Rush Limbaugh: Hurricanes are a liberal conspiracy for promoting climate change

[EvoUK]

sure. I think that is the best way to do things. You would need to remove subsidies, kickbacks and tax breaks from solar and alternative energy sources too.

It's nice to agree on things sometimes

Edited:

Though I also agree with Starlight above- both alternate & fossil fuel entities need to take their waste into account with regards to payments etc.

[Starlight]

While I agree that simple free market economics will essentially solve the problem itself, the question is whether, at the speed at which it is currently being solved, it will get solved in time.

I 100% agree with the second half of the sentence. That is indeed the question. And if the answer is "no", or "maybe, we're not sure", then obviously steps need to be taken in the present to reduce the damage currently being done.

As to the first half of the sentence: There is zero guarantee, merely speculation and hope, that future technologies will necessarily become cheaper than coal. 200 years from now we might have the best batteries and solar panels that man can invent, but coal/oil might still be an overall cheaper source of power. Free market economics in such a situation would say: Keep burning that coal/oil. So, no, the free market cannot be necessarily trusted to solve the problem.

There are two ways that this problem could be solved: (1) Governments can simply legally demand the use of solar rather than coal, and bypass market mechanisms entirely, or (2) Governments could introduce a carbon tax that reflected the global financial cost associated with the climate change caused by the carbon emissions and charge companies for their emissions, and that way the market could price-in the cost of emissions and at some point when the damage being done by climate-change was sufficiently high and thus the carbon tax had reached sufficiently high levels then solar would become cheaper than coal and the free market would opt for solar over coal.

I favor both options - the first in the sense that in most countries the government has control of electricity production and is the entity that chooses where and which new power plants to build and it can make the choice to spend $$ more to put a more expensive solar plant in rather than a cheaper coal plant, and then for private industry the government should set a carbon tax so that the free-market can price carbon emissions in as the cost of doing business and make rational decisions around emissions.

[Terraceth]

I 100% agree with the second half of the sentence. That is indeed the question. And if the answer is "no", or "maybe, we're not sure", then obviously steps need to be taken in the present to reduce the damage currently being done.

As to the first half of the sentence: There is zero guarantee, merely speculation and hope, that future technologies will necessarily become cheaper than coal. 200 years from now we might have the best batteries and solar panels that man can invent, but coal/oil might still be an overall cheaper source of power. Free market economics in such a situation would say: Keep burning that coal/oil. So, no, the free market cannot be necessarily trusted to solve the problem.

There is absolutely a guarantee that future technologies will become cheaper than coal because there's a finite amount of coal. If you have a finite amount of something and are continually using that amount up, guess what? You run out! And simple supply and demand will make its price extremely high due to the low supply. So yes, it is essentially guaranteed that free market economics will solve the problem by itself, as the price of coal and oil will inherently rise until, even if solar energy (or some other clean source) is no less expensive than it is now, the cleaner energy will be cheaper simply because coal/oil are more expensive.

I suppose one can claim it's not a "guarantee" because there's a chance someone will invent a way to manufacture coal/oil on demand, or some alternative cheap-and-infinite-but-just-as-polluting power source will be discovered. But if we're allowing wild speculation without any basis, then someone can say that there's a chance that there's some environmental force we're unaware of that will solve the whole problem for us if it gets too bad.

[Starlight]

Let's say we exhaust earth's finite supply of coal and oil in 100,000 years, and then the market moves to solar because it's cheaper... is that going to solve current issues with climate change? Obviously not.

Your observation would only be relevant if we had concrete evidence we were only a couple of decades away from exhausting the supplies of coal and oil. But we aren't, there's plenty of known reserves of both and new reserves of these are continuing to be discovered regularly.

Especially with new robotics technologies to replace human miners we'll be able to access deposits of coal and oil at greater depths increasingly cheaply.

[Starlight]

I should also add that as long as we're talking future technologies, Earth is not the only source of such fuels. People are already talking about the possibility of mining asteroids. There is more oil visible on the surface alone of Saturn's moon Titan than there is in all the known reservoirs on earth combined. Theoretically, nothing stops us transporting that to Earth and burning it here for fuel. Of course the feasibility of such a project would largely rely on getting space elevators working on Earth and Titan otherwise transporting the fuel would take a lot more energy than the fuel itself would produce, but assuming you could get that near-zero energy transportation method working, it wouldn't be implausible to transport a large amount of resources from there to here relatively cheaply.

It's possible that burning CO2 generating fuels will remain the cheapest method of energy production on earth forever (if we exhaust all such fuels in the solar system, we might just move on to mining other solar systems). There might be no point prior to the heat death of the universe at which the free market directs humanity away from such fuels and toward renewables.

[Terraceth]

Let's say we exhaust earth's finite supply of coal and oil in 100,000 years, and then the market moves to solar because it's cheaper... is that going to solve current issues with climate change? Obviously not.

...which is kinda why I said "the question is whether, at the speed at which it is currently being solved, it will get solved in time."

Though even if oil and coal lasts for a long time, I kinda doubt it'd last 100,000 years.

I should also add that as long as we're talking future technologies, Earth is not the only source of such fuels. People are already talking about the possibility of mining asteroids. There is more oil visible on the surface alone of Saturn's moon Titan than there is in all the known reservoirs on earth combined. Theoretically, nothing stops us transporting that to Earth and burning it here for fuel. Of course the feasibility of such a project would largely rely on getting space elevators working on Earth and Titan otherwise transporting the fuel would take a lot more energy than the fuel itself would produce, but assuming you could get that near-zero energy transportation method working, it wouldn't be implausible to transport a large amount of resources from there to here relatively cheaply.

"Assuming you could get that near-zero energy transportation method working" is a pretty large assumption (especially as whether such a method even exists is already an assumption). But let's suppose we somehow are able to use energy so efficiently that we'd be able to go to Titan, get the oil, and then come back while having used less than we picked up. Why in the world wouldn't we just use this hypothetical wondrous source on Earth to begin with?

It's possible that burning CO2 generating fuels will remain the cheapest method of energy production on earth forever (if we exhaust all such fuels in the solar system, we might just move on to mining other solar systems). There might be no point prior to the heat death of the universe at which the free market directs humanity away from such fuels and toward renewables.

And again, it's possible that scientific forces we are not yet aware of will solve the problem for us. Blind speculation is pointless.

[Starlight]

"Assuming you could get that near-zero energy transportation method working" is a pretty large assumption (especially as whether such a method even exists is already an assumption). But let's suppose we somehow are able to use energy so efficiently that we'd be able to go to Titan, get the oil, and then come back while having used less than we picked up. Why in the world wouldn't we just use this hypothetical wondrous source on Earth to begin with?

The mechanism I'm suggesting is space elevators which are a potentially near-future hypothetical technology. Assuming you can get them working, you can have a pulley system where you drop something down from space on to the earth and pull something else up weighing the same amount, and this action has near-zero energy cost associated with it. You do the same thing at the Titan end. And then from the orbital platforms at the top of the pulley system you could load up your massive oil freighters and give them a shove in the direction of the other planetary body, this shove could be any size you liked but the bigger the shove the faster it would traverse the Earth-Titan distance but it would cost you more energy. So from Titan to Earth you would ship oil, and you could ship whatever you felt like from Earth to Titan to counterbalance the weight of the incoming oil (garbage, sand, seawater, rock, whatever was most convenient). Since the pulleys themselves have near-zero energy cost associated with them, the main energy cost comes in how much energy you want to spend accelerating (and decelerating at the other end) the oil/rock shipments as they fly between Titan and Earth. In practice you're likely to want 1-5 year transit times, but if you're prepared to put up with 100 year or 1000 year or 10,000 year transit times you can use much less energy accelerating and decelerating the shipments. Overall, you should be able to make it energy effective so that you're shipping more energy to earth in terms of oil than it costs you in energy to ship it there. This method is dependent on space elevators being viable. But a lot of people seem to think they are.


Personally I think it's likely that solar panels will become the cheapest form of energy on earth within 100 years. But let me be the first to say that our primary plan to address the problem of climate change shouldn't be: Do nothing in the hope that Starlight's guessed right about future technologies.

[Roy]

There is absolutely a guarantee that future technologies will become cheaper than coal because there's a finite amount of coal.

Unfortunately there's also a finite amount of the various rare earth elements that are used in some technologies, e.g. neodymium in wind turbines and tellurium in solar panels.

[Sparko]

I 100% agree with the second half of the sentence. That is indeed the question. And if the answer is "no", or "maybe, we're not sure", then obviously steps need to be taken in the present to reduce the damage currently being done.

As to the first half of the sentence: There is zero guarantee, merely speculation and hope, that future technologies will necessarily become cheaper than coal. 200 years from now we might have the best batteries and solar panels that man can invent, but coal/oil might still be an overall cheaper source of power. Free market economics in such a situation would say: Keep burning that coal/oil. So, no, the free market cannot be necessarily trusted to solve the problem.

There are two ways that this problem could be solved: (1) Governments can simply legally demand the use of solar rather than coal, and bypass market mechanisms entirely, or (2) Governments could introduce a carbon tax that reflected the global financial cost associated with the climate change caused by the carbon emissions and charge companies for their emissions, and that way the market could price-in the cost of emissions and at some point when the damage being done by climate-change was sufficiently high and thus the carbon tax had reached sufficiently high levels then solar would become cheaper than coal and the free market would opt for solar over coal.

I favor both options - the first in the sense that in most countries the government has control of electricity production and is the entity that chooses where and which new power plants to build and it can make the choice to spend $$ more to put a more expensive solar plant in rather than a cheaper coal plant, and then for private industry the government should set a carbon tax so that the free-market can price carbon emissions in as the cost of doing business and make rational decisions around emissions.

The free market is not solely driven by what is cheaper. It is driven by demand. If consumers demand cleaner energy then that is what will drive the market. You can't make money selling energy based on coal if the consumer doesn't want it.

[Bill the Cat]

Let's say we exhaust earth's finite supply of coal and oil in 100,000 years, and then the market moves to solar because it's cheaper... is that going to solve current issues with climate change? Obviously not.

Your observation would only be relevant if we had concrete evidence we were only a couple of decades away from exhausting the supplies of coal and oil. But we aren't, there's plenty of known reserves of both and new reserves of these are continuing to be discovered regularly.

Especially with new robotics technologies to replace human miners we'll be able to access deposits of coal and oil at greater depths increasingly cheaply.

Wouldn't synthetic coal be a viable option to mining it?

[Mountain Man]

It's nice to agree on things sometimes

Edited:

Though I also agree with Starlight above- both alternate & fossil fuel entities need to take their waste into account with regards to payments etc.

And what about some of the destructive practices that fuel the "green industry", such as strip mining for rare minerals, and the toxic substances that are produced during the manufacture (and eventual disposal) of fuel cells and solar panels?

I mean, as long as we're talking about a level playing field. I once read a study which concluded, ironically, that from raw materials to junkyard, a Hummer has a smaller environmental impact than an electric car.

[lilpixieofterror]

And what about some of the destructive practices that fuel the "green industry", such as strip mining for rare minerals, and the toxic substances that are produced during the manufacture (and eventual disposal) of fuel cells and solar panels?

I mean, as long as we're talking about a level playing field. I once read a study which concluded, ironically, that from raw materials to junkyard, a Hummer has a smaller environmental impact than an electric car.

And as I recall, they still haven't quite solved the battery disposal issue either.

[Roy]

I once read a study which concluded, ironically, that from raw materials to junkyard, a Hummer has a smaller environmental impact than an electric car.

So? You're a frequenter of creation.com. You read lots of things that aren't true.

[Mountain Man]

So? You're a frequenter of creation.com. You read lots of things that aren't true.

[rogue06]

I mean, as long as we're talking about a level playing field. I once read a study which concluded, ironically, that from raw materials to junkyard, a Hummer has a smaller environmental impact than an electric car.

I'm not sure that is the case but few realize that much of the electricity these cars use comes from coal-burning power plants.