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U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#341

Post by macspoofing »

cptskippy wrote: post #327
macspoofing wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>You're completely ignoring batteries

I'm not.

>which have already demonstrated their viability in southern Australia.

They didn't. They replaced natural gas in one specific use-case, namely to provide grid stability. Those batteries (no batteries) are capable of bridging renewable variability.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#342

Post by pfdietz »

makomk wrote: post #259
pfdietz wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's declining in Africa also. https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/demographics-of-a...

I suspect that Covid is going to run a coach and horses right through that improvement. The best ways of getting population growth down in places like Africa are education and a strong, stable economy - and it's just trashed both.

Actually, the best way is empowering women.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#343

Post by therealdrag0 »

libraryatnight wrote: post #302
bamboozled wrote: post #64

I hope I’m wrong but it seems the world may have to leave the United States in the 1950s where it currently plans to reside. Seriously, it’s time counties who want to improve the situation need move on from worrying about what the United sates is doing because it doesn’t look like much will be happening for a long time.

Americans are about to start learning what it's like trying to emigrate to other countries for a better life.

How so? People love cheap shit without paying for the externalities.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#344

Post by cptskippy »

macspoofing wrote: post #341
cptskippy wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>You're completely ignoring batteries I'm not. >which have already demonstrated their viability in southern Australia. They didn't. They replaced natural gas in one specific use-case, namely to provide grid stability. Those batteries (no batteries) are capable of bridging renewable variability.

Southern Australia's wind farms alone are enough to meet demand and when their new synchronous capacitor projects are completed they won't need stand by gas power plants.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#345

Post by stjohnswarts »

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…

Also Paris accords don't do anything to slow down emissions in China and India the next big ones whereas USA is clearly showing some progress. I think with major solar improvements in the next decade and incredible price decreases things are looking a lot better. I hope for nuclear to supplement that but it looks like the world at large just isn't ready to get over their unnecessary, irrational fear of nuclear, except maybe China.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#346

Post by he0001 »

noworriesnate wrote: post #96
he0001 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this something that’s up to the companies that put their production there to decide?

No, because companies that want to employ Americans can't compete with companies that want to employ Chinese, because it costs less to employ Chinese. In other words there are externalities (polluting the global environment) that aren't priced into the cost of labor when you're comparing the two countries. Tariffs and similar things can help price in that externality.

Tariffs have been good for China. In fact their economy is booming. Polluting your own soil is never a good thing and spills over on other aspects of society makes it more expensive.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#347

Post by belorn »

tzs wrote: post #320
belorn wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which graph to look at depend on what question one has. If the question is "Who is polluting the world and need to stop" then country’s annual CO2 emissions is the single most relevant graph since that is where the pollution is right now coming from. If one is to ask "whom's individual citizen way of living is contributing most" we would look at per capita C02. If the question is "Who is at risk of increasing their p…

> Which graph to look at depend on what question one has. If the question is "Who is polluting the world and need to stop" then country’s annual CO2 emissions is the single most relevant graph since that is where the pollution is right now coming from. So if China were to spin off each province as a separate country and the US were to spin of each state as a separate country with each of the new countries emitting ex…

Splitting of countries has as much improvement as getting higher population density. A 5 person household does not have less pollution than 4 person household just because they got one person more to share the blame. Similar two countries combined do as much pollution as if they were separated, because physics does not care about borders.

If we go by per capita, the country that contribute the most to the world pollution is a island country with 300 islands and 1700 people. At the same time there are a bunch of oil countries which list as the most green countries in the world because per capita they got close to nothing in pollution per person. If we go outside of countries, the international space station and antarctic would have insane amount of CO2 per capita since only a very small number of highly specialized people living there.

If we want to stop climate change, going to Palau and Luxembourg with remedies will have zero impact. Their numbers at top of the table is only relevant in terms of statistics.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#348

Post by kortilla »

bluGill wrote: post #139
kortilla wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We will never build another coal plant in the US. Because of natural gas, not renewables. Renewables still need base load due to variable generation because storage technology isn’t economical. If the price of natural gas didn’t collapse due to fracking the fuck out of the whole country for the last 15 years, we would still be building coal plants hand over fist.

True, but misleading. Last year Iowa got more than 60% of their electric from renewable sources (almost entirely wind). The natural gas plants are not for base load, but for backup when the wind isn't blowing.

> gas plants are not for base load, but for backup when the wind isn't blowing.

That’s base load. If you didn’t have the gas plants you would have had rolling outages, which means it’s providing base load.

Perhaps you are confusing them with peaker plants, which are to help during high demand.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#349

Post by kortilla »

epistasis wrote: post #273
kortilla wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We will never build another coal plant in the US. Because of natural gas, not renewables. Renewables still need base load due to variable generation because storage technology isn’t economical. If the price of natural gas didn’t collapse due to fracking the fuck out of the whole country for the last 15 years, we would still be building coal plants hand over fist.

With the Paris Accord, we are talking about the future, not the last 15 years. And for the future, renewables + storage is cheaper than natural gas. We can get to 80% renewables cheaply. And as the modelers update their cost curves to adapt to the pace of storage's learning curve, we will be able to get to 90% renewables cheaply, then 95%, then 100% as we start to decarbonize the non-electrical parts of our economy.…

> And for the future, renewables + storage is cheaper than natural gas.

Sigh, there is no evidence of this or projects yet planned based on full renewable that uses storage to account for generation troughs. The storage gap is significant right now and making solar panels so cheap that labor and transmission are 99% of the cost won’t help that.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#350

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

7thaccount wrote: post #308
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country we already have a system where the price of electricity fluctuates hourly depending on supply and demand. The result for individuals: many people just subscribe to a flat rate from the electricity companies to avoid the uncertainty and pay the same predictable price each month (but of course, this predictable price comes at a significant markup with respect to the "free market" price). The rest of us go…

Interesting comment. Thank you! Does anyone have an automated system in place that would automatically curtail yourself when price gets above X at Y time?

The theory was that such systems should exist, but I haven't heard of any at the moment and Google doesn't seem to find any either. And this is several years after the system was implemented.
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