So you're saying there's a CHANCE the Avengers might show up, QB?
Quark Blast wrote: <incomprehensible gibberish> ...
Ah, but as one could read from a slightly less recent post of mine, there is simply no way, no way, we can scale wind and solar to meet even 80% of our power needs in the next 30 years.
It doesn't matter how cheap it is. It's a matter of scale. Not even China is building infrastructure that fast.
Let's live in Fantasy Land for a hypotheoretical moment and imagine we are going to build out wind/solar infrastructure that fast.
What would happen?
Well, one thing that would happen is a hellacious spike in commodity prices associated with building continental scale wind and solar projects in short order.
So?
Well, prices spike and suddenly it's not so cheap to build and the pace slows back to something actually imaginable.
Yep.
That's why it took so long for cheap automobiles to replace horse drawn carriages.
Or chain saws to replace manual cutting.
Or calculators to replace slide rules.
Or smart phones to replace land lines.
Or...
Coming back to reality, sorry but that's nonsense. When a commodity becomes valuable for use in some new application people go out and try to accumulate that commodity so they can make money selling it. Thus, the supply goes up to meet the demand. There are also alternatives to most materials... so if the cost of some component DID go up sharply it would then be cheaper to use an alternative until supplies caught up.
There is no reasonable case to be made for wind and/or solar rollout being slowed by lack of required resources... which is why this argument originates entirely from disinformation blogs and other sources with a similar history of false and unsupported claims.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: <sagacious musings> ...
Ah, but as one could read from a slightly less recent post of mine, there is simply no way, no way, we can scale wind and solar to meet even 80% of our power needs in the next 30 years.
It doesn't matter how cheap it is. It's a matter of scale. Not even China is building infrastructure that fast.
Let's live in Fantasy Land for a hypotheoretical moment and imagine we are going to build out wind/solar infrastructure that fast.
What would happen?
Well, one thing that would happen is a hellacious spike in commodity prices associated with building continental scale wind and solar projects in short order.
So?
Well, prices spike and suddenly it's not so cheap to build and the pace slows back to something actually imaginable.
Yep.
That's why it took so long for cheap automobiles to replace horse drawn carriages.
Or chain saws to replace manual cutting.
Or calculators to replace slide rules.
Or smart phones to replace land lines.
Or...
There is no reasonable case to be made for wind and/or solar rollout being slowed by lack of required resources... which is why this argument originates entirely from disinformation blogs and other sources with a similar history of false and unsupported claims. Those items you list, they were cheaper to build and maintain per unit of work by a long shot.
Not the incremental, a few percentage points edge, that solar and wind have over natural gas. Which is the actual subject at hand.
CB's attempted handwavery = Fail!
Secondly, it's a matter of scale. And you can't scale to something that large that quickly. Never been done. Not even by China.
As for your attempt to discredit this argument by spurious association with odd places on the Interwebs, know this first:
That idea comes from a reputably sourced scientific paper first brought to my attention by some cranky dude who goes by CB. Just say'n...
:D
Quark Blast wrote: Those items you list, they were cheaper to build and maintain per unit of work by a long shot. Smart phones cost less (or less 'per call') than land line phones?
Quark Blast wrote: Secondly, it's a matter of scale. And you can't scale to something that large that quickly. Never been done. Other than the four examples I already provided and dozens of others.
Computers? Artificial intelligence? You really can't see that rapid global scale technology transformations happen all the time?
How about the reverse? Can you cite an example where one technology started to replace another and then stopped/greatly slowed because of raw materials shortages?
Really, does my theory stand a chance either? Cause I'd like to know now if I can get Thor's autograph before I turn 50...
You make this too easy.
:D
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: Those items you list, they were cheaper to build and maintain per unit of work by a long shot. Smart phones cost less (or less 'per call') than land line phones? I'm not surprised that all you do with your cell phone smart phone is make phone calls.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: Secondly, it's a matter of scale. And you can't scale to something that large that quickly. Never been done. Other than the four examples I already provided and dozens of others. Those scales aren't the same. For example there's a reason why even the poorest farmers in the developing world often have cell phones and banking accounts and yet do not own a car/truck and likely never will.
CBDunkerson wrote: Computers? Artificial intelligence? You really can't see that rapid global scale technology transformations happen all the time?
How about the reverse? Can you cite an example where one technology started to replace another and then stopped/greatly slowed because of raw materials shortages?
Again, it's the amount of total infrastructure that needs to be built for solar/wind to push out fossil fuels 100%. In the next 30 years it is practically, and almost literally, impossible to build out that kind of continental scale infrastructure.
Will it happen eventually?
Yes.
Will it happen in time to keep the year 2100 at or below +1.5°C over preindustrial average global temp?
No ####### way!
Will it happen in time to keep the year 2100 at or below +2.0°C over preindustrial average global temp?
See the previous answer.
Will it happen in time to keep the year 2100 at or below +2.5°C over preindustrial average global temp?
Maybe. We'll know by 2030 or so for sure (barring scalable, near-miracle energy and/or CC&S tech being invented before 2050 or so).
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Thomas Seitz wrote: So is that a no, QB? Affirmative on that negative!
:D
Darn.
So I guess no Justice League then either?
Quark Blast wrote: I'm not surprised that all you do with your cell phone smart phone is make phone calls. The only 'unit of work' which land line and smart phones have in common is phone calls. You claimed that smart phones cost less per unit of work. That is nonsense. They certainly do many things that land line phones don't, but that isn't the case you made.
Quark Blast wrote: Those scales aren't the same. For example there's a reason why even the poorest farmers in the developing world often have cell phones and banking accounts and yet do not own a car/truck and likely never will. So, are you saying that automobiles are a smaller scale than cell phones? By that logic, wouldn't the fossil fuel electrical grid also be a smaller scale... since many people in poor countries don't have it, but DO have cell phones? Which, in many cases, they now use solar power to charge.
Quark Blast wrote: Again, it's the amount of total infrastructure that needs to be built for solar/wind to push out fossil fuels 100%. In the next 30 years it is practically, and almost literally, impossible to build out that kind of continental scale infrastructure. There is a vast difference between 'practically impossible for us to get to 100%' and your original claim that there is 'no way we get to 80%'.
We haven't 100% eliminated horse drawn carriages, manual saws, slide rules, or land line phones either. 'Re-framing' your position to a standard that high essentially concedes the point.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: I'm not surprised that all you do with your cell phone smart phone is make phone calls. The only 'unit of work' which land line and smart phones have in common is phone calls. You claimed that smart phones cost less per unit of work. That is nonsense. They certainly do many things that land line phones don't, but that isn't the case you made. Here's yet another example of you confusing your own incoherent thoughts for my arguments as posted in this thread.
I assume you also do this in the rest of your life and that makes me just a tiny bit sad.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: Those scales aren't the same. For example there's a reason why even the poorest farmers in the developing world often have cell phones and banking accounts and yet do not own a car/truck and likely never will. So, are you saying that automobiles are a smaller scale than cell phones? By that logic, wouldn't the fossil fuel electrical grid also be a smaller scale... since many people in poor countries don't have it, but DO have cell phones? Which, in many cases, they now use solar power to charge.
Here's yet another example of you confusing your own incoherent thoughts for my arguments as posted in this thread.
I assume you also do this in the rest of your life and that makes me just a tiny bit sadder.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: Again, it's the amount of total infrastructure that needs to be built for solar/wind to push out fossil fuels 100%. In the next 30 years it is practically, and almost literally, impossible to build out that kind of continental scale infrastructure. There is a vast difference between 'practically impossible for us to get to 100%' and your original claim that there is 'no way we get to 80%'.
We haven't 100% eliminated horse drawn carriages, manual saws, slide rules, or land line phones either. 'Re-framing' your position to a standard that high essentially concedes the point.
Oh we won't make it to 80% by the year 2050. That's my prognostication. And that's just North America (sorry Canada, you're part of the ol' US of A).
China? Also "no way".
India? "No way".
Europe? Insignificantly different from "no way". Oh, they'll say nice words (and mean them I expect!! ) but they won't get there either.
Too many cultures rely on tourism and that means lots and lots and lots of air travel. That fact alone will keep things away from the 80% target.
Then you add in all the other factors - lobbying by fossil fuel interests not least and their natural allies* - and 80% is untenable even if we agree that the science works out.
Pushing out non-Water/Wind/Solar power 100%? Well not even the science is going to back you there without imagining some sort of fantasy setting.
* You keep telling "those people" in the Yellow Vests that they need to pay their fair share of fuel taxes and see how far you get with your Green New Deal.
:D
Quark Blast wrote: Too many cultures rely on tourism and that means lots and lots and lots of air travel. That fact alone will keep things away from the 80% target. Nonsense.
Air travel accounts for only about 2% of global carbon emissions. All fossil fuels usage combined accounts for about 70%. Thus, air travel accounts for only 3% of total fossil fuel usage... if we round up.
Quark Blast wrote: Then you add in all the other factors - lobbying by fossil fuel interests not least and their natural allies* - and 80% is untenable even if we agree that the science works out. That would be true... if fossil fuels were still able to compete with renewables. Since they are instead steadily losing market share, it is already clear that their lobbyists can't overcome the advantages of renewable power... which means that renewables are growing and will eventually reach the point where their lobbyists can buy influence away from the fossil fuels. When that happens fossil fuels not only lose all the aid which is currently propping them up... that aid shifts to renewables. At which point renewables go from being merely the better option to being the only viable option.
That tipping point has already passed for some sectors in some parts of the globe (e.g. electric vehicles in Norway). Within a decade only a few countries whose economies are dependent on fossil fuels will still be holding out... and they'll all be well on their way to collapse.
CBDunkerson wrote: That tipping point has already passed for some sectors in some parts of the globe (e.g. electric vehicles in Norway). Within a decade only a few countries whose economies are dependent on fossil fuels will still be holding out... and they'll all be well on their way to collapse. Which, by the way, will be devastating to the big undiversified oil/gas exporting countries and help destabilize whole regions.
Quite possibly good in the long run, since those countries are often repressive dictatorships, but bad in the short term.
CBDunkerson wrote: ...That tipping point has already passed for some sectors in some parts of the globe (e.g. electric vehicles in Norway). Within a decade only a few countries whose economies are dependent on fossil fuels will still be holding out... and they'll all be well on their way to collapse. There are at least three points to make against your view of things.
1) So you berate me about arguing over 3% and you name an example that isn't even 0.03% of the issue as a "success" story?
2) On top of that Norway gets all it's $$$ for the EV revolution by selling gas and oil to the rest of the world. No small irony there.
3) This tipping point for the global energy market has to tip and the energy sector has to be 80% converted by 2050. As I said up thread: You simply can't build that much infrastructure in so short a time.
You know if Germany had spent the 580 billion on nuclear instead of the solar and wind rollout they would already be 100% 'carbon free'. Instead they still use coal, and natural gas, generation.
@thejeff: While it might be smart for the major powers to simply walk away from "whole destabilized regions", you know we won't. That'll be a cluster so big I'm not even going to consider all the ramifications. You see why I hope for a near-miracle tech breakthrough.
Quark Blast wrote: 1) So you berate me about arguing over 3% I didn't berate you and you didn't argue over 3%. You claimed that <3% was >20%. I corrected you.
Quark Blast wrote: and you name an example that isn't even 0.03% of the issue as a "success" story? Did Norway hit a tipping point and rapidly shift from ICEs to EVs? Yes, yes it did. This proves my point that such rapid transitions are happening.
Quark Blast wrote: 3) This tipping point for the global energy market has to tip and the energy sector has to be 80% converted by 2050. As I said up thread: You simply can't build that much infrastructure in so short a time. ...except for all the times it has been done in the past.
By 2050 most of the fossil fuel power plants currently in operation will have reached end of life and been shut down. Factor in growth in demand (~60% of current) and more than 80% of the power which will be needed in 2050 has not been built yet.
In short, we have to build that much infrastructure by 2050... just to keep up with replacement of existing power plants and growth in demand. Your argument that we cannot build that much infrastructure would suggest that we are heading towards an energy collapse no matter WHAT we do.
Which is probably why no one else is making such a ridiculous argument. Of course we can build that much infrastructure in 30 years. We do it all the time.
The only 'hard' part will be making sure that nearly all the new energy production built from now to 2050 is renewable. We obviously CAN do that. It is only a question of whether we WILL. Which, at this point, all depends on how far we are from peak fossil fuel consumption. If we hit it in the next 10 years, as I expect, then 80% renewable by 2050 is likely.
In 2018 renewables accounted for ~66% of new capacity and ~33% of total. Getting from there to 80% of total by 2050 is just not any sort of massive insurmountable shift. It's the way the trend is already heading.
Quark Blast wrote: You know if Germany had spent the 580 billion on nuclear instead of the solar and wind rollout they would already be 100% 'carbon free'. ...according to a nuclear advocacy group ('Environmental Progress') which makes Pinocchio look like a straight shooter.
Here in the real world, nuclear power costs more than coal.
thejeff wrote: Which, by the way, will be devastating to the big undiversified oil/gas exporting countries and help destabilize whole regions. Probably... but I'm somewhat hopeful that some of them have seen the writing on the wall and are frantically diversifying.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: 1) So you berate me about arguing over 3% I didn't berate you and you didn't argue over 3%. You claimed that <3% was >20%. I corrected you. OK, harangue me.
As a point of fact:
In order to count up to some proportion of a thing you have to have all or part of enough of the pieces to get there. That 3% you think so little of is 3% that is 100% unavailable to bolster your argument. Now I only need to show that a mere 17.1% more is unavailable among all the other factors, which I have done many times up thread, to ####can your argument.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: and you name an example that isn't even 0.03% of the issue as a "success" story? Did Norway hit a tipping point and rapidly shift from ICEs to EVs? Yes, yes it did. This proves my point that such rapid transitions are happening. Why are you ignoring the fact that Norway did this by funding it with fossil fuels sales to other countries? They got a free pass and took it. Big ####### deal!
The issue is to stop producing CO2 on a global scale. Norway off-loaded their CO2 so technically it's another country that generates the CO2. They gamed the system and you're lauding their "achievements". LOL what a #######!
:D
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: 3) This tipping point for the global energy market has to tip and the energy sector has to be 80% converted by 2050. As I said up thread: You simply can't build that much infrastructure in so short a time. ...except for all the times it has been done in the past... You don't understand economics at that scale. You really don't.
My opinions differ insignificantly from the likes of:
Tim Palmer on Climate Change, Chaos, and Inexact Computing
and
William Nordhause on Climate Change: The Ultimate Challenge for Economics.
Go ahead, disagree with them. I'd like to see you try. Not just spout off but actually address their perspectives and evidence.
Quark Blast wrote: CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: and you name an example that isn't even 0.03% of the issue as a "success" story? Did Norway hit a tipping point and rapidly shift from ICEs to EVs? Yes, yes it did. This proves my point that such rapid transitions are happening. Why are you ignoring the fact that Norway did this by funding it with fossil fuels sales to other countries? They got a free pass and took it. Big ####### deal!
The issue is to stop producing CO2 on a global scale. Norway off-loaded their CO2 so technically it's another country that generates the CO2. They gamed the system and you're lauding their "achievements". LOL what a #######!
We are ignoring it because this is not how "offloading" works. Norway sold fossil fuels before it transitioned. Their ff-sales are entirely independent from their shift from ICEs to EVs.
Additionally, there is a difference between saying something is "easy" and something is "possible". CB had to prove that it is possible. He did this by pointing out that Norway did it. We can start a new argument about how easy it is, but please first acknowledge that it is possible.
Quark Blast wrote: That 3% you think so little of is 3% that is 100% unavailable to bolster your argument. Now I only need to show that a mere 17.1% more is unavailable among all the other factors, which I have done many times up thread, to ####can your argument. You stated: Too many cultures rely on tourism and that means lots and lots and lots of air travel. That fact alone will keep things away from the 80% target.
Ergo, anything you imagine you can show about other factors adding up to account for >20% of emissions will not change the fact that you were wrong about "air travel ... alone" accounting for >20%.
That said, even if you WERE able to add on >17% more from other factors... that would only matter if we assumed that emissions from air travel will remain unchanged. Which may not be a safe assumption. So called 'telepresence' technologies, high speed rail, self driving cars, and even electric air travel could all cut in to air travel emissions by 2050.
Quark Blast wrote: Why are you ignoring the fact that Norway did this by funding it with fossil fuels sales to other countries? First, because I don't believe it is true... and second because it would be irrelevant even if it were.
It seems clear to me that Norway drove their switch over to electric vehicles by taxing gasoline use and subsidizing electric. This moved up the 'tipping point' where electric vehicles cost substantially less by several years and thus caused consumers to switch over. Nothing to do with fossil fuel sales... but if they had instead used those fossil fuel sales to pay for even steeper subsidies on electric cars to achieve the same result... so what? That still proves my point that the transition from ICEs to EVs is extremely rapid once a tipping point on cost has been reached... and thus disproves your claim that such rapid transitions are impossible.
Quark Blast wrote: You don't understand economics at that scale. You really don't.
My opinions differ insignificantly from the likes of:
Tim Palmer on Climate Change, Chaos, and Inexact Computing
and
William Nordhause on Climate Change: The Ultimate Challenge for Economics.
Go ahead, disagree with them. I'd like to see you try. Not just spout off but actually address their perspectives and evidence.
I can't tell what you are trying to say half the time when YOU say it. I'm not going to try to guess what part of the more than hour long Palmer video and/or half hour long Nordhaus video you think supports you... especially as neither appears to have anything to do with the 'speed of technology transition' issue we were discussing.
Devon Northwood wrote: Quark Blast wrote: CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: and you name an example that isn't even 0.03% of the issue as a "success" story? Did Norway hit a tipping point and rapidly shift from ICEs to EVs? Yes, yes it did. This proves my point that such rapid transitions are happening. Why are you ignoring the fact that Norway did this by funding it with fossil fuels sales to other countries? They got a free pass and took it. Big ####### deal!
The issue is to stop producing CO2 on a global scale. Norway off-loaded their CO2 so technically it's another country that generates the CO2. They gamed the system and you're lauding their "achievements". LOL what a #######!
We are ignoring it because this is not how "offloading" works. Norway sold fossil fuels before it transitioned. Their ff-sales are entirely independent from their shift from ICEs to EVs.
Additionally, there is a difference between saying something is "easy" and something is "possible". CB had to prove that it is possible. He did this by pointing out that Norway did it. We can start a new argument about how easy it is, but please first acknowledge that it is possible. I never said it was impossible, full-stop/can-never-happen/violates-the-laws-of-physics.
I said, in effect, that it is impractical to such a degree that it's functionally impossible.
What CB did is reword and significantly subtract-from and add-to what I posted, and thus made an entirely different (and totally irrelevant) point. Again! All the while attributing this absurdities to me.
If Norway didn't leverage it's fossil fuel largess to make the EV conversion (commitment), tell us why no other country has actually done so?
Read up on some of the salient details here:
Nine countries say they’ll ban internal combustion engines. So far, it’s just words.
QZ wrote: Yet despite all these commitments, no country has actually passed a law prohibiting anything. ”There is literally not a single ban on the books in regulatory language that is enforceable in any auto market in the world,” BTW - You do realize this "plan" that I'm criticizing needs to be fully rolled out globally by 2050? That's what makes it practically impossible. Timeline is way too short (as always, barring near-miracle tech being developed by 2030 or so).
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: That 3% you think so little of is 3% that is 100% unavailable to bolster your argument. Now I only need to show that a mere 17.1% more is unavailable among all the other factors, which I have done many times up thread, to ####can your argument. You stated: Too many cultures rely on tourism and that means lots and lots and lots of air travel. That fact alone will keep things away from the 80% target.
Ergo, anything you imagine you can show about other factors adding up to account for >20% of emissions will not change the fact that you were wrong about "air travel ... alone" accounting for >20%.
That said, even if you WERE able to add on >17% more from other factors... that would only matter if we assumed that emissions from air travel will remain unchanged. Which may not be a safe assumption. So called 'telepresence' technologies, high speed rail, self driving cars, and even electric air travel could all cut in to air travel emissions by 2050. Yes, yes! Why didn't I see it? Because tourism is only the price of jet/turbo-prop fuel! Duh!
OR, you might consider...
That 3% doesn't sit there in isolation. There are disruptive economic ramifications to all of these zero-emission tech rollouts. The faster you convert global humanity to them, the more disruptive things become.
You think positively, I'll give you that, but you don't think very deeply about these issues. Particularly so when you already "know" that you disagree with the conclusion being presented by the other.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: Why are you ignoring the fact that Norway did this by funding it with fossil fuels sales to other countries? First, because I don't believe it is true... and second because it would be irrelevant even if it were.
It seems clear to me that Norway drove their switch over to electric vehicles by taxing gasoline use and subsidizing electric. This moved up the 'tipping point' where electric vehicles cost substantially less by several years and thus caused consumers to switch over. Nothing to do with fossil fuel sales... but if they had instead used those fossil fuel sales to pay for even steeper subsidies on electric cars to achieve the same result... so what? That still proves my point that the transition from ICEs to EVs is extremely rapid once a tipping point on cost has been reached... and thus disproves your claim that such rapid transitions are impossible.
Fine, but my point is that Norway hopped over the uncomfortable transition that you call the tipping point.
Had they needed to pay something like the real cost for that, they would still be about where France is today. Think Yellow Vest Protests.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote:
You don't understand economics at that scale. You really don't.
My opinions differ insignificantly from the likes of:
Tim Palmer on Climate Change, Chaos, and Inexact Computing
and
William Nordhause on Climate Change: The Ultimate Challenge for Economics.
Go ahead, disagree with them. I'd like to see you try. Not just spout off but actually address their perspectives and evidence. I can't tell what you are trying to say half the time when YOU say it.
Indeed! And it's because you refuse to adopt another POV in order to understand. For someone so persistent about posting, you are amazingly recalcitrant to actually learning another persons position. Particularly when you "know" ahead of time that you disagree with the other person.
CBDunkerson wrote: I'm not going to try to guess what part of the more than hour long Palmer video and/or half hour long Nordhaus video you think supports you... especially as neither appears to have anything to do with the 'speed of technology transition' issue we were discussing. Oh, but these lectures/talks/Q-and-A do exactly that! These two fellows are specifically supporting my contention.
But then it's easier to complain about "wasting an hour of your life", than it is to actually learn something for a change. I'm totally sympathetic to that dodge. It's hard learning new stuff... What was it the Great Man once said, "I feel your pain".
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Quark Blast wrote:
Oh, but these lectures/talks/Q-and-A do exactly that! These two fellows are specifically supporting my contention.
But then it's easier to complain about "wasting an hour of your life", than it is to actually learn something for a change. I'm totally sympathetic to that dodge. It's hard learning new stuff... What was it the Great Man once said, "I feel your pain".
What you are doing, once again, is using a classic denialer tactic: a gish gallop.
There is a good quote from rationalwiki that sums up this tactic pretty good:
LRonPaul2012 on rationalwiki wrote: Cite a giant wall of text, or a three hour long [Y]ou[T]ube video, and then claim it as irrefutable proof.
When they ask for the relevant excerpt, whine about how it's not your job to do the research for them.
When they go through the video and start explaining why the video is wrong, accuse them of cherry picking […] because they aren't addressing the "important" arguments.
When they ask you what the important arguments are, insist that it's not your job to do the research for them.
And… repeat.
So once again, no. It is not our job to make your argument.
So please tell me what your argument is, and what concrete (!) quotes from these videos support your position.
I've asked him to do that for something like 2 years now, he's always refused. Hopefully you have more luck.
I keep asking him about the Justice League and he ignores that too, Iron.
Quark Blast wrote: I never said it was impossible, full-stop/can-never-happen/violates-the-laws-of-physics. Yeah, you did: "Ah, but as one could read from a slightly less recent post of mine, there is simply no way, no way, we can scale wind and solar to meet even 80% of our power needs in the next 30 years."
Quark Blast wrote: I said, in effect, that it is impractical to such a degree that it's functionally impossible.
What CB did is reword and significantly subtract-from and add-to what I posted, and thus made an entirely different (and totally irrelevant) point.
The quotation is right there for anyone to read, and linked to the post where you said it.
Now you claim that the videos you posted prove your case. They don't. Neither discusses the rate of wind and solar power deployment at all. Devon notes that you are effectively pulling a 'gish gallop'... but I'd say with a twist. In the traditional case, the cited long article / video actually makes the argument being claimed. Here you seem to be just pointing at random unrelated things and saying, 'See! I am right! This video on cat dancing proves it!'.
Thomas Seitz wrote: I keep asking him about the Justice League and he ignores that too, Iron. In his defense, there is a whole section of the forums devoted to comics and another one to movies. Questions about the Justice League would probably get more answers in either of those places.
Devon Northwood wrote: ...<snip> painfully irrelevant stuff </snip>
So once again, no. It is not our job to make your argument.
So please tell me what your argument is, and what concrete (!) quotes from these videos support your position.
The video on the economic side of getting CO2 emissions under control (Dr. Nordhause) made several excellent points. A few, but not all, are:
Regulating carbon with crazy local/national/international laws is a total ###### waste of effort, that is ofttimes even counter productive.
Regulating carbon with crazy local/national/international pledges ( yeah Kyoto/Paris/Katowice I'm talk'n to you! ) is a total ###### waste of effort, that is ofttimes even counter productive.
A universal, non-negotiable, tax on carbon emissions is the way to go. No exceptions, no riders for farmers or fishers or... Just a straight up tax. Something well more than our current approximate $1/ton we currently have but likely less than $50/ton.
As for Dr. Palmer's presentation. Well, he essentially echoes the many salient points I have made regarding the non-computability of our global climate in the year 2100 using our current data and models.
But hey, Nobel Prize winners at Yale and Royal Society luminaries from Oxford likely don't pull much weight with my detractors on this thread so I'll let those eager to actually learn something watch the videos. The talks are quite good.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: I never said it was impossible, full-stop/can-never-happen/violates-the-laws-of-physics. Yeah, you did: "Ah, but as one could read from a slightly less recent post of mine, there is simply no way, no way, we can scale wind and solar to meet even 80% of our power needs in the next 30 years."
Quark Blast wrote: I said, in effect, that it is impractical to such a degree that it's functionally impossible.
What CB did is reword and significantly subtract-from and add-to what I posted, and thus made an entirely different (and totally irrelevant) point.
The quotation is right there for anyone to read, and linked to the post where you said it.
Now you claim that the videos you posted prove your case. They don't. Neither discusses the rate of wind and solar power deployment at all. Devon notes that you are effectively pulling a 'gish gallop'... but I'd say with a twist. In the traditional case, the cited long article / video actually makes the argument being claimed. Here you seem to be just pointing at random unrelated things and saying, 'See! I am right! This video on cat dancing proves it!'. I don't see what's wrong with that quote.
Compared to 100% replacement, 80% sounds reasonable... until you start to look at how it might actually get implemented. Then intelligent folks quickly realize that even 80% is an idea that only sounds good coming out of the end of a pipe.
You might let others know what you're smoking. Some of that's no longer illegal. I advise using the PM feature on the Forums though.
To be clear, I don't care what you smoke to come up with your fantastic visions of the future. I prefer contemplating the future I'll have to actually live in.
Thanks though!!
Irontruth wrote: Thomas Seitz wrote: I keep asking him about the Justice League and he ignores that too, Iron. In his defense, there is a whole section of the forums devoted to comics and another one to movies. Questions about the Justice League would probably get more answers in either of those places. I know but considering reality has been less than stellar and there is some guy on TV using a sharpie to manipulate supposedly infallible weather predictions... I figured this was worth a shot...
Quark Blast wrote:
As for Dr. Palmer's presentation. Well, he essentially echoes the many salient points I have made regarding the non-computability of our global climate in the year 2100 using our current data and models.
.
I watched the first half of that and no, he most certainly did NOT agree with you. In fact, he pretty explicitly had the opposite opinion to what I think you have (although you are so bad at expressing yourself that I admit I'm not at all sure I understand your position).
Quote: . The video on the economic side of getting CO2 emissions under control (Dr. Nordhause) made several excellent points. A few, but not all, are:
Regulating carbon with crazy local/national/international laws is a total ###### waste of effort, that is ofttimes even counter productive.
And I watched all of this. It was far too short and had assertions with little actual evidence. I agree that he thought a much higher carbon tax was the way to go and that he thought current measures grossly inadequate. But he did NOT say useless or counter productive
pauljathome wrote: Quark Blast wrote: As for Dr. Palmer's presentation. Well, he essentially echoes the many salient points I have made regarding the non-computability of our global climate in the year 2100 using our current data and models. I watched the first half of that and no, he most certainly did NOT agree with you. In fact, he pretty explicitly had the opposite opinion to what I think you have (although you are so bad at expressing yourself that I admit I'm not at all sure I understand your position). Tim Palmer talks at length about potential amplifiers of the human CO2 increase.
Methane as an amplifier at ~22:00 is skimmed over but that one is likely bigger than the IPCC 2013 models admit. He also skimps on addressing contrails and ignores entirely talking about the effects of transportation particulates.
He also talks about the difficulty in modeling clouds and how important they will turn out to be. "The error bars for cloud effects are enormous" says Palmer.
Palmer spends some time on the three primary laws associated with climate models. Namely,
Newton's Law of Motion
Planck's Law of Photon Absorption
Clausius' 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
When he talks about climate modeling and the laws, he goes in at greater length how Newton's law, as applied to a fluid like the atmosphere (via the Navier-Stokes equation), is a non-linear equation and thus is highly recalcitrant to estimation since all scales of interaction in the fluid affect all other scales (aka the Butterfly Effect). What that means is the cloud systems are not actually modeled directly but approximated. The approximation makes unproven assumptions and therefore add an irreducible degree of uncertainty to climate models.
"The fate of humanity does depend very much on how clouds respond to human emissions of CO2", says Palmer.
The answer is exa-scale super computing. The answer will have to wait until the mid 2020's at the soonest. Because, as it stands, current climate labs would be looking at spending $100M/anum just to run the simulation at the level of detail Palmer says is needed. And ironically this level of computing will depend on incredible quantities of cheap power. Or near-miracle increases in computing efficiency. Or we can settle for low precision to get more accurate overall modeling. Palmer argues for the last of these three options.
But that will only give us more useful data. It won't make the decision for us ("us" being global humanity).
He summarizes his overall message here (58:30 - 1:02:17) if you can't be bothered to "waste" a bit over an hour of your life to see the whole talk.
pauljathome wrote: Quark Blast wrote: The video on the economic side of getting CO2 emissions under control (Dr. Nordhause) made several excellent points. A few, but not all, are:
Regulating carbon with crazy local/national/international laws is a total ###### waste of effort, that is ofttimes even counter productive.
And I watched all of this. It was far too short and had assertions with little actual evidence. I agree that he thought a much higher carbon tax was the way to go and that he thought current measures grossly inadequate. But he did NOT say useless or counter productive Oh yes he did. Specifically he mentioned this in the context of the pace of increase of CO2 emissions since Kyoto. How not only have these proffered laws and pledges not reduced the net increase rate but that the rate may actually be higher these last few years (i.e. the trend in CO2 emissions is trending the wrong way !). He hammers on this idea of laws and pledges again in the Q&A (aside from a straight-up carbon tax, no exceptions; as previously mentioned).
Here's another example of a useless effort.
World 'losing battle against deforestation'
BBC wrote: An assessment of the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) says it has failed to deliver on key pledges.
Launched at the 2014 UN climate summit, it aimed to half deforestation by 2020, and halt it by 2030.
Yet deforestation continues at an alarming rate and threatens to prevent the world from preventing dangerous climate change, experts have said...
"Since the NYDF was launched five years ago, deforestation has not only continued - it has actually accelerated," observed Charlotte Streck, co-founder and director of Climate Focus, which co-ordinated the publication of the report.
The report says the amount of annual carbon emissions resulting from deforestation around the globe are equivalent to the greenhouse gases produced by the European Union.
On average, an area of tree cover the size of the United Kingdom was lost every year between 2014 and 2018.
Tropical forest loss accounts for more than 90% of global deforestation, with the hotspot being located in Amazon Basin nations of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Peru...
However, researchers highlighted why the overall picture was so gloomy and why halting deforestation was so vital in the battle against climate change.
"Halting deforestation and restoring tropical forests, for example, could provide up to 30% of the mitigation required to help meet the Paris Agreement," explained Eszter Wainwright-Deri, forestry technical advisor at the Zoological Society of London.
"This cannot be achieved while zero-deforestation commitments continue to be dishonoured."
So this article is yet one more example of why the Pledges/Local Law approach to mitigating AGW simply will not work. The only nations who keep their pledges/laws are either the ones already doing so OR the ones with nothing left to degrade (hard to go downhill when you're sitting at the bottom already).
BBC wrote: The WRI's Mr Hanson concluded: ""We are losing the battle but we should not give up hope. This report, among other things, gives a clarion call that we need to re-energise commitment, action and financing towards the NYDF." Oh yeah! We need to "re-energise our commitment", that'll work for sure. </sarcasm>
What we need is a flat net-carbon tax. No exceptions.
Hello From the Year 2050
Time wrote: Let’s imagine for a moment that we’ve reached the middle of the century. It’s 2050, and we have a moment to reflect—the climate fight remains the consuming battle of our age, but its most intense phase may be in our rearview mirror. And so we can look back to see how we might have managed to dramatically change our society and economy....
By the end of the 2020s, it became clear we would have to pay the price of delaying action for decades.
For one thing, the cuts in emissions that scientists prescribed were almost impossibly deep. “If you’d started in 1990 when we first warned you, the job was manageable: you could have cut carbon a percent or two a year,” one eminent physicist explained. “But waiting 30 years turned a bunny slope into a black diamond.”
As usual, the easy “solutions” turned out to be no help at all: fracked natural-gas wells were leaking vast quantities of methane into the atmosphere, and “biomass burning”—cutting down forests to burn them for electricity—was putting a pulse of carbon into the air at precisely the wrong moment...
Environmentalists learned they needed to make some compromises, and so most of America’s aging nuclear reactors were left online past their decommissioning dates: that lower-carbon power supplemented the surging renewable industry in the early years, even as researchers continued work to see if fusion power, thorium reactors or some other advanced design could work.
The real problem, though, was that climate change itself kept accelerating, even as the world began trying to turn its energy and agriculture systems around. The giant slug of carbon that the world had put into the atmosphere—more since 1990 than in all of human history before—acted like a time-delayed fuse, and the temperature just kept rising. Worse, it appeared that scientists had systematically underestimated just how much damage each tenth of a degree would actually do...
Now if I had simply posted this article written for Time here, in this thread as my own creation, CB and others would have spared no effort to slam my sophomoric understanding of Climate Change.
I just love quoting at length from respected journalists and scientists to show my perspective on AGW is quite correct.
.
Can We Survive Extreme Heat?
RS wrote: The Paris Climate Agreement ... aims to limit the warming to 2°C. Given the current trajectory of carbon pollution, hitting that target is all but impossible. Unless nations of the world take dramatic action soon, we are headed for a warming of at least 3°C by the end of the century...
Air conditioning is one of those paradoxical modern technologies that creates just as many problems as it solves. For one thing, it requires a lot of energy, most of which comes from fossil fuels. AC and fans already account for 10 percent of the world’s energy consumption. Globally, the number of air-conditioning units is expected to quadruple by 2050. Even accounting for modest growth in renewable power, the carbon emissions from all this new AC would result in a more than 0.5°C increase in global temperature by the year 2100.
This excerpt from Rolling Stone is just a throw-away citation showing that even ####### ###### like the journalists at RS can understand the AGW situation and, therefore, agree with my take on the overall situation.
Quark Blast wrote: He also talks about the difficulty in modeling clouds and how important they will turn out to be. "The error bars for cloud effects are enormous" says Palmer. Cloud modeling is indeed incredibly complex and highly uncertain.
However, the conclusion that this means clouds could have a vast impact, either greatly increasing or greatly decreasing global warming, is almost certainly wrong.
I can say this because, as I have tried to explain to you so many times before, computer models are just one of many ways that we study global warming. The most relevant other method for estimating cloud feedbacks is... direct observation. We have about a century and a half of increasingly detailed weather data. We can look at this data to see how sudden changes in type and location of cloud cover have impacted temperatures, how cloud cover patterns have changed over time, and how all of this has played in to global warming. In short, we can study how clouds have responded to global warming thus far... and the results of those studies are that not much has changed.
Clouds theoretically COULD have a massive impact on global warming if there were significant changes in cloud cover, but all available data confirms that this hasn't happened. Could it suddenly start happening in the future? Maybe, but no mechanism has even been suggested for why clouds would have the negligible feedback impacts observed thus far and then suddenly change their reaction to a warming world so drastically that they'd become a major influence.
As to Nordhaus (note: there is no 'e'), you aren't understanding the difference between his true statements that global warming pacts and laws haven't accomplished much and your false statement that any such attempt is a waste of effort and/or counterproductive. The existence of successful international environmental pacts (e.g. the 1987 Montreal Protocol) proves you wrong. Hell, the global carbon tax which you insist is the only solution (in truth it is one of several options) would itself be just such an international agreement as you say cannot possibly work.
Then you seem to go on a diatribe quoting various people saying uncontroversial things ('global warming would have been easier to stop 30 years ago', 'nuclear reactors were left running longer than originally planned', 'water is wet', 'the Sun is hot', etc) as 'proof' that the false things you say are true.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: He also talks about the difficulty in modeling clouds and how important they will turn out to be. "The error bars for cloud effects are enormous" says Palmer. Cloud modeling is indeed incredibly complex and highly uncertain.
However, the conclusion that this means clouds could have a vast impact, either greatly increasing or greatly decreasing global warming, is almost certainly wrong.
I can say this because, as I have tried to explain to you so many times before, computer models are just one of many ways that we study global warming. The most relevant other method for estimating cloud feedbacks is... direct observation. We have about a century and a half of increasingly detailed weather data. We can look at this data to see how sudden changes in type and location of cloud cover have impacted temperatures, how cloud cover patterns have changed over time, and how all of this has played in to global warming. In short, we can study how clouds have responded to global warming thus far... and the results of those studies are that not much has changed. Great! You disagree with Palmer. I'm going to side with Palmer over you since his bonna fides and sense-talking far outweigh your meandering diatribes against my person (and occasionally against my arguments).
CBDunkerson wrote: Clouds theoretically COULD have a massive impact on global warming if there were significant changes in cloud cover, but all available data confirms that this hasn't happened. Could it suddenly start happening in the future? Maybe, but no mechanism has even been suggested for why clouds would have the negligible feedback impacts observed thus far and then suddenly change their reaction to a warming world so drastically that they'd become a major influence. Proof that you haven't read or watched (as appropriate) any of my recent links on this issue. The climate change literature is replete with stronger feedback mechanisms and/or heretofore unknown mechanisms that have come to light with study showing exactly this type of problem.
As for clouds specifically, as Palmer himself says, "The error bars for cloud effects are enormous" and "The fate of humanity does depend very much on how clouds respond to human emissions of CO2".
His whole point, in the talk + Q&A that I link to, is that this issue of clouds are emphatically an open question of the highest practical and scientific interest.
CBDunkerson wrote: As to Nordhaus (note: there is no 'e'),... I'll let Auto Correct know, thanks
;)
CBDunkerson wrote: ...you aren't understanding the difference between his true statements that global warming pacts and laws haven't accomplished much and your false statement that any such attempt is a waste of effort and/or counterproductive. The existence of successful international environmental pacts (e.g. the 1987 Montreal Protocol) proves you wrong. Hell, the global carbon tax which you insist is the only solution (in truth it is one of several options) would itself be just such an international agreement as you say cannot possibly work. Again, you disagree with me, you disagree with the globally recognized experts on these issues, Nordhaus in this specific case.
Let me correct you on the issue of the carbon tax, and I'll emphasize the salient point for you since you seem unable to read for comprehension in cases where you know you already disagree with the person you oppose. To repeat myself exactly but with emphasis:
What we need is a flat net-carbon tax. No exceptions.
It's the "no exceptions" part that you fail on ( in case you missed it yet again). Kyoto/Paris/Katowice... the one coming up in NY, etc. All those are either voluntary and/or have exceptions for various ostensible participants and that is, in part, why they've failed so badly to date. Remember, the rate of CO2 emissions has held steady for decades until recently, where it seems to be increasing at an increasing rate. Way to go global "agreements" (<-- Just between you and me and the InterWebs, I don't think they know what that word means).
CBDunkerson wrote: Then you seem to go on a diatribe quoting various people saying uncontroversial things ('global warming would have been easier to stop 30 years ago', 'nuclear reactors were left running longer than originally planned', 'water is wet', 'the Sun is hot', etc) as 'proof' that the false things you say are true. This is standard fare on global "agreements":
Nine countries say they’ll ban internal combustion engines. So far, it’s just words.
Had we started in earnest 20 to 30 years ago we would be having an easy time of things now. As it stands, we won't make the +1.5°C target for the year 2100, nor a +2.0°C target. As Rolling Stone said in the article cited by me, "we are headed for a warming of at least 3°C by the end of the century" without global dramatic action now.
Dramatic action isn't going to happen, "now", globally. Give us another 10 years, baring global war or a nuclear exchange, and I think the globe will be well on the way to a +2.5°C end of century. If it turns out to be a +3.0°C end of century I won't consider myself wrong since my +2.5°C is a best case or floor prediction.
So should I just start the post apocalypse nihlistic killing spree now, QB or wait until 2025?
Quark Blast wrote: Great! You disagree with Palmer. No. As I said, Palmer is entirely correct about the complexity and uncertainty of cloud feedbacks... in computer models.
Palmer does not address the observational data on cloud feedbacks at all. But then, why would he? His entire career has been in climate modeling.
Quote: The climate change literature is replete with stronger feedback mechanisms and/or heretofore unknown mechanisms that have come to light with study showing exactly this type of problem. False. The literature is replete with possible heretofore unknown and stronger mechanisms. This is your general ignorance of scientific research showing. Yes, every few months a study comes out saying, 'we got results showing huge uncertainty around <insert random factor here>!!!!'. These are then splashed all over the media and credulous people who don't know what they are talking about (e.g. you) start saying, 'look! PROOF!'.
What you don't pay any attention to is the followup studies which inevitably find methodological problems, contradictory evidence from other lines of research, similar studies that yield radically different results, etc.
There are outliers in scientific studies just like there are in polling... sometimes people get incorrect or incomplete results. Pointing to those as evidence that you are right would only be valid if those results were later actually observed. Can you cite an example of that? A case where one of these factors which would supposedly radically shift the impact of global warming actually HAPPENED? I'm gonna say no... because the IPCC 'best guess' at climate sensitivity has varied only slightly (at around three degrees Celsius) for decades now. There hasn't BEEN any significant change in our estimates of climate impacts... let alone the frequent massive shifts you imagine.
This fairy tale where clouds radically change the results of global warming has not happened. Neither you nor Palmer make any case for why that would suddenly change. What physical mechanism would cause cloud feedbacks to be negligible for all the warming observed thus far, but then suddenly shift to huge world altering impacts at some unspecified point in the future?
Basically, this boils down to another 'we do not know EVERYTHING, therefore it is theoretically possible that some unknown thing could radically change the results' argument. It isn't untrue per se... just absurdly unlikely. There is no evidence of such a shift in our modern observational data. There is no evidence of such a shift in our paleoclimate proxy data. There is not any suggestion of a physical mechanism which could cause such a shift. But hey... we don't know everything. Tomorrow we could run into a super rare and unforeseen situation where the universal gravitational constant no longer applies and everything on the Earth goes spinning off into space. Clearly the fate of the human race hinges on the uncertainty around the gravitational constant!
Quote: Again, you disagree with me, you disagree with the globally recognized experts on these issues, Nordhaus in this specific case. Again, nonsense. Nordhaus is correct that international efforts thus far have failed. You are incorrect that international efforts will automatically fail... and in your self contradictory claim that international efforts to enact a global carbon tax would automatically succeed... and that this is the only option. There are ways that a 'no exceptions flat net carbon tax' could fail (e.g. tax rate too low, weak enforcement mechanisms, countries refusing to sign on). There are ways that other efforts could succeed (e.g. market forces are doing the lions share of the work currently). Your zero dimensional thinking is (literally) self defeating.
CBDunkerson wrote: Quark Blast wrote: Great! You disagree with Palmer. No. As I said, Palmer is entirely correct about the complexity and uncertainty of cloud feedbacks... in computer models.
Palmer does not address the observational data on cloud feedbacks at all. But then, why would he? His entire career has been in climate modeling. Yes, Tim Palmer, Royal Society member, respected researcher among his peer group the world over, and total rube compared to CB's understanding of climate change. </sarcasm>
Also, FYI - because you missed this as well - Palmer favors cloud modeling, not because it's the only factor he recognizes, but because it's his specialty/contains the most uncertainty. Had you watched his talk and followup Q&A you would know, as I posted above, that Tim Palmer talks at length about other potential amplifiers of the human CO2 increase. Not just cloud modeling.
You live in your world, I'll live in the real one thanks.
CBDunkerson wrote: You are incorrect that international efforts will automatically fail... and in your self contradictory claim that international efforts to enact a global carbon tax would automatically succeed... and that this is the only option. There are ways that a 'no exceptions flat net carbon tax' could fail (e.g. tax rate too low, weak enforcement mechanisms, countries refusing to sign on). There are ways that other efforts could succeed (e.g. market forces are doing the lions share of the work currently). Your zero dimensional thinking is (literally) self defeating. I see (yet again!) that you didn't watch the talk and followup Q&A that Dr. Palmer gave. Other than that oversight, your rejoinder is brilliant and ought to shut me up for shame any moment now. </sarcasm>
Now of course I agree that market forces have and will continue to do the "lions share of the work" ( <-- See!?? I used quotes so you wouldn't accuse me of plagiarizing you.... I'm learning). Problem with that solution is it guarantees at least a +2.5°C year 2100. That's not a future we want.
The thing with a carbon tax like Palmer proposes (same in USA as in UAE, same in Canada as Cameroon, same in Algeria as in Argentina, ...) is that it's only one thing to agree on, and far, far easier to track compliance.
Compared to an international voluntary pledge, plus local laws variably restricting GHG emissions and variably enforced, plus numerous exceptions for this country and that, plus numerous exceptions for this industry and that, plus all the time it would take to create this myriad pile of ineffective regulation, which pretty much guarantees us a future we do not want.
It's really funny how QB claims everyone misunderstands him, while he's blatantly misreading their posts.
As for the uniform carbon tax you're talking about, it's not inherently a bad idea, but it's no easier to reach politically. Without an actual world government, there's no way to impose and enforce such a thing.
Quark Blast wrote: The thing with a carbon tax like Palmer proposes (same in USA as in UAE, same in Canada as Cameroon, same in Algeria as in Argentina, ...) is that it's only one thing to agree on, and far, far easier to track compliance.
Compared to an international voluntary pledge, plus local laws variably restricting GHG emissions and variably enforced, plus numerous exceptions for this country and that, plus numerous exceptions for this industry and that, plus all the time it would take to create this myriad pile of ineffective regulation, which pretty much guarantees us a future we do not want.
That is extremely naive.
First, there are no "voluntary" or "binding" international agreements. I know you are not the only one to use these words, but the way you think international treaties work is not how they work. If Finnland does not want to follow the Geneva convention, then they ... just don't. There is no world police, so even if we write into the next climate agreement that it is super duper binding, states could still violate it, or just not participate.
Second, such a tax has never been levied, and for good reason. For starters, in what currency is it measured? Dollar, Renminbi, Euro? What tax code are we following? Who gets to keep the tax? If Google pays taxes, does it pay in the US, or in every country it operates? What happens to countries that have vastly lower purchasing power than others?
So the reason your idea is perfect is because it runs entirely on the imagination.
In other news, is this a thing? Can it work?
Devon Northwood wrote: Quark Blast wrote: The thing with a carbon tax like Palmer proposes (same in USA as in UAE, same in Canada as Cameroon, same in Algeria as in Argentina, ...) is that it's only one thing to agree on, and far, far easier to track compliance.
Compared to an international voluntary pledge, plus local laws variably restricting GHG emissions and variably enforced, plus numerous exceptions for this country and that, plus numerous exceptions for this industry and that, plus all the time it would take to create this myriad pile of ineffective regulation, which pretty much guarantees us a future we do not want.
That is extremely naive.
First, there are no "voluntary" or "binding" international agreements. I know you are not the only one to use these words, but the way you think international treaties work is not how they work. If Finnland does not want to follow the Geneva convention, then they ... just don't. There is no world police, so even if we write into the next climate agreement that it is super duper binding, states could still violate it, or just not participate.
Second, such a tax has never been levied, and for good reason. For starters, in what currency is it measured? Dollar, Renminbi, Euro? What tax code are we following? Who gets to keep the tax? If Google pays taxes, does it pay in the US, or in every country it operates? What happens to countries that have vastly lower purchasing power than others?
So the reason your idea is perfect is because it runs entirely on the imagination.
In other news, is this a thing? Can it work? It's not a tax that countries pay, it's a tax that people/companies pay to their governments when buying power. It's levied in whatever currency the carbon based power is purchased in. Likewise it's paid to whatever country to purchase is made in. If Google runs a server farm in the US, it pays there for the energy to run that server farm. If it runs one in Botswana, it pays there. It's done as a percentage, so countries with lower purchasing power will pay less, since they will use less power.
Mechanically, it's relatively simple, the problems are political - getting the countries of the world to agree. Along with the fact that some countries can much more easily handle the economic burden of such taxes - and that those tend to be the countries that have done the most damage.
IPCC report saying that we can stay below 1.5°C warming while continuing to improve standard of living by getting to somewhere between 70% and 85% zero emissions energy production by 2050.
So I guess that's a maybe on the whole nihilistic killing off humans before 2025....
thejeff wrote: It's not a tax that countries pay, it's a tax that people/companies pay to their governments when buying power. It's levied in whatever currency the carbon based power is purchased in. Likewise it's paid to whatever country to purchase is made in. If Google runs a server farm in the US, it pays there for the energy to run that server farm. If it runs one in Botswana, it pays there. It's done as a percentage, so countries with lower purchasing power will pay less, since they will use less power.
Mechanically, it's relatively simple, the problems are political (...)
I understand that consumers and companies are supposed to pay the tax, but I can guarantee you that it is absolutely NOT simple.
So you want a tax that is the same in every country, and payable in whatever currency the carbon based power is purchased? Nice idea, but currency exchange rates are constantly changing, and there are countries like china that will artificially change it's currency exchange rate.
So maybe my chinese company pays 5% tax today, but will that be 5% in 3 months? Depends on the exchange rate.
So let's all pay in US-dollar then. Exept that the US-dollar is controlled by the US-federal reserve, so there is no chance in HELL my russian government gives them control of such an important aspect of their economy.
So lets just make it a flat %-tax, that's fair. But wait, petrol is ridiculously taxed and expansive in germany, while kuwait and venezuela give it away pretty much for free, so a 10% increase in the us will probably lead to riots while the average kuwaiti will hardly notice.
Oh, and before you cash that sweet tax-check in the name of the austrian government, swiss is demanding a fair share of the money, because while the server farm of amazon is located in Austria, the power plant is located in switzerland, and is run by south-african coal.
So no, you are looking at either
A) several tax systems for different countries, or
B) a mountain of practical problems, for which there are no easy answers.
Devon Northwood wrote: thejeff wrote: It's not a tax that countries pay, it's a tax that people/companies pay to their governments when buying power. It's levied in whatever currency the carbon based power is purchased in. Likewise it's paid to whatever country to purchase is made in. If Google runs a server farm in the US, it pays there for the energy to run that server farm. If it runs one in Botswana, it pays there. It's done as a percentage, so countries with lower purchasing power will pay less, since they will use less power.
Mechanically, it's relatively simple, the problems are political (...)
I understand that consumers and companies are supposed to pay the tax, but I can guarantee you that it is absolutely NOT simple.
So you want a tax that is the same in every country, and payable in whatever currency the carbon based power is purchased? Nice idea, but currency exchange rates are constantly changing, and there are countries like china that will artificially change it's currency exchange rate.
So maybe my chinese company pays 5% tax today, but will that be 5% in 3 months? Depends on the exchange rate.
So let's all pay in US-dollar then. Exept that the US-dollar is controlled by the US-federal reserve, so there is no chance in HELL my russian government gives them control of such an important aspect of their economy.
So lets just make it a flat %-tax, that's fair. But wait, petrol is ridiculously taxed and expansive in germany, while kuwait and venezuela give it away pretty much for free, so a 10% increase in the us will probably lead to riots while the average kuwaiti will hardly notice.
Oh, and before you cash that sweet tax-check in the name of the austrian government, swiss is demanding a fair share of the money, because while the server farm of amazon is located in Austria, the power plant is located in switzerland, and is run by south-african coal.
So no, you are looking at either
A) several tax systems for different countries, or
B) a mountain of practical problems, for which there are... Not really. It's just a sales tax.
I don't even understand the exchange rate issue. You pay 5% of the cost of the power. If the exchange rate changes, so what? We pay sales tax on goods we import from China right now, how is that different? The price of the goods might vary depending on exchange rate, but the sales tax rate doesn't.
That some countries will feel the bite more than others is a big concern, but it's political, not technical. Makes it harder to pass such a tax, but not really an issue with defining it. How to handle countries that subsidize fuel prices is a problem, I'll admit.
It doesn't really matter though, since it's all a pipe dream. The idea that somehow all countries throughout the world will pass the same tax laws, despite their different situations and political systems, is a pipe dream. It's probably not even the best approach - the same tax is likely to have different economic effects and thus different usage reductions in different countries. That's a silly goal.
Setting targets for countries to reach, as the existing frameworks do, makes more sense and isn't any less practical or enforceable.
Devon Northwood wrote: thejeff wrote: It's not a tax that countries pay, it's a tax that people/companies pay to their governments when buying power. It's levied in whatever currency the carbon based power is purchased in. Likewise it's paid to whatever country to purchase is made in. If Google runs a server farm in the US, it pays there for the energy to run that server farm. If it runs one in Botswana, it pays there. It's done as a percentage, so countries with lower purchasing power will pay less, since they will use less power.
Mechanically, it's relatively simple, the problems are political (...)
I understand that consumers and companies are supposed to pay the tax, but I can guarantee you that it is absolutely NOT simple.
It's definitely not simple. But I think you're actually agreeing with the Jeff. The problems are political.
They're admittedly HUGE. But the Montreal Protocol does show that sometimes it IS possible to get international buy in when the stakes are high enough.
And the stakes are pretty darn high.
Practically, you only really need buy in from the major economies/powers. They have (collectively) enough clout to more or less force the rest of the world to go along.
I'm a very long way from optimistic but some recent developments with young people starting to mobilize make me very slightly less pessimistic than I was.
Still mostly glad that I'll be dead before things REALLY hit the fan, though.
thejeff wrote: It's really funny how QB claims everyone misunderstands him, while he's blatantly misreading their posts. No, I understand their posts (for the most part), but their posts misrepresent what I'm saying in my posts (for the most part).
thejeff wrote: As for the uniform carbon tax you're talking about, it's not inherently a bad idea, but it's no easier to reach politically. Without an actual world government, there's no way to impose and enforce such a thing. This I agree with:
Sagaciously pauljathome wrote: Practically, you only really need buy in from the major economies/powers. They have (collectively) enough clout to more or less force the rest of the world to go along. .
Faster pace of climate change is 'scary', former chief scientist says
BBC wrote: Dr Friederike Otto from Oxford University is an expert in the attribution of extreme events to climate change.
She told us that in a pre-climate change world, a heatwave like this might strike once in 1,000 years.
In a post-warming world, the heatwave was a one-in-a-100 year phenomenon.
In other words, natural variability is amplifying human-induced climate heating.
“With European heatwaves, we have realised that climate change is a total game-changer,” she said. "It has increased the likelihood (of events) by orders of magnitude."
...
Prof John Church from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia told us: "Some things appear to be happening faster than projected. This may be partially related to the interaction of climate change and natural variability as well as the uncertainty in our understanding and projections.
“In my own area of sea level change, things are happening near the upper end of the projections.
“What is scary is our lack of appropriate response. Our continued lack of action is committing the world to major and essentially irreversible change.”
Following current agreements/policies/laws the globe will be expected, by consensus of climate experts, to rise +3.3°C by the century's end.
China, India and Russia will make up about 40% of the GHG emissions over the coming decades. At least two of those countries are proven liars when it comes to presenting themselves favorably. Thus we can expect the nearly 40% number to actually be a little low, say 5% too low. Those three, combined with other lessor emittors and liars, can be expected to throw off a +1.5°C target by at least +1.0°C, and arguably by an additional +0.5°C or more.
That and another 100 niggling little things not adequately captured by the IPCC means one would be a fool to expect the year 2100 to warm by less than 2.5°C.
One niggling example:
Roughly half of humanity needs to be vegetarian by 2050. Even India will fall short and outside India no country is likely to be anywhere near that - as in I'd be surprised if more than a few small countries exceed 15% vegetarianism.
pauljathome wrote: ...Still mostly glad that I'll be dead before things REALLY hit the fan, though. There's still hope! We might have a nuclear war before then.
:D
Quark Blast wrote: thejeff wrote: It's really funny how QB claims everyone misunderstands him, while he's blatantly misreading their posts. No, I understand their posts (for the most part), but their posts misrepresent what I'm saying in my posts (for the most part). That's what you would say if you didn't understand them, but thought you did.
Quark Blast wrote: pauljathome wrote: ...Still mostly glad that I'll be dead before things REALLY hit the fan, though. There's still hope! We might have a nuclear war before then.
:D I'm holding out for The Zombie Apocalypse, myself
Quark Blast wrote: Roughly half of humanity needs to be vegetarian by 2050. Like your climate change 'predictions', this is only true if we make the, absolutely ridiculous, assumption that there will be no significant changes in the next 30 years.
Yes, if population growth continues at current levels (it won't), the water intensity of meat production remains unchanged (it won't), water availability remains the same (it won't), and dozens of other things that definitely will change... don't change, then there won't be enough meat and lots of people will need to become vegetarians.
Basically, you are advancing a Malthusian world view. Joining a storied tradition of being continuously wrong for two centuries and counting.
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