The Green New Deal

llwyd said:
I think I have seen this tactic before (from some other grand, sorry, sizable old party maybe) - demand something totally outrageous and thus move the debate towards your goals. Better to play on your own homeground. If you start with a compromize you will end with much less that you could have settled for with bit tougher tactics. It totally doesn't matter if AOC being realistic at all, better actually if not.
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My take as well.
Whatever the early broad strokes if a GND are, they will be watered down by the time they become an actual concrete proposals. They will be watered down further as they move through congress and public debate.

Starting out extreme excites the young voters, shifts the window and allows us to land somewhere palatable in the end.

The only shadow of a downside I can see is that it leaves an opening for mockery and dismissal. But lets be honest, that was going to happen no matter how sober and practical this could be. We've seen the GOP mocking things that they praised or even created a few years back just in the name of obstruction.
 
Wayward son said:
Junk science. Bad science. Take your pick. Any article which says that world can be completely run on renewables, or any other source for which there is no real world example of it working on large scale is making a ton of assumptions and is covering a wide range of scientific, technological and engineering areas that the authors are unable to rigorously assess.
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It's a feasibility study. If there were already a real world example, a feasibility evaluation would not be necessary.

You're just engaging in in science denialism here because you don't like the conclusion.
 
Delvo said:
There's no trouble finding enough space to put solar panels. In addition to the places that are mentioned above, every domestic roof, and the top & sides of every skyscraper, are more opportunities to put panels up. Pretty much every bit of surface you could see from a satellite or aerial image that doesn't have other major physical requirements to contradict it (like letting cars drive on it) is another place you could put a panel.

But more importantly, even all of that still wouldn't be scratching the surface. The USA, China, Asutralia, and the Middle East and northern Africa have lots & lots & lots of land that's otherwise pretty much entirely unusable. It's called "deserts". Enough panels to power the world would never cover a substantial fraction of it.

The physical problem isn't space. It's production, and what producing that many panels would mean environmentally.
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Not to mention installing and servicing all those tens of thousands of acres of panels out in the middle of the world's deserts.
 
Cavemonster said:
Starting out extreme excites the young voters, shifts the window and allows us to land somewhere palatable in the end.
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My only quibble being that the youth of today (the *next* generation of voters) are far too savvy to sit on their hands while that happens. They're taking their cue from Greta Thundberg more so than from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They have no patience for the rest of us debating how such and such a proposal might affect such and such an industry while their world burns.

For perspective, I still feel (more or less) like a young man, and if I'm lucky enough to enjoy my own dotage I might live to see 2050. It's the generations coming after mine – of whom Millennials are the oldest – who will increasingly live out their lives approaching 2100, and face the dire consequences predicted for that time. They don't care about us, as they can see that we've spent decades betraying them.
 
kellyb said:
You're just engaging in in science denialism here because you don't like the conclusion.
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And you are engaging in scientism, not science. Nothing is above criticism, not even peer reviewed publications.
 
Ziggurat said:
And you are engaging in scientism, not science. Nothing is above criticism, not even peer reviewed publications.
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So the correct procedure would be to elected those in favor of The Green New Deal into power, so they can commission feasibility studies and test projects.
And if it turns out to be stupid, vote them out again.
 
Wayward son said:
Junk science. Bad science. Take your pick. Any article which says that world can be completely run on renewables, or any other source for which there is no real world example of it working on large scale is making a ton of assumptions and is covering a wide range of scientific, technological and engineering areas that the authors are unable to rigorously assess. There are many problems that grids with high levels of wind and/or solar will have to address. Things like frequency stability, inertia etc. Fixing those issues comes with a significant costs. Authors, such as these, who claim the cost of solar and wind are decreasing every year, are being deceptive. Costs of electricity within power grids almost always go up dramatically when large scale wind and solar are added. This is because the energy created by large scale wind and solar becomes less and less valuable as more is added to the grid and the unreliability of it results in the grid either needing to have more and more natural gas ready at a moments notice (this is extremely expensive) or they need large scale storage - which has massive energy loss, costs a lot, and requires a lot of resources.
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Pretty good analysis actually. However, hydroelectric and nuclear do not have this disadvantage, and even more importantly, there is no need to completely eliminate all fossil fuels use. It's that last several %'s of renewables replacing fossil fuels that escalates the cost under current technology. You explained why pretty well.

But emissions is only 1/2 the carbon cycle. We don't need to reduce gross emissions from fossil fuels 100%. All we really need to do is increase the sequestration side of the carbon cycle enough to make up the difference. Then we can instead have the NET emissions equal to zero, or even negative! Something completely impossible by eliminating all fossil fuel use. The lowest that could ever go is 0%. It could never go negative %.

Go back to basics and rethink what causes Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) to begin with.[1]

  1. We are burning fossil fuels and emitting massive amounts of carbon in the atmosphere as CO2 mostly but also some CH4 and a few other greenhouse gasses.[2]
  2. We have degraded the environmental systems that would normally pull excess CO2 out of the atmosphere.[3][4] (mostly grasslands[5])
  3. By putting more in the atmosphere and removing less, there is no other place for the excess to go but the oceans. They are acidifying due to absorbing just part of the excess.[6] (roughly 1/2)
  4. That still leaves roughly 1/2 of emissions that are building up in the atmosphere and creating an increased greenhouse effect.[7] (from ~280 ppm to 412+ppm CO2)
So this leads directly to the way we must reverse AGW:

  1. Reduce fossil fuel use by replacing energy needs with as many economically viable renewables as current technology allows. Please note that most current forms of ethanol gas additive are not beneficial because they further degrade the sequestration side of the carbon cycle and take more fossil fuels to produce than they offset.[8]
  2. Change agricultural methods to high yield regenerative models of production made possible by recent biological & agricultural science advancements.[9][10]
  3. Implement large scale ecosystem recovery projects similar to the Loess Plateau project, National Parks like Yellowstone etc. where appropriate and applicable.[11][12][13]

In short we need to reduce carbon in and increase carbon out of the atmosphere to restore balance to the carbon cycle.

Focusing only on energy is counter productive. It's important, but it is impossible to actually reverse AGW this way alone. And as you noted, incredibly expensive once the low hanging fruit is achieved.
 
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Ziggurat said:
And you are engaging in scientism, not science. Nothing is above criticism, not even peer reviewed publications.
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He didn't actually find a flaw in the science. He rejected it strictly based on the conclusion being something other than his own pre-formed belief about what they "should" have found.
 
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Red Baron Farms said:
Pretty good analysis actually. However, hydroelectric and nuclear do not have this disadvantage, and even more importantly, there is no need to completely eliminate all fossil fuels use. It's that last several %'s of renewables replacing fossil fuels that escalates the cost under current technology. You explained why pretty well.

But emissions is only 1/2 the carbon cycle. We don't need to reduce gross emissions from fossil fuels 100%. All we really need to do is increase the sequestration side of the carbon cycle enough to make up the difference. Then we can instead have the NET emissions equal to zero, or even negative! Something completely impossible by eliminating all fossil fuel use. The lowest that could ever go is 0%. It could never go negative %.

Go back to basics and rethink what causes Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) to begin with.[1]

  1. We are burning fossil fuels and emitting massive amounts of carbon in the atmosphere as CO2 mostly but also some CH4 and a few other greenhouse gasses.[2]
  2. We have degraded the environmental systems that would normally pull excess CO2 out of the atmosphere.[3][4] (mostly grasslands[5])
  3. By putting more in the atmosphere and removing less, there is no other place for the excess to go but the oceans. They are acidifying due to absorbing just part of the excess.[6] (roughly 1/2)
  4. That still leaves roughly 1/2 of emissions that are building up in the atmosphere and creating an increased greenhouse effect.[7] (from ~280 ppm to 412+ppm CO2)
So this leads directly to the way we must reverse AGW:

  1. Reduce fossil fuel use by replacing energy needs with as many economically viable renewables as current technology allows. Please note that most current forms of ethanol gas additive are not beneficial because they further degrade the sequestration side of the carbon cycle and take more fossil fuels to produce than they offset.[8]
  2. Change agricultural methods to high yield regenerative models of production made possible by recent biological & agricultural science advancements.[9][10]
  3. Implement large scale ecosystem recovery projects similar to the Loess Plateau project, National Parks like Yellowstone etc. where appropriate and applicable.[11][12][13]

In short we need to reduce carbon in and increase carbon out of the atmosphere to restore balance to the carbon cycle.

Focusing only on energy is counter productive. It's important, but it is impossible to actually reverse AGW this way alone. And as you noted, incredibly expensive once the low hanging fruit is achieved.
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Unfortunately, this extremely well written, informative and very scientifically accurate post will mostly fall on the deaf ears of...

... Greens, because it doesn't meet their 100% renewable energy, no nukes, no fossil fuels, tree-hugging hippie ideology

... Big business, because it would reduce their profit margins, leaving them less money for limousines, lavish dinners, multi-million dollar homes and private jets

... Conservatives, because to them, its not a 100% fix, and anything less than 100% is never worth considering (see the gun debate for further examples)

... The Far Right because, well, climate change is just a hoax.
 
kellyb said:
He didn't actually find a flaw in the science. He rejected it strictly based on the conclusion being something other than his own pre-formed belief about what they "should" have found.
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There's considerably more to his criticism than that, and your failure to even acknowledge it, let alone address it, doesn't impress.
 
theprestige said:
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned uranium in seawater yet.
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I will mention that it is an extreeeeeeeeeeeeemly expensive process, or, at least it was until Oak Ridge National Laboratories came up with a cheaper process that involved doping the polymers in the extraction mats they use with amidoxime and then irradiating them. Now its only extreeeeeeemly expensive.
 
llwyd said:
I think I have seen this tactic before (from some other grand, sorry, sizable old party maybe) - demand something totally outrageous and thus move the debate towards your goals. Better to play on your own homeground. If you start with a compromize you will end with much less that you could have settled for with bit tougher tactics. It totally doesn't matter if AOC being realistic at all, better actually if not.
Click to expand...


Wow that's a new take on things! The wilder and crazier the proposal the better it is! One of the most ludicrous proposals in my memory and, ya wow it's suddenly a great tactic!

Now that is spin!
 
smartcooky said:
I will mention that it is an extreeeeeeeeeeeeemly expensive process, or, at least it was until Oak Ridge National Laboratories came up with a cheaper process that involved doping the polymers in the extraction mats they use with amidoxime and then irradiating them. Now its only extreeeeeeemly expensive.
Click to expand...

That's a lot of Es. Any science?
 
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