Who is right? The climate alarmists? Or the Climate deniers?

And to give an idea, this is where I parked my bike 90% of the time.

https://www.google.com/maps/@37.794...4!1sMQ6uFjqwl8vNWbwtTgLrSQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

And in this shot I can see where I worked. In fact, more than once while I worked there I would be one of 5 or 6 people in the entire office, out of over 100. That was mostly because of the frequent transit strikes.

https://www.publicadvocates.org/resources/blog/the-untold-story-behind-the-bart-strike/

I learned long ago to never rely entirely on mass transit, especially in California. It seems like every few years one of the systems is down for a week to a month due to strikes. I first started to drive myself in during the BART strike, as I got stuck in the city for three hours the first night, the ferries were packed. I started to ride my bike in, and never looked back after that.

Oh, and if one works with a large dot com near Mission, there are a lot of private busses that are hired by the companies themselves. But even those had protests, as many of the locals object to a mass transit system that is only available to employees and not everybody.

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/san-francisco-tech-shuttle-buses-google-muni-16335538.php

Once again, it would be nice if you could bother to do even some basic research before opening your mouth and inserting your foot. But I have already long ago learned that you refuse to do any kind of research. And simply speak out your rectal orifice with absolutely no knowledge of what you are talking about.

Care now to give us a reference? No? I thought not.

 

No, I disagree.
There are consequences if you are wrong.
And the magnitude of those consequences depends on the extent to which you pursue "doing something" with the premise that we can control the climate by controlling CO2 emissions.

Also, there is nothing binary about the choices.
There is a wide range of options available.

Let's say for example in keeping with the approximate politics of the discussion that we have the drill-baby-drill guys on the far right set of options and we have the world-will-end guys on the far left side of the options. And, let's be honest, I'm not the one making up the concepts here. You yourself just asserted that the far left argument is about a "calamity of epic proportions" and that "we might wind up with an uninhabitable planet."

Now, let's say that if the far left wins this ideological battle and pursues what it considers the most effective possible strategy, whatever exactly that is, then we will end up with something along the lines of zero emissions by 2050. This is about as close to a succinct goal I've noticed as a result of the UN's IPCC program.

And, let's say the alternative for the far right position is that oil and gas becomes completely deregulated and the market is allowed to fully correct for unsound practices that result from deregulating government mandated HSE requirements.

What would be some of the actual implementations associated with these two limiting cases?

For the first case it seems there would need to be a moratorium on fossil fuel reserves use.
And there would need to be carbon capture systems so that by 2050 for every CO2 molecule released as a result of fossil reserve combustion a molecule of CO2 is captured.
Currently there is no technology available to do this that doesn't consume huge amounts of electrical power.

https://www.google.com/search?q=energy+required+for+carbon+capture

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17203-7

For the second case one of the consequences might be that a natural gas cogen facility wouldn't need to be taken offline because of exceeding an emissions limit.
This would resolve a problem was actually a contributing factor in Ercot's lack of generating capacity during winter vortex Uri.
Operational generation facilities had to request permission to continue to operate because they would exceed regulated emission limits by doing so.

***
Are you asserting then, that if you are wrong then there is no consequence other than wasted energy and money?
What about wasted time? I assume you include that as well.
Infrastructure development requires all three of these: time, money and energy, and materials.
Let's just call it all time and money though.

I disagree with your assertion that there are binary choices between doing nothing and doing something

You negate then the fact that lives were lost due to power grid failures in Texas? A grid that depends, by design, on almost 40% of its installed capacity on the vagaries associated with whether or not the wind is blowing and the sun is shining?



This infrastructure takes time and money to develop and currently the Ercot grid has become heavily dependent on baseload capacity that simply cannot be relied to operate with the reliability of fossil fueled sources.



I suppose it will seem pleasing to some folks on the left to see that Texas power is subject to failure due to green energy policies of its own making.

Due to political influences, time and money that could be used to winterize natural gas facilities is being used for other projects, letting the market bear the risks.
Due to political influences, natural gas generation is taken offline and defunded when wind and solar power is preferentially utilized while it is available.

Due to political influences, battery storage is woefully inadequate to account for the dependence on wind and solar.
As of 2021 there was 833 MW of storage capacity according to the Ercot file, Capacity_Changes_by_Fuel_Type_Charts_April_2022.xlsx.
But this doesn't tell the number that is needed to know what this capacity actually is, unless I am correct that this is implicitly one hour's worth of capacity.
And this does in fact seem to be the case, according to just this one link: https://www.energy-storage.news/texas-largest-battery-project-to-date-brought-online-by-vistra/
So the current projection is for about 8MWh battery capacity by the end of 2024.
That's 8MW for one hour.

You seem not to understand this stuff well enough to appreciate that what you consider actions without consequences are not a thing in general and in energy policy in particular.

You seem not to understand the glaring discrepancy concerning the amount of CO2 stored in the oceans and the mathematics of the entire CO2 cycle with respect to the premise of the debate that climate science has accurately been modeled sufficiently to justify pursuit of energy policy based on CO2 emissions, rather than the more certain fact that fossil fuel reserves are indeed finite.

It's a matter it seems to me along the lines of a need to go big or go home.
Carbon capture is a non-starter: the process consumes vast amounts of energy and produces it's own unwanted emissions.
Storage options on an infrastructure scale are not currently practical.
The only green option that works is to interlink the entire planet with a grid that can distribute wind and solar power from sources where on average there is a sufficient raw source available to more than meet the needs of 8 billion people and their animals and plants.
This is stuff of epic and almost fictional proportions.
In the meantime there are a patchwork of implementations such as Ercot's experiment that explicitly have gaps where they can be expected to fail to meet demand.

 

Doh! Correction:

 

You missing my point, which is that the wide range of options is on the do something side, the very side I assert is the wiser path to take. Once we decide we are going to do something, then we work out what we should do based on advice from climate scientists.

 

The extraordinary high cost of eliminating fossil fuels:
The Economic Cost of Eliminating Fossil Fuels
Andy May
By Andy May The debate on how much impact humanity has on climate change continues. As nearly everyone knows by now, there is no observational evidence that humans have a…
As Vaclav Smil makes clear in his new book, oil, gas, and coal underpin all of modern life. Besides energy, they are essential to feed, clothe, and shelter us. He calls ammonia, steel, concrete, and plastics the four pillars of modern civilization, and currently these can only be made with fossil fuels. These four indispensable materials use 17% of the worlds primary energy supply and produce 25% of all CO2 emissions. The IEA reports that 14% of the worlds oil and 8% of the natural gas are used as feedstocks for producing petrochemicals. Further, between 1973 and today the fossil fuel share of energy production has barely decreased at all, and the decrease is nearly entirely due to additional nuclear energy production. If fossil fuels are eliminated, or “phased out” using the euphemism from the article, the result would be catastrophic for the entire world, with nearly unimaginable consequences.

 

Honestly, you are asserting that I'm missing your point?

I provided an approximate political range of options in an attempt bookmark the limits of the politics of the discussion.

Since it appears that you have concluded that the potential threat is as advertised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change then the full range of options does not seem to me to be available to you as part of the set of options that count in your opinion as "doing something".

Here's a diagram that helps describe the point I'm trying to convey - savvy??



***
And you propose that we look to the climate scientists to provide solutions to energy policy?
Interesting - one of my several notable complaints about the IPCC that I've mentioned around here discussing this ridiculous subject includes the very structure of the IPCC.
There is no working group dedicated to developing technology to support green energy improvements.
There is no working group dedicated assessing the viability of currently available options to replace fossil hydrocarbon reserves with sustainable solutions.
Working Group 3 is as close as the IPCC structure gets to these two absolutely essential and key pieces of any solution to the puzzle presented by its entire premise.
And the energy requirements to remove CO2 from the atmosphere only exacerbate the whole damn premise.



One fairly major oil company, OXY is actually building CO2 capture facilities with the expectation that they will be able to sell CO2 credits and profit from them.
https://www.reuters.com/business/en...lion-2022-carbon-capture-projects-2022-03-23/

"Airplane-maker Airbus (AIR.PA) this month disclosed a long-term contract to buy carbon credits from the plant to offset its emissions. read more"

It is a fully transparent play that amounts to nothing more than OXY hedging their business ventures in the expectation that the IPCC wins this politically popular argument.
Popular among folks that believe we can control the Earth's climate by controlling atmospheric CO2 levels.
Popular among folks who rely on common sense intuitive measures of conservation without realizing the extent to which fossil hydrocarbon reserves form the basis for the entire structure of the world we live in.

Unlike some who argue this topic around here, I happen to hold the opinion that fossil resources are in fact a finite and unsustainable resource and that because of this we absolutely should seek to replace their use with sustainable means of electrical energy production. Carbon capture does not help one bit with that. And neither do carbon taxes.

As I said - there are consequences if we don't build the right solution that are well beyond simply wasting time and money.

Since there is no component of the IPCC tasked with assessing the state of viable sustainable energy options, it is safe to assume that there are not tens of thousands of energy scientists also working this part of the solution. Only tens of thousands telling us the world will end unless we do something. None working to determine if we can do something - all simply saying we must do something.

Wind and solar energy options are only dependable with a couple of corresponding requirements: either huge and currently impractical battery storage systems or transmission interconnects to distribute the power in real time. There are a host of other methods besides batteries to convert kinetic electrical energy to potential electrical energy, compressed air systems, spinning mass reserves like Frank Herbert dreamed up when he wrote Dune, several others - none of which come close enough to dethrone batteries as the currently best available option. And planet spanning transmission lines are..., well, what are they, exactly? They are most certainly possible. We already have transmission systems that span all the continents on earth. Supposing we were to actually do something to provide for real time transfer of solar power from one half the Earth to the other - why apparently isn't the IPCC interested in this?

So - no real time transmission interconnects and no adequate battery storage means no electricity when the sun goes down and/or the wind stops blowing.
And, when funding goes into building carbon capture and wind and solar but not into combined cycle cogen infrastructure then guess what - no reliable back up systems for the wind and solar.

Ah, it's not a bad thing building out wind and solar infrastructure, transitioning motor vehicles to all electric, improving battery storage technology.

I suppose my main point is that there seems to be significant gaps in powering our grids with these sources and it's pretty horrific when the power is out during a winter storm or a summer heat wave. So that's at least one consequence of what happens if you're wrong and these alternate sources of energy are not provided with the means to back them up or distribute them from places where they are available to places where they are not available at any given moment in time.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs... hahaha.... Marxist Energy Policy?

 

Liars gonna lie.
Bank of England Uses False Data, Debunked Scenarios to Overstate Climate Costs
CLIMATE MODELS MAY 30, 2022

 

@Patricio Da Silva

I suppose I should back up a bit and state more explicitly what I see as the main point of discussions concerning the general topic of this thread.

The general premise is that our use of fossil reserves must be constrained to limit the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere.

The conflict I see here is that our use of fossil reserves is presently and historically a key factor that has allowed the planet to sustain 8 billion people.

Here's an interesting book that you might consider reading, https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/daniel-yergin.

It provides a fascinating account of a fairly broad consideration of oil's impact upon civilization from about the time of the US Civil War up to the Gulf War.

I see that I'm simply repeating previous arguments at this point in this thread, going back to my first post discussing this subject in your previous thread,

http://www.politicalforum.com/index...-advocates-or-deniers.590629/#post-1072828457

You make use of the word wisdom in your recent arguments on this subject.

Although knowledge is not an assurance of wisdom, it is a prerequisite.

Given the number of times you've backed out of this discussion, just with me, offering that I was getting too technical,

I offer that maybe the wise approach to this subject on your part would be to abstain from taking either side of the debate if it is truly beyond your ability to understand.

I don't mean to be overly harsh with this assertion, but maybe sometimes if someone doesn't know enough to understand something then it really is the wisest position to abstain from taking a side.

 

I don't know enough about the subject to know what do do about it.

My only point was that doing something was wiser than doing nothing. As for what to do, I'll let you experts duke it out.

 

I take the view from a lay policy maker.

Should we do nothing?

Should we do something? If so, what?

So, the only way I can process the subject is as follows:

On whose path should we err, if err we must?

If we do nothing, and we are wrong, we could, conceivably, wind up with an uninhabitable planet, or some shade of it.


If we do something, and we are wrong, all we have done is waste time, effort, labor and funds, but we could wind up preventing the above.


All outcomes are possible, so, on whose side should we err, if err we must?

Seems to me, the side that says 'do something' is the wiser path.

Therefore, the debate then becomes, 'what should we do?'.

Thanks for your post. Technical arguments will lose me, that is why I put it to this level, to that of a lay policy maker, who has to decide on whether or not the government should do anything.

 

I would suggest moving forward deliberately on recyclables is not a bad option, nor is continued improvement on Internal combustion engines. IMHO the "all of the above" approach is the course to follow. No nonsensical deadlines - do what's possible. You correctly note that there is no consensus on what's going to occur.

 

Hell, that is the only thing keeping Tesla afloat.

A few years ago, they were over $5 billion in the red (the company has never actually shown a profit - after almost 20 years), and were weeks from closing their doors when they sold off over $6 billion on "carbon credits". CC is one of the biggest scams out there, and is literally a license for rich individuals and companies to print and sell empty promises.

 

It is pretty much impossible to make them any more efficient.

Because ICE works off of heat, the Second Law of Thermodynamics will always make them inefficient. I think in the last century the efficiency has increased by maybe 2%.

It is not hard to make cars "fuel efficient". But it has been proven over and over again, the buying public simply does not want vehicles where fuel efficiency is the main consideration.

We had 50 MPG cars over 3 decades ago. But nobody wanted to be seen driving a Geo Metro.

 

We'll see.

 

Deadlines only mean to serve as urgent reminders. No one seriously expects they are to be adhered to.

There is consensus that something very unpleasant is in our future if we do nothing.

 

Who cares about 50mpg when gas is a dollar?

Not that it's at $5+ a lot of people are looking more nicely at 50mpg, especially taxi drivers, truck drivers, traveling salesmen, etc.

I have a 50mpg car, and it's a helluva lot better and roomier than a GeoMetro.

 

If only.

Actually, no, there's not. In real scientific circles there's tons of debate.

 

I'm still having a hard time believing the mileage I got out of a Chevy Malibu Hybrid one time.
It was pretty much a brand new car - picked it up in Chicago at Midway and returned it the same day.
Stopped on the way back to Midway to put gas in it and was pretty surprised that the pump stopped at .9 gallons.

I was so surprised by this I even tried double pumping gas into it - something I've not done for decades.
It stopped again - maybe I got to .91 gallons.

I still have the Hertz receipt from that trip because I backed up some files that included the expense receipt folder for that project.
68 miles, 0.91 gallons: I got 75 mpg out of that Chevy Malibu Hybrid.
And it was a nice car too. Easily comparable to an Accord or a Camry in terms of size, interior space and appurtenances.
Mystery to me that GM discontinued it as quickly as they did.

 

Sure.

That's why the top selling car in the US gets a whopping 25 MPG (26 highway).

The highest fuel economy of the top 10 cars sold in the US gets a whopping 33 MPG (Honda Civic).

Once again, it does not matter what you buy. I myself owned a Geo Metro (actually a Chevy Sprint as the Sprint, Metro, and Suzuki Swift were all the same car), sold it before my second son was born as it was no longer large enough for our needs. Traded it in for a Taurus.

So the fact is, even with gas at $5 a gallon, nobody is trading in their trucks and SUVs for fuel efficient subcompacts and compacts.

And back in the 1980s, we were all well aware of the volatility of gas prices. Even when we had to double the price at the pump as none could charge more than 99.9 cents per gallon.

 

Rather simple, poor sales.

It simply was not very popular, with sales on average of under 1,000 units per month (typically around 825). That is simply not enough volume to keep a company interested in manufacturing it.

It does not matter how "awesome" a car is, if nobody buys it.

 

I think you highlighted one of the major dividing lines between left and right. On the one side, there is your side with the idea of do something, anything, and on the other side is Chesterson's fence, which would want caution before charging headlong into the unknown.

 

No, they don't.

First, they're not laws.

Second, what a science says is determined by that community of scientists.

Third, Big Oil propaganda isn't science.

 

Belief in "Big Oil propaganda" is a matter of religious faith.

 

Yes, they do. They say what they say and that's that.

The word 'law' is used whenever a theory of science has been formalized into mathematics. Ergo, the LAWS of Thermodynamics... the Stefan Boltzmann LAW... Planck's LAW... Ohm's LAW... For each and every one of those, there is an associated mathematical equation. That is the result of a theory being formalized into mathematics.

WRONG. Science is not a community of people. It is a set of falsifiable models that predict nature. It is a set of falsifiable theories (as noted above).

What is "Big Oil propaganda", specifically? Can you provide an example of such?

 

Fine, then go ahead and violate Newton's Laws then.