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The way I see it is that you've got a garbage fire in your backyard and it smells bad and is making breathing difficult, so the government steps in with a giant

The way I see it is that you've got a garbage fire in your backyard and it smells bad and is making breathing difficult, so the government steps in with a giant fan to blow the bad smell away from you instead of working on finding a real solution. Maybe this will work in the short term, but I'm a bit worried that it will cause complacency with the current situation. If they said that they were moving away from coal-fired plants to look for better energy solutions in addition to this, I doubt anyone would have any complaints. This feels like a band-aid fix when they should be amputating the arm.

jessriedel 10y ago
Smog is different than carbon. Traffic deaths are different than carbon. We don't give up on reducing traffic deaths in order to disincentivize carbon. You're seriously suggesting allowing half a million people to die per year unnecessarily in order to incentivize them to adopt cleaner power plants.
- bradjohnson 10y ago
  Why are you putting words in my mouth? I'm not suggesting anything like that. I'm suggesting that the government look into different solutions in addition to this. The CO2/kwh of coal is the highest of any modern energy source. If they're willing to spend money powering jet engines to shoot the smog higher into the atmosphere, why won't they transition to using a cleaner energy source that requires less money to maintain?
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    > I'm not suggesting anything like that. I'm suggesting that the government look into different solutions in addition to this. OK, then I am happy to withdraw my characterization of your comment. Your comment just adds nothing substantive to the discussion. > If they're willing to spend money powering jet engines to shoot the smog higher into the atmosphere, why won't they transition to using a cleaner energy source that requires less money to maintain? Because one is orders of magnitude more expensive than the other. It's as unrelated as bringing up carbon emissions by cars when people are discussing highway safety.
    - bradjohnson 10y ago
      I was saying that if they were making any effort to clean up their energy source, there would be no backlash. You're trying to make this into a dichotomy where either you're for or against the deaths of people from smog. So, if I'm not participating in your flamewar, I'm not adding anything substantive? It is reminiscent of the "clean-coal" marketing scheme that already exists in the United States and that's what most people in this thread are discussing.
      - jessriedel 10y ago
        You're not adding anything substantive because your reply to my comment introduces a completely distinct issues from what's discussed in my comment, and you do not appear to have a grasp of their relative effect size. You said "This feels like a band-aid fix when they should be amputating the arm." But the ill effect of the smog produced by a given plant in India is dramatically worse, and easier to fix, than the ill effects of the carbon.
  - emp_zealoth 10y ago
    Do you even know just how much it costs to run a power plant? You need a few hundred (400-600) tons of coal per hour per one decently sized BLOCK (few hundred MW), usually power plants have several of those, sometimes a dozen or more, a few jet engines running at full blast its a big deal compared with a FUCKING POWER PLANT /rant Also, none of the renewable energy sources are cheaper than coal, especially when you look at the bigger picture (mostly unutilised capacity, grid overbuild requirements, volatility)
    - bradjohnson 10y ago
      They could transition to a combined cycle plant if they wanted to increase efficiency. I'm obviously not an expert, just like 99% of people here. If you look at the basic sentiment here it is that this seems like a fake solution to the problem of coal power plants and I somewhat agree. I think that it would help to know that they are at least attempting to move away from coal towards nuclear or renewable sources. It seems like there are a lot of solutions that could be pursued.
      - emp_zealoth 10y ago
        The problem is smog. >They could transition to a combined cycle plant if they wanted to increase efficiency. And who is going to pay for that? How do they fuel them? They already have to import a sizable part of their natural gas consumption. Do they spend even more and add coal gassification? India is building out nuclear, obviously after Fukushima retards made sure to obstruct as much as they could Again, the issue is smog, that is killing right fucking now. Should they just ignore the problem and develop a massive program so you feel better?
        Retric 10y ago
        You can use coal and avoid smog. It's an incentive problem without enforcement pollution is slightly cheaper. So, really the core problem is corruption not technology.
    - Retric 10y ago
- emp_zealoth 10y ago
  "Ecology" extremists are becoming crazy as of late. Sure, let's let them suffocate, starve or have their society collapse, as long as they are not burning coal!
- Jemmeh 10y ago
  Wouldn't cleaner power plants = less pollution = less deaths?

jessriedel 10y ago

Smog is different than carbon. Traffic deaths are different than carbon. We don't give up on reducing traffic deaths in order to disincentivize carbon. You're seriously suggesting allowing half a million people to die per year unnecessarily in order to incentivize them to adopt cleaner power plants.

bradjohnson 10y ago
Why are you putting words in my mouth? I'm not suggesting anything like that. I'm suggesting that the government look into different solutions in addition to this. The CO2/kwh of coal is the highest of any modern energy source. If they're willing to spend money powering jet engines to shoot the smog higher into the atmosphere, why won't they transition to using a cleaner energy source that requires less money to maintain?
- jessriedel 10y ago
  > I'm not suggesting anything like that. I'm suggesting that the government look into different solutions in addition to this. OK, then I am happy to withdraw my characterization of your comment. Your comment just adds nothing substantive to the discussion. > If they're willing to spend money powering jet engines to shoot the smog higher into the atmosphere, why won't they transition to using a cleaner energy source that requires less money to maintain? Because one is orders of magnitude more expensive than the other. It's as unrelated as bringing up carbon emissions by cars when people are discussing highway safety.
  - bradjohnson 10y ago
    I was saying that if they were making any effort to clean up their energy source, there would be no backlash. You're trying to make this into a dichotomy where either you're for or against the deaths of people from smog. So, if I'm not participating in your flamewar, I'm not adding anything substantive? It is reminiscent of the "clean-coal" marketing scheme that already exists in the United States and that's what most people in this thread are discussing.
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      You're not adding anything substantive because your reply to my comment introduces a completely distinct issues from what's discussed in my comment, and you do not appear to have a grasp of their relative effect size. You said "This feels like a band-aid fix when they should be amputating the arm." But the ill effect of the smog produced by a given plant in India is dramatically worse, and easier to fix, than the ill effects of the carbon.
- emp_zealoth 10y ago
  Do you even know just how much it costs to run a power plant? You need a few hundred (400-600) tons of coal per hour per one decently sized BLOCK (few hundred MW), usually power plants have several of those, sometimes a dozen or more, a few jet engines running at full blast its a big deal compared with a FUCKING POWER PLANT /rant Also, none of the renewable energy sources are cheaper than coal, especially when you look at the bigger picture (mostly unutilised capacity, grid overbuild requirements, volatility)
  - bradjohnson 10y ago
    They could transition to a combined cycle plant if they wanted to increase efficiency. I'm obviously not an expert, just like 99% of people here. If you look at the basic sentiment here it is that this seems like a fake solution to the problem of coal power plants and I somewhat agree. I think that it would help to know that they are at least attempting to move away from coal towards nuclear or renewable sources. It seems like there are a lot of solutions that could be pursued.
    - emp_zealoth 10y ago
      The problem is smog. >They could transition to a combined cycle plant if they wanted to increase efficiency. And who is going to pay for that? How do they fuel them? They already have to import a sizable part of their natural gas consumption. Do they spend even more and add coal gassification? India is building out nuclear, obviously after Fukushima retards made sure to obstruct as much as they could Again, the issue is smog, that is killing right fucking now. Should they just ignore the problem and develop a massive program so you feel better?
      - Retric 10y ago
        You can use coal and avoid smog. It's an incentive problem without enforcement pollution is slightly cheaper. So, really the core problem is corruption not technology.
  - Retric 10y ago
emp_zealoth 10y ago
"Ecology" extremists are becoming crazy as of late. Sure, let's let them suffocate, starve or have their society collapse, as long as they are not burning coal!
Jemmeh 10y ago
Wouldn't cleaner power plants = less pollution = less deaths?