Lights out for Clinton + The Day After - Page 16

kluge · 05-13-2008, 10:50 AM

Hey, FF - check out this website for the 9/11 conspiracy guys: Scholars and Family Members Submit Request for Correction to 9/11 NIST Report They've got scientists and other experts, too. They've got withering sarcasm directed at the "official" position, too.

So why aren't you jumping on that bandwagon --- too?

fundingfather · 05-13-2008, 10:58 AM

"Thank you, FF, for so clearly illustrating the point."

Thanks for the complete non-sequitor with respect to tobacco.

fundingfather · 05-13-2008, 11:00 AM

kluge,

I guess its too much to ask of you to keep the topic serious. Your insistence to mock people who disagree with you is a reflection of the strength of your argument and logic. Weren't you the one who started a thread about keeping discussions civil?

xiggi · 05-13-2008, 12:31 PM

Quote:

Xiggi - Clinton is yesterday's news. I know it will come as a great disappointment to you. Time to move on.

Heck, I thought a bit of levity as you "reinvent" the planet would be welcome. My bad.

Speaking about yesterday's news, would the debate about the scientific basis of AGW not be ... passé as well. The reality is that people are finally starting to realize that changing our consumer and user habits are necessary and that corporations are also finally realizing that being green is a pretty good answer to ... greed. While there is plenty to do in the future, we are starting to pay for our shortsighted views. It was not that long ago that I wrote about the "need" to pay $4 or $5 per gallon and use the proceeds to provide commercial incentives (not government-sponsored RD and pork programs.) My theory was that we still HAD a choice and that foregoing the investment would results in higher prices later and ... no commercial solutions. Well, we are almost there.

xiggi · 05-13-2008, 12:43 PM

Oh, Kluge, one last thing ... please remember to turn the switches off when you leave this thread. It's good for the environment and appropriate for the original idea of this thread.

Hanna · 05-13-2008, 03:01 PM

"Barring some technological breakthrough that just isn't on the horizon"

It isn't on the horizon because we're choosing not to invest in it. That's a choice we could change tomorrow if we wanted to. This is an easier task than some other projects our scientists/engineers have successfully undertaken in the past with strong support (Manhattan project, eradication of polio, turning AIDS into a manageable condition, etc.).

Hunt · 05-13-2008, 04:33 PM

I don't know...there is a ton of money to be made if somebody can figure out how to sequester CO2, and people are spending money on it. It is actually very hard to do.

Hanna · 05-13-2008, 05:16 PM

I'm not talking about sequestering CO2; I'm talking about, say, the next big breakthrough in electricity storage or wind generation.

TerpDad · 05-13-2008, 05:25 PM

IMHO,I believe both parties agree that we should be enviromentally more conscious. The problem is what steps do we take to get there w/o economically hamstringing our country. Logic dictates that in order to ween ourselves off oil dependency w/o suffering economically,we need a plan that implements an increase in alternative fuel sources. Whether it be hydrogen fuel cells, solar, wind, nuclear power. And yes even drilling for oil even if's its only temporarily. To get from point A to point B w/o shooting ourselves in the foot so to speak. We've got to stop putting ourselves in a box with no way out. Where's the common sense with regards to our energy policy?

garland · 05-13-2008, 05:33 PM

Terpdad--in post 222, I linked to a common sense, thoughtful approach.

kluge · 05-13-2008, 05:48 PM

Hey Xiggi - no offense intended. I just thought that not having a Clinton to "kick around any more" (Nixon reference) would bum you out, and felt like kidding you about it. I have to admit - Hillary made it almost too easy for you guys.

You were right about the price of gas - then and now. It's a shame that the excess is going to Saudi Arabia and Exxon/Mobil's multi-billion dollar bottom line instead of being used to design and implement a solution to the problem. I guess ExxMob's investment of millions into the anti-global warming propaganda effort paid off - for them, if not for us.

fundingfather · 05-13-2008, 06:05 PM

garland, were there any price tags associated with this paper? Just because they can develop a series of approaches to meet an end, it doesn't mean that the price will be affordable. Exactly how much would a PSV field the size of New Jersey or a wind farm the size of Germany cost? And, that is what is required to provide just one of the wedges.

My problem with this whole thing is that the costs to do this will be so prohibitive that they will sink our economy and that the net result will be no change in CO2 emissions since China, who couldn't care less about the environment, will gladly use its vast coal resources to provide cheap power to take on the all of the world's production that is no longer economically feasible in the US and other industrialized counties. What is your solution to that? Does it not give you pause, knowing that even the IPCC hasn't stated with any certainty that dire consequences will result if we don't reduce CO2 emissions?

garland · 05-13-2008, 06:19 PM

FF--Great questions! Here's part of an article by Bill McKibben that addresses some of your questions on implementation (it's nice to have a civil discussion on this, isn't it

):

Quote:

These approaches have one thing in common: They're more difficult than simply burning fossil fuel. They force us to realize that we've already had our magic fuel and that what comes next will be more expensive and more difficult. The price tag for the global transition will be in the trillions of dollars. Of course, along the way it will create myriad new jobs, and when it's complete, it may be a much more elegant system. (Once you've built the windmill, the wind is free; you don't need to guard it against terrorists or build a massive army to control the countries from which it blows.) And since we're wasting so much energy now, some of the first tasks would be relatively easy. If we replaced every incandescent bulb that burned out in the next decade anyplace in the world with a compact fluorescent, we'd make an impressive start on one of the 15 wedges. But in that same decade we'd need to build 400,000 large wind turbines-clearly possible, but only with real commitment. We'd need to follow the lead of Germany and Japan and seriously subsidize rooftop solar panels; we'd need to get most of the world's farmers plowing their fields less, to build back the carbon their soils have lost. We'd need to do everything all at once.

As precedents for such collective effort, people sometimes point to the Manhattan Project to build a nuclear weapon or the Apollo Program to put a man on the moon. But those analogies don't really work. They demanded the intense concentration of money and intelligence on a single small niche in our technosphere. Now we need almost the opposite: a commitment to take what we already know how to do and somehow spread it into every corner of our economies, and indeed our most basic activities. It's as if NASA's goal had been to put all of us on the moon.

Not all the answers are technological, of course-maybe not even most of them. Many of the paths to stabilization run straight through our daily lives, and in every case they will demand difficult changes. Air travel is one of the fastest growing sources of carbon emissions around the world, for instance, but even many of us who are noble about changing lightbulbs and happy to drive hybrid cars chafe at the thought of not jetting around the country or the world. By now we're used to ordering take-out food from every corner of the world every night of our lives-according to one study, the average bite of food has traveled nearly 1,500 miles (2,414 kilometers) before it reaches an American's lips, which means it's been marinated in (crude) oil. We drive alone, because it's more convenient than adjusting our schedules for public transit. We build ever bigger homes even as our family sizes shrink, and we watch ever bigger TVs, and-well, enough said. We need to figure out how to change those habits.

Probably the only way that will happen is if fossil fuel costs us considerably more. All the schemes to cut carbon emissions-the so-called cap-and-trade systems, for instance, that would let businesses bid for permission to emit-are ways to make coal and gas and oil progressively more expensive, and thus to change the direction in which economic gravity pulls when it applies to energy. If what we paid for a gallon of gas reflected even a portion of its huge environmental cost, we'd be driving small cars to the train station, just like the Europeans. And we'd be riding bikes when the sun shone.

The most straightforward way to raise the price would be a tax on carbon. But that's not easy. Since everyone needs to use fuel, it would be regressive-you'd have to figure out how to keep from hurting poor people unduly. And we'd need to be grown-up enough to have a real conversation about taxes-say, about switching away from taxes on things we like (employment) to taxes on things we hate (global warming). That may be too much to ask for-but if it is, then what chance is there we'll be able to take on the even more difficult task of persuading the Chinese, the Indians, and all who are lined up behind them to forgo a coal-powered future in favor of something more manageable? We know it's possible-earlier this year a UN panel estimated that the total cost for the energy transition, once all the pluses and minuses were netted out, would be just over 0.1 percent of the world's economy each year for the next quarter century. A small price to pay.

In the end, global warming presents the greatest test we humans have yet faced. Are we ready to change, in dramatic and prolonged ways, in order to offer a workable future to subsequent generations and diverse forms of life? If we are, new technologies and new habits offer some promise. But only if we move quickly and decisively-and with a maturity we've rarely shown as a society or a species. It's our coming-of-age moment, and there are no certainties or guarantees. Only a window of possibility, closing fast but still ajar enough to let in some hope.

StopGlobalWarming.org: Carbon's New Math: To Deal with Global Warming

Hunt · 05-14-2008, 07:53 AM

But just reading McKibben's piece--which is overly optimistic about costs--shows how very difficult this would be. First, it turns out that it's not so easy to site those 400,000 wind turbines, because they have ecological impacts, too. Second, renewables like wind, solar, and hydroelectric, even if maximally employed, will provide only a fraction of the energy needed. To really replace fossil fuel, you'd need nuclear plants--lots of them. You'd need a total change in the current resistance to them. As far as reducing comsumption enough to make a difference, you'd essentially need a world-wide religious conversion on this point. I don't see that happening any time soon; in fact, the opposite seems to be happening when you look at the world as a whole.
I'm not denying the problem; I'm just saying that I'm skeptical about the proposed solutions.

garland · 05-14-2008, 09:08 AM

Well, Hunt, he does call it "the greatest test we humans have faced." No solution is going to be easy. I think the greater point is we need to start working on them now. We have a greater chance of getting through this by starting to implement the easier solutions (conserving, wind and solar wherever possible, real money going into new technologies), and working toward workable, more complex solutions, then by wringing our hands and saying, oh well.