The article is based on a Breitbart article.
I strongly agree with the closing paragraph. Apart from that, it suffers from being hastily put together with an apparent lack of interest by its author, and there’s no visible effort to substantiate the sensationalist claims. The title, and by extension your comment above, is blatant bullshit.
A surrender assumes that I was attempting to engage you in meaningful discourse, an endeavor that has been abundantly demonstrated as futile. I’m just pointing and laughing, because acerbic snide is all that your bullshit deserves in response.
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Jughead=Troll
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Regarding the issue at hand, I find the realities of anthropogenic climate change established beyond question, and seldom a subject of stimulating discussion. This raises some interesting issues: Why is this happening, what is our moral position in the matter, and what should we (as a species, society or individual) do about it?
The answer to the first question seems rather obvious to me: Having become the apex predator, humanity is rapidly destroying its surroundings, causing cataclysmic species extinction and destruction of the environment. Global warming through the release of bound carbon is only a small part of this, driven by our sheer numbers combined with our insatiable thirst for luxury, which necessarily entails a high level of energy consumption per individual.
The second question is much more difficult to answer. I personally rationalize my behavior by pointing out that I’m just embracing my human nature, and it doesn’t really matter that much in the big picture anyways. I know at least one moral philosopher who can take that to pieces without even trying, but the second part is worth some thought. We think of ourselves as enormously important, and talk of the damage we do as essentially permanent. While that is true from a human perspective, the planet Earth thinks on a geological time scale, and in that picture we ain’t shit.
We can re-set a few hundred million years’ worth of carbon deposition, exterminate species left and right, and spread toxic metals in every nook and cranny. However, in a few hundred million years the carbon will be back in the ground, new species will prosper, the poison buried in sediment, and countless ice ages will have rubbed out every trace of our existence. Sure, we’ll bring about our own destruction in the process, but that’s just the logical conclusion to our saga.
This brings us neatly to the final question, what should we do? I believe that all fossil fuels will be burned off in the next few generations, except for maybe some of the lignite. This is an inescapable result of the ever expanding number of people who want to live better, and our increased ability to make that a reality. The only alternative is a drastic population decrease, and politically that’s a real tough sell.
It strikes me as self destructive for a society to give up its competitive edge in the name of saving the world, especially if things are going to end badly anyway. The smart move would be to keep rocking with an eye towards getting out on top when this party finally crashes and burns. The sort of political masturbation inherent in plastering the Norwegian mountains in windmills while hobbling our industry through punitive taxation, is precisely the sort of shit that has kept me far away from the enviro-populists. If someone was to talk about what it actually takes to solve this, they could count me in.
“Apres nous la deluge.” I need that on a t-shirt.
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Giving up a competitive edge assumes your country has one, in this case fossil fuels. If a country does not have fossil fuels as most don’t why should they accept your country exploiting your advantage while destroying the planet? The top to get out on should not be a pile of rubbish. I am not an enviro-populist, whatever that means, but I am a realist. Oil which seems to be the fossil fuel of dispute is much too valuable to burn. The products produced by oil range from medicines to chemicals needed for every day life. We need to conserve that resource and not piss it away to make a relatively few people rich while ruining the planet at the same time. People went from horses, hay, carriages, and buggy whips to oil over time. I am sure the hay and carriage barons felt slighted. The world will also go to wind, solar, battery technology, tidal electric and other energy sources yet unknown over time. Innovation creates a lot of jobs as is evident in the wind, solar and other energy installations going on now. Time and progress waits for no one.
The most important lesson from the atmospheric CO2 discussion is that conducting global experiments with potentially catastrophic outcomes is a bad idea.
The theorized positive feedback loops with water vapor and CO2 aren’t coming true. That’s wonderful, but we should take what might have happened as a warning, not a reason to stop paying attention to cumulative environmental damage.
I’m talking about the competitive edge in using the most cost effective energy source, which is enormous. The really smart move would be to use our oil powered industrial might to develop a viable alternative (thorium?)
In terms of global warming, it’s coal that’s going to do the real damage, simply because there’s far more of it.
Very good point about the use of oil as a polymer precursor vs. fuel.
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Well everyone knows my position. And everyone here who were arguing with me has resorted to personal abuse, quite nasty personal abuse. That’s always a simple admission that you’ve lost the argument and you know it. You reject scientific papers I’ve cited because I propose them, they come from a web site at odds with your new religion or you simply can’t change your mind with all you’ve invested in your eco-catastrophism.
In all of this you have absolutely zero concern for the poor and disadvantaged who are utterly devastated by the effects of your green religion. Not one response has answered my criticisms of your solutions about this. Why? I suspect because to you they’re just ‘deplorables’, meaningless numbers preferably eliminated (nicely somehow, Klaveness?) to ease the load on Gaia.
True. China, India are planning on building a LOT of coal plants. Even the Philippines and Indonesia are planning more. The Philippines has gas offshore but have been afraid to develop it because they don’t want to make the Chinese mad.
Solar could become:
Upgrading the grid is related to the issues of intermittent power (sun not shining, wind not blowing) and is low hanging fruit.
Another article - more technical details with regards to U.S. grids.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/energy/renewables/why-does-the-us-have-three-electrical-grids
Don’t do it. None of the reasons cited holds water if you want continuously reliable power on demand.
First, if solar is too cheap to meter then just give it away for free and see how you go. Too ridiculous to comment on.
The national grid is just the thing energy dilute sources want so they can more easily hook into a grid (rather than pay for it themselves) and dribble out their tiny amounts of power fluctuating with every passing cloud.
Much of Australia is on a single grid and it created incentives for states to free-load on the system or game the market. South Australia dynamited its modern coal fired power stations and tried to go renewable relying on a couple of long, tenuous links to coal fired stations in the eastern states. Something caused the wind farms to trip causing sudden increase in demand via the interconnections and they too tripped. The state was blacked out for days unable to re-energise its grid. You can’t simply switch on a wind farm even if it’s ready to generate. It has to be synchronised to existing stable supplies. The idiot government later decided an Elon Musk battery was the answer and had it installed (plus a lot of less well publicised diesel generators). It can’t power anything really, but can smooth out loads. The state begged for bigger, better, more reliable wires to the big, reliable coal fired power in the east … and naturally expected every one else to pay.
The situation is ongoing. Renewables penetration is too deep (coal fired is closing down) and the grid is in danger of not being able to handle peak loads on hot days. Power companies are raking in the cash, the poor are suffering as always, grid managers live on the edge of forever managing wildly varying power inputs and demands and politicians assure us we can all look forward to cheaper power … renewables being freeeeeee or some such. As is the case everywhere, the higher the penetration of unreliable renewables in any system, the higher the power prices. So much for unmetered solar.
My advice is don’t do it. Require every state to be responsible for its own power and only then trade with adjacent states. You should demand a system in which the poor voters can put a target on the back of their politicians and hold them utterly accountable to the people who elect them for the safe, continuous, reliable, endless supply of this basic utility. The diverse management responsibility of a national grid puts those responsible remote and beyond the wrath of the electors and that’s bad for democracy.
Don’t do it. Read all those reasons. They are the mantra of the green left not of sensible national policy. They always promise ‘lots of jobs’. Well if more people are employed providing power, guess what, prices rise and the poor suffer more.
Forcing power plants with high costs to compete against other sources would drive prices down.
At a gathering of experts and policymakers in Lawrence, Kansas, Novacheck was sharing the results of the Interconnections Seam Study, better known as Seams . The Seams study demonstrated that stronger connections between the U.S. power system’s massive eastern and western power grids would accelerate the growth of wind and solar energy—hugely reducing American reliance on coal, the single biggest contributor to climate change, and saving consumers billions. It was an elegant solution to a complicated problem.
You may take some satisfaction in knowing it was well earned and much deserved.
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An Atlantic Magazine article on the Seams Study:
Thank for proving my point.
You can’t argue. Can’t answer simple questions. Just abuse.
Nothing drives down power prices more than removing subsidies, regulations and policies in favour of unreliable renewables.
Fossil fuels are getting a huge subsidy in the form of failure to price in economic externalities.
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Does Jughead work for the Koch brothers?
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For the pessimists abounding in this thread: Did you see this? No doubt overly optimistic since sourced mainly from those doing the development, but very likely will be proven valid sooner rather than later.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/climate/nuclear-fusion-reactor.html]
Also widely reported elsewhere, a number with more details.
No, we rented the analysis of that paper done by a biased site, not the paper itself. Also, one paper doesn’t make something a fact. You just continue to demonstrate how poorly you understand the basics of science.