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Curiously enough, chlorine radicals and volatile organic compounds from coal and wood combustion have the opposite effect in the lower atmosphere, where the int

Curiously enough, chlorine radicals and volatile organic compounds from coal and wood combustion have the opposite effect in the lower atmosphere, where the interaction increases ozone production (due to reaction with various nitrogen oxides). This also generates the lung irritant PAN which is a component of brown smog: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep36821 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep36821 > "The chlorine radical is a potent atmospheric oxidant, capable of perturbing tropospheric oxidative cycles normally controlled by the hydroxyl radical. Significantly faster reaction rates allow chlorine radicals to expedite oxidation of hydrocarbons, including methane, and in polluted environments, to enhance ozone production... Even when present at low levels, Cl radicals can have a profound impact on tropospheric oxidation and radical cycling. Cl chemistry can significantly impact levels of tropospheric ozone, a greenhouse gas that is also a precursor for the OH radical, destroying it in clean environments and enhancing its formation under polluted conditions." Incidentally, Australia's massive wildfires of 2019-2020 produced about 700 million tons of CO2, which is only about 1/3 of Australia's annual fossil CO2 generation from coal (counting total production of Australian coal, of which only about 1/5th is burned in Australia itself, the rest being exported). If you want to eliminate fossil fuel use, and aren't just posturing for political convenience, stopping production makes a lot more sense than stopping emissions at point-of-use.

londons_explore 4y ago
> If you want to eliminate fossil fuel use, and aren't just posturing for political convenience, stopping production makes a lot more sense than stopping emissions at point-of-use. This. And the fact I haven't heard of any country saying "we'll stop extracting coal/oil to help the environment" tells me nobody really cares about the environment - everyone just wants to look like they care to appease voters.
- omegabravo 4y ago
  Depriving people of energy can be just as catastrophic. While not digging it up would be effective, I'm not sure some people in developing* country would necessarily agree. It's a complex topic, and Australia (where I live) has little excuse to still be using coal fired energy so much. Politics gets in the way of the obvious solutions. I don't particularly like attributing CO2 to the source. Unless we're going to stop counting CO2 emission internally, because the oil has been extracted elsewhere. edit: updated to developing, didn't realise the other was offensive. My apologies
  - gostsamo 4y ago
    If you care about third-world countries, at least be polite enough to call them developing countries.
    - StevenRayOrr 4y ago
      Developing into what?
      - kevviiinn 4y ago
        Exploitation machines just like big daddy united states. Unless they have resources we want ofc, then the CIA simply puts in a complicit dictator!
    - mdp2021 4y ago
      'Third World' was coined - I believe, by Alfred Sauvy in 1952 (following Pascal Boniface) - as an expression to literally mean "non aligned in the dichotomy of NATO vs Warsaw pact affiliance". Stereotypes about qualities frequent in Countries of such /political/ quality (such as said alleged "need for development", following the poster) are not implied. 'Third' is proper for "non-aligned"; 'developing' when noting such state makes sense (special sense, since growth seems to be a shared goal); some other term for other cases - such as "rich in raw materials", etc.
      - gostsamo 4y ago
        I can come up with list of words that were coined with some intention and gained another. Why a term was created has nothing to do with how it is used and the gp comment wasn't in the context of the cold war history.
        mdp2021 4y ago
        > list of words No need because that is the normal process, involving meaning and use - you could present the whole dictionary. But it is none of our business if suddenly one individual or a multitude start using 'mangrove' for something they decide, and it gives no toss of credential to those who after that decide that 'mangrove' does not mean "mangrove".
- wil421 4y ago
  Norway is the perfect example of this. Nationally they seem to be moving towards EVs faster than others but they have no problems producing oil. The biggest lie told today is that pollution is our problem and that we, as individuals, can make a decent impact. Industry has to change to make any impact. It doesn’t matter how clean your cars or energy sources are if you keep pumping fossil fuels out of the ground.
- pjc50 4y ago
  That would be leaving a substantial amount of money on the table. Also, they're not necessarily the same countries or people; there are for example anti-fracking movements in some of the countries where that is happening.
- idontpost 4y ago
  [dead]
- Aperocky 4y ago
  Or maybe those countries are just realistic and didn't want to put people who already live paycheck to paycheck on a more desperate economic footing. There's no cake milord!
paganel 4y ago
> stopping production And then how do you provide energy cheaply and reliably enough? That is in order to maintain today’s “civilizational level”, so to speak. As far as I am aware the energy sources that are now branded as alternative cannot do that, i.e. provide energy that is both cheap and reliable.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Technology is reaching the point where renewables are just as cheap and reliable as fossil fuels (and note, coal plants break down and gas and oil supplies get interrupted): https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/australia-promises-billions-renewable-projects-rewire-power-grid-2022-10-19/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/australia-promi... It's rather interesting that some major fossil fuel producers are building renewable domestic infrastructure (Australia, Saudi Arabia) although they don't seem to want to cut exports as quickly.
  - zizee 4y ago
    Both of you have good points. The world needs cheap energy to function. Renewables are becoming more capable by the day, and can/will be that source of cheap reliable energy. But the transition is not going to be instantaneous. If renewables are as cheaper/reliable/better as fossil fuel (and continually improving) the economic incentives will effectively push the transition as fast as is possible. The transition is supply constrained as much as anything. Production of solar, wind is rapidly growing, but it can only grow so quickly.
idiotsecant 4y ago
>If you want to eliminate fossil fuel use, and aren't just posturing for political convenience, stopping production makes a lot more sense than stopping emissions at point-of-use. Talk about posturing. This is the least effective way to reduce carbon emissions, because it simply won't be done without sufficient replacement energy generation and transmission in place, as well as alternatives for spot-use of hydrocarbons like automotive, heating, etc. If you want to get nothing done, propose solutions that make nobody happy. If you want to get something done propose solutions that can work.
- somewhereoutth 4y ago
  However, it would force people to do something. Restricting supply increases price, and thus alternatives/efficiencies become more viable. An effective climate preservation campaign would focus on production facilities - coal mines, oil rigs etc. Not necessarily directly - for example the best way to shut down North Sea oil production would be to make it impossible to fly helicopters out there - protest airfields, helicopter maintenance depos, protest to the pilots, disrupt the logistics. Of course this then becomes a national security threat, and would be dealt with accordingly.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    It forces them to vote you out of office and in come the subsidies for coal.
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      Yeah, for an example of how this works horribly in practice, look at how the French yellow vests rolled back their climate taxes
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    At better way is tax it. Governments are experts at taxing.
    - 4y ago
somewhereoutth 4y ago
Exactly. And restrictions on supply will force people to use fossil fuels more efficiently, whereas just increasing efficiency might actually make people use more fossil fuels - the Jevons paradox. I would suggest the slogan 'Leave it in the ground!'
nojvek 4y ago
Coal exports are a huge part of Australia's GDP. Resource exports make 67% of their total exports https://www.rba.gov.au/snapshots/economy-composition-snapshot/pdf/economy-composition-snapshot.pdf?v=2023-03-10-04-51-31 https://www.rba.gov.au/snapshots/economy-composition-snapsho... If Australia stopped exporting Coal (mostly to China), it would decimate not only their economy, but affect China (world's factory) making everything else expensive too. Unpopular opinion: It seems with Coal or Gasoline, due to CO2 emissions, they've been seen as unclean and something we should switch away from. However their energy density is high, only below nuclear. Easy to transport, relatively safe. It's an amazing source of fuel. I'm somewhat hopeful that someday we'll figure out how to capture 100s of millions of tons of C02 from atmosphere and turn it into synthetic gasoline-like fuel. All using solar energy. The whole dance of global warming is because we know how to burn fuels and create heat + CO2 + H20, but we don't know how to do the reverse cheaply at scale. Once we do that, then gasoline/ethanol is a renewable resource. Lithium ion batteries are great, but gasoline is 100x denser than batteries.
- guelo 4y ago
  > capture 100s of millions of tons of C02 from atmosphere It's way more efficient to capture it at the source, ie. the coal plant. But nobody wants to talk about that because that would cost coal companies money and that's not allowed. They want to spew the pollution for free to keep coal energy "cheap" while the whole world has to pay for the cleanup.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    It would take all the energy the coal plant produced to capture all of its CO2 emissions, it's a pretty futile cycle... For comparison, try to imagine a diesel truck that captured all its emissions onboard as it drove down the highway. It's not very plausible and would represent a huge drain on power output. FutureGen was a massive failure, too.
    - guelo 4y ago
      If they were forced to pay the true externalized costs of burning coal they would either have to figure out the tech or go out of business.

londons_explore 4y ago

> If you want to eliminate fossil fuel use, and aren't just posturing for political convenience, stopping production makes a lot more sense than stopping emissions at point-of-use. This. And the fact I haven't heard of any country saying "we'll stop extracting coal/oil to help the environment" tells me nobody really cares about the environment - everyone just wants to look like they care to appease voters.

omegabravo 4y ago
Depriving people of energy can be just as catastrophic. While not digging it up would be effective, I'm not sure some people in developing* country would necessarily agree. It's a complex topic, and Australia (where I live) has little excuse to still be using coal fired energy so much. Politics gets in the way of the obvious solutions. I don't particularly like attributing CO2 to the source. Unless we're going to stop counting CO2 emission internally, because the oil has been extracted elsewhere. edit: updated to developing, didn't realise the other was offensive. My apologies
- gostsamo 4y ago
  If you care about third-world countries, at least be polite enough to call them developing countries.
  - StevenRayOrr 4y ago
    Developing into what?
    - kevviiinn 4y ago
      Exploitation machines just like big daddy united states. Unless they have resources we want ofc, then the CIA simply puts in a complicit dictator!
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    'Third World' was coined - I believe, by Alfred Sauvy in 1952 (following Pascal Boniface) - as an expression to literally mean "non aligned in the dichotomy of NATO vs Warsaw pact affiliance". Stereotypes about qualities frequent in Countries of such /political/ quality (such as said alleged "need for development", following the poster) are not implied. 'Third' is proper for "non-aligned"; 'developing' when noting such state makes sense (special sense, since growth seems to be a shared goal); some other term for other cases - such as "rich in raw materials", etc.
    - gostsamo 4y ago
      I can come up with list of words that were coined with some intention and gained another. Why a term was created has nothing to do with how it is used and the gp comment wasn't in the context of the cold war history.
      - mdp2021 4y ago
        > list of words No need because that is the normal process, involving meaning and use - you could present the whole dictionary. But it is none of our business if suddenly one individual or a multitude start using 'mangrove' for something they decide, and it gives no toss of credential to those who after that decide that 'mangrove' does not mean "mangrove".
wil421 4y ago
Norway is the perfect example of this. Nationally they seem to be moving towards EVs faster than others but they have no problems producing oil. The biggest lie told today is that pollution is our problem and that we, as individuals, can make a decent impact. Industry has to change to make any impact. It doesn’t matter how clean your cars or energy sources are if you keep pumping fossil fuels out of the ground.
pjc50 4y ago
That would be leaving a substantial amount of money on the table. Also, they're not necessarily the same countries or people; there are for example anti-fracking movements in some of the countries where that is happening.
idontpost 4y ago
[dead]
Aperocky 4y ago
Or maybe those countries are just realistic and didn't want to put people who already live paycheck to paycheck on a more desperate economic footing. There's no cake milord!

paganel 4y ago

> stopping production And then how do you provide energy cheaply and reliably enough? That is in order to maintain today’s “civilizational level”, so to speak. As far as I am aware the energy sources that are now branded as alternative cannot do that, i.e. provide energy that is both cheap and reliable.

photochemsyn 4y ago
Technology is reaching the point where renewables are just as cheap and reliable as fossil fuels (and note, coal plants break down and gas and oil supplies get interrupted): https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/australia-promises-billions-renewable-projects-rewire-power-grid-2022-10-19/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/australia-promi... It's rather interesting that some major fossil fuel producers are building renewable domestic infrastructure (Australia, Saudi Arabia) although they don't seem to want to cut exports as quickly.
- zizee 4y ago
  Both of you have good points. The world needs cheap energy to function. Renewables are becoming more capable by the day, and can/will be that source of cheap reliable energy. But the transition is not going to be instantaneous. If renewables are as cheaper/reliable/better as fossil fuel (and continually improving) the economic incentives will effectively push the transition as fast as is possible. The transition is supply constrained as much as anything. Production of solar, wind is rapidly growing, but it can only grow so quickly.

idiotsecant 4y ago

>If you want to eliminate fossil fuel use, and aren't just posturing for political convenience, stopping production makes a lot more sense than stopping emissions at point-of-use. Talk about posturing. This is the least effective way to reduce carbon emissions, because it simply won't be done without sufficient replacement energy generation and transmission in place, as well as alternatives for spot-use of hydrocarbons like automotive, heating, etc. If you want to get nothing done, propose solutions that make nobody happy. If you want to get something done propose solutions that can work.

somewhereoutth 4y ago
However, it would force people to do something. Restricting supply increases price, and thus alternatives/efficiencies become more viable. An effective climate preservation campaign would focus on production facilities - coal mines, oil rigs etc. Not necessarily directly - for example the best way to shut down North Sea oil production would be to make it impossible to fly helicopters out there - protest airfields, helicopter maintenance depos, protest to the pilots, disrupt the logistics. Of course this then becomes a national security threat, and would be dealt with accordingly.
- bluGill 4y ago
  It forces them to vote you out of office and in come the subsidies for coal.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Yeah, for an example of how this works horribly in practice, look at how the French yellow vests rolled back their climate taxes
- WalterBright 4y ago
  At better way is tax it. Governments are experts at taxing.
  - 4y ago

somewhereoutth 4y ago

Exactly. And restrictions on supply will force people to use fossil fuels more efficiently, whereas just increasing efficiency might actually make people use more fossil fuels - the Jevons paradox. I would suggest the slogan 'Leave it in the ground!'

nojvek 4y ago

Coal exports are a huge part of Australia's GDP. Resource exports make 67% of their total exports https://www.rba.gov.au/snapshots/economy-composition-snapshot/pdf/economy-composition-snapshot.pdf?v=2023-03-10-04-51-31 https://www.rba.gov.au/snapshots/economy-composition-snapsho... If Australia stopped exporting Coal (mostly to China), it would decimate not only their economy, but affect China (world's factory) making everything else expensive too. Unpopular opinion: It seems with Coal or Gasoline, due to CO2 emissions, they've been seen as unclean and something we should switch away from. However their energy density is high, only below nuclear. Easy to transport, relatively safe. It's an amazing source of fuel. I'm somewhat hopeful that someday we'll figure out how to capture 100s of millions of tons of C02 from atmosphere and turn it into synthetic gasoline-like fuel. All using solar energy. The whole dance of global warming is because we know how to burn fuels and create heat + CO2 + H20, but we don't know how to do the reverse cheaply at scale. Once we do that, then gasoline/ethanol is a renewable resource. Lithium ion batteries are great, but gasoline is 100x denser than batteries.

guelo 4y ago
> capture 100s of millions of tons of C02 from atmosphere It's way more efficient to capture it at the source, ie. the coal plant. But nobody wants to talk about that because that would cost coal companies money and that's not allowed. They want to spew the pollution for free to keep coal energy "cheap" while the whole world has to pay for the cleanup.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  It would take all the energy the coal plant produced to capture all of its CO2 emissions, it's a pretty futile cycle... For comparison, try to imagine a diesel truck that captured all its emissions onboard as it drove down the highway. It's not very plausible and would represent a huge drain on power output. FutureGen was a massive failure, too.
  - guelo 4y ago
    If they were forced to pay the true externalized costs of burning coal they would either have to figure out the tech or go out of business.