Very good, and particularly well balanced, analysis.
(08-13-2019 02:39 AM)Stugray2 Wrote: Cows as a major source is BS. Human farting is probably greater than cows. There are 7.53 Billion of us around the world.
First we need to get things in perspective. Carbon emission rate in all forms is about 50 times the environmental absorption rate. This is greater than the rate of the great extinction events caused by volcanic activity over millions of years. If we are serious about slowing climate change we need to reduce output by 98% worldwide. Obviously the US producing under 15% of that total cannot do that alone (China is above 20%), but we can be an example for other developed countries and developing.
Can much actually be done to increase the absorption rate? I think economics are going to drive the continued reduction of the Amazon rain forest, and there goes a major absorption asset. It seems that the majority of the Europeans' cap-and-trade compliance efforts are directed in the area of increasing offsets, but I'm not sure how effective that is. I wonder if we could find ways to get water to areas that are currently desert and grow forests there. I've thought about the Qattara Depression (small), Lake Eyre (has been discussed, problem is the evaporation rate, but if that could be handled it would surely produce enough rainfall to increase Australian agricultural production mightily), or getting desalinized sea water to the head of the Niger (at altitude but very close to coast) in sufficient quantities to maintain a steady flow for irrigation downstream, turning south Sahara into productive land. Each of these would also remove some sea water, possibly delaying the impact of sea level rising, although not sure if te impact would be material. It's probably a hard sell, since the locals will probably strongly favor growing food for subsistence rather than waiting on trees, and any such agriculture is probably a net producer. But maybe it could be made financially attractive. I've not seen a lot on increasing absorption, but I think that might offer some promise. We are almost certainly not going to cut carbon emissions by 98% worldwide, so this might be a way to hedge the bets a bit.
Quote:(Andrew Yang is partly right, we have baked in significant climate change, but we can dramatically reduce the length and severity of that with massive reduction)
The primary culprit for carbon emission is electrical power generation. It is approaching 55% of the total in the US. Autos and transportation other than air has dipped below 40%; Air traffic is 5%.
Power generation is the key, since it's the biggest piece and it's also the piece with ready solutions. The US has actually cut emissions more than almost any other country, primarily by shifting from coal to natural gas for electricity generation. But that can only go so far.
One problem that shift creates is economic displacement in coal-producing regions, and the US has a lot of coal, as do many other countries. I wonder ow much potential the old German WWII technologies to liquefy as gasify coal might have. The problem with the processes as theist is that they produce a lot of the very CO2 that we are trying to eliminate, but it's point source CO2 that can be captured and sequestered and dealt with a lot more easily than dispersed source CO2, and that may be a reasonable trade for cleaner burning fuel when used.
Quote:Shifting to electric cars is mostly transferring the source of CO2 but not doing much to reduce the actual output. I read somewhere that you actually have to drive your Tesla 9 to 13 years to produce less of a footprint than a Toyota Corolla or similar sub compact. The manufacturing process and electrical power generation eats up most of the savings. That changes if the electricity is emission free.
So we should seek to move electricity generation to emission free as we seek to develop electric cars further.
Quote:But this is one of two points the left falls down in it's Green Programs -- which to be honest are being pushed as jobs programs rather than climate impacting (well that is more what they do). Wind and Solar can pick up a little bit but at huge cost. Where economical it's worth pursuing, but it's only going to chip at the edges of the total. What the left doesn't want to touch is Nuclear power generation (not all, a few like Jay Inslee have embraced it; Booker, Delaney, Klobuchar and Biden belong in that group, but less enthusiastically). It's really a pretty clear choice, go nuclear or accept the >70% of power generation will come from fossil fuels.
I'm not sure how well green-programs-as-job-programs actually works. Yes, you create jobs in the green energy business, but you lose jobs elsewhere. If the green jobs pay a lot more, it can be a net benefit, but otherwise I think it's no better than a push.
Any realistic carbon-reduction program has to acknowledge that nuclear has to be a big part of it, at least until some magic new technology appears from the heavens on golden tablets.
Quote:The other issue all sides ignore is immigration. The US added 50M people from 1999 to 2019. We went from 279M to 329M people. These additional 50M greatly increase our carbon footprint, as well as other resources. If we continue on the current policy trajectory and add another 50M in the next 20 years, then much if not all the reduction in CO2 will be eaten up by these additional people's emissions. We really need to move to an immigration policy of replacement level and not increasing.
Note: business loves adding 1.8M people a year to the population as it gives a GDP boost and growth for "free" (to them). The government wants them, in order o keep the actuarial tables working for Social Security. Colleges want them for more high paying students. Business wants them, so they can higher high end workers and not have to take students from "B" schools in key roles, and most of us want it for people doing the miserable jobs cheap.
Reducing immigration to replacement level means we have to solve a bunch of issues. Business will have to figure out how to fill key developer roles with 1/3rd the number of H1B, farmers will have to figure out how to harvest with fewer workers. Our education system will have to be more efficient and productive to produce a higher percentage of people capable of doing the high end jobs. In short we'll have to waste a lot fewer people than we do.
Immigration is a bit of a tricky one, because of the tradeoffs you mention. One thing that is not well understood is that most other countries--Europe (including especially Russia), Japan, Canada, particularly China with it's one-child policy--are about to experience severe shortages of working-age people. With their aging populations needing pensions and health care, they could be facing almost impossible economic issues. They are--and should be, perhaps even more--sweetening the pot to attract younger people, or keep the ones they have at home. I think we may find ourselves in stiff competition for those immigrants who actually bring significant skills to the table. That would clearly impact the immigration growth that we have experienced, but we probably need to adopt policies that will enable us to continue to attract highly-skilled individuals that we need to keep our economy going. I think we need to go to a merit-based immigration system, based on a points calculation similar to what most of the rest of the developed world does.
Quote:These are the forces arrayed against actually reducing CO2. This is why the Paris accord only calls for a 70% increase in CO2 emissions rather than the 95% increase that would occur doing next to nothing (Cap and trade concept which Europe uses has failed completely; countries instead use it as a substitute for foreign aid, as the aid total goes down "cap and trade" number to the same countries goes up). You can add to it the denier lobby, back by fossil fuels which is strong in the US.
This is what I find absurd. We need per your calculations a 98% reduction. So we make a huge deal of committing to a 70% increase, with no tools to enforce it except the US agrees to write a bunch of checks. I'm not a denier, but I'm very skeptical of anyone who tells me that we have an existential crisis on our hands, and to deal with it, we're going to agree to make it only 70% worse, with no real consequence to anyone who can't achieve that. I think a lot of the "denier lobby" is not so much truly denying as they are saying, "Really? That's the best you can do?"
Quote:Note, my platform would add a 3rd element to nuclear and immigration. Hydrogen for internal combustion, as rural areas are not well suited to electrical transportation. This is a conversion system, efficient but none the less just energy conversion, and still has to be generated via electrical power. That makes nukes even more important to attack the 40% which is transportation.
Hydrogen is a great concept, except as you say it's really just energy conversion, and the conversion process takes such great amounts of power that it only becomes carbon-reducing if we get to 100% nuclear and wind/solar electricity generation (which practically means something like 80% nuclear and 20% wind/solar if we want to maintain base load to support our industrial economy).
I think cars are a challenge because of the need to take their energy supply with them. One place that I think we could make a dent is electric trains, which can draw energy from permanent sources as they go along. Europe has them, and I think we could too, but we need that nuke electricity first.
Quote:The hardest piece is aviation. How do you replace Jet fuel?
You don't. Fortunately it is such a minor part of the total that we can come back to it later after we address everything else. The Navy made a big deal of some test flights using bio jet fuel, but that's a long way from happening on any appreciable scale.
I think we can and must find ways to do a whole lot better than a 70% increase. I think we need some BHAGs. If we could reduce emissions 50% and triple or quadruple absorption, then we might have something. If the US could accomplish this without destroying our economy, then we could take a leadership role in the world. If we implement things that negatively impact our economy without materially reducing emissions, the rest of te world is not going to follow.
Of course, what if it turns out that this warming was mainly due to solar activity, and we have spent a ton of money for little impact? If the decisions were economically sound, we would still be fine. If we did things hysterically that were not economically sound, that's a different story.
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