The Presidential Candidate With a Plan To Run the US On 100% Clean Energy 308
merbs writes: Thus far, no other candidate has said they're going to make climate change their top priority. Martin O'Malley has not only done that, but he has outlined a plan that would enact emissions reductions in line with what scientists say is necessary to slow global climate change—worldwide emissions reductions of 40-70 percent by 2050. He's the only candidate to do that, too. His plan would phase out fossil-fueled power plants altogether, by midcentury.
Phase out fossil-fueled power plants by midcentury (Score:3)
Thus far, no other candidate has said they're going to make climate change their top priority.
Ever notice how politicians' plans are always far out in the future? Sure, 35 years is within the scope of of most of our lives, but usually they are well past the time that the politicians proposing them will be around to face the consequences. We hear the same thing all the time about balancing the budget and paying down the deficit ever since Reagan, but neither one has happened yet.
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We hear the same thing all the time about balancing the budget and paying down the deficit ever since Reagan, but neither one has happened yet.
At least 50% false (because I have no idea what was done with the "surplus" in those years): http://www.heritage.org/multim... [heritage.org]
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Insert lecture on the difference between technical and pointlessly pedantic here...
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Hate to be technical
This is Slashdot. You are supposed to be technical.
but a "balanced" budget be $0. So we've had 4 years out of the past 35 that had a surplus
In many of those 35 years, most of the debt was purchased by the Federal Reserve, which pays all interest back to the treasury. So that is more like transferring assets from one ledger book to another, rather than real net debt. Or, to put it another way, since the effect was to dilute the money supply, that debt was already paid off by taxing cash.
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The other alternative is an honest government is elected, audit the Federal reserve, point out it fraudulent and conspiratorial nature, seize it's assets, throw it's executives and investors in prison, seizing their assets and voilÃ, no debt, in fact likely a very high surplus. That money that is owed is owed to someone and when that someone can legally pretend to have money to lend and the claim repayment via real assets, logically that is fraud and a conspiracy and they should be in jail.
Re:Phase out fossil-fueled power plants by midcent (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, until very recently, the Social Security budget was running in the black and contributing to the ability of the US government to spend. Unfortunately, all of the Social Security surplus was invested, in accordance with the law, in US Treasury bonds, and those debts were not counted as part of the federal budget deficits. So the problem is not in the Social Security budget, per se, but in Congress having already spent all of the Social Security surpluses of the past.
Re:Phase out fossil-fueled power plants by midcent (Score:4, Informative)
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Thus far, no other candidate has said they're going to make climate change their top priority.
Ever notice how politicians' plans are always far out in the future? Sure, 35 years is within the scope of of most of our lives, but usually they are well past the time that the politicians proposing them will be around to face the consequences. We hear the same thing all the time about balancing the budget and paying down the deficit ever since Reagan, but neither one has happened yet.
Amen to that.
If we are gonna claim to be serious about cutting emissions, France has already proven the technology to do so has already existed for a long time. We can start funding the deployment of nuclear power on a large scale now. The technology all existed to transition years ago already when France did it and used it to this day to sell energy to the rest of Europe.
Meandering mouth service to researching solar or wind or some other solution isn't bad per se, but it is absolutely inadequate to stop th
Re:Phase out fossil-fueled power plants by midcent (Score:5, Insightful)
Followed the link, searched for nuclear, didn't find it in the story. Closed the page.
If you are espousing 0 emission energy in the next 35 years, and you don't mention nuclear as a necessary component, then you are lying.
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Followed the link, searched for nuclear, didn't find it in the story. Closed the page.
If you are espousing 0 emission energy in the next 35 years, and you don't mention nuclear as a necessary component, then you are lying.
I agree if you do NOT mention using nuclear power you are lying or stupid. Tim S.
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Nuclear power has gone from "too cheap to meter" to "too expensive to matter".
There are many problems with nuclear but its high cost will end up killing it.
Solar and wind are cheaper and battery storage can match supply to demand.
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Re:Phase out fossil-fueled power plants by midcent (Score:5, Insightful)
I heartily support the construction of all nuclear plants that have an competitive lifecycle cost. I'm sure they will a fill a niche in the market that the currently endless flood of solar, wind, and grid-storage bids at a quarter the cost cannot possibly fill.
Sarcasm aside, take a look at some of the recent [cleantechnica.com] studies [cleantechnica.com] showing how to decarbonize electricity production in the next 20 to 40 years with no new research, and coincidentally, very little new nuclear capacity. The ONLY barriers are social and political--even now the economics are so compelling that every call for projects solicits more than regulators and utilities want to accept. In another 2-5 years, battery tech will invalidate every last excuse they have been using to discourage wind and solar, and the fuel-free future will finally take off.
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so how are you creating those pv panels without oil?
Unicorn blood?
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Quite apart from the most dubious assumptions that go into such simplistic "100%" calculations, the notion of "jobs created" is nonsense. The 6 million jobs that this is supposed to "create" aren't created, they are diverted from other places. The time and effort they spend digging holes for onshore wind farms is time and effort that is unavailable for building the next space port, or fusion research lab, or highway, or whatever.
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Yes, perhaps we too can do it the German way. All we need to do is reopen all our old coal-fired power plants, while at the same time encouraging Mexico to install nuclear, so we can buy it from them.
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France has already proven the technology to do so has already existed for a long time.
Exists, yes, but at a substantially higher cost than what we in the U.S. are used to paying, therefore involving substantial economic disruption.
France didn't go to nuclear initially because it was cleaner, nor cheaper; they did it because they don't have fossil fuel resources.
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We have cars coming off the assembly line now that will take 20 years to fully phase out. As much as I'd love to just throw fossil fuels out the window, the transition will take time.
Unless you believe in magic.
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tell me what you are going to do to clean up the messes that the previous presidents have made in your actual term
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Yep, and in Maryland, O'Malley was famed mostly for talking out of his ass and raising taxes...and this after he finished screwing up Baltimore as mayor.
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If it doesn't include nuclear... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then it's not a plan. It's just a bullshit pipe dream that he's selling you for your vote.
Re:If it doesn't include nuclear... (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't really talk about nuclear in any way. You can read between the lines a bit, though.
It talks about mandating clean energy by 2050. Clean energy is not strictly defined -- by most standards I've seen, nuclear is clean because it doesn't have significant carbon emissions. And there's a lot about capping carbon emissions.
Other parts of the document talk about increasing renewable energy use, which is not nuclear but doesn't contradict nuclear also being used.
Parts of the document talk about ending all subsidies for fossil fuels. Nuclear is definitely not a fossil fuel.
The same guy has been on the record in the past (2009) as pro-nuclear, but I didn't find any more recent statements (other than Iran): http://us.arevablog.com/2009/0... [arevablog.com]
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Those kinds of arguments are uniformly bullshit, because they assume that the construction and decommissioning activities, etc. somehow can't possibly also run on energy derived from the same source!
Equipment used to build nuclear plants can run on electricity generated by (previously-built) nuclear plants.
Feedstock for biodiesel can be harvested by farm equipment running on biodiesel.
Photovoltaic panel factories can run on solar electricity.
Or you can mix and match!
The idea that green power isn't "really"
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Also consider the emissions associated with uranium mining, purification
Well that is a steaming pile of BS. Having been to large ore mines, iron not uranium but probably not much different equipment wise, the haul truck, shovels, and conveyor belts could all easily run off of electricity. The big shovels are all electrical internally but usually have a large stationary 2 stroke diesel engine nearby providing the power so this is just a change of power source. Most of the large haul trucks while diesel are all electric drive with the engine being a large generator and there have
Re:If it doesn't include nuclear... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got nothing against nuclear. It can play an important role in the energy economics of the future. But pro-nuke nuts really need to get a grip. In the real world, and not in the fantasy world that they imagine, nuclear is extremely expensive; far more expensive than wind or solar, on average. Some people fudge their figures in various ways (not taking into account decommissioning costs and waste handling costs, etc.) to make it look like it isn't, though.
Nuclear makes sense in places where wind, solar, and hydroelectric aren't available or are expensive for the quantity of power needed. For instance, near some dense population centers. But if you look at the way energy technology is going, we don't really need nuclear to transition away from fossil fuels. Sure, it might help, but we can do without it if needed. Solar is a minor player now, but it's growing fast. In the future solar could very well provide us with all the power we're ever going to need and more. Actually, it's even possible there's going to be a huge surplus of power.
Re:If it doesn't include nuclear... (Score:5, Interesting)
nuclear is extremely expensive; far more expensive than wind or solar, on average.
True, but Nuclear works when its dark and there's no wind. Nuclear is a base load source so should only be compared against other base load sources.
Some people fudge their figures in various ways (not taking into account decommissioning costs and waste handling costs, etc.) to make it look like it isn't, though.
Nuclear probably has the most accurate and transparent cost model of all the base load options. So if it looks expensive, it's because all power generation is, but Nuclear is forced to include ALL costs, while the likes of coal get a free ride. If you include the costs of climate change, which is a cost of Coal Power, it's pretty much the most expensive thing ever in all of human history.
Nuclear? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuclear isn't clean by any stretch, but it is 'clean air' which is what we probably need most right now. I'd love to see full renewable but a more reasonable plan would be nuclear in the short (30-50) year term while renewable/storage becomes grid capable.
Re:Nuclear? (Score:5, Insightful)
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nuclear is a VERY good bridge between coal/oil/gas and "clean energy".
That was definitely true in 1980. In the 1990's we chose gas as the bridging tech (re: fracking boom), however we have now clearly crossed the gas bridge and arrived on the other side. The massive efficiency gap between generating electricity with FF vs renewables that existed in the 1980's no longer exists. Today the "smart money" is on renewables becoming cheaper than coal in the near future. Here in Australia it's already a "no-brainer" to put solar panels on a new home, and that's with a far-right gover
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Not a lot of storage is necessary as long as electricity is never priced below market equilibrium, which it should never be. So all we really need to keep the grid blackout- and brownout-free running exclusively on renewable energy are smart meters and lead-acid batteries.
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Those of us who have to run our air-conditioners 24/7 seven+ months of the year disagree. A lot of storage is necessary, or a lot of the energy producers have to be baseload. For which read "nuclear"....
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What has base load to do with storage or nuclear?
I suggest to learn what base load means.
The base load does not change if you exchange the power plants ... regardless from which technology to which.
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Have to, or want to? How would you have survived before residential A/C, and what's different today?
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According to my coworker who grew up in phoenix. Asphalt, miles and miles of asphalt.
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Whoever owns that asphalt should pay your electric bill in proportion to how much they increased it.
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Nuclear isn't clean by any stretch
*sigh*
Actually modern nuclear IS relatively clean and can process existing nuclear waste, thereby making the world *less* irradiated.
Re:Nuclear? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure what you mean here. "can process nuclear waste"? To the best of my knowledge nearly all of the waste of commercial power reactors is sitting on site in vast pools of water. It hasn't been processed, and I'm not aware of imminent plans to process it. So, really, it seems that there are some problems that are preventing the processing. Maybe in theory we can process it, but in reality it isn't happening. This is still a big barrier to widespread construction of new nuclear plants.
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So, really, it seems that there are some problems that are preventing the processing.
Those are social problems rather than engineering ones.
Re:Nuclear? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it is "social problems", but that doesn't make it any less real. Fukishima, Three Mile Island, Chernoble, and Fermi accidents have all created a widespread mistrust of the nuclear industry's assurances that nuclear power is safe. Realistically, this "social issue" isn't going away just because some engineers wish it would. The nuclear overlords have screwed up big time in the risk management of these facilities, and there likely have been other screw-ups that didn't turn out so badly. It may be mostly a social issue, but it is a problem that isn't going away soon.
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No, instead we're left with aging plants using older, much more questionable designs that are too costly
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It's true that people are overly paranoid about nuclear but that's not why reprocessing is not being done. Reprocessing is just too expensive, plain and simple.
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So, really, it seems that there are some problems that are preventing the processing.
Yeah, Carter outlawed it, so since no one repealed that law, it is illegal to reprocess spent fuel.
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Wasn't Carter a nuculer engineer? Why would he outlaw it? I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here, since the President doesn't make laws, congress does.
Laws can be changed. Why hasn't the nuclear industry sought a reversal? You would think it would be at the top of the industry's wish list, since reprocessing is probably the biggest barrier to nuclear power.
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His Op-Ed doesn't mention nuclear even once.
To be fair, it doesn't mention ANY specific replacement power supply other than 'renewable'. It doesn't mention solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, biomass, etc....
I also hit his site up, and there's no additional information there. Plenty of asking for money though.
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actually, we (by this I mean americans) don't need clean air right now. Our air is cleaner than it's been in 50 years. and it's only going to get better over the next 20 years as old tech is phased out in favor of tech we have today. This will happen without further advancement in this technology.
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but we don't currently have any way to store it in a grid scale type of way
This is FUD spread by the coal industry, they are trying to make you believe "base load" does not need batteries. The truth is that coal and nuclear already have a network of giant batteries called "hydroelectric dams", that they recharge during off peak times when the plant is generating too much electricity. They need dams and gas fired turbines today because their output curve is flat whereas the demand curve of a city is not. In fact all forms of large scale generation need "batteries" for the simple fa
Better title: (Score:3)
bonus: you can reuse it for any of them
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The Presidential Candidate with an Unrealistic Campaign Promise
Can't use that as a headline. It's not news.
Yeah, well .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Many of us in Maryland know this character ALL too well already. Typical liberal "tax and spend" agenda is what you can expect from him. "We're the government and we know what's best for you."
Thanks, but no thanks.
Look, "climate change" may be the hot discussion topic right now - but it's crazy thinking we can put a serious dent in it and "turn it around" simply by shutting down a bunch of our nation's power generation plants! (Right now, we're finally coming around in energy self-sufficiency, largely because of the discovery of large natural gas and shale oil deposits. Folks like O'Malley would discard all of this as "bad fossil fuels", even though much of the rest of the world will keep on using fossil fuel energy sources anyway. That means we're at a big economic disadvantage. Will be far cheaper to get things done in the nations that have lower cost energy to get them done for us -- so leads to more outsourcing of manufacturing and jobs, not to mention job loss in our country for people in the business of gathering, processing and selling those forms of energy.)
Fossil fuel usage will decline as better alternatives become economically viable. (Who wouldn't rather get "free energy" from the wind, the natural flow of water, or the sun shining down on us?) Those options are being worked on by lots of people and we're putting them into use as fast as it makes economic sense to do so. But you can't just "legislate them into exclusive usage" and pretend that's a problem solver! Whenever you're legally FORCED to use a technology that doesn't make good economic sense, you just increase the cost of living, destroy job availability and drive people to find other places in the world where alternatives are still allowed.
Frankly, I think nuclear power is still the obvious best option for large scale centralized power generation -- but the type of reactors needed to do it safely are VERY costly to construct and still have to overcome a lot of negativity from "OMG, nuclear! It's gonna kill us all!" types who don't understand the technology very well. Again, it's something that will naturally come with time (and as given fossil fuels become scarce enough to run their price up enough to make these alternatives look better).
Re:Yeah, well .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who indeed.
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-f... [priceofoil.org]
http://www.petrostrategies.org... [petrostrategies.org]
https://www.opensecrets.org/po... [opensecrets.org]
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I would rather have a "tax and spend" liberal, than a "cut tax and spend more" conservative.
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Fossil fuel usage will decline as better alternatives become economically viable.
If you add to the cost of fossil fuel the damage they do that time will come much sooner. If my neighbor builds a house by piling all the dirt on my property it will be a lot cheaper for him. If someone burns fossil fuel and warms the planet they don't personally bear the costs. Proper treatment of what economists call "externalities" has to be the job of society in the form of the government. That's what a carbon tax is all about. We solved acid rain at much less
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As a liberal from Maryland, I'd like to add that O'Malley was such a terrible governor that a solid blue state elected a virtually unknown Republican to succeed him.
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Look, "climate change" may be the hot discussion topic right now - but it's crazy thinking we can put a serious dent in it and "turn it around" simply by shutting down a bunch of our nation's power generation plants!
That's the most infuriating, idiotic thing that is continually said in this sort of discussion.
Here, let me spell it out for you - why do you think the global temperature has _DRAMATICALLY_ spiked in recent years? Explain to me, in an intelligent way, how and why the temperature of the entire planet has increased faster and more radically than it normally does.
If you need some help, here, let me help you: It's because of us.
We are releasing so much garbage into the air that we are causing the temperature of
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What we don't know is what the effects will be when we start drawing thousands of megawatts directly out of the environment.
Well, considering the solar energy coming into the environment is a net 170,000 terawatts, the 0.0003% represented by a few hundred gigawatts isn't really all that significant. Even the geothermal flux of 47 terawatts dwarfs it.
Consider also that we're not removing energy from the environment (it's not destroyed), we're just redistributing it - the energy is re-radiated elsewhere, ending up as heat (which is what most solar radiation, wind energy etc ends up as also). There may of course be specific sites t
Don't let him fool you.... (Score:3)
This is politics at it's best, say something which everybody agrees with, even if it's not possible. Claim you have a plan! We can pass a law! Never mind that what you are promising is simply not possible.
There is no such thing as "CLEAN" energy on an industrial scale. Literally EVERYTHING has negative environmental impact. You simply cannot avoid it. Of course you can just declare that some technology is clean (i.e. "Clean Coal") if you want, but that doesn't make it so, nor does it mean you fulfilled your promise.
Now when some candidate comes out and starts saying things like "environmentally responsible energy sources" and mentions that he likes fracking for natural gas because it's domestic, fairly clean and we have a lot of it, that's the politician I'm going to pay attention to. The guy that starts talking about conservation of the energy we now use is more likely to get my vote than this nut job. They are thinking about the issue, not just dropping politically correct phrases on us.
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Now when some candidate comes out and starts saying things like "environmentally responsible energy sources" and mentions that he likes fracking for natural gas because it's domestic, fairly clean and we have a lot of it, that's the politician I'm going to pay attention to.
Well, it's better than coal but worse than just about everything else.
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Now when some candidate comes out and starts saying things like "environmentally responsible energy sources" and mentions that he likes fracking for natural gas because it's domestic, fairly clean and we have a lot of it, that's the politician I'm going to pay attention to.
Well, it's better than coal but worse than just about everything else.
There you go, making stuff up... Or perhaps redefining stuff? In what way is NG "worse" than just about everything else? NG is pretty clean stuff, energy efficient to transport, and apart from CO2 has pretty low emissions when properly burned.
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There you go, making stuff up... Or perhaps redefining stuff?
Stuff in this context is other methods of generating energy. Natural Gas is the cleanest fossil fuel, but all other forms of energy generation are cleaner than fossil fuels. Don't misunderstand, I think we should be using a lot of it right now as a strategy to stop using coal, which is horrible by any measure except extraction cost.
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Lately "clean" just means "zero carbon."
and mentions that he likes fracking for natural gas because it's domestic, fairly clean and we have a lot of it, that's the politician I'm going to pay attention to
Fracking is far from "environmentally responsible"...
How's that? Pumping stuff a few miles into the ground is somehow dangerous to the environment? Fracking isn't anymore dangerous than plain drilling.
For the pro-nuke crowd... (Score:2)
He'll never get elected... (Score:2)
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Of course China is going to go along with this hair-brained idea, right?
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Hare-brained. It's an analogy to rabbits, not to people with ingrown follicles....
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Of course China is going to go along with this hair-brained idea, right?
China, as you may know, has immense and shockingly bad pollution problems. That's not a result of the Chinese leadership's shrewd thinking, it's the result of government and industry collusion and corruption. In China industry sets industrial and energy policy. The most powerful companies are state or military affiliated, but they act no differently than any other company that has succeeded at regulatory capture.
And we in the West have been down this dirty road too, but if you're under 50 "smog" is just w
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What's the timeline you consider realistic?
Honestly 35 years to get rid of fossils doesn't seem insane to me. Except I don't have an obvious replacement in mind for airplane fuel, but that's sort of trivial in the grand scheme of things.
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What's the timeline you consider realistic?
Honestly 35 years to get rid of fossils doesn't seem insane to me. Except I don't have an obvious replacement in mind for airplane fuel, but that's sort of trivial in the grand scheme of things.
Just suggesting we "get rid" of fossil fuels is going to be pretty much insane. Aircraft fuel is the least of your worries, it's just kerosene and any flammable liquid can generally be used in a turbine if you refine it well enough, so pick anything else you want to burn. We just use kerosene because it has a lot of energy for it's volume and weight..
What you CANNOT replace is the generation of fertilizers which is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. If you don't solve this problem FIRST, you are going t
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The replacement for airplane fuel is biofuels (made in a way that doesn't hurt the planet due to their production). A number of airlines have flown (and continue to fly) aircraft using biofuels (either 100% biofuel or biofuel/regular jet fuel blends). Even the US military has flown a number of test flights with biofuels of various sorts.
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100% is ambitious certainly. Using a compound interest calculator, the global target range of 40-70% can be achieved by a mere 1.5-3% annual reduction.
If the world were actually serious, they'd divert more than a trivial % of GDP into investment.
My own Australian government are apologists for the coal industry, naturally. :(
Re:"Clean Energy Candidate" (Score:4, Insightful)
Before the Civil War they said freeing the slaves would ruin the economy. The US had to free them because it was a moral imperative. The war cost us 5% of the US population in casualties. The sum total of the monetary value of all slaves at the start of the civil war was roughly one trillion dollars in today's dollars. The slaves were freed and the US became the world's greatest economic power as a result.
Fast forward to today. The oligarchic elites (the Koch brothers and other greedy billionaires) control roughly fourteen trillion dollars in fossil fuels. In order to monetize their investment they need to suck it out of the earth and burn it. The resulting pollution would kill at least millions, if not render the entire planet uninhabitable. There is a moral imperative to not do that.
If one trillion dollars was sufficient to justify killing or wounding 5% of all Americans, I shudder to think how many people the Koch brothers and their friends are willing to kill or wound for fourteen trillion dollars.
Our economy was based on slave labor. We emancipated the slaves, and surprise! We prospered anyway. Now our economy is based on generating poison gas from fossil fuels. When we stop burning fossil fuels, I predict we'll prosper anyway. Maybe not the Koch brothers. Oh boo-hoo.
Re:"Clean Energy Candidate" (Score:4, Interesting)
Before the Civil War they said freeing the slaves would ruin the economy. The US had to free them because it was a moral imperative. The war cost us 5% of the US population in casualties. The sum total of the monetary value of all slaves at the start of the civil war was roughly one trillion dollars in today's dollars. The slaves were freed and the US became the world's greatest economic power as a result.
Really? The US didn't become the number one economy until 1916 - about the time that most of the European powers (specifically, the UK - which was the biggest economy before the US stepped into that role) were deep into World War I. World War II pretty much cemented our position as the rest of the first world (and much of the 2nd) was bombed and broken. I don't think it was the slaves that made us the greatest economic power, but rather the fact we have two large bodies of water keeping us relatively safe from wars in Europe and Asia.
Re:"Clean Energy Candidate" (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazing. Glossing over facts, ignoring the difference between disproven hypotheses and modern economic theory. Baldly dishonest claims about the effects of petroleum as a fuel.
Our economy was not based on slave labor. The North won the war largely because its non-slave economy was stronger. The South could have had an economy stronger than it was if it had just slowly transformed into a market economy (because free labor is more productive than slave.) (Historically not possible, due to culture and laws of slave states.)
That is just plain dishonest. Our economy is enhanced by, not based on, energy production from fossil fuels. The primary byproducts are carbon dioxide and water, neither of which is a poison at the concentrations at which they are currently generated. You are a liar, and you know it.
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Human progress since the Industrial Revolution has been based on cheap energy.
Well, then doesn't that mean we ought to start looking past fossil fuels then? After all oil won't stay cheap forever. And as long as we're looking, why not put "clean" on the punch list?
"Cheap", by the way, is not an unambiguous term, because the market doesn't count externalities like pollution. In China air pollution from "cheap" energy contributes to as many as 1.2 million premature deaths a year (source [kcet.org]).
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Do you leftists have a death wish?
No.
You can't control climate.
We aren't talking about controlling climate. We are talking about arresting a sudden impetus for rapid climate change.
There is no viable substitute for petroleum.
Then we are doomed because petroleum is not limitless. The cost will creep ever further from the average person's reach, then even from the rich's reach.
Unless we can manufacture more petroleum. The only way to do that, is with an energy source greater than the energy of the petroleum we're making...
(even other fossils can replace petroleum)
Get over it.
No. I'm not going to submit to a life of mis
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What part of the concept "present tense" do you not understand?
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And why should that make it acceptable to not care about the longer term consequences?
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No, it would be actual suicide. You can't feed 7 billion people in the world without fossil fuels and you never will. It would be prohibitively difficult even if it was confined to the USA. Food is not grown and transported by magic fairies. It gets from ground to plate, refrigerated because hydrocarbon fuel exists.
Given more time, and less population, this could change. Starvation would take care of the problem, and *boy* would we be green. Well, the dead folks would be, anyway.
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You do know that the food does not care if it is transported in an electric truck? Or a fuel cell driven electric truck? Or in a truck run by bio diesel, probably harvested from algae with noting but sunlight. Or electric trucks with overhead lines, like many busses in european cities have? Or by train? Or by ship? By sailing ship even?
Frankly, you are the biggest idiot since weeks if not months here on /.
Perhaps you should read a book about physics ... the energy does not care how it is produced.
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I want to buy a RTG powered electric car...now!
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Why are 6 billion people likely to starve due to a 35-year plan to remove fossil fuels? That sounds like a grossly unrealistic consequence at first brush.
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How is most of your food transported?
How is most of your food refrigerated from farm to home?
How is most of the fertilizer mined (or made) and transported on site?
How are the machines that work the land powered?
How do you, personally, get to markets?
How do you power your refrigerator?
For more details, I refer you to this sweetly over-optimistic missive by those wild liberal radicals at the NIH ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... [nih.gov] ). A grimmer, more realistic picture can be found here: ( http://www.wolfatthed [wolfatthedoor.org.uk]
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Why are 6 billion people likely to starve due to a 35-year plan to remove fossil fuels? That sounds like a grossly unrealistic consequence at first brush.
It's called fertilizer.... MOST of it we use today come from Fossil fuel based sources...
Re:That makes it easy... (Score:4, Informative)
Welcome to the Mark Levin Show.
http://www.universetoday.com/9... [universetoday.com]
https://theconversation.com/20... [theconversation.com]
http://www.theguardian.com/env... [theguardian.com]
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I don't get how we can talk about a plan for 35 years out and call that "literally overnight".
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He's unlikely to make it past the Iowa caucuses if that's what he's banking his whole campaign on.
Don't underestimate the pull of the "ethanol as motor fuel" lobby and the corn farmer of Iowa..
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The US produce somewhere around 19% of the world wide carbon emission. Are we taking over the world to enforce this plan? Russia and China are going to do what ever the hell they want.
We will reach out to them of course, and ask them to volunteer to comply with the emission reductions.
They will of course tell us to pound sand... Or better yet, agree to the emission caps, then hold us to ours while ignoring theirs...
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Well yes, Russia under Putin *will* do whatever the hell he likes. But failing to implement policy based on the actions of a global pariah is not something to aspire to.
As for China, we buy their stuff. Using Tim Cook as a poster child, insist that any environmental standards that would apply to building an iProduct in the USA apply to the manufacturing chain from start to finish, including the sourcing of renewable energy. If that adds $75 to the cost of a manufacturing a $1500 Macbook then so be it. Other
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Not everyone believes that CO2 emitted by man is having any significant effect on the planet
Yep, and some people think vaccines cause autism, both groups are factually incorrect and were initially motivated by a morally warped version of financial self-interest. Piers Corbyn uses "secret methods" to scam money from people who are mathematically/scientifically illiterate, he claims to be able to predict earthquakes and the weather but his track record does not match his claims. That you fall for such obvious technobabble just betrays how little you know about human nature, science, and maths.
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