Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

[furcifer]

We have parks in Canada bigger than Sweeden, UK and Switzerland put together. And lakes.

Yay!

So hows that fair? How do you tax the carbon emissions on the mining, ore and smleting to process the steel they use to make watches Switzerland?

By taxing the fuel used to generate the energy to do all that.

Is the UK paying a carbon tax on all the planes that land in the UK and generate their economy?

Nope. The UK pays a carbon tax on the fuel they pump into those planes.

Should Canada pay a carbon tax on the trees they cut down for lumber in the UK?

No. It's not released into the atmosphere.

Or do we get the credit for growing them?

Sure, as long as you don't mind penalties for then cutting them down. However, it would be simpler to just tax fossil fuels and ignore lumber, since in the mid term (a decade or so) it's net zero.

I don't think you understand.

My driveway is probably longer then the commute most of the citizens in Denmark have to go to and from work.

They pay nothing.

I get penalized because my country is big and it requires me to use fossil fuels to make the products those people in Denmark sell, assemble, market, put in their beer etc?

It is a global economy. I realize I don't directly contribute to someone in Denmark earning a living. But indirectly we all rely on others to deliver the good and services we need to run our (already over taxed) economies.

You see where this is going?

It's only works in tiny densely populated countries with relatively low energy overhead.

In order for a carbon tax to be implemented fairly on a global scale you need a centralized government with a bunch of nerds running super computers calculating the carbon costs. I like to think of it as the first steps to the formation of the Federation and warp travel. Others just think Hitler. To each their own.

Don't get me wrong, I think that's how it should be. I'm willing to forgo the debate about the actual effects of climate change, ("global warming" is actual something I think most of us in the far North dream about), and like to think it's just not beneficial to release all the CO2 that been sequestered for millions years in a very short time.

So even if we assume catastrophic consequences, how do we do it given the hurdles I've just outlined?

There's even more to consider. If you think about it, it really requires forced relocation and mass sterilization. Which again, I'm not totally opposed to. I don't think a lot of people should breed. But that's just my opinion. Taking away the rights of people is a whole other ball of wax. The best way to reduce population has been to improve the standard of living. But that's almost impossible to do without cheap and abundant fossil fuels.

It's a mess dude. I've done a lot of research and stuff and all I know for sure is there is NO definitive answer. It's not the end of the world IMO but this is a very perplexing question if you look at it from all sides.

 

[jonescg]

Yeah forced sterilisations is not on.

You don't need to go there, let people choose to not have kids, and don't penalise them if they do. We still need bright young minds to solve problems.

 

[furcifer]

Why think so complicated. Natural gas, raw oil, hard coal and lignite have a certain amount of C per kg of product and if you burn it this is realeased as CO2 to the atmopshere.

tax the amount of carbon in those fuels and you have already made an excellent(!) start.

Ideally this happens worldwide, if not just tax the products based on assumed CO2 footprint.

Again, this only works if every country is willing to do so.

Think about it. So I'm in Canada, I'm pro carbon tax. I say if it takes 2000kg of CO2 to produce a pound of copper I'm going to charge $100.

But hey, Chile says, nuh uh! We only charge $1

Oh wait, here's Venezuela "We only charge $0.001 because inflation!"

Where do YOU buy your copper from???

And so on a so forth.

How does the free market work? Does it reward to stewards of the Earth?

Nope.

 

[furcifer]

Yeah forced sterilisations is not on.

You don't need to go there, let people choose to not have kids, and don't penalise them if they do. We still need bright young minds to solve problems.

Having kids is a proven way to kill your economy, shorten your life, ruin your standard of living.

That's just the facts. Hate on China all you want but somebody in the know back in the day saw this. I'm not condoning it, I'm not advocating it, but it is a fact.

It's not something I even like to acknowledge, but if you start talking about these things it's something you have to consider.

It's so messed up.

 

[furcifer]

Nothing is hermetically sealed.

Correct. There are just levels from what you are talking about on the very low end, to nuclear power plant switch gear, which is what I'm talking about, on the high end.

You're talking about something with a very low IP rating and trying to say it's more robust because it requires different measures to satisfy requirements. I don't think anyone get's that.

It's simple. On a sale of 1 - 10, 10 being the highest, you're talking 2 and I'm talking 10.

I don't think you have experience in power plants. Even the computers that controlled turbine input were in a climate controlled sealed unit within the plant. Entering the unit set off the alarms.

All of the electronics within a power plant are monitored for the slightest deviation from normal operation. And that's a cogen plant, not nuclear.

If the change in humidity in the air is enough to set off alarms, you think they allow any ingress of water?

Again, I'm not sure what you are getting at. Maybe you could be more specific and I could address it directly. For the most part I honestly don't think you have a clue at this point. You might be over reaching. Than again I could be totally missing your point.

 

[jonescg]

Having kids is a proven way to kill your economy, shorten your life, ruin your standard of living.

That's just the facts. Hate on China all you want but somebody in the know back in the day saw this. I'm not condoning it, I'm not advocating it, but it is a fact.

It's not something I even like to acknowledge, but if you start talking about these things it's something you have to consider.

It's so messed up.

Having too many children is bad, but not having enough is also going to put a handbrake on development.
China doesn't do it anymore though. People are choosing to have fewer children, and they have access to education, contraception and are better at planning now.
Why force people to have fewer kids when you can improve education and access to contraception, and let them make that call.

Also, when you have a consumer economy, it relies on a constant supply of consumers who all have enough money to buy crap. If you have a deficiency of either, your economy shrinks. Not that that's always a bad thing, but if it takes living standards with it, then it's bad indeed.

 

[furcifer]

Having too many children is bad, but not having enough is also going to put a handbrake on development.
China doesn't do it anymore though. People are choosing to have fewer children, and they have access to education, contraception and are better at planning now.
Why force people to have fewer kids when you can improve education and access to contraception, and let them make that call.

Also, when you have a consumer economy, it relies on a constant supply of consumers who all have enough money to buy crap. If you have a deficiency of either, your economy shrinks. Not that that's always a bad thing, but if it takes living standards with it, then it's bad indeed.

Um, no. Look at the numbers. Having 1 kid on average maximizes longevity and standard of living. For every kid you have above and beyond is drop of about 10% in standard of living and 5 years of life. Kids are the only handbrake.

Contraception is voluntary and everyone with kids is basically programmed to think their's is the next coming of Christ or the the reincarnation of Einstein. Time and time again people gamble their lives on their children and for the most part they're duds. Access to education is how you make money off dumb parents and keep the economy rolling.

I hate being blunt but those are the cold hard facts. When you talk to your friends about these matters I suggest sugar coating it. You don't make many friend with facts.

eta: If you're talking about developing nations the access to clean water and and food seem to be a natural contraceptive. I hate to say it without looking it up but if memory serves people have kids basically out of desperation. The worse off you are in life the more likely your are to have kids. People basically have kids as an insurance policy. In terms of this discussion, if energy gets more expensive those in the worst of circumstances are more likely to pump out babies. That presents a challenge.

 

[jonescg]

You just made my point. Choosing to have one child is better than either none, or more than one.

But the moment anyone advocates for ending the lives of those already born into the world, you're talking eugenics, and that's a very dark place.

Fortunately it's improving right around the world, and women are having far fewer babies than ever before. A few places are the exception, but we're on track for a population peak of 10 billion by 2100 and we know it's possible to feed that many when we get there. Ideally we won't hit that point, it will peak earlier than that. But we do need to stop thinking about ourselves and stop shitting in our own nest first. Hans Rosling had a bunch of really good presentations on the matter.

 

[Punx0r]

Again, this only works if every country is willing to do so.

Think about it. So I'm in Canada, I'm pro carbon tax. I say if it takes 2000kg of CO2 to produce a pound of copper I'm going to charge $100.

But hey, Chile says, nuh uh! We only charge $1

Oh wait, here's Venezuela "We only charge $0.001 because inflation!"

Where do YOU buy your copper from???

And so on a so forth.

How does the free market work? Does it reward to stewards of the Earth?

Nope.

Any country not signed up to the agreed carbon-pricing scheme gets hit with punitive tarrifs on their exports. It's really not hard or complicated and the Paris agreement has already demonstrated there can be sufficient interntional agreement.

 

[furcifer]

Any country not signed up to the agreed carbon-pricing scheme gets hit with punitive tarrifs on their exports. It's really not hard or complicated and the Paris agreement has already demonstrated there can be sufficient interntional agreement.

The Paris Accord is just another example of everyone agreeing and then doing nothing once they realize the consequences. At best you get a couple years of trying and then once a new government gets into power they reverse their stance to repair their own economies. Repeat adnauseum.

Kyoto, Copenhagen,Marrakech, Paris, Cancun. Every COP meeting starts with countries making excuses for not doing anything and ends with everyone agreeing to do something.

They've been doing this for 25 years.

 

[furcifer]

You just made my point. Choosing to have one child is better than either none, or more than one.

But the moment anyone advocates for ending the lives of those already born into the world, you're talking eugenics, and that's a very dark place.

Fortunately it's improving right around the world, and women are having far fewer babies than ever before. A few places are the exception, but we're on track for a population peak of 10 billion by 2100 and we know it's possible to feed that many when we get there. Ideally we won't hit that point, it will peak earlier than that. But we do need to stop thinking about ourselves and stop shitting in our own nest first. Hans Rosling had a bunch of really good presentations on the matter.

Well yah, none means extinction and everything goes to zero.

If he's the stats guy I think I may have seen some of them.

I'm leaning towards spending money on providing clean water, food and electricity to those that currently don't have it. Humanitarian efforts may have more impact on climate change than alternative energy.

I think people are also going to have to get over their fear of nuclear as well.

 

[sendler2112]

Kyoto, Copenhagen,Marrakech, Paris, Cancun. Every COP meeting starts with countries making excuses for not doing anything and ends with everyone agreeing to do something.

They've been doing this for 25 years.

Human civilization has immense inertia and the current debt based free market system cannot function without perpetual growth. We will need a whole new way. And our primal motivations are hijacked to consume. The carbon pulse has allowed us to grow our consumption many times larger than will be possible without it when liquid fuel starts to leave us in a couple decades. We are well into overshoot as a species and must accept that we must bend all consumption back down. Choosing to act wisely now would stretch the transition over many decades to be as painless as possible. But it will still seem to hurt a little. And no selfish rich guys are willingly choosing that. "Quantitatively Easing" the pedal to the metal for another 10 years will precipitate a higher peak and sharper more painful Seneca Effect decline.
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[billvon]

My driveway is probably longer then the commute most of the citizens in Denmark have to go to and from work.

They pay nothing.

Right. And I pay nothing. Because carbon taxes aren't in place here. That's the problem to fix.

I get penalized because my country is big and it requires me to use fossil fuels to make the products those people in Denmark sell, assemble, market, put in their beer etc?

Right. And you get penalized via income taxes, even though your work product may help people in Denmark.

Everyone pays taxes. The goal should be to make them fair. And universal, when the item being taxed affects everyone.

In order for a carbon tax to be implemented fairly on a global scale you need a centralized government with a bunch of nerds running super computers calculating the carbon costs.

I don't think it needs to be much harder than the Montreal protocol, which resulted in neither Hitler nor the Federation. And which regulated atmospheric releases of specific compounds.

There's even more to consider. If you think about it, it really requires forced relocation and mass sterilization.

Forced relocation would seem to primarily be a result of (not a mitigation against) climate change.

Mass sterilization? All that is needed is population reduction. And from the proven methods for accomplishing that, I would think that educating women would be a far better approach than mass sterilization.

 

[Punx0r]

The Paris Accord is just another example of everyone agreeing and then doing nothing once they realize the consequences. At best you get a couple years of trying and then once a new government gets into power they reverse their stance to repair their own economies. Repeat adnauseum.

Out of almost every country on the planet only the USA has reneged on the Paris agreement.

Maybe you're right and we should just give up without even trying - there's no way something like the UN, WTO, nuclear test ban treaty, IMF or the Geneva Convention could ever work.

 

[furcifer]

Out of almost every country on the planet only the USA has reneged on the Paris agreement.

Maybe you're right and we should just give up without even trying - there's no way something like the UN, WTO, nuclear test ban treaty, IMF or the Geneva Convention could ever work.

Do you know what the Paris Accord is?
"The climate agreement adopted at the 21st United Nations Climate Conference (COP21) in Paris in December 2015 has officially abandoned the idea of an international equitable burden-sharing arrangement to control and reduce carbon emissions based on multilaterally negotiated binding emissions targets and time tables for each country, the foundation of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. By that it has effectively sidelined equity and environmental justice considerations as a guiding principle for multilateral cooperation. It has let the developed world largely off the hook for its massive historic contribution of CO2 that has already accumulated in the earth’s atmosphere. "

In order to come to an agreement they basically gave up on anything legally binding and arrived at what amounted to a pledge. A pledge that's supposed to be renewed every 10 years or so. But it's just words. So the US is basically the only honest country of all the countries in the world.

Everyone agrees it's bad and something should be done but nothing is actually getting done. And that's because it kills economies.

 

[billvon]

Everyone agrees it's bad and something should be done but nothing is actually getting done. And that's because it kills economies.

That's why it has to be international law - so that the countries ignoring it don't benefit over the responsible countries.

 

[furcifer]

I would think that educating women would be a far better approach than mass sterilization.

It is. But it seems to conflict with some religions.

Montreal was successful because it wasn't about taxing individuals. It was about disposing of things properly. Plus it was about using antiquated technology. A lot of things came together to make it work. CFC's are on the rise however as developing countries start to want things like air conditioning.

It's a tough road ahead. Like I said, you basically have the "Haves", which represent about 1/6th of the world population, telling the "Have nots" "Sorry but you can't Have that, we found out it's bad". And a lot of the division is along racial and religious lines. I don't think you need to be much of a historian to know it's not going to play out well.

 

[furcifer]

That's why it has to be international law - so that the countries ignoring it don't benefit over the responsible countries.

And that's where it falls apart. India is pretty big and they're pushing pretty hard for not only reduction, but sanctions on developed countries so they can get fair piece of the action. You can't reduce what you have yet to produce.

 

[billvon]

It's a tough road ahead. Like I said, you basically have the "Haves", which represent about 1/6th of the world population, telling the "Have nots" "Sorry but you can't Have that, we found out it's bad".

I agree. I think a better approach would be "sorry that's a bad choice, here, have this instead. It's cheaper."

India is pretty big and they're pushing pretty hard for not only reduction, but sanctions on developed countries so they can get fair piece of the action.

Yep. Everyone wants stuff for themselves.

 

[furcifer]

It's a tough road ahead. Like I said, you basically have the "Haves", which represent about 1/6th of the world population, telling the "Have nots" "Sorry but you can't Have that, we found out it's bad".

I agree. I think a better approach would be "sorry that's a bad choice, here, have this instead. It's cheaper."

India is pretty big and they're pushing pretty hard for not only reduction, but sanctions on developed countries so they can get fair piece of the action.

Yep. Everyone wants stuff for themselves.

That's almost unfair to say. It implies everyone is greedy, but in reality all the poor majority are asking for is to be afforded the same opportunity the Western world had 100 years ago.

Imagine the entire western world living like Little House on the Prairie for the next 100 years while the rest of the world catches up.

 

[billvon]

That's almost unfair to say. It implies everyone is greedy, but in reality all the poor majority are asking for is to be afforded the same opportunity the Western world had 100 years ago.

Pretty much everybody _is_ greedy. That's why capitalism (usually) works.

Imagine the entire western world living like Little House on the Prairie for the next 100 years while the rest of the world catches up.

Well, we are headed in that direction when oil runs out. We'd be wise to make sure that Little House (and more importantly the farm it's on) has as much independent energy as possible when that happens.

 

[furcifer]

Well, we are headed in that direction when oil runs out. We'd be wise to make sure that Little House (and more importantly the farm it's on) has as much independent energy as possible when that happens.

Maybe people are, but it would take a 100 years for over half of the world's population doing exactly what we've done in the West before they approach the same level.
Those should be pretty humbling numbers but they don't seem to be.

 

[Hillhater]

Out of almost every country on the planet only the USA has reneged on the Paris agreement.

You put a lot of faith in a signature, and seem to have overlooked those that are either ignoring it..(China, India,Russia, Turkey, Saudi, Poland, etc,etc )..those that have declared intention to quit..(Brazil, Indonesia,) as well as the fact that the vast majority of those “committed” to the agreement , are so far from meeting their targets that they may as well not be included.
Worse still, of the 7 that are “setting the example” and getting close to targets, most are countries like Ethiopia, Buhtan, Gambia, Morroco, Costa Rica, etc......not exactly major players in the “Carbon Emitter” championship.
“Paris “. Is not a solution to your percieved problem !

 

[cricketo]

Maybe people are, but it would take a 100 years for over half of the world's population doing exactly what we've done in the West before they approach the same level.
Those should be pretty humbling numbers but they don't seem to be.

Well, by the level of industrialization and use of machinery the third world may be quite a bit behind, but they're pretty efficient at chopping down and burning down forests to do agriculture. How much of an impact is that ?

 

[sendler2112]

Some interesting charts.
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