QuarkJets posted:

Climate change is anti-imperialist. Fossil fuel company CEOs are comrades, drill baby drill.

suck my woke dick posted:

Apparatchik Magnet posted:

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1188805779496882183

MomJeans420 posted:

Good blog post about high energy prices in winter and mortality

CommieGIR posted:

......so, just from looking over their Twitter and their articles, a lot of arguments about "Cheap Energy" and they don't like rooftop solar, and are kind of in the middle over PG&E? Lot of emphasis on Natural Gas

It mostly looks like an Economics institute, which is garbage science. Nearly every one of their site is mostly MBAs, and a lot of guys from Exxon and other groups. Exxon notable for being major climate change deniers.

Let's check out some of their other articles, like: Are Oil Executive Overpaid (They don't clearly say yes or no...)
https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2018/09/04/are-oil-and-gas-executives-overpaid/

These are economists. Not scientists.

Apparatchik Magnet posted:

And...?

Whether climate change exists and how much is a scientific issue. Whether to do anything about it, how, and how much, are political and economic issues.

Marxalot posted:

"High energy prices kill the poor" doesn't strike me as the hottest of takes.

Celexi posted:

High energy prices do kill people, but we could have cheap clean electricity from a nuclear reactor heating up places instead of burning gas for it.

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

Yeah, the argument of we need cheap energy, thus we must burn fossil fuels is completely stupid. I see it quite frequently in regards to people burning fuel in harsh winter climates. The idea that some people burning heating oil is the problem when we are burning bunker fuel is annoying.

Use nuclear for electricity, and electric heating where feasible. I'm not going to hate on someone just trying to keep their family warm however.

The issue is when fossil fuel companies then try to use the people fueling their heater in winter as a reason they should exist. Pretty sure we can supply heating oil without much issue even if we scale back fossil fuel production significantly.

CommieGIR posted:

Ah yes, economists. The guys who got us in this mess, and openly pushed climate change denial and deregulation. They'll save us this time.

Let alone a think tank that may be funded by Exxon.


Its not, but their argument is basically: "If we stop using fossil fuels completely, everyone will suffer" the problem is "No poo poo, but what are you going to do to offset their suffering down the road as a result of their use rather than continuing to promote their use"

The problem isn't that energy prices don't kill people, they do. The PROBLEM is a think tank that is publishing articles about how Oil CEOs may not be overpaid, might not be the best source for defending continued use of fossil fuels.

A Literal McKinsey Dipshit posted:

We could use public money to weatherize homes of low income folks in order to lower their heating and cooling costs. The only causal evidence on this I can find is that these programs are expensive, people do not take them up at high rates and they deliver only some of the savings engineers promise us. [Partial FAIL]

We could make energy cheaper for everyone. Generally we think energy is not priced correctly since not all external costs are priced in everywhere. So the price signal should go in the opposite direction to combat the negative consequences of air pollution and climate change. [For completeness, Severin and Jim have a paper suggesting that retail electricity prices might be higher than social costs in some areas – for now]. [FAIL]

We could make energy cheaper for the most sensitive populations. We do this in California, where through the CARE program low-income households get a 20% discount on their electricity and natural gas bills. At the federal level there is a program called LIHEAP, which in many cold areas is not sufficient and supplemented by local utility programs. [PARTIAL APPROVE].

We could think carefully about seasonality in pricing natural gas. We currently add so called volumetric charges to each unit of gas consumed, which make you pay for the fixed costs of operating the natural gas system. These are charged throughout the year. My super smart former student Ed Rubin and I have a paper suggesting that shifting these charges to the summer time is both progressive (meaning helps low-income people) and efficient (makes the pie bigger). This is wonky, but clever. [APPROVE]

Marxalot posted:

Stopped clock, etc. Good propaganda isn't based on a lie; It's about emphasis. It's easier to just repost the guy's entire block of solutions and follow it with a if you want to poo poo on this bootleg wordpress blog without going through a shitload of effort trying to figure out how exactly it's astroturfed into existence, because that's where it really falls apart. (also check out his CV lol https://are.berkeley.edu/~auffhammer/auffhammer_cv.pdf )

also rooftop solar is an expensive bourgeois boondoggle unless the goal is power grid decentralization in more rural disaster prone areas, put the panels down somewhere where they're easier to install/maintain

Marxalot posted:

e2: He comes off more as a bog standard Serious Liberal than some glassy eyed fossil fuels industry psychopath, for what little that's worth. They're half the reason we're in this mess lmao

CommieGIR posted:

Wait, why does his CV include his married status and name of spouse? That's kinda creepy.

Rooftop solar is an expensive boondoggle, right now. But it has some benefits, largely offset usage costs, but the bigger problem is local power companies going out of their way to attack rooftop solar by charging for it being attached to the grid.


Yeah, a couple of the articles try to go to bat for Nuclear, but they are so focused on the economics of it, they largely dismiss it as "Too expensive"

Which is why economists such as sources for valid methods for addressing climate change: Eventually that bill will come due, and the market will just shake its head and go "We're not paying that, more cheap energy please"

Marxalot posted:

It's always going to be far, far more effective to throw down 1MW of solar panels in a cow pasture somewhere than it would be to toss 250k individual 4kW installs on random houses. Not to mention having to maintain the drat things.


As for the economists, they're pretty hit or miss. Mostly miss since if you want to make any money at all as an economist you basically need to be a status quo guy who doesn't rock the boat.


e: extremely fast google indicates large photovoltaic installations being about a dollar/watt and home ones being like $3-4 lol

Apparatchik Magnet posted:

And...?

Whether climate change exists and how much is a scientific issue. Whether to do anything about it, how, and how much, are political and economic issues.

CommieGIR posted:

......so, just from looking over their Twitter and their articles, a lot of arguments about "Cheap Energy" and they don't like rooftop solar, and are kind of in the middle over PG&E? Lot of emphasis on Natural Gas

It mostly looks like an Economics institute, which is garbage science. Nearly every one of their site is mostly MBAs, and a lot of guys from Exxon and other groups. Exxon notable for being major climate change deniers.

Let's check out some of their other articles, like: Are Oil Executive Overpaid (They don't clearly say yes or no...)
https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2018/09/04/are-oil-and-gas-executives-overpaid/

These are economists. Not scientists.

Marxalot posted:

It's always going to be far, far more effective to throw down 1MW of solar panels in a cow pasture somewhere than it would be to toss 250k individual 4kW installs on random houses. Not to mention having to maintain the drat things.

CommieGIR posted:

Rooftop solar is an expensive boondoggle, right now. But it has some benefits, largely offset usage costs, but the bigger problem is local power companies going out of their way to attack rooftop solar by charging for it being attached to the grid.

CombatInformatiker posted:

Yeah, that's because 250k * 4kW = 1GW

MomJeans420 posted:

You're wrong on that institute, these aren't some Exxon funded climate deniers. Severin Borenstein is frequently in the papers for energy related issues, you can easily see he's pro-renewables and a believer in climate change. I'm the first one to make fun of economists, but these guys understand the energy utilities and markets more than 99% of people who talk about energy. They don't like rooftop solar because it doesn't make nearly as much sense as grid scale solar projects, which is common sense. And of course they have emphasis on natural gas, they are interested in real world solutions that actually work, but we don't need to cover that again because you won't actually put forward an actual solution.

QuarkJets posted:

Unironically posting "This institute doesn't shill for oil companies, they just suggest that we have no choice but to extract and use fossil fuels as quickly as possible"

The entire premise of using harm to poor people as a justification for expanding natural gas extraction is completely flawed since it's poor people who are already being hit hardest by climate change. Wow, 10k fewer fatalities/year in the winter thanks to cheap natural gas, that's great drill baby drill! Oh, what's that, climate change already kills over 10x that number/year, and is predicted to kill 25x that number/year by 2030? Eh

QuarkJets posted:

"Whether to do anything about it" is not an economics issue. It may be a political issue, even if it's dismaying to say that "should the human race continue to persist" is a political issue

MomJeans420 posted:

You're wrong on that institute, these aren't some Exxon funded climate deniers. Severin Borenstein is frequently in the papers for energy related issues, you can easily see he's pro-renewables and a believer in climate change. I'm the first one to make fun of economists, but these guys understand the energy utilities and markets more than 99% of people who talk about energy. They don't like rooftop solar because it doesn't make nearly as much sense as grid scale solar projects, which is common sense. And of course they have emphasis on natural gas, they are interested in real world solutions that actually work, but we don't need to cover that again because you won't actually put forward an actual solution.

MomJeans420 posted:

LOL if you believe climate change is killing 100k people a year. And yes, the poor people being hit the hardest by climate change are really worried about it, just ask the people in Ecuador how happy they were when gas subsidies went away recently.

My point also wasn't to argue that the blog was the definitive site on policy, just to provide more information that a lack of cheap power can kill people. That same blog will also talk about the finer points of if you make electricity cleaner and cheaper, you can switch water heaters and home heating from gas to electric and lower emissions.

Celexi posted:

High energy prices do kill people, but we could have cheap clean electricity from a nuclear reactor heating up places instead of burning gas for it.

Marxalot posted:

"Throw solar and nuclear everywhere" is an actual solution that works.

CommieGIR posted:

Wait, why does his CV include his married status and name of spouse? That's kinda creepy.

Tab8715 posted:

If I hadn't lent my copy of Inhabitable Earth I'd quote the passage on how drat far difficult it is replacing current energy demand with nuclear. Even if we cleared numerous bureaucratic hurdles we consume so much energy it's that drat difficult.

MomJeans420 posted:

Good blog post about high energy prices in winter and mortality

MomJeans420 posted:

LOL if you believe climate change is killing 100k people a year. And yes, the poor people being hit the hardest by climate change are really worried about it, just ask the people in Ecuador how happy they were when gas subsidies went away recently.

My point also wasn't to argue that the blog was the definitive site on policy, just to provide more information that a lack of cheap power can kill people. That same blog will also talk about the finer points of if you make electricity cleaner and cheaper, you can switch water heaters and home heating from gas to electric and lower emissions.

CommieGIR posted:

The problem is: Its really the only hurdle that will lead to a solution.

More natural gas will not, and can not. Not in the face of what we know about the companies running these wells, and not in the face of their hatred of environmentalism and regulation.

Family Values posted:

What's bourgeois about rooftop solar? It's an obvious and logical place to put panels that otherwise wouldn't be used for anything else. Subsidies to make it more affordable have been available, although I think Trump ended them? We should restore and expand the subsidy program. Speaking as someone who has PG&E as a power provider and has 0% trust in them, I actually really like decentralization.

Tab8715 posted:

May you define work?

Our ability to meet energy needs with that solution isn't really feasible? Even if all the world governments started cooperating tomorrow - which is impossible - it'd be multiple decades until we'd meet demand along with political feasibility. No one wants a Nuclear reactor in their backyard - personally I'd be okay with it. And this just meets today current demand which is only expected to grow because of things from more buildings to more tech gadgets.

If I hadn't lent my copy of Inhabitable Earth I'd quote the passage on how drat far difficult it is replacing current energy demand with nuclear. Even if we cleared numerous bureaucratic hurdles we consume so much energy it's that drat difficult.


Of all things I'd dispute in a discussion over any topic. It's one's martial status.

Family Values posted:

What's bourgeois about rooftop solar? It's an obvious and logical place to put panels that otherwise wouldn't be used for anything else. Subsidies to make it more affordable have been available, although I think Trump ended them? We should restore and expand the subsidy program. Speaking as someone who has PG&E as a power provider and has 0% trust in them, I actually really like decentralization.

silence_kit posted:

Is it straightforward to ramp the electricity generation from nuclear power plants up and down quickly? I suspect that it probably isn't done very often, and that the people running nuclear power plants usually run them as much as possible. Running a nuclear power plant only part of the time would make nuclear electricity even more expensive, and it is already very expensive.

But in a hypothetical future world where renewable electricity generation is a large fraction of the US' electricity generation capability, in the absence of an economical electricity storage technology or greatly overbuilding renewable electricity generation resources, a complementary electricity generation technology is needed to be able to fill in the gaps of the intermittent renewable sources. Is nuclear electricity a good technology for this purpose?

Marxalot posted:

Ok so what's your reasonable sustainable solution to unfucking our reliance on coal/natural gas if building new forms of carbon neutral power generation is off the table? Thin the herd?

fishmech posted:

You don't see what's generally bourgeois about expecting individual citizens will own or co-own the building they're in to be able to order installation of solar panels on its roof?

Also, decentralization doesn't fuckin help anything for preventing fires, especially since now you need better wiring to handle the possible changes in direction and magnitude of energy flows at all levels.

MomJeans420 posted:

LOL if you believe climate change is killing 100k people a year.