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July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

nytimes.com

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Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#371

Post by pjc50 »

bcarrell wrote: post #358

I own a home built in the 1960s in the northeast US. My home (like many others, I'm sure) uses an oil-fired boiler to provide heating and hot water. I don't have gas lines to my house. The gas company won't run them unless I pay ~$5,000 for them to do so. Even if my home used natural gas instead of oil, I feel like it's not really solving the problem. What are my options here? Is solar viable? What can _I_ reasonably…

Incremental improvements are the only way. Only you can make the decision as to what's viable for you. How's your insulation? Political engagement matters too: is there anything you'd like to lobby for or against?

I declared solar PV viable for me in Scotland at 56N, due to the available feed-in tariffs, and it's working pretty well. House not so old but the gas heating bill is unpleasantly high.

Don't overlook transport in global warming, it's not just about the house.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#372

Post by Daishiman »

DannyBee wrote: post #352
bad_user wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that costs are subsidized by basically letting businesses destroy the environment. The solution should be simple: add lots of taxes, let the off-the-shelf cost of meat and gasoline reflect the real cost to our environment, make deforestation a crime, tax the shit out of all polluting industries and if a country is not participating add taxes on imports from said country, or ban those imports altogether…

"The problem is that costs are subsidized by basically letting businesses destroy the environment. The solution should be simple: add lots of taxes, let the off-the-shelf cost of meat and gasoline reflect the real cost to our environment, make deforestation a crime, tax the shit out of all polluting industries and if a country is not participating add taxes on imports from said country, or ban those imports altogethe…

What do you mean? You're discarding the solution as something completely impractical when the reality is that import tariffs and taxes are very effective at controlling certain behaviors and mitigating the second-order effects of certain economic activity.

Recycling, sin taxes, environmental regulation and control for polluting industries. They are not 100% effective but they are clearly way more effective than the alternative of doing nothing.

We don't live in a black and white world where people either accept prohibition passively or defy it just because. There are cost-benefit relationships to doing these things and reasonable economic policy is about striking the balance that allows the most beneficial results.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#373

Post by zaroth »

mseebach wrote: post #288
bsdetector wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question becomes if the taxes are raised high enough to actually impact or reverse climate change, will people abide by them? If it costs $100/day to heat your home in the winter are you going to pay that or buy black market kerosene or just chop down a tree and burn it when no government inspector is around? There's a limit to how much can be done with taxes.

First, there's no evidence that the carbon tax would have to be so high to be effective - $7-20/ton[1], probably increasing over time. US emissions per person is the world highest at 16.5 tons -- that's several hundred dollars per year , not day. Second, the revenue from the carbon tax should be fed back to the people by lowering other taxes. It should be net-zero on the government budget. The point is to create a cl…

> US emissions per person is the world highest at 16.5 tons -- that's several hundred dollars per year, not day.

That's 16.5 tons per man, woman, and child, right? So potentially over $1,000 for a family of 4.

> Second, the revenue from the carbon tax should be fed back to the people by lowering other taxes. It should be net-zero on the government budget.

The bottom 50% of earners currently pay about 3% of Federal taxes. So if you are planning on replacing the progressive income tax with a carbon tax I think you're going to run into pretty substantial problems with regressive brackets massively increasing taxes on the lower and middle class.

Total US emissions were 6.8 billion tons. At $7/ton that's about $50 billion or 1.5% of total Federal tax receipts. Sounds like no big deal, right? But for the bottom 50% it's a $25 billion tax hike on their existing $100 billion bill -- you've just raised taxes 25% on the bottom half.

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#374

Post by spdustin »

I've come to the (I feel) inevitable conclusion that we are already well and truly fucked. I will still do what I can to slow the inexorable slide into worldwide famine, war and anarchy, in the hopes that the majority of my children's lives will be made incrementally better, should they choose to remain on this planet (and, it is assumed, that they may actually have a choice, but there's no way I can know).

We're on the wrong side of the story arc here. It's too late. The damage has been done, and it will continue to snowball even if we stop putting carbon (as both CO2 and methane) into the atmosphere today. Anyone who cooks can instinctively understand how "carryover heat" works - the temperature gradient hasn't yet finished equalizing, the latent energy (and, for that matter, the latent GH gasses) stored in the oceans and, indeed, the land itself hasn't yet made its full effects felt, and we've successfully argued and argued and argued about it without actually doing anything substantial enough to make a meaningful difference.

But that sort of hopeless talk makes me sound like a crackpot, and I've typed this sort of message into many a text field on the Internet over the past year before deleting it, or pressing cancel, or closing the browser tab. But today, in a moment of vulnerability, or for another reason I can't hope to know, something is telling me to press "submit".

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#375

Post by chr1 »

goodmachine wrote: post #204
harryh wrote: post #44

Personally I think that the idea that these trends can ever be revered by some sort of world wide agreement to lower consumption is a pipe dream. People want to eat meat and drive cars and fly on airplanes. As long as they're rich enough to do so you'll never stop them. The only solution to this problem is technology. Some combination of green energy sources plus probably very large scale terraforming.

Regarding terraforming, I suggest a quick win may be to trigger a volcanic super-eruption. The cooling effect is known to reduce global temperatures to refreshing and/or bracing levels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter I was leaning towards using nuclear weapons to kick things off, but the potential side effects of such an event will probably be tricky enough, without the giant dust clouds soon to enshro…

Alice: Looks like there is a wasp nest under the roof, we need to do something about it

Bob: Let's blow it up with dynamite!

When thinking about terraforming people tend to think of megaprojects that would "fix" everything at once, but that doesn't work.

There are much more predictable and safer ways to do terraforming, e.g. desalinating water, building canals, planting forests, ferilizing ocean in the worst case.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#376

Post by tomp »

mikeash wrote: post #368
bluehazed wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Energy storage solves that problem" Yes, but we don't have that solution.

I'm puzzled as to why you quote part of my comment and then act like I didn't think of the point you're making, when I made the exact opposite point just one sentence later. Batteries, pumped hydro, thermal storage, and many other technologies exist. They just need to become cheap enough. Thus, the problem is once again price.

It's not just price. None of the technologies you mention scale to anywhere near the levels of a nuclear powerplant. It's a huge engineering issue that, while most likely solvable, simply hasn't been solved yet.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#377

Post by jpollock »

bcarrell wrote: post #358

I own a home built in the 1960s in the northeast US. My home (like many others, I'm sure) uses an oil-fired boiler to provide heating and hot water. I don't have gas lines to my house. The gas company won't run them unless I pay ~$5,000 for them to do so. Even if my home used natural gas instead of oil, I feel like it's not really solving the problem. What are my options here? Is solar viable? What can _I_ reasonably…

We already give pretty good indications on how much carbon something is producing based on the power/oil bill. If you act to reduce your total outgoings, you're probably heading in the right direction.

Add insulation. If your house was built in 1960, was it retrofitted with wall insulation? Put more into the ceiling.

Depending on how much space you have, you can de-carbon your heat generation. Investigate heat pumps (ground loop for up there) for both hot air and hot water.

Solar hot water might be viable. In the US, the tax breaks make solar power a gimme if you have the money.

Stop watering the lawn, and install rain water tanks for any gardens you have.

As appliances die, replace them with more energy efficient ones. A small full fridge is more efficient than a large empty one. Beer and wine fridges should be gotten rid of.

Then, try to convert peak load to base load. Shift to a demand pricing tariff at your power company (where the price changes by time of day), and then try to lower your bill by changing when you do things.

Then we get into transport reduction, which is another whole kettle of fish.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#378

Post by bcarrell »

ianlevesque wrote: post #369
bcarrell wrote: post #358

I own a home built in the 1960s in the northeast US. My home (like many others, I'm sure) uses an oil-fired boiler to provide heating and hot water. I don't have gas lines to my house. The gas company won't run them unless I pay ~$5,000 for them to do so. Even if my home used natural gas instead of oil, I feel like it's not really solving the problem. What are my options here? Is solar viable? What can _I_ reasonably…

Better insulation was missing from your list (or was maybe part of "etc") but if you want a more efficient heating / cooling system ground source heat pumps are an option. They can run from the grid more efficiently than most other sources of heating or cooling or optionally be combined with solar.

Walls were stripped to studs approx. 8 years ago and new (fiberglass) insulation installed at that point. Attic has batt insulation.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#379

Post by mikeash »

tomp wrote: post #376
mikeash wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm puzzled as to why you quote part of my comment and then act like I didn't think of the point you're making, when I made the exact opposite point just one sentence later. Batteries, pumped hydro, thermal storage, and many other technologies exist. They just need to become cheap enough. Thus, the problem is once again price.

It's not just price. None of the technologies you mention scale to anywhere near the levels of a nuclear powerplant. It's a huge engineering issue that, while most likely solvable, simply hasn't been solved yet.

How so? Pretty much any building you can point at has enough space for batteries to sustain its power needs overnight. The only reason we haven't all run out and done it is because, first, it's not necessary with the grid as it is now, and second, it costs a whole lot.

The engineering issues are in getting this stuff to be sufficiently cost effective that we can afford to put them into wide use.

Re: July was the hottest month ever recorded, according to Nasa

#380

Post by kurthr »

DannyBee wrote: post #352
bad_user wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that costs are subsidized by basically letting businesses destroy the environment. The solution should be simple: add lots of taxes, let the off-the-shelf cost of meat and gasoline reflect the real cost to our environment, make deforestation a crime, tax the shit out of all polluting industries and if a country is not participating add taxes on imports from said country, or ban those imports altogether…

"The problem is that costs are subsidized by basically letting businesses destroy the environment. The solution should be simple: add lots of taxes, let the off-the-shelf cost of meat and gasoline reflect the real cost to our environment, make deforestation a crime, tax the shit out of all polluting industries and if a country is not participating add taxes on imports from said country, or ban those imports altogethe…

Although I basically agree with you (Fear & Greed aren't just what drive the Stock Market) the problem is that the Politics of Fear seem (to me) to be far more dangerous short term... but if people aren't afraid of their frog being boiled, what are we to do?

Some form of global collectivism will be required to deal with extreme climate change, whether it is enforced by governments or insurance companies and banks.

Alternately, pull out and nuke it from orbit... it's the only way to be sure.

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