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Sorry Chris, must differ on the side of pessimism. There is zero probability that coal burning can be controlled planetwide. I have no doubt that people will eventually burn all the coal available with +EROEI. Nations that tap the power of coal will be able to out compete those limited to nuclear and renewable energy sources. CO2 sequestration will be done only in rare situations. Even in "clean, green" New Zealand, opening a coal power plant is the most likely solution to Auckland's electric power crisis.
While coal is not as useful as oil or gas, it is already being used for coal to liquids. Many plans for mitigation of the decline in oil production are based on massive coal to liquids projects. Coal energy will also be tapped to make ethanol and to replace natural gas for electric generation. If it gets hot enough so that air conditioning is needed in Alaska, coal will be burned to power the air conditioners. When worst comes to worst, look for coal powered steamboats and railroads again, maybe even coal powered steamer automobiles.
I am with Lovelock on this one. The planet is going to get roasted, and nothing can be done about it on the macro level. On the personal level, one could buy subpolar land for the grandchildren.
However, agree that all the political drama about the evils of air travel is pointless.
You have very little faith in the climate change activism! It appears there is significant momentum building at the moment with even Exxon shifting their position slightly, US evangelicals met with Hansen and others last week and made positive noises and the British government is hinting that Bush will bring up CO2 emission targets in the State of the Union on Tuesday. I think things are moving fast.
My thinking regarding coal over the next few decades goes along these lines: Can coal substitute for declining oil and gas enabling business-as-usual and GDP growth to continue through the 21st Century? I say no. In that case we have contraction, falling global GDP. In that situation I can't see where the demand for this massive coal burn is going to come from. During depressions energy consumption falls, whether the depression was caused by peak oil isn't really relevant, if we have depression coal demand is likely to fall inline with global productivity.
Climate change activists always ignore or dismiss human nature. The fact is we will not accept any restrictions on our rights to the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed, including the right to breed. That means when oil and gas become scarce we will burn coal, wood, garbage, old newspapers, and anything else we can find to keep warm. It means when the lights go out we will do anything to make them come on again. And it means when the cars and trucks run out of gasoline we will find some other means to keep them running. So the planet is going to get baked, fried and london broiled. That's human nature.
Well, look at what the Kim family did - they burned their SUV's tires! They got out on a little-traveled road, city people trying to take on the rather trackless Northwestern US wild, and the wild won. So they ended up burning up their SUV's tires to keep warm, they didn't form a "nest" out of their clothes and sleep huddled naked together which would have been toasty-warm, restrict their moving about to the warm hours, and do some foraging, they didn't discover the hunting/fishing cabin about a mile away with provisions, they burned their SUVs tires. Mr Kim eventually took off on his own to try to find help, Mrs Kim and kids stayed put and were rescued.
The reason I find burning the SUV's tires to ironic is, it's very polluting, they'd have had to do it outside of course, which means most of the heat wasted, and what if they'd been found by some kid with an ATV or motorcycle who could have gone and gotten 5 gal's of gas and driven 'em out of there? Nope they rendered their vehicle useless.
I see this as a microcosm of how humans, not just American humans but most humans will act.
Fleam,
With all due respect, I think the problem for the Kims was starvation, not heat. They had no food and they were slowly starving to death. Also, I believe there is an ongoing investigation by the Oregon police department as to why the search for poor James Kim (deceased Silicon Valey high tech guru) and his wife and 2 children was so botched up.
But yes, I agree that the Kim saga is a warning to the rest of us about how unprepared and uneducated we are.
Unfortunately true. We need nukes, because burning uranium is much less globally destructive than coal.
Of the Socolow and Paccala 'wedges' which Al Gore alludes to in An Iconvenient Truth, 1 wegde = 1bn tpa of carbon abatement in 2050.
Current emissions 7bn tpa. 2050 emissions, business as usual, 15bn tpa.
That is equivalent to 1000 new nuclear stations (to replace the existing fleet which will be finished by then, and build a net 500 new reactors).
So yes nuclear is part of the solution, but only 1/8th of what is required to stabilise CO2 emissions at their current level. I don't know of any reasonable nuclear engineer or scientist or economist who thinks we can build more than 20 reactors pa, worlwide.
Carbon Capture and Storage on large coal fired power plants is another wedge.
Why? They're only about 1-2 billion in a 50 trillion dollar economy.
It may be a 50 trillion dollar economy but I doubt my hairdresser (who contributes to that economy) would be able to contribute much towards building a nuclear power station!
She cuts the hair of construction crews and engineers that would otherwise be working on coal plants.
If you are including the cost of the construction crew's haircuts then the power stations cost more than the 1-2 billion you mentioned.
.
Chris Vernon wrote:
BUT what if peak is more like a plateau with a slow squeeze on economic growth as Stuart Staniford has argued? In that case, no depression, maybe not even a permanent recession.
Further, our transition to dirty coal might emit enough extra CO2 to offset the lower emissions as a result of shrinking GDP based on cleaner fuels.
With GDP falling, I don't see climate activism amounting to a hill of beans. The only reason it's enjoying a surge now is that people think they can afford it.
The only reason it's enjoying a surge now is that people think they can afford it.
It's not even that - the only reason it's enjoying a surge now is that people are not asked to pay for it. Even affordable but somehow reducing the standard of living price will be deeemed unacceptable - as we are witnessing in Germany and Denmark for enxample, where green enthusiasm is waning as costs grow and reality starts to kick in.
If the recession is due to lack of oil (meaning high prices), then there will be someone who cures this lack offering CTL oil for a slightly lower price.
Only if the recession is caused by other factors, raising the oil supply obviously will not make a difference and therefore not be employed.
Cheers,
Davidyson
Nations that tap the power of coal will be able to out compete those limited to nuclear and renewable energy sources.
This depends. France which is mostly nuclear and renewable (hydro) powered features one of the lowest electricity rates in Europe at 13.6 c/kwth. Its mostly coal powered eastern neighbour - Germany enjoys almost 20c/kwth price and has 65% higher per capita CO2 emissions (10.3 tonnes CO2/capita vs 6.2 tonnes/capita, source).
The key is government engagement with nuclear power in France and the correctly persued policy of mass-producing and incrementaly evolving the best nuclear reactor designs. My only hope to fight climate change is doing something similar on a world scale. Peak Oil does not bother me (aside from the dangers of resource wars).
LevinK-"The key is government engagement with nuclear power in France and the correctly persued policy of mass-producing and incrementaly evolving the best nuclear reactor designs."
Contrast the US system. No standard design and varied types [boiling water v pressurized water, etc]; frequent mis-understandings because procedures, training, manuals, are often a local matter; competitive and defensive attitudes are invited by lack of an impartial, mandated standard by which to monitor and assess performance, thereby putting emphasis on merely the appearance of "looking good"; even the language/jargon/definitions vary from plant to plant.
The US system is "industry" driven with government oversight on the model of the FDA. Regulation is mostly self-regulation. E.g.-Even record-keeping reflects the conflict of interest inherent in self-regulation. Sure, ink is used rather than pencil to discourage alteraton, but then alteration occurs simply by writing a new "original" record and tearing up the original "original". Such is done to make the record appear neat and clean as it is permanently kept for or by the NucRegCommission [looks good] but "original" logging of data is lost and sometimes inadvertantly altered.
Despite the handicap of the US system being poorly-standardized, by limited personal experience over several years, I have always observed good intentions and honest best-efforts by all employees with whom I interact, with exceptions being minor and within tolerance for large groups.
The standardization levels in France would seem to give them much greater freedom from unneeded distractions so they keep more attention on doing what they are doing, thus minimizing potential catastrophic "events".
But catastrophic near-misses keep occurring and we have have been lucky. I assume France has its near-misses, too. The concept of "downwind", in fact, covers endless territory.
BTW, both Chernobyl and 3-Mile Island "events" involved management over-riding [control-room] operators' attempts to shut-down when the operators recognized potential, out-of-control situations that deviated from their plan.
Regarding the nuclear-power option, what do readers of this board thing of Dr. Ernest Sternglass' work [Secret Fallout]on low-radiation effect on populations, especially the lowering of IQ test scores? I read it years ago and wonder if his data was ever refuted?
And consider this: If you can create radioactivity but you cannot uncreate [stop] it, can you really control it? E.g.nuclear "waste".
You want us to research yet another anti-nuclear pseudoscientist that misconstrues data with an agenda?
We can uncreate it at some cost through neutron irradiation and actinide incinerator reactors. Its just not worth it. Controlling it is as easy as encasing it in concrete for the next five or ten decades.
Despite Three Miles Island I find the record of the nuclear industry in the US almost impecable. Which is an achievement worth highest level of recognition - given the deficiencies of the system we are talking about. Consider the number of death cases from nuclear incidents in the history of US civilian industry - 0, nada. Now compare this to the coal industry which scores number of deaths in the coal mines each year. BTW it is notable how the coal mine death in public perceptions are somehow separated from the elictricity we are valuing so much.
But catastrophic near-misses keep occurring and we have have been lucky.
It is not luck it is active precaution that keeps this from happening. The same planned precautions which save lives daily and we are accepting as a normal part of our live - like wearing a seatbelt for example.
Well, there is a bit more to Germany's high consumer electric prices (industry enjoys a very low rate) - look at the EU fines coming from abusing the market, which the electric companies are not really happy about, but after the offices were searched, and the files seized, it is a bit out of their hands - as reported, one of those companies will have fines in the 'large' or 'major' range.
Quite honestly, the major reliance on coal burning does disturb a lot of Germans, which is why laws have been passed mandating efficiency/conservation, and in forcing renewable energy to bought and distributed by the electric companies, which hate this process deeply - they would rather apply for more permits for new coal burning plants (EnBW), then a couple of weeks later apply for a permit to keep their oldest nuclear plant running, saying it is out of concern for global warming.
No one here actually trusts or believes the energy companies have any interest but their own for anything they do. But since Germany still has a somewhat functioning democratic system, the energy companies don't always get to write the laws, and they still have to follow them the ones they don't approve of.
Of course, many people hold simplistic views which are not well thought out in terms of energy - but the energy companies have a very simple view - profit, regardless. And many of their customers would like a chance to do things differently.
I think you are being quite one-sided on this one.
Yes, utilities are large, beurocratic and sometimes autocrative mastodonts. But this is nothing new - they are like that everywhere around the world. What is more important is there are certain reasons for this, and the reasons fundamentally lie in the nature of the industry - which requires it in order to achieve economies of scale and in order to effectively manage the grid, which is in the end is only one for all. This is the nature of the technology and we don't have any others... so far, dispersed small local grids are present only in countries like Kenya and the observed quality of service is not very good.
And of course utilities will rant at whatever mandates they are coerced to obey. Mandates are the worst possible tool in government policy - they force some business decision on the companies and eliminate any competitive element. They are much like additional tax burden, because the company has to absorb the costs associated with them without being credited anything else than not being closed down. BTW I admit experiencing sardonic pleasure watching the latest EU idiocy of trying to break down utilities - knowing how this affects prices and reliability of service wherever it happens.
the energy companies have a very simple view - profit, regardless
I find this absolutely distructive. The idea that energy companies are our "enemies", which need to be faught with is leading us to nowhere. We are the ones that created energy companies because we are the ones demanding their product at reasonable cost - why not just stop using it if they are so "bad"? I know it is giving a convenient scapegoat to the public, but this is not the way to make them become better. We need to try spending sometime in their shoes too.
Germany is a strange case - before the electric market was 'liberalized' (which in this case essentially means restructured into large scale monopoly power in the hands of a few, where before it was local monopolies in the hands of a fairly large number), much of what is under discussion here in terms of structure didn't really exist - that is, the 'Stadtwerke' were generally responsible for water, sewage, electricity, district heating, etc. As these Stadtwerke tended to be somewhat bound to the community, they made decisions based on local conditions.
A large, centralized monopoly utility may have certain attributes which fit the technical conditions of maintaining a complex framework - but as happened here, even when other energy companies attempt to sell electricity which is generated using renewable electricity only (the customers naturally pay a very high price), the charges for handling that customer's 'free market' choice become absurd - or some reason is given why it can't be done. And of course, if one barrier is overcome, the company just invents another. (In a related area - the accounting tricks used by a gas company to justify their billing where so outrageous that they were publicly ridiculed for the absurdity of it - but that didn't stop them from continuing to charge that rate. A judge might, though.)
I could go on about EnBW/Yello - when the market was first opened, all the large monopoly companies created cheaper, nimbler units, to try to expand their business into other monopoly regions. As it turned out, they were so clever at finding ever more creative (and illegal) ways to block any competition, that their less expensive divisions were never able to go beyond their monopoly market - it is amusing to see how Yello pays a fee to its parent to be able to use its parent's system, while still providing electricity at a lower price - the whole thing is absurd, and having watched it play out over a decade, amusing is about the only word for it, unless you need an object lesson in how a 'free market' works in a capitalist system, with politicians that are also available for the right price.
The heads of RWE or EnBW care about nothing but profit - and they are so well set politically, that even major or minor corruption scandals (things like handing out free World Cup tickets and just hanging out with the minister in charge of regulatory decisions) don't make the tiniest difference.
An adversial relationship is about the only type they understand, to be honest, while they cry about how unfair it is they are punished for breaking the law repeatedly, and abusing their 'natural' monopoly position.
But the point that they are not the enemy is not wrong - just the people currently running them, in many cases.
AFAIK you can't buy sub polar land.
1. who knows what ownership rights will be in 50 years time? One is postulating the death of most of the planet's population (or at least its migration).
2. Canada. The land is owned by the state, mostly.
Russia-- well we know who owns Russia's land (it ain't the people who live there).
Alaska I am not sure.
Which is an argument for Carbon Capture and Storage.
For coal fired power stations, coal to oil facilities and chemical plants in general, this can be done-- and it will be.
The world has survived big phase shifts in energy sources before (from wood to coal, from whale oil to geologic oil). It can again. It might be wrenching, but it is also inevitable (exhaustion of geologic resources of coal).