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U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#191

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

tootie wrote: post #14
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.

It was barely debated. We can't even get half the country to care about a disaster that's unfolding in their faces.

If anything, I think the US election has emphasized how the idea that humans can come together, globally, to solve a problem that will require worldwide shared sacrifice for benefits that are largely at least one lifetime in the future is a pipe dream. Humans (and in fairness, most creatures) are fundamentally too selfish as a species to implement this kind of collective action.

Unstoppable severe climate change is coming, if not already here. Emissions continue to go up and up and up every year, the best you get is a slight pause in a year, while we need emissions to go to zero, fast. At this point the only slight hope is geoengineering, and even then I wouldn't bet on it.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#192

Post by alehul »

7thaccount wrote: post #182
macspoofing wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> 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

I don’t think any of these solutions are viable to prove we can be reliant on renewables, and this one especially would not resonate with a populace.

Just at a consumer level, think of everything you use power for on a daily basis. It’s a cornerstone of modern life, and you can’t expect society to backtrack.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#193

Post by PragmaticPulp »

maxerickson wrote: post #175
macspoofing wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

It's also almost cheaper to build new solar than to operate natural gas. It doesn't require coordinated action to move away from coal and gas at that point.

They’re not interchangeable.

Solar is great for marginal additional output, but to make it useful as a primary energy source it requires massive investments in storage technology. Solar doesn’t work at night or on cloudy days, so you still need other power sources. At least as long as storage solutions are rare.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#194

Post by m0zg »

trasz wrote: post #189
m0zg wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You do. Absent onerous Western regulations nuclear power is economically viable, especially if you don't build a custom design for every plant, and build a lot of them.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#195

Post by belorn »

tomtomtom777 wrote: post #43
roenxi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure. Nature, being unconcerned with fairness, has little regard for per capita statistics. If we want 8 billion people living in comfort, we need more energy. As always, I think we should have been building more nuclear plants back in the 90s. And again in the 2000s. And the 2010s. Maybe now we can go wind and solar. But we need lots of something.

> Pretty sure. Nature, being unconcerned with fairness, has little regard for per capita statistics. But nature also has little regard for per country statistics. Splitting China into two countries, isn't going to lower their polution. Using per capita statistics at least allows us to focus on those that are emitting excessively more than others.

Splitting a country is not going to lower the pollution, but equally so does a high populations density not decrease pollution.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#196

Post by Filligree »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #180
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

> now that the US basically proven to be untrustworthy Was the US ever trustworthy?

They were better at pretending.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#197

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

sampo wrote: post #115
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.

USA per capita CO2 emissions are large, but at least they have been coming down moderately fast. From 2007 to 2017, USA reduced emissions by 20%, whereas if we take Germany as an example of a country with strong "green" element in politics, Germany reduced by 8%. Apply linear extrapolation, and USA would go below Germany in 20 years. Extrapolating with exponential decay, in 40 years. https://ourworldindata.org/co2/co…

In a global economy, per-country per-capita emissions mean little, as my consumption largely "counts" against another country that produces the goods I use.

Germany has a much larger per-capita manufacturing and export sectors of their economy, I would expect their emissions to slow more slowly.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#198

Post by flurdy »

giantg2 wrote: post #60
Ygg2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have linked economies. What China makes for US they also use a version of that internally. So if US goes all electric car, China would follow suit, etc.

So Tesla is being built in China? That's not what I've heard. In fact Tesla has shipped cars to China. Just look at the recent recall. China has their own versions of electric cars (see NIO as an example).

Erm, yes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Shanghai

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#199

Post by est31 »

sampo wrote: post #188
est31 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good point. CO2 equivalents are a better measure than CO2.

I think fixing leaks is an easier task than reducing the coal CO2 footprint. We'll have to figure this out somehow anyways, because a lot of methane will be going into the atmosphere from thawing permafrost, both on land and in the seas.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#200

Post by Retric »

7thaccount wrote: post #182
macspoofing wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

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 natural gas with the other 2kWh being wasted.

Which does not mean 2/3 of total solar energy would be wasted. Further, storage and energy markets also complicate things. However, it does illustrate why you want an over supply of the cheapest option even if not all of it gets used.

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