Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

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> the idea more likely comes from the kind of confused climate skeptic literature

https://www.svtplay.se/video/23437510/agenda/agenda-18-nov-2...

Political debate from 2 weeks ago. Green party spoke person vs moderate party leader. It beings at 35m. The moderate describe multiple times that Sweden buys dirty coal energy when the wind is now blowing, and the green party spoke person repeats the argument of being net exporter of green energy in response.

> It can even be carbon negative as rootmass is left to build soil

Areas where we plant tree and don't cut them down has a name: nature sanctuary. There has been plenty of initiatives to plant trees in order to create official carbon sinks on the books, so how many of those are nature sanctuary?

> It can even be carbon negative as rootmass is left to build soil, and benefit wildlife too

https://www.forskning.se/2019/09/20/tradplantering-ingen-uni... https://www.svd.se/plantera-trad-loser-inte-klimatproblemen

Counting tree planting initiatives as carbon sinks when there is no planning for what happens afterward is simply wishful thinking (quote from the study).

Criticism of the green movement is not automatically climate skepticism. How many climate skeptics want a complete ban of power generated from fossil fuels in the energy grid? If the green movement just would adapt that stance then I would not care. If people want to use other technologies in a non-fossil fueled world then good, just as priority one is a non-fossil fueled world. Sweden could adapt a ban on fossil fuel produced energy tomorrow and it would mostly only be a bit more expensive (some infrastructure to Norway might be needed in order handle still winter nights).

> the green party spoke person repeats the argument of being net exporter of green energy in response.

I think its a valid argument or caveat to the undesirable coal burning. That's a spoken debate, open to interpretation and misunderstanding, not evidence of carbon trading actually being gamed.

> where we plant tree and don't cut them down has a name: nature sanctuary. Sure, or let the trees seed themselves but I said cut the tree and leave the roots (they have considerable mass and hard to harvest) Then you got a partial natural habitat, carbon sink and fuel source, you've got a mix - that's an option. Plant more trees than you need - never sure how many you'll need anyhow, call it headroom. The object is to reduce net carbon emissions as fast as possible and improve habitats as much as possible, the objectives conflict a bit and can compliment a bit, ecology is complex like that.

> Counting tree planting initiatives as carbon sinks when there is no planning for what happens afterward is simply wishful thinking (quote from the study).

So get planning - because it can work, and it could be done to some extent if you want to decarbonise -according to the IPCC at least. Whatever renewable power your country is generating, if its traded and used then it is cutting carbon, either within your country or another destination - thats not imaginative accounting, its situational awareness.

You are talking like this is all a sham, like your greens are saying they don't need to do anything more about carbon reduction because they're exporting some renewable generation - I dont believe that and expect they're actually just arguing their progress so they can make more progress. Then you say it wouldn't be too hard to just ban fossil fuels tomorrow, so are you annoyed with greens holding things up then ? That sounds like a "super green" policy, do many people believe in it? Because it wont be able to happen till then. Maybe you've got low quality green politicians carrying the banner, that can sure happen.

> I think its a valid argument or caveat to the undesirable coal burning.

If I was doing some tit-for-tat argument I would ask what kind of confused climate skeptic literature says that its a valid argument for importing coal energy in 2019.

The green party used to say that the coal belong in the ground. It was one of their slogans. Being a net exporter of green energy does not make it suddenly valid to dig up the coal and burn it. The coal belong in the ground and should stay there.

> So get planning - because it can work

Claiming something to be a carbon offset in the books and telling the public misleading information is not acceptable. If they want to put things that "can work" then they can put down "could be a carbon offset" in the book rather than "is a carbon offset". Then the "could be" calculations could be compared to the factual climate change data.

> That sounds like a "super green" policy, do many people believe in it?

And there we have it. Not burning fossil fuel for power is apparently a fantasy?

But that is not true. There are countries today which operate with no or close to zero fossil fueled energy grids. Places like France does it without even calling it "super green". They just did it because they didn't want to be dependent on other nations after the second world war. Iceland just use geothermal and hydro because it was cheapest and available. Norway and Sweden could do it but doesn't for political and economical reasons.

It also a bit silly to argue that it must be done tomorrow. They could set up a goal like they did for 2020, 2030 and 2040 and so on. A lot of green politics is about putting down goals and focusing the political discussion. Banning fossil fuels in energy production has yet to be part of any such discussion, and the green party just dodges the question when ever the issue of still winter nights comes up.

It is also a bit funny that we are defining nuclear as a super green policy. Its a label that sounds like a insult but really, is it? Personally I don't care much either way as my goal is that the coal and oil stay in the ground, the natural gas don't get fracked, and the biofuel production don't get double counted and presented as a carbon offset. I just wish that the green movement would be behind that.

I'm certain that in general you are a very coherent thinker, but in this discussion I cant make coherent sense of your criticisms :

> it wouldn't be too hard to just ban fossil fuels tomorrow

That sounded a "super green" idea to me - with no idea myself how you thought that could be done. Nuclear ?! How can I tell to what degree your writing is to be understood as exaggeration - affordable nuclear supply by tomorrow? by next year? by next decade? When you have a rational case, you should be able to promote it with accurate rational language. Sorry but I cant tell what you are really intending or concerned about, because your case has not been coherent. Perhaps examine whether you have a prejudice towards the idea of "green" policy (sounds like an insult?) and prejudice allows one to be hyper critical while inattentive to the coherence of ones own convictions.

The green movement has harbored some prejudice towards nuclear power, but nuclear power is not more expensive now than renewable options because of green prejudice. Its just an excessively complex, resource and high level human attention demanding industrial process to safely generate large amounts of heat from radioactive materials, besides the normal expense of cooling and extracting power from concentrated heat. Sure nuclear might have not been the monster which many greens have pictured it as, also consider whether it is the affordable suppressed magic which nuclear has promoted itself as in the preceding decades while spending many billions on undercosted projects which where delayed to the point of never producing any power. That doesnt happen with wind and solar so even if they foist "misregulation" and fear on nuclear - at least they have shown that they deliver !

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