Cut global emissions by 7.6% per year for next decade to meet 1.5°C Paris target • Hacker News Board

Re: Cut global emissions by 7.6% per year for next decade to meet 1.5°C Paris target

#101

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Nov 26, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #95

toomuchtodo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even assuming you're not a die hard capitalist, why champion an outdated energy technology when there are superior options. We aren't costing CO2 properly, but then we're also not costing decommissioning of nuclear generators or the waste disposal either.

We're not? https://www.nrc.gov/waste/decommissioning/finan-assur.html We also have a nuclear waste fund that previously received $750M in fees per year and sits at a balance of $44B, but that's been paused since there has been no effort to actually use the funds to dispose of waste.

Accumulating funds for an activity you can't or won't undertake isn't properly accounting, it's aspirational accounting. Talk is cheap.

https://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/nuclear-waste-fiasco-...

"Doing nothing often has a cost — and when it comes to storing the nation’s nuclear waste, the price is $38 billion and rising.

That’s just the lowball estimate for how much taxpayers will wind up spending because of the government’s decades of dithering about how to handle the radioactive leftovers sitting at dozens of sites in 38 states. The final price will be higher unless the government starts collecting the waste by 2020, which almost nobody who tracks the issue expects.

The first $15 billion is what the government spent on a controversial nuclear waste repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain until the Obama administration scrapped the project. The other $23 billion is the Energy Department’s estimate of the damages the government will have to pay to nuclear power utilities, which for the past 30 years have paid a fee to DOE on the promise that the feds would begin collecting their waste in 1998.

Industry argues that the damages are closer to $50 billion — which raises the bottom line to $65 billion including the money spent on Yucca."

So we're going to build more reactors you say? Where will that waste go? This is not an issue with renewables and batteries.

Re: Cut global emissions by 7.6% per year for next decade to meet 1.5°C Paris target

#102

Post by dirtyaura » Tue, Nov 26, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #13

maxharris wrote: post #3

I searched for 'nuclear' on that page, and found no mention of the word at all. Whatever you might think of nuclear energy, I don't think such a drastic energy cut is even possible to implement without it. (After all, I see little point in cutting CO2 emissions in the US if people in other countries emit an amount equivalent to whatever gets cut here.)

The time for nuclear has passed (at least fission. Fusion may still be a good future energy source). I say this because the cost of building a new nuclear plant is more expensive than wind and solar. Nuclear might still be a good solution for northern and southern habitats. But, at this point, where most pollution is produced, solar and wind are viable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source With…

Storage and grid stability problems are still largely unsolved. When wind and solar starts to be 30-50% of the capacity, this problems will get serious. If you factor the cost of storage solutions, the cost of wind and solar against nuclear is not that lucrative any more

Re: Cut global emissions by 7.6% per year for next decade to meet 1.5°C Paris target

#103

Post by keldaris » Tue, Nov 26, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #47

maxharris wrote: post #3

I searched for 'nuclear' on that page, and found no mention of the word at all. Whatever you might think of nuclear energy, I don't think such a drastic energy cut is even possible to implement without it. (After all, I see little point in cutting CO2 emissions in the US if people in other countries emit an amount equivalent to whatever gets cut here.)

Just to add to the two very insightful replies you've already got, yes, nuclear power could have been a great contributor on the fight against Global Warming, 30 years ago. And yes, it is a shame that "environmentalist" movements made so much noise that they ensured we took the most harmful possible path. Those movements should be shamed, and very loudly so because they still didn't give up on fighting improvements a…

I mostly agree with you (with the caveat that pushing for nuclear has different cost/benefit ratios in different parts of the world, the U.S. is merely one extreme), but this is exactly why I pay very little attention to public debate regarding energy policy and emissions control.

Outside of IPCC reports (which for all their process issues are generally fairly comprehensive and well written) and a small number of other scientific publications, there are few serious attempts to conduct objective cost/benefit analysis, rank order policy measures, etc. Instead, we have people who pretend science doesn't exist on one side and many of the same "environmentalists" who are, by virtue of their ideological stupidity, just as culpable for this mess as their opponents on the other. Given this state of affairs, I see no reasonable prospect of prevention. Instead, we will simply have more or less local mitigation solutions, which will work fairly well in the rich parts of the world and probably fail miserably in many of the poorer parts. The only silver lining here is that localized measures are far easier to implement as they require cooperation on a much smaller scale and, for the most part, will happen to avert dangers that will by then have become obvious to all.

Re: Cut global emissions by 7.6% per year for next decade to meet 1.5°C Paris target

#104

Post by andbberger » Tue, Nov 26, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

blondie9x wrote: post #74

To all, because governments have mostly failed us on quick action I created a climate pledge. It is open to feedback but I think starting with individual commitments and sustainable lifestyles will help us move society forward as a whole. Governments are not moving quickly enough on climate change with small incremental changes over time. However, people and organizations who champion these efforts can pressure gover…

I mean if it makes you feel better... but the culpability for climate change does NOT lie with individuals. Sweeping systemic changes are our only way out of this mess.

Re: Cut global emissions by 7.6% per year for next decade to meet 1.5°C Paris target

#105

Post by Junk_Collector » Tue, Nov 26, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

_ph_ wrote: post #43

maxharris wrote: post #3

I searched for 'nuclear' on that page, and found no mention of the word at all. Whatever you might think of nuclear energy, I don't think such a drastic energy cut is even possible to implement without it. (After all, I see little point in cutting CO2 emissions in the US if people in other countries emit an amount equivalent to whatever gets cut here.)

Funny, one of the most often heard argument of those, who try to fight against reducing CO2 in Germany is, that other countries, e.g. the US, are not reducing theirs and we should wait until they do. That sounds to me, that every country should do its best to cut CO2 and not wait for others to lead first.

That's funny because the US actually has reduced per capita CO2 emissions by about 20% back down to levels not seen since 1960.

Edit: I suppose I should include a source. From the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location...

Re: Cut global emissions by 7.6% per year for next decade to meet 1.5°C Paris target

#106

Post by g_sch » Tue, Nov 26, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #58

cogman10 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time for nuclear has passed (at least fission. Fusion may still be a good future energy source). I say this because the cost of building a new nuclear plant is more expensive than wind and solar. Nuclear might still be a good solution for northern and southern habitats. But, at this point, where most pollution is produced, solar and wind are viable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source With…

The cheapest option is probably to build nuclear to the level that meets minimum demand at night, and solar for everything on top of that, with just enough storage to even out the remaining discrepancies. Storage is quite a bit more expensive than nuclear, and while the cost is dropping it has a long way to go. At the same time, new nuclear technologies like molten salt reactors could well drop the price of nuclear.…

This is a great point - solar/wind and nuclear are, as the grid currently works, not drop-in replacements to each other, but complements. Nuclear provides base load (because it's difficult and slow to ramp a nuclear plant up or down), Wind/solar provides as much daytime load as practical, and meeting any remaining demand (especially peak evening demand) will require a peaking source that can dynamically be ramped up or down to meet demand.

The optimist in me believes that we'll eventually get good enough at solving the unit commitment problem in the energy grid that we'll reduce the need for carbon-intensive peaking sources and eventually even eliminate nuclear power. But we're not there today.

Re: Cut global emissions by 7.6% per year for next decade to meet 1.5°C Paris target

#107

Post by magnamerc » Tue, Nov 26, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

blondie9x wrote: post #74

To all, because governments have mostly failed us on quick action I created a climate pledge. It is open to feedback but I think starting with individual commitments and sustainable lifestyles will help us move society forward as a whole. Governments are not moving quickly enough on climate change with small incremental changes over time. However, people and organizations who champion these efforts can pressure gover…

I don't want to discourage you, because everything counts, but I think the real problem with climate change isn't in the West, it's in the rest of the world. The West had the luxury of using cheap carbon in the early 20th century to industrialize and build out infrastructure. India and countries in Africa haven't had that luxury, therefore they are going to use as much carbon as is necessary to industrialize. It would be hypocritical for Westerners to criticize them for it. The only way to change that is if Western countries governments actively exported low-carbon tech to help them leap-frog a centralized power distribution network and go straight to in-situ decentralized power generation without it affecting their rising quality of life. This is a societal, market economics and technological problem. Cutting out meat won't help nearly as much as developing lab grown meat will. Rather than attempt to change individual behaviors, we should strive to make low carbon technologies that align with existing behaviors.

Re: Cut global emissions by 7.6% per year for next decade to meet 1.5°C Paris target

#108

Post by greedo » Tue, Nov 26, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

core-questions wrote: post #34

throwaway122kk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greenpeace and the environmental movement have a lot to answer for, thanks to their knee jerk reaction to nuclear one of the technologies (note that I say "one of", there is a range of choices, not an either/or black/white choice, as is so often case on internet discussions nowadays) we ended up with more coal/oil power plants contributing towards climate change nuclear could have been the bridging technology buying…

> Greenpeace and the environmental movement have a lot to answer for Gut instinct is that they were sponsored by shell corporations / charities to go after nuclear et. al. and leave other vested interests alone.

I've heard rumors that their budget dropped precipitously after the fall of the Berlin Wall...

Re: Cut global emissions by 7.6% per year for next decade to meet 1.5°C Paris target

#109

Post by mrmanner » Tue, Nov 26, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #53

I don't understand why globalism rarely, if ever, factors into the debate. It boggles my mind that if I walk down to the drug store to buy a toothbrush that toothbrush was likely made in a Chinese factory, shipped across the Pacific ocean in a diesel-spewing container ship, and then driven a good thousand miles in an 18-wheeler. It seems like a tremendous waste of energy for something that could be made locally for c…

In a way it's true that we transport things too much - but container ships are extremely efficient compared to almost all other means of transportation. The thousand miles in the 18-wheeler is probably a far larger part of the transportation emissions than the container ship from China.

So it might be more efficient to make a large investment in the American railroad network and start removing trucks from the road, than to start making toothbrushes in the US.

Re: Cut global emissions by 7.6% per year for next decade to meet 1.5°C Paris target

#110

Post by DubiousPusher » Tue, Nov 26, 2019, 9:33 PM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #90

skummetmaelk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here you seem to be blaming globalism for failing to account for the true price of a product. The product should be cheaper if made locally because transport costs are reduced. At the moment transport is extremely cheap because there is no significant cost to producing emissions. If appropriate carbon taxes were added you would see such products being made more locally.

> Here you seem to be blaming globalism for failing to account for the true price of a product. Fair, but in my mind this is why globalism is a thing -- because it doesn't account for the exploitation of human labor and lack of regulation. If it did, there would be no reason to ship a few dollars of plastic from China to the USA.

I think you're right. Our current form of global trade can only exist by exploiting a kind of lawlessness that comes from being able to distribute owns company beneficially across uncoordinated governmental regions.