5 ms·

its to the point where i'm consciously trying to not engage in the facts debate or the what-about-foo endless spiraling. we're over-complicating things and ena

its to the point where i'm consciously trying to not engage in the facts debate or the what-about-foo endless spiraling. we're over-complicating things and enabling the "debate" to continue to waste precious time. coal need to end within a decade. oil needs to be cut in half within a decade. anything else is a distraction.

colechristensen 7y ago
The problem is already solving itself as well as it can. The world is running out of any fossil fuel except natural gas which can be extracted more cheaply than the various types of renewables. With $100 USD/bbl oil you don't need protests and activism to switch away from fossil fuels, simple economics will drive energy choices. Saudi Arabia is going to run out, and it is likely they have been exaggerating their reserves and production capacity for political reasons. It won't take much to explode the price of oil and people know it and are planning for it.
- eru 7y ago
  > The world is running out of any fossil fuel except natural gas which can be extracted more cheaply than the various types of renewables. That seems to be sort-of true, but mostly in the sense that renewables are getting cheaper. Fossil fuels don't seem to be getting that much more expensive. Mostly because the long run supply is actually fairly elastic.
  - aoeusnth1 7y ago
    Also, fracking is new huge source of natural gas that wasn't exploitable before.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    Saudi Arabia claims 250-300 billion barrels of viable oil reserves, and it's currently pumping about 4 billion per year. There is also credible doubt to those numbers with some saying they may be greatly exaggerated for political reasons. It is very possible the all time high of ~11 million barrels a day in Nov 2018 will never be surpassed. There is a lot of oil around to be extracted, it won't "run out" but it is absolutely not elastic, and not at arbitrary prices. The big reserves which remain are considerably more expensive to extract and convert to a usable state. The $100/bbl rate is somewhere around the floor price for the oil economy when those resources dominate. The price of fossil fuels has bounced around in the last decade or two for political reasons. OPEC was forcing prices above $100 because they're a cartel but then North America found an enormous quantity of tar sands and similar kinds of expensive-to-extract but in huge quantities, it was profitable to extract at those prices and OPECs cartel price highs were broken because they could not afford to cut production in order to raise prices (much of OPEC proping up their power with money that they couldn't do without). OPEC is running out of cheap oil, the world is running out of cheap oil. There is an enormous amount of oil left in the ground which can be extracted, but at a price. A price which is easily beatable by renewables now and definitely in the future when scaling and technology factors further lower their prices. Fossil fuels are over, it's done. There's little left to protest or try to change, the situation is forcing it and it can be seen by anybody in the energy business. If you want to burn public money you can accelerate the process a bit with taxes and tech development (this is already being done and it could be done a bit more) but ultimately the future doesn't depend on that, just a bit of timing.
    - eru 7y ago
      We mostly agree on everything, we just use different terminology. I do agree that the Saudi Arabian numbers deserve some doubt. When I say that the supply of oil is elastic, I am talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_supply Elastic in this context means that an increase in the price will bring forth more supply. That's very much the same thing as your statement that we are running out of cheap oil. In the short run, oil supply and demand are very inelastic. That means that even if oil prices were to double for a week, it wouldn't much change the amount of oil consumed nor the amount of oil produced. It takes a while to explore and exploit new oilfields, and it takes a while to shift consumption to and from oil. Thus in the longer run, say over a few years, oil supply and demand are much more elastic. Especially if you add in new technologies, like we saw with fracking. The longer run being more elastic than the shorter run means that the longer running price is more stable than in the shorter run. (Of course, more stable doesn't mean constant. We still see the secular rise in real oil prices.) That's all still totally in line with everything you say. Now you correctly mention that renewables are getting cheaper. For most applications, you just want power say for electricity generation, so you can easily substitute renewables (or coal..) for oil. That further contributes to long running stability of the oil price. For some applications like fueling cars, or even more so: planes, carbohydrates are harder to replace. So they get substituted later, or perhaps never; depending on how effective relative prices (including taxes and reputational effects) move. (In principle, we don't need fancy electric batteries: you can use electricity from renewables to synthesize aviation fuel from scratch. It mostly just carbon and hydrogen. It's not just worth it at the moment, and might never become worthwhile.) I'm all in favour of replacing fossil fuels with renewables. My point is just that the market driven replacement comes mostly from renewables becoming cheaper, less so from fossil fuel becoming more expensive. > If you want to burn public money you can accelerate the process a bit with taxes and tech development (this is already being done and it could be done a bit more) but ultimately the future doesn't depend on that, just a bit of timing. Yes. Though I do wish we had a carbon tax, even if just a low one. Not just for any of the effects of steering people away from fossil fuels, but to show that combating climate change should be a money-spinner for the government, not a money sink. That should make it easier to argue against government efforts of trying to pick winners like the pretty much useless German photovoltaic subsidies of the past: Germany is not known for its long days of blasting sun.. (And about competitive effects in regards to other countries: just treat the carbon tax like VAT when you adjust for products and services crossing borders.)
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Why wait? Just tax it. Why wouldn't be want to tax the destruction of something instead of work/labour/selling stuff?
- adrianN 7y ago
  The world has way, way more coal left than we can afford to burn.
mikepurvis 7y ago
In particular, anything about single-use plastics is mostly a distraction. There's something to be said for the emissions cost of delivering and disposing of them, but in general, sucking oil out of the ground, turning it into plastic objects, and then burying those plastic objects back in the ground is a "complete lifecycle", much more so than releasing that oil's carbon into the atmosphere via combustion. All the more so if the plastic objects are mostly buried alongside other plastic objects where they can be dug up and reprocessed later on as the need arises.
- XorNot 7y ago
  Except single use plastics don't end up in the ground reliably: they end up in water ways, beaches, wetlands and the oceans. They degrade into micro plastics and then end up in the food chain. They are a huge problem for non-emissions reasons.
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    Oh yeah, they're definitely a problem, and work should be done to reduce and eliminate them. But they're not directly a climate change problem. Also, if you live in a major western city, especially a non-coastal one, your garbage is pretty reliably ending up in a landfill. 90% of river-borne plastic pollution comes from just 10 rivers, all of which are in Asia and Africa: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluti... This is not a get-of-jail-free card to the rest of the world, but it does change the nature of our responsibility— in particular, it means that individual action is almost entirely worthless. Because the issue in the west is not the trash, it's that we're culturally exporting a single-use lifestyle that creates all that mess when it is imitated in places without the pipeline in place to manage the waste. So what is needed is a collective cultural change in order to alter what we export via our media, and the actions/expectations of our politicians, celebrities, tourists, etc.
BenoitEssiambre 7y ago
Also natural habitats need to be protected. I'm so sick of plastic straw theater though. Plastics barely matter at all for the environment!

colechristensen 7y ago

The problem is already solving itself as well as it can. The world is running out of any fossil fuel except natural gas which can be extracted more cheaply than the various types of renewables. With $100 USD/bbl oil you don't need protests and activism to switch away from fossil fuels, simple economics will drive energy choices. Saudi Arabia is going to run out, and it is likely they have been exaggerating their reserves and production capacity for political reasons. It won't take much to explode the price of oil and people know it and are planning for it.

eru 7y ago
> The world is running out of any fossil fuel except natural gas which can be extracted more cheaply than the various types of renewables. That seems to be sort-of true, but mostly in the sense that renewables are getting cheaper. Fossil fuels don't seem to be getting that much more expensive. Mostly because the long run supply is actually fairly elastic.
- aoeusnth1 7y ago
  Also, fracking is new huge source of natural gas that wasn't exploitable before.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  Saudi Arabia claims 250-300 billion barrels of viable oil reserves, and it's currently pumping about 4 billion per year. There is also credible doubt to those numbers with some saying they may be greatly exaggerated for political reasons. It is very possible the all time high of ~11 million barrels a day in Nov 2018 will never be surpassed. There is a lot of oil around to be extracted, it won't "run out" but it is absolutely not elastic, and not at arbitrary prices. The big reserves which remain are considerably more expensive to extract and convert to a usable state. The $100/bbl rate is somewhere around the floor price for the oil economy when those resources dominate. The price of fossil fuels has bounced around in the last decade or two for political reasons. OPEC was forcing prices above $100 because they're a cartel but then North America found an enormous quantity of tar sands and similar kinds of expensive-to-extract but in huge quantities, it was profitable to extract at those prices and OPECs cartel price highs were broken because they could not afford to cut production in order to raise prices (much of OPEC proping up their power with money that they couldn't do without). OPEC is running out of cheap oil, the world is running out of cheap oil. There is an enormous amount of oil left in the ground which can be extracted, but at a price. A price which is easily beatable by renewables now and definitely in the future when scaling and technology factors further lower their prices. Fossil fuels are over, it's done. There's little left to protest or try to change, the situation is forcing it and it can be seen by anybody in the energy business. If you want to burn public money you can accelerate the process a bit with taxes and tech development (this is already being done and it could be done a bit more) but ultimately the future doesn't depend on that, just a bit of timing.
  - eru 7y ago
    We mostly agree on everything, we just use different terminology. I do agree that the Saudi Arabian numbers deserve some doubt. When I say that the supply of oil is elastic, I am talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_supply Elastic in this context means that an increase in the price will bring forth more supply. That's very much the same thing as your statement that we are running out of cheap oil. In the short run, oil supply and demand are very inelastic. That means that even if oil prices were to double for a week, it wouldn't much change the amount of oil consumed nor the amount of oil produced. It takes a while to explore and exploit new oilfields, and it takes a while to shift consumption to and from oil. Thus in the longer run, say over a few years, oil supply and demand are much more elastic. Especially if you add in new technologies, like we saw with fracking. The longer run being more elastic than the shorter run means that the longer running price is more stable than in the shorter run. (Of course, more stable doesn't mean constant. We still see the secular rise in real oil prices.) That's all still totally in line with everything you say. Now you correctly mention that renewables are getting cheaper. For most applications, you just want power say for electricity generation, so you can easily substitute renewables (or coal..) for oil. That further contributes to long running stability of the oil price. For some applications like fueling cars, or even more so: planes, carbohydrates are harder to replace. So they get substituted later, or perhaps never; depending on how effective relative prices (including taxes and reputational effects) move. (In principle, we don't need fancy electric batteries: you can use electricity from renewables to synthesize aviation fuel from scratch. It mostly just carbon and hydrogen. It's not just worth it at the moment, and might never become worthwhile.) I'm all in favour of replacing fossil fuels with renewables. My point is just that the market driven replacement comes mostly from renewables becoming cheaper, less so from fossil fuel becoming more expensive. > If you want to burn public money you can accelerate the process a bit with taxes and tech development (this is already being done and it could be done a bit more) but ultimately the future doesn't depend on that, just a bit of timing. Yes. Though I do wish we had a carbon tax, even if just a low one. Not just for any of the effects of steering people away from fossil fuels, but to show that combating climate change should be a money-spinner for the government, not a money sink. That should make it easier to argue against government efforts of trying to pick winners like the pretty much useless German photovoltaic subsidies of the past: Germany is not known for its long days of blasting sun.. (And about competitive effects in regards to other countries: just treat the carbon tax like VAT when you adjust for products and services crossing borders.)
Scoundreller 7y ago
Why wait? Just tax it. Why wouldn't be want to tax the destruction of something instead of work/labour/selling stuff?
adrianN 7y ago
The world has way, way more coal left than we can afford to burn.

mikepurvis 7y ago

In particular, anything about single-use plastics is mostly a distraction. There's something to be said for the emissions cost of delivering and disposing of them, but in general, sucking oil out of the ground, turning it into plastic objects, and then burying those plastic objects back in the ground is a "complete lifecycle", much more so than releasing that oil's carbon into the atmosphere via combustion. All the more so if the plastic objects are mostly buried alongside other plastic objects where they can be dug up and reprocessed later on as the need arises.

XorNot 7y ago
Except single use plastics don't end up in the ground reliably: they end up in water ways, beaches, wetlands and the oceans. They degrade into micro plastics and then end up in the food chain. They are a huge problem for non-emissions reasons.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  Oh yeah, they're definitely a problem, and work should be done to reduce and eliminate them. But they're not directly a climate change problem. Also, if you live in a major western city, especially a non-coastal one, your garbage is pretty reliably ending up in a landfill. 90% of river-borne plastic pollution comes from just 10 rivers, all of which are in Asia and Africa: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluti... This is not a get-of-jail-free card to the rest of the world, but it does change the nature of our responsibility— in particular, it means that individual action is almost entirely worthless. Because the issue in the west is not the trash, it's that we're culturally exporting a single-use lifestyle that creates all that mess when it is imitated in places without the pipeline in place to manage the waste. So what is needed is a collective cultural change in order to alter what we export via our media, and the actions/expectations of our politicians, celebrities, tourists, etc.

BenoitEssiambre 7y ago

Also natural habitats need to be protected. I'm so sick of plastic straw theater though. Plastics barely matter at all for the environment!