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Yes, Skeptical Science. See: https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

by phaemon 11y ago

hueving 11y ago
The only issue with that site is it seems to refuse to admit certain things. Take a look at this: https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-limits-poor-poverty.htm https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-limits-poor-poverty.htm Their response fails to even address the argument that CO2 limits will impact cheap, dirty coal that provides power for the poor. Instead, they try to change the argument to see who will be most impacted by climate change. I hate arguments like that because it gives denialists all the more fuel to work with. Just flat out admit that this will deny the world cheap energy in the short term but it's a price that will have to be paid to deal with the issue. Then the discussion can actually move to a place where we figure out how to subsidize energy for the poor.
- epistasis 11y ago
  I'm not entirely sure that your argument is true though. Coal was cheap but isn't really the cheap fuel anymore. Also, in developing areas, it may be cheaper to use distributed renewable than to build out the grid. By all means, if you have definitive arguments that agreements like the recent one in Paris will hurt the poor more than climate change will, please share them. But it's certainly not clear that its the answer, even limiting scope to just energy sources, and ignoring the detrimental impacts of climate change on subsistence farming.
  - hueving 11y ago
    >if you have definitive arguments that agreements like the recent one in Paris will hurt the poor more than climate change will You missed the whole point of my argument (or just didn't read it) and did the same thing I criticized skeptical science for. The side effects of climate change being terrible do nothing to dispute that fact that in terms of cost per KwH, energy prices will increase. We need to admit that and address it rather than constantly bring up the benefits of slowing climate change down instead. Here is an analogy to illustrate the point in a different subject. Alice: "We are tripling the cost of bread because it's unhealthy to eat too much bread." Bob: "I eat lots of bread because I can't afford the other food." Alice: "But this is much healthier for you because you won't be eating so much bread. There have been many studies showing that bread is unhealthy." Bob: "If I can't eat bread, I don't think I will get enough calories." Alice: "You will have to eat something else, because bread is unhealthy." Bob: "But I can't get anything else for the same cost." Alice: "Bread is unhealthy. What aren't you understanding? Here is are links to more studies." Do you see how Alice is failing to address Bob's concern or really even acknowledge it? >Coal was cheap but isn't really the cheap fuel anymore. That's only because natural gas got even cheaper than coal. Both are still cheaper per KwH than renewals without subsidies or externalities calculated in. >Also, in developing areas, it may be cheaper to use distributed renewable than to build out the grid. If they are fine with unstable power, sure. However, this still doesn't take into account the massive populations in China and India that have electricity from a grid already based on dirty energy.
    - epistasis 11y ago
      I guess I'm still not seeing your point, but you're also not acknowledging mine. Based on your hypothetical conversation, you seem to be saying that it is beyond doubt that these agreements will overall increase the cost of a certain standard of living. Since you haven't offered to provide any evidence to back up your claim, I'm forced to make some assumptions about your assumptions: that you're assuming that a certain standard of living has a fixed energy requirement (it doesn't), and that the current prices for energy will remain the same as they get adopted around the world (they won't). For example, renewables are intermittent, but storage is getting incredible cheap, and the grid in these areas can also be quite intermittent and unreliable. For example, current lithium ion batteries cost ~$0.20/kWh stored, which may be massively under the cost of building out the grid. And that price is getting much cheaper faster than any of the experts predicted. So, if somebody has a full economic analysis that supports your claim of bread costing three times as much but no other cheaper alternatives being available, I'd like to hear it. I'd also like to hear why you're certain that coal will be the cheapest even after building out energy infrastructures. These are assumptions that might be true, but don't seem very true to me, and definitely don't seem firm enough to discount skepticalscience's answer.
      - hueving 11y ago
        Ok, let me make it more clear: Skepticalscience's answer did not address the concern at all. They did not try to argue that energy will be cheaper/the same after we impose taxes. All they implied was that climate change was bad for the poor, which does nothing to address the concern. Your point about renewable energy being cheaper seems to ignore all of the current cost per KwH measurements available, so I chose not to argue with that because it's not based on anything but opinions about what might happen in the energy market.
- jacobolus 11y ago
  It’s also a crappy solution in the short term. Using coal power in very densely populated areas (especially ones without strict air quality standards) causes off-the-charts-terrible air pollution, leading to massive health problems, of which none of the costs flow back to the coal producers/distributors or power plant operators. Just look at the current conditions in Chinese and Indian cities. If coal is the only possibly affordable energy source in these countries given their current level of wealth/development, then we’d all be much better off in the long run if rich countries would heavily subsidize developing-country energy production of basically any other type (and the residents of those areas would benefit starting right away). Likewise, we should do everything we can to reduce the health/environmental impacts of cooking using indoor wood fires, either by subsidizing cleaner fuels or at least improved wood stoves, or via electrification. Probably also a good idea to work on alternatives to fire for clearing large amounts of land for agricultural use. CO2 emissions are gradually changing the planet, and we should reduce them for the sake of future generations, but breathing smoke every day is killing millions of people per year.
- js8 11y ago
  Maybe you misunderstand the purpose of the site. Its purpose is to educate in climatology (and related Earth sciences), not deal with politics. You cannot argue with physics in a way "yeah but it will be really bad for the poor". It's up to humans to construct human societies, physics doesn't care.
- Scarblac 11y ago
  The worst of this is that the question "how are the poor impacted" isn't even part of the debate whether anthropogenic global warming is a real phenomenon. So it gives fuel to anthropogenic climate change skeptics without even being about that.
mirimir 11y ago
Meh, standard ploys from the tobacco-industry playbook.

Yes, Skeptical Science. See: https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

by phaemon 11y ago

Yes, Skeptical Science. See: https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

hueving 11y ago

The only issue with that site is it seems to refuse to admit certain things. Take a look at this: https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-limits-poor-poverty.htm https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-limits-poor-poverty.htm Their response fails to even address the argument that CO2 limits will impact cheap, dirty coal that provides power for the poor. Instead, they try to change the argument to see who will be most impacted by climate change. I hate arguments like that because it gives denialists all the more fuel to work with. Just flat out admit that this will deny the world cheap energy in the short term but it's a price that will have to be paid to deal with the issue. Then the discussion can actually move to a place where we figure out how to subsidize energy for the poor.

epistasis 11y ago
I'm not entirely sure that your argument is true though. Coal was cheap but isn't really the cheap fuel anymore. Also, in developing areas, it may be cheaper to use distributed renewable than to build out the grid. By all means, if you have definitive arguments that agreements like the recent one in Paris will hurt the poor more than climate change will, please share them. But it's certainly not clear that its the answer, even limiting scope to just energy sources, and ignoring the detrimental impacts of climate change on subsistence farming.
- hueving 11y ago
  >if you have definitive arguments that agreements like the recent one in Paris will hurt the poor more than climate change will You missed the whole point of my argument (or just didn't read it) and did the same thing I criticized skeptical science for. The side effects of climate change being terrible do nothing to dispute that fact that in terms of cost per KwH, energy prices will increase. We need to admit that and address it rather than constantly bring up the benefits of slowing climate change down instead. Here is an analogy to illustrate the point in a different subject. Alice: "We are tripling the cost of bread because it's unhealthy to eat too much bread." Bob: "I eat lots of bread because I can't afford the other food." Alice: "But this is much healthier for you because you won't be eating so much bread. There have been many studies showing that bread is unhealthy." Bob: "If I can't eat bread, I don't think I will get enough calories." Alice: "You will have to eat something else, because bread is unhealthy." Bob: "But I can't get anything else for the same cost." Alice: "Bread is unhealthy. What aren't you understanding? Here is are links to more studies." Do you see how Alice is failing to address Bob's concern or really even acknowledge it? >Coal was cheap but isn't really the cheap fuel anymore. That's only because natural gas got even cheaper than coal. Both are still cheaper per KwH than renewals without subsidies or externalities calculated in. >Also, in developing areas, it may be cheaper to use distributed renewable than to build out the grid. If they are fine with unstable power, sure. However, this still doesn't take into account the massive populations in China and India that have electricity from a grid already based on dirty energy.
  - epistasis 11y ago
    I guess I'm still not seeing your point, but you're also not acknowledging mine. Based on your hypothetical conversation, you seem to be saying that it is beyond doubt that these agreements will overall increase the cost of a certain standard of living. Since you haven't offered to provide any evidence to back up your claim, I'm forced to make some assumptions about your assumptions: that you're assuming that a certain standard of living has a fixed energy requirement (it doesn't), and that the current prices for energy will remain the same as they get adopted around the world (they won't). For example, renewables are intermittent, but storage is getting incredible cheap, and the grid in these areas can also be quite intermittent and unreliable. For example, current lithium ion batteries cost ~$0.20/kWh stored, which may be massively under the cost of building out the grid. And that price is getting much cheaper faster than any of the experts predicted. So, if somebody has a full economic analysis that supports your claim of bread costing three times as much but no other cheaper alternatives being available, I'd like to hear it. I'd also like to hear why you're certain that coal will be the cheapest even after building out energy infrastructures. These are assumptions that might be true, but don't seem very true to me, and definitely don't seem firm enough to discount skepticalscience's answer.
    - hueving 11y ago
      Ok, let me make it more clear: Skepticalscience's answer did not address the concern at all. They did not try to argue that energy will be cheaper/the same after we impose taxes. All they implied was that climate change was bad for the poor, which does nothing to address the concern. Your point about renewable energy being cheaper seems to ignore all of the current cost per KwH measurements available, so I chose not to argue with that because it's not based on anything but opinions about what might happen in the energy market.
jacobolus 11y ago
It’s also a crappy solution in the short term. Using coal power in very densely populated areas (especially ones without strict air quality standards) causes off-the-charts-terrible air pollution, leading to massive health problems, of which none of the costs flow back to the coal producers/distributors or power plant operators. Just look at the current conditions in Chinese and Indian cities. If coal is the only possibly affordable energy source in these countries given their current level of wealth/development, then we’d all be much better off in the long run if rich countries would heavily subsidize developing-country energy production of basically any other type (and the residents of those areas would benefit starting right away). Likewise, we should do everything we can to reduce the health/environmental impacts of cooking using indoor wood fires, either by subsidizing cleaner fuels or at least improved wood stoves, or via electrification. Probably also a good idea to work on alternatives to fire for clearing large amounts of land for agricultural use. CO2 emissions are gradually changing the planet, and we should reduce them for the sake of future generations, but breathing smoke every day is killing millions of people per year.
js8 11y ago
Maybe you misunderstand the purpose of the site. Its purpose is to educate in climatology (and related Earth sciences), not deal with politics. You cannot argue with physics in a way "yeah but it will be really bad for the poor". It's up to humans to construct human societies, physics doesn't care.
Scarblac 11y ago
The worst of this is that the question "how are the poor impacted" isn't even part of the debate whether anthropogenic global warming is a real phenomenon. So it gives fuel to anthropogenic climate change skeptics without even being about that.

mirimir 11y ago

Meh, standard ploys from the tobacco-industry playbook.