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The perfect is the enemy of the good. Natural gas is roughly half as bad as coal, and it's an easy win, compared to the alternatives. It's also better in terms

The perfect is the enemy of the good. Natural gas is roughly half as bad as coal, and it's an easy win, compared to the alternatives. It's also better in terms of particulates. If we sit around waiting for reduction of energy use and increase in renewables to save us, we are screwed. Gotta take what we can get for now, and continue fighting for even better solutions.

acidburnNSA 7y ago
> The perfect is the enemy of the good. In this case, high-carbon (coal and gas) is the enemy of low-carbon (wind/solar/tidal/hydro/nuclear/geo). I said this in another thread, but switching from terrible to awful is not something we should take as what we can get. The starting point and the end point are unacceptable in a coal to gas transition. No point celebrating that. For example, fracked gas is so cheap that it's starting to cause near zero-carbon nuclear plants to close early. Unlike gas, nuclear plants are actually low carbon (12 gCO2-eq/kWe vs. 490 for gas). Thus, fracked gas being cheap and not considered the high-carbon fuel it is is preventing us from reaching our climate goals. This is really serious stuff.
- scarmig 7y ago
  > This is really serious stuff. Yes, we're in agreement on that. And "celebrating" gas is a million miles away from my perspective. Every reduction in CO2 emissions today saves lives not just today but a century from now. Suppose we could instantaneously replace coal with natural gas, today. And we also have a choice of replacing all coal with low-carbon sources, but at some point in N years in the future. How long does it take to break even? 2N years in the future. So even assuming we could fully decarbonize the world economy in 25 years, it'd be a half century before we even get to the break even point in terms of accummulated emissions. And that doesn't even account for a significant part of the carbon emissions from the first 25 years being absorbed by various processes, or the ability to simultaneously push for low carbon and natural gas energy. Even if natural gas pushes the timeline for full decarbonization from 25 to 35 years out, it's still a clear win. That scenario I acknowledge is bleak, but bleak is better than... really fucking bleak, which is what we're headed for with coal.
- naiveprogrammer 7y ago
  What you say makes perfect sense but when you transpose to the real world the story changes. See how the most vocal and powerful climate activists work day and night to stifle nuclear energy as a perfectly good solution to fight climate change, by far the best solution out there to reduce emissions. Maybe gas is the second best solution to reduce emissions while we develop other solutions in the meantime.
  - scarmig 7y ago
    > See how the most vocal and powerful climate activists work day and night to stifle nuclear energy as a perfectly good solution to fight climate change I don't think that conforms with reality. Off the top of my head, I looked up McKibben and Greta, and both see a role for nuclear power in decarbonization. The bigger issue is that it's not prioritized because it'd split the environmental movement, but that's a far cry from "work day and night to stifle nuclear energy."
    - mattrp 7y ago
      They don't have to work that hard to stifle nuclear because that battle was largely fought and won 3 decades ago. By and large it has remained 'won.' Without splitting hairs the point remains that nuclear was scapegoated sufficiently that even if environmentalist could agree on nuclear and worked day and night to fight FOR it, we're at least a generation away from any new installations much less meaningful adoption within the grid. In the meantime, I think an objective person might say that natural gas -- on balance -- is a preferred alternative to coal (excepting any other viable substitutes).
      - Recurecur 7y ago
        > we're at least a generation away from any new installations much less meaningful adoption within the grid. That's just not the case, if sanity prevails at all. We could have much safer Gen IV plants online within 10 years easily. It just takes the will to do it.
        7y ago
- 727262826hdhd 7y ago
  If it's really serious then the USA should be emphasizing expanding fracking operations further since that's been their most effective emissions reducer. Most of the country's emissions progress has been due to a mix of increased efficiency across particular consumption mediums (like cars) and natural gas replacing dirtier energy generation methods.
  - tempestn 7y ago
    The problem with that is, when you build a gas plant, that's infrastructure that you now have an economic incentive to run for decades. So while switching to these plants might make a small improvement now, it will cause greater pain in the future.
    - 727262826hdhd 7y ago
      It's not a small improvement though, it's the primary source of the USA's emissions gains. And it comes with the side bonus of promoting energy independence while also creating exportable products.
      - acidburnNSA 7y ago
        It's undercutting and killing what makes over 50% of our carbon free energy: our 100 GWe nuclear fleet. Gas is not an ok end point. Nuclear is. Killing an ok endpoint to make small gains while approaching a not-ok endpoint is unwise.
      - SiempreViernes 7y ago
        I mean, the reason natural gas makes a difference is because the USA isn't actually trying the cheapest and most effective way: just reducing emissions.
- kortilla 7y ago
  > starting to cause near zero-carbon nuclear plants to close early No, it’s shitty politics around nuclear that are causing them to close early. Nuclear costs are so high because each plant is a bespoke monster tied up in regulatory tape, NIMBYism, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Calif... These nut jobs will ensure nuclear plants keep getting closed under any excuse, regardless of energy prices.
jcampbell1 7y ago
Natural Gas is also load following and plants are efficient at a much smaller scale, which means it is easier on the grid and makes more renewables possible. Moving from coal to gas enables solar and wind. I personally think the US or Canada should build massive LNG plants in the PNW, and export gas to China. It would help the nasty particulate problems in the cities, and also make their infrastructure more amenable to renewables.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  Why would we invest in and build more very-high carbon systems like fracked natural gas when we have so many incredible low-carbon resources around like solar, geothermal, tidal, hydro, nuclear, and wind!? This seems really backwards to me considering the gravity of the climate situation.
  - jdmichal 7y ago
    Your parent already said why. The ability of gas plants to quickly adjust to changing loads is one of the things enabling those solar, tidal, and wind plants to be on the grid. Nuclear, hydro, and geothermal are great for baseline load, but adjust very slowly to changing load requirements. Gas is filling a legitimate technical gap right now within the power grid, bridging between slow baseline plants and unpredictable renewable sources.
    - WorldMaker 7y ago
      Even ignoring that we have a well known, much more renewable option on the table (nuclear), it is a technical gap that is also rapidly shrinking from advancements in storage tech (batteries and hydrogen fuel cells).
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - incangold 7y ago
      Does pumped-storage hydroelectricity meet a similar need? Or does it take longer to come online than natural gas?
bcrosby95 7y ago
Part of the problem is the life of a power plant is on the order of decades. Every new natural gas plant is a plant that will exist for 50+ years. Because investors need to make their money back.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  Investors want to get their money back. They frequently don't, when conditions change.
  - MiroF 7y ago
    But they also frequently lobby the government in order to ensure that they do. Nothing good comes from having a large class of investors with significant amounts of money tied up in high-carbon power plants for the next half century.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
> The perfect is the enemy of the good. As often said when trying to push a bad solution instead of a good one. Replacing coal plants with gas plants is a bad solution. Rapid deployment of nuclear+renewables is merely good. Perfect would be overhauling the economy to be less dependent on growth and much less carbon intensive.
- scarmig 7y ago
  And everyone should get a pony!
  - goo 7y ago
    The thing is, everyone _could_ get a pony, if we decided that doing so was a priority. Ponies cost about $1000. If it mattered enough, the US government could ABSOLUTELY afford $330 billion to get everyone a pony. It's not that tremendous things aren't possible, it's that we aren't doing them.
    - bzbarsky 7y ago
      Not to take away from your main point, but the capitalized total cost of ownership for a pony is _much_ larger than $1000 (which, by the way, is the price for a not-very-good-natured pony; breeds with nice temperaments cost a lot more according to https://pets.costhelper.com/pony.html https://pets.costhelper.com/pony.html ). Doing some quick checking, food for a pony is ~$1-2k per year. Lodging is $2-3k per year. Basic preventative veterinary care is $1k per year; if the pony gets old this could get a lot more. That's $4-6k a year for upkeep, and ponies live for 20+ years. So the actual cost of a pony, even with discounting and whatnot for future dollars, is probably at least $50k, not $1k.
      - goo 7y ago
        If you really think through the implications of every individual in America owning a pony, it gets a lot more interesting than that! It means that everyone in every city would own a pony -- would that mean that perhaps a proxy ownership situation would occur, where you had a certificate of pony ownership, but the pony would be housed and maintained anywhere in the country that could do so cheapest? It would cost a lot more than 2-3k/year to house a pony in NYC! Let alone the sudden demand for housing about 5 million of them... My guess is that these ponies would be kept in horrible conditions similar to the way domesticated cattle are raised for milk and meat. I would hazard that all of our assumptions about the actual price of ponies and maintenance would come down if we all needed to have a pony, and would come down by a LOT.
kerkeslager 7y ago
> The perfect is the enemy of the good. The bad is also the enemy of the good. Nuclear would be an example of a good solution that isn't perfect. Natural gas is an example of bad solution, in that it doesn't actually fit the definition of a solution because it doesn't in any way contribute to solving the problem. > Natural gas is roughly half as bad as coal, and it's an easy win, compared to the alternatives. This is simply false. Given methane emissions, we don't actually know that it's better at all, let alone half as bad. > If we sit around waiting for reduction of energy use and increase in renewables to save us, we are screwed. Actually, we're pretty much screwed no matter what we do, which is why the marginal-improvement-that-might-not-even-be-an-improvement you're trying to say is acceptable, isn't acceptable. > Gotta take what we can get for now, and continue fighting for even better solutions. Is "fighting for even better solutions" what you think you're doing here?
- scarmig 7y ago
  > This is simply false. Given methane emissions, we don't actually know that it's better at all, let alone half as bad. Methane emissions have a much shorter residency time in the atmosphere than carbon. It's literally an order of magnitude difference: methane is significantly worse for a short period, but over the course of a century carbon dioxide is far worse. That lopsidedness gets even worse when you go out to a millenium. Thinking out to a century from now, it's appropriate to more or less ignore methane and focus on carbon dioxide. > Actually, we're pretty much screwed no matter what we do, which is why the marginal improvement you're trying to say is acceptable, isn't acceptable. "It's unacceptable for ten million people to die, so we shouldn't have a preference between ten and twenty million people dying!" > Is "fighting for even better solutions" what you think you're doing here? As someone who has actually worked full-time on climate solutions and whose carbon emissions are in the bottom 1% of Americans, it's presumptuous of you to assume that you're doing more for the climate because you're regurgitating an article you saw on the Facebook newsfeed.
  - gxon 7y ago
    I really respect anyone who's chosen to willingly sacrifice their lifestyle to reduce their carbon emissions. Very few people are actually willing to do that. So I'm curious about your opinion. Do you think that promoting hope that what we're doing is enough is the right play at this point in time? Decades of warning from the scientific community have yielded effectively 0 progress on halting our exponential march towards ecological collapse. Sure, you can argue for marginal progress here and there. But when the likely end goal remains total collapse of civilization and possible extinction of our species, does it really matter? I know we tend to think of panic and despair as something that prevents us from finding solutions, or even make the problem worse. But maybe pretending that we're going to mostly be OK and figure out climate change is just causing us to be complacent and procrastinate on the problem until it's too late. It may already be too late due to tipping points being triggered. Like I said, I'd love to hear your thoughts, but I've increasingly started to believe that panic is an idea worth spreading. It may be the only way we can ever hope to collectively wake up and start making the sacrifices necessary to survive this extinction event.
briandear 7y ago
And particulates are far more dangerous than CO2. People don’t get asthma or cancer from CO2.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  That's the first concession of my comment at the top of this thread. Coal and oil kills today (~6 million/yr). Gas kills tomorrow via climate change.
didibus 7y ago
Natural gas seems like tech dept to me. Take short term gain over long term. Hope that you'll address the tech dept sooner rather then later. Sometimes that's the right call, and sometime the wrong call. I'm not qualified to tell, but I don't think this is a case of perfect being the enemy of the good, since all the other alternatives aren't perfect either, and seem equally viable, as opposed to a perfect over engineered solution that would never ever be able to actually materialize and ship, which is generally when the phrase perfect is the enemy of the good applies.
StuffedParrot 7y ago
> Natural gas is roughly half as bad as coal Not if you enter a feedback cycle of greenhouse gas emissions. That is DEFINITELY the enemy of good.
shinryuu 7y ago
Considering that we really need to reduce emissions every year by about 15% by now it is not enough at all https://mobile.twitter.com/CarbonBrief/status/1213272332464082944 https://mobile.twitter.com/CarbonBrief/status/12132723324640...

acidburnNSA 7y ago

> The perfect is the enemy of the good. In this case, high-carbon (coal and gas) is the enemy of low-carbon (wind/solar/tidal/hydro/nuclear/geo). I said this in another thread, but switching from terrible to awful is not something we should take as what we can get. The starting point and the end point are unacceptable in a coal to gas transition. No point celebrating that. For example, fracked gas is so cheap that it's starting to cause near zero-carbon nuclear plants to close early. Unlike gas, nuclear plants are actually low carbon (12 gCO2-eq/kWe vs. 490 for gas). Thus, fracked gas being cheap and not considered the high-carbon fuel it is is preventing us from reaching our climate goals. This is really serious stuff.

scarmig 7y ago
> This is really serious stuff. Yes, we're in agreement on that. And "celebrating" gas is a million miles away from my perspective. Every reduction in CO2 emissions today saves lives not just today but a century from now. Suppose we could instantaneously replace coal with natural gas, today. And we also have a choice of replacing all coal with low-carbon sources, but at some point in N years in the future. How long does it take to break even? 2N years in the future. So even assuming we could fully decarbonize the world economy in 25 years, it'd be a half century before we even get to the break even point in terms of accummulated emissions. And that doesn't even account for a significant part of the carbon emissions from the first 25 years being absorbed by various processes, or the ability to simultaneously push for low carbon and natural gas energy. Even if natural gas pushes the timeline for full decarbonization from 25 to 35 years out, it's still a clear win. That scenario I acknowledge is bleak, but bleak is better than... really fucking bleak, which is what we're headed for with coal.
naiveprogrammer 7y ago
What you say makes perfect sense but when you transpose to the real world the story changes. See how the most vocal and powerful climate activists work day and night to stifle nuclear energy as a perfectly good solution to fight climate change, by far the best solution out there to reduce emissions. Maybe gas is the second best solution to reduce emissions while we develop other solutions in the meantime.
- scarmig 7y ago
  > See how the most vocal and powerful climate activists work day and night to stifle nuclear energy as a perfectly good solution to fight climate change I don't think that conforms with reality. Off the top of my head, I looked up McKibben and Greta, and both see a role for nuclear power in decarbonization. The bigger issue is that it's not prioritized because it'd split the environmental movement, but that's a far cry from "work day and night to stifle nuclear energy."
  - mattrp 7y ago
    They don't have to work that hard to stifle nuclear because that battle was largely fought and won 3 decades ago. By and large it has remained 'won.' Without splitting hairs the point remains that nuclear was scapegoated sufficiently that even if environmentalist could agree on nuclear and worked day and night to fight FOR it, we're at least a generation away from any new installations much less meaningful adoption within the grid. In the meantime, I think an objective person might say that natural gas -- on balance -- is a preferred alternative to coal (excepting any other viable substitutes).
    - Recurecur 7y ago
      > we're at least a generation away from any new installations much less meaningful adoption within the grid. That's just not the case, if sanity prevails at all. We could have much safer Gen IV plants online within 10 years easily. It just takes the will to do it.
      - 7y ago
727262826hdhd 7y ago
If it's really serious then the USA should be emphasizing expanding fracking operations further since that's been their most effective emissions reducer. Most of the country's emissions progress has been due to a mix of increased efficiency across particular consumption mediums (like cars) and natural gas replacing dirtier energy generation methods.
- tempestn 7y ago
  The problem with that is, when you build a gas plant, that's infrastructure that you now have an economic incentive to run for decades. So while switching to these plants might make a small improvement now, it will cause greater pain in the future.
  - 727262826hdhd 7y ago
    It's not a small improvement though, it's the primary source of the USA's emissions gains. And it comes with the side bonus of promoting energy independence while also creating exportable products.
    - acidburnNSA 7y ago
      It's undercutting and killing what makes over 50% of our carbon free energy: our 100 GWe nuclear fleet. Gas is not an ok end point. Nuclear is. Killing an ok endpoint to make small gains while approaching a not-ok endpoint is unwise.
    - SiempreViernes 7y ago
      I mean, the reason natural gas makes a difference is because the USA isn't actually trying the cheapest and most effective way: just reducing emissions.
kortilla 7y ago
> starting to cause near zero-carbon nuclear plants to close early No, it’s shitty politics around nuclear that are causing them to close early. Nuclear costs are so high because each plant is a bespoke monster tied up in regulatory tape, NIMBYism, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Calif... These nut jobs will ensure nuclear plants keep getting closed under any excuse, regardless of energy prices.

jcampbell1 7y ago

Natural Gas is also load following and plants are efficient at a much smaller scale, which means it is easier on the grid and makes more renewables possible. Moving from coal to gas enables solar and wind. I personally think the US or Canada should build massive LNG plants in the PNW, and export gas to China. It would help the nasty particulate problems in the cities, and also make their infrastructure more amenable to renewables.

acidburnNSA 7y ago
Why would we invest in and build more very-high carbon systems like fracked natural gas when we have so many incredible low-carbon resources around like solar, geothermal, tidal, hydro, nuclear, and wind!? This seems really backwards to me considering the gravity of the climate situation.
- jdmichal 7y ago
  Your parent already said why. The ability of gas plants to quickly adjust to changing loads is one of the things enabling those solar, tidal, and wind plants to be on the grid. Nuclear, hydro, and geothermal are great for baseline load, but adjust very slowly to changing load requirements. Gas is filling a legitimate technical gap right now within the power grid, bridging between slow baseline plants and unpredictable renewable sources.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    Even ignoring that we have a well known, much more renewable option on the table (nuclear), it is a technical gap that is also rapidly shrinking from advancements in storage tech (batteries and hydrogen fuel cells).
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - incangold 7y ago
    Does pumped-storage hydroelectricity meet a similar need? Or does it take longer to come online than natural gas?

bcrosby95 7y ago

Part of the problem is the life of a power plant is on the order of decades. Every new natural gas plant is a plant that will exist for 50+ years. Because investors need to make their money back.

BurningFrog 7y ago
Investors want to get their money back. They frequently don't, when conditions change.
- MiroF 7y ago
  But they also frequently lobby the government in order to ensure that they do. Nothing good comes from having a large class of investors with significant amounts of money tied up in high-carbon power plants for the next half century.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> The perfect is the enemy of the good. As often said when trying to push a bad solution instead of a good one. Replacing coal plants with gas plants is a bad solution. Rapid deployment of nuclear+renewables is merely good. Perfect would be overhauling the economy to be less dependent on growth and much less carbon intensive.

scarmig 7y ago
And everyone should get a pony!
- goo 7y ago
  The thing is, everyone _could_ get a pony, if we decided that doing so was a priority. Ponies cost about $1000. If it mattered enough, the US government could ABSOLUTELY afford $330 billion to get everyone a pony. It's not that tremendous things aren't possible, it's that we aren't doing them.
  - bzbarsky 7y ago
    Not to take away from your main point, but the capitalized total cost of ownership for a pony is _much_ larger than $1000 (which, by the way, is the price for a not-very-good-natured pony; breeds with nice temperaments cost a lot more according to https://pets.costhelper.com/pony.html https://pets.costhelper.com/pony.html ). Doing some quick checking, food for a pony is ~$1-2k per year. Lodging is $2-3k per year. Basic preventative veterinary care is $1k per year; if the pony gets old this could get a lot more. That's $4-6k a year for upkeep, and ponies live for 20+ years. So the actual cost of a pony, even with discounting and whatnot for future dollars, is probably at least $50k, not $1k.
    - goo 7y ago
      If you really think through the implications of every individual in America owning a pony, it gets a lot more interesting than that! It means that everyone in every city would own a pony -- would that mean that perhaps a proxy ownership situation would occur, where you had a certificate of pony ownership, but the pony would be housed and maintained anywhere in the country that could do so cheapest? It would cost a lot more than 2-3k/year to house a pony in NYC! Let alone the sudden demand for housing about 5 million of them... My guess is that these ponies would be kept in horrible conditions similar to the way domesticated cattle are raised for milk and meat. I would hazard that all of our assumptions about the actual price of ponies and maintenance would come down if we all needed to have a pony, and would come down by a LOT.

kerkeslager 7y ago

> The perfect is the enemy of the good. The bad is also the enemy of the good. Nuclear would be an example of a good solution that isn't perfect. Natural gas is an example of bad solution, in that it doesn't actually fit the definition of a solution because it doesn't in any way contribute to solving the problem. > Natural gas is roughly half as bad as coal, and it's an easy win, compared to the alternatives. This is simply false. Given methane emissions, we don't actually know that it's better at all, let alone half as bad. > If we sit around waiting for reduction of energy use and increase in renewables to save us, we are screwed. Actually, we're pretty much screwed no matter what we do, which is why the marginal-improvement-that-might-not-even-be-an-improvement you're trying to say is acceptable, isn't acceptable. > Gotta take what we can get for now, and continue fighting for even better solutions. Is "fighting for even better solutions" what you think you're doing here?

scarmig 7y ago
> This is simply false. Given methane emissions, we don't actually know that it's better at all, let alone half as bad. Methane emissions have a much shorter residency time in the atmosphere than carbon. It's literally an order of magnitude difference: methane is significantly worse for a short period, but over the course of a century carbon dioxide is far worse. That lopsidedness gets even worse when you go out to a millenium. Thinking out to a century from now, it's appropriate to more or less ignore methane and focus on carbon dioxide. > Actually, we're pretty much screwed no matter what we do, which is why the marginal improvement you're trying to say is acceptable, isn't acceptable. "It's unacceptable for ten million people to die, so we shouldn't have a preference between ten and twenty million people dying!" > Is "fighting for even better solutions" what you think you're doing here? As someone who has actually worked full-time on climate solutions and whose carbon emissions are in the bottom 1% of Americans, it's presumptuous of you to assume that you're doing more for the climate because you're regurgitating an article you saw on the Facebook newsfeed.
- gxon 7y ago
  I really respect anyone who's chosen to willingly sacrifice their lifestyle to reduce their carbon emissions. Very few people are actually willing to do that. So I'm curious about your opinion. Do you think that promoting hope that what we're doing is enough is the right play at this point in time? Decades of warning from the scientific community have yielded effectively 0 progress on halting our exponential march towards ecological collapse. Sure, you can argue for marginal progress here and there. But when the likely end goal remains total collapse of civilization and possible extinction of our species, does it really matter? I know we tend to think of panic and despair as something that prevents us from finding solutions, or even make the problem worse. But maybe pretending that we're going to mostly be OK and figure out climate change is just causing us to be complacent and procrastinate on the problem until it's too late. It may already be too late due to tipping points being triggered. Like I said, I'd love to hear your thoughts, but I've increasingly started to believe that panic is an idea worth spreading. It may be the only way we can ever hope to collectively wake up and start making the sacrifices necessary to survive this extinction event.

briandear 7y ago

And particulates are far more dangerous than CO2. People don’t get asthma or cancer from CO2.

acidburnNSA 7y ago
That's the first concession of my comment at the top of this thread. Coal and oil kills today (~6 million/yr). Gas kills tomorrow via climate change.

didibus 7y ago

Natural gas seems like tech dept to me. Take short term gain over long term. Hope that you'll address the tech dept sooner rather then later. Sometimes that's the right call, and sometime the wrong call. I'm not qualified to tell, but I don't think this is a case of perfect being the enemy of the good, since all the other alternatives aren't perfect either, and seem equally viable, as opposed to a perfect over engineered solution that would never ever be able to actually materialize and ship, which is generally when the phrase perfect is the enemy of the good applies.

StuffedParrot 7y ago

> Natural gas is roughly half as bad as coal Not if you enter a feedback cycle of greenhouse gas emissions. That is DEFINITELY the enemy of good.

shinryuu 7y ago

Considering that we really need to reduce emissions every year by about 15% by now it is not enough at all https://mobile.twitter.com/CarbonBrief/status/1213272332464082944 https://mobile.twitter.com/CarbonBrief/status/12132723324640...