Climate Deal: US and China Join Paris Climate Accords (bbc.com)

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the BBC: The US and China -- together responsible for 40% of the world's carbon emissions -- have both formally joined the Paris global climate agreement... It will only come into force legally after it is ratified by at least 55 countries, which between them produce 55% of global carbon emissions. Before China made its announcement, the 23 nations that had so far ratified the agreement accounted for just over 1% of emissions. This will put pressure on G20 nations over the weekend to move faster with their pledge to phase out subsidies to fossil fuels...
There's a G20 summit starting on Sunday, and the BBC's environmental analyst reports that the accord "will just need the EU and a couple of other major polluters to cross the threshold." Its ultimate goal is to stop global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius -- "well above the aspirational 1.5C heating that the UN accepts should really be the limit" -- though U.K. researchers report that already 2016 temperatures may be rising 1.1C above pre-industrial levels.

Comments

Hooray!

[PvtVoid]

Now please quit arguing that since China isn't doing anything, there's no point in the U.S. doing anything either. Fact is, the U.S. and China together are responsible for more than 38% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the EU, Russia, India, Japan and Brazil combined. We have a unique responsibility in the fight against global warming.

Re:Hooray!

[Stephan Schulz]

Icelandic vulcanos produce more but thei don't count that. They can't do much about that either.

Well, good thing then that that claim is plainly wrong, by many orders of magnitude. Overall, volcanic activity produces less than 1% of human CO2 emissions. And Iceland is only a small part of the overall picture. This is based on a a well-debunked claim - currently no. 74 of pseudo-sceptical arguments.

Re:Trump will reverse it

[known_coward_69]

coal and oil are subsidized. there is a huge federal fund to pay for coal workers health problems which should be paid by the customers via higher prices. same with oil where the government leases land and passes all kinds of laws in case oil companies get sued after a spill

Re:Trump will reverse it

[Kjella]

The US 'formally' joining the Paris Accord is based on Obama's claim that it's not actually a treaty, and therefore doesn't actually require Congressional ratification, despite the fact that that it incorporates compulsory actions on the part of the signatory countries, and is therefore a treaty.

Well it doesn't have any penalties. JFK could say "we will send a man to the moon by the end of the decade" without any legal problems of binding Congress and future presidents because it's no more than a statement of intent. The Paris accords are pretty much the same, we promise to work to reduce climate change. If we don't... we don't. Nothing has been explicitly regulated or banned, no money has been explicitly promised, it's basically a statement of good intentions put to paper. It's a symbolic agreement with less teeth than the Kyoto protocol exactly so it can pass anywhere, like the UN declaration of human rights even though they're regularly violated in many countries of the world.

Only possible if we go nuclear

[blindseer]

When it comes to carbon footprint the top two on energy produced per greenhouse gasses emitted are hydroelectric and nuclear. Wind and solar are close behind. So close that if anyone wants to argue with me on this I'll call them all equal, perhaps I'd even grant wind and solar a 10x lead because even then nuclear is so much better than coal and oil. Geothermal is up there somewhere too but, like hydro, it is highly location dependent. Wind and solar are still location dependent but much less so. There are few places we cannot put nuclear.

Then there are lives lost per terawatt hour produced. Nuclear gets 0.04 lives lost per TWh produced, and this includes Fukushima, Chernobyl, and deaths by mining uranium. Rooftop solar has 0.1, wind has 0.15, hydro has 1.0 (mostly due to China, 0.1 otherwise), with the world average around 47, mostly due to coal, oil, and natural gas. Again, even if we take the nuclear number and multiply it by 10 it is still not bad compared to the rest.

When it comes to costs I'll take average numbers from the EIA because I feel like it and I found their numbers real quick. Nuclear is $95.2/MWh, conventional coal is $95.1, hydro is $83.5, peaking natural gas is $113.5, combined cycle natural gas is $75.2, wind is $73.6 onshore and $196.9 offshore, Solar is $125.3 for PV and $239.7 for thermal. Nuclear doesn't have a 10x advantage here but If someone wants to argue the numbers I'll grant a 2x advantage since then it still beats out the unreliable wind and solar in many cases. What I will not do is allow claims that wind and solar prices will improve but nuclear will not. If we grant that future technology improvement grants a better price for one energy source then we should be able to assume an equal gain on any other energy source. This is especially true if discussing any technology that turns heat or mechanical motion into electricity since nuclear power uses those just as much as wind or solar thermal.

Then it comes down to whether or not we can actually build it all. I saw a comparison on these energy sources based on a cubic mile of oil. This comparison spreads the construction over 50 years, and if we assume a 50 year lifespan of these power sources then it turns into a continuous rate of construction. We'd need one new 900MW nuclear power plant every week. 200 new 18GW hydroelectric dams every quarter. 1200 new windmills every week with 1.65MW capacity each. For PV solar we'd need to cover 250,000 roofs per day with 2.1kWh capacity each.

Here's where I think the final nail in the coffin on the idea that we can replace coal with wind lies. To replace coal with wind worldwide would require 10 billion tons of steel and concrete, and current annual production is 1.5 billion tons. Wind requires over 500 tons of steel and 1000 tons of concrete per MW installed, about ten times that of nuclear, coal, or gas. I got most of these numbers from the EIA and from Morgan Stanley.

I've heard people claim it is impossible for us to produce one new nuclear power plant per week worldwide. I call bullshit because nuclear power takes no more resources than coal or natural gas and we are currently building them at a similar rate. Arguments against nuclear on costs in lives and dollars also go out the window to anyone that does an honest analysis. Comparing nuclear to wind on resources required makes nuclear look so much easier. I tried to do a similar analysis on solar but my calculator doesn't do numbers that big.

I've largely ignored issues like reliability, location restrictions, etc. that count against wind and solar because I don't have to go there to make my point. If someone wants to argue about nuclear being unreliable but wind and solar can be predicted then I'll go there, but you'll lose.