03-30-2019, 05:40 AM
(03-29-2019 11:38 PM)flash3200 Wrote: [ -> ](03-29-2019 09:53 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ]I have a great idea...let's let the free market work and figure out when the right time is to allow green tech to supplant fossil across the various energy uses of our economy. It's pretty f'ing simple...just sit here and do nothing and let the 7.5 billion people on planet earth self select their energy source. Think we need a price on carbon because it is evil and the Galveston seawall might need to be 6 inches taller in 50 years? Put a price on carbon, force every country to pay for it via tariffs when they import to the USA, and let the market figure it out. Wind, Solar, Algae farts, energy efficiency, not eating meat, taking covered wagons in lieu of aircraft...we will figure it out quickly once a carbon price is established. This back and forth about what can work or won't work is all idiot-speak for statists and idiots who think that driving a Prius is going to save the polar bears.(03-29-2019 09:19 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote: [ -> ]Did I suggest we dismantle our economy and shirk technology? That seems like a really far reach, no?Where did I say that you suggested that? I didn't. I'm saying that's the impact of the green policies currently being proposed.
We cannot move FROM fossil fuels until we have a viable alternative to move TO. And right now, that something to move TO is what's lacking. And setting an arbitrary deadline with no available alternative is the absolute pinnacle of stupidity.
So we destroy our economy, the rest of the world says no f-ing way, and in the end we go broke and have infinitesimal effect on global temperatures a century from now. I can think of one way that we might have a significant effect. Once we go to farming without fossil fuels, our food production will drop so precipitously that half the world will starve, and the other half will kill each other fighting over what food is left, and that will certainly reduce human impact on the environment.
It's an absurd goal. I know, people say JFK challenged us to go to the moon in a decade, and out of nowhere came a space program that got it done. Except that's not what happened. We already had a space program, we already had astronauts, three of them had already flown in space, and the rockets tat eventually took us to the moon were already being developed. We would have been on the moon by probably 1975 or so without JFK's challenge. He just ratcheted it up a bit.
That's not the case with green energy. We have some things that work, but most of them have limited applicability. We don't have answers to the scale and infrastructure issues that inevitably prove to be the hard ones. We don't have a practical way to take a green road trip.
The Texas electric grid (ERCOT) routinely has more than 50% renewable penetration (IE the amount of electricity consumed at any point can be over 50% renewable) and Texas enjoys the most renewable capacity installed of any state and is pretty high up on the list if we were a country. New renewable projects continue to be built in Texas at this very moment. How did this happen? The PUCT put in place some pretty basic ground rules, the federal government implemented the PTC, and the free market went to work in a resource rich state. The government literally did nothing outside of a few one pagers, and the Texas grid has no problems handling over 50% renewables which people said was "implausible" etc. a few years ago. They were full of it...we are cranking out the wind power and solar is not far behind as y-o-y solar capacity growth is coming in around 25%-50% in a state with zero incentives for solar and zero carbon price.
It is simple, if you think carbon has a price, create an economy for carbon and everything else will follow. The results of the action will be wildly different than the mentally deficient GND. The fact that we are even having this discussion makes me think how many people are brain damaged. We might not even need a market for carbon as technology (Moore's law etc) is rapidly dropping the cost of renewables to the level of incremental costs of fossil fuel extraction. The arguments over the GND are the dumbest **** I have ever heard since the theories that Trump is a Russian plant.
Yep.
One interesting point, renewables are far more attractive under a deregulated pricing model than under the traditional regulated utility model. Texas probably has the most deregulated electricity market in the country and we have the greenest supply. The two are far more than coincidental.