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Why is it necessary to replace all fossil fuels? You can keep gas turbine power plants around. I support nuclear power but it's very very expensive, even in me

by mantap 7y ago

Why is it necessary to replace all fossil fuels? You can keep gas turbine power plants around. I support nuclear power but it's very very expensive, even in meteorologically inactive places such as UK. Maybe India and China can make it work, but in the west you can forget it. Hinkley Point C is a failure and it hasn't even been constructed yet.

ThomPete 7y ago
Nuclear power is expensive in no small part because of the bureaucracy and safety measures that are required but also because of the policial headwinds. Nuclear is expensive in the short run but much better in the long run. It's capacity factor is almost 100 compare that to wind and solar which is between 20-40 depending on season etc. Furthermore nuclear is expensive because we compare it with the non-true cost of ex. wind and solar which both need backup energy to be useful (not calculated), the decommission (not calculated). It's completely backwards that we are investing in making wind and solar cheaper not nuclear. Wind and solar are linear solutions to the exponential problem of energy. They don't point to the future but to the past. They are great for some things but never as a foundation for a modern society energy needs. I don't think it's necessary to replace fossil fuels as such but many people seem to think so and they have the problem I tried to outline in my previous post.
acqq 7y ago
> Why is it necessary to replace all fossil fuels? "Just" in order to avoid the uncontrolled warming up of the Earth's atmosphere. As long as we use them, there will be more CO2 in the atmosphere, more warming and the destruction of the environment in which the humanity grew up (the climate was extraordinary stable since the civilizations appeared... until the last 100 years). We still don't exactly know how fast that difference can hit us, and how big issue for us it can get (i.e. the worst case) but what we know already is enough to know that the resolute action is needed even if the worst case doesn't happen, "business as usual" will be a serious, long-time problem: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6459/eaaw6974 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6459/eaaw6974 "The human imperative of stabilizing global climate change at 1.5°C" "increasing GMST to 3°C above the pre-industrial period substantially increases the risk of tipping points such as permafrost collapse, Arctic sea ice habitat loss, major reductions in crop production in Africa as well as globally, and persistent heat stress that is driving sharp increases in human morbidity and mortality" "Our preliminary estimates suggest that the benefits of avoided damage by the year 2200 may greatly exceed energy sector investment costs to 2050. Current national voluntary emission reduction pledges for 2030 are insufficient to drive this even if followed by “very challenging increases in the scale and ambition of mitigation after 2030”" "The majority of pathways for achieving 1.5°C also require carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. Delays in bringing CO2 emissions to net zero over the next 20 to 30 years will also increase the likelihood of pathways that exceed 1.5°C (i.e., overshoot scenarios) and hence a greater reliance on net negative emissions after mid-century if GMST is to return to 1.5°C" Simply put, it's safer to not the let the CO2 in the atmosphere at all than to try to remove it later and fail. But eventually we will have to remove more than we let. And the amounts in question are immense, and removal costs a lot of energy too. So we do need all the energy to be produced without fossil fuels. Wherever some fossil fuels are burned, we'll need even more energy to remove that.
- ThomPete 7y ago
  There is no base for the claim that it's safer to not let CO2 into the atmosphere. More people die from cold than from heat and then world has gotten 14% greener because of more CO2. So if anything it's inconclusive and I don't see any scientifically demonstrated consequence of the climate-changing that we don't know how to deal with.
  - acqq 7y ago
    > world has gotten 14% greener because of more CO2. "But that isn’t cause to celebrate. It’s a bit like hearing that your chemotherapy is slowing the growth of your tumor by 25 percent. Despite global greening, carbon dioxide levels have climbed over the past two centuries to levels not seen on Earth for millions of years. And the carbon dioxide we’ve injected into the atmosphere is already having major impacts across the planet." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/climate-change-plants-global-greening.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/climate-change-pl...
    - ThomPete 7y ago
      Sahara desert is greening. How is that a bad problem? Furthermore Sahara used to be a jungle and that disappear long before we ever started using CO2. The climate is always changing. I am celebrating every day that fossil fuels have made life better and safer for us in the west. What I am fearing is that well meaning but fundamentally ignorant climate catastrophism will make it harder for the worlds poorest to get access to the very energy they need to fight any change in climate.
      - Retric 7y ago
        > long before we ever started using CO2 That’s not technically true. While unrelated, humans have been burning coal for at least 5500 years where the current Sahara desert is only around 4,500-8,000 years olds. Considering how long we have been using fires, coal use could actually vastly predate this event, though again the impact of such usage would have been minimal. Again, several vastly more likely causes exist from livestock grazing to purely natural climate shifts.

by mantap 7y ago

ThomPete 7y ago

Nuclear power is expensive in no small part because of the bureaucracy and safety measures that are required but also because of the policial headwinds. Nuclear is expensive in the short run but much better in the long run. It's capacity factor is almost 100 compare that to wind and solar which is between 20-40 depending on season etc. Furthermore nuclear is expensive because we compare it with the non-true cost of ex. wind and solar which both need backup energy to be useful (not calculated), the decommission (not calculated). It's completely backwards that we are investing in making wind and solar cheaper not nuclear. Wind and solar are linear solutions to the exponential problem of energy. They don't point to the future but to the past. They are great for some things but never as a foundation for a modern society energy needs. I don't think it's necessary to replace fossil fuels as such but many people seem to think so and they have the problem I tried to outline in my previous post.

acqq 7y ago

> Why is it necessary to replace all fossil fuels? "Just" in order to avoid the uncontrolled warming up of the Earth's atmosphere. As long as we use them, there will be more CO2 in the atmosphere, more warming and the destruction of the environment in which the humanity grew up (the climate was extraordinary stable since the civilizations appeared... until the last 100 years). We still don't exactly know how fast that difference can hit us, and how big issue for us it can get (i.e. the worst case) but what we know already is enough to know that the resolute action is needed even if the worst case doesn't happen, "business as usual" will be a serious, long-time problem: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6459/eaaw6974 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6459/eaaw6974 "The human imperative of stabilizing global climate change at 1.5°C" "increasing GMST to 3°C above the pre-industrial period substantially increases the risk of tipping points such as permafrost collapse, Arctic sea ice habitat loss, major reductions in crop production in Africa as well as globally, and persistent heat stress that is driving sharp increases in human morbidity and mortality" "Our preliminary estimates suggest that the benefits of avoided damage by the year 2200 may greatly exceed energy sector investment costs to 2050. Current national voluntary emission reduction pledges for 2030 are insufficient to drive this even if followed by “very challenging increases in the scale and ambition of mitigation after 2030”" "The majority of pathways for achieving 1.5°C also require carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. Delays in bringing CO2 emissions to net zero over the next 20 to 30 years will also increase the likelihood of pathways that exceed 1.5°C (i.e., overshoot scenarios) and hence a greater reliance on net negative emissions after mid-century if GMST is to return to 1.5°C" Simply put, it's safer to not the let the CO2 in the atmosphere at all than to try to remove it later and fail. But eventually we will have to remove more than we let. And the amounts in question are immense, and removal costs a lot of energy too. So we do need all the energy to be produced without fossil fuels. Wherever some fossil fuels are burned, we'll need even more energy to remove that.

ThomPete 7y ago
There is no base for the claim that it's safer to not let CO2 into the atmosphere. More people die from cold than from heat and then world has gotten 14% greener because of more CO2. So if anything it's inconclusive and I don't see any scientifically demonstrated consequence of the climate-changing that we don't know how to deal with.
- acqq 7y ago
  > world has gotten 14% greener because of more CO2. "But that isn’t cause to celebrate. It’s a bit like hearing that your chemotherapy is slowing the growth of your tumor by 25 percent. Despite global greening, carbon dioxide levels have climbed over the past two centuries to levels not seen on Earth for millions of years. And the carbon dioxide we’ve injected into the atmosphere is already having major impacts across the planet." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/climate-change-plants-global-greening.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/climate-change-pl...
  - ThomPete 7y ago
    Sahara desert is greening. How is that a bad problem? Furthermore Sahara used to be a jungle and that disappear long before we ever started using CO2. The climate is always changing. I am celebrating every day that fossil fuels have made life better and safer for us in the west. What I am fearing is that well meaning but fundamentally ignorant climate catastrophism will make it harder for the worlds poorest to get access to the very energy they need to fight any change in climate.
    - Retric 7y ago
      > long before we ever started using CO2 That’s not technically true. While unrelated, humans have been burning coal for at least 5500 years where the current Sahara desert is only around 4,500-8,000 years olds. Considering how long we have been using fires, coal use could actually vastly predate this event, though again the impact of such usage would have been minimal. Again, several vastly more likely causes exist from livestock grazing to purely natural climate shifts.