Cont: Global warming discussion V

[dann]

The design of Chernobyl NPP itself was dangerous compared to other designs at the time.

Yes.
I take it that you agree that people haven't stopped cutting costs and being stupid and arrogant.

 

[dann]

This is the root of the issue. You don't care how much it costs, so you'd rather go with the method that makes you feel good.

Whereas I'm suggesting we go with one that will achieve the same, but with a lower cost, enabling us to afford other important things.

Yes, that's what you keep claiming.

 

[dann]

Yesterday, I mentioned this in the other thread, but there's a new WP article about it:
Can vacuums slow global warming? Administration bets $1.2 billion on it. (Washington Post, Aug 11, 2023).
Unfortunately, those machines suck!
And I think that it is a particularly bad idea for the Biden administration to fund Occidental Petroleum Corp. in this manner. If the company uses fossil fuel energy instead of solar and wind to drive those CO₂ sucking machines, it will emit more CO₂ than it pulls out of the atmosphere.

 

[The Atheist]

Its ok, you guys can all chill about nuclear power - a Maori bloke is going to have fusion energy available next week. (or two)

https://www.openstar.tech/

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Yesterday, I mentioned this in the other thread, but there's a new WP article about it:
Can vacuums slow global warming? Administration bets $1.2 billion on it. (Washington Post, Aug 11, 2023).
Unfortunately, those machines suck!
And I think that it is a particularly bad idea for the Biden administration to fund Occidental Petroleum Corp. in this manner. If the company uses fossil fuel energy instead of solar and wind to drive those CO₂ sucking machines, it will emit more CO₂ than it pulls out of the atmosphere.

Both of those web pages are blocked for me. Can you quote the relevant passages for us?

 

[dann]

It isn't very different from other articles about the same theme: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=14139135#post14139135
Occidental and Climeworks winners as Biden allocates billions for CO2 removal (CNBC, Aug 11, 2023)
Biden administration to invest $1.2 billion in projects to suck carbon out of the air (CNN, Aug 11, 2023)
How the Biden administration is pouring billions into technology that sucks carbon from the air (LATimes, Aug 11, 2023)
The US just invested more than $1 billion in carbon removal (MIT Technology Review, Aug 11, 2023)

MIT claims that "the move represents a big step in the effort to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere - and slow down climate change," but no, it doesn't.
However, it sounds damn good, doesn't it?!
For the time being, it's no practical solution to anything.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Problem is if we start by building more nuclear power plants it be 10 years or longer before they come online. That's 10 years of burning fossil fuels that will make the situation much worse.

However If we start by prioritizing renewables, then when those nuclear plants finally become operational we will already be half way there, and need less of them.

Modern cars can go much faster, are generally heavier, and are driven at high speed a lot more, so they are inherently less safe. That has been mitigated by adding seatbelts and airbags and crumple zones and other safety features. But those features cost money, making modern cars a lot more expensive.

Similarly, modern nuclear plants are only safe because a lot of effort is put into making them so. They take a long time to build right and the power they produce is more expensive than other sources, including wind and solar. In the future this lack of competitiveness will get worse. That means from a purely economic standpoint it doesn't make sense to bet the farm on nuclear alone.

You say 'wealthy' countries can afford it, but is that really true? Western countries have generated their wealth through market economies that are actually quite fragile, and the wealth is not spread around evenly. Just because the US for example is 'rich', doesn't mean it can sink a large percentage of GDP into projects that that won't provide a return for a decade or so without affecting the economy. The poor will suffer first, then the political backlash could be severe.

Many places in the World are not suitable locations for nuclear power plants. They need to be close to a large source of water that doesn't mind being heated up, and located away from earthquake, volcanic, tsunami, flooding and wildfire zones - and of course not in war zones. In some countries that's impossible. Maybe in the future we will develop nuclear power plants that aren't so picky, but that's not now.

Countries which have the most need to build new nuclear plants are doing it. China currently has 21 plants under construction, India has 8, Turkey has 4, Egypt, South Korea and Russia have 3 each, Japan and the UK have 2 each. China is the most important because they are currently burning way more coal than any other country in the world. And you can bet they aren't holding out on nuclear over irrational safety concerns.

The IEA predicts that between now and 2040 nuclear will be dominated by China and other developing economies, while advanced economies overall will reduce nuclear capacity as they ramp up renewables. By 2050 the total added nuclear capacity of 20GW will be matched by the retirement of a similar amount - IOW we will be building a lot more new reactors than we are now just to replace old ones being decommissioned.

This is a good point. At least in the US, our public infrastructure is a mess. The wealth of these nations are increasingly concentrated in private hands, and we shouldn't assume that there's any capacity for serious infrastructure projects like de-carbonizing our energy system without some serious reforms on how these political economies function.

Gonna assume that rich people aren't really interested in putting the public good ahead of their own venal interests, and clawing back any of this wealth and plowing it into a green energy project will be quite heavily contested.

 

[dann]

Gonna assume that rich people aren't really interested in putting the public good ahead of their own venal interests, and clawing back any of this wealth and plowing it into a green energy project will be quite heavily contested.

Of course, they aren't interested in that, and of course, it will be heavily contested. It's what they do.
But look at the Big Tobacco Lawsuits:

In 2006, the American Cancer Society and other plaintiffs won a major court case against Big Tobacco. Judge Gladys Kessler found tobacco companies guilty of lying to the American public about the deadly effects of cigarettes and secondhand smoke.

Today, after 11 years of Big Tobacco stalling and negotiating, tobacco companies are being required to run an extensive television and newspaper advertising campaign, at their own expense, admitting the truth about their products.

That process is obviously much too slow, but referencing earlier cases and decisions, like the one against Big Tobacco, tends to speed things up:

Federal District Court Judge Gladys Kessler issued a 1,500 page ruling in 2006, finding that, “over the course of more than 50 years, Defendants lied, misrepresented, and deceived the American public, including smokers and the young people they avidly sought as ‘replacement smokers,’ about the devastating health effects of smoking and environmental tobacco smoke, they suppressed research, they destroyed documents, they manipulated the use of nicotine so as to increase and perpetuate addiction, they distorted the truth about low tar and light cigarettes so as to discourage smokers from quitting, and they abused the legal system to achieve their goal – to make money with little, if any, regard for individual illness and suffering, soaring health costs, or the integrity of the legal system.” For a helpful summary of keys points of this landmark decision, see The Verdict Is In: Findings From United States v. Philip Morris Collection (Public Health Law Center, William Mitchell College of Law)
Department of Justice Lawsuit Against the Tobacco Industry (American Cancer Society, Jan 3, 2023)

And these guys are screwing up the whole planet - while Biden is allowing them to frack it up even more.

ETA: And this has nothing to do with Science, Math, Medicine, and Technology, sorry!

 

[dann]

When I wrote the previous post, I hadn't yet heard about the Montana climate change trial.

 

[dann]

Short video about the climate victory in Montana:

In the first case of its kind to go to trial, a Montana district judge ruled that the young plaintiffs’ rights to a clean and healthy environment were violated. The state will likely appeal. NBC News’ Anne Thompson reports.
Montana judge rules in favor of 16 young people in climate change case (NBC News on YouTube, Aug 15, 2023 - 1:24 min.)

"The state will likely appeal."
Yes, of course it will.

From the video:

It's a sweeping victory for the 16 young people who brought the case. The first of its kind to go to trial.
A district judge ruled that their right to a clean and healthy environment, as guaranteed by Montana's constitution, was violated because the state prohibited agencies from taking climate-change impacts into consideration when evaluating fossil-fuel projects.
The judge also ruled that the ban was unconstitutional.
The judge found the state knew about the dangers of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels for at least 30 years and that, until concentrations are reduced, she says that young people will be unable to lead clean and healthy lives in Montana.

Despite the track record of dismissals for youth-led climate cases in the United States, experts said the Montana youths had an advantage in the state’s constitution, which guarantees a right to a “clean and healthful environment.” Montana, a major coal producer, is home to the largest recoverable coal reserves in the country. The plaintiff’s attorneys say the state has never denied a permit for a fossil fuel project.
(...)
Though it remains to be seen whether the Montana Supreme Court will uphold Seeley’s findings, experts said the favorable verdict for the youths could influence how judges approach similar cases in other states and prompt them to apply “judicial courage” in addressing climate change.
(...)
Phil Gregory, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the court’s verdict could empower youths everywhere to take to the courts to secure their futures.
“There are political decisions being made without regard to the best scientific evidence and the effects they will have on our youngest generations,” he said. “This is a monumental decision.”
Judge rules in favor of Montana youths in landmark climate decision (Washington Post, Aug 14, 2023)

"All comments 3.4k". Of the most recent 20 comments or so, not a single one is not on the kids' side! (Including mine, of course.)

 

[dann]

If any of you are interested in the actual arguments presented in court at the climate trial in Montana, you should go to the local papers. I have only seen superficial reporting in the mainstream media.

This article from today is a good place to start, in particular if you make use of its many links to other sources: Judge Sides With Youth In Montana Climate Change Trial, Finds Two Laws Unconstitutional (Patch.com/Minnesota/Minneapolis, Aug 15, 2023)

The plaintiffs appear to have had much better (= actual) experts than the state. For instance, one of the state's expert witnesses was an ill-prepared 'climate economist', whose numbers the state's lawyers don't appear to have done much to check out. This is just so good! The trial should should have been televised to the rest of the world!

The final witness the state called was Terry Anderson, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and professor at Montana State University who proclaims himself to be a founder of so-called “free market environmentalism” and identifies himself as a “climate economist.”The attorneys for the plaintiffs almost immediately objected to his testimony, which involved him presenting data about Montana’s greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that he is an economist and not a climate scientist.
Seeley allowed the state to continue their questioning of Anderson since he was reading data purportedly off the Energy Information Administration’s website.
Anderson argued global greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 were 34.8 gigatons, while they were 36.8 gigatons in 2022, citing the EIA data. He then said that Montana’s emissions – which he narrowed to the location where carbon is consumed – were 0.0262 gigatons in 2020 and 0.036 gigatons in 2022, which he provided as seven hundredths of one percent and eight hundredths of one percent of global emissions those years, respectively.
But his testimony was almost immediately flipped on its head.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Phil Gregory pointed out the numbers that Anderson originally submitted in a report last October contained data that was incorrect, which Anderson said had later been “corrected” before he was deposed in the case.
Gregory told Anderson he had changed the metric between his two submissions, from million metric tons of CO2 to gigatons of CO2, which make the numbers appear smaller compared to global emissions. He further changed one of the data points for 2022, Gregory said, which Anderson confirmed.
DEQ employees, ‘climate economist,’ testify for state in Montana climate change trial (DailyMontanan, June 19, 2023)

I can recommend the rest of the article. There is much more, and it's as brutal as any TV court drama. It's not a long article.

The plaintiffs' lawyers obviously came well prepared. The lawyers for the state and their 'expert' witness ... not so much.

Great cross examination, and great reporting from the court by Blair Miller! I bet it is not usually as fun to do reporting from courtrooms as it probably was in this case.

Climactivists and their lawyers should study this trial carefully. It's something they can learn from. Big Fossil Fuel will no doubt be studying it, too!

 

[dann]

Hubris

Montana, two months ago:

HELENA, Mont. -- Montana officials sought to downplay a first-of-its-kind trial taking place over the state's obligations to protect residents from climate change, saying Monday that a victory by the young plaintiffs would not change approvals for fossil fuel projects.
Montana officials downplay first-of-its-kind climate trial (ABC News, June 19, 2023)

 

[dann]

Steven Novella:

Heat is the number one environmental cause of death in the US – greater than cold, storms, hurricanes, floods, or tornadoes. Worldwide there are about 5 million deaths per year related to extreme heat or cold, four and a half million from cold and half a million from heat. This ratio is slowly shifting, however, due to global climate change. There are fewer cold related deaths, but more than offset by greater numbers of heat related deaths in recent years. We can expect this trend to continue for at least the next 2-3 decades, depending on how successful our efforts are to mitigate climate change.
Heat A Growing Public Health Problem (Science-Based Medicine, Aug 16, 2023)

It takes some scrolling to get down to The Lancet's 5-million-deaths-per-year article in the link.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

MIT claims that "the move represents a big step in the effort to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere - and slow down climate change," but no, it doesn't.
However, it sounds damn good, doesn't it?!
For the time being, it's no practical solution to anything.

Unfortunately none of those articles have enough info to determine whether current DAC techniques will significantly slow down global warming. I couldn't find any hard numbers anywhere else either, so apparently it's going to take $1.2 billion to find out. Scary number, but remember that the US government previously spent over half a billion dollars on Solyndra in 2009 for no result. So $1.2 billion is not that much - a mere 0.02% of the federal budget.

Personally I am extremely skeptical of the viability of current DAC techniques, but for such a small cost I think it's worth trying. In these desperate times we are going to have to accept that some money will be thrown down the drain, just like it has in the past. But at least one 'oil company' is willing to try something positive rather than simply continuing to fuel global warming. If it doesn't pan out we can still use their solar farms other purposes.

Eventually oil companies will start to feel the squeeze as demand drops off. Many are even now thinking seriously about what they can do to stay relevant. It may seem perverse that we could be paying them to take back the same carbon they sold to us, but that's our fault as much as theirs. If we didn't keep buying their product and burning it...

 

[dann]

Unfortunately none of those articles have enough info to determine whether current DAC techniques will significantly slow down global warming.

Try this one from the other thread.

 

[dann]

Eventually oil companies will start to feel the squeeze as demand drops off.

Big Oil can't allow that to happen, obviously!
That is why the campaigns against solar and wind are of the utmost importance!
(Why didn't somebody get to that ******* judge?!)

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Try this one from the other thread.

That's not what I'm looking for.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Big Oil can't allow that to happen, obviously!
That is why the campaigns against solar and wind are of the utmost importance!
(Why didn't somebody get to that ******* judge?!)

Not much they can do about it. Once renewables get cheaper than oil the market will be against them.

Recently Saudi Arabia again refused to increase production. Meanwhile they are installing massive quantities of solar and wind. Why? Their stated reason is to free up more oil for export. But why would they do that if they had plenty? Seems the Saudis are not expecting oil to be their main income earner forever.

In the US conventional oil extraction peaked in the 1970s. Since then they have been relying on 'tight' oil to keep production up. But this costs more as the remaining oil gets harder to extract, raising the price. They have plenty of oil, but most of it is too expensive to extract when other energy sources are cheaper.

As the world gets familiar with renewables and the technology improves, there will come a time when oil just isn't attractive anymore. When that happens the switch will be rapid and dramatic. Energy companies that don't adapt will die. The smart ones are preparing for that now.

You talk about campaigns against against solar and wind by 'Big Oil', but that's not where it's coming from today. It's mostly coming from luddites and 'libertarians' in the general population. As we found out with Covid, a lot of people don't like being told what to do, especially if it means changing their lifestyle in any way. Even as we struggle to handle unprecedented effects of global warming, the press is full of anti-renewable stories that stoke reactionary fears. This isn't some conspiracy engineered by 'Big Oil', it's just journalists doing what they always do - and they do it because they have an audience which is receptive to it.

Makes me sick thinking about it, but as with everything it's all about reaching the hearts and minds of the people. Just knowing what has to be done is not enough. Just like with Covid, millions will have to die before people are affected badly enough to overcome their shortsighted selfishness (and some never will).

 

[dann]

What makes you think that Saudi Arabia's refusal to increase production is because they don't have plenty of oil? It is not the first time Saudi Arabia refuses to do so, is it? It is easier to believe that "the Saudis are not expecting oil to be their main income earner forever.." As you point out, they themselves "are installing massive quantities of solar and wind," and it can't have escaped their attention that many countries in the world are doing it too, which will (hopefully) put a stop to or at least decrease significantly "their main income."
See also post 587 in the 'Hoax' thread about the estimated oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.

As for your faith in the forces of the free market, you tend to forget the many forces that restrain that freedom:
1) Monopolies, cartels and conglomerates.
2) The state.
With the exception of hardcore libertarians, people tend to praise the latter for its influence on the Wild West tendencies of the free market, but there are strong players and very weak ones when it comes to lobbying: Fossil fuel is a strong player. Millions of individual consumers are not.
And as for the former, they are the reason why you are wrong when you think that "the switch will be rapid and dramatic." If left to the market, it won't be. It isn't, and it never was!
"The state [of Montana] knew about the dangers of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels for at least 30 years."

The "time when oil just isn't attractive anymore" came a long time ago, but that didn't stop Big Oil from prolonging the shelf life of 'attractive oil' far beyond what ought to have been its last sell-by date.
I highly recommend (once again) the story about how fossil fuel managed to suppress the scientific facts about CO₂ emissions: The Parrot and the Igloo: Climate and the Science of Denial (PublishersWeekly, Oct 31, 2022).

Who do you think owns and controls the grid? The little guys? The individual consumers?
Who do you think has access to the people who control the grid?
Why do you think Denmark is so much closer to to goal of replacing fossil fuels with renewables than the USA? (In at least one respect, DK had a head start:

Work began on the site on 29 May 1975 with 400 volunteers helping to lay the initial groundwork for the turbine. Tvindkraft was officially opened on 26 March 1978 and has continuously produced power since this date.
Tvindkraft – the oldest operating wind turbine in the world (Power-Technology, Aug 13, 2019)

And DK wasn't exactly a fast learner. A more effective wind turbine wasn't built in Denmark until 2000 (Wiki), i.e. more than twenty years later!

 

[dann]

I don't understand how you can still believe that anythng at all comes from "the general population," or in this case that "it's mostly coming from luddites and 'libertarians' in the general population." As I point out again and again in almost every thread about U.S. politics: What the majority of the general population wants doesn't seem to have an impact on decisions made. It may change campaign promises, but it doesn't change politics. Even your reference to the alleged fact that "a lot of people don't like being told what to do," is mainly based on ideology, not on fact or "the hearts and minds of the people." That also wasn't the case during the pandemic.

People are being told that "people don't like being told what to do," but in actual fact people not only like to be told what to do, they even take pleasure in being told what to believe! MAGA, MAGA, MAGA! Or do you seriously believe that this was a movement that 'we the people' started?

Feel free to believe that "it's all about reaching the hearts and minds of the people." My personal aspiration is to reach the minds of people by means of facts and arguments. But don't forget who has the power and not least the money to buy their way into the minds and pockets of so-called influencers and deciders.
It's not the little people.

Or do you think that the little people made this decision?
With climate change a top priority for Biden-Harris administration, here’s what that means for fracking (Boston University, Dec 9, 2020)
No, Biden didn't just ban fracking (CNN, Jan 27, 2021)
Update: Biden Promised a Ban – He’s Doing the Opposite (Food and Water Watch, Sep 15, 2021)
Biden Fracking Ban At A Standstill Amid Global Energy Crisis (Earth.org, May 8, 2022)
Joe Biden Broke His 2020 Pledge on Fracking. Good. (Washington Monthly, Mar 7, 2023)

Do you think the peculiar time line was due to a change of heart in the general population? Did Biden look at polls or focus groups to make his decision to do the exact opposite of what the had promised the people who voted for him?

I recommend that you take another look (or two) at the hearts of mind of people:

As the globe bakes under some of the longest, hottest heat waves in recorded history, reducing emissions to curb climate change is clearly an existential imperative. But climate change driven by human activity and the burning of fossil fuels has been in the news for more than 110 years. By the 1980’s, Congress was already seriously discussing the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So what happened? Since then, the fossil fuel industry has set out to reshape the narrative surrounding climate change, global warming, and the consequences of burning fossil fuels. It's a decades-long, multi-billion dollar campaign to influence our politics, gaslight people to question scientific consensus, and maintain our addiction to fossil fuels.
Big Oil’s decades-long gaslighting campaign (MSNBC on YouTube, July 23, 2023 - 6:57 min.) (I assume MSNBC's pun on gaslighting is intended.)

The Troll Army of Big Oil (Climate Town on YouTube, Jan 3, 2023)

What's in the hearts and minds of people is very likely to have been paid for by Big Oil, in particular when those people are Luddites, anti-Luddites and/or 'libertarians'.
The Luddites were actually a pretty progressive group. The modern use of the term has very little to do with what the Luddites stood for.

I can recommend British comedian Mark Steel's 30-minute 'lecture' about the Luddites and their demands and the industrial revolution in general:
MP3 version (I recommend the MP3 versions. It's probably also more energy efficient. )