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Trabisnikof posted:You can't just switch back and forth between coal and natural gas based on the spot price. Once you've built a coal-fired power plant, you're running it till you shutdown, same with gas. You can shutdown early and build a new plant, but the costs make that uneconomical. The information that you quoted a few posts ago states that US coal generation changed from about 50% to 32% in just five years, which is close to instantaneous on the timescale of energy usage changes; when analysts predict that coal will become more profitable in five/ten years time (this will be at some point in the future), then coal plants will be built or un-mothballed. Without a carbon price or other legislation, there will be nothing to stop all the economically-accessible fossil fuels from being burned, and fracking just adds to that quantity.
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May 18, 2015 22:19
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Placid Marmot posted:The information that you quoted a few posts ago states that US coal generation changed from about 50% to 32% in just five years, which is close to instantaneous on the timescale of energy usage changes; when analysts predict that coal will become more profitable in five/ten years time (this will be at some point in the future), then coal plants will be built or un-mothballed. Without a carbon price or other legislation, there will be nothing to stop all the economically-accessible fossil fuels from being burned, and fracking just adds to that quantity. Just because we had a ton of old coal plants retiring now doesn't mean they're going to take offline brand new gas plants in five years. That would be insanely bad mismanagement of grid planning on the utilities part. Remember new EPA restrictions are part of the market forces here, so even if gas wasn't so cheap they still might need new expensive environmental controls. Instead of replacing those old plants with new 30-50 year lifespan coal-fired power plants they built 30-year lifespan gas power plants. While that's not as good as a perfect solution, it is vastly better that we did build gas plants instead of coal plants. That's a fact already in the emissions curve. The idea that it is bad to switch to natural gas now because if we do nothing for the next 50-100 years we might use a ton of fossil fuels is irrelevant. By making one of the cleanest and least climate damaging fossil fuel cheaper now fracing has done more to help the climate than Kyoto did. Its by no means a sufficient solution, but it was better than the alternative, more coal. If we're seriously considering burning all economic fossil fuels, that's 3x the business as usual scenario so its not exactly realistic to begin with. But since you brought up the % of total resource framework, here's a source using said framework. Coal just sucks that bad. quote:Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. cannot burn much of the coal, oil and gas located within their national territories if the world wants to restrain global warming. That’s the conclusion of a new analysis aimed at determining what it will take to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius this century—a goal adopted during ongoing negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
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May 18, 2015 22:43
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Trabisnikof posted:Except that green completions are now mandatory, which prevents most of the leaking and that even including methane, natural gas still emits fewer LCA greenhouse gasses than coal. Then again, six months ago there was a 2500 sq mile cloud of methane sitting over the southwest. Evil_Greven fucked around with this message at 01:03 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 01:00
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bpower posted:http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/17/shell-accused-of-strategy-risking-catastrophic-climate-change "Called Mountains and Oceans, Shell’s New Lens Scenarios analyse current trends and trace two plausible routes to the future, exploring the implications for global economic development, the energy system and greenhouse gas emissions." Presumably because that will be the only places left.
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May 19, 2015 15:40
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Another pipeline burst. Woohoo
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May 20, 2015 07:16
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Just had this linked to me on FB: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4443252.ece Thought it might provide some amusing fuel for the thread. I hadn't heard of Ridley somehow, been reading up on him. What a character! Don't have Times access but here's a quote I found: quote:Our lives are vastly improved by oil and coal but this is wilfully ignored by those pressing for institutions to disinvest
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May 20, 2015 12:57
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I don't think it's to nutty to say that climate change is going to make return on capital lower in the long run, and that that alone could cause major changes for first world countries as we know them. I'm not saying water will stop coming out of my taps and that dogs will be living with cats and other mass pandemonium, but poo poo will get very real when the investments that fuel the first world economy start to produce permanently lower real rates of return. Radbot fucked around with this message at 14:16 on May 20, 2015 |
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May 20, 2015 14:14
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Matt Ridley is a noted climate change denier. So take it with a massive grain of salt, and is a member of a known denialist think tank.
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May 20, 2015 15:01
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El Grillo posted:Just had this linked to me on FB: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4443252.ece If you want an aggressively pro-fossil fuels book, check out The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels It's pretty much Arkane in book form, including misreading charts and everything. edit: for example, check out this graph that uses *science* to *prove* that increasing carbon emissions will in fact....cause fewer climate related deaths! 
Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 19:16 on May 20, 2015 |
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May 20, 2015 17:32
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 not including Somalian fishermen
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May 20, 2015 21:04
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Trabisnikof posted:If you want an aggressively pro-fossil fuels book, check out The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels Disaster deaths in the developed world have fallen in recent years because of the ability of people to receive and act upon information regarding approaching hazards, improvements in science, engineering, and architecture, the ability to move materiel and food to post-disaster locations, and the capacity to generate heat and clean water. This is why people died after Katrina - no cars (so no evacuation), no warning (from the levee breach), and so on. So, in a way, most of the things we do to reduce death from disaster currently utilize fossil fuels (though they don't have to, theoretically). However, they have also subsidized our capacity to be exposed to hazards (in massive, centralized, coastal settlements), and disaster occurrence has risen sharply as global development speeds up. If current mechanisms for death-reduction were to systematically fail, there would probably be lots of dead people. In the develop-ing world, disaster deaths are still quite high, especially when they occur outside of the more developed cities.
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May 21, 2015 06:36
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Fasdar posted:Disaster deaths in the developed world have fallen in recent years because of the ability of people to receive and act upon information regarding approaching hazards, improvements in science, engineering, and architecture, the ability to move materiel and food to post-disaster locations, and the capacity to generate heat and clean water. This is why people died after Katrina - no cars (so no evacuation), no warning (from the levee breach), and so on. So, in a way, most of the things we do to reduce death from disaster currently utilize fossil fuels (though they don't have to, theoretically). However, they have also subsidized our capacity to be exposed to hazards (in massive, centralized, coastal settlements), and disaster occurrence has risen sharply as global development speeds up. If current mechanisms for death-reduction were to systematically fail, there would probably be lots of dead people. In the develop-ing world, disaster deaths are still quite high, especially when they occur outside of the more developed cities. Correct, you now understand that the moral value of Fossil Fuels faaaaarrr outweigh whatever silly and exaggerated climate impacts there are. Glad to see your anti-science hippyism is being reduce. Here have some more "science" that "proves" all this!    Wrap it up, anti-carbon failures.
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May 21, 2015 07:14
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May 21, 2015 07:34
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Trabisnikof posted:Correct, you now understand that the moral value of Fossil Fuels faaaaarrr outweigh whatever silly and exaggerated climate impacts there are. Glad to see your anti-science hippyism is being reduce. I know you are a funny guy, but I was actually kind of trying to point out that fossil fuels create massive vulnerabilities that are largely unnecessary, given the availability of alternatives. Pegging our entire life-support system to a spatially disparate, expensive, dangerous to transport, and economically volatile commodity is going to result in more mass fatality incidents as global distribution systems become stressed.
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May 21, 2015 07:54
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On the other hand, carting around an energy dense and therefore by definition dangerous fuel is necessary to maintain a 21st century standard of living, and a high tech society will never be as resilient as a million backwards farming hamlets at least to certain kinds of disturbances (e.g. "suddenly half the infrastructure blew up"). Just use Uranium instead of coal to make sure the system doesn't disturb itself by wrecking the planet too much.
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May 21, 2015 08:14
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Looks like Shell is now buying into the conspiracy.quote:Ben van Beurden, the chief executive of Shell, has endorsed warnings that the world’s fossil fuel reserves cannot be burned unless some way is found to capture their carbon emissions. The oil boss has also predicted that the global energy system will become “zero carbon” by the end of the century, with his group obtaining a “very, very large segment” of its earnings from renewable power. quote:“I am absolutely convinced that without a policy that will really enable and realise CCS (carbon capture and storage) on a large scale, we are not going to be able to stay within that CO2 emission budget.” quote:Van Beurden insisted that he had his hands tied from investing more heavily in renewables or CCS because they would not produce the high financial returns that investors had been used to from oil and gas. “I would lose my job over it if I just threw a few billions away [on CCS] … CCS is essential for society and ... is ultimately important for our company, but listen, I have great difficulty to have shareholders focus on the quarter after next.”
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May 23, 2015 20:33
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Happy_Misanthrope posted:Looks like Shell is now buying into the conspiracy. Watch him get kicked out by the board of directors and get replaced by someone who is "fully onboard" with "doing whatever it takes" to "maximize shareholder value."
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May 24, 2015 06:40
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enraged_camel posted:Watch him get kicked out by the board of directors and get replaced by someone who is "fully onboard" with "doing whatever it takes" to "maximize shareholder value." Uh, that's what he's saying? Burning the world's fossil fuel reserves would require dramatically increasing the rate of consumption and resource extraction. This guy is suggesting we burn massively more fossil fuels that we otherwise would and do some CCS on the side.
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May 24, 2015 06:46
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Trabisnikof posted:Uh, that's what he's saying? Yes, but he also accepts global warming: quote:The Shell boss said he accepted the general premise contained in independent studies that have concluded that dangerous levels of global warming above 2C will occur unless CO2 is buried or reserves are kept in the ground. “We cannot burn all the hydrocarbon resources we have on the planet in an unmitigated way and not expect to have a CO2 loading in the atmosphere that is often being linked to the 2C scenario,” he said in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. It would seem to me that Shell board of directors may want a global warming denier at the helm. Maybe I'm just being cynical, though.
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May 24, 2015 06:55
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enraged_camel posted:Yes, but he also accepts global warming: But what I'm saying is, he's moving the goalposts. In the quote you gave: quote:We cannot burn all the hydrocarbon resources we have on the planet in an unmitigated way and not expect to have a CO2 loading in the atmosphere that is often being linked to the 2C scenario Burning all the hydrocarbons wasn't on the table before, so sure he's admitting we'll need to do something if we're going to massively increase our carbon output, but that's nowhere near saying we should do something about the mess we're causing now. Now since we're discussing "burning everything" when they backdown to "only 2x 2015 baseline" it'll feel like we're winning when we've lost.
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May 24, 2015 07:02
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I went to a science panel talk in Adelaide over the weekend, and there were a couple of scientists the panel who just casually described how the climate change numbers are seriously bad and we are in huge trouble pretty much regardless of what we do at this point. It's amazing to listen to them just matter-of-factly say "The the last time temperature changes of this level occurred, they occurred over a much longer time period and lots of stuff died. This time around, it's happening much quicker, and once the methane starts to seep out, then we're all uncontrollably hosed. Oh and by the way these huge holes in Siberia are probably methane seeping out. I feel bad leaving it on such a negative note though so here is a funny anecdote and hopefully we find a miracle, have a nice day". The dichotomy between that at the regular news coverage is striking. They even made reference to the normal media coverage being very restrained and driven by influences that didn't want the situation to be accurately described. I told this to a work mate with who I occasionally talk climate change with (in a much more optimistic sense normally) and he started to get irate, asking me what I was doing about it and if I wasn't going to do anything then why did I talk about it, and questioning the same of these scientists and the people coming up with the numbers in the first place. Does no-one else like doomsday porn on a Monday? markgreyam fucked around with this message at 06:15 on May 25, 2015 |
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May 25, 2015 05:59
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markgreyam posted:I went to a science panel talk in Adelaide over the weekend, and there were a couple of scientists the panel who just casually described how the climate change numbers are seriously bad and we are in huge trouble pretty much regardless of what we do at this point. I was just part of a conference that brought together ecologists, public lands managers, some social scientists (not enough) and climate scientists. There the mood was a bit different - in fact, almost... excited? The conference and the institution that housed it, of course, are focused specifically on adaptation and how to facilitate it across ecosystems and various patterns of land use, and figuring out ways to 'mainstream' no-carbon or carbon-negative technologies into existing frameworks. The most interesting thing, though, was that the various government employees, more than anyone, seemed to be ready to hammer nails. (It is not every day you see a USDA rep openly trashing the farm bill's regressive commodification of food systems while wearing a belt buckle the size of Texas.) The rep from the National Park Service seemed almost ready to start digging trenches for more than fire, as well. So while some scientists may indeed be glooming and dooming (academics are naturally a meek lot, suffering as they do from decades of learned helplessness), there are a lot of people ready and willing to get crazy on this stuff and start transforming our society. Failing that, however, there are networks forming that, despite high level political bullshit, are nevertheless accomplishing some pretty remarkable work through a variety of smaller agencies. What everyone agreed on, moreover, was that there has, thus far, been a total failure by actual scientists and practitioners to relate to the public just how much we can do, and indeed are doing already. Though it didn't come up directly, a lot of people referenced the sort of irate fatalism you mentioned. Thing is, though, is that CC isn't going to be an apocalypse unless we make it one, and if we undertake the broader adaptation measures that most experts are discussing, we might even get a more sensible global economy and national socio-ecological system out of it. Hell, with the energy it is bringing to normally sleepy ecologists, we're making huge inroads into understanding just how it is that the various terrestrial ecosystems in the U.S. function, which opens up still further paths to designing built environments and infrastructure that facilitate the creation of refugia and more hospitable environments for at-risk species. Nerd poo poo, for sure, and at a terrible cost, most likely, but there is a growing chance that this might be the near-death experience that actually gets us to grow up as a species. Maybe.
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May 25, 2015 07:47
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markgreyam posted:I told this to a work mate with who I occasionally talk climate change with (in a much more optimistic sense normally) and he started to get irate, asking me what I was doing about it and if I wasn't going to do anything then why did I talk about it, and questioning the same of these scientists and the people coming up with the numbers in the first place. Does no-one else like doomsday porn on a Monday? He was getting irate because you were piercing his bubble of It's Always Sunshine and Rainbows. Most people cannot handle the idea that their life is going to change for the worse soon due to factors outside their control, so they either stick their head in the sand or they lash out harshly to try to silence the other person.
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May 25, 2015 08:46
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enraged_camel posted:He was getting irate because you were piercing his bubble of It's Always Sunshine and Rainbows. Most people cannot handle the idea that their life is going to change for the worse soon due to factors outside their control, so they either stick their head in the sand or they lash out harshly to try to silence the other person. To be fair, if one is complaining about climate change but are also unable to list the things one is doing (and striving to do) to adapt and mitigate, one tends to sound like a bit of a tool.
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May 25, 2015 08:51
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Fasdar posted:What everyone agreed on, moreover, was that there has, thus far, been a total failure by actual scientists and practitioners to relate to the public just how much we can do, and indeed are doing already. I don't think it's a failure on part of scientists and practitioners. You gotta remember that there's very serious money behind denying climate change and trying to cast doubt into climate science. Combine this with people's general unwillingness to make non-negligible changes to their lifestyle, and you've got yourself the current status quo.
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May 25, 2015 08:52
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Trabisnikof posted:To be fair, if one is complaining about climate change but are also unable to list the things one is doing (and striving to do) to adapt and mitigate, one tends to sound like a bit of a tool. That's not the point, though. Even if the guy had listed the things he's doing, his coworker would probably have given an equally irate response, something along the lines of, "too bad you're just one person" or "well i can't do that because".
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May 25, 2015 08:55
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enraged_camel posted:I don't think it's a failure on part of scientists and practitioners. You gotta remember that there's very serious money behind denying climate change and trying to cast doubt into climate science. Combine this with people's general unwillingness to make non-negligible changes to their lifestyle, and you've got yourself the current status quo. Eh, I'm of the mind that you can't win over a TV watcher with more TV. I'm talking about reaching people who are already engaged in various community-level or local political activities, many of whom are much more reasonable - and interested in things that save them money, make them feel safe, and that are genuinely cool, like democratized energy infrastructure and houses that don't turn to moldy hate during flash floods. poo poo, local governments and cities are already seeing the money at the end of the tunnel (and along the way), even if most don't have the capital to start going towards it. No mayor is proud of smog - some are in denial, and some ignore it - but they are not proud. And even oil towns can't be exactly loving the thousands of layoffs they've seen in the last year or so. I mean, I'm sure we could maintain the population control aspects of the oil industry through things like mass-scale tree planting, mangrove building, and soil cultivation, if we wanted to! And it wouldn't be so prone to instability. It is a shame scientists aren't able to cut at these angles under current funding and institutional structures (wherein we are mostly broke and tied to very specific sorts of outputs). Everything is piecemeal applied projects, or, for cities and states, broad, often vague 'plans,' which may or may not be accompanied by executive summary style readings of assessment data. Some cool things are happening at an international-ish (multiple local sites across the globe in one study) way, but we don't go and talk to our nearest rich person and/or official very often. Honestly, I think we ought to just bite the bullet and start running for city councils and the like, and start working up from there. Especially the grey beards who still have all their contacts and access to younger innovation but who don't have to be conscious during their office hours. I know some of us are weird looking, but then... so are local politicians.
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May 25, 2015 09:53
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One person I can think of who has tried to do basically what you are saying, and doesn't look weird with a grey beard, is Jess Spear. Her opponents in the establishment have co-opted any message she had and packaged it in a more 'reasonable' manner. She hasn't really come close to winning despite being correct and all that. She now campaigns for a higher minimum wage.
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May 25, 2015 11:48
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Trabisnikof posted:To be fair, if one is complaining about climate change but are also unable to list the things one is doing (and striving to do) to adapt and mitigate, one tends to sound like a bit of a tool. I wasn't complaining about it, I was just marveling at the dichotomy between what scientists with no need to concern themselves with a "party line" so to speak will say, versus any sort of coverage that you'd see on a more (okay I'm going to say it) mainstream coverage of it by a news source or otherwise. Who complains that we're heading for a major extinction event that we're going to be part of the "not going to make it" list for? What difference does acting upon it make to commenting on it? I can't believe that we're going to go the way of the dinosaurs even though I walk everywhere, recycle everything I can that was made using renewables in the first place and have no kids? This sucks! Stupid climate change! enraged_camel posted:He was getting irate because you were piercing his bubble of It's Always Sunshine and Rainbows. Most people cannot handle the idea that their life is going to change for the worse soon due to factors outside their control, so they either stick their head in the sand or they lash out harshly to try to silence the other person. Another guy I work with is adamant this is all because there is an incoming ice age. If 10,000 years is incoming then who am I to argue with his point.
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May 25, 2015 13:09
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ultimately the human mass extinction will be a blip in the Earth's evolutionary record, cutting short mammal dominance before the next asteroid hit in the distant future, birdmen will wonder about the origin of tools in the plastic-rich fuel deposits
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May 25, 2015 19:02
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blowfish posted:ultimately the human mass extinction will be a blip in the Earth's evolutionary record, cutting short mammal dominance before the next asteroid hit Ah yes, the final stage of climate denialism, climate fatalism.
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May 25, 2015 19:08
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full
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May 25, 2015 19:39
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Do you drive a Prius? Are you a vegan? Well then you can't talk about climate change, tool 
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May 25, 2015 19:47
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1FeHcTI614
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May 25, 2015 21:51
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enraged_camel posted:He was getting irate because you were piercing his bubble of It's Always Sunshine and Rainbows. Most people cannot handle the idea that their life is going to change for the worse soon due to factors outside their control, so they either stick their head in the sand or they lash out harshly to try to silence the other person. One of the biggest issues is that a hell of a lot of people do understand that climate change is happening but outright deny it because they don't want to think about it. Other people want to make excuses to themselves to refuse to make the changes necessary. It's also extremely controversial and people hate controversy. It's also commonly believed that anybody that gives even the slightest poo poo about the environment is going to one day become a tree-hugging hippy that doesn't have a job, quit showering, rides a bike, and lives in a tent. A lot of it is assuming extremes; you're either "normal" or you're a green freak wearing tie-dye, smoking pot, and being lazy. There is no in between and people really, really don't want to be labelled with that negative stereotype. Completely ignoring of course that everybody pulling together and making small changes (you know, drive less, walk more, recycle a goddamned can once in a while) massive changes would result.
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May 25, 2015 22:25
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Completely ignoring of course that everybody pulling together and making small changes (you know, drive less, walk more, recycle a goddamned can once in a while) massive changes would result. Absolutely false.
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May 25, 2015 22:31
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Completely ignoring of course that everybody pulling together and making small changes (you know, drive less, walk more, recycle a goddamned can once in a while) massive changes would result. This is adorable.
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May 25, 2015 22:41
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B-but it's so hard being white! Waaaaaagh!
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Vaginapocalypse posted:This is adorable. Not saying it would solve all the problems just pointing out that a lot of people won't even make small changes. That and part of the problem is people saying "well what does it matter if one person does X?" Granted I've also met people that literally believe that recycling was invented by Satan.
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May 25, 2015 22:43
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Completely ignoring of course that everybody pulling together and making small changes (you know, drive less, walk more, recycle a goddamned can once in a while) massive changes would result. Sorry, recycling no longer turns you into a social superhero.
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May 25, 2015 22:46
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What about bringing your own bags when grocery shopping? I remember when only dirty hippies did that.
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May 25, 2015 23:26
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