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U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#321

Post by Retric »

macspoofing wrote: post #311
Retric wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most economical option is it have a massive oversupply of wind and solar as their significantly less expensive than any alternative. You can model this as (cost per kWh of cheapest alternative) / (cost of rentable per kWh) = marginal oversupply you want. So, if hypothetically Solar was 2c/kWh and peaking natural gas was 6c/kWh then you would want to add more solar until 3kWh of new Solar only offset 1kWh of natur…

And where are you going to store this oversupply?

My point is you don’t need to store the oversupply. Grid spot prices hitting zero mean you can just dump the power as that excess is in effect worthless.

That said, consistent very low prices will likely result in someone using most of that power for something even if the power plant operators aren’t making money during that period.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#322

Post by __jf__ »

cryoshon wrote: post #288
__jf__ wrote: post #29

Meanwhile, awareness/disclosure of climate risk is rising sharply in large publicly traded companies, measured by counting the percentage of companies reporting "climate risk" in their 2019 annual reports: - 26% of companies in EU - 9% of companies in APAC - 7% of companies in US Still a long way to go obviously, but these numbers have doubled compared to fiscal 2017.

can you cite a source for this? I'm interested in learning more in detail

Source: own research after collecting and processing 14000 annual reports the last 2 years. Mostly for infosec purposes but it seems to be useful in other areas as well.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#323

Post by __jf__ »

treypitt wrote: post #55
__jf__ wrote: post #29

Meanwhile, awareness/disclosure of climate risk is rising sharply in large publicly traded companies, measured by counting the percentage of companies reporting "climate risk" in their 2019 annual reports: - 26% of companies in EU - 9% of companies in APAC - 7% of companies in US Still a long way to go obviously, but these numbers have doubled compared to fiscal 2017.

Wow. Rising sharply, from what, 0%? Assuming the size of the US public markets is the largest in the world, and that we needed to take action decades ago to prevent climate change's worst effects, these statistics place the blame squarely on large corporations

Better late than never, says the optimist. If you break these numbers down by industry it looks like climate risk is primarily identified by (european) financials. Fiscal 2019:

             US  EUR APAC
   financls  12% 37% 16%
     energy   8% 20% 12%
  materials   8% 24%  7%
  utilities   3% 22%  7%
  industrls   3% 12%  3%
   consumer   5% 14%  4%
      telco   3% 12%  -
       tech   3%  8%  -
   healthcr   3% 11%  -

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#324

Post by gnramires »

roenxi wrote: post #13
originalvichy wrote: post #3

As a European this is the main fear I have during this election. 4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world will really bite us in the ass. Not that I’m super proud of how we are doing in my country, but it can’t get worse.

Here are some interesting graphs from arguably the most transformative economic miracle in human history [0]. The risk isn't the US doing nothing, it is India, Africa, etc, etc deciding that they seriously want a comfortable standard of living. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=~CHN

If the US, brimming with wealth, technologically advanced and educated can't commit to fighting climate change, what will the poorest developing countries decide? They would need to take the burden themselves and falling behind economically (something China in particular would strongly resist). A few defectors can ruin the entire plan because of economic pressure. I think we should be nearing an accord with greater control anyway -- defectors will need to suffer harsh economic sanctions greater than what they'd spend on the accord anyway. I expect this to happen within a few years.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#325

Post by reducesuffering »

onion2k wrote: post #75
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #62

On a related note, if all of the frozen ice goes melty melty, Paris will be underwater. It’s at 35m, and sea levels could rise by 70m if Earth goes full thaw.

This is quite a good tool to explore what would happen at different sea level rises - http://flood.firetree.net/ - it maxes out at 60m, but even there it's a very different world.

Where can one find the data for the predictions of Pacific coast sea level rise on various timelines?

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#326

Post by cptskippy »

macspoofing wrote: post #145
originalvichy wrote: post #3

As a European this is the main fear I have during this election. 4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world will really bite us in the ass. Not that I’m super proud of how we are doing in my country, but it can’t get worse.

>4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world will really bite us in the ass. But that's not the case. America is reducing its emissions greatly by shifting from coal to natural gas (which mirrors what Germany is doing, for example). Coal is ostensibly dead in US. If you look at the charts from Wikipedia [1][2], you'll see the US has cut emissions at about the same rate (o…

> Renewables are not a panacea and may never be able to power a modern economy as they will probably always require fossil fuel baseload

This is completely fallacious. There will always be outliers but the overwhelming majority of power needs, both residential and commercial, can be addressed with renewable energy and battery solutions.

> not to mention that because renewables are a diffuse energy source, they require HUGE land areas which makes no different for CO2 emissions, but makes a huge difference for environmental collapse.

Can you cite anything backing that up? Hydro electric does dramatically impact the environment but other renewable sources have no such impact. Wind is negligible despite the fanatic ravings of one fat orange lunatic who doesn't like it's aesthetics. Solar is easily deployed on rooftops and along transit corridors which has zero impact. You don't have to consolidate all the renewable energy sources in one location.

I have a solar array that covers less than half my roof, produces 1.5x my energy needs annually, it stores reserves in a battery, and back-feeds excess into the grid. The cost to operate the array is less than the cost of grid power, and my excess production results in a payout from the power company.

The excess production from residential and commercial arrays can be captured and distributed to outliers who are unable to directly leverage renewable energy and completely offset the need for polluting energy sources.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#327

Post by cptskippy »

macspoofing wrote: post #312
throwaway5752 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables are not a panacea and may never be able to power a modern economy as they will probably always require fossil fuel baseload You say that like it's true, and it's not. Anyway, the climate doesn't care. Human emissions will reach equilibrium with what's compatible with life on Earth, one way or the other. Figuring this out is preferable to massive loss of life and degraded standards of living for the survivo…

Nuclear is great but it is a terrible baseload for renewables because nuclear cannot just spin up and spin down like hydro or natural gas can.

You're completely ignoring batteries which have already demonstrated their viability in southern Australia.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#328

Post by TearsInTheRain »

apexalpha wrote: post #205
sampo wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China [...] world's fastest growing CO2 emitter This is not true. From 2001 to 2011 China almost tripled their emissions, but after 2011 they haven't grown almost at all. It's stable. Maybe you haven't looked at the data in the past 10 years? https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=~CHN

Plus, to be fair, they make all our stuff. Or at least a lot of it. So a big part of their CO2 is YOUR stuff being made.

I dont know if it is funny or sad to see that whenever the US passes an environmental or labor regulation there is no net reduction in bad behavior, the bad behavior just gets moved to a different country and we burn a little more oil to move it there

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#329

Post by xster »

koheripbal wrote: post #40
originalvichy wrote: post #3

As a European this is the main fear I have during this election. 4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world will really bite us in the ass. Not that I’m super proud of how we are doing in my country, but it can’t get worse.

The biggest issue with the Paris Accords is that China did not commit to begin any restrictions until 2030. ...and since they are both the world's largest CO2 emitter and world's fastest growing CO2 emitter, the Accords became a corporate strategy to just move more manufacturing to China (and other non-limited countries). Frankly, I think the Paris Accords does more harm than good by giving anyone the notion that we…

> China did not commit to begin any restrictions until 2030

Is this factual? They committed to peaking in 2030. Stopping at the stop sign is a radically different concept from starting to brake at the stop sign.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#330

Post by bluGill »

DFHippie wrote: post #204
bluGill wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free trade raises the standard for everyone. Today China has those issues, but free trade is raising their living standard. As standards of living raise people find pollution is negatively affecting them and so they solve the problem locally. Of course the downside free trade allows production to move to places where there are no controls because non-local pollution both less affects any individual, and because inter…

> As standards of living raise people find pollution is negatively affecting them and so they solve the problem locally. This works if the problem is local and bothersome to the locals -- rusting drums leaking poison or heaps of trash. Carbon dioxide and methane are invisible and odorless and instantly become everyone's problem, so we can't expect this mechanism to induce people to solve the problem locally.

You are yourself the counter example that proves you are wrong. People like you do in fact care about non-local pollution. there are steps: first you need to get far enough out of poverty that you can start thinking you can accept the lower standard of living not having poison around you is acceptable. When you don't have enough to eat or in danger of freezing to death (or other weather/nature related disasters) that poison is something you just stay away from - particularity if your job is with whoever is dumping it since making them clean up might me they don't pay you and then you can't eat. When you don't have those basic worries to you worry about more avoidable ones like local poison/pollution. Only after the above do non-local concerns matter.
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