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Fossil Fuels Could Be Phased Out Worldwide In a Decade, Says Study (phys.org)
James Hakner, writing for Phys.org: The worldwide reliance on burning fossil fuels to create energy could be phased out in a decade, according to an article published by a major energy think tank in the UK. Professor Benjamin Sovacool, Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex, believes that the next great energy revolution could take place in a fraction of the time of major changes in the past. But it would take a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-scalar effort to get there, he warns. And that effort must learn from the trials and tribulations from previous energy systems and technology transitions. In a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Research & Social Science, Professor Sovacool analyses energy transitions throughout history and argues that only looking towards the past can often paint an overly bleak and unnecessary picture. Moving from wood to coal in Europe, for example, took between 96 and 160 years, whereas electricity took 47 to 69 years to enter into mainstream use. But this time the future could be different, he says -- the scarcity of resources, the threat of climate change and vastly improved technological learning and innovation could greatly accelerate a global shift to a cleaner energy future.There's no doubt that we will soon reach a point wherein solar and wind will be readily available and feasible to the vast majority but, the decade timeframe feels like a stretch. We must acknowledge the financial and political challenges that we face today. Private and government-backed companies have invested billions of dollars into plants that turn fossil fuels into electricity. Ditching these plants means losing a lot of capital and owing investors with plenty of explanations. There are several forces at play here.
not if China has anything to say about it
Things are unstable enough as it is in that territory. Matters could get a lot worse if they lose their only major source of income.
Pile on a few more conditions and you realize this is just wishful thinking. Some "think tank". Alternative energy is growing. And this is a good thing. But oil was still viable at $150/bbl. Don't think that at $40/bbl people are going to drop it. I think we're currently at or just past peak oil. Peak oil is not where oil is scarce - peak oil is where there is so much oil available that we are literally drowning in oil. Which is why we're hearing about oil gluts, and seeing plummeting oil prices.
Yes, economic slowdown in the US and China has something to do with that too. But currently we are running flat out pumping up oil from tar sands, from the bottom of the oceans at scary depths, and even shale oil from coal and barely treading water, barely producing oversupply. Once the economic slowdown reverses and demand picks up again, these gluts are going to disappear, but production will not pick up as quickly. It can't. All the "easy" oil has already been drilled. Fossil fuels will be not be phased out, there just won't be anymore. But it's going to take a lot more than a decade.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I haven't even read the study and can tell you the title conclusion is completely ridiculous, bordering on bad click-bait.There exists over 1 Billion cars in the world. Unless the governments of all countries in the world both fully subsidize AND legally mandate people to switch to electric cars AND build global infrastructure to support 1 Billion electrical cars, then it ain't gonna happen. Simple as that, end of story.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
It simply won't happen until there is a compelling financial reason to do so.
Market forces always, eventually, win.
-Styopa
https://xkcd.com/678/
Fossil fuels will be here for the foreseeable future and then some.
If the Aussie brown coal industry shut down tonight, the natural fires that they have prevented would destroy centuries worth of fuel coal by the next of the next fire season.
If coal isn't a useful resource, it isn't in anyone with money's interest to keep it from burning so natural fires will start and it will burn sometime in the future. That issue must be addressed.
I have a Time magazine from 1948 and the cover article said the same thing.
It simply won't happen until there is a compelling financial reason to do so.
Market forces always, eventually, win.
I'm pretty sure that if your hose is burning you won't bide your time and wait until there is a bear market in the fire extinguisher business so you can secure a fire extinguisher at the lowest possible price, you'll pay any price asked for a fire extinguisher so you can keep your house from burning down.... but then again boil a frog slowly, yada, yada, yada... (it doesn't work on frogs but apparently it will work on some free market fundamentalists).
The author of the paper, Professor Benjamin Sovacool, is Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex. Confusingly, the University also describes him as "Professor of Energy Policy (SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit)". A brief search of the University of Sussex, University of Aarhus, and Wikipedia Web sites reveals that he has published a vast number of papers, given many, many talks and seminars, published books, received grants, and has a PhD in 'science and technology studies from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, where he won the “Outstanding Dissertation of the Year” award from the College of Social Sciences and Humanities'.
Nowhere, however, can I find any information about Professor Sovacool's undergraduate degree discipline. From his published biographical details, he seems to have popped into existence at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University where he received his PhD - awarded, be it noted, by "the College of Social Sciences and Humanities".
Until I learn to the contrary, therefore, I am assuming that Professor Sovacool is essentially a social science specialist who has ventured - very boldly indeed - into the topical, not to say fashionable, world of climate change, global warming, and general greenness. TFA tells us that, "In a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Research & Social Science, Professor Sovacool analyses energy transitions throughout history and argues that only looking towards the past can often paint an overly bleak and unnecessary picture".
"Energy Research & Social Science". Hmmmmmmm. Professor Sovacool advances undeniably compelling (if not very scientific) arguments, such as this:
"Moving from wood to coal in Europe, for example, took between 96 and 160 years, whereas electricity took 47 to 69 years to enter into mainstream use... Ontario completed a shift away from coal between 2003 and 2014; a major household energy programme in Indonesia took just three years to move two-thirds of the population from kerosene stoves to LPG stoves; and France's nuclear power programme saw supply rocket from four per cent of the electricity supply market in 1970 to 40 per cent in 1982".
Well, there you have it. Clearly that evidence leaves no possible doubt that "[t]he worldwide reliance on burning fossil fuels to create energy could be phased out in a decade". To the satisfaction of any social science professor, anyway.
http://phys.org/news/2016-04-f...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
The idea that fossil fuels could be "phased out" in a decade is so ludicrous that I hardly know where to begin.
Yes, we'll just replace EVERY car, truck, bus, motorcycle, and every other existing conveyance that uses an internal combustion engine. No PROBLEM!
Then we'll do the same for every bit of construction equipment in the world (earth moving machines, trucking & hauling vehicles, paving and compacting machinery, lifting & material handling equipment, drilling & trenching gear, etc).
And sure, we'll do it all in 10 years. HA HA HA HA!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
You might argue that it would solve their problems.
If there was no demand for their product, the major world powers wouldn't quit injecting themselves into their affairs. With no income, they couldn't buy weapons. Without weapons, their ability to wage large-scale wars would drop off.
The whole place might not be nice, but it would probably settle back to a patchwork of tribal areas generally stable because there was no means of consolidating power or enforcing minority governance.
That is the only issue. Everything else is trivial by comparison.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The wars will be pretty small if they can no longer afford to buy the mass weaponry they are importing.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
For example, Ontario completed a shift away from coal between 2003 and 2014; ... and France's nuclear power programme saw supply rocket from four per cent of the electricity supply market in 1970 to 40 per cent in 1982.
So with a little political will, large changes can be made to our electricity generation system rather quickly. It would mean embracing nuclear, though.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If renewables are cheaper, they're going to get built.
Unfortunately, it's extremely difficult - perhaps even impossible - to say what is cheaper. Government regulations and subsidies have so muddied the water that vast fortunes can now be made out of selling power that is generated less cheaply and efficently than it could be by other means.
But that is just one extreme example of how government regulation and subsidy distorts everything. It's very ironic that the governments that boast most loudly about their wonderful free-enterprise, free-market capitalist economies are the same governments that control interest rates - the fundamental price which controls all other prices. Every time a government passes a law, crates a regulation or offers a subsidy, it distorts the economy and prevents the existence of a free market.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
We can't run the whole world on nuclear because we don't trust much of the world to have it. Do you want Iran to build enough reactors to meet its energy needs? And Palestine? North Korea?
Also, how are you going to get every country up to scratch on nuclear safety and security? Even if they don't use it for weapons, can they run it without serious accidents indefinitely?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yes, we'll just replace EVERY car, truck, bus, motorcycle, and every other existing conveyance that uses an internal combustion engine. No PROBLEM!
That's what I thought at first too, but the paper is talking about generating electricity, not transportation.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The idea that fossil fuels could be "phased out" in a decade is so ludicrous that I hardly know where to begin.
You must be new to the world of social science.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
If "feasible" means "economical", there is definitely doubt - each bit of government subsidy & market distortion is concrete proof of that.
Compared to the runaway greenhouse effect of coal and oil killing EVERYONE but on a longer time period?
Please educate yourself and think about what you're writing before you post next time.
But it would take a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-scalar effort to get there, he warns.
Uhh, that isn't a minor speed bump, that is Olympus Mons on Mars sized speed bump...
To actually do it would require that we actually buy up and destroy most of the gas powered cars on the roads, since more than half of them are used longer than 10 years.
We'd have to shut down and destroy trillions of dollars worth of industry around the world, from oil refineries to coking coal plants that make steel, to natural gas powered appliances, etc. (in my home along, my water is heated, my food is cooked, and my home is heated with natural gas, it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to replace all that with electric).
We would somehow have to get all the nations of the world on the same page. You know, the same ones that are at war right now, declared and undeclared, the ones that fly jets 30 feet over our warships, the ones wanting to expand ISIS, and the ones building islands in the South China sea.
If you wanted to avoid nuclear, you'd also somehow have to build an international power grid and allow nations to become dependent on other counties for power. That may work for Denmark and Sweden, but do you really think South and North Korea are going to get along? How about the US and Mexico? Israel and everyone else...
---
The "think tank" either just wants money to write more pointless "reports", or they are smoking crack... Both are sad...
All of the fast changes of electrical supply cited in the article were moves from one baseload source to another. But if you want to move from baseload to renewables (other than the lone baseload renewable, hydro) we will need a new grid. The envisioned upgrade, "Smart Grid" would be able to match fluctuating supplies with continually monitored and controlled loads. Yes, you will have to give your utility power to continually monitor your electrical demand and be able to switch your major appliances on and off to match the changing supply of sun and wind. Changing over to this grid will cost a few teradollars.
The very first small step in upgrading to Smart Grid is Smart Meter, the first generation of which continually monitors load for each user, but does not have the control component. In my town the hippie moms have already protested away Smart Meter on grounds that they "emit radiation" by which they mean use cellular data chips to send their readings to the utility. So around here anyway, the flat-earth lobby has already eaten its own proposed solution.
Coal is known to kill nearly 100,000 per year so please educate us oh wise one
As of 2015, 33% of the United States' electricity was produced from coal.
Coal might not be used as much as it once was, but it's still among the dominant energy sources in the US and many other nations.
In many regions we didn't really see a shift away from coal. Instead of the coal being directly used on-premise to heat buildings, it was centralized at large coal burning plants. The plants would then provide the coal-derived energy to power the electrical heating of these buildings.
This is what we're seeing with electrically powered vehicles, too. The end user only thinks they're using electricity, often not realizing that this energy came from burning coal. They think they're being "green" when they're indirectly powering their vehicles using coal!
I so saw this coming. Started saving my pile of banana peels in my kitchen corner so I can stuff them in my "Mr. Fusion" powered flying car we'll all have when this comes to be... right? DERP.
I suppose so. I mean, space aliens could land in my back yard tomorrow, and that's even less likely.
I comment occasionally so that I can mod others -1 overrated or -1 offtopic.
My cars are 26, 20 and 18 years old and I have no plans to replace them (or at least, no plans to replace two of the three). If there are no more fossil fuels in 10 years, then I'll be running them on biofuel instead.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Current nuclear technology requires finite resources and is nonrenewable. It would only kick the ball down the road. If you're going to invest in sustainable energy, wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, tidal and so forth are the better long-term investment.
If and when we develop efficient large-scale fusion technology, that will be different, but simply moving our energy reliance from one non-renewable (fossil fuels) to another (uranium and other radioactive elements) really is not a great leap forward.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
We have have 3 major nuclear incidents in none of them have millions died. There is a lot of hype and fud, coal kills people ever year it puts more radioactive material into the air etc etc etc and has not killed us all of yet. Look at the ecological devastation of making solar panels, sure you can do it clean but dirty is cheaper.
Proliferation is an issue, newer designs deal with it pretty well, hell some designs allow for commercial production with marginally more than uranium ore.
No sir I dont like it.
Things are unstable enough as it is in that territory. Matters could get a lot worse if they lose their only major source of income.
The Middle East is unstable because of the oil wealth. Most terrorism comes from the wealthiest ME countries, not the poorest. If a government gets most of its wealth from oil, it has little need to be concerned about the welfare or aspirations of the people, other than to just keep them under control. So you get a corrupt and repressive elite, and seething resentment from the population. Saudi Arabia is the worst case, and has bred the most terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, and 15/19 of the 911 hijackers.
Here's the article: http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
Man, I wouldn't admit publicly on slashdot that math is hard. Just saying.
No, he is right...
The US Government pays 2.7 cents per KWh to wind producers for each KWh sold.
That is why sometimes Texas Wind Farms give away their power, and have at times, paid people to take it, because of government money.
There are other incentives and tax credits beyond that. Texas makes 9% of its power from Wind. That is largely because of government money, not because Wind is cheap.
The recent price crash of oil was caused by a supply glut of 2 million barrels per day. According the the studies referenced here, if electric vehicle growth continues at the rate we have seen in recent years, electric vehicles will in and of themselves create their own oil demand glut of 2 million barrels by 2023. I wouldn't want to own oil stocks when that happens.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
With no income ...
what little economies they do have will collapse and that huge population of unemployed young people will go somewhere, bringing their Wahhabism with them.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Oh look, another "God would never create physical laws that would allow us to damage ourselves" types. Here's the facts. CO2 traps energy in the lower atmosphere. The more CO2, the more energy trapped. Care to tell us where that energy is going, if not into raising temperatures? Go on, tell us how the lower atmosphere is exempt from thermodynamics.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
When I went to school back in 2000 I was taught the world would be out of oil by 2016. So when I hear scientist complain about resources drying up I don't believe them. That is what happens when you make predictions you don't know are true.
Scientific pseudoskepticism coupled with conspiracy theories. David Icke met Roy Spencer, and you're the product of that unholy union,.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
At a level of global cooperation never before achieved by the human race, on a project vastly more expensive than any project previously undertaken by any nation state (or supranational governing body) humanity could achieve X in Y years for Z dollars—where the precise value of X is pretty much irrelevant, since it surely won't happen in less than Y*3 years and Z*10 dollars, in the unlikely event it happens at all.
What Coke promised: "I'd like to teach the world to sing".
What Coke delivered: global BMI inflation & Texas-sized land yachts.
Over the last 5-10 years you have had a large number of power plants re-powered from oil to natural gas and from once-through cooling to cooling tower operation. I could be way off on my numbers, but I believe the cost is around $1MM/MWh typically, and generally amortized as a 30 year investment. So, in order to pay off those expenses, you are looking at whatever the existing (wholesale) cost of electricity is, and adding the cost of new renewable sources to it (roughly triple the wholesale cost amortized out). In addition, you need to add effective peaking capacity back in, which right now is sodium batteries.
The wholesale energy cost today is $0.03, give or take, so you would see energy costs go up by about $0.20/kWh to make it happen. In California this would be a retail cost of around $0.30/kWh compared to a blended $0.15 today.
Which seems kind of manageable. It would really suck for people with McMansions in Texas that currently have $3-400/summer month electricity bills seeing it go up to $6-800 per month... but market factors should push a solution.
The problem, which the electrical utilities are all painfully aware of, is that at such a point, what is their value-add? Would you see a mass exodus from the grid? (If so, would people just run a crappy little genset on days without adequate sun, making matters worse?) Whomever is left on the grid at that point is going to see costs closer to $1/kWh which is not viable in terms of investments that go out 30 years.
So, the alternative becomes letting the generators go bankrupt and/or bailing them out in order to get the costs off the books quickly. Then you need to bail out the consumers who made poor decisions relative to the previous utility assumptions. Oh, then you need to bail out cities, since they won't have enough land area for renewable resources to make them self-sufficient... so they are disproportionately impacted.
I think it can and should be done, but the horizon is likely closer to 20 years, and we need to get new nuclear plants permitted now and completed within 10 years. It is likely the only thing that would make financial sense. Less developed nations could be able to do it in an economically viable manner faster with the right technologies.
The government paid off the slave owners.
There's a smidge more ICE vehicles than there were slaves.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Enter the carbon tax. Price emissions for their actual costs they incur. You know, the free market solution.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It simply won't happen until there is a compelling financial reason to do so.
You're right. If the US government stopped it's massive oil and gas subsidies, the economy would swing toward renewables quickly.
I don't respond to AC's.
"We have have 3 major nuclear incidents in none of them have millions died."
So why aren't they able to get any insurance company to cover them?
>They think they're being "green" when they're indirectly powering their vehicles using coal!
burning coal in an plant, and using its electricity in a battery-operated vehicle is more environmentally friendly than using petrol, and it does allow using solar or wind or other future power to drive the vehicles.
"The US Government pays 2.7 cents per KWh to wind producers for each KWh sold."
And the coal and oil industry get 20 billions of subsidies each year, one wonders why.
http://www.ibtimes.com/us-foss...
An EV powered by coal emits less pollution than an oil powered car. Plus, as more renewables come online, the EV becomes more efficient.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
BIGGGG emphasis on "Could be"..!!
Fossil fuels receive $5 trillion subsidy annually (according to IMF). We need to remove this market distortion.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
If you want to know how that works, look back at California's electric market deregulation in 2000/2001. Real time pricing is unfortunately very easy to game.
And what if your house *isn't* burning? Do you still by a $40k fire extinguisher to put it out?
Rolling Stone, of all places, had an excellent analysis of the rather simple and brutal math behind such a transition. Simply put, there are about thirty trillion (ie, 10^12) US Dollars worth of hydrocarbons in the ground. Those hydrocarbons count as assets on the balance sheets of the richest companies on earth. Avoiding a 2-degree C global average temperature increase requires leaving about $20T of those reserves in the ground, forever. That is, you would have to get the richest companies in the world, all together, to write off a loss five times the size of the one that triggered the subprime mortgage implosion in 2008.
The scary thing is, in the long run, that's the cheaper alternative.
It's not like we want to avoid it, peak nuclear production is expected around 2030 to 2040.
Don't be silly, that is just counting existing refined stockpiles.
Between actually bothering to mine for more uranium and using breeder reactors to make plutonium, we could make 100% of our power from nuclear for a long time if we wanted to.
We simply don't want to.
This demonstrates a POSSIBLE answer. Right now we don't think the situation is anywhere near bad enough to warrant the major problems caused by the proposed solution.
Far more likely is the complete removal of all coal plants, replaced by green technology. Combine that with a cessation of building fossil fuel burning cars, and you have a major shift.
While not as good as the possible solution from the actual post, this is a far more likely one, and would still surprise most people. The benefits would take a while to appear, but they would be real.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The coal industry is crashing. Peabody coal, the largest coal company in the US just went bankrupt. The reason: competition from renewables and cheaper LNG, and dropping Chinese demand. China has a huge air pollution problem caused primarily by coal generation. They are moving to renewables in a big way.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Except that in 1867, no one was trying to FORCE people to stop using coal. To the extent that people stopped using coal (which really only happened in the 20th century), they did so because oil, natural gas, and their derivatives were a better solution.
However, for the most part, oil (and derivatives) was used for things which had not been done before because coal was a completely unsuitable fuel for those things.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Who cares? The point about TFA is all fossil fuels would be gone in a decade. Which I believe is just a load of bullshit. It is not going to happen within a decade for sure.
Achille Talon
Hop!
If the 120 or so wealthy men with governments in their pockets who mostly rule commerce on this world agree, and they can be on board to receive the profits, then this would happen.
Most of those billions are available to EVERY other industry as well (including "renewable" energy producers). The reason that the fossil fuel industries get more dollars than renewable for those is because the fossil fuel industries involve a lot more dollars overall.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
We may be about to find out to what degree the oil and coal industries own governments. You can bet that big oil and big coal will play every evil card on the bottom of the deck to maintain their grip on your wallet. Then again with an out of control world population problem exploding in our faces we may be using human bodies as fuel to run power plants.
Current nuclear technology requires finite resources and is nonrenewable.
The same is true of fusion (e.g. solar) power. Everything is non-renewable. It's a nonsense comment. Technology moves faster than we run out of fuels.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
[coal] is still the dominant energy source in the US
Natural gas surpasses coal for electricity generation, July 2015
Now just for a month, but coal has been declining in it's percentage.
in 2010 coal was 50%. Dropping to 30% in just 5 years? that's not a 'dominant' player, that's a dead albatross on it's way down.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
And the coal and oil industry get 20 billions of subsidies each year, one wonders why.
Instead of just linking to it, you should try reading it.
A direct cash payment of 2.7 cents per KWh isn't remotely the same as a company writing off business expenses on their tax return.
The report noted that, in the U.S., deductions for cleaning up oil spills allows companies to claim the cost as a standard business expense. This provision allowed British oil giant BP Plc to claim $9.9 billion in tax deductions in 2010 following the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico, where the company reportedly incurred over $32.2 billion in cleanup costs.
Companies writing off expenses is not a "subsidy", it is how tax works. The company installing the Wind Farm was able to write off all their expenses as well, yet those aren't called a "subsidy".
The 2.7 cents per KWh allows them to pay you 1 cent per KWh and still come out better than turning off the turbines. But it distorts the market and makes all power cost more to the end user.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
Nuclear is a terrible idea. It is, however, the only choice we have for the next 50ish years for non CO2 releasing true baseload power. Even then though, perhaps having more peaking gas plants might be able to cover that. Not CO2 free but less than coal.
Renewables can provide orders of magnitude more energy than nuclear or fossil fuels and can do that as of today. What they can't do just yet is store that energy to smooth out it's variable generation scale. Batteries are the next front of massive change.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
In the U.S., the majority of that "subsidy" is tax credits which are available to any business. Most people think a subsidy is money given by the government to a business, not tax deductions that business can use to reduce their taxes. I agree with that definition.
As a general rule, subsidies are bad. Tax credits are much more varied.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
So... You should move to Somolia to obtain a piece of the heaven you speak of.
Please stop posting this drivel on Slashdot.
We're beyond equating "in this one instance, government intervention might be net harmful" with "yay anarchy" here. Perhaps you were looking for Reddit?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Both wrong and right in the same post :)
We don't run anything on solar, it's run on electricity. And yes we can run the entire world on electricity...and for the most part already do. The trick with solar and renewable is energy storage and that isn't there yet but will come in likely a matter of decades.
But to deal with the CO2 issues, for the next 20-50 years, yes nuclear is the only CO2 free base load source we've got. The problem is by the time you get all those plants constructed, you likely won't need them for more than a decade or two more...which makes that massive investment less than ideal.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Coal WILL cause climate change and massive upheaval. Nuclear *might* when something goes wrong.
That doesn't make nuclear a GOOD choice by any measure, but it may be the only one we can deal with for the moment.
What's your solution?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I question that thesis.
These countries have by and large been economic backwaters forever and its required basically a state of war and anarchy in Syria for several years to kick off a major wave of migration. End the fighting and you end most of the migration. The oil economies of most of these countries don't do a lot to help the man in the street anyway, they largely depend on general internal economic activity for subsistence.
Plus you have to figure that the Europeans won't tolerate much more migration as it stands. They already agreed to let Erdogan run a fascist dictatorship in exchange for letting them repatriate people who leave from there. A lot of central European countries have unilaterally closed their borders and fenced them off, any significant increase in migration will result in political changes that endorse not just closed borders, but the use of deadly force to keep people out, forced repatriation and so on.
You may want to check your math. We have been working on electric cars for closer to 170 years than 70 years. Electric vehicles started being developed only a short time after development of internal combustion energy devices.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
So within the next decade people going on long road trips are going to put up with traveling 80 miles at a time, parking for over an our to recharge in between ASSUMING there is a free power station as they arrive? I can't see it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The space shuttle was considered pretty safe...until the Columbia disaster happened pointed out it's massive design flaw.
Past performance is highly suspect in terms of future results.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
You clearly don't know anything about subsidies. Look it up; they're not nearly as big and bad as you imagine.
They are a drop in the bucket compared to the economy, and aren't really big enough to affect prices the way you think.
this has never happened at this scale in the past 60 years of exploitation. I'm pretty sure that the biggest death toll is still Hiroshina & Nagazaki.
Obstacles are physical, not political...
I did not read the article - this is Slashdot after all.
But, start with in the US alone there are about 275 million cars and trucks on the road in the US alone. That means replacing over 27 million of them each year. That means everyone driving a car can afford to replace it.
Net step is replacement of the infrastructure to deliver fuel conveniently to 275 million vehicles.
Next step replacing the OTR trucking industry with something powered some other way.
Next step, replacing 39% of our (US) power generation using coal. The past 10 years we have replaced 10%
Replacing super tankers drive systems and super tankers. And remember these tankers are expensive and the ROI is based on more than 10 years service, someone will take a heck of a beating.
Converting to a different energy source is what we need to do, and we need to start seriously NOW. But, to much money, to much infrastructure, and too much investment to replace in just 10 years.
Yes because its a new shiny and if I have a new one I impress my neighbors.
American buying public is already that fickle, so yes they absolutely will.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Enter the carbon tax. Price emissions for their actual costs they incur. You know, the free market solution.
A couple things.
First, government-imposed "social engineering" taxes such as a carbon tax are anything *but* "free market" and are nearly polar opposites.
Second, such a tax would impact lower-income people hugely more than wealthier people both directly and through increases in their cost of living. The "1-percenters" won't hardly notice, but lower income people will pay a much larger percentage of their income, drastically affecting their ability to house, clothe, feed, and prevent themselves from freezing to death in winter and dying from heat in summer.
Why do you hate lower-income people struggling to survive?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I'm pretty sure that my house isn't burning, no matter what excuse those who love a powerful government want to deceive me into giving the government more power.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Depending on other factors you may regard generation from (a) biomass combustion/AD (b) municipal solid waste combustion/AD (c) sewage combustion/AD (d) non-pumped hydro (e) geographically-dispersed tidal stream (f) tidal ponds as carbon free and demand-callable and/or with storage.
So nukes are not the only non-intermittent CO2-free generation.
Also note that the last big nationwide power cut and load shedding (500k users) in the UK was from a nuke plant tripping out, ie nukes are not perfectly demand-callable either.
And in any case I regard 'baseload' as purely an artefact of how we have become used to running electricity systems...
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
manishs worries about the cost of dumping old infrastructure to investors. However, smart investors will take advantage of the opportunity. Stanford was out of coal stocks before they tanked, while Harvard's coal country president, Drew Faust, has cost Harvard big time with her dubious loyalties to fossil fuels. There is essentially no cost to investors that avoid buying buggy whip stock.
from the link:
“In 2015, BP reached a final settlement with the US government and five state governments totalling $20.8 billion. However, only $5.5 billion of this is in the form of a non-tax-deductible penalty, and the remainder can be written off by BP,”
Just wanted to make sure all the nay sayers understand...BP got a tax break for polluting the Gulf of Mexico...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Yes, you will have to give your utility power to continually monitor your electrical demand and be able to switch your major appliances on and off to match the changing supply of sun and wind.
No, just no...
Come over to my house and speak with my wife, tell her that she no longer will get to decide when she can and cannot use her appliances. See how far you get.
If you told her the choice was a 4 degree rise in global temps, or limit her appliance use, she'll take the appliance use, and she isn't alone.
These countries have by and large been economic backwaters forever and its required basically a state of war and anarchy in Syria for several years to kick off a major wave of migration.
Syria isn't Saudi Arabia, which has a huge population of educated, unemployed young people who are used to the good life and don't revolt only because they're being paid off.
No more payoffs means no more placidity, which means more radicalism.
A lot of central European countries have unilaterally closed their borders and fenced them off, any significant increase in migration will result in political changes that endorse not just closed borders, but the use of deadly force to keep people out, forced repatriation and so on.
But think of the children!!!!
Anyway, as long as it shuts them up about us being fascist pigs for trying to keep out illegal Mexicans, bully on them for trying to deal with their own illegal immigration problem.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Turns out the uranium would run out within a decade of the transition. https://slashdot.org/journal/2...
Millions of elderly people die from city smog every year. Their old lungs can't take the dirty air and they get pneumonia, fluid build up, and die.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Average age of a vehicle on the road today is 11 years, and the trend has been lengthening. That fact alone suggests the average person would not be phasing out fossil fuels in less than 11-12 years. Given that is the mean age, many folks are out there with cars that are 15-20 years old.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Why am I'm not allowed to use electrified rails and battery packs?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The space shuttle was considered pretty safe...until the Columbia disaster happened pointed out it's massive design flaw.
False. The space shuttle was considered quite dangerous, with a 1 in 100 chance of failure originally estimated. When you fly hundreds of missions, a mission failure was likely. It is true that later the chances were revised to even higher a higher chance, but by no means was the shuttle ever considered safe.
Damn straight!
That reminds me, I bought a nice Columbia jacket at a thrift store in Dallas for a buck; the caveat? It has a big, green "BP" logo emblazoned on the front... needless to say, I only wear it in Boulder...
Yes, the truly controversial feature of Smart Meter is the going to be the upgraded version that controls your appliances. Though the version now being installed just monitors your usage, it has to transmit that information to the utility using (cue the spooky organ music) deadly radio waves!
I don't think you understand how this works. They won't go somewhere. They will die.
Tell that to the millions of people fleeing Syria...
Yes, but before you go down the big hill in the rollercoaster, you have to be at the top.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
No, not tax credits. It would be good if you would read the paper first:
https://www.imf.org/external/p...
News article here:
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
"Nicholas Stern, an eminent climate economist at the London School of Economics, said: “This very important analysis shatters the myth that fossil fuels are cheap by showing just how huge their real costs are. There is no justification for these enormous subsidies for fossil fuels, which distort markets and damages economies, particularly in poorer countries.”
Lord Stern said that even the IMF’s vast subsidy figure was a significant underestimate: “A more complete estimate of the costs due to climate change would show the implicit subsidies for fossil fuels are much bigger even than this report suggests.”
Energy subsidies are sizable in nearly all countries, advanced and developing economies alike.
The bulk of energy subsidies in most countries are due to undercharging for domestic environmental damage, including local air pollution—especially in countries with high coal use and high population exposure to emissions—and broader externalities from vehicle use like traffic congestion and accidents. In many top subsidizers in percent of GDP and in per capita terms, these also reflect the setting of domestic energy prices below their supply cost.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I'm pretty sure that if your hose is burning...
...you need antibiotics?
I keep repeating it. It's very well documented in this 42 page paper:
https://www.imf.org/external/p...
News article here:
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
"Nicholas Stern, an eminent climate economist at the London School of Economics, said: “This very important analysis shatters the myth that fossil fuels are cheap by showing just how huge their real costs are. There is no justification for these enormous subsidies for fossil fuels, which distort markets and damages economies, particularly in poorer countries.”
Lord Stern said that even the IMF’s vast subsidy figure was a significant underestimate: “A more complete estimate of the costs due to climate change would show the implicit subsidies for fossil fuels are much bigger even than this report suggests.”
Energy subsidies are sizable in nearly all countries, advanced and developing economies alike.
The bulk of energy subsidies in most countries are due to undercharging for domestic environmental damage, including local air pollution—especially in countries with high coal use and high population exposure to emissions—and broader externalities from vehicle use like traffic congestion and accidents. In many top subsidizers in percent of GDP and in per capita terms, these also reflect the setting of domestic energy prices below their supply cost.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Why did people move from wood to coal? Candles and gas lamps to electric lights? Was there a shortage of wood available? This was quite likely in some cases.
While I admit to not having done a rigorous analysis of this topic I do recall from history class in college that electric lights were cheaper, safer, and easier to manage. Coal is energy dense and it doesn't take from the wood supply used for construction.
People moved to these new energy sources because they were better than what they had. Much like how the stone age didn't end for lack of stones.
If we want to see a shift away from fossil fuels then we need to have something that is cheaper, safer, and plentiful. This must also take into account the cost of changing the infrastructure. Some transitions are easier than others. Gas pipes in homes became conduit for electric wires, making that transition something that could be done without tearing walls open. Moving from wood to coal likely meant they could use the same boilers, just shovel in coal instead.
What won't be as easy is shifting gasoline and diesel fueled vehicles to whatever this professor thinks can replace them. We can replace coal with nuclear, that's not a big shift in infrastructure. Shifting away from natural gas for heating would take some time since people aren't going to throw away a working furnace on a whim. I presume this would be replaced with electricity, which likely means a greater electric load. Cars and trucks on the other hand cannot be just replaced with electric. Ethanol might be considered but only as long as it takes someone to do the math on how much crop land it would take to produce enough ethanol for every car to run from it.
One way out of this is to synthesize hydrocarbons using nuclear power. This would close the carbon loop since the carbon released in burning is recycled from the air to produce more hydrocarbons. The US Navy has been experimenting with this for a few years now. The change in infrastructure would be minimal but it would mean replacing every oil well and refinery with enough nuclear power plants and fuel synthesis plants. Unless the US Department of Energy starts handing out nuclear power operation licenses like never before then it cannot happen. I've done the math before and we'd need something like one new nuclear power plant coming online every month, perhaps more.
The bottleneck on this is regulation. I believe that it always was. The USA and many other nations could have built nuclear power plants like France did and free themselves from coal a long time ago. The costs to build a nuclear power plant today largely rides on appeasing the regulators, not in building a safe power plant. We know how to build a safe nuclear reactor, and we've known how to do that for decades.
I believe that humanity will reach a nuclear powered world, it's just a matter of when. It might happen in ten years because government policy makers listen to people like this professor. It might take one thousand years because we've run out of coal to burn. If we don't move to nuclear power then civilization will die. Energy is life. We can't live without it. If we don't move to nuclear power then we die. Well, not all of us will die. Those that remain will be hunter gatherers in tropical rain forests.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
John Podesta, Podesta Group and the Clinton Fund. Google that for some king of sleaze stuff. Podesta Group was BPs chief lobby pre and during the oil spill.
http://freebeacon.com/issues/p...
https://www.opensecrets.org/lo...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
OK, so basically you are saying that "costs" I am unconvinced exist are subsidies
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I would agree but it's too late to put that genie back in the bottle, which means if that region falls into a oil-demand depression then the entire world will become a less safer place.
And in any case I regard 'baseload' as purely an artefact of how we have become used to running electricity systems...
So you're saying we should go back to 3rd world levels of reliability? Now there's a winning solution!
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The point still stands. It wasn't as 'safe' as it was thought to be.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Different side of the same coin
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
We only have the patterns of use that we do now because it fitted the generators' convenience, eg domestic use was introduced to fill in a lack of other demand out of work hours, and the UK's Economy 7 (and 10) that account for something like 33% of domestic demand still were introduced to soak up the 'baseload' output of nukes IIRC.
So, having painted ourselves into this corner we should realise that it doesn't have to be this way...
(Just as a radical thought, as humans are diurnal I'd suggest that at least some of us go back to matching our work hours to daylight hours, rather than working a rigid arbitrary set of hours as now...)
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
When some one says A could happen, there is some chance it is going to happen. But it could also mean "it is not impossible, and under the following circumstances, however unlikely and improbable the circumstances are, A could happen". So in that sense the paper could be correct.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
eg domestic use was introduced to fill in a lack of other demand out of work hours
So 'domestic' should go without electricity? domestic use fit a need of the industrial revolution...it also massively increased the standard of living. That's a *good* thing by any measure. There are certainly side effects we need to work on mitigating, but you still seem to be saying people shouldn't be using electricity...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
In 2026 I'll be looking to buy a 2016-2019 model year car. And it will probably burn fossil fuels.
If they convert those older cars to non - fossil, then I'm in the market for a more affordable option. Like an older car...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I'm saying that demanding power when it isn't easily available is maybe something *all* users, not just domestic, should be doing less of.
Many many utilities and suppliers already shape demand towards availability and efficiency/cost with, for example, ToU charging.
Dynamic demand side response, and some societal changes to move/spread demand, such as less rigid working hours, will quite likely help.
Transport for London already gives me quite a complex set of discounts for avoiding their peak demand times, including on their electrified tubes and surface trains, for example. And not travelling standing with my nose jammed in someone's armpit is good for many reasons beyond cost and shifted electrical demand.
To make a radically-changed energy system work will require thinking about completely-contingent habits of demand as well as supply, not sitting in the dark and crying.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
It's a poor bet with current nuclear technology though - Global uranium reserves are only sufficient to meet global energy demands for a decade or so before being depleted. Efficient seawater extraction could potentially extend that to maybe a century, but we don't really have any idea how to do that, and a decade is unlikely to be enough time to master the technology.
If we want to go nuclear in a rational manner, then we need to invest in fundamentally new technology - thorium reactors are a likely candidate, known thorium reserves would deliver at least a millenia or two worth of power at current consumption rates - not a permanent solution, but it should buy us plenty of time to develop something better. Fusion likewise has long term potential - we have limited fuel supplies for "easy" D-T fusion, though we could increase that dramatically by fissioning lithium with waste neutrons, at the expense of permanently consuming a very useful elements. More importantly though, we'd be advancing the state of the technology so that we should hopefully be able to advance to more challenging forms of fusion (p-B and eventually maybe even H-H) for which fuel is far more abundant.
As for solar, and the many derivative sources (wind, biomass, etc) - that energy is being consumed regardless of whether or not we harness it, and will continue to be readily available at roughly constant radiation densities for at least a couple billion years - probably far longer than our species will survive. For all intents and purposes of any creature resembling modern humanity, it's an inexhaustible energy source.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Unfortunately, current nuclear technology is only sufficient for a decade or so at current global energy consumption levels - after that we will have exhausted the global uranium supply. If we want to go nuclear we need to invest heavily in developing reactors that can consume thorium and/or non-enriched uranium as their primary fuel. At present we ave only a few model prototypes and lots of grand designs that have never been tested.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I would agree but it's too late to put that genie back in the bottle, which means if that region falls into a oil-demand depression then the entire world will become a less safer place.
It takes resources to be a threat. There are plenty of extremists in dirt poor places like Somalia and northeast Nigeria, but they pose little threat outside their home regions ... and even there, the extremism is promoted by funding from Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia.
It's a poor bet with current nuclear technology though - Global uranium reserves are only sufficient to meet global energy demands for a decade or so before being depleted
Sure, unless we, you know, actually explore/mine for more uranium (there's no real economic incentive to discover more uranium today, unlike oil where reserves get larger every decade). Or use breeder reactors.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There were 135 or 136 space shuttle missions.
There were two accidents.
Odds were estimated at 1:100
Two in 135 is right in the ballpark.
So no, your point does not stand.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
These are not power sources. They are power transport mechanisms.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If the costs aren't paid for by the consumers and are paid for by taxpayers (or foisted on others), then they are subsidies.
It's not a free market if you are not paying the cost of what you produce or consume and force others to pay for it.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I keep repeating it. It's very well documented in this 42 page paper:
https://www.imf.org/external/p...
Point me to the spot in the 42 page paper where direct payments are made from government to oil, gas, and coal companies to make their products cheaper.
Seriously, because I did skim it and I found a lot of words that said very little. But if it is in there, I'm all ears.
Tax breaks for writing off capital investments and direct operating expenses don't count, all industries get those.
---
The vast sum is largely due to polluters not paying the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas. These include the harm caused to local populations by air pollution as well as to people across the globe affected by the floods, droughts and storms being driven by climate change.
Yea, this is it right here. These "subsidies" are in fact not anything of the sort... They are made up numbers for a carbon tax that doesn't exist.
What you're saying works when you're connected in real time to the power generation systems as we are today. The demand/production curves require active management.
That won't nearly as significant an issue with renewable sources because a renewable system runs off the energy storage, not the energy production systems. There's an extra layer there smoothing out the differences.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The analysis is flat-out wrong. Those reserves will still be used; even if we completely stopped burning them for fuel this year, we would still need them. Right now, over half of each barrel of oil goes for about 6,000 non-fuel products:
Here's a partial reference
So -- at most, assuming no new uses are discovered for it, which is an extremely poor assumption --, those stocks would take twice as long to use up.
So, no. No one will be leaving those in the ground, abandoning the value they represent. Not going to happen.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I agree it takes resources. Saudi Arabia has most of our modern weapons system and $750 billion in US treasuries alone. I think those are enough resources.
You are confusing the rate in a small sample with the probability of an event.
One in 100 chance does not mean there will be exactly one accident in 100 events. There might be zero; there might be ten. Might happen on launch one; might happen on launch 100; might not happen at all; might happen on launches 40 through 60 (though I agree this would be disturbing... ;)
What it actually means is that over a long series of events taken in groups of 100, the average rate of problems is expected to work out to one in 100. A sample of 135 with two events in no way contradicts the expectation.
For instance, I can tell you, and you are probably aware, that a fair coin flip has a 50% probability of heads.
However, it would not be in the least bit (hah!) unusual to see heads, heads, tails, heads in the first four flips. Approaching it the way you do, though, you'd be saying that such a result shows a 75% probability that the operation results in heads. Which is wrong. The observed rate for a sample of four was h-h-t-h. The probability remains at 1:2 and is in no way contradicted by the h-h-t-h result. Or a t-t-h-t result, or an h-t-h-h result. Etc.
1:2 does NOT means that one of two or two of four will be heads. It just means that in a long sequence, it's predicted (correctly, as it happens, if the circumstances are otherwise unbiased) settle out to that.
Which is not to say that those generally ignorant of how probability actually works won't set their expectations incorrectly; of course they will. That's why we have lotteries, McDonald's "Monopoly", and a good deal of the businesses in Las Vegas.
But I assure you, when the probability of a shuttle accident was assessed at 1:100, the people doing so did understand what they were doing, and what that prediction means. It is hardly their fault, or NASA's, when an individual doesn't understand what they've been told. That's more down to a failure to learn on the part of the individual. Also, I absolutely guarantee you that each and every astronaut and passenger that went up in the shuttle knew these facts perfectly well.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That assumes that the costs are real.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
This grid will be very expensive and very vulnerable.
To make renewable energy sources competitive requires a very large and expensive electric grid so that when the wind blows over the plains in Oklahoma it can keep the lights on in St. Louis. It also means that the setting sun on the west coast is keeping lights on where it's already dark on the east coast. If there happens to be a tornado in Kansas then this delicate balance is gone, those downed power lines mean even if the sun is shining and the wind blowing the power can't get to where it's needed.
If we build redundancies for such issues then costs go up. If we bury lines to keep the weather from damaging lines then costs go up. If the costs go up too much then wind and solar don't look so competitive.
Turning off residential air conditioning and such can manage the load but only to a point. Running enough power lines to make renewable energy work is certainly possible in theory for large land masses like the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and maybe smaller ones like Australia and Greenland. For islands, geographical or political, renewable energy will not work.
What does work is nuclear power. We have small modular nuclear power designs that are safe, inexpensive, and reliable. How do I know this? Because the US Navy figured this out decades ago, and the US Air Force came up with some better ideas not much later.
If we want to keep electricity cheap and reliable then we don't need massive "smart" grids, we need small "stupid" ones.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Automobiles stay in the collective fleet for 15 to 20 years. You are not phasing out fossil fuels till the current cars run on something else.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Hundreds of billions in health costs, and thousands of avoidable deaths, from coal power in the US alone. Coal prices would double, if the true cost of supply was covered.
Disbelief doesn't make costs go away, and is the very definition of denialism.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
The point about TFA is all fossil fuels would be gone in a decade.
I think the point of TFA is that it would be possible to phase out fossil fuels in a decade with enough effort, not that we would do it. To me a decade is extremely optimistic but I could see them mostly phased out in 20 years and gone except for specialized applications in 30 years.
The myth that fossil fuel industries don't get industry-specific subsidies is the one that keeps getting repeated. Fossil fuel exploration and mining in particular are heavily subsidised, far beyond standard business expenses.
In AU for example, billions in fuel tax credits are freely given out to oil & coal mining companies - try getting those for your own business. http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/...
In the US, there are tens of billions annually of tax write-offs, financing, and loan guarantee benefits specifically for fossil fuel producers. One single example:
The deduction for intangible drilling costs, worth $3.5 billion in 2013, provides a 100% tax deduction for costs that are not directly part of the final operating oil or gas well, including exploration expenses.
Good luck getting that one yourself. Plenty more in the US breakdown linked here: http://www.odi.org/publication...
Renewable subsidies are needed initially to build industry scale and solve the chicken & egg problem. Fossil fuel industries really don't have that problem - so why are they still getting such huge industry-specific subsidies?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
It covers transportation too, e.g. Brazil's switch to ethanol fueled cars, but it's talking about market transitions, switching new sales to non-fossil-fuel equipment, not eliminating old equipment.
The study itself never once claims to cover "phasing out all fossil fuel", only the transitions to a new market & infrastructure, which can and have happened with surprising speed.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
No. They don't. To recap:
Tossing a coin 4x and getting heads-heads-tails-heads does NOT show other than 2:1
AND:
Launching the shuttle 135 times and getting two fails does NOT show other than 1:100
Same EXACT issue: Nowhere near enough sample runs to demonstrate empirically that the calculated odds for one sample are wrong.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Going nuclear would enable us to keep our current grid. It still needs upgrades, for such considerations as security and EMP resistance. But it wouldn't need a total redesign and we wouldn't have to allow utilities to control our appliances.
But we ARE drowning in oil. When they're talking about renting oil tankers just to store the stuff, there's a lot of unused oil. Therefore production currently far exceeds demand - but not because production has or can increase - because demand has slacked off. Slightly. China by 1%. The US by 2%. Every country in the world that HAS oil is trying to produce that oil. Refineries around the world are working at full capacity. Saudi Arabia has not slacked off production and is almost at full capacity. Never has oil been sucked out of the ground at a higher rate than today. And it's barely enough. Even if oil demand doesn't grow in the next year or so through industrial demand, it will grow through population increase.
China alone adds the population of Australia to the world every single year. All of them will need food, heat, light, transport, etc - even when the economy is in the tank. And when you talk about the Chinese economy being in the tank, it's still growing at 6% per year. That means the Chinese economy doubles in size in 12 years. It is currently tied with the US for the largest. In 12 years it will be twice the size of the US. Imagine every chinaman wanting and more importantly being able to afford a new car. How much oil are they going to want? US currently guzzles 20 million barrels a day. What happens when China ALSO wants 20 million barrels a day? They currently consume 11 and are growing at 4.3% per year. In 16 years, China will want 22 million bbl a day. Do you see world production of oil DOUBLING in 16 years? I don't. Peak oil is right now.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Unless exxon mobil can secure pretty much a monopoly on the next source of power.
It covers transportation too, e.g. Brazil's switch to ethanol fueled cars, but it's talking about market transitions, switching new sales to non-fossil-fuel equipment, not eliminating old equipment.
Yeah, you're right, I misread the links.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Summary says
Private and government-backed companies have invested billions of dollars into plants that turn fossil fuels into electricity. Ditching these plants means losing a lot of capital and owing investors with plenty of explanations.
We all invested even more billions of dollars into assets that require a sustainable ecosystem. Ditching it means losing even more capital.
We have have 3 major nuclear incidents in none of them have millions died.
One-- how many have to die before we consider the risk too high? How do you measure how many die prematurely due to radiation exposure that may take decades and isn't easy to correlate with the actual deaths? How do you measure the adverse impact of long-term waste storage? Your conclusion here is based on an incomplete evaluation of the facts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You also have to look behind the incidents we know of and see to what extent incompetence played a part in it. Another useful thing to consider is the way incompetence factored into the Challenger disaster-- while not a nuclear incident (though nuclear shuttles have been proposed, and carrying nuclear material to space stations as well), the point is, NASA became overconfident of the safety of their rockets because they hadn't yet had a problem.
While it may be true that a nuclear plant can theoretically be made safe, there is little evidence that humans WILL, in practice. And a lot of evidence that corners will be cut somewhere putting people at risk.
You also have to look at what state those three incidents you mention are in now, and how things might have been different if they were to occur at different proximity to habited areas. And, what the effect of sea level rise would be.
In short, you need to do more homework.
If you phase out fossil fuels, how are they going to get all the low-income people to upgrade or convert their cars? I can suggest a possible answer, but many of you aren't going to like it-- we either need to upgrade low-income people so there aren't any, or at least much fewer of them, and/or subsidize the upgrade of their cars-- and who is going to pay for it?
I think the answer is going to be to reduce it significantly rather than eliminate it entirely. But there is going to be the problem of finding gas stations at some point, once it's no longer profitable to operate them. I suppose there may be some that will convert to charging stations and retain some ability to dispense gasoline, but probably far fewer of them since many people will charge their cars at home when they're not travelling. There are also industries that will be at risk-- what is going to happen to professional auto racing and "monster truck" rallies, etc.? How soon are electric vehicles going to replace those?
Back home in Maine there's a house that was on the property when I bought it. I had a new house built further up the side of the mountain. I was going to tear that old one down but it kind of grew on me so I had it rehabbed. In the basement, there's a giant (probably about six feet across) round boiler that burns wood or coal. I'm not there to look but I think it's called a Homart.
Lemme Google...
Yeah, the logo looks right but Google Image Search doesn't appear to have one. Maybe I'll take some pictures of it and upload them somewhere for posterity. I doubt there are many left. It's from the late 1800s and can be used to heat water as well as using ducts to pipe heat all over the house. It's really quite remarkable.
At any rate, I don't use the house myself but it does get used at times. I don't like the phrase, it seems a bit like putting on airs, but it's really just a guesthouse. There's a ready supply of coal and firewood down there in the basement. The Farmer's Union still sells coal and, for a few extra bucks, they'll even deliver it to you. It comes in plastic bags - thick plastic and I've got a half-dozen tons worth of it, or about that much, stocked away in the basement.
When I have friends stop by and stay for a while, we often get the coal fire going and it's a nice, thorough heat. When I had the house rehabbed, I had them restore it but much of the restoration is cosmetic. The walls are now full of real insulation and the windows only appear to be old. They're actually triple pane and the house is rather tight. A coal fire, with surprisingly little coal now, will keep you roasty toasty for a long time - on the order of feeding it just twice a day.
There are enough people buying coal to heat their homes that the Farmer's Union not only carries it but they run out of it during the winter months - on a regular basis. Coal is not dead and gone, it's still actively being used by more people than you might think - and in the residential areas as well as the commercial areas. I don't go through a lot of it - I put 10 tons in there to begin with. I imagine there's about a half-dozen ton left. It's not like it goes bad or anything.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
They seem to be one of those people who are inclined to say that people should do as they say and not as they do. They're kvetching about electricity use while wasting electricity to post on Slashdot. Yes, yes they are...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Where'd you get that idea?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
About six months ago, I took a look at the "decade until depletion" numbers that were being tossed around. You're most likely quoting someone else and believe them to be authoritative. I encourage you to actually go look for the numbers and do some math yourself.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
There is no nice way to say this so I'm going to just come out and say it. You're an idiot.
Have you ever been to Somalia? No? I didn't think so. I have. In fact, I spent almost six weeks there. If there's one thing Somalia has, it's an overabundance of government. Yes, you read that right. No, I'm not wrong. You could even say that they're probably more strictly regulated than most other countries on the planet.
Why idiots keep repeating this, why idiots thing Libertarians are against government, is beyond me - but, they're idiots. There's no way to apply logic and figure out why it is that they do and think the stupid things they do.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I took a look at the paper. It's funny... They include things like medical expenses while actually not considering the taxes paid by the companies. Here's the best part...
They want to count all the external costs. They don't even begin to consider the externalized benefits. You know, how far would our economy and society work without fossil fuels today? How far would it have come without them?
Yeah, it's bullshit. But, they repeat it often so it must be true.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
And to weaken the United States shale oil production. Isn't it funny how they waited until so much money was invested before undercutting shale oil to less than the cost of production. Shale oil costs a LOT more to extract than the oil the Iranians are producing. The USA is getting hurt a lot more by this than Iran and Russia.
Even if thermal coal for electricity generation goes away the home market is still likely to get enough cheap coal for those boilers, stoves etc from lower grade metallurgical coal. As probably a lot of people here (but not all) would know, coal is used in steelmaking not just for the heat but for the chemical reaction with the iron ore. There is no easier or "greener" way to do it since using hydrogen or whatever to reduce the ore isn't going to add carbon to turn iron into steel. In Brazil a wood burning blast furnace ran for a while and consumed astonishing amounts of wood - not "green" at all. Most comparable metals require a lot more energy to produce than steel, so forget aluminium and titanium etc for general use.
The GP is suggesting following the demand instead of shaping demand to match supply. Everything else is your own baggage taken to a ridiculous extreme.
Keep in mind that such storage systems are incredibly lossy so such a suggestion of buffering all production is not something that can be taken seriously.
Yes I know about pumped hydro. I have worked with pumped hydro. It is a very lossy system since those pump motors are nowhere near 100% efficient.
The maths is incredibly rubbery since it depends on choosing one of some very different reactor designs with very different fuel needs and a lot of the calculations get based on estimates of reserves from as far back as the 1960s. I doubt that any of the "decade until depletion" numbers are worth anything since most were worked out before some very major reserves such as Olympic Dam were even roughly explored.
So personally I think the numbers are a case of using the fuel consumption of reactors worse than we would ever bother to build to reserves that are less than have already been explored. If we are ever going to build a lot of reactors it's going to be based on a series of improving prototypes and not the 1970s crap we have now. Why bother building a thousand TMIs painted green? We can do better given a few pilot projects.
On the other side, while there is a lot of Uranium in the ground a great deal of it is very deep - bottom of the crust deep. That's never included in the reserves number but is in the % of the element in the crust number.
loss is less of a concern when your fuel is free. See 50s cars getting 12 mpg. When fuel is cheap and plentiful, efficiency is a very small concern.
Renewables get really close to quite literally 'free' fuel.
In hydro your 'fuel' storage is somewhat limited, but in an electrical system you can add more storage capacity.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
"We have have 3 major nuclear incidents in none of them have millions died."
So why aren't they able to get any insurance company to cover them?
First, because there's only been four, not three major nuclear accidents. Insurance companies don't gamble on low probability events with considerable downside and few examples. Second, because human societies are completely retarded about risk management. This results the primary unknown in how costly a nuclear accident turns out, namely, how much costly theater the plant operator is forced to go through following an accident.
"Until the replacement technologies have years of study and years of proven reliability they should not be deployed." oh dear, another one who thinks green energy is all smoke and mirrors.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
lots of people care, they are just stumped by the price of the still newish technology, but the price is dropping all the time and the market will widen out to more and more people as a result.
A test for you, drive your petrol/diesel vehicle in your garage, close the garage door, sit in the car with the windows open and turn on the engine and see how long it takes you to care. then do the same with an EV and see which is more pleasant an environment.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
that was still the case unto the 1950's and it was smog (fog and smoke).
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
polluting old tech shouldn't get tax deductions, it should have become so efficient by now (how decades has it taken and many more decades will it take?) to stand on its own feet. Tax advantages should be only for new tech.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The very first small step in upgrading to Smart Grid is Smart Meter, the first generation of which continually monitors load for each user, but does not have the control component.
There is literally no need to monitor each user until you can control each user. Substation monitoring provides all the information the power company needs about residential customers, because they cannot switch power at a finer resolution anyway. Big industrial customers need to be connected more intimately to the system, because they are the ones which make large and unpredictable demands on the system. Residential demand is highly predictable.
In my town the hippie moms have already protested away Smart Meter on grounds that they "emit radiation" by which they mean use cellular data chips to send their readings to the utility.
Yeah, that's stupid, because they use radio chirps. They don't transmit constantly. That, however, just proves how useless they actually are. They don't do realtime reporting anyway! However, there are serious problems with so-called "smart" meters. The first and largest problem is that when they fail, which is regularly, they fail in favor of the power company and not you, the way the electromechanical meters do. The other problem, which is also significant, is that they occasionally explode, burst into flames, et cetera. You can look it up, if you care.
Smart meters are stupid shit that nobody needs on residential customers at this point. If they wanted to spend money on "smart" infrastructure then it should have been on more infrastructure. We call it a "power grid" but it is not. It is a network of barely interconnected trees. We should make it more like a grid, to reduce outages.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And how are you going to get these years of study and proven reliability without some serious deploy of these technologies? Besides, these techniques where available and in use since the nineties at least. That gave us the data to go ahead right now.
What makes the oil, gas, and coal industries possible is permitting them to ignore externalities. If you had to put the hill back to being nice after mining coal, and you had to fix all the CO2 emitted, and also somehow put all the radioactive isotopes back in the ground, and actually build refineries such that they don't occasionally^Wregularly emit deadly toxic clouds forcing evacuations (that is, build them to the same standard as chip fabs) and clean up 100% of the oil spilled and so on and so forth, none of those industries would even exist, at least not in their current forms. The oil industry would be focused on plastics, which would cost more. We'd use more composites as a result, with natural fibers perhaps. Coal just would be over. It wouldn't even be a thing. Natgas would exist, but we wouldn't be fracking, and they wouldn't be storing it in leaky underground caverns.
Permitting an industry to ignore externalities is a kind of subsidy being paid in natural capital which, in theory, belongs to all of us.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They are not fleeing from unemployment, you know.
Sure, there are plenty of economic migrants, but refusing those entry to your country is commonplace and generally not considered to be morally wrong. Yes, there is illegal immigration, but the scale and the ethics are very different from migration of people fleeing for their lives.
polluting old tech shouldn't get tax deductions, it should have become so efficient by now (how decades has it taken and many more decades will it take?) to stand on its own feet. Tax advantages should be only for new tech.
That isn't how the tax code works...
ALL businesses get to deduct things from their taxes, capital investments over time, ongoing business expenses. Otherwise you'd be taxing GROSS income instead of NET profit.
No. The point of the article is that the next energy transition could only take a decade. Not THE next decade. WHEN the next breakthrough happens, the transition won't be as long as previous transitions. It might not start for 20 years. But when some as yet unknown technology is created, the whole world will transition in 10 years hence.
FFS wind and solar are just too of over a dozen ways to harness renewable energy. And what on earth is 'will be' there for? Solar and wind are readily available now.
Other renewables types and ways to move over include:
Tidal lagoons, tidal streams, wave power, dams and pumped storage - several types including compressed air underground, underwater and dual reservoir. Solar panels, solar water heating, concentrated solar and this including molten salt storage etc. Geothermal power generation and geothermal home heating. Air-source and ground source heat pumps. Fusion and cold fusion*. Battery technology is going nuts right now, cheap battery tech that could store vast amounts of grid energy using some of the most common elements is currently being developed, for example Materials discovery for earth-abundant battery | UTokyo Research.
And then there's 'time-shifting' which would be a lot easier if all vehicles where electric or some electric some hydrogen etc. These vehicles could be charged when renewables output is high.
Energy ratings could be vastly improved, the creators of consoles and computers could be moved to improve standby energy use and have default energy profiles which save energy quicker.
Home heating systems could be vastly improved, it could be mandated that all new radiators have indiviual temperature monitoring and remote setting capability, we've had the technology to be able to do this for decades already. Heating a whole house 24/7 when half the rooms aren't in use is very wasteful. Energy taxes should escalate with usage / waste, the 1st 10kwh / day tax free, the next 10kwh/day taxed higher etc or something along these lines.
Country of origin labelling should be mandatory, for example I bought an apple the other day which it turn out had come from the other $%^&ing side of the planet, I didn't know this because UK supermarkets don't have to say where food comes from.
Just saying we can't power the world with wind and solar shows a complete lack of understanding of renewables and ways to go 100% renewable.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Ralph Nader says nuclear is too expensive to be sustainable. Not to mention plants can only get built with taxpayer backing because no private investors are willing to take the risks. Uranium fission nuclear is finished.
In other words, Saudi Arabia has a lot of people who have both the ability and the motivation to build a decent nation, once oil gets out of the way.
Radicalism has no "good life" to offer, and often no life at all. ISIS is offering a practical demonstration of just that in the area.
One might argue it's a case of old masters showing young wannabes how it's done.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
In other words, Saudi Arabia has a lot of people who have both the ability and the motivation to build a decent nation, once oil gets out of the way.
I have a significantly less-positive view of mankind than that.
Radicalism has no "good life" to offer, and often no life at all. ISIS is offering a practical demonstration of just that in the area.
Neither does Communism, but that doesn't stop True Believers from saying, "They just did it wrong. If they do it my way, everything will work out Just Fine."
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Tony Seba has an interesting talk about disruption. In 1900 there were no cars on the streets of New York
By 1913 there were no horses on the streets of New York
Not many people saw that coming!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
How much does sunshine cost again? Or the blowing wind?
Don't confuse infrastructure costs with fuel costs.
Solar has a large upfront cost buy then costs almost zero to operate in a residential scenario. Not quite that good in a utility scenario buy still better than coal. It's still very new though so needs some subsidies to get people to invest for that initial outlay.
and doesn't produce CO2....how much does that cost for coal?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
i'm talking about stuff like this, not normal running expenses/capital expenditure http://www.theguardian.com/env...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
A proposed Shell petrochemical refinery in Pennsylvania is in line for $1.6bn (£1bn) in state subsidy, according to a deal struck in 2012 when the company made an annual profit of $26.8bn.
Quote from the link you posted.
That stuff is normal business practice between states. If Pennsylvania didn't offer it, another state would have.
Tesla was offered how many billions to build his battery factory in Nevada? That wasn't because it was "green", that was because it was "jobs".
Those items are not fossil fuel subsidies, they are jobs subsidies.
Now we could debate if we should have jobs subsidies or not, but it has nothing to do with dead dinos...
That's because of incredibly cheap natural gas flooding the market as a byproduct of the oil boom in North Dakota. Now that the oil industry in North Dakota is seriously hurting, I'd be curious to see how the price of natural gas is going to change.
Thanks for keeping the debate high- minded, AC.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
Are you really going there? Are you really trying to suggest that fuel is the only issue?
How about I hold off the deserved torrent of insults and let you get back within the vicinity of reality and then we can continue.
Um, it is reality. When your fuel is free and plentiful, efficiency is less of a concern. That's basic economics. To get more power I can increase the efficiency of my panels OR I can just install more panels of the lower efficiency.
Since very very few things in history have had this concept its understandable to look at it with the frame of reference of fossil fuels. You need X amount of fuel for operation and that costs money.
That simply isn't the case with solar or wind. The 'fuel' providing your electricity is free and plentiful. What renewable sources aren't yet are, 1. storable 2. continuous (see 1), and 3. dense enough.
#2 will be solved when we have better electricity/power storage ability.
#3 is solved both by new tech with higher efficiency or simply adding more capacity (and we have LOTS of places to add more capacity)
Yes it's theory, but it's based on sound principles. I'm curious what about this you disagree with?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Except clean energy doesn't get all of them as well. Many of these tax deductions are specific to fossil fuel companies as my links show - just like there are other incentives that are specific to clean energy. The point is, there are particular tax incentives available only to fossil fuel industries, and not to other industries. Can you show any evidence to the contrary?
If you don't think that forgiving billions of dollars of tax revenue from a specific industry counts as a subsidy to that industry (in that it lowers their cost of production), then perhaps you don't understand what subsidies are. There is zero difference between giving billions in taxpayer dollars to a company, and not taking the tax from them in the first place.
The real question is, why are fossil fuel companies being granted hundreds of billions of dollars in specific tax incentives at all? Subsidies are often given to desirable new industries to help them become competitive, but that's hardly the case with oil and coal.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
With respect, we've had almost free fuel with coal and oil for a long time but other issues of course arise.
Please take things seriously instead of going off into fantasy land.
Magic?
Coal and oil are decidedly not free. Certainly not priced correctly but far from free.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Basic economics. Which apparently seems like magic to you.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Since 1971, OPEC is bullied/bribed to sell Crude Oil exclusively in US dollars resulting in friction between Islam and the West;
http://www.zerohedge.com/print/502779
Casteism
Can you show any evidence to the contrary?
Yes, and I have multiple times in this story...
Most of the "subsidies" are one of three things:
1. Tax breaks for jobs
2. No charge for "carbon tax" which doesn't exist
3. Tax breaks for doing business in general
The only one that could be called specific to fossil fuels is #2, but that is just a made up number with a dollar sign that someone else attached to it. The IPCC for example establishes some absurdly huge number to "carbon taxes" and says that fossil fuels are getting HUGE subsidy because they aren't paying their made up number.
---
The irony to all this is that I actually agree that carbon is a huge problem. So huge, that we simply aren't going to be able to stop 2 degrees from coming and going. I won't be shocked if we don't stop it at 4 degrees. A whole lot of people are living in either fantasy land, or they know exactly what the issue is, but can't do anything about it due to the problems of trying to push that hard.
The short version, 80% of proven reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas cannot be burned, or we'll overshoot 2 degrees with an 80% certainty (or as best as the experts can guess). I'll take them at their word.
However, there is zero chance that will happen. It just won't. It'll all get burned. In fact, tens of billions of dollars is being spent to find MORE reserves.
The world in 100 years is going to be different to the world today. Humans will be the cause, but the time to change it was 30+ years ago. The ship has long since sailed. We'll just have to adapt to the new world.
I scanned your comment history and didn't see a single citation, just more unsourced claims like the above.
I cited two specific examples (waived fuel tax and 100% deductible exploration expenses), with links to more, of fossil-fuel industry tax incentives that don't fall under any of your 3 categories. Can you cite any tax breakdowns that contradict the studies I linked?
And I'm not sure how you reconcile your agreement that carbon is a "huge problem", yet deny the many externalised social costs of emitting that carbon (i.e. the "made-up number" from your point #2).
Luckily, I disagree with your pessimistic assumption that we'll end up burning all our fossil-fuel reserves. That might be a risk if we assumed that
a) politicians continued to give fossil-fuel industries free reign, even if unsubsidised (actually not that unlikely),
b) the afore-mentioned externalised social costs of fossil fuels continue to be ignored (depends on how much more money the industry pumps into fueling that denial),
c) direct costs of fossil fuels don't rise significantly, and
d) that alternative energy prices stop falling, and never drop below current fossil fuel prices.
I think that, at this stage, point d) is highly unlikely, so even if all the others turn out to be the case, it simply won't make business sense to use the more expensive option of fossil fuels. For example, renewable energy plants have been cheaper to build than new coal plants in many parts of the world for some years now, and of course they have zero ongoing fuel costs, so there the transition is inevitable, once existing coal power stations get old enough.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Makes sense. Attempting to replace physics with economics is indeed somewhat warped magical thinking.
On the other thread where you are asking for an answer could you please explain WTF your actual question is - I can't find it for the noise.
Luckily, I disagree with your pessimistic assumption that we'll end up burning all our fossil-fuel reserves.
How do you address the issue that tens of trillions of dollars of reserves have to be left in the ground?
Those reserves are priced in to the world's economy. If you were to try and force all that to stay put, you'd make the 2008/2009 crash seem minor by comparison.
The world is not just addicted to coal, oil, and natural gas, but the money attached to them as well.
Can we transition off them? Yes. Can we do it in the time we have left? No. We need to be off them by 2050, we will have a hard time doing it by 2100.
This is not a technology problem, it is an economic one.
And I'm not sure how you reconcile your agreement that carbon is a "huge problem", yet deny the many externalised social costs of emitting that carbon (i.e. the "made-up number" from your point #2).
I don't deny them, I simply don't call them subsidies. In any case, it doesn't matter. We're just debating now if we should form a bucket brigade on the Titanic or not. It is a stupid debate and misses the point. The ship will sink 2 hours before Carpathia shows up. No one is going to survive 2 hours in the freezing water. You're either in a life boat, or you're going to die.
Just as coal and oil are, surely. They are simply transporting the energy captured from the sun millions of years ago.
The costs are demonstrated to exist. You can perform your own research to show they are not. We can wait, but until then, the original point stands and you are wrong.
You might want to read some history, as you are sounding like an 8-year-old who knows just enough to make himself look ridiculous.
Did you honestly just say Africa was a country? No wonder you are so scared of Muslims - your education is clearly some sort of joke foisted upon the rest of the world.
Or you have no idea what government is.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
One of the biggest consumers of fossil fuels is international shipping via container ships. They use massive amounts of crude diesel fuel and emit large amounts of untreated, highly polluting emissions, with very limited oversight while the ships are in international waters. When we consider how much of the world economy is dependent on it, it will take a massive overhaul of the worlds supply of goods and the related economic system to change the shipping industry. It will eventually happen but it's hard to imagine that we'll see it in the next decade.
so you agree I can power my train with nuclear power?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I don't deny them, I simply don't call them subsidies.
Society pays for those costs, so that the producers don't have to. This lowers the sale price of the goods to half their true cost. If it waddles like a subsidy, and quacks like a subsidy...
Anyway, we can disagree about the transition time, but consider this: The average lifespan of a coal power plant is about 40 years - and many of them are due for replacement fairly soon. Knowing what we now know, it would be insane to replace them with more coal plants, and since new solar & new wind is already cheaper than new coal in many places, we have the opportunity to clean up a whole sector by 2050. And most vehicles have significantly shorter lifespans than that, so they can be transitioned too. In fact, TFA itself points out that Brazil changed their whole market over to flex-fuel ethanol-capable vehicles in just 5 years, so any cars sold after that can be fully carbon neutral.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Anyway, we can disagree about the transition time, but consider this: The average lifespan of a coal power plant is about 40 years - and many of them are due for replacement fairly soon. Knowing what we now know, it would be insane to replace them with more coal plants
Logically, I understand your viewpoint... but consider this:
http://energydesk.greenpeace.o...
"According to a new Greenpeace analysis, in the first nine months of 2015 Chinaâ(TM)s central and provincial governments issued environmental approvals to 155 coal-fired power plants â" thatâ(TM)s four per week."
At the end of the day, the goal to replace fossil fuels runs into a $20 trillion dollar roadblock... money... The known reserves in the ground are already accounted for above ground on balance sheets...
http://www.reuters.com/article...
"The largest U.S. independent refiners are bullish on domestic gasoline demand as super-cheap fuel and the lure of bigger vehicles entice more consumers.
Valero Energy Corp and Phillips 66 both say they are in "max gasoline mode," pumping out as much as they can as a mild winter, economic uncertainty and a stinging slump in oil drilling squeezed U.S. diesel demand.
They still see export demand growth for both gasoline and diesel, but at home expectations are for rising gasoline demand, despite concerns the U.S. economy could soften in 2016."
As gas gets cheaper, demand for it will pick up. There are over a billion cars in the world, many of them 20 years old. EVs will continue to grow of course, but last year 75 million cars were sold world-wide, about half a million of them EVs (most of those plug in hybrids that still use gas).
This path isn't going to change by 2050. Even if we wanted it to, it can't, because of economics. Many governments, for better or worse, are addicted to coal, oil, and natural gas, they won't allow them to change faster, we'll have an economic disaster on our hands.
Or do you really think Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the USA are going to leave all those trillions of dollars in the ground?
They're only worth trillions if the demand says so. And demand will not continue for ever - coal is already almost flat. Peak Oil will take longer, but the writing on the wall is already visible, with EVs predicted to make up one quarter of the global market in just 10 years.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
They're only worth trillions if the demand says so.
Right, and that's my point. Governments will do whatever it takes to ensure that will happen, at least for awhile...
If you were to write off $20 trillion in balance sheet value from the world, there is a decent chance that you wouldn't have an economy the next day. It would make 2008/2009 look like a small speed bump.
And demand will not continue for ever
Of course not, but it will continue far beyond where it needed to have stopped. We have perhaps 550 gigatons left of CO2 that we can emit, total, to keep global average temps below 2 degrees. The known reserves are 6 times that. We are emitting 20+ gigatons a year.
At our current rate, we can emit Carbon for 25 more years, then we must stop, cold turkey. The reality is that our emissions are going up, not down.
EVs predicted to make up one quarter of the global market in just 10 years.
That report has to be smoking something. :) To do that, 7.5 million EVs will have to be sold to hit that target. That is up from almost nothing today.
I'll even be kind and consider plug in stuff like the Chevy Volt to be an "EV", since that is in the 540,000 cars sold in 2015 that could be called an "EV". True EVs with no gas engine are a rounding error.
For that report to be true, all car companies would have to be working on making most car models into EVs now, because cars tend to have 10 year development cycles. Auto companies take a long time to turn and change.
That is of course beside the point. The whole idea is to leave the bulk of the dead dinos in the ground. Since that simply isn't going to happen, we really should start having the conversation on what to do with a changed world that is coming.
Since you are arguing AGAINST supply meeting demand I think your idea of "basic economics" is most definitely something else, such as magic.