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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.
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
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.
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.'"
> 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=
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.
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.
Before pointing your finger in an accusatory manner, perhaps you should consider what their targets are first.
China and India are still on the up side of the curve, no one expects them to be decreasing yet. They expect them to be slowing the rate of increase, which they are.
Remember all that whining about how emissions targets would force the US back to pre-industrial levels of civilization? That's the reason why China and India aren't expected to immediately halt their increasing output.
And despite all that they are still at just a fraction of the per capita emissions of the US anyway, around half.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"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.
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
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.
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.
Utilities are trying to get ready for EVs, as well as deal with the CO2. Problem is, they might pull out a 120 MW coal plant and put in a 500 MW nat gas. Considering that nat gas emits less than 1/2 of the CO2 of coal (per BTU) means that you can double, even come close to 3x increase and still emit less. But this is 4x up. Way too much.
We need to replace those old coal plants with nuclear power.
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...
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.'"