US Carbon Emissions Hit 20-Year Low 245
Freddybear writes "A recent report from the U.S. Energy Information Agency says that U.S. carbon emissions are the lowest they have been in 20 years, and attributes the decline to the increasing use of cheap natural gas obtained from fracking wells. Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for 'cautious optimism' about potential ways to deal with climate change. He said it demonstrates that 'ultimately people follow their wallets' on global warming. 'There's a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources,' said Roger Pielke Jr., a climate expert at the University of Colorado."
It just moved (Score:5, Insightful)
About 1/3 of carbon emissions comes from manufacturing, and most manufacturing is now done in asia.
Re:It just moved (Score:2)
About 1/3 of carbon emissions comes from manufacturing, and most manufacturing is now done in asia.
And you don't think the Asians will seize upon the opportunity save money by adopting fracking techniques themselves? The west may be ahead of the curve with regard to petrochemical energy production but I really don't see any nation leaving money on the table.
Re:It just moved (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It just moved (Score:2)
Heard a story about Chinese attempts to begin fracking recently. The government in China is being uncharacteristically cautious due to environmental concerns. At least, that's what they are saying. I think they just don't want to have to pay us to do it for them.
Re:It just moved (Score:2)
China has a butt load of shale gas and in rapidly acquiring the technology to exploit it.
It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.
not exactly a new insight (Score:5, Insightful)
"There's a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources"
Sure, that's what everyone's been saying. The disagreement is over how to get there. Should we offer insurance guarantees for nuclear power plants? Should we mandate feed-in tariffs for household solar? Should we loosen restrictions on fracking? Should we increase science funding for alternative energy R&D? Should we institute a carbon tax?
Re:not exactly a new insight (Score:4, Insightful)
So far, the strategy has been to cause all energy costs except those from "green" energy sources to, as Obama is famously quoted as saying; "necessarily skyrocket".
That's where I have a problem. Making "green" energy cheaper and more practical is a win and something I'd applaud, trying to force it by instead making everything else too expensive is stupid and hurts people, especially the poor, and the economy in general.
Strat
Re:not exactly a new insight (Score:2)
Re:not exactly a new insight (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes to all! But for the fracking, heavy monitoring would be good, too. The point being that gas is bad, fracking dirty, but all in all a much better choice than coal.
But nuclear plants? Yes: it is the only carbon-free large-scale dense energy producing plant you can deploy anywhere. Feed-in tariffs for solar? Yes, you want as much solar as you can, because that forces the upgrading of the grid, and improves resilience. It is clean, too. Science funding? How can there be a debate. Is there any case of science funding which is a bad idea?
I don't understand how there is a disagreement: all of theses are possible, they don't contradict each other, and could be done simultaneously.
Re:not exactly a new insight (Score:5, Insightful)
The market doesn't really care about lowering pollution, though, since pollution is an unpriced negative externality. Sometimes it'll favor more-polluting energy sources, and other times less-polluting energy sources, due to completely unrelated factors. So if you're waiting for the market to lower pollution without pollution actually being priced, you're just hoping for luck. Sometimes it does come along; the current cheapness of natural gas vis-a-vis oil is one of those instances. Other times it doesn't; the cheapness of coal is one of the other kinds of instances.
Re:not exactly a new insight (Score:3)
I wish I had mod points. This is one of the simplest explanations I've seen on the reality of this matter.
There are also those who will say that "an unpriced negative externality" is of no value whatsoever, since the only value that anything has is what the market assigns it. I don't happen to agree with that assessment, but I'm sure that many would salute if you ran it up the flagpole, especially if they're making money hand-over-fist making money that way.
Pollution is easily priced (Score:2, Insightful)
The market doesn't really care about lowering pollution, though, since pollution is an unpriced negative externality.
It's quite well priced. Companies know there are legal risks, and they also want good relations with the communities they are in. They know the costs of cleanup of various materials, there's a ton of comparative data now.
It's a fallacy to claim that every company totally ignores pollution, many companies try to be responsible in this regard. You have to be or you generate a lot of bad press.
Re:Pollution is easily priced (Score:3)
Companies know there are legal risks, and they also want good relations with the communities they are in.
Thie is where PR comes in. For instance one could say that fracking is good because it lowers CO2 emissions. Hey, wait....
Just from burning coal? (Score:2, Interesting)
Note how the graph says "Carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere in the U.S. from burning coal has fallen to its lowest level in 20 years".
Is the data truly valid for *ALL* emissions, or as the graph suggests, just the ones from burning coal?
Just the type of pollutants have changed! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just the type of pollutants have changed! (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh poppycock. Fracking is an old (over 100 years) well-proven technology. If it weren't any good we would have known it 50 years ago.
Kyoto Protocol (Score:3)
So, this means the US almost hit the targets of the Kyoto Protocol. Interesting.
Re:Kyoto Protocol (Score:5, Insightful)
Kyoto was never about saving the Earth. It was about holding the US back so the rest of the world could catch up economicly.
You're half right. Kyoto was never about saving the Earth. Kyoto was about politicians pretending to care about saving the earth to improve their reelection chances by making promises that would be delivered far enough in the future that those making the promises could not be held accountable.
Why not fix the market failure? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or you could simply fix the original market failure [wikipedia.org] by adding the cost of emissions (a negative externality [wikipedia.org]) into the price of energy. To prevent this from burdening the poor, return an equal share of the revenue to everyone.
Imaginary Numbers (Score:2)
Or you could simply fix the original market failure by adding the cost of emissions (a negative externality) into the price of energy.
It's bizarre to claim you can "add the cost of emissions" to a product. How would you honestly come by such a figure, when there are myriad sources that can cause health issues (including people who smoke!)?
Would you equally burden supposed "green" sources of energy with the same costs, from the production of pollution in China when producing components?
The better and more direct approach is to limit emissions at a source rather than playing a wild guessing game that in the end amounts to "we get to charge you whatever the hell we like because we don't like you",
But we already heavily regulate power plant emissions. Further controls are just not going to give us much benefit, and skyrocket the cost of energy for everyone - hurting the poor the most since the need for shelter comes almost before even food...
Re:Imaginary Numbers (Score:2)
How would you honestly come by such a figure, when there are myriad sources that can cause health issues (including people who smoke!)?
Well, we're not talking about any pollutant here, just greenhouse gases, and mostly CO2 when we're talking about energy.
I agree that it's not straightforward to establish a cost figure. So I guess one way to do it is set a goal of total emissions, run a few models to establish a tax amount that'd get you close according to those models and then run it in the real world and adjust in both directions appropriately. I guess you'd ease society into it by lowballing the tax and gradually increasing it until it you get to your intended goal.
I wouldn't want immediately toxic emissions to be handled in the same way because I don't want an individual plant to emit those at will and only subject to financial limits. But CO2 seems more like a finite resource than a toxic emissions.
CO2 the only emission that does not matter (Score:2, Insightful)
But CO2 seems more like a finite resource than a toxic emissions.
Why? CO2 is the ONLY emission that the biosphere of the entire planet is built around consuming.
CO2 is not pollution, in any sense of the word.
Rather than chasing after black unicorns based on the uncertain idea that possibly the earth MIGHT warm enough to cause any issues at all, we should address real pollution that effects real people living now.
That is the biggest crime in my book, people are focused on CO2 so much they are missing real pollution much closer at hand.
Re:CO2 the only emission that does not matter (Score:3)
Obviously you still don't know anything about CO2, polution, and its consequences. Why do you think your opinion is a qualified then?
CO2 as a nutrient, etc. (Score:2)
Why? CO2 is the ONLY emission that the biosphere of the entire planet is built around consuming.
I beg to differ. Fixed nitrogen (mostly NOx) is another such emission, consumed by the biosphere whether in vapor or dissolved forms, from combustion by-products, sewage, or fertilizer run-off (especially fertilizer). So are Phosphates, found in detergents, fertilizer, and sewage (and of all major nutrients, possibly the most highly bio-concentrated in terms of the ratio between ambient environment and living organism). Unfortunately, while artificial applications of these nutrients are a boon to agriculture, their haphazard disposal results in eutrophication of freshwater bodies, and dead zones and red tides along coasts. As with all complex systems, the details are important.
In terms of CO2, if we were to assume all other factors remain the same (distribution of temperature and precipitation), we'd likely see some benefit to crops which utilize C3 photosynthesis AND are at least sometimes limited by CO2 uptake vs other nutrients -- I suspect rice, cassava, and potatoes would fall into this category, but not sure about soy and most fruits and vegetables (they're also C3 plants, but not sure how CO2-limited they are). C4-based plants and crops (wheat, corn) will likely show little benefit, being capable of high-intensity photosynthesis in the presence of low CO2 concentration.
The distribution of other limiting factors is the key. I suspect over-all biological production (on land) will rise, but the benefits will vary. For instance, swaths of Canada and Russia will benefit from a longer growing season; Saharan Africa may become greener as well due to more precipitation, while the mid and south-west US could experience reduced biological productivity. But these details of precipitation changes are one of those things associated with complex models (that critics like to deride) and lots of potential error.
Oceanic productivity will also be affected. CO2 could be a limiting factor in niche cases (sea-grass beds, maybe), but in broad swaths of the ocean, other factors predominate (nitrogen, phosphorous, iron, dissolved O2). Acidification is an interesting problem -- you don't need as complex of a model to determine the degree, it's a much more straightforward function. Organisms utilizing carbonate skeletons (and those that eat them) will suffer, while those using siliceous or organic frameworks may benefit from reduced competition. Likewise, lower O2 solubility and changes in inter-strata mixing will benefit some organisms (jellyfish) while penalizing others (possibly commercial fish species).
Personally, I think reducing CO2 production through laws is a fool's game, when enforcement is divided among multiple sovereign players, some who stand to gain an economic advantage by cheating. But I have a beef with climate denialists anyway -- they interfere with our ability to plan and invest in the technology and infrastructure required to adapt to climate changes.
Re:Imaginary Numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you could simply fix the original market failure by adding the cost of emissions (a negative externality) into the price of energy.
It's bizarre to claim you can "add the cost of emissions" to a product. How would you honestly come by such a figure, when there are myriad sources that can cause health issues (including people who smoke!)?
The fact that you can't price perfectly (particularly since there is no market here) doesn't mean you can't price at all. Right now, we price CO2 emissions at 0. For those who agree on the basic premise that CO2 emissions are a problem, 0 is obviously too low a price.
If you agree that CO2 is a problem, pricing CO2 emissions is the right answer.
Re:Imaginary Numbers (Score:2)
If you agree that CO2 is a problem, pricing CO2 emissions is the right answer.
Agree to the premise, disagree to the conclusion unless you add a second premise that we have the power to price emissions uniformly across jurisdictions, or at least the ability to prevent substitution of emissions from one jurisdiction to the next.
If you increase the cost of emissions only in the US, the rational thing for emitters to do will be to substitute emissions somewhere else. A lot of steel gets made in China (with no pollution controls to speak of) and shipped to Europe (ironically, in dirty diesel powered freighters) because CO2 targets (and hence costs) vary across borders.
Washington State is planning a giant terminal so that coal can be shipped by train to the Pacific, loaded in a freighter, hauled to China and then burned, again with no scrubbers or controls. Is that really better for the environment than burning it in Montana where we can save absurd transit costs and the EPA can regulate at least somewhat?
I want to do something about AGW, but the economics of it strongly suggest to me that taxing emissions will not work without some (impossible to imagine) international power that can coerce (yes, coerce) nations to adopt them uniformly (leaving aside that many developing nations do not believe they should cut CO2 uniformly to the west anyway). Hence, I've pretty much put all my stock in active geo-engineering technology that obviates the need for coercive global implementation.
Pricing Pollution (Score:2)
If you agree that CO2 is a problem, pricing CO2 emissions is the right answer.
Agree to the premise, disagree to the conclusion unless you add a second premise that we have the power to price emissions uniformly across jurisdictions, or at least the ability to prevent substitution of emissions from one jurisdiction to the next.
If you increase the cost of emissions only in the US, the rational thing for emitters to do will be to substitute emissions somewhere else. A lot of steel gets made in China (with no pollution controls to speak of) and shipped to Europe (ironically, in dirty diesel powered freighters) because CO2 targets (and hence costs) vary across borders.
You can deal with this by simply applying a tarriff on products from countries that don't implement reasonable carbon controls. For a large power to pass WTO review you have to base this tarriff on an estimate of the amount of polution caused by producing the product in the exporting country. But the money raised from the tarriff would more than pay for the cost of estimating the amount of polution being generated in the exporting country. And in reality if a major trade block like NAFTA or the EU implemented such tarriffs others would quickly implement their own carbon dioxide controls. As long as the carbon dioxide emissions are being factored into the price, the exporting country would rather not have that done by the importing country collecting tarriffs.
I don't think that a carbon tax should be the only acceptable way to avoid the tarriff. If the exporter is lowering their emissions faster than the importing country through some other scheme then it would be unfair to apply the tarriff, be that through subsidy of alternate power sources or harnessing the power of the flying spagetti monster. But practically all economists agree that a carbon tax is the cheapest way to address the problem.
The truth is that if the US or Europe wanted to get real about CO2 they could. Maybe some smaller countries acting alone couldn't do this because they would be smaked down by the WTO, but they could try this and if enough small countries did this that would work too.
Re:Imaginary Numbers (Score:2)
There's coercion, and there's coercion.
Most international treaties have countries going along with the program without a central global power coercing their submission. I don't think it's unrealistic that the main producers of CO2 can get on board for a treaty "pledging" to locally tax CO2 emissions.
Are CO2 costs really be the main cost driver between European Steel and Chinese steel now? I'd doubt it. And I think it will be harder to get the US on board than China.
Geoengineering? I'd rather we spent more money on fundamental energy R&D. That way we avoid the CO2 problems and get cheaper energy.
Re:Then what about charging people to breathe? (Score:2)
Since we also price most pollution at $0, the argument applies there as well. The difficulty of assessing total cost accurately should not be an excuse to pretend the total cost is $0, just as the failure to charge you for each exhalation should not be an excuse to charge a coal plant $0.
Re:Then what about charging people to breathe? (Score:2)
At worst it MAY raise global temperatures somewhat, making more land arable...
Why do you think MAY?
CO2 is a greenhouse gas like many others. Like the glass in a real greenhouse itnisncausing warming. There is no question about that, except the USA spread fud of the last 15 years.
Re:Why not fix the market failure? (Score:4, Informative)
Why not just put the money where you want it to go in the first place by subsidizing clean energy programs?
Because that's not where you want it to go. Especially after passing through several layers of bureaucracy.
Re:Why not fix the market failure? (Score:2)
You complain about several layers of bureaucracy in regards to raising one tax and lowering another, but you think that we can subsidize clean energy programs without bureaucracy?
The number one, best clean energy program is for individuals to use less energy. If energy were more expensive, people would do that naturally. No bureaucracy needed. The biggest failure of our current system is that it paints with too broad a brush. For example, fuel economy standards mean that we are pushing people who drive their car less than ten miles a week to drive a more fuel efficient car. However, if we just got existing people who drive 10,000 miles a year to drive less (even in their existing cars), we could save more energy.
What's the number one way we could save fuel? Shorter commutes. When fuel economy standards increased, we continued to spend the same amount on fuel. Why? We increased our commutes to use just as much fuel as previously. If people would choose to live closer to work, we could save a lot of fuel. However, governments have almost no ways of directly subsidizing shorter commutes.
Markets are really good at distributing decision making. Governments are really bad at it; governments are good at centralizing decision making. The best way for governments to participate is in changes in things that are already centralized, like taxes. By increasing the cost of fuel, the government can simultaneously promote increased fuel economy (for those that have to drive long distances) and decreased driving (for those who have options). That has the government doing what it does best while leaving markets to do what they do best. It allows individuals to make decisions for themselves.
Power generation still a big problem (Score:4, Interesting)
We are running on overbuilt capacity from the 1960s. After that it became very, very expensive to build a large power plant - with most of the new costs being public protests and public comment sessions that turned into more and more evironmental impact studies. Often the result was the project was abandoned.
In Arizona and Illinois (both places I have lived) the solution was simple: build "peaker" plants that run on natural gas and build them up over time from 200MW to more like 1000MW over time. This still results in a lot of protest activity but governing bodies are far more likely to ignore protests when the plant has been safely and cleanly operating for five years or so when it comes time to expand.
The problem is that this is just a delaying tactic that will not solve the problem in the long run. Most parts of the country could use another 2000MW of capacity right now. Certainly if the economy recovers there will be considerable need for more and more electric power which today simply isn't available.
It is just barely possible today to build a data center that is independent of the grid but the costs for the battery storage are huge. Solar PV generation is constantly being touted as a solution, but the only way it is a real solution would be to have it on a lot of homes and other buildings - a lot meaning probably over 50% of them. Unfortunately, this doesn't address the grid problems at 5-9 PM when everyone gets home, turns down the air conditioner temperature and turns on the microwave and the washing machine. To fix that we are going to need capacity that doesn't depend on the sun and today's grid-tied PV systems do not address that at all.
One way out of the coming capacity crisis would be to have a big switch at the power company office: Day (offices) and Night (homes). This is literally what we might be facing soon. The problem is that we could easily have this kind of capacity problem in five years. It takes five years to build a new coal plant without any public opposition - and there would be plenty no matter where it was going to be built. It takes more like ten years to build a nuclear plant and we almost certainly do not have ten years before really running into a big capacity problem. We also need maybe 20-30 new plants coming on line in five years and we haven't even started building them.
The power companies really don't care. They will not be the enemy when you find your refrigerator doesn't run during the day and there is a new box that shuts off your house power whenever the capacity is needed. You can bet their PR departments and outside agencies will be working overtime to make sure someone else gets the blame.
But hey, if we don't build any new plants you can bet everyone will be shouting about how our CO2 emissions are down.
Re:Power generation still a big problem (Score:5, Informative)
Grid tied solar on homes would solve the power issue. Buy the dumped panels from China for the initial installation, and ramp up domestic production for replacement parts (as 20+ year life is good, but still means you need to replace about 5% per year forever). Distributed solar will take care of almost all our problems. We may end up with the (good) problem of more peak generation than demand, in which case we'd need to invest in some sufficient storage (China uses hydro storage, and it's quite effective - yes, I've been to Tien Shi and seen the production facility). Enough of that stable enough, and we could decrease baseline production.
Re:Power generation still a big problem (Score:2)
Parent is correct. Distributed power is a THREAT to centralized power and that is one reason there has been zero interest in technologies that are disruptive-- it is like expecting Microsoft to support Linux.
If every house was partially covered in solar panels we would have a totally different situation that we do today. We wouldn't need wind or nuclear. There would be a demand for power STORAGE so instead of a nuclear plant you would have probably also centralized big corporations which sucked up your cheap solar power and sold it back to you at night. Advances in battery tech and investment in conversion/storage would be much much higher resulting in many side benefits (because research often produces discoveries are were not the goal of the research. Just look how many things come out from "worthless" biological research or space exploration.)
Kind of disproves the conservatives claim (Score:2)
Kind of proves the opposite. (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep hearing from conservatives that we can't do anything about climate change or reducing CO2.
That is what you heard.
That's not what they said.
Conservatives have long claimed there is no need to spend extra money to reduce CO2. They said there would be no benefit in ham-stringing first world countries in many ways to reduce a gas that may not even be causing a problem.
And as it turns out, they were correct. If we had adopted Kyoto the U.S. would have a far worse economy than we have today, with many additional regulations imposed on businesses - when it turns out those additional regulations were never even needed.
Over time alternative energy WILL naturally overcome traditional sources just in cost benefit alone, there is no need to hurt the productivity of countries to make that happen.
Re:Kind of proves the opposite. (Score:3)
Rhe countries that adopted Kyoto protocolls have far less economic problems than the USA. How do you explain that?
Productivity has nothing to do with the way how energy is produced. It also has not very much to do with how much energy you use for producing something.
The contrary is true. The more you produce for the same amount of energy *or* the less energy you use to produce the same, the more efficient/productive you are.
Re:Easy to explain (Score:2)
You must be very confused. Kyoto is about reducing CO2 emissions. ... ... how much gasoline does a us car use? How much power does an US fridge use? How much power does a US washing machine use? How much time do you spend each month (and miles) to go for shopping? ... and you take it as example why the USA can not reduce CO2 emmisions or in any way modernice its economy or its products ....
There is no wealth transfere schema anywhere
The rest of yournpost isnutter nonsense
A typical USA household needs 3 or 4 times the energy an european does. That is neither efficient nor productive.
Regarding your spain example, spain has no problems from kyoto but from failed investment banking just like the usa had 2 years ago. And on top of that: Spain not only signed the Kyoto contracts but also honoures them and exceeded in lowering its long term CO2 emissions.
So a country with realy hard economic problems (for various reasons) is topping the mighty USA
Guess how many people in europe own an USA made fridge or washing mashine ?
When ? (Score:3)
And as asked to conservative when will that happen ? The best answer I got was "when alternative energy are cheaper than oil and coal". The problem is, by that time we have burn so many of both that climate change might be irreversible and well going thru. The problem is that conservative lacks UTTERLY in insight, they see their own generaztion only, and future folk are fucked, but who cares. The problem is, some of us see beyond the next year in econom,y and look at maybe 5 or 10 generation in future. Who cares if you lower economy strength by 5, 10% , if rather than take that you fuck up future generation that the climate get so chaotic that the damage long term is greater. The truth is that conservative don't care a shitty bit on the long term consequence. Which is why by the way they don#t care about pollution law in general.
Re:Kind of disproves the conservatives claim (Score:2)
The USA are so keen on fracking because around 2006 the estimated total gas reserves of the USA (ready forproduction) was less then 10 times the anual consumption. Hence the USA stopped producing "normal" natural as and started importing, and now since a few years is doing fracking. ...
I have no idea how big the 'frackable' resources are, but I would wonder ifnitnlasts 20 years
my experience (Score:2)
I work at a coal plant. This year alone the overall power requirement for our area had been lower than the historical average. Yes, we did hit a peak generation record this year as well, but it's been a much milder year than normal.
We've also seen the cost of natural gas fall to the point where it was cheaper to leave the coal plants on standby and run the natural gas plants for the power demand.
This year we've run about 50% less than last year.
Re:my experience (Score:2)
50%? Seriously? *boggle* That's a serious drop. That's a huge drop, considering the population is the highest it's ever been. Or does your plant serve one of the areas that has lost population? Ohio and Michigan both have lost so much population over the past decade that they lost Congressional seats.
Part of a natural trend? (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember reading an article many years ago - long before the global warming scare - that pointed out that moving to lower carbon fuels was a long-term trend. Industry started out with coal and charcoal, essentually pure carbon. Then it moved on to oil, which contains a mix of carbon and hydrogen. Natural gas was up-and-coming, with 1 carbon to 4 hydrogens. The article assumed that the future held nuclear and solar, both of which are essentially zero-carbon.
Aside from the hiccups with nuclear (justified or not, depending on your point of view), the article seems to have been pretty prescient.
Go Nuclear (Score:4, Informative)
You could go nuclear and avoid so much of it's proliferation and disposal drawbacks by going with liquid flouride thorium reactors (LFTR's). But then again, if you wanted to create a big government pie-in-the-sky "make work" project, you could pursue fusion. Oh yeah, they're already doing that.
What about methane? (Score:5, Informative)
Methane leakage is a significant source of greenhouse gases.
It's quite questionable as to whether the switch to natural gas is a significant benefit in terms of global warming for a variety of reasons.
http://energyinnovation.org/2012/05/natural-gas-methane-leakage-and-climate-change/ [energyinnovation.org]
Strike while the iron is hot (Score:3)
"director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for 'cautious optimism' about potential ways to deal with climate change"
Only if we close the plants down. If the economy comes back soon and these things are still operational, they'll turn them back on.
We should strike while the iron is hot and get these things closed. It's very easy to make a gas plant, we can have ample capacity in time for a resurgence in industry.
Re:OR (Score:5, Informative)
Read the article. It talks about that quite a bit.
While conservation efforts, the lagging economy and greater use of renewable energy are factors in the CO2 decline, the drop-off is due mainly to low-priced natural gas, the agency said.
Re:OR (Score:4, Interesting)
The last time the state of Milankovitch Cycles was similar to what they are now was during the interglacial about 430,000 years ago. That one lasted about 30,000 years. But if "On the Effect of a New Grand Minimum of Solar Activity on the Future Climate on Earth" (Feulner & Rahmstorf 2010) [agu.org] is right then the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases has postponed any new ice age indefinitely. It's unlikely a new glacial period will happen any time soon certainly not in the lifetime of anyone alive today*.
*Assuming no breakthroughs in immortality.
Re:OR (Score:5, Insightful)
Except if you'd looked at the graph in TFA, you'd see that CO2 emissions by the US were pretty level for a good bit of the past decade, and appear to have started trending downward prior to the 2008 economic crash.
I'm sure the state of the economy has a role in this, but it's certainly not the whole story.
Additionally, the summary quote from Pielke may be a bit misleading when taken in isolation. In the article he also states that "Natural gas is not a long-term solution to the CO2 problem". I only mention this because most people won't bother to read the article.
Re:OR (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OR (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that the reason it is cheap is because of shale gas. Of which there is at least a 100 year supply. It is just not going to run out for decades, even with massive increases in usage.
Re:OR (Score:2)
I think you don't want to believe. The reality is that unless the anti-fracking lobby limits it's production, natural gas from shale deposits will be very abundant for a very long time. Not only that, shale oil deposits are massive as well. Likely big enough to push Peak Oil out a few decades in North America.
Shale of the century
The “golden age of gas” could be cleaner than greens think
http://www.economist.com/node/21556242
Re:OR (Score:2)
I work in the energy industry and we do our fair share of fracking but our natural gas exploration group has started drilling for oil in the last couple of years to offset the low returns on gas. You can't stay in business if it costs more to acquire then you can sell it for.
Re:OR (Score:2)
My brother is running a natural gas fracking project, and, according to him, the only reason it was considered viable in the first place was because they projected a few years of getting oil (at what are historically high prices) in addition to natural gas. The project may be shut down because, not only has the price of methane dropped and stayed low, the prices of natural gas liquids like ethane, propane, butane, etc., have dropped to about 1/3 of their previous values. That is a story that's undertold because consumers don't directly notice those prices.
If you are someone who just wants the price of natural gas to rebound , rather than stopping fracking, you should be promoting the use of natural gas (like T. Boone Pickens) for fuel for transportation, electricity generation, and heating.
The Long Game (Score:2)
Because after a while the cheapest gas will be gone and we'll probably be shifting back to coal.
I'm pretty sure in 200 years or so, either solar will be practical to use en-masse or nuclear will be simple and widespread (or a combination of both).
Re:The Long Game (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Long Game (Score:2, Interesting)
You do understand that they mine the cheapest, easiest to get at gas first, just like any other resource.
You do understand that extraction technology improves over time to easily get at once was difficult...
Fracking itself is an excellent example, none of the stuff fracking can get to was considered viable to extract not that long ago.
200 years of cost-effect extraction, just in the U.S. alone. Easy. But I'm sure renewable sources will cross the cost threshold long before we run out of even the most easily extracted raw energy from the earth.
Re:The Long Game (Score:5, Informative)
Fracking itself is an excellent example, none of the stuff fracking can get to was considered viable to extract not that long ago.
Fracking is a bad example. We've been able to horizontally fracture oil wells for the past 50 years. It hasn't been much utilized because it is expensive. It was only when crude oil starting hitting $90 a barrel did it start to get popular.
Same with fracking natural gas - it's an economic rather than technical decision. Most of the major 'breakthroughs' in hydrocarbon resource extraction haven't occurred because of improved technology, but instead (largely) due to price increases.
Yep, there is a lot of oil and natural gas around. Maybe not so much relatively inexpensive stuff around. 'Cost effective' is an arguable point. If energy prices increase too much, the economies tend to fall off (as noted in TFA). We'd best hope that renewables get more reasonable fairly soon.
Re:The Long Game (Score:2)
Re:OR (Score:2)
ciris energy.
Cheaper AND CLEANer to convert coal to methane, then to burn coal directly (low efficiencies and you still need to recover the pollutants).
Re:OR (Score:2)
No, that's not what it means at all.
Re:OR (Score:2, Interesting)
The article and title here are very misleading since they actually refer only to power production, not overall CO2...
While gas has advantages over coal, there are serious issues with fracking.
âoeThe oil and gas industry is a significant source of VOCs, which contribute to the formation of ground-level ozone (smog),â said the EPA in announcing new rules for drilling issued this April. The EPA said methaneâ"what natural gas is made ofâ"is a highly potent greenhouse gas. The agency blames oil and gas production and processing for âoenearly 40% of all U.S. methane emissions.â
http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/08/07/frackings-link-to-smog-worries-some-texas-cities/ [npr.org]
http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2012/07/30/in-northeast-pennsylvania-methane-migration-means-flammable-puddles-and-30-foot-geysers/ [npr.org]
As with what's happening with corporate "free speech", money/stock may be an influence elsewhere. The study showing that it was toxic waste fluid injection wells causing contamination, not fracking itself, came from someone who received over 1.5 million in salary/stock (and didn't disclose that either).
Even stranger, he was a senior official at the USGS, which instead of showing their own studies on fracking related quakes, linked to a similar outside study. There are many brilliant people at the USGS that don't deserve reputations being soiled by a key player.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/07/23/fracking-company-paid-texas-professor-behind-water-contamination-study/ [npr.org]
Re:BS (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing is 100% safe and effective. Been that way for 50,000 years.
nope (Score:2)
it means we outsourced our means of production (real wealth creation) to China, look at their pollution levels.
Re:OR (Score:2)
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:5, Interesting)
It produces around 30-40% less CO2 than coal for the same power output. Coal is particularly bad, both in terms of CO2 production, and other kinds of pollution (though with currently mandated scrubbers it's not as bad a contributor to things like acid rain as it once was).
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:3)
I have never heard it explained why gas plants are cheaper to build and more responsive than coal plants, so I'm curious if anybody knows.
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:3)
And the core of a gas plant is a gas turbine. The US has thousands of mothballed jet engines sitting in the Mojave dessert that can be inexpensively repurposed into gas generators.
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:2)
Are there any existing programs to do that? I know they use the same principle of operation, but I would be surprised if they were easy drop-in replacements.
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:2)
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:2)
Basically the same reason gasoline engines are far more efficient than coal-powered steam plants. Coal plants require more heat, for longer, to get sufficient burn, and require more overall metal cost to build. Plus the ramp-up time is hours, whereas the ramp up time of nat gas is very similar to turning on your car, excepting the huge generators would need maybe 10-15 minutes of ramp up time to get the oil flowing before you turn them full bore.
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:2)
However, a smart grid can make demand rise and fall in sync with solar and wind generation. This negates one advantage of gas plants over coal and nuclear.
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:2)
Ugh, your're right, Obama used the term "clean coal" in his State of the Union address. [youtube.com] Must he try and please everybody?
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:2)
http://dddusmma.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/iea-supports-ultra-supercritical-coal/ [wordpress.com]
Would these supercritical thingies bring the US up to par?
Seems that the power efficiency would be comparable, based on what you mentioned above.
"Ultra-supercritical plants have a thermal efficiency of 44% HHV, which is a 35% improvement over traditional plants."
"Itâ(TM)s anticipated that temperatures and pressures can be increased further, and that a thermal efficiency of 46% (HHV) can be achieved in the next several years. These would be referred to as Advanced Ultra-supercritical plants."
46% would probably mean 41% improvement over traditional plants? (46/44*1.35)
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:2)
Er. Sorry, bring *coal* up to par.
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:2)
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:2)
For oil based, it is a little less than 2H per carbon (incomplete burning).
for coal, it is a little over 1 H per carbon due to about half burning.
Far more efficient to convert coal => methane then burn that. Interestingly, the engines and boilers for methane work well for hydrogen.
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:2)
Far more efficient to convert coal => methane then burn that. Interestingly, the engines and boilers for methane work well for hydrogen.
Eh.. What? How do you convert coal to methane without costing energy or releasing CO2?
I say it's far more efficient to convert the coal to uranium, and then there would be zero carbon emissions!
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:3)
Re:natural gas doesn't make CO2? (Score:2)
Natural gas is mostly methane, and methane has the most hydrogen per carbon of all the hydrocarbons.
Re:It also means... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not at all.
If you look at the article (it's not that long, won't take that long), they discuss whether the level of economic activity has changed because of the state of the economy. It makes it very clear that this has nothing to do with the state of the economy being in slow-growth.
And it's not the state of the economy is bad for everyone, you know? Luxury cars, yachts, diamonds, high-end houses and condos aren't doing all that badly, and in some cases are doing very very well.
Re:It also means... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It also means... (Score:2)
Forgive him, he does not know what a socialist is.
Re:It also means... (Score:2)
And none of that has anything to do with whether Obama is a "foreigner", which he isn't, or a socialist, which he isn't.
While your complaints are valid, your anger is directed in the wrong direction, which makes you a dumbass. On top of this, you think Obama was born in Kenya or some stupid shit like that. Which makes you a birther. Which also makes you a dumbass of epic proportions.
>unfounded personal attacks against me
Go be unproductively mad somewhere else.
--
BMO
Re:It also means... (Score:2)
Re:It also means... (Score:3)
>merely aping
No, I have listened and watched. I have heard talk radio from its modest beginnings here in New England, back when it was new through its eventual evolution to what it is now, and what I hear on the AM dial hurts my head. I used to listen to Limbaugh regularly back in the early 90s and he was entertaining back then, but he's just turned into an angry old man whose invective is wildly wrong and frankly coarse and offensive. I'm appalled by the pile of garbage talk radio has become. Hannity, Levin, Savage, et al., are all cokie-cutter outrage-machines whose only intent is to inflame.
It has even happened to local talk radio. The stupid shit on the AM dial these days from local hosts make me pine for the days of Sherm Strickhauser (WHJJ/WPRO) and David Brudnoy(WBZ who once did a fantastic interview with Ron Paul), back when you could actually learn something from listening. The last of the thoughtful ones, Arlene Violet, left the air in 2006 and went back to practicing law full time.
Talk radio has become unlistenable to anyone with at least two neurons to rub together. Outrage sells. Sanity and knowledge doesn't.
Similarly, Fox doesn't report news anymore. They have become the propaganda wing of the radical right in the Republican Party. They even went to court as an amicus in Florida to say that they have the right to lie in news over the air and won. They have a single token "reasonable person" as an anchor in Shepard Smith, but that's about it. Having Shepard Smith doesn't make up for all the other crap on Fox.
>ownership of production
I guess you're talking about the bailout of GM and Chrysler.
http://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2012/02/bush-would-do-it-again-on-auto-bailouts/ [thedetroitbureau.com]
Funny how that doesn't make GWB socialist. Funny how GWB did TARP and that doesn't make him a socialist either. And for all the worshipping of St. Ronnie people like you do on the right, you conveniently forget that he also bailed out Chrysler. And they didn't call it socialism back then either.
You don't know what socialism is, and to call Obama socialist means you are using your own private definition of socialism. Because it's certainly not the accepted one. You are deliberately abusing language, to use the word "socialism" as a weapon. Trying to reason with someone who can't use a generally accepted definition of a term is impossible. Such a person has abandoned reason.
Bye.
--
BMO
Re:Ah, Penn State (Score:2)
It that isn't a trolling comment I don't know what is. Trying to tie Mann to a scandal in the football program. On top of that Mann has never been shown to be a liar. If his studies lead him to be alarmed about the potential for global warming to devastate our civilization shouldn't he as a leading scientist in the field voice his concerns?
Re:Ah, Penn State (Score:2)
Rather than speculate you could actually go read the report on Mann [psu.edu] and see who the investigating officials were:
Composition of the Investigatory Committee:
Sarah M. Assmann, Waller Professor
Department of Biology
Welford Castleman, Evan Pugh Professor and Eberly Distinguished Chair in Science
Department of Chemistry and Department of Physics
Mary Jane Irwin, Evan Pugh Professor
Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
Nina G. Jablonski, Department Head and Professor
Department of Anthropology
Fred W. Vondracek, Professor
Department of Human Development and Family Studies
Research Integrity Officer:
Candice Yekel, Director of the Office for Research Protections
Penn State never did a formal investigation of Sandusky until the past year so it's unlikely that any of those people knew anything about it.
Re:It is still too high (Score:2)
And we should look into those treaties again. The Republicans made a wrong decision for not signing it. If they would have, we would have achieved it, and China might have grown slower meaning that there would be more jobs here in the US.
How do you figure that? Kyoto only held China to the standards of other 'developing economies'. But since they are our proxy for dirty manufacturing, all that would happen is more manufacturing would move there.
The only sane treaty holds everyone to the same standards. Granted, the third world points at us and cries about our record of consumption that put us in our current position. But the Chinese don't need to go through a phase of driving 6000 lb cars with tail fins to achieve what we did. Put them in the same state of the art vehicles that you all want us to drive.
Oh, and every pound of carbon that a tree in the USA sequesters should be worth the same as a pound of carbon sequestered in a South American rain forest (sorry Al Gore if this undermines your investments).
Re:It is still too high (Score:2)
Forrests don't sequester CO2. They only store it temporaily. As soon as a tree dies and is rotting, the same amount of CO2 it used during its live is released again ...
Re:It is still too high (Score:2)
Technically, this is true. But the Kyoto treaty figures that the Amazon rain forest works on different principles than forests in the USA.
The credit one should receive for forest sequestration should be based on the amount of carbon than is removed from the forest on logging trucks.
Re:Fake numbers (Score:3)
Re:Fake numbers (Score:2)
Re:Fake numbers (Score:2)
Only a socialist planned economy on a global scale can deal with the environmental pollution crisis. Workers to power! Expropriate the bourgeoisie! Dogfart!
It won't work, based on the record [harvard.edu] of previous "Dictatorships of the Proletariat".
EUROPE'S ENVIRONMENTAL NIGHTMARE: HARD ROAD TO RECOVERY [fsu.edu]
Dogfart!
A fair characterization of Communist governance.
Re:What matters is *planetary* carbon emissions (Score:2)
Re:No manufacturing (Score:3)
"This should not be a surprise that the emissions are lowest in 20 years, that's because so many manufacturing jobs have been moved out of USA."
Efficient manufacturing reduces the number of manufacturing jobs, reduces pollution, and reduces production costs.
" In the past decade, the flow of goods coming from U.S. factories has gone up by a third as capital has increasingly become a greater share of input over labor."
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/05/u-s-manufacturing-output-may-boom-but-not-jobs/ [aei-ideas.org]
Re:No manufacturing (Score:2)
Manufacturing has declined as a percentage of the economy, but it has never declined in absolute terms. The US manufacturing sector is bigger than it has ever been.