"But Global Warming is a HOAX!!!"

[dann]

Your message has changed somewhat since July 28, Myriad. Back then, you didn't preach abstinence and austerity as a solution to global warming. You described the things you did, as a consumer, as being merely practical, healthy, enjoyable and convenient, i.e. much the same way I had described my bike rides:

I do in fact take cold showers. I have for years, all cold except when ill. It saves money I can use to help improve my resiliency in other ways, it feels good, it's better for my easily-irritated skin, the bathroom doesn't steam up, I save time and water not having to adjust the water temperature just right and not standing there luxuriating, I don't have to worry about whether the hot water will run out or if it'll run out on someone else if I use it, it doesn't matter if someone else turns on a tap while I'm in there, and being physiologically accustomed to cold water gives me a lot more opportunities to go swimming here in New England. No medal. No illusions that I'm "saving the planet" (see above).

However, your resentment at other people with different tastes was obvious in the word luxuriating, which also revealed that you were probably lying to yourself when you claimed that the cold showers felt good. Another give-away was when you pretended that adjusting the temperature to be "just right" was time-consuming. It isn't usually. If it is, it's time to call the plumber.
It makes it obvious that the temperature of your cold showers wasn't "just right" and doesn't make you feel good in any carnal sense but only in a moralistic austere sense.

The bitterness of your post became apparent when you looked forward to what was coming to the others, the 'comfort mazimizers', who you imagined would soon no longer be able to continue "standing there luxuriating":

But also, no illusions that everything in my surroundings should or can be adjusted to maximize my comfort moment by moment. Something that a lot of people will have to learn or change their minds about, for any change to happen.

That is the problem with moral outrage: It makes one despise people who don't want to make (or aren't by necessity forced to make) the same sacrifices as oneself.
'Those others take hot showers and buy Christmas trees! They'll soon learn where that attitude gets them!'

It's always the small everyday pleasures of ordinary people that occur to them. It's almost never, for instance, the private jets of celebrities.
And practical solutions to the problem of global warming aren't considered. The idea of everybody's allegedly guilty pleasures and the karma they call upon themselves is just too ... pleasurable.

Don't you try to make all my years of cold showers look like a vanity project!

 

[Myriad]

However, your resentment at other people with different tastes was obvious in the word luxuriating, which also revealed that you were probably lying to yourself when you claimed that the cold showers felt good. Another give-away was when you pretended that adjusting the temperature to be "just right" was time-consuming. It isn't usually. If it is, it's time to call the plumber.
It makes it obvious that the temperature of your cold showers wasn't "just right" and doesn't make you feel good in any carnal sense but only in a moralistic austere sense.

The bitterness of your post became apparent when you looked forward to what was coming to the others, the 'comfort mazimizers', who you imagined would soon no longer be able to continue "standing there luxuriating":

You're reading way too much into a choice of a single word. The enjoyment of cold water is different from the enjoyment of hot water, and for physiological reasons is usually engaged in for a shorter time. I understand there are Scandinavians who enjoy relaxing and talking in a sauna, then running outside and quickly cooling off in snow. They obviously enjoy both, or they wouldn't do both. But for some strange reason they don't do it the other way around, relaxing and talking in the snow and then running in to quickly warm up in the sauna. Apparently you'd interpret that as meaning the ones who run out into the snow are envious of the ones who just stay in the sauna. Gotta give you credit for imagination, at least.

As for adjusting the temperature, try getting it just right (1) in rental apartments with cheap barely-functional bath and shower fixtures; (2) in a house full of parents and siblings and relatives who have no compunction about running other taps in the house, hot or cold, not to mention flushing toilets, causing sudden large temperature changes which you can either be fanatically austere and ignore, or interrupt what you were doing to grab the taps and re-adjust; (3) in any shared dwelling with a typical (tank type) water heater when your housemates had already used up most of the hot water. You would be calling a plumber daily in those circumstance, apparently? Strike up a chorus of "What Do The Simple Folk Do?"

That is the problem with moral outrage: It makes one despise people who don't want to make (or aren't by necessity forced to make) the same sacrifices as oneself.
'Those others take hot showers and buy Christmas trees! They'll soon learn where that attitude gets them!'

It's always the small everyday pleasures of ordinary people that occur to them. It's almost never, for instance, the private jets of celebrities.
And practical solutions to the problem of global warming aren't considered. The idea of everybody's allegedly guilty pleasures and the karma they call upon themselves is just too ... pleasurable.

Don't you try to make all my years of cold showers look like a vanity project!

Even if all that were true (it's not, and I've already explained why and it what ways), how would it be any different from your incessant moral outrage against celebrities with private jets?

 

[Myriad]

Yes, that's certainly simple , and every consumer should be aware that unless they till their own fields plowed by oxen, they themselves as consumers are the cause of the greenhouse effect.

That's ridiculous. Oxen contribute to greenhouse warming too. For every family to have their own ox team, the total number of cattle on earth would have to increase about tenfold, and cattle farming is already the biggest cause of greenhouse warming.

Farming methods that use fossil fuels are far more efficient, not just in production per acre and production per man-hour of labor, but also in production per amount of carbon emitted. Go back to simpler petrochemical-free methods, and most of us starve. Blaming "the producers" for using the presently available methods of producing enough food that (most of us, usually) don't starve, thus causing greenhouse warming, is as absurd as blaming "the consumers" for consuming it. Production and consumption are both things that must and do exist, not crimes that must be punished or problems that must be solved.

But nonetheless, fossil fuel based farming, on its present day scale, does contribute to global warming, which causes climate changes that increasingly disrupt the farming; also, water sources and soil and phosphates are becoming depleted, and fossil fuel supplies themselves may be noticeably depleted soon. (Everyone keeps assuming Saudi Arabia has been cutting production because they want to. Probably best we all continue assuming that, or else markets may go haywire.) It's all unsustainable.

Two percent of the world's energy use is for making fertilizer using natural gas. Making fertilizer using electricity by known methods takes about 20x as much energy, so add a lot more wind and solar power to the build-out schedule for that. (Or, one of various "experimental" methods has to be proven, scaled up and built.) You tell me how to get those built in the next decade and I'll grant you the necessary electric tractors and trucks. (Fuel cells, probably, or perhaps very long extension cords. If only fuel cells weren't so complicated and expensive.) Actually never mind those. Even if new electric tractors with the same range and purchase price and cost to operate as diesel ones were on the showroom floor right now, it would still take three decades to replace the diesel ones already in use. But meanwhile, everyone needs to eat today, so the farms will still run and greenhouse gases will still accumulate. Curse those irresponsible producers!

 

[lobosrul5]

That's ridiculous. Oxen contribute to greenhouse warming too. For every family to have their own ox team, the total number of cattle on earth would have to increase about tenfold, and cattle farming is already the biggest cause of greenhouse warming.

Farming methods that use fossil fuels are far more efficient, not just in production per acre and production per man-hour of labor, but also in production per amount of carbon emitted. Go back to simpler petrochemical-free methods, and most of us starve. Blaming "the producers" for using the presently available methods of producing enough food that (most of us, usually) don't starve, thus causing greenhouse warming, is as absurd as blaming "the consumers" for consuming it. Production and consumption are both things that must and do exist, not crimes that must be punished or problems that must be solved.

But nonetheless, fossil fuel based farming, on its present day scale, does contribute to global warming, which causes climate changes that increasingly disrupt the farming; also, water sources and soil and phosphates are becoming depleted, and fossil fuel supplies themselves may be noticeably depleted soon. (Everyone keeps assuming Saudi Arabia has been cutting production because they want to. Probably best we all continue assuming that, or else markets may go haywire.) It's all unsustainable.

Two percent of the world's energy use is for making fertilizer using natural gas. Making fertilizer using electricity by known methods takes about 20x as much energy, so add a lot more wind and solar power to the build-out schedule for that. (Or, one of various "experimental" methods has to be proven, scaled up and built.) You tell me how to get those built in the next decade and I'll grant you the necessary electric tractors and trucks. (Fuel cells, probably, or perhaps very long extension cords. If only fuel cells weren't so complicated and expensive.) Actually never mind those. Even if new electric tractors with the same range and purchase price and cost to operate as diesel ones were on the showroom floor right now, it would still take three decades to replace the diesel ones already in use. But meanwhile, everyone needs to eat today, so the farms will still run and greenhouse gases will still accumulate. Curse those irresponsible producers!

If we just forced all farmers to stop using fossil fuel tractors and other equipment we'd solve global warming! By starving to death most of humanity.

 

[Myriad]

If we just forced all farmers to stop using fossil fuel tractors and other equipment we'd solve global warming! By starving to death most of humanity.

Nah, we won't starve if we just force the farmers to invest in solar powered equipment and solar-manufactured agrochemicals (that aren't available yet, but the planning committee that doesn't exist will certainly act in ways that cannot be explained to make them available pronto). And of course, while obtaining all that new equipment they cannot be allowed to decrease production or raise prices, because that would be using climate change as an excuse for sticking it to the consumer when we all know producers are the problem.

 

[dann]

You're reading way too much into a choice of a single word. The enjoyment of cold water is different from the enjoyment of hot water, and for physiological reasons is usually engaged in for a shorter time. I understand there are Scandinavians who enjoy relaxing and talking in a sauna, then running outside and quickly cooling off in snow. They obviously enjoy both, or they wouldn't do both. But for some strange reason they don't do it the other way around, relaxing and talking in the snow and then running in to quickly warm up in the sauna. Apparently you'd interpret that as meaning the ones who run out into the snow are envious of the ones who just stay in the sauna. Gotta give you credit for imagination, at least.

You are much too modest! It's your fantasy, not mine, so I'll give you full credit for it.
I am one of those Scandinavians, and I know that the sauna --> snow experience is actually kind of enjoyable, but it's not something I'm addicted to. And it's very different from cold showers alone although cold showers can be made a part of a similar experience. Most public indoor swimming pools offer the combination sauna --> cold showers, which is somewhat similar to the sauna --> snow experience. It's the shock of the abrupt temperature change that makes it enjoyable - and very different from cold showers alone.

And I don't read too much into one word. It is one word of many that stands out in the context of the rest.

As for adjusting the temperature, try getting it just right (1) in rental apartments with cheap barely-functional bath and shower fixtures; (2) in a house full of parents and siblings and relatives who have no compunction about running other taps in the house, hot or cold, not to mention flushing toilets, causing sudden large temperature changes which you can either be fanatically austere and ignore, or interrupt what you were doing to grab the taps and re-adjust; (3) in any shared dwelling with a typical (tank type) water heater when your housemates had already used up most of the hot water. You would be calling a plumber daily in those circumstance, apparently? Strike up a chorus of "What Do The Simple Folk Do?"

In a house with many people, it is usually possible to make rules to avoid or limit those problems, but there are obvious technological solutions, and you don't have to worry about it.
That particular problem will be solved once wind and solar deliver cheap electrical power to everybody. (You know, your worst nightmare: when even poor people are able to consume!)

Even if all that were true (it's not, and I've already explained why and it what ways), how would it be any different from your incessant moral outrage against celebrities with private jets?

Of course, it's true, and you have explained nothing at all. As for Bill Maher, I mention him and his ilk as the ones that never upset you - unlike ordinary people and their preference for the kind of creature comforts that you would like to deprive them of.

 

[dann]

That's ridiculous. Oxen contribute to greenhouse warming too. For every family to have their own ox team, the total number of cattle on earth would have to increase about tenfold, and cattle farming is already the biggest cause of greenhouse warming.

Of course, it's ridiculous. That was the point!

Farming methods that use fossil fuels are far more efficient, not just in production per acre and production per man-hour of labor, but also in production per amount of carbon emitted. Go back to simpler petrochemical-free methods, and most of us starve. Blaming "the producers" for using the presently available methods of producing enough food that (most of us, usually) don't starve, thus causing greenhouse warming, is as absurd as blaming "the consumers" for consuming it. Production and consumption are both things that must and do exist, not crimes that must be punished or problems that must be solved.

The presently available methods based on fossil fuel are presently available because that's the methods that were made available by the producers of tractors and other farm equipment much the same way that the presently available cars were made for fossil-fuel consumption and cities were planned and built based on that. But I notice the change in attitude to consumers "as absurd as blaming "the consumers" for consuming it." Progress!

But nonetheless, fossil fuel based farming, on its present day scale, does contribute to global warming, which causes climate changes that increasingly disrupt the farming; also, water sources and soil and phosphates are becoming depleted, and fossil fuel supplies themselves may be noticeably depleted soon. (Everyone keeps assuming Saudi Arabia has been cutting production because they want to. Probably best we all continue assuming that, or else markets may go haywire.) It's all unsustainable.

You will have to elaborate on Saudi Arabia running out of oil, if that's what you're implying. It sounds like a conspiracy theory. It's far from the first time Saudi Arabia has played around with the oil tap. It has been happening since the 1970s. This was three years ago: Saudi Arabia Turns Off America’s Oil Taps Again (WP, Aug 11, 2023)
It doesn't seem to indicate that the "fossil fuel supplies themselves may be noticeably depleted soon." I don't know if I should say: unfortunately:

Saudi Arabia has proven reserves equivalent to 221.2 times its annual consumption. This means that, without Net Exports, there would be about 221 years of oil left (at current consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves).
Oil Reserves in Saudi Arabia (Worldometers)

Two percent of the world's energy use is for making fertilizer using natural gas. Making fertilizer using electricity by known methods takes about 20x as much energy, so add a lot more wind and solar power to the build-out schedule for that. (Or, one of various "experimental" methods has to be proven, scaled up and built.) You tell me how to get those built in the next decade and I'll grant you the necessary electric tractors and trucks. (Fuel cells, probably, or perhaps very long extension cords. If only fuel cells weren't so complicated and expensive.) Actually never mind those. Even if new electric tractors with the same range and purchase price and cost to operate as diesel ones were on the showroom floor right now, it would still take three decades to replace the diesel ones already in use. But meanwhile, everyone needs to eat today, so the farms will still run and greenhouse gases will still accumulate. Curse those irresponsible producers!

Yes, the farms will still run, and yes, curse those irresponsible producers of agricultural machines who based modern agriculture on fossil-fuels - and are still doing it, for the most part. As for the practical solutions, the green reorganization of agriculture, I can recommend these pages:
Fødevarer og bioressourcer (RGO.dk)
Aftale om grøn omstilling af dansk landbrug: Dansk landbrug skal nedbringe udledningen af drivhusgas med 55-65% frem mod 2030. (Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fishing, Jan 9, 2023)

 

[dann]

If we just forced all farmers to stop using fossil fuel tractors and other equipment we'd solve global warming! By starving to death most of humanity.

There was a formatting problem with your post, but I FTFY.

Why would you consider forcing farmers to stop using fossil-fuel tractors when the obvious solution to the problem of CO₂ emission from those tractors would be to replace them with tractors that don't emit CO₂?
Yes, they're not big yet, but why pretend that the only alternative to fossil-fuel tractors is "starving to death most of humanity"?

Making the Case for Solar-Powered Electric Tractors (MotherEarthNews, Dec 16, 2020)

But if you prefer to use force, why not force (or entice, or whatever!) the producers of farm equipment to manufacture the necessary wind and solar powered tractors, so you don't have to starve? Biden just gave $1.2 billion dollars to a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum and similar companies.

Pretending that the alternative to fossil-fuel tractors is "starving to death most of humanity" is the kind of childish alternative fact that MAGA might come up with.

 

[lobosrul5]

There was a formatting problem with your post, but I FTFY.

Why would you consider forcing farmers to stop using fossil-fuel tractors when the obvious solution to the problem of CO₂ emission from those tractors would be to replace them with tractors that don't emit CO₂?
Yes, they're not big yet, but why pretend that the only alternative to fossil-fuel tractors is "starving to death most of humanity"?

Making the Case for Solar-Powered Electric Tractors (MotherEarthNews, Dec 16, 2020)

But if you prefer to use force, why not force (or entice, or whatever!) the producers of farm equipment to manufacture the necessary wind and solar powered tractors, so you don't have to starve? Biden just gave $1.2 billion dollars to a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum and similar companies.

Pretending that the alternative to fossil-fuel tractors is "starving to death most of humanity" is the kind of childish alternative fact that MAGA might come up with.

OK yes. Lets get all of the farmers in the world electric farming equipment, manufactured without putting C02 into the air, and powered by renewable energy, by end of next year, without increasing food prices

I haven't the foggiest clue how a link to a $1.2 billion grant to a DAC development has anything at all to do with my reply.


ETA:...

The 790-pound tractor-no oil, gas, engines, transmissions,
belts and pulleyswill turn inside an aisle 10 feet wide,
will tow up to 6 tons of wheeled cargo, and is available
with either a 36-volt or 48-volt battery pack. The
manufacturer says the 36-volt tractor is equivalent to an
18 horsepower to 20 horsepower gas tractor and provides
five hours of mowing/sweeping or 12 hours of towing at a
top speed of 5 mph. The 48-volt tractor increases the
overall speed and power by 30 percent and run times by 20
percent to 25 percent.

Dude thats no even close to capable for large scale farming.

 

[dann]

Dude, did you notice that I wrote that "Yes, they're not big yet"?
And since they're not big yet, don't you think funding for research to make them bigger might make a difference and speed up things so you don't have to starve?!

 

[dann]

Breaking news:
Judge sides with young activists in first-of-its-kind climate change trial in Montana (AP News, Aug 14, 2023)

The state argued that even if Montana completely stopped producing C02, it would have no effect on a global scale because states and countries around the world contribute to the amount of C02 in the atmosphere. A remedy has to offer relief, the state said, or it’s not a remedy at all.

But [Judge] Seeley said the state’s attorneys failed to give a compelling reason for why they were not evaluating greenhouse gas impacts. She rejected the notion that Montana’s greenhouse gas emissions are insignificant and noted that renewable power is “technically feasible and economically beneficial,” citing testimony from the trial indicating Montana could replace 80% of existing fossil fuel energy by 2030.

A first-of-its-kind trial is underway in Montana, where a group of young people argue the state's lawmakers aren't doing nearly enough to address climate change. Montana is one of the nation’s biggest coal producers and the industry there has strong political support. William Brangham reports how the plaintiffs are using a unique clause in the state constitution to try and force a change.
Group of young people sue Montana over inaction on climate change[/url] (PBS NewsHour on YouTube, June 20, 2023 - 7:01)

 

[lobosrul5]

Dude, did you notice that I wrote that "Yes, they're not big yet"?
And since they're not big yet, don't you think funding in research to make them bigger might make a difference and speed up things so you don't have to starve?!

OK, so write Joe Biden a letter? Do you not think maybe, just maybe, the DOE knows more than you or I about where to spend the money? Farming puts out significant greenhouse gas emissions, but just a small sliver of that is because of fossil fuel burning equipment... maybe batteries are best used on transportation vehicles rather than farming equipment? Theres only so much lithium that can be mined per year.

 

[dann]

Why would I write him a letter?
I guess he knows where to spend the money. The people who pay his campaign tells him so, I assume.
Maybe batteries can be used on both transportation vehicles and farming equipment. If you have reason to believe that they can't, tell us about it. In Denmark we have battery-driven ferries.
And while you're at it, tell us about this mysterious limitation to the amount of lithium that can be mined per year.
Bolivia's lithium reserves are even larger than it previously estimated (QZ, July 21, 2023)

 

[lobosrul5]

Why would I write him a letter?
I guess he knows where to spend the money. The people who pay his campaign tells him so, I assume.
Maybe batteries can be used on both transportation vehicles and farming equipment. If you have reason to believe that they can't, tell us about it. In Denmark we have battery-driven ferries.
And while you're at it, tell us about this mysterious limitation to the amount of lithium that can be mined per year.
Bolivia's lithium reserves are even larger than it previously estimated (QZ, July 21, 2023)

Good for Denmark. Good for Bolivia. Neither has much to do with my point. Only so much lithium is mined per year. Do you agree or disagree with the previous statement? Transportation vehicles burn many many times more fossil fuel than farming equipment. Do you agree or disagree with the previous statement?

As far as the letter... did I miss your point on the DAC grant?? That we're spending money there instead of farming equipment battery operation technology. And that you think the DOE is putting money in the wrong place?

FYI if the DOE's numbers are correct that 1.2 billion works out to $2600 per vehicle they claim to negate the CO2 from. The cost to replace a serious industrial tractor with lithium ion batteries will easily be in the 100's of thousand each. Plus the cost of putting in windmills or solar to power them.

 

[Myriad]

Why would you consider forcing farmers to stop using fossil-fuel tractors when the obvious solution to the problem of CO₂ emission from those tractors would be to replace them with tractors that don't emit CO₂?
Yes, they're not big yet, but why pretend that the only alternative to fossil-fuel tractors is "starving to death most of humanity"?

1260W solar panels. That's 1.7 horsepower, at high noon on the equator on a clear day. Less than 1 horsepower, most of the time. The solar panels are mostly decorative. This isn't solar powered, it's battery powered with an accessory solar slow charger mounted on it. Consider using an actual horse instead.

12V x 110 amp x 4 batteries. I'll assume they mean 110 amp-hour batteries, because that's a standard size battery and it looks like the machine has room for about four of them. Run at 1C (where the amps drawn equal the amp-hour capacity), that's 5280 Watts, or 7 horsepower. Much more impressive than a horse, and could do some serious work as shown in the video. But that that power it runs for one hour on a full charge. Which it won't get sitting out all day if it's cloudy, but you can charge it from the grid instead or from a larger fixed solar array. Actually, make that 40 minutes, because the batteries won't last long if you fully discharge them every cycle. One hour twenty minutes at 0.5C, or 3.5 horsepower.

That's not close to realistic for commercial crop farming (typical 50-100 horsepower, and runs for hours or days continuously during time-critical planting and harvesting operations). Might be pretty good for home-garden use. When the wind isn't blowing (or if you took off the solar panels and mounted them in a fixed parking/charging location instead, which makes more sense). Might even find some use in small-scale ranching (moving bales of hay around and the like, carrying you and your fence-repair tools to a work site, things like that) rather than plowing or harvesting. Except for the 80 minute working time per recharge.

Remember how people were fooled by the Christmas tree thing? Don't be fooled by this toy. It or equipment derived from it will not substitute for diesel farm machinery. Imagine a canopy frame holding 200 solar panels instead of 4, to provide 50 horsepower instead of 1 in good conditions, and it still stops when a cloud passes over, assuming it hasn't already tipped over or bogged down under its own weight.

You could add more batteries, ditch the mobile solar panels, and thus make a larger, more capable tractor. The key technology to making such a machine useful for commercial farming is being able to quickly swap battery packs, so that some batteries recharge while others run. That's difficult because sufficiently capacious batteries are too heavy for an unassisted human to lift them, and "plug in" friction-contact connections are insufficient to carry the necessary current without overheating the contacts. A battery swapping station would itself have to be a hefty and probably expensive machine that to be useful would have to be installed at each individual farm. That, plus multiple battery packs, multiples the capital cost. The same problems have so far prevented any workable commercial scheme for quick-swap batteries from being commercially developed for electric cars, even though those could be more easily amortized by deploying them in shared public sites such as gas stations.

But if you prefer to use force, why not force (or entice, or whatever!) the producers of farm equipment to manufacture the necessary wind and solar powered tractors, so you don't have to starve? Biden just gave $1.2 billion dollars to a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum and similar companies.

Pretending that the alternative to fossil-fuel tractors is "starving to death most of humanity" is the kind of childish alternative fact that MAGA might come up with.

It's the only alternative in the short term. If you want to propose a realistic plan and time schedule for inventing, developing and testing equipment that doesn't currently exist, before passing laws requiring anyone to manufacture and sell it, along with a realistic plan for financing the changes without bankrupting farmers or sending food prices into orbit, I'm all ears.

 

[Myriad]

It's always the small everyday pleasures of ordinary people that occur to them. It's almost never, for instance, the private jets of celebrities.

It's time to look more closely at this claim.

Suppose a celebrity were to offer to destroy their private jet (if they sold it, someone else would buy it and use it, with no fossil fuel savings) and give the purchase price in cash away to the deserving poor. And after that, every year, give away what would have been the operating cost of the jet in cash to the deserving poor.

Would you prefer they do that, instead of continuing to own and use the jet as before? No "well, I'd rather they do [some other thing] instead." Just yes or no.

If your answer is yes, then consider this. The average celebrity probably doesn't use their private jet all that often. Usually it just sits around. Meanwhile, the deserving poor recipients will use the money to buy stuff they couldn't afford otherwise. The fossil fuel cost of manufacturing all the stuff they buy that they couldn't afford otherwise will, in all probability, at least equal what the jet would have used. So the celebrity's action will not have reduced total carbon emissions at all.

In other words, if your answer is yes, then the reason you keep bringing up that you're peeved about celebrities' private jets has nothing to do with the global warming they cause. It's just about the wealth disparity.

Wealth disparity is a terrible thing, I hate it too (except, like most Westerners, I don't hate the part about my own modest wealth being greater than the global average for reasons unrelated to personal merit). We should discuss it, but not here, because it's not the subject of this thread. That some celebrities have private jets is not only not a valid reason to disparage discussion of what ordinary individuals can do for themselves, it's not even on topic.

 

[dann]

Good for Denmark. Good for Bolivia. Neither has much to do with my point. Only so much lithium is mined per year. Do you agree or disagree with the previous statement? Transportation vehicles burn many many times more fossil fuel than farming equipment. Do you agree or disagree with the previous statement?

1) Only so much anything is mined per year, and even if the mining of that anything is doubled, it is still "only so much". There is also only so much oil extracted per year, and yet that amount changes from year to year.
2) Your statement that "only so much lithium is mined per year," implies that the amount of lithium mined per year somehow sets the limit for the amount of batteries that can be built per year, but you don't tell us how and why this limit is supposed to work.
3) So the problem with your statement is ts irrelevance.

When talking about our desperate need for a green energy future, there's been a lot of hand-wringing over whether there's enough lithium locked away inside igneous rock and saltwater brine to meet the demand of an increasingly electrified world. Recently, Hannah Ritchie, a data scientist at Oxford University, examined whether this lithium scarcity could actually impact the world's future green energy plans.
In short, Earth is more than capable of supplying all the lithium we need for the foreseeable future. Getting it out of the Earth, on the other hand, is a whole different story.
Does the World Have Enough Lithium for Batteries? (PopularMechanics, Jan 4, 2023)

In spite of some limitations, it turns out it does. See the article for more on that.

As far as the letter... did I miss your point on the DAC grant?? That we're spending money there instead of farming equipment battery operation technology. And that you think the DOE is putting money in the wrong place?

You are not spending any money on that. The US government is. What the US government considers money well spent is up to the US government. I don't have a say in that. Neither do you, really.
I assume that this particular vanity project is money well spent for the Biden administration. I am sure that Occidental Petroleum thinks it's money well spent, too. It will look damn good in ads telling people how green Occidental Petroleum has gone. Already does, actually. (I wonder how much advertising consultants were paid to come up with that name!)

FYI if the DOE's numbers are correct that 1.2 billion works out to $2600 per vehicle they claim to negate the CO2 from. The cost to replace a serious industrial tractor with lithium ion batteries will easily be in the 100's of thousand each. Plus the cost of putting in windmills or solar to power them.

If windmills and solar to power them are actually put in. Your argument seems to be that unless it is cheaper for farmers, industrialists, the government and the consumers to switch to wind and solar, it just can't be done, which, of course, is why we are where we are. So emitting more and more CO₂ is just unavoidable, which it isn't, actually.

You seem to have missed this:

... But [Judge] Seeley said the state’s attorneys failed to give a compelling reason for why they were not evaluating greenhouse gas impacts. She rejected the notion that Montana’s greenhouse gas emissions are insignificant and noted that renewable power is “technically feasible and economically beneficial,” citing testimony from the trial indicating Montana could replace 80% of existing fossil fuel energy by 2030.

Of course, Montana's state attorneys were not evaluating greenhouse gas impacts. Why would they?

 

[dann]

A little more about the Montana ruling.

 

[MRC_Hans]

*snip*

Yes, they're not big yet, but why pretend that the only alternative to fossil-fuel tractors is "starving to death most of humanity"?

Making the Case for Solar-Powered Electric Tractors (MotherEarthNews, Dec 16, 2020)

But if you prefer to use force, why not force (or entice, or whatever!) the producers of farm equipment to manufacture the necessary wind and solar powered tractors, so you don't have to starve? Biden just gave $1.2 billion dollars to a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum and similar companies.

Pretending that the alternative to fossil-fuel tractors is "starving to death most of humanity" is the kind of childish alternative fact that MAGA might come up with.

Well, in time maybe, but the "tractor" in that video is certainly a childish suggestion. It is equal in capacity to a fairly small lawn tractor (as Myriad noted). You might use it in a medium-sized garden, where it comes with the additional advantage of including its own shed, but for actual agriculture, a farmer trying to live off a piece of land that it could realistically till would not be able to afford it.

You might say it is just a beginning, but battery cost and weight is quite a barrier to most kinds of heavy land vehicles, especially if they're supposed to negotiate any kind of terrain. Ships do better because weight is not nearly as much of an issue.

Hans

 

[lobosrul5]

1) Only so much anything is mined per year, and even if the mining of that anything is doubled, it is still "only so much". There is also only so much oil extracted per year, and yet that amount changes from year to year.
2) Your statement that "only so much lithium is mined per year," implies that the amount of lithium mined per year somehow sets the limit for the amount of batteries that can be built per year, but you don't tell us how and why this limit is supposed to work.
3) So the problem with your statement is ts irrelevance.

In spite of some limitations, it turns out it does. See the article for more on that.




You are not spending any money on that. The US government is. What the US government considers money well spent is up to the US government. I don't have a say in that. Neither do you, really.
I assume that this particular vanity project is money well spent for the Biden administration. I am sure that Occidental Petroleum thinks it's money well spent, too. It will look damn good in ads telling people how green Occidental Petroleum has gone. Already does, actually. (I wonder how much advertising consultants were paid to come up with that name!)




If windmills and solar to power them are actually put in. Your argument seems to be that unless it is cheaper for farmers, industrialists, the government and the consumers to switch to wind and solar, it just can't be done, which, of course, is why we are where we are. So emitting more and more CO₂ is just unavoidable, which it isn't, actually.

You seem to have missed this:



Of course, Montana's state attorneys were not evaluating greenhouse gas impacts. Why would they?

You are still missing my point. If thru rebates or just by force, making or enticing all farmers to switch their farming equipment from diesel to electric has a cost. You seem to be of the opinion that we are in a post scarcity world and government money is just magic that they can freely spend with no consequence. This is not the case. If it costs $250,000 for a farmer to replace a tractor that will either be more government debt, or higher food prices. That money could've been put into other programs that will likely save more carbon emissions than getting every farmer in the world onto electric equipment with renewable energy. What if it takes 1000 lbs of lithium per tractor, when we could've built 100 "city cars" with that lithium, getting people off of fossil fuel burning cars? AHA you say, but why not research better batteries? Ok so 500 lbs per tractor or... still 100 short range battery powered city cars.

If OTOH the farmer chooses to replace his existing diesel equipment when it wears out with electric equipment this will have a much lower cost. Of course, he's going to sell his existing equipment on the secondary market unless he's mandated that he cannot do so. Or he just wants to take a financial hit for the planet.

ETA: I also suggest you look at greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and what their main sources of release are. Its not farming equipment. Its ruminant animals releasing methane, fertilizer production, and the soil being turned over. Also burning forests.