Slashdot Mirror
US Carbon Emissions Hit 20-Year Low
Freddybear writes "A recent report from the U.S. Energy Information Agency says that U.S. carbon emissions are the lowest they have been in 20 years, and attributes the decline to the increasing use of cheap natural gas obtained from fracking wells. Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for 'cautious optimism' about potential ways to deal with climate change. He said it demonstrates that 'ultimately people follow their wallets' on global warming. 'There's a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources,' said Roger Pielke Jr., a climate expert at the University of Colorado."
It could also means that CO2 release is correlated to the general state of the economy which as of currently is in the shitter.
Now the fuel industry in the US will see this as a challenge to get back to the top of CO2 emissions by the end of the year. :S :P
Should have kept quiet about this to help save the planet.
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
About 1/3 of carbon emissions comes from manufacturing, and most manufacturing is now done in asia.
"There's a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources"
Sure, that's what everyone's been saying. The disagreement is over how to get there. Should we offer insurance guarantees for nuclear power plants? Should we mandate feed-in tariffs for household solar? Should we loosen restrictions on fracking? Should we increase science funding for alternative energy R&D? Should we institute a carbon tax?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Note how the graph says "Carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere in the U.S. from burning coal has fallen to its lowest level in 20 years".
Is the data truly valid for *ALL* emissions, or as the graph suggests, just the ones from burning coal?
Now instead of burning coal we are using shitty methods to create natural gas that will pollute our waters.
It produces around 30-40% less CO2 than coal for the same power output. Coal is particularly bad, both in terms of CO2 production, and other kinds of pollution (though with currently mandated scrubbers it's not as bad a contributor to things like acid rain as it once was).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
So, this means the US almost hit the targets of the Kyoto Protocol. Interesting.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Or you could simply fix the original market failure by adding the cost of emissions (a negative externality) into the price of energy. To prevent this from burdening the poor, return an equal share of the revenue to everyone.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The US getting better is commendable, however what matters from a "not turning the planet into another Venus" perspective is *planetary* carbon emissions. It's not like CO2 stays put over the country that emitted it. And global emissions are still on the rise due to the growing economies in China, Latin American, India, and elsewhere. All this press release is is a pat on the back.
We need nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, and we need them yesterday.
No, not at all.
If you look at the article (it's not that long, won't take that long), they discuss whether the level of economic activity has changed because of the state of the economy. It makes it very clear that this has nothing to do with the state of the economy being in slow-growth.
And it's not the state of the economy is bad for everyone, you know? Luxury cars, yachts, diamonds, high-end houses and condos aren't doing all that badly, and in some cases are doing very very well.
You are welcome on my lawn.
We are running on overbuilt capacity from the 1960s. After that it became very, very expensive to build a large power plant - with most of the new costs being public protests and public comment sessions that turned into more and more evironmental impact studies. Often the result was the project was abandoned.
In Arizona and Illinois (both places I have lived) the solution was simple: build "peaker" plants that run on natural gas and build them up over time from 200MW to more like 1000MW over time. This still results in a lot of protest activity but governing bodies are far more likely to ignore protests when the plant has been safely and cleanly operating for five years or so when it comes time to expand.
The problem is that this is just a delaying tactic that will not solve the problem in the long run. Most parts of the country could use another 2000MW of capacity right now. Certainly if the economy recovers there will be considerable need for more and more electric power which today simply isn't available.
It is just barely possible today to build a data center that is independent of the grid but the costs for the battery storage are huge. Solar PV generation is constantly being touted as a solution, but the only way it is a real solution would be to have it on a lot of homes and other buildings - a lot meaning probably over 50% of them. Unfortunately, this doesn't address the grid problems at 5-9 PM when everyone gets home, turns down the air conditioner temperature and turns on the microwave and the washing machine. To fix that we are going to need capacity that doesn't depend on the sun and today's grid-tied PV systems do not address that at all.
One way out of the coming capacity crisis would be to have a big switch at the power company office: Day (offices) and Night (homes). This is literally what we might be facing soon. The problem is that we could easily have this kind of capacity problem in five years. It takes five years to build a new coal plant without any public opposition - and there would be plenty no matter where it was going to be built. It takes more like ten years to build a nuclear plant and we almost certainly do not have ten years before really running into a big capacity problem. We also need maybe 20-30 new plants coming on line in five years and we haven't even started building them.
The power companies really don't care. They will not be the enemy when you find your refrigerator doesn't run during the day and there is a new box that shuts off your house power whenever the capacity is needed. You can bet their PR departments and outside agencies will be working overtime to make sure someone else gets the blame.
But hey, if we don't build any new plants you can bet everyone will be shouting about how our CO2 emissions are down.
It that isn't a trolling comment I don't know what is. Trying to tie Mann to a scandal in the football program. On top of that Mann has never been shown to be a liar. If his studies lead him to be alarmed about the potential for global warming to devastate our civilization shouldn't he as a leading scientist in the field voice his concerns?
I have never heard it explained why gas plants are cheaper to build and more responsive than coal plants, so I'm curious if anybody knows.
A big part of this is the advantage of modern natural gas power plants is the combined-cycle nature of their operation vs. the single cycle of coal plants. In a coal plant, burning coal heats water which turns to steam which drives a turbine that is connected to the generator. In a combined cycle gas plant, instead of just burning the gas for heat, they use the gas to power a turbine similar to one that you would find in a military jet engine. The turbine produces mechanical energy on its output shaft which drives a generator directly in addition to the hot output gas is also used to power a heat exchangers which boil water and makes more electricity in using the traditional method.
Story has nothing to do with Democrats vs. Republicans except to dumbasses like you determined to find a dark cloud in every silver lining.
And we should look into those treaties again. The Republicans made a wrong decision for not signing it. If they would have, we would have achieved it, and China might have grown slower meaning that there would be more jobs here in the US.
How do you figure that? Kyoto only held China to the standards of other 'developing economies'. But since they are our proxy for dirty manufacturing, all that would happen is more manufacturing would move there.
The only sane treaty holds everyone to the same standards. Granted, the third world points at us and cries about our record of consumption that put us in our current position. But the Chinese don't need to go through a phase of driving 6000 lb cars with tail fins to achieve what we did. Put them in the same state of the art vehicles that you all want us to drive.
Oh, and every pound of carbon that a tree in the USA sequesters should be worth the same as a pound of carbon sequestered in a South American rain forest (sorry Al Gore if this undermines your investments).
Have gnu, will travel.
And the core of a gas plant is a gas turbine. The US has thousands of mothballed jet engines sitting in the Mojave dessert that can be inexpensively repurposed into gas generators.
I keep hearing from conservatives that we can't do anything about climate change or reducing CO2. Natural gas has long been proposed as superior to oil because of releasing far less CO2. Fracking is dirty but we were producing plenty of natural gas before fracking. Fracking simply caused a glut and increased profits. Other factors like the reduction in driving mimics more efficient cars so we don't have to stop driving to make a difference. I just read we could offset all the cars just by grass feeding cows. Less corn is needed saving oil used in it's production, less corn means less gassy cows and allowing them to free range breaks down the waste more naturally releasing less methane and CO2. Also the soil becomes more biologically active allowing it to store more carbon as well as restoring the soil itself for farming. There are claims even, and not from left wing fanatics, that by field raising all our animals and going back to organic farming we could offset all our CO2 released. The point is factory farming is not sustainable and in some ways it's already starting to collapse. Downer cattle and Mad Cow are some of the many symptoms of weakness in the system. With farming we get the Gulf of Mexico dead zone as well as listeria outbreaks are a direct result of farm waste getting into our rivers. All of it together suggests the system is fixable without everyone driving electric cars and living like hyppies. Also organic farming is a cute term but hyppies didn't invent it it's how we produced food for the first 12,000 years. Modern farming has only been around for the last 100 years and has largely been a disaster.
Apparently Kenya is on a course for carbon-free electricity, predominately geothermal. Basically because it's cheapest and more reliable even than hydroelectric.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Basically the same reason gasoline engines are far more efficient than coal-powered steam plants. Coal plants require more heat, for longer, to get sufficient burn, and require more overall metal cost to build. Plus the ramp-up time is hours, whereas the ramp up time of nat gas is very similar to turning on your car, excepting the huge generators would need maybe 10-15 minutes of ramp up time to get the oil flowing before you turn them full bore.
The market doesn't really care about lowering pollution, though, since pollution is an unpriced negative externality.
It's quite well priced. Companies know there are legal risks, and they also want good relations with the communities they are in. They know the costs of cleanup of various materials, there's a ton of comparative data now.
It's a fallacy to claim that every company totally ignores pollution, many companies try to be responsible in this regard. You have to be or you generate a lot of bad press.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I work at a coal plant. This year alone the overall power requirement for our area had been lower than the historical average. Yes, we did hit a peak generation record this year as well, but it's been a much milder year than normal.
We've also seen the cost of natural gas fall to the point where it was cheaper to leave the coal plants on standby and run the natural gas plants for the power demand.
This year we've run about 50% less than last year.
I remember reading an article many years ago - long before the global warming scare - that pointed out that moving to lower carbon fuels was a long-term trend. Industry started out with coal and charcoal, essentually pure carbon. Then it moved on to oil, which contains a mix of carbon and hydrogen. Natural gas was up-and-coming, with 1 carbon to 4 hydrogens. The article assumed that the future held nuclear and solar, both of which are essentially zero-carbon.
Aside from the hiccups with nuclear (justified or not, depending on your point of view), the article seems to have been pretty prescient.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Or you could simply fix the original market failure by adding the cost of emissions (a negative externality) into the price of energy.
It's bizarre to claim you can "add the cost of emissions" to a product. How would you honestly come by such a figure, when there are myriad sources that can cause health issues (including people who smoke!)?
Would you equally burden supposed "green" sources of energy with the same costs, from the production of pollution in China when producing components?
The better and more direct approach is to limit emissions at a source rather than playing a wild guessing game that in the end amounts to "we get to charge you whatever the hell we like because we don't like you",
But we already heavily regulate power plant emissions. Further controls are just not going to give us much benefit, and skyrocket the cost of energy for everyone - hurting the poor the most since the need for shelter comes almost before even food...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Are there any existing programs to do that? I know they use the same principle of operation, but I would be surprised if they were easy drop-in replacements.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Because after a while the cheapest gas will be gone and we'll probably be shifting back to coal.
I'm pretty sure in 200 years or so, either solar will be practical to use en-masse or nuclear will be simple and widespread (or a combination of both).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I keep hearing from conservatives that we can't do anything about climate change or reducing CO2.
That is what you heard.
That's not what they said.
Conservatives have long claimed there is no need to spend extra money to reduce CO2. They said there would be no benefit in ham-stringing first world countries in many ways to reduce a gas that may not even be causing a problem.
And as it turns out, they were correct. If we had adopted Kyoto the U.S. would have a far worse economy than we have today, with many additional regulations imposed on businesses - when it turns out those additional regulations were never even needed.
Over time alternative energy WILL naturally overcome traditional sources just in cost benefit alone, there is no need to hurt the productivity of countries to make that happen.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, natural gas turbines tend to be far more gigantic than used in aviation do a google image search for Siemens gas turbines
... and in the DRM, bind them.
'Cause clean coal is dirtier than burning just about anything else on the planet.
Learn to love Alaska
Ugh, your're right, Obama used the term "clean coal" in his State of the Union address. Must he try and please everybody?
You could go nuclear and avoid so much of it's proliferation and disposal drawbacks by going with liquid flouride thorium reactors (LFTR's). But then again, if you wanted to create a big government pie-in-the-sky "make work" project, you could pursue fusion. Oh yeah, they're already doing that.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
But CO2 seems more like a finite resource than a toxic emissions.
Why? CO2 is the ONLY emission that the biosphere of the entire planet is built around consuming.
CO2 is not pollution, in any sense of the word.
Rather than chasing after black unicorns based on the uncertain idea that possibly the earth MIGHT warm enough to cause any issues at all, we should address real pollution that effects real people living now.
That is the biggest crime in my book, people are focused on CO2 so much they are missing real pollution much closer at hand.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
However, a smart grid can make demand rise and fall in sync with solar and wind generation. This negates one advantage of gas plants over coal and nuclear.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Oh poppycock. Fracking is an old (over 100 years) well-proven technology. If it weren't any good we would have known it 50 years ago.
Yes, that has certainly done a great job in China, Russia, Poland, etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The power generation plants use purpose built gas turbines designed specifically for electrical generation with methane fuel. they're large, heavy, and designed for longer duty than aircraft engines.
for natural gas, it is 4 H per carbon.
For oil based, it is a little less than 2H per carbon (incomplete burning).
for coal, it is a little over 1 H per carbon due to about half burning.
Far more efficient to convert coal => methane then burn that. Interestingly, the engines and boilers for methane work well for hydrogen.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This should not be a surprise that the emissions are lowest in 20 years, that's because so many manufacturing jobs have been moved out of USA.
The reality is that the wealthier economy can allow the luxury of decreasing its pollution, but not a poorer economy. Poor people don't care about the environment. Huge governments also don't care about the environment, see USSR for reference.
You can't handle the truth.
Methane leakage is a significant source of greenhouse gases.
It's quite questionable as to whether the switch to natural gas is a significant benefit in terms of global warming for a variety of reasons.
http://energyinnovation.org/2012/05/natural-gas-methane-leakage-and-climate-change/
And none of that has anything to do with whether Obama is a "foreigner", which he isn't, or a socialist, which he isn't.
While your complaints are valid, your anger is directed in the wrong direction, which makes you a dumbass. On top of this, you think Obama was born in Kenya or some stupid shit like that. Which makes you a birther. Which also makes you a dumbass of epic proportions.
>unfounded personal attacks against me
Go be unproductively mad somewhere else.
--
BMO
http://dddusmma.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/iea-supports-ultra-supercritical-coal/
Would these supercritical thingies bring the US up to par?
Seems that the power efficiency would be comparable, based on what you mentioned above.
"Ultra-supercritical plants have a thermal efficiency of 44% HHV, which is a 35% improvement over traditional plants."
"Itâ(TM)s anticipated that temperatures and pressures can be increased further, and that a thermal efficiency of 46% (HHV) can be achieved in the next several years. These would be referred to as Advanced Ultra-supercritical plants."
46% would probably mean 41% improvement over traditional plants? (46/44*1.35)
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Since we also price most pollution at $0, the argument applies there as well. The difficulty of assessing total cost accurately should not be an excuse to pretend the total cost is $0, just as the failure to charge you for each exhalation should not be an excuse to charge a coal plant $0.
Er. Sorry, bring *coal* up to par.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
If you agree that CO2 is a problem, pricing CO2 emissions is the right answer.
Agree to the premise, disagree to the conclusion unless you add a second premise that we have the power to price emissions uniformly across jurisdictions, or at least the ability to prevent substitution of emissions from one jurisdiction to the next.
If you increase the cost of emissions only in the US, the rational thing for emitters to do will be to substitute emissions somewhere else. A lot of steel gets made in China (with no pollution controls to speak of) and shipped to Europe (ironically, in dirty diesel powered freighters) because CO2 targets (and hence costs) vary across borders.
You can deal with this by simply applying a tarriff on products from countries that don't implement reasonable carbon controls. For a large power to pass WTO review you have to base this tarriff on an estimate of the amount of polution caused by producing the product in the exporting country. But the money raised from the tarriff would more than pay for the cost of estimating the amount of polution being generated in the exporting country. And in reality if a major trade block like NAFTA or the EU implemented such tarriffs others would quickly implement their own carbon dioxide controls. As long as the carbon dioxide emissions are being factored into the price, the exporting country would rather not have that done by the importing country collecting tarriffs.
I don't think that a carbon tax should be the only acceptable way to avoid the tarriff. If the exporter is lowering their emissions faster than the importing country through some other scheme then it would be unfair to apply the tarriff, be that through subsidy of alternate power sources or harnessing the power of the flying spagetti monster. But practically all economists agree that a carbon tax is the cheapest way to address the problem.
The truth is that if the US or Europe wanted to get real about CO2 they could. Maybe some smaller countries acting alone couldn't do this because they would be smaked down by the WTO, but they could try this and if enough small countries did this that would work too.
Nothing is 100% safe and effective. Been that way for 50,000 years.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Grow up and get over hating your parents, my generation doesn't owe you anything.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Far more efficient to convert coal => methane then burn that. Interestingly, the engines and boilers for methane work well for hydrogen.
Eh.. What? How do you convert coal to methane without costing energy or releasing CO2?
I say it's far more efficient to convert the coal to uranium, and then there would be zero carbon emissions!
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
At worst it MAY raise global temperatures somewhat, making more land arable...
Why do you think MAY?
CO2 is a greenhouse gas like many others. Like the glass in a real greenhouse itnisncausing warming. There is no question about that, except the USA spread fud of the last 15 years.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for 'cautious optimism' about potential ways to deal with climate change"
Only if we close the plants down. If the economy comes back soon and these things are still operational, they'll turn them back on.
We should strike while the iron is hot and get these things closed. It's very easy to make a gas plant, we can have ample capacity in time for a resurgence in industry.
Forgive him, he does not know what a socialist is.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Forrests don't sequester CO2. They only store it temporaily. As soon as a tree dies and is rotting, the same amount of CO2 it used during its live is released again ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Only a socialist planned economy on a global scale can deal with the environmental pollution crisis. Workers to power! Expropriate the bourgeoisie! Dogfart!
It won't work, based on the record of previous "Dictatorships of the Proletariat".
EUROPE'S ENVIRONMENTAL NIGHTMARE: HARD ROAD TO RECOVERY
Dogfart!
A fair characterization of Communist governance.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Rather than speculate you could actually go read the report on Mann and see who the investigating officials were:
Composition of the Investigatory Committee:
Sarah M. Assmann, Waller Professor
Department of Biology
Welford Castleman, Evan Pugh Professor and Eberly Distinguished Chair in Science
Department of Chemistry and Department of Physics
Mary Jane Irwin, Evan Pugh Professor
Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
Nina G. Jablonski, Department Head and Professor
Department of Anthropology
Fred W. Vondracek, Professor
Department of Human Development and Family Studies
Research Integrity Officer:
Candice Yekel, Director of the Office for Research Protections
Penn State never did a formal investigation of Sandusky until the past year so it's unlikely that any of those people knew anything about it.
it means we outsourced our means of production (real wealth creation) to China, look at their pollution levels.
You must be very confused. Kyoto is about reducing CO2 emissions. ... ... how much gasoline does a us car use? How much power does an US fridge use? How much power does a US washing machine use? How much time do you spend each month (and miles) to go for shopping? ... and you take it as example why the USA can not reduce CO2 emmisions or in any way modernice its economy or its products ....
There is no wealth transfere schema anywhere
The rest of yournpost isnutter nonsense
A typical USA household needs 3 or 4 times the energy an european does. That is neither efficient nor productive.
Regarding your spain example, spain has no problems from kyoto but from failed investment banking just like the usa had 2 years ago. And on top of that: Spain not only signed the Kyoto contracts but also honoures them and exceeded in lowering its long term CO2 emissions.
So a country with realy hard economic problems (for various reasons) is topping the mighty USA
Guess how many people in europe own an USA made fridge or washing mashine ?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Natural gas is mostly methane, and methane has the most hydrogen per carbon of all the hydrocarbons.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Carbon emissions and the economy are pretty tightly linked, so if the economy is down, carbon emissions go down. And if you force carbon emissions to go down, the economy goes down. That's because energy is the single most important input to economic activity.
Technically, this is true. But the Kyoto treaty figures that the Amazon rain forest works on different principles than forests in the USA.
The credit one should receive for forest sequestration should be based on the amount of carbon than is removed from the forest on logging trucks.
Have gnu, will travel.
Why? CO2 is the ONLY emission that the biosphere of the entire planet is built around consuming.
I beg to differ. Fixed nitrogen (mostly NOx) is another such emission, consumed by the biosphere whether in vapor or dissolved forms, from combustion by-products, sewage, or fertilizer run-off (especially fertilizer). So are Phosphates, found in detergents, fertilizer, and sewage (and of all major nutrients, possibly the most highly bio-concentrated in terms of the ratio between ambient environment and living organism). Unfortunately, while artificial applications of these nutrients are a boon to agriculture, their haphazard disposal results in eutrophication of freshwater bodies, and dead zones and red tides along coasts. As with all complex systems, the details are important.
In terms of CO2, if we were to assume all other factors remain the same (distribution of temperature and precipitation), we'd likely see some benefit to crops which utilize C3 photosynthesis AND are at least sometimes limited by CO2 uptake vs other nutrients -- I suspect rice, cassava, and potatoes would fall into this category, but not sure about soy and most fruits and vegetables (they're also C3 plants, but not sure how CO2-limited they are). C4-based plants and crops (wheat, corn) will likely show little benefit, being capable of high-intensity photosynthesis in the presence of low CO2 concentration.
The distribution of other limiting factors is the key. I suspect over-all biological production (on land) will rise, but the benefits will vary. For instance, swaths of Canada and Russia will benefit from a longer growing season; Saharan Africa may become greener as well due to more precipitation, while the mid and south-west US could experience reduced biological productivity. But these details of precipitation changes are one of those things associated with complex models (that critics like to deride) and lots of potential error.
Oceanic productivity will also be affected. CO2 could be a limiting factor in niche cases (sea-grass beds, maybe), but in broad swaths of the ocean, other factors predominate (nitrogen, phosphorous, iron, dissolved O2). Acidification is an interesting problem -- you don't need as complex of a model to determine the degree, it's a much more straightforward function. Organisms utilizing carbonate skeletons (and those that eat them) will suffer, while those using siliceous or organic frameworks may benefit from reduced competition. Likewise, lower O2 solubility and changes in inter-strata mixing will benefit some organisms (jellyfish) while penalizing others (possibly commercial fish species).
Personally, I think reducing CO2 production through laws is a fool's game, when enforcement is divided among multiple sovereign players, some who stand to gain an economic advantage by cheating. But I have a beef with climate denialists anyway -- they interfere with our ability to plan and invest in the technology and infrastructure required to adapt to climate changes.
I was about to post a comment about how this would get turned into a free market circle jerk, but I was beaten to the punch with this inarticulate drivel.
Well, I guess we just need to wait for roman_mir to come forth and spew his garbage about the Free Market Deities.
Yeah, damn that roman_mir and his proven facts, accurate history, and logic!
How's a Marxist/Statist supposed to sell his claptrap failed ideology with guys like that around?
Marxism isn't pining for the fjords, and it wouldn't "voom" if you put 50,000 volts through it. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. It has shuffled off it's mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. It is an ex-ideology. It is dead.
Some people, however, insist on repeatedly nailing it to it's perch and trying to resell it.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Kyoto is useless in terms of preventing climate change; the participants themselves admitted that. Instead, it was hijacked by economic interets.
A typical US household only uses about 20% more energy than a British or German household (but it is typically also larger, both in terms of people and size). You're confusing household and "per capita" energy expenditures. Per capita, the US uses a lot more energy, but that's not household use, it's business use, and it is matched by a proportionately higher economic output. In terms of energy intensity (energy used to produce a dollar of output), the US is similar to European nations, somewhere between Sweden and Finland.
Probably not a lot because Europeans are considerably poorer than Americans and have smaller homes, so large and expensive appliances designed for the US market wouldn't sell well in Europe.
(The degree of ignorance of Europeans of anything outside their borders never ceases to amaze me.)
...from fracking, but something else.
I'm still skeptical about any pro-fracking news. There has been some evidence that fracking and the sequestration of the fracking fluids is causing some problems. So my impression is the pro-fracking interests need some good press.
Taking a quick look at some other sources, it looks as if coal still plays a big part in power generation and isn't letting up any time soon.
Political and investment
Those links do not absolutely refute the possibility that fracked gas has helped nor do they suggest it has. They do suggest coal is doing okay despite some EPA controls re emissions.
It just seems more likely to me there is a cumulative effective of better emission controls on cars, high-efficiency heating systems, and emission controls on industry operations (eg, power generating stations) over a period of years.
I just checked the emissions of a nearby coal-fired plant. Between 1999 and 2003, emissions dropped by more than half and have been held there ever since. It looks as if the EPA regs are having a positive impact in our area.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
>As the word is used in the USA, Obama is a socialist
No, the only people who think Obama is a socialist are the idiots who listen to Limbaugh, Buchanan, Coulter, and the rest of the idiotic pundits on Fox "news" and talk radio.
Obama is about as socialist as Ronnie Reagan or Nixon.
People like you don't even know what socialism is and have misused the word to the point where it doesn't mean anything other than "anything I don't like is socialism."
You fucks would call Barry Goldwater a RINO because he said that gays in the military are just fine (you don't need to be straight, just shoot straight).
--
BMO
"Over time alternative energy WILL naturally overcome traditional sources just in cost benefit alone, there is no need to hurt the productivity of countries to make that happen."
And as asked to conservative when will that happen ? The best answer I got was "when alternative energy are cheaper than oil and coal". The problem is, by that time we have burn so many of both that climate change might be irreversible and well going thru. The problem is that conservative lacks UTTERLY in insight, they see their own generaztion only, and future folk are fucked, but who cares. The problem is, some of us see beyond the next year in econom,y and look at maybe 5 or 10 generation in future. Who cares if you lower economy strength by 5, 10% , if rather than take that you fuck up future generation that the climate get so chaotic that the damage long term is greater. The truth is that conservative don't care a shitty bit on the long term consequence. Which is why by the way they don#t care about pollution law in general.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Really ?
(Though Australia probably isn't going to be up there much longer, our world-leading real estate bubble is finally starting to pop.)
On top of that, the wealth disparities in the US are huge. The averages come out OK because of the relatively large number of [super-] high-net-worth individuals in the US, but if you start looking at the wealth and income around the median level (and especially consider the class mobility, which in America is just about the worst in the OECD), the average American is poorer than the average European (assuming we're using the EU countries as "Europe").
GPE use catalysis to lower the energy requirements. In-situ approach does it by inexpensive means.
And Uranium does not drive cars, tractors, semi-trucks, etc.
In addition, other than burning up old 'waste' fuel, uranium reactors are going to be dead. Instead, it will be thorium due to safety issues and economics.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There's a lot of room between roman_mir's free market worship and Marxist economics.
I say it's far more efficient to convert the coal to uranium, and then there would be zero carbon emissions!
You know the secret of the Philosopher's Stone!?
In general the effects of global warming has been exceeding predictions.
When your drinking water is polluted and gets poisonous, I count that as not safe.
Not all gas turbines are equal. Can you say a 125cc single cylinder motorbike engine can push your Hummer around at the same performance?
Most of the coal-fanciers ignore the fact that the ash spewed out contains more uranium than used in the nuclear plants and as a result more radioactive than your typical nuclear waste (although it must be said that it's significantly more diluted!).
What about burning people? I'm sure I'll go off like a bornfire.
Wow, are you really that stupid to think that cherry-picking numbers for a small number of European nations out of a Swiss feel-good report apparently related to savings (but it's hard to tell because there is no methodology) has any relevance to what we're talking about?
Fact is that median equivalized disposable household income in the US is higher than any nation in the world (2010). The median US family ha y 55% more money available than the median German family, and Germany is one of the wealthiest EU nations. That's what determines how wealthy you are in the sense we are talking about: how much stuff you can buy. And that's "median", so it's not affected by income inequality either (the mean equivalized US family income is 61% higher than that German families). And those differences are so large and US growth rates so high that nobody is going to catch up any time soon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income
There's a lot of room between roman_mir's free market worship and Marxist economics.
Precisely.
They are polar opposites, as Maxists do not believe in a free market. Roman_mir's experiences living under the oppression of a Marxist government and in an "economy" ("We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.") planned and run by Marxists has illustrated to him, like nothing else can, how horrible such societies are to live in and what happens when there is *not* a free market. Note: "free" in this context does not mean lawless.
What was your point?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Sorry, but every single claim (especially abou who/what uses most energy in the US) is simply wrong. :) (because of b) c) and d) :) )
Europeans dont buy american fridges or washing machines for the following reasons:
a) they are not really sold here
b) they are to expensive
c) they use 3 or 4 times the energy a Bosh or Miele does, or 2 to 3 times the energy of cheap model
d) they are not build to last - a moden european one lasts easy 20 years and longer
If you see economic interests in the Kyoto Protocolls, care to point some out? Would be nice if it where backed by some facts :) e.g. what exactly is the technological challange that some countries are unable/unwilling to replace CO2 producing plants with clean plants? ... and 'forcing' you to reduce that, an disadvantage :)
What is the problem in recycling? And what is the problem in better insulations? And why is there a problem in being more economic in fuel usage and energy usage? How do you even come to the idea that reducing energy consumption is costing you anything? If I safe energy, I safe money, must be a wierd society you live in that more energy usage gives you an economical advantage
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
... to China.
there is one way for the mom to earn that much money a month: legs apart, lying in a bed...
>merely aping
No, I have listened and watched. I have heard talk radio from its modest beginnings here in New England, back when it was new through its eventual evolution to what it is now, and what I hear on the AM dial hurts my head. I used to listen to Limbaugh regularly back in the early 90s and he was entertaining back then, but he's just turned into an angry old man whose invective is wildly wrong and frankly coarse and offensive. I'm appalled by the pile of garbage talk radio has become. Hannity, Levin, Savage, et al., are all cokie-cutter outrage-machines whose only intent is to inflame.
It has even happened to local talk radio. The stupid shit on the AM dial these days from local hosts make me pine for the days of Sherm Strickhauser (WHJJ/WPRO) and David Brudnoy(WBZ who once did a fantastic interview with Ron Paul), back when you could actually learn something from listening. The last of the thoughtful ones, Arlene Violet, left the air in 2006 and went back to practicing law full time.
Talk radio has become unlistenable to anyone with at least two neurons to rub together. Outrage sells. Sanity and knowledge doesn't.
Similarly, Fox doesn't report news anymore. They have become the propaganda wing of the radical right in the Republican Party. They even went to court as an amicus in Florida to say that they have the right to lie in news over the air and won. They have a single token "reasonable person" as an anchor in Shepard Smith, but that's about it. Having Shepard Smith doesn't make up for all the other crap on Fox.
>ownership of production
I guess you're talking about the bailout of GM and Chrysler.
http://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2012/02/bush-would-do-it-again-on-auto-bailouts/
Funny how that doesn't make GWB socialist. Funny how GWB did TARP and that doesn't make him a socialist either. And for all the worshipping of St. Ronnie people like you do on the right, you conveniently forget that he also bailed out Chrysler. And they didn't call it socialism back then either.
You don't know what socialism is, and to call Obama socialist means you are using your own private definition of socialism. Because it's certainly not the accepted one. You are deliberately abusing language, to use the word "socialism" as a weapon. Trying to reason with someone who can't use a generally accepted definition of a term is impossible. Such a person has abandoned reason.
Bye.
--
BMO
I don't doubt that you can convert coal to natural gas, My doubting is that it would be a useful conversion.
You take a pound of carbon-carbon bonds that would yield X number of kilojoules of energy if broken and combined with oxygen, and instead of combining them directly with oxygen, you bond with hydrogen somehow (If it's from H2, you're adding energy, so it must be from H2O...), and then later break the carbon-hydrogen bonds to combine with oxygen resulting in H20 and CO2 and Y kilojoules of energy.
I fail to see how Y could possibly be greater than X for the same quantity of CO2 released, unless we're ignoring where the hydrogen input comes from.
The uranium comment was a tongue-in-cheek analogy - If we're assuming the ability to turn stuff into other stuff with no energy cost that makes the whole thing pointless, why not just assume that we can turn the carbon into something with no emissions at all.. e.g. uranium. Energy balance isn't an issue - carbon carbon fusion would be endothermic, so within the three laws of thermodynamics, there is no reason why it should be impossible transmute some quantity of carbon to some quantity of uranium & iron with zero net energy cost. All we need is a magic fusion catalyst (like the philosopher's stone mentioned in another post)...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I say it's far more efficient to convert the coal to uranium, and then there would be zero carbon emissions!
You know the secret of the Philosopher's Stone!?
That's a joke, I say, that's a joke, son.
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
roman_mir's free market idealism is just as unrealistic at Marxism. In the real world ideologies of any kind are rarely an ideal solution. A mixture of some capitalistic principles and some socialistic principles probably produces the best outcomes, in other words somewhere in the space between the two.
Prove me wrong. You probably read the predictions, ignore the time scales attached to them and think it's all going to happen in the next 10 or 20 years. And I'm not saying all predictions have been conservative, just most of them so you're going to have to show several examples to prove me wrong.
Me too.
GPE converts the coal into methane at a cost of $4-5/MMBTU. Right now, In America, the costs of natural gas at the wellhead is 2.5/MMBTU. In Europe, it is around $8-10/MMBTU (most is imported at that cost). In China, it is $20/MMBTU. As such, China has invested 1.25 Billion into GPE. Why? Because they are running out pipelines to where the coal mines are to pick up the generated natural gas. So, rather than ship the coal back 1000 miles, it is cheaper to simply convert it to methane and then pipe it back. Now, you speak of efficiencies, while ignoring the whole system and the important issue: COSTS. First off, coal plants have efficiencies on the order of 35-40 %. Why? Because they burn at lower temps and are loaded with large amounts of incomplete hydrocarbons as well as side elements. As such, you have incomplete burning. With NG, we now have burners that are just under 60% efficient. Why? Because you have 4H with 1 C and little to no side effects (some NOX, but not significant amounts). Now, add on that the lose of efficiency for pollution control. With coal, you have to capture pollution POST burning. That is at high temps AND increased volume. You need to capture gases, elements, and fly ash. Here in America, just doing the little bit of current pollution control results in something like a 20% lose of energy. However, you will note that China has some of the worst pollution in the world. Why? Because few of the plants turn on pollution control due to loss of money. As such, China sea is one of the heaviest polluted in the world with loads of mercury. Sadly, it will not stay there and is entering into the rest of the world. Likewise, here in America 5-10% of the pollution reaching Colorado's National Park is from China. Most of that is their coal plants not running pollution controls. However, if you do GPE's conversion upfront, you pull out all of the pollutants, break apart the hydrocarbon chains and then fully hydrogenate them. What with? H2O. Is there an energy cost for it? Yup. But with the catalysis, it is much lower than expected. More importantly, it is a LOW COST stream, and when it comes to energy, the issue is NOT energy efficiency, but economic costs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The article said we've reached 1992. So about another 10% to go. Natural gas electricity conversion should easily reach this. Even if a new Republican government eases the new draconian vehicle admission standards (twice mpg as now).
No more hand waving than your dismissal of Marxism. Marx got the answer wrong but some of his analysis is spot on.
I was idealistic like that when I was young. The world is a messy place and will never conform to his (and I assume your) idealistic vision. Somewhere in the middle is the optimal solution.
So you're confirming what I was saying: Europeans simply cannot afford the bigger, more expensive, more frequently replaced US appliances. Many US middle class homes have refrigerators that are bigger than European closets, and they don't hesitate to throw them out when a new gadget comes out.
Limitations on greenhouse gas emissions are limits on economic activity, because economic activity is pretty much proportional to emissions; they also cause emission intensive processes simply to be moved to nations that don't have limits imposed on them.. Emissions trading is a second means of implementing transfer of money from productive societies to unproductive ones.
And all of that has to be seen in the context that the Kyoto protocol does not make a meaningful difference to global warming.
There are no problems with any of those, which is why they are widely practiced in the US. In fact, many of these programs, like the entire environmental movement, started in the US before Europeans adopted them.
The reason all of this confuses you so much is because you're starting with incorrect assumptions, namely that Americans use energy inefficiently. As I was pointing out, US households only use 20% more energy than British or German households. The larger per capita usage in the US translates directly into economic output, making the US about as efficient as Sweden or Finland.
However, "energy efficiency" becomes an economic disadvantage if the cost savings through using less energy are offset by disproportionately higher production costs. And often, "energy efficiency" (in particular in Europe) amounts simply to exporting the carbon emissions to a third world nation.
From where the rest of the world is, it looks like US is in the shits. Good riddance.
You would prefer living in a world dominated by the People's Republic of China? Really?!
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Sorry, you seem to have a wiered way of thinking.
Why should I buy something that is inferior and more expensive in the long run (energy and water consumption)? What has that to do with "can afford"? It would be plain stupid to buy "a bigger fridge"
Your idea that reducing CO2 emissions is reducing economic activity is debunked all over the world. In fact as you can see in europe economics are thriving, except in the countries that are hit by the financial crisis. However even those have a new thriving energy sector and related manufactoring.
CO2 production is not 'exported' to the third world. Unlike the USA we are pretty able to keep jobs in our countries.
Unlike the USA germany for instance produces more energy and consumes more energy than ever, however more and more of it is green energy. Well, production got cut now recently while the nuke plants get decommissioned.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
In 2009, Germany emitted 750 Mt CO2 to produce 1478 TWh of energy, or 0.5 Mt CO2/TWh (and imports another 2360 TWh). The US emitted 5195 Mt CO2 to produce 19613 TWh of energy, or 0.26 Mt CO2/TWh (and imports 6501 TWh). That not only makes US energy production more efficient than Germany's, it also shows that Germany is fond of exporting its problems elsewhere and then pretending it didn't cause them.
I'm sorry, I didn't put that well: I was talking about productive economic activity. Naturally, there are tons of things you can do to create unproductive economic activity. One of the reasons Germany's unemployment is nominally so low is because lots of people are engaged in unproductive activities in order to keep them off the streets. That's one of the reasons Germans are poorer than Americans. Of course, given Germany's violent history, this is still probably a good arrangement.
Yeah, like the GE LM500, a purpose designed turbine specifically for electrical generation, except for the fact that it's a minor derivative of the J79 jet engine.
Turbine design is a very high cost process. Most turbines are derivatives of jet engines, because it's a lot cheaper that way. You can't just put a military jet engine directly into a power plant, but the conversion process is usually not expensive.
Well, you can't be helped.
First off all your conception of poor is very wiered. It is well known that the lower classes of the USA are far far more than in any other first world country.
I doubt there are many europeans that by any standard are considered poor.
In 2009, Germany emitted 750 Mt CO2 to produce 1478 TWh of energy, or 0.5 Mt CO2/TWh (and imports another 2360 TWh). The US emitted 5195 Mt CO2 to produce 19613 TWh of energy, or 0.26 Mt CO2/TWh (and imports 6501 TWh). That not only makes US energy production more efficient than Germany's, it also shows that Germany is fond of exporting its problems elsewhere and then pretending it didn't cause them.
Regarding your numbers, I don't get from where you pick such nonsens numbers. Even as this is in german you should easy be able to pick the tables with "export" and "import" mentioned ... http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiemarkt
A note to your previous posts, reducingf CO2 footprint has no relation to your economy, No idea why US guys think that.
A aluminium plant needing 5 GW the next 8h does not care if that power comes from a nuclear plant, a coal plant or a wind plant. It needs the 5 GW regardless. So switching from coal to wind reduces CO2 exhaust.
A car produced and sold does not care if the manufactor needed 4GWh to produce the car or 2.5GWh to produce it. The less he needs the cheaper the car is. Investing into saving energy should be a now brainer. Also the customer buying cars does not care how much energy was used. So reducing the energy needed in construction reduces the CO2 emitted during construction, makes the car cheaper and more competitive.
As the USA is not really doing anything to reduce CO2 in their industry production, the current state of the economy has nothing to do with CO2 reduction anyway. So your claims regarding this are complete nonsense.
Here you can read a bit about the EU / China trade: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/09/375&type=HTML or here http://ec.europa.eu/trade/creating-opportunities/bilateral-relations/countries/china/
Perhaps this cures you from your stupid braindead idea germany had reduced its CO2 footprint be "exporting CO2 heavy industries" to China.
Sorry, to say it bluntly: your picture of the world, especially about poverty, economics and energy is pretty dumb and retarded.
One of the reasons Germany's unemployment is nominally so low is because lots of people are engaged in unproductive activities in order to keep them off the streets. Sentences like this and this: given Germany's violent history, this is still probably a good arrangement. prove this. Do you even have any clue since when the last war is over? Definitely you have no clue about employment and unemployment in germany and the EU.
Regarding "germany exporting its CO2 production": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions ...
Even if germany would export 100% of its CO2 production it would not significantly increase Chinas
In one older post you used the median to compare "poverty" or "wealth" of the USA with Europe.
Sorry, again you behave utterly retarded. The following two lists of numbers have the same median:
1, 2, 8, 8, 19, 32
3, 4, 16, 99, 1000
If you would care to read how the median is defined in this wikipedia article you would realize that using it to compare two countries is completely pointless: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income
In fact if you would understand a little bit ab
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The numbers on the page you point to is about electrictiy. The numbers I stated are about energy. I'll leave it to you to verify my numbers on Wikipedia.
Percentage living below the national poverty line in Germany: 15.5%, percentage living below the national poverty line in the US: 15.1%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentage_of_population_living_in_poverty
Of course, that's relative poverty; if you ask about how many Germans live below the US poverty line, the picture becomes worse.
I used median disposable household income in terms of PPP, the right measure to use in this case. If you don't understand why, you can always look at the raw income distributions; they tell you the same thing.
The last totalitarian German government ended little more than 20 years ago and communists are an active part of Germany politics. Germany has a massive problem with neo-Nazi extremists, and the current governing party is the successor to the party that installed Hitler as dictator. Pardon me for not having much confidence in the German political system. Do you even know what's going on in your own country?
It's OECD numbers, not American numbers. The mean disposable household income in the US is even higher relative to Gemany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Ranking_of_Household_Income
Nope, it's the same article and the same numbers: it contains BOTH mean and median values, from the OECD.
You simply refuse to accept the simple, objective fact that Americans are financially a lot better off than Germans, let alone Europeans as a whole.