Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 368 posts

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#231

Post by ceilingcorner »

oblio wrote: post #190
the-pigeon wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The CCP has absolutely zero problem suppressing its own citizens if they threaten the government’s power, I seriously doubt they care any more about the rest of the world.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#232

Post by mmm_grayons »

7thaccount wrote: post #221
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…

There is a problem with the massive oversupply idea though. It assumes wind locations are fairly randomized and I don't think that is entirely true. Meaning you can build more in area "x", but if it isn't blowing a quarter mile away, it probably isn't blowing near you either. Think of this more as a conceptual argument. Now oversupply would help if it's just blowing a little bit I suppose.

Exactly. The big blocker to a full-scale rollout of renewables is storage and it has been this way for years. We're still facing the problem of the duck curve, which has been known for years: wind and solar peak at the wrong times because peak load is actually in the evening.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#233

Post by Retric »

7thaccount wrote: post #221
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…

There is a problem with the massive oversupply idea though. It assumes wind locations are fairly randomized and I don't think that is entirely true. Meaning you can build more in area "x", but if it isn't blowing a quarter mile away, it probably isn't blowing near you either. Think of this more as a conceptual argument. Now oversupply would help if it's just blowing a little bit I suppose.

It doesn’t matter if supply sinks up 1:1 because demand doesn’t. If solar always produced the same energy evenly form exactly 10AM to 6PM EST for some parts of the day you could have an over supply of solar and at other parts of the day you would have an under supply. The same is true on the weekend vs weekday. Even seasonal power demand is less in spring and fall than summer and winter due to heating and cooling.

Though when selecting individual locations for wind, different locations favor different time of the day. And of course solar output varies significantly east/west and based on local weather conditions. That all gets modeled ahead of time and in practice get reflected in market rates.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#234

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#235

Post by ben_w »

abyssin wrote: post #162
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…

Next step is to reduce energy consumption. It's so obvious I wonder why it isn't talked about more. I'm not saying it's easy. We either choose to reduce energy consumption, or the consequences of climate change will force us to do it. The difference is in the first case, we have more control over it, and it might cause less human suffering.

> It's so obvious I wonder why it isn't talked about more

I think this is because energy consumption is directly related to our ability to manufacture things, and the ability to manufacture things is directly connected to both wealth and military power.

(I’m half-remembering someone else’s explanation, so I assume this is an oversimplification).

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#236

Post by DoingIsLearning »

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…

I think arguing percentages is misleading and is missing the point of the total environmental impact.

Using the same data source you can truly see how much of an outlier the US carbon footprint is:

https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country...

Basically the large majority of countries sit below the 10 tonne per capita cut-off, with the outliers of US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Luxembourg above the 15 tonne cut-off (with Qatar being basically off the charts). I am not sure if it is just consumer behaviour differences or energy source differences and I am sure there will be multiple factors depending on the country and regions but these outlier countries are effectively emitting anywhere between 50% to 300% more emissions than any other population on Earth.

The main issue here is population size:

Luxembourg : 600k

Qatar: 2.897M

Saudi Arabia: 34.997M

Canada: 37.885M

US: 331.669M

If you stop thinking per capita and actually take into account total population, you quickly realize that all other nations on Earth are dependent on US market carbon correction in order to avoid environmental collapse. Far more than any other foreign policy ineptitude from the current adminsistration it's the environmental inaction and downright resistance of US lobby driven policy that scares everyone else around the world.

We are still on track for an inevitable major environmental collapse but it could still be vastly mitigated, if US politicians and citizens would get with the program.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#237

Post by ovi256 »

abyssin wrote: post #162
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…

Next step is to reduce energy consumption. It's so obvious I wonder why it isn't talked about more. I'm not saying it's easy. We either choose to reduce energy consumption, or the consequences of climate change will force us to do it. The difference is in the first case, we have more control over it, and it might cause less human suffering.

> why it isn't talked about more

Because reducing energy use reduces quality of life at constant dollar income (at least medium term), and reduces economic growth (energy's an input in all economic activities), with all the social negative consequences that produces. It's a third rail, politically. No one's going to get elected by saying "your children have to live worse than you".

The Western world is already (slowly, over decades) reducing this (look at per capita energy use dropping nicely since the 90s), and there's significant pushback even at this rate (gillets jaunes, cost of living protests). All future energy use growth is elsewhere (Africa, China, India) with no plans to stop and if the Western world tries to impose their views on them, it'll look a lot like neocolonialism for environmental reasons.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#238

Post by freeone3000 »

einpoklum wrote: post #142
tootie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not "half the country". In a recent Fox news (yes, those Fox news...) poll, they found that 72% of people were either "very concerned" or "somewhat concerned" about climate change. What is true that none of the presidential candidates is taking the crisis seriously: Trump denies it, Biden pays a bit of lip service to it but has done very little about it with Obama, and will probably not do much about it if elect…

Noting down your concern on a poll isn't the same as taking action - even the least action, voting for someone who is not a climate change denier, was beyond half the country. And if this sort of political action is what 73% produces? Then that figure isn't worth the poll paper it's printed on.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#239

Post by LatteLazy »

I'm not a trump supporter or right wing or a climate denier. But the Paris agreement is shit. Its a non binding "accord" to do nothing and hope that the problem goes away. The pretense that it matters or will make a difference (let alone actually solve the issue) activey prevents progress.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#240

Post by ben_w »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #193
maxerickson wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which is why Tesla is now talking about Terafactories rather than just Gigafactories for battery production.
Post reply on HN