If the goal is impossible, there are no workable solutions.
OK, here are some constructive criticisms.
[ul][li]Solar and wind cannot possibly be scaled up in ten years to meet 100% of our energy needs.[/ul][/li][ul][li]No plan that excludes nuclear energy can possibly succeed.[/ul]So, just adjust the plan to replace all references to “alternative energy” with “nuclear energy”. [/li]
Oh, and by the way, any arguments based on how much nuclear energy will cost, or how difficult it will be to implement - we don’t need to deal with those. Just make the resolution, and we will worry about the details later.
Naw, you don’t got it. As usual. Your metric butt load of straw doesn’t get my post in the least. Which seems to be par for the course with you, especially lately. You bring so much straw and horseshit into this post it’s hard to know where to start. Let’s start at the top. I never said it’s too late to stop global warming, nor that we should just keep burning coal or drink Champaign, which I find vile. Those are all out of your own ass or the fantasy conversation in your head.
Since you seem to have trouble understanding, I’ll spell out my own thoughts on this. You can’t have a green energy plan that is realistic without nuclear. If you are going to try and say we can do it all with wind and solar, well, you are wrong. At least on any sort of realistic timescale that would make a real impact on global climate change. It’s disappointing that so many of you seem to be in the unicorn wishes and dragon dreams category on this stuff. And it’s mainly due to you and your side (fantasizing that it’s engineers and scientists on your side) that is kicking the can further down the road by making this all about wind and solar, instead of a more realistic and real world assessment of what we COULD actually do to lower CO2 (and other GhG) emissions. Personally, I think we could do a lot…unlike your strawman…if we could only get the green idiots on your side to consider nuclear, and get the coal idiots on the other side to give that shit up. We COULD replace a large number of coal plants in the US…hell, most if not all…with either cleaner burning natural gas as an interim step or with nuclear, or a combination of those with wind and solar doing what it does best, acting as a niche energy source. Maybe in 10 or 20 years there will be breakthroughs in battery technology, allowing us to install large metropolis scale batteries on a smart grid where we COULD scale that up to use solar and wind to become more than just niche sources…but that isn’t happening today, nor is it a given that it will. It MIGHT. In the mean time, we have a green energy solution that WILL scale up…especially if we are talking about spending trillions anyway. Nuclear will do the job. But your side (the progressive types who come up with these loopy plans) won’t and don’t even consider it. Or did I miss where they are going to propose building, say, 200 new model nuclear power plants in the US to augment and normalize the energy usage an load as part of the green new deal? No? Feel free to cite it.
Finally, just on a personal note…why the fuck do you think and keep posting that I’m a Trump fan, or even aligned with that idiot at all? This is like the 3rd post you’ve made alluding to this and seriously…WTF? I’m sure you think I’m some sort of ‘right winger’ (which is hilarious in itself), since, again, you keep bringing that up and you base that on your completely inability to actually know what my point is in any of this (and a political position so skewed that you’d even see me as a right winger), but please stop with the MAGA and Trump horseshit in reference to me. If you want to still believe in your fantasies about this, I ask you keep them to yourself and safely locked away inside. Please.
If this goal actually is impossible, then we will need to break ourselves upon it trying, because we have no choice. This needs to be solved, and failing to do so will cost us far, far more than any of the proposals in the green new deal.
[quote]
OK, here are some constructive criticisms.
[ul][li]Solar and wind cannot possibly be scaled up in ten years to meet 100% of our energy needs.[/ul][/li][/quote]
Well, it’s a good thing “renewable” means more than just that, and it’s also good news that we’re already at a point where it’s feasible. Seriously, this stuff isn’t pie-in-the-sky material - it’s probably going to be hard, but it’s absolutely necessary and we can, in fact, do it.
[QUOTE]
[ul][li]No plan that excludes nuclear energy can possibly succeed.[/ul]So, just adjust the plan to replace all references to “alternative energy” with “nuclear energy”.[/li][/QUOTE]
Have you ever mentioned nuclear energy on this forum when it wasn’t in the context of slagging off renewables? In discussions of climate change you’re this huge evangelist for nuclear power (whenever it’s convenient to slag off renewables), but I rarely see you advocating for it elsewhere. Like, for example, I guess you missed this thread - seems like it might be right up your alley.
FWIW, the GND doesn’t actually mention nuclear at all, so it’s hardly excluded as a possibility, and I imagine it will be part of how we move away from fossil fuels. But it is a bit odd that you always bring it up whenever the subject comes up, but not particularly often in other cases.
Yes. It is plausible to very significantly increase the percentage of elecriticty generation to perhaps equal and replacing essentially the coal. But in ten years, 100 percent is not realistic, even as the stretch goal. b
You mean from the carbon emissions objective so excluding natural gas? If yes, it is agreed.
Once again the Green New Deal is not a plan or a solution. It’s a silly wishlist which has no relationship with reality. It lacks pretty much every element of a plan: a realistic timeline, plausible mechanisms to achieve the goals, cost estimates etc. And it wouldn’t even achieve the goal of significantly reducing climate change. The US produces 15% of carbon emissions and the GND doesn’t say much about major sources of emissions like agriculture and manufacturing let alone how to reduce emissions in the developing world.
As for real solutions, a carbon tax, much more R&D funding for new emissions-reducing technologies particularly in agriculture and manufacturing, and more nuclear energy are probably going to be key.
there is a choice.
the choice is the change adaptation.
While it is a painful one it could be less painful than an economy ruining 'break ourselves" which is not a rational objective but any way as the French case has seen, is one that will never win the real pubic support.
That is for the electric power generation and not total energy, a very different topic.
Merely making the declarations of necessity is not making a plan economically feasible.
Is anyone here old enough to remember when the American Medical Association fought a bitter war against Medicare, warning that adopting it would destroy the medical system? Or when people said that putting a man on the moon was utterly impossible? It was, until we made the political decision to throw money at it.
Read that page closely. In 1912, it was a pie-in-the-sky, utopian set of dream policies. Most were anathema to certain classes, especially the powerful and wealthy. Not all of them were achieved, or could realistically be, but for the most part the clauses read like a list of trite, old-fashioned platitudes too obvious to be controversial.
Transformation policies work only when there is a political will. The Progressives lost the election, even with Theodore Roosevelt as a candidate, but but Wilson saw that the public was ready to accept a few of the planks. Many more came to being under Franklin Roosevelt. Today social Security is untouchable; child labor unthinkable; women’s suffrage a basic right.
Concentrating on the vague utopian dreams of the Green New Deal is a losing proposition. That will just allow the more practical and achievable goals to slip in as moderate solutions. If the political will is there - and I think it is - the conversation will shift from “these are impossible” to “which of these can we enact first?”
As a connoisseur of irony, I offer these glowing lines as proof that Americans, especially younger ones, will go for the Green New Deal in a huge way.
They’re the closing lines of Trump’s 2019 SOTA. He hasn’t offered a single dream. But those who have can quote these forever.
So…we should see this green new deal as something to spark imagination and get folks thinking, not as anything realistic in an of itself? I’m fine with that…I do think there is a place for dreaming big and proposing big, impossible things to see what that sparks wrt what folks come up with. And what is ‘impossible’ today could be very possible (albeit in different ways than originally envisioned) 50 or 100 years down the pike. But if that’s the case, then the answer to the OP should follow along those lines…there aren’t realistic numbers because it’s not a realistic or even possible plan, and it’s not meant to be one.
No, that’s silly. If the goal is impossible, then we need not waste our time - we should pursue mitigation strategies, or something that is less but has a reasonable chance of success.
We haven’t gotten far enough to say how much the GND will cost, so we can’t compare the cost to the cost of doing nothing, or pursuing mitigation.
AFAICT you are making the same mistake as the authors of your cite complain about - confusing feasible with possible. I could only read the abstract - if you could cut and paste the parts where they show that we could replace everything with solar panels, that would help the discussion.
Quit trying to change the subject. If nuclear power is relevant to the discussion of climate change, and it is, and if it has some chance of working better than alternatives, and it does, then address it. “How come you don’t bring it up when it isn’t relevant” is not a counter-argument.
Your imagination isn’t relevant. Ms. AOC is on record that she wants the US to eliminate nuclear energy, and this GND is mostly her idea. Now, maybe this is another thing AOC is lying about, or intending to mislead about, or she doesn’t know what her bill is supposed to do, but that hardly matters.
If the GND doesn’t explicitly say that nuclear power should be our main focus, and that alternative energy is the way to go, then the GND is not worthwhile even as a statement of principle. Maybe AOC thinks we can run the world economy on moonbeams and pixie dust, but we can’t. But “the world is coming to an end in twelve years unless we do something, and never mind if it will work or not” is not how to approach a serious problem.
YMMV, but unless you drive an electric car or don’t mind walking to work in the dark while the Chinese make things worse anyway, it shouldn’t.
The GND fails even as a utopian wishlist because it doesn’t meaningfully solve the problem of climate change. It is deeply confused about what climate change is and how it will be solved. Ramez Naam had a nice series of tweetsabout this
The estimates I have seen is that the US federal government spends 1.2 trillion and states spend about 500 billion on healthcare per year. So total new spending would be 1.5 to 1.7 trillion per year. Since the question was the total cost and not the new spending cost I think the total cost of 3.2-3.5 trillion per year is the relevant number.
The numbersI have seen for residential solar per watt is $5-%6 per installed watt. There are places that have it for cheaper but that includes government subsidies to get it down to $3-4 per watt. At current prices the price for just residential building is 5-6 trillion dollars. I assume that economies of scale could bring panel costs down significantly but the opposite is likely true for installation. Something like 2% of homes currently have solar and in order to get the other 98% done in 10 years the number of electricians will have to skyrocket. Since it takes time to train electricians, for the first few years, their wages will likely skyrocket, increasing the total cost.
The number of cars in the US is 276 million and the cost before subsidies of the Nissan Leaf is $30,000. To replace all of the cars with the base Nissan Leaf would cost 8.2 trillion dollars. Once again it would be cheaper to manufacture them once the factories scaled up but it would be hugely expensive to change all the existing car factories to electric car factories.
Another aspect would be replacing airline travel with high speed rail. The high speed rail in California has tripled in estimated cost and is likely to cost at least 100 billion dollars. Given that California has around 10% of the US population it would seem reasonable that the cost for the entire country to switch would be at least 1 trillion dollars. To do it in ten years would mean that the laws for construction permitting and environmental impact statements would have to be massively changed.
To get rid of all 94 million cows in the US at the going rate of $3,000 per cow would cost 282 billion dollars.
Wow. First off, far from attacking you personally, I carefully excised your name from the Quote box. I attack ideas, not Posters.
Consider it a compliment that I chose to pivot off your comment, rather than that of a less coherent right-winger.
The question I posed — and I’m at a loss to imagine why this wasn’t clear — is whether we, as a nation, should move to mitigate global warming or not. The details of AOC’s proposal are almost irrelevant: look at posts by Exapno Mapcase to understand why. She’s pulling her weight if she gets young people enthused about working for a better country, a better world, and a better future.
So — and I hope you can answer this question without just insulting me again — should we applaud Miss Ocasio-Cortez and hope to move forward, probably with better ideas than hers, perhaps pushing for nuclear solutions to complement her plans? Or should we focus on denigrating the young Congresswoman and her progressive ideals, and thereby implicitly serve the vested interests pushing for coal and other dirty energy sources?
As in the other thread, I reject your bad analogies. Whether any particular technology can work is of a wholly different order than whether political goals are feasible if the political will exists.
“Our goal is to ensure the right of everyone to cross the Atlantic on a regular basis” is not the same as “every single attempt to cross the Atlantic will always be successful.”
Naysayers fail because they look through the wrong end of the telescope.
