USA’s top Climate Change Expert Lied

[Old Greg]

In reality, I agree. There are technical solutions that allow us to decouple the historic correlation between economic development and fossil fuel, but they are largely political non-starters. For example cement production is a huge CO2 producer, it requires energy to get the high temperatures needed for production and the process itself generates CO2 as a waste product. There exist viable low-temperature low-CO2 alternatives but without an incentive to switch, the industry sticks to the 'devil it knows'.

As long as there is not a source that provides the energy density of coal at a comparable cost then the Chinese (say) will dig it up and burn it, and who can blame them? They're the largest emitters now but on a per capita basis they chuck out about a quarter of what the US does, and most of the CO2 in the atmosphere was put there by the First World. Absent a binding global agreement to include the long term costs of fossil fuels in their price, which would require unprecedented political co-operation on a global scale, which seems unlikely, to say the least, interesting times lie ahead for us and our kids...

I suspect the best hope is a 'moon-shot' technological fix project (or part fix) which may or may not succeed.

[pjclarke]

I suspect the best hope is a 'moon-shot' technological fix project (or part fix) which may or may not succeed.

Well, we should be throwing moonshot or even wartime budgets at it, but we're not. Tech fixes seem to be either removing CO2 from the atmosphere, and the problem there is it is a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, so you have to move a lot of air over whatever you're using, and the energy needed to do that outweighs the benefits, or some kind of geo-engineering, such as generating our own aerosol clouds by firing sulphates into the atmosphere or DA's favourite of chucking fertiliser into the oceans to promote algae growth which then gets eaten and sequestrated by sinking to the ocean floor. None of these has been shown to work, and may divert efforts away from what we are sure would have impact which is to reduce emissions.

Carbon Capture and Storage at power stations has some promise and the UK 2012 Energy Bill promised that the Government would 'meet our climate change goals by largely decarbonising the power sector during the 2030s'. Yet the legislation set a limit on CO2 of 450g/kWh for new plant. Most gas plants emit around 400g/KWh so there is no 'decarbonsiation' there, and new coal plant emits about 800g and the coalition agreement promised us that 'will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient carbon capture and storage to meet the emissions performance standard'. But the Bill exempts from the limit any station that is part of its Carbon Capture and Storage programme, but this is defined as one that as one which will use CCS at some time in the future, no timescale given.

As I said, what is lacking is political will, a situation not helped by the public confusion caused by disinformation from the deniers ....

[Old Greg]

Well, we should be throwing moonshot or even wartime budgets at it, but we're not. Tech fixes seem to be either removing CO2 from the atmosphere, and the problem there is it is a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, so you have to move a lot of air over whatever you're using, and the energy needed to do that outweighs the benefits, or some kind of geo-engineering, such as generating our own aerosol clouds by firing sulphates into the atmosphere or DA's favourite of chucking fertiliser into the oceans to promote algae growth which then gets eaten and sequestrated by sinking to the ocean floor. None of these has been shown to work, and may divert efforts away from what we are sure would have impact which is to reduce emissions.

Carbon Capture and Storage at power stations has some promise and the UK 2012 Energy Bill promised that the Government would 'meet our climate change goals by largely decarbonising the power sector during the 2030s'. Yet the legislation set a limit on CO2 of 450g/kWh for new plant. Most gas plants emit around 400g/KWh so there is no 'decarbonsiation' there, and new coal plant emits about 800g and the coalition agreement promised us that 'will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient carbon capture and storage to meet the emissions performance standard'. But the Bill exempts from the limit any station that is part of its Carbon Capture and Storage programme, but this is defined as one that as one which will use CCS at some time in the future, no timescale given.

As I said, what is lacking is political will, a situation not helped by the public confusion caused by disinformation from the deniers ....

This is all very well but we know it's not going to happen - the coal will be burnt. So we either put resources into something which would work but which won't happen for political and economic reasons, or we put out resources into something which may or may not work but which is politically and economically possible.

[EternalOptimist]

Or we could stop spending billions on producing non-effective and unusable solutions for a problem that does not even exist

[Old Greg]

Or we could stop spending billions on producing non-effective and unusable solutions for a problem that does not even exist

Out of interest, how certain are you that it doesn't exist?

[original PM]

Out of interest, how certain are you that it doesn't exist?

Does it matter - you will only tell me it does exist to make money out of me.

If no one was trying to make money out of it then people may believe it but while all you are doing is taking money out of my pocket under some inprovable pretense then I will simply not believe you.

[Old Greg]

Does it matter - you will only tell me it does exist to make money out of me.

If no one was trying to make money out of it then people may believe it but while all you are doing is taking money out of my pocket under some inprovable pretense then I will simply not believe you.

People will make money out of everything? Do you not believe in anything?

[EternalOptimist]

Out of interest, how certain are you that it doesn't exist?

That's a good question. How can two intelligent people, given the same evidence come to opposite conclusions.
How come my brother, who is smarter than I , believes in God, when I dont.
It cant be because he is smarter, because I have a younger brother who aint so smart, who also believes in God.
So it's nothing to do with brains.

maybe I should follow the concensus

[original PM]

People will make money out of everything? Do you not believe in anything?

Yes - people make money out of selling cars for example - I can see a car, feel it , touch it, own it and drive it so it is real.

People used to sell guilible people things like the statue of liberty, london bridge etc - these people were called Fraudsters as they sold things which did not exist for them to sell.

You see the difference?

Selling climate change is like selling religion - you are not selling anything tangible simply something people are scared into buying through manipulation, lies and subterfuge.

[EternalOptimist]

People will make money out of everything? Do you not believe in anything?

would you sell indulgences ?


thats what carbon credits are