U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#181

Post by UncleMeat » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

pferde wrote: post #164

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism and enterpreneurship is how we got here in the first place. Elon and renewables are only becoming a thing because of economic incentives from governments - positive incentives in the form of subsidies on e.g. new EVs, solar panels, etc, and negative incentives in the form of carbon taxes. Take those away and the "green" companies would have NO incentive to push their work. They'd be working with people wan…

Isn't that exactly what government incentives are for? Subsidize the thing you want to see succeed, until it no longer needs subsidizing. Of course, that is the ideal success scenario, in the failure scenario, you subsidize the thing until it fails, or until you can no longer afford to subsidize it. EDIT: grammar

Of course. The point is that it is ridiculous to use Tesla as evidence that the free market will solve our problems when

1. Tesla's impact on global emissions is minimal.

2. Government intervention in EVs has been there from the start.

The charitable conclusion is that governments and markets can work together. The pessimistic conclusion is that markets are only capable of putting lipstick on pigs.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#182

Post by 7thaccount » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

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…

The US has majorly been transitioning to both natural gas AND renewables.

In fact, practically the only facilities being built for the last decade have been wind and solar and in massive quantities. If you look in the generation queues of the various RTO/ISOs (organizations that manage which units run and at what level for large parts of the grid) the only thing expected to be built is even more wind and solar along with storage. Multiple GW of wind capacity is being added each year, so it isn't slowing.

Why is this happening? It's complicated, but it's basically economics at this point.

What problems do we face? Well, sometimes wind and solar aren't available. You can solve this in three ways. The first is to have thermal generation respond when the wind/solar dips. This can be tricky as thermal generators (outside of natural gas) weren't designed to move that fast. They were designed to run near max for most of their life. Natural gas peakers are more effective here. Another option is storage, which can hold you over until you get more wind/solar again. However, we would need a massive amount of storage built for this to be effective. A third option would be to increase demand response at the industrial and customer level. Meaning, power isn't generally expected to be 100% available in that scenario. If there isn't enough generation capacity, those that aren't willing to pay the high prices are shut off (or something along those lines). That is generally how supply/demand is supposed to work anyway, but practically speaking, the demand doesn't participate today. In actuality, I expect a combination of all of that to become common place and it is what the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been pushing for.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#183

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

wwright wrote: post #87

toomuchtodo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The definition of comfort is the issue. There are simply not enough resources for everyone on Earth to live like an American. Maybe Europeans if we stretch with renewables and quickly cut down overfishing and stripmining agricultural practices. My money (unfortunately) is on a whole lot of death and despair from crop failures, drought, and mass migrations due to climate change even if we’re able to rapidly decarboniz…

I’m really not sure this is the case. For example, we know that we have far more than enough capacity to produce food for the entire world, we just simply don’t do it. Of course, Americans are very wasteful, and we can’t scale that amount of wastefulness to the entire planet.

We have enough fossil-fuel-dependent capacity to strip-mine soil to feed the entire world. I'm not sure if we have enough capacity for sustainable food production, and even if, the methods, technologies and supply chains aren't there (and won't be, as long as they have to compete against modern agriculture).

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#184

Post by astura » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

perryizgr8 wrote: post #170

astura wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like that because unlike most states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania didn't start counting their mail-in votes until after in person votes. Mail in votes will almost certainly heavily skew blue and there's substantial numbers of them this year. Not saying Biden will definitely win, just we can't tell yet. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/04/whats-behind-trumps-leads-in...

> Mail in votes will almost certainly heavily skew blue. Is there a good explanation for that assertion? I've seen it being said in many places but never any reason for it. Why would mail in votes skew in a particular direction?

It's in the article I shared in the GP

>Starting early this year, the coronavirus pandemic prompted millions of voters across the country to request mail-in ballots in order to avoid exposure to the virus at the polls. And while the party breakdown for mail-in ballots started off fairly even, it split off after Trump launched a monthslong crusade to discredit mail-in voting.

>As Election Day neared, some states, like Florida and North Carolina, tallied up the mail-in ballots they received ahead of time, and then released that total soon after the polls closed on Election Day, and before they finished counting up the in-person votes... they tended to show early leads for Biden which disappeared once all the in-person votes (which tended to favor Trump) were counted. This was dubbed the blue mirage.

Also

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/10/09/voter-engage...

>Trump supporters are more than twice as likely as Biden supporters to say they plan to vote in person on Election Day (50% vs. 20%). By contrast, 51% of Biden supporters say they plan to vote by mail or absentee (or have already voted this way). A quarter of Trump supporters (25%) say they plan to vote by mail or absentee.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#185

Post by ImprovedSilence » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #117

nichos wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Syria? Obama has been at war longer than any president in the history of the country.

The Syrian civil war (if that's what you're referring to) is a result of the Arab Spring that started in 2010 in reaction to low standards of living in Tunisia, which spread to amongst others Syria. That's the wiki summary anyway, which doesn't directly implicate the US or any particular president. That said, general unrest in the middle-east can be attributed to meddling from the US that has been going on for decade…

While it's fun to blame the US for all the problems in the world ever, in the middle east lets not forget the heart of the serious issues are largely a result of European colonialism at the turn of the 20th century. And then they made a bunch of "mandates", peaced out, and left everything in shambles..

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#186

Post by trasz » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #52

legulere wrote: post #2

So much opportunity wasted considering China would do more if the US also did more.

I highly doubt that. As others have said, China has no plans to reduce pollution until 2030 (negotiated at the accord) and is currently increasing their polluting infrastructure.

Building forty nuclear power plants - which is what China is doing - won’t reduce pollution?

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#187

Post by Mahn » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

originalvichy wrote: post #37

roenxi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I feel like this is a deflection and a critical reason why progress isn’t happening fast enough. Your house is already messy, and the need to clean it up is now. Not when China and a couple billion other people mess their house up. My country’s ambitious plans are shot down by members of parliament going for the kneejern ”but India and China...” response, and the net result would be no action if they were in power. L…

More importantly, if you want China, India and Africa to pollute less, the only way to do so is leading by example and figuring out a way to achieve cost-effective, environmental-friendly path for economic growth for yourself. If it works, and it's better, they'll copy it.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#188

Post by sampo » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

est31 wrote: post #152

FerretFred wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>coal to natural gas Fossil fuel to .. fossil fuel. Sigh.

CO2 per KWh is lower for natural gas than it is for coal. https://www.volker-quaschning.de/datserv/CO2-spez/CO2-spez_e...

> CO2 per KWh is lower for natural gas than it is for coal.

Unfortunately there are methane leaks in the systems, and it is quite possible that when accounting for the methane releases, natural gas has equally bad climate effect (emissions of CO2 and CH4 combined) as coal.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#189

Post by trasz » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #112

bamboozled wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people want to believe so strongly that China is working so hard to destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to achieve. Maybe they actually do want to reduce pollution ? I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I don’t know if “Wired” would know the full story either. China a pretty difficult place to get information in and out of ?

You don't build coal fired power plants if your goal is to reduce pollution.

You don’t build 40 nuclear power plants if your goal isn’t to reduce pollution.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#190

Post by oblio » Wed, Nov 04, 2020, 1:58 PM UTC

the-pigeon wrote: post #136

mola wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot hinder developing countries from the comfort of living in a develop country. The fact that China agreed to a year is amazing. If the US would have kept part of that deal then maybe we would've seen improvements. But now that the US basically proven to be untrustworthy, even towards allies, these kind of deals are just undoable anymore. This will end in tears

Why exactly? China has shown time and time again that China will do what China feels like doing. Meaning them committing to doing something 10 years doesn't mean they will do it at all. We clearly don't really care about climate change or stuff like this would be about taxing pollution through tariffs and other means. Rules like this just move the manufacturing and thus pollution to different countries. Which is poin…

I know this would have sounded absurd a few years ago, but the authoritarian Chinese regime is currently more rational than the democratic US regime.

They actually know, understand, and to some degree care, that they're basically 1/5th of the world's population and if they don't get pollution under control the entire world will burn.