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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

> let's just curtail CO2 emissions

We are though. Most people I talk to don't know that the US peaked CO2 emissions ten years ago and it's been falling every since - in per capita, per GDP, and absolute terms.

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But this achievement is less even impressive than a "OK, we've done the US, now let's look at other countries"

The problem is that the US can export it's carbon-intensive industries and even consume new carbon intensive entities produced by other countries. For example, US investors certainly consume a modest fraction of bitcoins mined in China and bitcoins wind-up consuming not just a lot of energy but also form a new source sort of carbon-intensive production.

Solar and wind power are becoming competitive with oil in general but this can never by itself halt hydrocarbon-energy production 'cause as it's relative price drops, there's always a practical use for hydrocarbon-energy close to the source, where pumping it out of the ground is nearly free.

The United States fully intends to reverse course on that and fire up coal plants in order to something something jobs.

The reason it was falling was because of strict emissions standards and a strong EPA, both of which are basically gone.

That's just angsting about short term partisan politics. The trends remain positive for the longer term. Don't let whatever Trump says this week blind you to the long term.

Trends are whatever people make them and many people don't appreciate both the fragility and reversibility of "progress".

Things don't just work out, they get worked out. Telling people to stop worrying, relax and become lazy and complacent is extremely counterproductive.

I'm not saying to "relax and become lazy and complacent". I'm saying that attitude that nothing can be done, because we happen to have a crap president at the moment, is far more counterproductive.

Yes, the EPA is taking a beating. But within my lifetime, the EPA didn't even exist. We did something about it. The EPA can and will be rebuilt. The benefits of solar/wind power are real market benefits, and will triumph, despite the desperate resistance of the coal industry. Etc.

Do you think the United States is capable of reliably thinking about the long term and electing a President that does the same? As long as the planet can be impacted in such a large way by myopic leaders, I don't see what can be done.

We don't need all of them to be sober, responsible thinkers. Just a majority of them.

I was afraid that the new administration would follow through on its promise to increase American coal use and extraction. Fortunately, it has not.

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/coal.php

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/westmoreland-chapter-11-mar...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mission-coal-bankruptcy-marks-5...

Wait, are you saying Trump lied to them?

It's not a lie if you believe your own bluster.

Pro-coal government action in other countries has managed to delay and diminish coal retirements there, so I wouldn't consider it impossible that it could happen in the USA too. I'm grateful that the economics are so steeply tilted against coal in the USA and that few politicians appear to have the stomach for large direct subsidies to keep coal plants profitable here.

I was under the impression that we've "done well" because natural gas generation has come online like crazy and proves more economical than coal and INCIDENTALLY cleaner to burn.

I'm not sure how long (absent intelligent policy) til we hit peak natural gas and the balance naturally shifts back towards dirty energy sources.

I.e. policy helps, but economics had as much to do with it

Solar power and large scale battery storage are still dropping in price though - I would assume that by the time we hit peak natural gas, the more dirty energy sources will not be economically attractive as solar will be simply cheaper even without any incentives.

Fracked gas is about as bad as or dirtier than coal.

Source? That sound very unlikely, unless we are talking about CO2 only. But then keep in mind the total CO2 emissions. Coal needs more workers, more machines and more transportation.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13053040

Yeah - no.

Coal CO2 emissions are almost double natgas' [1]. While it is true that natgas is mainly CH4, a highly potent GG, its atmospheric lifetime is about 8 yrs. Further, the only way the methane would be getting into the air is via leaks in upstream/midstream processes. Today, hardly any of this leaks (EPA estimates leak rate of 1.4%).

Now addressing fracking, the drilling and fracturing process are the cause of little to no environmental impact/damage. The culprit is wastewater injection. This is the unknown, and while the EPA found no evidence of widespread or systemic pollution of water resources due to the fracking process (which includes WWI before the well is capped), it did highlight the potential in several stages of production for contamination to occur.

Now that said, the damage natgas causes, from E&P (especially) to burn, pales in comparison to coal's at any stage.

I think it would be beneficial for HN users to spend some time in the energy industry before making baseless claims.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=73&t=11

Baseless? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13053040

That study starts with the ridiculous assumption of a 3.6 -7.9% leak rate in fracked gas. By their own admission, the data they used was spotty for leak rates during drill completion, and transport. Study is also outdated (2011) with regards to technological improvements of frack wells.

A leak rate confirmed by NOAA and Lawrence Berkeley: https://cleantechnica.com/2013/12/01/natural-gas-production-...

There's also a defence of the original study https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-012-0401-0#...

Even with a lot of political will to increase coal, the economics won't permit it. Natural gas, and now renewables in many circumstances, are the clear economic winners.

And the reason it was falling is natural gas / hydraulic fracking, which emits far less carbon for the energy produced.

The EPA can lay claim to many environmental successes, but this isn't one of them.

The main reason it is falling is because of natural gas substituting for coal in the power sector and that will continue to happen due to the low prices for natural gas.

If only there weren't other countries that we import goods from. If I drive a car made in Canada, Mexico, China, and the US what do I contribute as a consumer to CO2 production?

It's not even nearly enough. According to the recent UN report, we need cut global net emissions by 50% in the next 12 years, and get to zero net CO2 by 2050. This is a slow-motion catastrophe and people aren't nearly worried enough to take the steps necessary to avert it.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/un-says-climate-genoc...

https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fos...

It seems obvious to me that this is unrealistic - that we're not going to do the cuts that we "need"; People will not get worried enough to take the steps necessary to avert it, it's simply not going to happen, and it's wishful thinking to expect that people will change their behaviour so much before they have immediate first-hand horrible effects (and those effects won't happen before it's too late). If that is our plan, then why not just wish for rainbow-farting unicorns to fix our ecosystem, it's just as likely to happen but more effective? Everything we know about people's psychology, social structures and politics seems to indicate that if the global population will be given a choice between those reductions and a slow-motion catastrophe, they'll pick policies that result in this catastrophe. Such reductions won't be made unilaterally or willingly, they might happen only if enforced with extreme violence (i.e. short-term threats instead of long-term horrible expectations) but no one sufficiently powerful seems willing to fight internal unrest or threaten international wars to enforce drastic measures for the sake of preventing climate change.

So we have to start with an assumption that emission cuts of the required scale are not going to happen (or, at least, are not going to happen soon enough), and look for more realistic alternatives than convincing 7 billion people to voluntarily downshift their lifestyle by 2050. Large scale carbon sequestration is one such alternative option.

But that UN report is based on predictions we know with 100% certainty to be incorrect. That's politics, not science. Science says "learn to do math before telling everyone the world is ending".

[citation needed]

All models are wrong. Some are useful.

Basically every organization that has looked at the issue and built a serious model has reached the same conclusion. From early studies done by engineers at oil and gas companies, to research undertaken by skeptics, the message is the same: we're not in Kansas anymore, and we're running out of time to turn around.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of...

Which organizations are those? Ones that are funded based on how much hysteria they whip up to justify stealing from people? I don't care about organizations opinions or statements, I care about the math. When the math is clearly incorrect, and we keep being told the world is ending because the incorrect math says so, there's a problem. Climate hysterians hate Monckton, and rage about how evil and wrong he is because "his opinions do not match the scientific consensus", but none of them refute the simple, factual errors he brought up. Mathematical errors that have been confirmed by mathematicians: https://mythesmanciesetmathematiques.wordpress.com/2016/09/1...

All of the models you mention use the completely incorrect math for feedbacks that will worsen warming caused by CO2. They literally all use the 3K per doubling figure. Despite it being proven wrong mathematically, and proven wrong historically as these models have all been wrong for the last 20 years of observed data.

reference on monckton for others: https://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton_Myths_arg.htm

Yes, precisely like that. He makes a simple, objective claim that a specific formula used in the models is used incorrectly, and the self proclaimed "skeptics" who see themselves as the arbiters of science can make no objective response. Instead the compile a list of strawmen and ignore that the very references they are using to "debunk" those strawmen are the ones proven wrong by the corrected math in question.

I'm sure you're aware that one of the "engineers from oil and gas companies" that I mentioned is Dr. Flannery, an author of the literal bible of computational numerical methods [1]. I'm sure you're aware that Monckton has no formal mathematical training and that his complaints against terrestrial climate models include the "fact" that they didn't predict warming on Pluto.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_Recipes

>I'm sure you're aware that one of the "engineers from oil and gas companies" that I mentioned is Dr. Flannery, an author of the literal bible of computational numerical methods

As soon as you get him to address the error, let me know.

>I'm sure you're aware that Monckton has no formal mathematical training

Good thing it has been confirmed by mathematicians like I pointed out then huh?

>that his complaints against terrestrial climate models include the "fact" that they didn't predict warming on Pluto.

I am not interested in strawmen, I am interested in the simple, verifiable, objective claim being made. Every single climate model used to promote climate change hysteria uses the same feedback equation. They all make the same error, using the temperature difference rather than the temperature as they should. Using the correct data to calculate the feedback, those climate models produce only 2 degrees warming by 1200ppm CO2 rather than the 6 the IPCC is promoting. And they match with the last 20 years of data, while using the wrong figures as the IPCC promoted predictions do gave us hugely overestimated warming for the past 20 years. No amount of "I don't like things I pretend that guy said before" changes this. Math does not care about what anyone says or how anyone feels. The entire warming hysteria relies on the feedbacks, the IPCC and CIMP both agree that direct warming is only 1k, and claim feedbacks make it 3k. Without the incorrectly calculated feedback, there's simply no justifying the hysteria.

Just because you've taken the foot off the accelerator, doesn't mean that we're going to stop before we drive off a cliff.

I've yet to see a plan for a transition to a carbon-neutral economy, even on a 30-year timeline.

There isn’t. There won’t be. Fair warning, this is a cynical, but honest comment, and it’s not defeatist, but acceptance of our collective nature.

I’ve roughly gauged most of our species moves on climate accurately so far.

I bet that We are going to go full bore on geo engineering. It’s the perfect eco-poli-socio fix, and is a perfect storm to fill a lot of our mental blind spots.

Geo engineering is jobs, and economic spending. It’s great PR, and it’s a BIG moonshot style project, so the optics are stupendous. Which politician wouldn’t like to say “we secured billions in funding for jobs protecting our environment, by creating factories that absorb carbon from the air”

It doesn’t even have to work, for people to sell it.

Create a military industrial complex style system with geo engineering at its root, and soon humanity will be performing biospheric surgery.

There’s a specific vein of cynical realism, that acknowledges both humanities ingenuity and it’s emtrapment to its darker natures.

We will stick to a carbon positive economy, because no one can turn around and tell the world “its over, the good days are gone, and now when we price environmental costs to everything, the markets will tank.”

Too many goods are cheap because externalities aren’t priced in. A price rise in plastic costs will end product lines and packaging.

This will push people to alternatives which are worse (paper takes more water than plastic, and decays causing eventual spoilage and replacement.)

Plastic releases little CO2 into the air and its environment negatives are minimal if deposed of in a landfill. If CO2 and other external pollution sources were highly taxed, plastic prices could even go down as burning oil for energy is phased out and non-taxed oil used for plastics drops in price.

Sure, local commodity price changes are not predictable. But the point I am making still stands.

Not exactly. The sharpest drop happened "thanks to" the financial crisis, and after that, it has been bouncing up and down depending on the year. The overall trend is downwards though. But not enough, by far.

But the decline hasn’t been monotonic. There have been several years of the past ten where absolute and per-capita CO2 emissions in the US have increased year-over-year.

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