrates a lack of knowledge of economics. We need every drop of oil we can get. Conservation is great but it will only get you so far.

Put it this way. Right now, IIRC, there is worldwide surplus capacity of something like 2 or 3 million barrels day. As long as we have excess capacity the price of oil will be driven by perceptions. But the moment the world needs more oil than it can produce, the cost of oil will skyrocket like nothing we've seen so far.

Even if it's only an extra few hundred thousand barrels of oil, it behooves us (and the entire world) to have that capacity online and ready to go. Because if we see the day that demand exceeds capacity, even by a few barrels per day, get ready for some truly high prices.

Also, I've seen that claim of 200,000 barrels per day but I haven't seen the source material. Do you have a link handy?

Me: But our economy and demand for oil will continue to grow.

You: Have you checked our economic growth figures lately? Or the world's, for that matter? We're in the red, and the world is only slightly in the black.

And you want to bank our future on the bet that the national and worldwide economic recession will be bad forever? That's not the kind of thinking I want in the White House. Of course our economy and the worldwide economy--and demand for oil--will continue to grow over the long term. We need to be prepared for that.

1) Offshore drilling means oil in 5-10 years -- not in 2 years, and certainly not now. Drilling is a *long term* way to adjust market supply.

Two answers: 1) The "5-10 years" is not accurate. When an oil company decides to drill, it doesn't take that long to deploy. 2-3 years is more accurate. 2) We need a long-term solution, not just a quick fix.

2) Reduction in consumption is equivalent to adding more supply, except that reductions in consumption happen *immediately*.

*Sigh* I already explained this.

No-one is saying that it doesn't make sense to conserve, too. But, short-term economic problems notwithstanding, the long-term trend of the country and for the world is growth. Even if save 600,000 barrels of oil inflating our tires, the economy will still eventually grow and need more than those 600,000 barrels--even if we keep inflating our tires. We STILL need to drill to prepare for the future.

World oil supply today is 87M BBD, while world demand is 88M BBD.

We're talking about capacity, not the amount produced. As the report itself says on page 31: "Tight spare capacity is another supportive factor, especially against the background of rising tension over Iranâ(TM)s nuclear activities." Spare capacity means there's still an ability to produce more than we need, and that's all that's necessary to keep prices in check. When we no longer have that ability, we're toast.

Me: The price of oil is currently being driven by perceptions of the market, not by insufficient oil.

You: Gee, now who's energy plan, in the "short term" section, includes cracking down on speculators? (hint: not McCain's).

*Sigh* I give up. I'm talking to someone that doesn't understand how the market works. If you're blaming "evil speculators" for the price, you're just looking for a scapegoat. The market as a whole prices in its expectations of future supply into the price of oil. You can't avoid that. Speculators make money off changes in those expectations but they can't significantly drive the price up beyond what the market believes is a reasonable price. And if the market believes it's a reasonable price, that price is going to be the price whether speculators make money off it or not.

That might have been the original intent, but if you listen to his quote, he's basically insinuating that there's no need to drill because we can supposedly save more simply by inflating our tires; he's mocking the need to drill for oil by suggesting that we can essentially get just as much by inflating our tires.

He's mocking how little oil drilling in the restricted areas would return. And he's absolutely right about that.

Even if you use his 3% figure, that's 600,000 barrels per day. To suggest that that's more than we can get by drilling our known petroleum reserves is not accurate.

The Bush admin's estimates for offshore drilling are 200,000bbl/day by 2030. The most extreme estimate I've seen is 3m bbl/day, but, for starters, that also includes ANWR, which neither Obama *nor* McCain support drilling in, and assumes that all of the oil will be immediately exploited, which is obviously unrealistic, given today's drill ship and rig rents and the fact that oil is a fungible commodity -- you get it wherever it's cheapest first.

But our economy and demand for oil will continue to grow.

Have you checked our economic growth figures lately? Or the world's, for that matter? We're in the red, and the world is only slightly in the black.

So we'd get a one-time bump of 3% but our consumption will still increase so we still need more oil.

What part of "short term" is it that you're having trouble with -- the word "short" or the word "term"? This is one of several *short term* things Obama has suggested, and one that is recommended by virtually every expert in the field. The fact that you're making fun of it is really just a pathetic reflection on you. If you want to discuss his many other short term plans, or his medium to long term plans, I'd be glad to, but you'll actually have to have *READ* them first.

It does NOT negate the need to drill for more oil which is what Obama's mocking statements effectively imply.

Feel free to put all the words in his mouth that you want. It should be obvious to anyone that he's showing how little oil offshore drilling will give, in that merely inflating your tires properly can equal it.

Of course, Obama has started waffling. He originally believed (accurately, I might add) that we shouldn't tap the strategic oil reserve but now he thinks we should.

Wrong (although, since this has been misreported a fair amount, you can be forgiven for believing that). He believes that we should do a swap of light oil from the reserve for heavy oil. Which I think is a great idea; right now, we have a lot of capacity for handling light but not enough for heavy. New heavy capacity is being built, but it's not ready yet.

Which is an inherent admission that to reduce prices, we need more oil on the market. Guess what? Drilling will produce that.

There are several things wrong with that statement.

1) Offshore drilling means oil in 5-10 years -- not in 2 years, and certainly not now. Drilling is a *long term* way to adjust market supply.
2) Reduction in consumption is equivalent to adding more supply, except that reductions in consumption happen *immediately*.

Obama has an energy plan? Regardless of what his stated plan is, it seems it's more dictated by tire inflation and the whims of polls telling him he was fighting a losing battle.Nope. There is still more oil being produced on a daily basis than there is consumed.

Nope. World oil supply today is 87M BBD, while world demand is 88M BBD.

The price of oil is currently being driven by perceptions of the market, not by insufficient oil.

Gee, now who's energy plan, in the "short term" section, includes cracking down on speculators? (hint: not McCain's).

If you want to see REAL high oil prices, wait for the day that the world actually needs more oil than it is producing. At that point, we're toast. Which is why we need to start drilling

About one quarter of the world doesn't have electricity. (1.6 B according to IEA, 2 B according to Greenpeace).

Pumping CO2 underground on the other hand, I'm sorry, but I have a hard time accepting that as a reasonable alternative. [...] What if a massive cloud of CO2 is released suddenly, due to a massive earthquake or whatnot?

Statoil has been pumping CO2 underground in the Sleipner field off the coast of Norway for a few years now. You have to keep in mind that, at those pressures, CO2 becomes a liquid; but, even as a gas, you are putting CO2 in underground pockets that have a proven record of holding gas and hydrocarbons for millions of years: that's the safest place on earth.

As an energy engineer with a specialization in petroleum, my opinion is that of course we should pursue better and cleaner energy sources (be it wind, solar, or the best of them all energy conservation—yes it's an energy source) but as long as we are stuck with the present system we have to live with it, and the best thing we can do with the excess carbon is to put it where it came from in the first place.

Of course, if earthquakes could fracture reservoirs so that gas would escape to the surface they would have done it already in the past millions of years. If we find gas or oil (which almost always has a gas cap anyway) in a reservoir, it means it could not escape for geological times. That's a storage as safe as they come.

These are the most recent figures I could dig up. 3GW * (364*24*60*60)secs / (60*60)hours = 26000 GWh. This is larger than the IEA's figure of 500GWh for solar, though they might have made a huge increase to solar output since 2004.

But it does put it into perspective; even 26000 GWh is about half of the amount of energy they import from nuclear countries like France and Denmark, and about 1/7th of the energy they make from nuclear.

This is a country where everyone is strongly opposed to nuclear and pro-renewables, and they still get 1/3rd of their energy from nuclear, and only 1/20th of their power from renewable sources (the majority of which is hydroelectric). And because they're surrounded by nuclear countries as they use less and less nuclear at home they're having to use more and more nuclear from other countries, which seems like a political move than a practical anti-nuclear move.

World oil production is about 85 million barrels per day and T. Boone does Not think it can be increased.

Currently the USA consumes about 23 million barrels of oil per day.

I watched as a man and his wife who had worked hard and lived fruggley say their nest egg which was at they time they retired worth a little more than the value of a house erode away while they sat on low interest long term mortgage investments

Saudi Arabia currently produces in the vicinity of 10 million Barrels of oil per day

Where does it go from here? Maybe oil will be priced in Euros? Maybe foreign investment will decline as the dollar drops?

World oil production is about 85 million barrels per day and T. Boone does Not think it can be increased.

Currently the USA consumes about 23 million barrels of oil per day.

I watched as a man and his wife who had worked hard and lived fruggley say their nest egg which was at they time they retired worth a little more than the value of a house erode away while they sat on low interest long term mortgage investments

Saudi Arabia currently produces in the vicinity of 10 million Barrels of oil per day

Where does it go from here? Maybe oil will be priced in Euros? Maybe foreign investment will decline as the dollar drops?

Are you saying the lies have to be blatant or truthful? Because this entire story is a lie. Err the idea that the white house cherry picked anything for the benefit of itself in regards to this story it. I'm assuming if there is a lie about people lieing, you would believe the first lie over the second?

Alright, here goes the issues. The article at the Pacint website has some flaws in it. First, it doesn't use the same data as the study the white house cites. Second, it doesn't even pull the data from the ame sources which means they may not be directly comparable. That's right, the EU numbers may be totally misrepresented when compared to US numbers and vice versa. There was no effort to verify reporting criteria or anything that would suggest two sets of data from two separate sources are the same or comparible in any meansingful way. Crime stats between the US and EU aren't comparible because of differences in reporting. there is nothing indecating this isn't the case here.

In case your wondering, the study the president or white house was reporting on is here. Unfortunately, it costs a lot of money. But the article at the pacinst site never even considered this or there would be a reference and disclaimer that thy gathered their set on their own because of the costs. There isn't any disclaimer because this is a deliberate attempt to mislead you into believing something that isn't true to perpetuate the Hatred some people have against the president. They don't even keep the data that the white house was talking about (Co2 from combustible sources)in a proper representation with thier claims which include all Co2 sources including known natural one and byproducts of manufacturing among many more sources. They don't even reference the limits that the white house source was constrained to. This is an act of deception by the people attempting to get you to belive that the white house is lieing.

Also, The idea that is being put forward about manipulating the dates, You will see from the page to the study I linked to, the study only goes up to 2004-2006. Now if the president is concerned about what happened when he was in office, he would look at the year before to the latest year the study cites. I don't understand why this would be any different considering the statement originally was about how the rates of increases were lower in the US while Bush was president.

Now, I hope I wouldn't have to explain to anyone that the IEA is an autonomous international organization that neither the white house nor the president controls. The number they produced were because of internal decisions and regulatory reasons, not because Bush needed some help. This study has been prepared and released since before Bush was in office so the idea of it being tailored to him isn't an option.

Now, which lie is blatant or obvious. The one talking about the lie or the lie the lie is talking about? You do realize if the lier is telling a lie about another person telling a lie, odds are that one lie didn't happen. Also, How many other lies are lies in order to make you say "Saying Bush cherry picks statistics and manipulates data to mislead the public (i.e. lying) cannot be doubted by a reasonable person." I'm a reasonable person, but I knew which lie was first. I also knew what context the white house made the statement on and I searched for their study they cited from the credit they gave to it in their press statement. Does this make me unreasonable?

Wow. I cannot believe I missed this story. There was another and this is probably just a dupe I ignored.

But to your liberal blah blah blah. Your right, it is. And your being marked as a troll shows the BIAS here. It does so in the same way this story does.

First, the analysis from that pacinst website doesn't even look at the same data set the white house did.

Second, they don't even take the data for their US usage and their EU usage from the same data source so there isn't anything representing the data to be the same stuff or reported under the same criteria. It is entirely possible that one or the other reprisents the data totally different like when they classify violent crimes. The EU and US numbers aren't directly comparable because not all of them get reported the same.

Third, in their attempt to represent whatever, They neglected to mention that the study the White House mentions talks about co2 from combustible fuels only. This in itself is a different claim then what the pacinst is trying to make it out to be. The costs of the study might be one reason for this, bashing Bush is probably the real reason.

Fourth, They pick on the years the white house mentions as if it is some elaborate plot to hide the truth. The fact is, when the statement from the white house was "under president bush's leadership", why would they be worried about anything other then the year before he took office to get a baseline, until 2004-6 when the study terminates it's numbers.

Fifth and probably finally, Maybe even the most important, This was a study done by an international organization independent to the white house. Not the white house or the president. They had nothing to do with the numbers or how they were collected or represented. It makes adjustments to bring the numbers in step with each other ensuring the accuracy of their claims and how they compare to each other. Everything in this story is false except the fact someone wrote about it and someone attempted to show the white house doing something wrong. The entire premise of the white house manipulating anything is completely bogus in the least.

Anyways, I'm not going to comment on the god dis it or anything else. I saw the joke in there and thought it was funny too. But you were correct in the blatheringness of the story submission.

I'm one of those .01% too. And to back up your claims of biased nonsense, Think about this.

The article linked to doesn't even use the same data set the White House uses. It grabs data from two separate sources and one of those sources is labeled as a draft report. But more importantly, the data sources provide different data calculations all together. The US data is derived from here (pdf) which covers everything under the sun and the Europe numbers come from here(pdf) Now the US data lists everything it is counting while the EU data list reported totals whatever they may be. They list a few more details in the other parts about the data ofr the EU here I read through some o it and it doesn't look like everything counted is the same. I haven't and will not do an in depth analysis of it to find out one way or another.

I won't do this because the White House cited data from the International Energy Agency which pulls the same data from the countries and do the same calculations for it. We know the data here, even though it doesn't encompass anything that isn't Co2 or from burning fuel sources, uses the same information available for both geographical areas. I think this is interesting for several reasons. One is because the White House said that according to a report by the IEA, and then made their claims. And another is that as I said above, we know the information collected is accurately represented for both areas. There must be a reason they selected only natural gas for some extra supporting evidence at yet another site with more different data.

SO the article makes several claims that are just blatantly false. One is that the White House cherry picked information, The truth is an international agency provided the data, the years were selected because they were the years he was president and you need a qualifier year previous to this to show the changes between what he claims has been accomplished. Another is that there is some conspiracy to skew science. The fact is, the only people manipulating numbers are the one throwing rocks.

Another problem is that they aren't even talking about the same stuff. Yet the Pacinst report claims it is for some reason. The president/White House has said from the start that the IEA provided the numbers. and the IEA report only talks about emissions from combustible sources.

I hope I haven't rambled on too much. It didn't take long to find these problems out when I first saw the pacinst thing on the 9th or 10 of may. This thing is a sham from the start and as you put it, the bias just elevates it.