Fantasy Demolished - U.S. Climate Goals Threatened by "Green" Power demands

Not hard to figure out. Obstruction by legacy energy companies and Repubs. Glad I could help.

 

Who cares! 1- It contaminates 2- It exacerbates Climate Change 3- It runs out.

The OP and the poll question appear to be based on the premise that there is some sort of "choice" between so-called "green energy" and fossil fuels... there isn't. End of story.

We can prepare for a soft landing, or we can crash land. Those are the REAL alternatives.

 

It's really very simple: Unlike in previous energy transitions (for example from wood to coal), the one that is ahead of us is from a higher energy density source (fossil fuels) to a lower energy density source (renewables). Higher density energy sources are always preferable, in other words, higher energy density means a higher quality energy source. That's why batteries have converged on Li ion batteries, because Li+ is very light and small, allowing very high energy density.

The only "minor" problem with continuing to rely on fossil fuels: THEY ARE NON-RENEWABLE. I don't know how hard this is for conservatives to understand. They seem to think that the fossil fuel gravy trained will go on forever. Newsflash: It will not. We already have used up more than half of it in the past 100 years.

The issue is: The price of fossil fuels is dependent on the rate of production, not on the availability of remaining reserves. It's basically like drinking out of a glass of water with a straw. The rate of drinking does not depend on the water level, until the water in the glass is pretty much gone. A compounding problem is that we cannot visually see the depletion of the fossil fuel reserves. If we were able to see how the levels go down over the decades, like we do for water levels in Lake Mead, there would be a lot more urgency. However, the attitude is rather: Why do I care? It won't affect me. To heck with my children and grandchildren, as long as I can drive my F350.

Now, if one wants to talk about fantasies, the fantasy of fossil fuels lasting forever is a very dangerous one.

 

I am not on "the right" but no one planned for the depletion of sources of whale oil. We survived..

 

Wind and solar are not meant to replace, they are meant to supplement.

 

I still think there could be much more solar and/or many more plants (like covering roofs) to combat the CO2...they can do things now but none of them care about the environment, just power

 

Sure thing, if you want to go back to the world population at the times of whale oil of less than a billion. Other than that, your "plan" is hoping for the tooth fairy. No business would get funding for such a "plan", however, fossil fuel proponents seem to think it is a great "plan" to run the world's largest economy in the future.

 

I'll try to help you. Here's one possibility, discussed in an Atlantic Magazine article (link, possibly expired, I'll email PDF on request)

I suspect there are other solutions in the works, which will more likely come to fruition if people weren't worried about government getting in the way. Chicken little, the sky is not falling.

 

So, you have no answers, just callng someone concenred about the energy future about our children and grandchildren "chicken little". As expected. You just suffer from recency bias. You think because the fossil fuel gravy train has worked for you in the last 30 years, it will keep going like this. Unfortunately, this is predictable. In large masses, humans are no different than lemmings, not realizing that the cliff is near until it is too late.

 

1. Contaminates what? Crude oil sits in the ground. We come along and pump it out of the ground. We refine it and we use it. The only "contamination" comes when it gets spilled, which doesn't happen that often, does it? As for using it and it contaminates, we're getting much better at that, aren't we? Oh, and by the way, ever seen the tailings from a mine? All that rock and stuff dug out of the ground becomes a "contamination" once we move it doesn't it?
2. Well, and here we get back to the same old question; show me one. Just one, doomsday prediction that has proven true. Your pick; New York will be under hundreds of feet of ice, or New York will be under water, or we're all gonna starve, or whatever. Pick your favorite doomsday prediction and show us that it has proven true. Just one.
3. I recall when Carter was running in 1976 and he told everyone we'd be out of oil by 2011.
CLIMATE SCARE FLASHBACK: Jimmy Carter Predicts We Run Out of Oil By 2011 – RedState
Well, that tired old prediction has been made and repeated, with different dates, always at least 20 years in the future, and we keep finding new oil reserves and we keep not running out of oil. So, again, pick your doomsday prediction and show us how it came true.

The real alternatives are not a "crash landing" or a "soft landing".
We can pay attention to our environment, quit treating it like a trash dump, and clean up after ourselves. We can also tell the so called "environmental experts" to go screw themselves until they
a) stop flitting around in the private jets they never owned so they can pat each other on the back and publish their endless doomsday predictions. b) Stop telling us how we MUST live or die, while they go home to their huge mansions in their private limousines, all financed by money they've conned out of us like a Baptist preacher at a Sunday revival. c) Quit with the stupid "fixes", like eliminating plastic straws and replacing them with paper straws ......... wrapped in plastic. Or telling us we MUST bring our own reusable bags to the grocery so we can carry home our plastic wrapped produce, and our plastic wrapped meat, and our plastic wrapped chips. Seriously, those plastic bags are a problem, but we simply refuse to address the rest of the problem, don't we? d) Be real about the "solutions". While we're told we MUST buy an electric car, and electric mower, and electric trimmer and electric range and fans and on and on and on, we ignore that one plane ride spews more pollutants into the air than my entire fossil fueled fleet of cars, mowers, trimmers, blowers, and power washers will in their entire useful lives. And we already know how to recycle all of them. Effectively.

 

There is not evidence that we are near a cliff of that the sky is falling.

 

I'll give you THREE guesses as to what fossil fuels contaminate.

Yeah... because nothing more than roses and petals come out of those Flue-gas Stacks. Oil spills happen often enough to deprive entire populations of drinkable water for a long time, and wild life we need to keep the food chain alive.

Sorry, but if you expect me to teach you the problems fossil fuels cause to HUMAN life, you'll have to look elsewhere. We expect at least a moderate level of understanding of reality in this forum.

"Doomsday predictions" have never been MADE. You are the victim of anti-science propaganda. Not to mention the ignorance of people who confuse models with predictions.

Oh God! What nonsense!

Look.... Let me give you a small lesson in reality. When somebody says that this EXTREME result can happen if we don't do anything about it, the OPERATIVE part is if we don't do anything about it. Obviously, we WILL do something about it. So it's an easy call that the model will NEVER become reality.

In the same way, when I say "it runs out", I'm not "predicting" it will run out. In fact, it WON'T. Why? Because the ONLY way it would run out is narrow minded positions like the one in your post were to ever take over the world. That will NEVER happen.

Models are not predictions. "All models are wrong. But some models are useful" -JP Box Predicting what will happen is NOT what models are used for.

You appear to be one of the self-appointed "environmental experts" that would benefit from being told that.

No! REAL "environmental experts" are scientists who know what they're talking about. When experts make predictions, they ascribe degrees of probabilities given multiple scenarios to try to figure out the best course of action. NOT to make predictions. If you don't understand this (and you obviously don't) you don't understand how science works. And this makes you vulnerable to pseudo-science.

Oh no! Again??

I opened a thread a while back to debunk this nonsense.
http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/what-do-we-do-about-climate-change.611869/

It dispels this nonsense, so I urge you to read it. But the bottom line is that individual action is NOT going to solve AGW.

It's absolutely FINE for anybody to fly in private jets. As it is for you to eat meat, use incandescent light bulbs, ... etc. Individual action might help a tiny bit... but the solution is in the policies. Not in what YOU do or fail to do.

So you can do those things if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy. But that is not the solution. It's not even PART of the solution.

 

Democrats never think anything through. If it sounds good then just do it.

 

Just like a I pointed out, you're looking for someone else to blame.

Please show us specific examples of how you think these big companies have stopped the government.

 

Did you not read the article? You didn’t get it straight at all.

 

I also read your comment.

How low will your standard of living get if they eliminate clean energy?
How would $12/gallon gas impact that standard?

Care to return to the "good old days?"
Pittsburgh 1940s


California 1970s

 

Well done!!! I too tire of the “internet experts” who ignore the huge pyramids of research on AGW because either “I don fink so!” Or it was “sum bloke on da internetz”. It annoys me that so few actually research any stance they take relying solely on the Alex Joneses of this world to think for them

 

You ARE joking yes? Have you missed the last 30 years of scandal after scandal where the fossil fuel,industry has been found playing the tobacco handbook of how to hide the lolly

 

And the Warming/cooling periods are what? An abberation? The REAL Hoax is the idea that we peon humans(or at the very least one country of peon humans) can save climate change.

To the extent that it's even frigging possible, it'll have to be an effort of the international community.

 

So what is driving the current climate change we are witnessing??

The sun?
Milankovitch cycles?
Change in Ocean currents?
Volcanism?
Tectonic plate movement?
Change in land cover?
Greenhouse gases?
Size of the polar ice caps?

 

Some of all of the above? Hence why according to those articles, electric power is also contributing. It's way too late(if it was ever 'natural' in the first place) to put the global warming genie back in the bottle. The best we can hope for is to sustain our current climate.

 

Which shows you have not done the reading on this you should have - IPCC “Mitigation of climate change’

 

I only posted once… what are you talking about

 

So about this post that somehow only magic liberals can see, what did I say? Is it as made up as the idea that we can control the climate?

 

The alarmists' fantasy will run its course and sanity will return.