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How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

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Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#71

Post by godelski »

dragonwriter wrote: post #68
godelski wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to break in here because that's a large range in prices. To explain those, they are because the different amounts of storage capacity. These very drastically in location. So somewhere like SoCal needs less than in the Bay area because SoCal is almost always sunny and windy. The Bay has plenty of shady days (go talk to the people at LLNL, there's plenty of people there working on this problem). Alternative…

> No pro nuclear person is anti-renewable. I've seen plenty of anti-renewable and pro-nuclear (and often pro-fossil fuel, from the same source) advocacy from people in the US Right. It is simply false to say “no pro-nuclear person is anti-renewable.” It is accurate to say that some pro-nuclear people are also pro-renewable. > It's not a VS game When it comes to resource allocation, it absolutely is. There aren't infi…

> I've seen plenty of anti-renewable and pro-nuclear (and often pro-fossil fuel, from the same source) advocacy from people in the US Right.

I've seen this from politicians but not people. The people are really just against the subsidies, at least that I've seen. Which is fair, but I'd still consider dumb.

I'll also add, like I said I would, that I'll call those people anti-scientific as well. Because they are ignoring the expert advice on an extremely nuanced and complicated problem.

> When it comes to resource allocation, it absolutely is. There aren't infinite resources to allocate.

I think both camps can agree that we need to spend more. That's a big part to the argument. You can't say "this is a catastrophy happening, we have only so many resources" when we clearly do have more. They need to be reallocated to the high importance problems at hand (I'd argue climate is in fact a military issue, and there have been plenty of high ranking generals that agree. So let's allocate some of those funds). So I get the argument, but I don't think it's the right argument to make. Because the resources are there to do both, just not currently. Shifting the argument to the zero sum argument doesn't address the underlying issues. (We have enough resources that we'd run into problems of how to effectively spend them long before we ran out).

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#72

Post by dragonwriter »

godelski wrote: post #71
dragonwriter wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No pro nuclear person is anti-renewable. I've seen plenty of anti-renewable and pro-nuclear (and often pro-fossil fuel, from the same source) advocacy from people in the US Right. It is simply false to say “no pro-nuclear person is anti-renewable.” It is accurate to say that some pro-nuclear people are also pro-renewable. > It's not a VS game When it comes to resource allocation, it absolutely is. There aren't infi…

> I've seen plenty of anti-renewable and pro-nuclear (and often pro-fossil fuel, from the same source) advocacy from people in the US Right. I've seen this from politicians but not people. The people are really just against the subsidies, at least that I've seen. Which is fair, but I'd still consider dumb. I'll also add, like I said I would, that I'll call those people anti-scientific as well. Because they are ignori…

> I've seen this from politicians but not people.

(1) Politicians are a subset of people, so if you've seen it from politicians, you've seen it from people.

(2) I've seen it from people who are not politicians (mostly people who are both highly partisan and politically engaged, but then, those people are overrepresented in public policy discussions of all types. They are also disproportionately influential in government since they are reliable voters and provide the foot soldiers for political campaigns.)

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#73

Post by ddxxdd »

dev_dull wrote: post #19
bryanlarsen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear for power no longer makes sense; wind, solar and batteries are just too cheap. Nuclear for heat makes more sense.

Can you explain more about why they don't make sense? My understanding is that they're extremely desirable. They're a drop-in replacement for millions of hydrocarbon plants. They can scale up/down with demand. They produce enormous amounts of energy and emit no C02. Think of the materials and industrial waste to produce 1 nuclear power plant versus all of the battery, solar cells, and turbines to equal the same in po…

>Think of the materials and industrial waste to produce 1 nuclear power plant versus all of the battery, solar cells, and turbines to equal the same in power and scalability.

Please, also think of the carbon footprint of those materials. Every ton of cement produces 1 ton of CO2. Every ton of steel produces 1.8 tons of CO2. The mere process of building a hydroelectric dam and wind turbine involves emitting CO2 into the environment. Even the process of growing silicon crystals and doping them with ions to create a solar panel produces CO2 that must be offset over the lifetime of that solar panel. Carbon capture solutions, on the other hand, can involve simply planting trees. Each acorn that is dug into the ground will capture a ton of CO2 over the course of a decade.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#74

Post by ddxxdd »

GuiA wrote: post #26
bryanlarsen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adapting to +8C will be a lot more expensive than reducing moderately to hit +4C and adapting to that. And the only way to limit to +4C IMO is to try and limit to +2C and inevitably missing.

+8c means the end of life on Earth as we know it. Maybe rich San Francisco VCs can live in underground bunkers with labor slaves fed on soylent tending to their hydroponically grown crops, but 99.9% of Earth’s population will be (quite literally) toast. “Only” +4 is already going to be a very, very rough situation rife with positive feedback loops that may well make +5, then +6, etc inevitable. http://globalwarming.b…

On the other hand, if the economy grows at 3% per year, then humanity will be 12 times richer by 2100 than if the economy slows down to 2% growth due to heavy government interference.

Compounding interest and economic growth has been the primary driving force for lifting people out of poverty, and increased wealth can be used to build seawalls, sequester carbon, and implement climate control on a large scale.

There is still plenty of debate to be had about whether the economic growth from acclimation outweighs the potential climate benefits from mitigation.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#75

Post by pbreit »

GuiA wrote: post #26
bryanlarsen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adapting to +8C will be a lot more expensive than reducing moderately to hit +4C and adapting to that. And the only way to limit to +4C IMO is to try and limit to +2C and inevitably missing.

+8c means the end of life on Earth as we know it. Maybe rich San Francisco VCs can live in underground bunkers with labor slaves fed on soylent tending to their hydroponically grown crops, but 99.9% of Earth’s population will be (quite literally) toast. “Only” +4 is already going to be a very, very rough situation rife with positive feedback loops that may well make +5, then +6, etc inevitable. http://globalwarming.b…

Wouldn't civilization move further towards colder climates before the end? Is the feedback loop to get hotter or colder?

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#76

Post by thereisnospork »

garmaine wrote: post #42
tomComb wrote: post #10

He says that Steel (and some other materials) are the most important issue because we don't yet have any proven good or easy way to reduce the CO2 impact of their production. That leads me to the opposite of Gates' conclusion. At this point there are many low hanging fruit, so until we have a good way to address steel production, we should keep the focus on those other measures. We should certainly be doing research…

This isn’t something more research will solve. Metals exist in ores as oxides. To get pure metal you have to reduce them, and that oxygen had to go somewhere, bound to something. There is no net zero process that will magic away those pesky atoms.

Eh, its perfectly doable to make those atoms wind up as O2, it is just expensive. All we need to do to solve climate change, today, is accept a drastically lower standard of living. Hence why it isn't happening, (and won't happen until people start dying).

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#77

Post by smackthatthro »

godelski wrote: post #11
dev_dull wrote: post #2

> Some industrial processes can’t easily be electrified because they require too much heat. One possible alternative is to get the heat from a next-generation nuclear plant. Glad to see this. I take any future large-scale green energy initiative as unserious if it doesn’t take an honest look and consideration at new nuclear energy power plants.

There's three necessities I see in a green scale initiative: carbon tax, nuclear, and sequestration (CC). I also have a hard time taking anyone serially if they don't talk about how we need a diversified energy portfolio nor understand the difficulties of energy density. I feel like many repeat popular points but do not spend time trying to understand. I think that's how we get politicians that consider climate chang…

Anti-scientific, or we learned from our mistakes? We can barely build a bridge that lasts for 50 years, but somehow we are going to magically build containment units for waste which last 1,000s?

The science has shown us that Nuclear electricity is incredibly dangerous, and that humans are mostly too incompetent to maintain it safely. I say this as the child of a Nuclear Physicist who spent half of his life working on weapons, and half at a power plant. Dad didn't think we were up to the responsibility either.

I was just in Belarus, a friend of mine told me that since Chernobyl 20 members of her family have died of cancer. Cancer isn't fun, I will tell you from experience.

There's more to consider than "does it work in the lab?" and "will it be cheaper"?.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#78

Post by fock »

wisty wrote: post #23
pbreit wrote: post #3

Unpopular opinion: adaptation is best (only?) solution.

It's been argued that a hose pipe, a helium balloon, and a bit of sulphur could easily cool the planet as much as we want. But of course, people get mad about "playing god" or "using pollution to fight pollution". Kinda like a bad parent who refuses to ever punish their child, because they're afraid of being responsible if things go wrong (despite them already being responsible for things having gone wrong). There's…

I recommend you ask your parents where the acid came from when we last blew tons of sulfur into the atmosphere...

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#79

Post by tonyedgecombe »

news_to_me wrote: post #46
bryanlarsen wrote: post #43

My climate change plan is simple: a ratcheting carbon fee with dividend[1], together with a carbon tariff as part of a climate club[2] The industries where it's easy will take the easy way to avoid the carbon fee. The industries where it's hard will pay the fee but will see the ratchet coming and will be furiously researching alternatives. Worse come to worse, at some point the fee will be more than sequestration cos…

Cool, now the price of steel skyrockets and brings up the cost of everything that uses steel. Maybe we can find a way to do this in a less economically violent way?

Maybe we can find a way to do this in a less economically violent way?

If you accept that we need to lower carbon emissions then that means we will need to stop doing some things. Yes some people will be worse off, others better off. Given that change is coming anyway we might as well be on top of it rather than dragged along screaming and kicking.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#80

Post by roenxi »

smackthatthro wrote: post #77
godelski wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's three necessities I see in a green scale initiative: carbon tax, nuclear, and sequestration (CC). I also have a hard time taking anyone serially if they don't talk about how we need a diversified energy portfolio nor understand the difficulties of energy density. I feel like many repeat popular points but do not spend time trying to understand. I think that's how we get politicians that consider climate chang…

Anti-scientific, or we learned from our mistakes? We can barely build a bridge that lasts for 50 years, but somehow we are going to magically build containment units for waste which last 1,000s? The science has shown us that Nuclear electricity is incredibly dangerous, and that humans are mostly too incompetent to maintain it safely. I say this as the child of a Nuclear Physicist who spent half of his life working on…

Options for death are basically either heart attack, cancer or other [0]. Cancer is horrible, but that isn't a very telling example without more detail.

> We can barely build a bridge that lasts for 50 years, but somehow we are going to magically build containment units for waste which last 1,000s?

We've had nuclear power for ~70 years. There is a very high likelihood that if we push on with nuclear power we will either be reprocessing that 'waste' for fuel at some point or it will be inert enough that it doesn't really matter.

The idea that we in 2019 need to take responsibility for the next 15 generations is absurd. Anyone who tried that at any point in the past would have been at best wasting their time; technology has moved too quickly. Our ancestors might as well have worried that by 2019 we'd look back on them with contempt for not leaving us a strategic 10t reserve of bronze for forging our swords and shields.

The biggest risk is that in 60 years they will dig it up and hurl it at their enemies, on purpose, as a dirty bomb.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

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