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> 2. Current US administration is going 180 degrees in the other direction, i.e. doing everything it can to support coal. And apparently failing miserably in t

> 2. Current US administration is going 180 degrees in the other direction, i.e. doing everything it can to support coal. And apparently failing miserably in this effort: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/17/epa-cheers-decline-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-und/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/17/epa-cheers-...

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
I think this article helps me clarify a great point, mainly in these sentences: "The yearslong decline in U.S. emissions has been widely credited to the oil and gas boom. Power plants increasingly turned from coal to natural gas as innovations in extraction technology resulted in lower prices." Lots of people talk about carbon emission reductions, but there is a much simpler way to think about it. There is a lot of carbon stored in the ground in the form of coal, natural gas and oil. What's the probability that a great deal of that carbon will be left there, permanently? The only way this will happen is if the production costs of non-emitting forms of energy (mainly solar, wind and nuclear) are fundamentally less than the extraction costs of the carbon forms in the ground. That may be possible for some high-cost carbon sources like coal, but the cost of production of some traditional oil sources (like Ghawar field) are ridiculously cheap, and tech like fracking has made other carbon sources like natural gas also cheaper. Thus, the idea that reducing the production cost of natural gas is good for the environment is ridiculous. At the end of the day you've made another huge carbon source that much cheaper to extract. It may temporarily switch from some more polluting source, but at the end of the day all of that (now cheaper) gas is coming out of the ground and going into the air. So instead of looking at emission rates, we should be asking "What is the probability that non-carbon-emitting forms of energy will eventually be made cheaper than carbon-emitting forms of energy". If you do the math on this one, even leaving a lot of uncertainty that tech on one side or the other will change the equation a bit, the only conclusion you can come to is that there are still huge amounts of carbon to be released. We're inevitably fucked.
- ip26 8y ago
  So instead of looking at emission rates... Lowering the emission rates does buy us time to tackle the problem. It's hard to solve something right away & all in one go. But if you can put our friend Zeno to work, you might have a chance.
- i_am_proteus 8y ago
  If gas reserves are exploited along with coal reserves, your conjecture holds. If gas reserves are exploited in lieu of coal reserves, it does not. If the cost per Joule of carbon-free energy goes down over time, carbon-free energy will eventually dominate the energy economy. This is generally expected to happen "too late" because of how much carbon will be released before we get there. If burning oil and gas instead of coal reduces carbon emissions prior to carbon-free sources taking over, overall carbon emissions are reduced and the amount of warming is reduced.
  - vkou 8y ago
    > If gas reserves are exploited along with coal reserves, your conjecture holds. If gas reserves are exploited in lieu of coal reserves, it does not. If we exploit all the fossil fuel resources, in currently operating mines and wells, we will blow through the 2 C 'safe' warming budget. Unless for every new fracking well, we shut down a coal mine, the conjecture absolutely holds.
    - hackeraccount 8y ago
      That's exactly what the parent is saying. We're not shutting down coal mines - they're just being made noncompetitive but in the long run that amounts to the same thing.
      - vkou 8y ago
        Opening new coal mines may be uncompetitive. Nobody's stopping work in existing ones. It does not amount to the same thing. To avoid catastrophic warming, we need to stop all development of new fossil fuel resources, and stop exploitation of some active fossil fuel resources. We're not doing that. We're not even close to doing that.
- lucas_membrane 8y ago
  It is unlikely that countries with oil and gas will leave it in the ground. However, quite a bit of the coal is in countries that are prosperous and which should be able to muster the political will to leave the coal in the ground. That would be a great improvement.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

I think this article helps me clarify a great point, mainly in these sentences: "The yearslong decline in U.S. emissions has been widely credited to the oil and gas boom. Power plants increasingly turned from coal to natural gas as innovations in extraction technology resulted in lower prices." Lots of people talk about carbon emission reductions, but there is a much simpler way to think about it. There is a lot of carbon stored in the ground in the form of coal, natural gas and oil. What's the probability that a great deal of that carbon will be left there, permanently? The only way this will happen is if the production costs of non-emitting forms of energy (mainly solar, wind and nuclear) are fundamentally less than the extraction costs of the carbon forms in the ground. That may be possible for some high-cost carbon sources like coal, but the cost of production of some traditional oil sources (like Ghawar field) are ridiculously cheap, and tech like fracking has made other carbon sources like natural gas also cheaper. Thus, the idea that reducing the production cost of natural gas is good for the environment is ridiculous. At the end of the day you've made another huge carbon source that much cheaper to extract. It may temporarily switch from some more polluting source, but at the end of the day all of that (now cheaper) gas is coming out of the ground and going into the air. So instead of looking at emission rates, we should be asking "What is the probability that non-carbon-emitting forms of energy will eventually be made cheaper than carbon-emitting forms of energy". If you do the math on this one, even leaving a lot of uncertainty that tech on one side or the other will change the equation a bit, the only conclusion you can come to is that there are still huge amounts of carbon to be released. We're inevitably fucked.

ip26 8y ago
So instead of looking at emission rates... Lowering the emission rates does buy us time to tackle the problem. It's hard to solve something right away & all in one go. But if you can put our friend Zeno to work, you might have a chance.
i_am_proteus 8y ago
If gas reserves are exploited along with coal reserves, your conjecture holds. If gas reserves are exploited in lieu of coal reserves, it does not. If the cost per Joule of carbon-free energy goes down over time, carbon-free energy will eventually dominate the energy economy. This is generally expected to happen "too late" because of how much carbon will be released before we get there. If burning oil and gas instead of coal reduces carbon emissions prior to carbon-free sources taking over, overall carbon emissions are reduced and the amount of warming is reduced.
- vkou 8y ago
  > If gas reserves are exploited along with coal reserves, your conjecture holds. If gas reserves are exploited in lieu of coal reserves, it does not. If we exploit all the fossil fuel resources, in currently operating mines and wells, we will blow through the 2 C 'safe' warming budget. Unless for every new fracking well, we shut down a coal mine, the conjecture absolutely holds.
  - hackeraccount 8y ago
    That's exactly what the parent is saying. We're not shutting down coal mines - they're just being made noncompetitive but in the long run that amounts to the same thing.
    - vkou 8y ago
      Opening new coal mines may be uncompetitive. Nobody's stopping work in existing ones. It does not amount to the same thing. To avoid catastrophic warming, we need to stop all development of new fossil fuel resources, and stop exploitation of some active fossil fuel resources. We're not doing that. We're not even close to doing that.
lucas_membrane 8y ago
It is unlikely that countries with oil and gas will leave it in the ground. However, quite a bit of the coal is in countries that are prosperous and which should be able to muster the political will to leave the coal in the ground. That would be a great improvement.