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Natural Gas is Now Getting in the Way; US Carbon Emissions Increase by 3.4% (arstechnica.com)
AmiMoJo shares a report: "The US was already off track in meeting its Paris Agreement targets. The gap is even wider headed into 2019." That's the dire news from Rhodium Group, a research firm that released preliminary estimates of US carbon emissions in 2018. Though the Trump administration said it would exit the Paris Agreement in 2017, the US is still bound by the agreement to submit progress reports until 2020. But the administration has justified regulatory rollbacks since then, claiming that regulation from the US government is unnecessary because emissions were trending downward anyway. But it appears that emissions have increased 3.4 percent in 2018 across the US economy, the second-largest annual increase in 20 years, according to Rhodium Group's preliminary data. (2010, when the US started recovering from the recession, was the largest annual increase in the last two decades.)
This reversal of course -- the first increase in emissions in three years -- came from a few sources. Carbon emissions from the US electricity sector increased by 1.9 percent, largely because the installation of new natural gas plants has outpaced coal retirements. Cheap natural gas has been credited with killing coal, which is a dirtier fossil fuel in terms of emissions. But natural gas is a fossil fuel, too, and burning more natural gas than is needed to simply replace coal will result in more carbon emissions. But electricity wasn't the main culprit. Transportation was.
This reversal of course -- the first increase in emissions in three years -- came from a few sources. Carbon emissions from the US electricity sector increased by 1.9 percent, largely because the installation of new natural gas plants has outpaced coal retirements. Cheap natural gas has been credited with killing coal, which is a dirtier fossil fuel in terms of emissions. But natural gas is a fossil fuel, too, and burning more natural gas than is needed to simply replace coal will result in more carbon emissions. But electricity wasn't the main culprit. Transportation was.
So... lower taxes and having to deal with the shit instead yourself is better? Who are you that you can afford this?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Let's just say it is because Americans are selfish individuals that think that if you can't drive an SUV/pickup, live in a McMansion, fly to extravagant locations, and eat beef every day, you aren't living the American Dream.
For many liberals, one can lie to oneself and say that technology needs to improve and we need more alternative energy.
For many conservatives, one can line to oneself and say that climate change isn't real.
It's not fashionable to actually own it and say that American lifestyle of endless consumerism isn't sustainable.
Last time I checked, we're done with the Paris agreement in 2020 (specifically on Nov 4). By trying to slip it through as an executive thing (to skip Senate ratification as a binding approval), Obama allowed the next President (Trump) to kill it, and kill it he did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_the_Paris_Agreement
It would have been less if nuclear power plants were kept in operation and/or new ones were built. But Americans are a bunch of poorly-educated, cowardly NIMBYs so that won't happen.
But ... perpetual growth! It's mandatory for a healthy economy! Just look at all the Americans who try to participate, at least with their weight!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Climate change is more about redistributing money than about our planetary weather conditions. Paris was just another attempt to suck money out of the U.S. economy and move it to less developed countries. Breathe in, breathe out. I love the smell of good clean coal in the morning!
I drive an econo-box and rent my home. I've never flown to anywhere exotic, and I eat way more chicken than beef. I thought I was living the American dream, but now I feel so ashamed. Thank you for enlightening me.
As noted in TFS and TFA, much of the increase comes from the transportation sector, and increased demand for diesel (and jet fuel, but I repeat myself.) What's needed to make immediate improvements in transportation efficiency and emissions is electrified rail. The specifics of what that would look like vary from place to place, and situation to situation, but in general getting rid of rubber tires and adding electric motivation are things which we not only could be doing now, but could have been doing already.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Thank you Mr Trump.
Yes, Thank you. Why? Because instead of suppressing our economy and lowering emissions by making us all poorer in actual standards of living, he has got the economy growing faster than inflation and our population for the first time in at least a decade.
Now I'm all for being careful with the environment though conservation and technological means to reduce emissions as much as we can, but I'm for a strong economy that keeps us competitive with the rest of the world as it's of strategic importance. We cannot unilaterally disarm, either militarily or economically if we wish to preserve both our freedoms and a reasonable standard of living for ourselves and our posterity.
China would be more than willing to sacrifice their environment to rule us, Russia would to. Do you really believe that the fall of the USA would be a good thing for the world? That death and wide spread destruction would not follow our demise? What's worse then?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
> And thank you for understanding that no amount of taxes and regulations on the United States will cause the biggest polluters in India and China to reduce their output
"Well those guys over there are pissing in the pool, so why should I stop?"
That's the logic here, in a nutshell.
=Smidge=
It's not fashionable to actually own it and say that American lifestyle of endless consumerism isn't sustainable.
It may be fashionable to believe what you see on TV is how most Americans live.
Fashionable? Maybe. Stupid? Certainly.
For example, I, a simple-minded American, am fully capable of believing that not all people from Holland wear wooden clogs and live in a windmill, not all people in Germany live in gingerbread houses in the Alps and wear lederhosen, and not all people in the UK wear tophats and monocles and live in a castle. No matter how fashionable those themes may be.
It would have been less if nuclear power plants were kept in operation and/or new ones were built. But Americans are a bunch of poorly-educated, cowardly NIMBYs so that won't happen.
Yes we are all poorly-educated, etc, etc. We are so dumb that we can't understand anything! Oh woe is us in the U.S. sob sob sob. If only we were as smart as you and accepted unlimited immigration and the oh so smart Paris accord we'd be so smart like you! The EU leaders are so smart and are only looking out for the good of the EU! Yes Yes Yes! Why didn't we see it before?
Even though emissions from passenger cars was down, emissions from planes and trucks are up. Hopefully the Tesla push to electrify trucking will come into reality on the market soon.
China would be more than willing to sacrifice their environment to rule us, Russia would to. Do you really believe that the fall of the USA would be a good thing for the world? That death and wide spread destruction would not follow our demise? What's worse then?
Apparently you haven't been paying attention. There is a large and growing segment of society that believes the US is the source of all evil in the world, and that the downfall of the US is the best thing that could possibly happen. It would be funny in a dark, twisted way, if it wasn't so tragic.
Well as long as we are pointing fingers lets make sure that we have plenty to point at. In 2018 China was up 4.7% and India by 6.3%. An according to this report, the US is only up by 2.5%. Interesting, both are well below even the 3.5% mark of the article. But yet, we leave those out and just post a US bashing article. The EU is doing good.
https://www.theguardian.com/en...
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Cheap natural gas has been credited with killing coal, which is a dirtier fossil fuel in terms of emissions. But natural gas is a fossil fuel, too, and burning more natural gas than is needed to simply replace coal will result in more carbon emissions.
What stupidity. Nobody is burning more natural gas than is needed and nobody is running coal plants just for fun. If those gas plants are coming online / being utilized to a larger part of capacity and the coal plants are not being idled or shuttered its because consumers want the power! Its not like we are generating electrical potential just ground it out because we think arc-flash is cool!
The issue is the economy grew so despite efficiency improvements emissions grew.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Funny, the French have civilian-controlled nuclear power, and some of the cheapest energy in Europe. They just don't spend as much on their military scum and adventures abroad as the US does, so they have money to subsidize clean nuclear.
Let's just say it is because Americans are greedy selfish individuals that think that if you can't drive an SUV/pickup, live in a McMansion, fly to extravagant locations, and eat beef every day, you aren't living the American Dream.
For many liberals, one can lie to oneself and say that technology needs to improve and we need more alternative energy.
For many conservatives, one can line to oneself and say that climate change isn't real.
It's not fashionable to actually own it and say that American lifestyle of endless consumerism isn't sustainable.
Geez, more bog standard anti-American claptrap.
Why am I surprised in a comment to a story that's already nothing more than anti-American claptrap?
First, the US withdrew from the Paris Agreement, so whether or not the US meets its targets under that agreement is totally irrelevant.
Second, the article singles out the US when even such "must address climate change" stalwarts such as France and Germany haven't met their targets, either.
Third, the Paris Agreement goals don't even apply to China and India and Indonesia.
Fourth, what Paris Agreement goals that do exist are - by the Paris Agreement itself - entirely unenforceable, making the Paris Agreement worth less than used toilet paper.
So after you translate the Paris Agreement to reality and strip away the anti-American claptrap, you're left with a giant stinking useless turd.
But because ORANGE MAN BAD, it's not proper to point that out.
Quality of life, life expectancy, and CO2 emissions are all generally higher in Western Europe than in the US.
Talk about burying the lede:
While we don’t expect a repeat of 2018 this coming year , the data provides some important insights into the emission reduction challenges facing the US.
The reasons they don't expect a repeat are sprinkled through the article, e.g.:
1. The winter was extremely cold. People used more energy staying warm.
2. The economy was roaring. People traveled more. More goods were shipped. More buildings were built.
On top of this, and somewhat amazingly for what purports to be an independent research group, they chose to put a negative spin on the fact that, as they put it, "a record number of coal-fired power plants were retired last year" and replaced with natural gas (which our friend AmiMoJo then further spun into the sensationalist title of this article).
At bottom, this is just more of the unfortunate stream of SlashClickbait that is gradually swamping what used to be a useful tech blog.
I have not bothered with my local greens but where i came form (Some tiny country in Yurop) the greens were in love with natural gas. Funny. It probably has to do with combined cycle plants fast enough to be paired with intermittent energy sources that cannot be dispatched. Like the wind turbines they are fond of.
The report itself is a good detailed estimate of emissions from various sectors along with analysis and projections. Last year's estimate was pretty accurate so this probably is as well. But nowhere do they use the words "Dire news". That's the spin from Ars Technica.
Natural gas produces 50-60% less CO2 than a coal plant for the same amount of energy. That means a lot of new capacity has been added to the grid.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Well right - and the political left in this country needs to internalize that just as most of the political right does but even more so because it driving absolutely the wrong policy choices on the left.
We can make some efficiency improvements certainly but there is exactly one[1] ultimate driver of environmental degradation and that is human population size per area. We have a birth rate near the replacement rate right now. There is little evidence we would need to get into people's reproductive choices. We can stop population growth by simply putting and end to immigration.
Anyone who cares about having a beautiful green America for their Children and grandchildren needs to recognize this.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Nuclear can supply all of our energy needs for the foreseeable future. Climate bed-wetters always frame our current situation as solar/wind or nothing.
We've run very old Nuclear plants well past their design lifespans safely. We would be on 3rd or 4th gen reactors by now - if we could just get some Nuclear deniers out of the way.
"There is a large and growing segment of society that believes the US is the source of all evil in the world" Well, ya think there may be a reason for it, cherub???
If nothing else comes from trump's idiotic reign it will show that the constitution needs to be idiot proofed because they've just handed it over to a group of idiots.
It was supposed that the other two branches would stop the idiot in the executive from fucking things up, but republicans are idiots and proved that you cannot rely on it unless you make it necessary for politicians to back the USA rather than their party (very stalinist, really: party before country and people) and the courts cannot do anything if they've been partisan picked by the legislative branch idiots who, lets remember, put party before country.
There will be a lot less "gentlemen's agreement" in the constutution because the current pile of rightwing fuckwits have shown that there aren't any gentlemen on the rightwing.
The post (suspiciously) left out the most important explanatory part of TFA:
"The transportation sector held its title as the largest source of US emissions for the third year running, as robust growth in demand for diesel and jet fuel offset a modest decline in gasoline consumption," Rhodium wrote. Industrial emissions from various types of manufacturing as well as emissions from buildings both saw significant increases in their carbon emissions in 2018.
...
In 2018, gasoline demand decreased by just 0.1 percent. But growth in the US trucking industry increased diesel demand by 3.1 percent, and demand for air travel increased jet fuel demand by 3 percent.
I think generally, yes.
People that can will. People that can't won't be left behind or hurt by large spending initiatives and programs that have unintended consequences or poorly thought out life cycles.
Who are you that you can afford this?
The irony is that a lot of the green initiatives are hard on the poor. EV's are a prime example. It's great that they are becoming more popular and the costs are coming down. But those aren't really a good solution for the poor because the used EV market hasn't had time to be created, yet. However, the rising tax (on gas or other taxable sources) to cover the infrastructure maintenance that EV do not pay are felt more directly by the poor.
CA requiring solar panels on houses is another. While it's laudable it hurts the poor. Sadly, too many on /. think "only 10k more on your house isn't a big issue. It'll pay for it self in a few decades" isn't really helping poor either. It's a struggle enough to get a house and 10k, while not a lot in regards to a mortgage, can be enough price a house out of a pool of buyers. There are other costs, like maintenance, that are also dismissed as "it's not that much" seemingly disregarding the reality of what it's like to be poor. All that CA did was make it harder for poor people to get a house in CA and exacerbated their housing market problems. It's great virtue signaling but hurts poor people.
It's better to allow people to make the choice themselves instead of ignoring basic economics and unintended consequences.
The right is also at fault -- we should be paying for family planning (euphemism for abortion/birth control) programs abroad as well.
Except that coal is more expensive - even if you pay less per kWh at best you are just pushing the cost onto someone else's lungs.
Trying to use India and China as an excuse is ridiculous. They are doing massive amounts to reduce their output, and if 2.5 billion people all adopted your lifestyle you would be completely screwed. China's emissions per capita are half of yours.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Most prominent Leftists live in real mansions, do fly everywhere in private jets, drive SUVs (some armor plated), and probably do eat beef every day (but will never admit it).
To be honest, it would have been Bush and Co. who deregulated the gas companies and made it cheap, as as San Bruno unfortunately found out in 2010.. I notice you didn't list Russia among heavy polluters - I wonder why.
Suppressing the economy? Let's see, coal is on government welfare to keep going, you had to bail out all the old auto manufacturers but Tesla made you a nice return on your investment, and renewables are a massive and rapidly growing new source of jobs and GDP.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You have completely left reality. The USA is still many times lower in population but 2nd overall and the highest per capita in the world.
Country 2016 kton CO2
China 10432751.35
USA 5011686.62
India 2533638.05
Maybe you are fine with shitting in the pool but not all of us want to live like you do: surrounded by filth.
China would be more than willing to sacrifice their environment to rule us, Russia would to.
China's per capita carbon emisions are about one third of the USA. Russia's per capita emissions are about 4/5 of the USA. It's pretty disingeneous to demand that China, which still has a long way to go in terms of economic development, slashes or freezes its emissions while the USA continues having one of the highest emission rates in the world. We on par with Saidi Arabia.
Are you trolling or do you actually believe that protecting the environment for future generations requires harming the economy?
Hanlon's Razor says I should assume the latter, so this will probably go over your head, but people smarter than you and I agree that correcting market failures such as negative externalities makes the market work better, not worse.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Well, technically we are. Post-natal, by mowing them down in case they have something we want and they don't give it to our conditions.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Doesn't every organism consume endlessly until it is itself consumed by something else consuming endlessly?
You're going to cover the poor's medical bills when the air becomes worse than in China and "drinking" water is at best available in supermarkets anymore? Or is that part of the win-win situation where they die off early to take pressure off the job and housing market?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It is one thing to replace an old efficient coal plant with either new coal or a new nat gas, but it does no good when the size of these increase to the point where you are adding more CO2.
All nations have to stop this. Here in America, we need to push Nuclear SMRs into production SOON. NuScale is a perfect example. It will not be in production until 2025/6 timeframe. With some money (for both the company and NRC), it can be put into production by 2023. That would enable us to replace a number of these coal plants with cheaper/safer nuclear SMRS. Add in more solar/wind and geo-thermal, and we can shut this down.
The one good thing missing out of this report is that over the next couple of years, America will continue downwards due to EVs replacing old cars, along with the fact that our electricity is fairly clean.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think it might be fair to thank trump for killing expensive coal... after all under his watch we are at the lowest coal consumption in nearly 40 years...
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37817
I think it's fair to thanks trump for being so inept as to completely fail to even remotely be able to follow up on campaign promises we now use less coal than we have in decades!
it would only harm U.S. jobs and standards of living
You know this kind of mentality makes me think of the old adage of "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". It's funny to see how many people don't see how not being able to predict when to grow things will affect food supply in any one country. Oh well, sorry future people of the planet, hate that you will have to spend an endless amount of money solving basic everyday tasks that our rapacious greed and ephemeral way of life took for granted. If it makes any of you all feel better, we weren't the only ones apparently doing it, so that makes it okay that we didn't do anything either.
It's pretty disingeneous to demand that China, which still has a long way to go in terms of economic development, slashes or freezes its emissions while the USA continues having one of the highest emission rates in the world.
Why is that? Certainly its easier to not start doing something than it is to stop / give up doing it. Is that fair to folks in China, maybe not but the truth is we can't probably cut emissions enough to appreciable slow, let alone break out of the co2 driven climate change cycle. So we should harm ourselves trying? It would be better to just acknowledge we are going to have to adapt to a changing climate and solve those problems
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Yes, but I believe that Burlington Northern is still heading down the path of LNG for their fuel.
I keep wondering if batteries combined with track charging in cities would be a better choice.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
China has already installed over 165 GW (equiv to about 200 or NG plants), 40 of which was installed this year. The original target was 105GW, which they blew past and now are considering a 210-270 GW target by 2020. Also, due to gov. incentives, China has the largest EV market in the world, with over 1 million sold to date and they're just maturing. Shenzhen, with 13 million people, runs 100% electric buses. https://www.pv-magazine.com/20...
The narrative that China and India are polluting to gain economic advantage is just RW radio garbage. They realize that fossil fuels are a dead end and the country with the most advancements in growing renewable energy market will prosper. We should be leading, but instead we're falling further behind and ceding the lead to China.
Trump has no agenda - any fool can see. He only cares about his "ratings" and "brand" (his words). He just regurgitates whatever Fox News, Hannity, and Limbaugh say, which reinforces what that audience saw on TV or heard on the radio. Just as Pruitt set out to destroy the EPA and hand it over to the regulated, this administration has sold the government to the highest bidder. Many of those companies that lobbied for tax cuts used those profits to buy back stocks, pay executives bonuses, then they continued to lay off and outsource workers. https://www.theguardian.com/us... https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
Story isn't about methane. It's about diesel (vehicles) and kerosene (jet fuel). Basically people fly more and there are more products that need to be driven to the stores for people to buy. Not to even mention the whole amazon deliveries aspect. Basically rapid growth of economy leads to more flying to vacations by the wealthy city folks and more driving to get consumer products.
The reason why there's an attempt to spin this as "it's the methane" is because of increasing desperation in the green lobby with methane outcompeting pretty much everything in electricity generation in North America due to fracking phenomena. It's almost free as a by-product of fracking and it has only about half of CO2 emissions compared to coal per energy generated. So all the major wind and solar on grid is starting to run into the wall of "thanks, but unless there are massive subsidies and PR boost, we will just install a CCGT". And chemistry dictates that you'd need over double the installed capacity of methane over decommissioned coal to actually get to increase from this replacement process.
Which is obviously not occurring.
Trump "has got the economy growing faster than inflation and our population for the first time in at least a decade"?
Really, so those eye-popping deficits over the last 8 years had nothing to do with it? Gee, add a bunch of extra money to the economy, and cut interest rates to near zero for years, and the economy takes off. Who'd have thunk it? Not you.
No, we NEED a green new deal here. We just do not need her idea of it.
Perry has it correct that we need to have on-demand systems available, but these should also be clean. The would leave it as hydro, geo-thermal, and nuclear.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Please respond back explaining why you think the US having it's "downfall" would be the best thing to happen.
I would just say "Woooosh", but it's overused. I really thought the last sentence in my comment made it clear that I don't subscribe to the viewpoint of that 'large and growing segment of society. Maybe you didn't read that far?
Personal responsibility is a good thing if, and only if, the people actually have a chance to better their lot. This was true in the US for the longest time, but in the past 20 years or so, I don't really see that opportunity anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
China is cleaning up their fossil fuel use at an astounding rate and this is a great stimulus to their economy. (They're world leader in electric cars, solar panels and nuclear power). The US, OTOH, is pushing for more coal, oil and NG which is a dead end (literally, as it is killing people) and at the same time turns the economy into a dead end. Investments in renewable energy, cleaner air and water and combating climate change are a boon to the economy. China realizes this but our government is corrupted by fossil fuel companies whose greed is destroying our country.
China is already far along the way to dominate the US. The US is becoming a backwater. China is leading in the technologies which will dominate this century.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Tesla made you a nice return on your investment.
Hmmm.. You mean the $7,500 tax credit for 200K vehicles or the $500 Million loan that they paid off? Or the sum total of 2 Billion in federal money Tesla has enjoyed?
Actually the ROI was JUST the interest on the half a billion, which was low and federally guaranteed and is more than washed out by the half a billion dollars in tax credits handed out so far (which we are still going to give out, though to a lesser degree for awhile yet).
I think Tesla's share holders have made more money than the Fed on this venture....And they haven't made all that much yet really.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The environment doesn't give two fucks about per-capita emissions.
Science can be used to explain why the developing world is polluting more in spite of doing more to reduce pollution. You're correct that the total is what matters, but it's not reasonable to expect those nations to change overnight — especially given that the rest of us aren't exactly doing all we can, either. And if we really want them to improve rapidly, maybe we should help them do it, because after all,
Total is all that matters.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Huh.
Lets see. China is now stopping adding new nuke plants (they will finish the ones they have and then stop).
Germany and a lot of EUrope is stopping their nuke plants.
Japan stopped it, but realized that they had to have it.
S. Korea continues to add.
And hey, it turns out that America is now adding new nuclear SMRs. In particular,NuScale just got an order to build 12 reactors. There are others looking at it and considering using these to replace coal. And Perry/GOP are looking at other ways to get more nuclear power going.
So, no. Some Americans are anti-science on this, but others are not.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's pretty disingeneous to demand that China, which still has a long way to go in terms of economic development, slashes or freezes its emissions
Economic development is a poor excuse. The environment doesn't care what your goals were, it only cares what you put into it. It doesn't matter how developed your nation is, you should be minimizing pollution.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, the French count on NATO to protect them and do their bidding. FOr example, the French, Italians and Germans called up NATO alliance to force America to help them invade Libya. And if you prefer, we can let AQ/ISIS attack you as opposed to telling you 3-6 times a year when a group is about to attack.
....
And considering that we have a great deal more nuclear power than france, and worse yet, France is shutting down their reactors and replacing with AE, just like America has done in SOME places,well,
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"B-b-but Obama inherited the George Bush economy! It's not his fault!"
"B-b-but Trump had nothing to do with the largest economic gains in generations! It was post-Obama's legacy!"
Do you realize how fucking retarded you look?
So are gang rapes, knife attacks, grenade attacks, acid attacks, Islamic murders, political assassination attempts, and leftist/Muslim antisemitic attacks.
But you probably think that's just the happy price of "diversity" and clearly a strength.
Come on, America, it's time to be the adults, look under our own beds, and assure ourselves that the Nuclear Boogeyman is just our imagination.
We need nuclear power. Safe nuclear power isn't 'theoretical', it's a reality; there are safer reactor designs on the drawing board right now, but since everyone seems to lose their bladder containment whenever the subject comes up, no money gets allocated into developing them.
Of course none of this can even begin to happen until 2020; we need to get the current bozo out of office, because his geriatric obsession with dragging us back to the 1940's, trying to resurrect the coal industry, prevents any progress in nuclear power from happening. Hell, I wouldn't put it past the guy to 'executive order' all information to-date on reactor design be destroyed, just to ensure that ass-backwards coal mining is brought back from the dead.
Once we get past that hurdle and back into a sane energy policy, new reactor designs can be developed and implemented. That'll take at least 10 years though.
Meanwhile continuing development and deployment of solar and wind power, in conjuction with large-scale energy storage strategies, should tide us over, and as capacity in these technologies increases, old-fashioned outdated filthy fossil-fuel-based power plants can be shuttered. Tear them down and build solar farms, so we can reuse the grid connections to them.
In order to facilitate faster adoption of plug-in electric vehicles, there should be new government programs to promote them. Rebates, credits for decomissioning ICE vehicles, grants to municipalities to fund change-over from diesel buses to electrics, ad campaigns promoting electrics. Get as many people as possible off ICE-based transportation and into electrics.
Meanwhile continue funding development of practical fusion technology, to eventually replace fission technology.
Also, for all we know, if we, as a species, manage to survive another hundred years or so, we might even have antimatter reactor technology (or something more exotic than that, even), and never have to worry about energy ever again.
The takeaway here is that we have to stop dwelling on the past and move forward, stop being scared little rabbits, use what we've got that's better than what we've been using, and stop sabotaging ourselves.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
The correct, albeit expensive approach would be to phase out coal and gas as fast as possible to save energy. Instead gas plants are still cheaper to operate than coal (wow something from SimCity is true) and have the emissions reduction as a net benefit, instead of trying to chase "lowering emissions" as the end goal.
Like there are a plenty of things that should be done to lower emissions, and some of these are expensive:
1) Phase out gasoline and diesel cars by having refueling infrastructure built and phasing out fossil fuel refueling (gas stations) from city cores. You can have them at the edges, thus only people who need a gas car already will use one, and gas will only be used for long distance trips and not short ones in the city.
2) Phase out coal and natural gas as an energy-generation fuel. Natural gas should be burned for heat, and heat alone, and only as a secondary fuel (eg hot water, cooking, and fireplaces) when electricity is generated by green sources (eg wind, solar, hydro, geothermal) and never as a primary fuel for electricity.
3) Phase out the single-occupancy vehicle. Ideally we would have some kind of "personal transport vehicle" that is fully automated, picks people/parcels up and drops them off without ever having to own the vehicle, and the vehicles just go sit in parkades at the edge of the city near their refueling/recharging infrastructure when not in use, keeping the roads clear. For mass transit, subways would connect all major points of interests (hospitals, airports, ferries, convention centers, shopping malls, universities, colleges, high schools) and automated buses would connect smaller businesses to the central business districts, or residents to their central residential hub. For PTP hopefully, drones get smarter so that small aircar's can transport a person point-to-point. So you have three primary means of transportation. PTV (Personal Transport Vehicle), MTV (Mass Transport Vehicle), and PTPTV (Point to Point Transport Vehicle.) Don't bother owning a car anymore.
4) Phase out Jet-based air travel and go back to blimp-style air travel (solar powered) as more like a cruise. Make high speed rail competitive with air travel and air travel will become less popular, and thus all the energy saved by not producing jet fuel.
5) Phase out transcontinental shipping of products that can be produced locally through automation. 3D printers exist, just about any plastic sprocket, widget or bolt can be made as-needed, so why do we still hire china to produce all these shitty plastic (fossil fuel) things?
So the you will see three repeated keywords there "efficiency" by choosing better, more reliable tech that in turn uses less energy.
The reason emissions go up in the US has a lot more to do with government unwillingness to stop subsidizing inefficient things. The federal government should halt all subsidies that involve transportation (everything from corn/ethanol to light rail funding) and instead directly pick a winner and standardize on it. High Speed Rail is a clear winner, but it requires an actual commitment to rebuilding the rail system to support it (thus nationalizing it) or only funding one specific domestic manufacturer (eg Boeing, Bombardier)'s designs, and mandating that everything produced fit that spec, since we're committing to it for the next 100 years.
I love this argument. Urrr mah gurd the cows are the cause, go vegan. Hah fucking retards. Human beings output orders of magnitude more emssisons than any other animal. The cow argument is made by almost exclusively by morons who believe anything anyone tells them.
Yes, humans (and human activity) do emit more greenhouse gasses than any other animal. But not orders-of-magnitude more. Agriculture, and in particular, livestock, is still a significant contribution. The US Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has reported that agricultural contribution to be about 18% of all greenhouse-gas emissions, with cattle-breeding as a major component.
Worse, methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, by a factor of about 23. On the flipside, it does break down more quickly in the atmosphere than CO2.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
The US Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Whoops, typo. Make that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Wrong.
"Republicans" (actually a Democratic majority House & Senate along with the Republican president Nixon) created the EPA in response to the environmentalists, or "emotional hippies" as you call them.
OMG, we're not allowed to ever harm US jobs or standards of living, so screw the planet! We should not get into the trap of saying "until everyone else follows the rules, we don't have to follow the rules", because that inevitably causes to no one following any rules.
There's nothing wrong with taking the lead instead of following behind and waiting to see what China does.
Except there is demonstrable benefit to reducing the total amount of CO2 (piss) being released into the atmosphere (pool). Even if "they" don't stop, there is still a strong incentive for "us" to stop.
It also sets a good example and puts us in an ethically superior position to pressure them into stopping.
It should be noted that "they" (China) are hell for leather converting to renewable energy. If the US didn't have our heads up our collective asses, we could have been the one selling the world solar panels and wind turbines and battery technology... but because some very deep pockets decided it benefits them to maintain the status quot, and a bunch of idiots buy into the propaganda, we are being left behind.
=Smidge=
From www.epa.gov:
In early 1970, as a result of heightened public concerns about deteriorating city air, natural areas littered with debris, and urban water supplies contaminated with dangerous impurities, President Richard Nixon presented the House and Senate a groundbreaking 37-point message on the environment. These points included:
Around the same time, President Nixon also created a council in part to consider how to organize federal government programs designed to reduce pollution, so that those programs could efficiently address the goals laid out in his message on the environment.
Following the council’s recommendations, the president sent to Congress a plan to consolidate many environmental responsibilities of the federal government under one agency, a new Environmental Protection Agency. This reorganization would permit response to environmental problems in a manner beyond the previous capability of government pollution control programs:
Nope, sorry. By refusing to extend respect and civility towards others, you forfeit all expectations to receive any yourself.
Stop being a lying, violent, racist shithead and we'll stop treating you like one.
Until then, go fuck yourself. We're tired of your bullshit.
=Smidge=
Eliminate all depreciation, deductions, exclusions, and grandfathering of all fossil fuels, from extraction to use, and add all cleanup as a cost.
It's called a market - you have to capture both Goods and Bads to actually have a working Capitalist economy. Letting people pollute for free has costs, specifically in dead kids.
There. Fixed.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I don't see the benefit of being the only one not pissing in the pool. i.e. Being the only ones to massively reduce our CO2.
Why? Because we know that catastrophic issues start to happen at 2C of warming. That will happen globally, and not just in countries that continue with high CO2 output. It doesn't matter if we have 3.1C of warming or "only" 3.0C of warming - the catastrophic issues will still happen. So, why should we pay trillions of dollars when we (and the world) will still get 95% of the problems - but only the U.S. will get the bill.?
As a car analogy... It doesn't matter if we are driving towards a cliff at 75 MPH or just 55 MPH or even 10 MPH. If we get to the cliff Bad Things happen to everyone in the car. So, the U.S. could go to zero emissions and slow the climate change car from 75 MPH to 55 MPH, but we still hit that cliff - and the U.S. ends up paying trillions on top of everything else.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
It's pretty disingeneous to demand that China, which still has a long way to go in terms of economic development, slashes or freezes its emissions
Economic development is a poor excuse.
Is it? Shall we just forget economic development and go back to pre-1900's non-industrialized ways of living that don't pollute enough to cause global warming? If we do that, are you going to volunteer to pick the 2/3rds of the worlds population that we will have to eliminate? Are you willing to die?
I may be pushing the logical limits of my argument a bit, but that's pretty much what you are saying, that we need to forego economic development and the standard of living that it allows. I'm not so sure that's a good idea.
Do we need to be careful and not squander our environment and resources, but we simply cannot sacrifice our economy and thus our freedom and security either.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It matters because it impacts how quickly that tipping point is reached, and how quickly the changes happen. You are wrong in your thinking; It's not as if there will be no problems until we hit 2C and BAM! we're fucked... it's a process, and if we can slow down that process it buys us more time to mitigate the problems and lessens their severity.
In other words, to correct your car analogy we need not a cliff but another, oncoming car.
Even if the other guy doesn't slow down, slowing down yourself will lower the severity of the crash and maybe give you an extra split second to swerve to make a head-on collision less direct.
It should also be mentioned that reducing CO2 emissions by way of alternate technologies is actually a net positive economically, in the long term, so your argument also falls flat on that front. it only seems more expensive if you are unable or unwilling to see the economics of it beyond a few year's time.
=Smidge=
How many ways can you be wrong? Shesh, China is burning more and more coal and destroying their environment at a frightening pace of late. Yes, they produce a lot of the "green" stuff they sell to us, but they are making a huge environmental impact while they do and polluting with reckless abandon as they industrialize their country.
Don't hold them up as a paragon of environmental virtue.. They are literally a mess... Worse than the US ever was.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
No president has any control over short term economic outlooks, yet every president is quite ready to take credit when the economy looks good and pass blame when it looks bad.
Are you trolling or do you actually believe that protecting the environment for future generations requires harming the economy?
It's not an either or situation here. We can be both careful about our environment and develop our economy, in fact we largely are. We've come a LONG way from the start of the industrialization age here in the USA where pollution wasn't a concern at all, nobody cared, to where we are today. We've cleaned up our air, water and land in many respects and undone much of the mindless damage we caused previously.
However, the PROBLEM is the suggested solutions being advanced for today's environmental problems all seem to be rooted in something other than actually helping the environment and usually involve an all or nothing approach. They are unbalanced, don't consider the economics of the situation or the impact to the average person. For instance, advocates that say we should stop burring fossil fuels... There is zero way that we could do that, even with a decade's notice, without collapsing our economy in a bad way. Yet, I hear this discussed all the time.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Does ending immigration stop population growth? All those people will stop reproducing if they're not on US soil?
The vast majority of people in the US is an immigrant or a recent descendant of immigrants. So this sounds a lot like shutting the doors behind you.
PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY WORKING & TRAVELING AND LIVING!!!!!
Why not a market based solution like Fee and Dividend?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Yes we are all poorly-educated, etc, etc. We are so dumb that we can't understand anything!
It doesn't have to be all, it just have to be a majority of those who vote, locally or nationally.
Electricity can be stored for later use, you know. Cells and capacitors aren't exactly new inventions.
Using energy, exports, been productive again.
Jobs, work and exports.
Why would anyone want to reduce US jobs, exports, productivity?
Why should the USA be held back from exporting, making products, selling services to the world?
Just the start of the USA winning again.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Funny in a dark way.
lol now try storing enough power for the entire US at night in batteries. You're better off doing things like pumped storage hyrdo, but then you'll have lawsuits from environmentalists and NIMBYs.
Shesh.. That clean coal is dying canard again..
Look, let us stipulate, up front, that Trump's fascination with coal is mostly political. Not that he's not doing something, he is, it's just that if you are paying attention to the reality of things, coal is just too expensive to use. Trump's administration is backing off the EPA's mandates in order to keep from killing coal faster than it's already dying, but make no mistake, coal is a fuel that simply won't last much longer for electric power generation. Trump is making it possible to keep existing coal plants on line longer, but eventually they will wear out and be replaced with other sources.
Regardless of the politics of this, if you look at fuel prices and future projections for various sources, natural gas is literally wiping the floor with EVERYTHING else out there. Nuclear, Wind, Solar AND coal are more expensive over the total expected lifecycle of a generation plan than natural gas. THAT is why coal is dying and there is little anybody can do to stop this.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
However, the rising tax (on gas or other taxable sources) to cover the infrastructure maintenance that EV do not pay are felt more directly by the poor.
Gas taxes have always been regressive, hitting the poor far harder than other segments of society. Look for gas taxes to be phased out and spread out through society in different ways. The existence of EVs isn't really going to change that.
Stop eating so many cheese burgers and we won't need to have so many cows.
It's already started. America now has 1.2 billion pounds of excess cheese — and nowhere to put it. That sounds weird, but the jist of the story is that the US has a LOT of processed cheese. A ridiculous amount. This is because processed cheese lasts a very long time, so excess milk could be turned into processed cheese. There's plenty of excess milk because Americans are drinking much less milk: 149 lb/capita in 2017, down from 247 lb/capita in 1975. Less milk drinking == farm closures and dairy folks trying to figure out what to do with the cheese.
It would have been less if nuclear power plants were kept in operation and/or new ones were built. But Americans are a bunch of poorly-educated, cowardly NIMBYs so that won't happen.
Yeah, how dare those NIMBYs demand that utility companies run plants like Davis Besse until they were unsafe. Just because the NIMBYs demanded additional profits for the utility company shareholders.
Perhaps you should think about what you post.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Ideally, if we restart our nuclear power with SMRs, we will probably use a combination of battery/recharging when going through slow cities/stops.
So how do you propose to dispose of a SMR at the end of its service life? Have you thought this idea through?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Odd. I thought you'd orient yourself to be at the pinnacle and spearhead of human development. Of course, if you prefer to compare your country to the likes of Somalia and Bangladesh instead of Sweden and Germany, you're doing really well, I agree.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The relevant measurement is emissions per capita not per country. Why is this so difficult to understand for passportless Americans?
Hello Strawman! Glad to see you're back in the argument!
"Well those guys over there are pissing in the pool, so why should I stop?"
It is more like pissing in the ocean. Everyone has to piss. There is no way to stop it and we all have to live in it. To stretch the metaphor really far: As long as it is only whales, fish, etc in the oceans, everything should stay okay, but as humans, we can create things that have to piss more than all the humans in the world combined. And we are making millions of them.
See? The pool idea does not really fit because you can just get out of the pool and go take a piss elsewhere. We can't just get out of the planet. We eat and drink where we shit and piss. So far, the scale of the planet has been enough to "process" the waste products naturally. We have hit that limit in atmospheric chemistry.
We laughed at the idea of anyone buying water in bottles for drinking purposes. Why? Water is fucking free. It flows everywhere. We have drinking fountains that do not ask for payment. Why would anyone buy bottled water? Well, get ready for bottled air! We already have "oxygen bars". I imagine it shouldn't be too much longer until you can purchase premium air in a bottle. 100 years? With Beijing being the way it is, it may start earlier there. They are already wearing (ineffective) masks.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
China's per capita carbon emisions are about one third of the USA.
Wow! Really? All I have to do is encourage my poor farmers to breed like rabbits and I can then run dirty industries and make billions of dollars from them and everyone will give me a free pass because 90% of the citizens in my country live off the land and have essentially zero impact on the environment?
I really do love this whole per capita thing. It really captures the truth of the picture. I mean yeah, that poor subsistence farmer has nothing at all to do with that iPhone factory, but if we can lay some portion of the blame on that farmer, then we can appear to be better than we are concerning emissions.
So, if we fuck like rabbits here in the USA and we end up with 3 billion people to spread the blame over, we can look even better than China and run more dirty factories? After all, it does reduce the per-capita pollution numbers even if it fucking increases the overall pollution. After all, it is not the pollution that matters. No. What matters is how many people we can spread the blame over. No, the person who decides to run a business that dumps chemicals into the environment is not to blame. No. He gets to include his neighbors as partially to blame too.
I am sure that neighbor won't get pissed off being blamed for his neighbors spewing shit into the environment. The neighbor did petition city council, engaged in lawsuits, etc to stop the fucker from polluting, but it is appropriate to blame the neighbor because the neighbor obviously didn't do enough to stop it.
I will die on this hill. Measuring industrial pollution in a per-capita manner is absolutely fucking dishonest. You want to do per-capita pollution measurement? Then do it against what society as a whole is doing, not what specific segments of society are doing. Until then, this is all bullshit. I don't dump chemicals in my fucking rivers, but other Americans do and I can't fucking stop them. Stop fucking blaming me. Per-capita my ass.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
You have completely left reality. The USA is still many times lower in population but 2nd overall and the highest per capita in the world.
I've tried making that argument before, but Slashdot has lots of folks who believe per-capita does not matter; only total generation per country matters.
Poe's Law is unfortunately correct. You say something crazy, and you will get plenty of people coming out of the woodwork who believe you and legitimately think "What this guy said, yes, that's the truth I believe in!"
"B-b-but Trump had nothing to do with the largest economic gains in generations! It was post-Obama's legacy!"
I'd give Trump more of the benefit of the doubt if the economy wasn't roaring the same amount in the final year or two of Obama's presidency. Trump made a point of it, saying on the campaign trail that the stock market couldn't be trusted, how the Obama boom was all smoke and mirrors. Of course, as soon as 2017 rolled around, he pulled a 180 and took credit for it all.