So to make a statement "phase out fossil fuels" means to literally phase out oil and gas. So why would I interpret the phasing out of fossil fuels as the phasing out of oil and gas? Because that is literally what you guys are saying, that is why.
No it doesn't. Any more than saying "phase out wood fuel" means no longer using lumber to build houses. If people meant phase out oil and gas, they would say "phase out oil and gas".
Quote:
Maybe people should be more clear, or provide the proper clarifications, such as "phase out the burning of fossil fuels".
An example:
"we need to phase out X"
"but if you do that there are disastrous consequences with Y, which is literally made from X"
"no but YOU misunderstood. I said phase out X why would you claim Y would get phased out?"
"because Y is literally X"
"no that's your misinterpretation. We mean phase out X EXCEPT FOR Y. YOUR mistake."
Ahhhh okay. Sounds good.
You're posting in a climate change thread, a topic that revolves wholly around carbon emissions. Do people really need to explain that we're talking about things that produce significant levels of emissions, and not things that don't? I mean, what do you think solar panels are made of?
To cite Wikipedia again:
Quote:
While crude oil and natural gas are also being phased out in chemical processes (e.g. production of new building blocks for plastics) as the circular economy and biobased economy (e.g. bioplastics) are being developed[4] to reduce plastic pollution, the fossil fuel phase out specifically aims to end the burning of fossil fuels and the consequent production of greenhouse gases. Therefore, attempts to reduce the use of oil and gas in the plastic industry do not form part of fossil fuel phase-out or reduction plans.
So as a bit of a side discussion - what is a reasonable level of sacrifice we should accept in order to get emissions down?
North Americans have the highest environmental impact of anywhere else in the world. This is driven by the requirement to fly across the country, requirement to drive given the layout of our cities, the requirement to road trip to get anywhere, the use of huge SUVs to carry our stuff, and our infrastructure is by far the largest. Hell, even look at our sports, we artificially create ice in warm climates, we have grass for sports like baseball and football, and we have air conditioning in huge arenas, and stadiums - not to mention our conference spaces.
Today the WSJ posted an article covering the huge protests going on in France right now.
Quote:
Striking teachers, railway and health workers staged marches in dozens of cities across the country, joining protests led by refinery workers who have been on strike for several weeks, choking fuel supplies nationwide and hobbling the country’s refining system. Around 28% of the nation’s gas stations have run out of either gasoline or diesel. Long lines have formed at stations that have supplies, and prices have risen sharply. Marches were mainly peaceful but some protesters in Paris smashed store windows and clashed with police.
Moscow’s decision to cut natural-gas supplies to Europe —a move that Western officials say is aimed at punishing the continent for backing Ukraine—has sent electricity and gas prices soaring, sparking demands from workers for pay increases to cushion the blow. Geopolitical tensions between the West and Russia have also bolstered oil prices, hitting drivers at the pump.
In Germany, thousands of people have held protests in recent weeks, demanding caps on energy bills, greater financial support for vulnerable families as well as the end of sanctions against Russia.
Now, MathGod seems to want to use the argument that the Ukraine/Russia war is the culprit. Which according to every energy expert I have listened to is rubish. The Ukraine/Russia war may have accelerated some of the energy issues by 2 - 3 years however we were going to face this problem regardless. You cannot take down your base load power such as nuclear, and restrict the associated capital required to keep natural gas out of the ground and not face these issues. The supply crunch was inevitable and was almost entirely due to the ESG movement. We had activist investors changing company's capital plans from within, we had regulatory hamstringing development projects, and we had capital dry up for the industry as a whole restricting production. Just look at what happened to the US, a few years ago they were a net energy exporter, now they are back to an importer. This is what happens when you stop spending money!
Assuming this spending is not replaced and supply is capped for the next decade there will continue to be a deficit. The only other controllable variable will be demand. So that's back to the question - what are you willing to give up to curtail your demand? Especially being in North America where your footprint is already the worst percentile. Or do you refuse to give anything up that impacts your quality of life and end up protesting like 100,000 French who just realized how important Energy is to their daily lives?
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I'd like to believe that the goal is to reduce carbon emissions, but I'm starting to believe the goal is to be anti-fossil fuels, even if it leads to worse emissions. Which, in 2022 is what we now have. Coal being used more than it was in previous years.
Nothing like 1 step forward and 8 steps back.
But hey, lets worry about lawn watering instead while China builds out MASSIVE coal burning capacity, and exports it all to 3rd world countries who need cheap energy.
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So as a bit of a side discussion - what is a reasonable level of sacrifice we should accept in order to get emissions down?
North Americans have the highest environmental impact of anywhere else in the world. This is driven by the requirement to fly across the country, requirement to drive given the layout of our cities, the requirement to road trip to get anywhere, the use of huge SUVs to carry our stuff, and our infrastructure is by far the largest. Hell, even look at our sports, we artificially create ice in warm climates, we have grass for sports like baseball and football, and we have air conditioning in huge arenas, and stadiums - not to mention our conference spaces.
Today the WSJ posted an article covering the huge protests going on in France right now.
Now, MathGod seems to want to use the argument that the Ukraine/Russia war is the culprit. Which according to every energy expert I have listened to is rubish. The Ukraine/Russia war may have accelerated some of the energy issues by 2 - 3 years however we were going to face this problem regardless. You cannot take down your base load power such as nuclear, and restrict the associated capital required to keep natural gas out of the ground and not face these issues. The supply crunch was inevitable and was almost entirely due to the ESG movement. We had activist investors changing company's capital plans from within, we had regulatory hamstringing development projects, and we had capital dry up for the industry as a whole restricting production. Just look at what happened to the US, a few years ago they were a net energy exporter, now they are back to an importer. This is what happens when you stop spending money!
Assuming this spending is not replaced and supply is capped for the next decade there will continue to be a deficit. The only other controllable variable will be demand. So that's back to the question - what are you willing to give up to curtail your demand? Especially being in North America where your footprint is already the worst percentile. Or do you refuse to give anything up that impacts your quality of life and end up protesting like 100,000 French who just realized how important Energy is to their daily lives?
Speaking for myself, I eat a relatively local, mostly vegetarian diet. We cook the majority of our own meals and go out to restaurants once every other month. I live within walking or biking distance to any store that I need to sustain myself and as a result, I drive my car like once a month. If I travel internationally, its once every 5-10 years. My hobbies and activities are generally free and carbon neutral once you have the things for it (cycling, reading books from the library, playing guitar/painting)
It's probably not a lifestyle most of western society would feel comfortable with, but it satisfies me and makes me fulfilled. Even the relatively simple life I try to lead is still orders of magnitude more luxurious than the vast majority of humans who have ever lived, going back hundreds of thousands of years. I did have to drive my car last night to take my wife to an appointment at the hospital, and while driving on deerfoot I saw a gigantic flames logo on the side of a building downtown from glenmore and couldn't help but think: why is this necessary? When we talk about reducing our carbon footprint as a species, how many giant displays of the flames logo on the side of a skyscraper for a few hours are there out there that artificially drive up our energy consumption as a species? People need electricity to their homes, but stuff like that is not really required for the human experience and that's just one thing that's innocuous but adds to the problem
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I'd like to believe that the goal is to reduce carbon emissions, but I'm starting to believe the goal is to be anti-fossil fuels, even if it leads to worse emissions. Which, in 2022 is what we now have. Coal being used more than it was in previous years.
Nothing like 1 step forward and 8 steps back.
But hey, lets worry about lawn watering instead while China builds out MASSIVE coal burning capacity, and exports it all to 3rd world countries who need cheap energy.
A few things here.
1)People who want to reduce carbon emissions are not monolithic and there's a large degree of variance in methodologies. It's unclear what you mean by the goal being anti fossil fuels. There isn't a singular authority planning this out. Every town, province, state, country, continental organization is doing different things to try to get there
2) the transition was always going to be bumpy. We haven't done this before and there's bound to be some issues. Include the sudden withdrawn of 40% of the natural gas from the European market and you'll see bumpiness.
3) Everyone needs to address the elephant in the room, and that is fossil fuel production is the source of employment for a lot of people. Only 7% of Oil and gas is used for materials so it's an existential transition that will cause a lot of pain in this part of the world. There are absolutely some people on the environmental side who want a simple antagonist in the story and use the industry for that. That cannot be argued.
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Saying that fossil fuels need to be phased out in the next 30 years or we doom billions of people is anti-fossil fuel.
Instead the goal should be to reduce emissions over the next 30 years to a level where warming is not going to cause massive disruption to our way of life.
And if we want to reduce emissions, we need to reduce our dependency on coal. The quickest and most cost effective way to do that is by switching to natural gas in the short term.
Instead of doing that, Europe and other places including Canada have become anti-natural gas, and now we are back to burning more coal.
China is building more solar than anyone else, and they have not moved the middle on coal usage ONE bit. In fact they are going to INCREASE their coal usage going forward. If that doesn't tell you have effectively useless solar will be to reduce emissions over the next 30 years, then you are blind.
Natural gas fixes our short term problem.
Renewables, energy storage, etc fixes it long term.
We THINK we can skip the short term solution, but it is becoming painfully obvious that it won't work despite the pompous stupidity in thinking it can and we can simply just stop using fossil fuels.
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Saying that fossil fuels need to be phased out in the next 30 years or we doom billions of people is anti-fossil fuel.
Instead the goal should be to reduce emissions over the next 30 years to a level where warming is not going to cause massive disruption to our way of life.
We're already past massive disruption to our lives. If we didn't emit a single molecule of CO2 starting right now, we're still going to see large increases in natural disasters, areas of the world uninhabitable, coastal areas under water, and climate refugees in the tens of millions, possibly in the hundreds of millions. We're already going to see a lot of this. The trouble is it's baked in and the worst effects won't be seen for a few decades. Don't take my word for it, the IPCC is a non political group of experts. Take their words. The 30 year goal is exactly what you're asking for. They didn't pick 2050 out of a hat
And if we want to reduce emissions, we need to reduce our dependency on coal. The quickest and most cost effective way to do that is by switching to natural gas in the short term.
Instead of doing that, Europe and other places including Canada have become anti-natural gas, and now we are back to burning more coal.
China is building more solar than anyone else, and they have not moved the middle on coal usage ONE bit. In fact they are going to INCREASE their coal usage going forward. If that doesn't tell you have effectively useless solar will be to reduce emissions over the next 30 years, then you are blind.
Natural gas fixes our short term problem.
Renewables, energy storage, etc fixes it long term.
We THINK we can skip the short term solution, but it is becoming painfully obvious that it won't work despite the pompous stupidity in thinking it can and we can simply just stop using fossil fuels.
Switching coal to natural gas is exactly what everyone's been trying to do for well over a decade. This isn't a new phenomenon. And yes Canada should ship it's natural gas
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Saying that fossil fuels need to be phased out in the next 30 years or we doom billions of people is anti-fossil fuel.
Instead the goal should be to reduce emissions over the next 30 years to a level where warming is not going to cause massive disruption to our way of life.
And if we want to reduce emissions, we need to reduce our dependency on coal. The quickest and most cost effective way to do that is by switching to natural gas in the short term.
Instead of doing that, Europe and other places including Canada have become anti-natural gas, and now we are back to burning more coal.
China is building more solar than anyone else, and they have not moved the middle on coal usage ONE bit. In fact they are going to INCREASE their coal usage going forward. If that doesn't tell you have effectively useless solar will be to reduce emissions over the next 30 years, then you are blind.
Natural gas fixes our short term problem.
Renewables, energy storage, etc fixes it long term.
We THINK we can skip the short term solution, but it is becoming painfully obvious that it won't work despite the pompous stupidity in thinking it can and we can simply just stop using fossil fuels.
I work in a rural town that had many workers who are employed in a coal mine/plant. They're deeply upset with the transition away from coal in this province. They express the exact same things you are expressing about fossil fuels.
We're already past massive disruption to our lives. If we didn't emit a single molecule of CO2 starting right now, we're still going to see large increases in natural disasters, areas of the world uninhabitable, coastal areas under water, and climate refugees in the tens of millions, possibly in the hundreds of millions. We're already going to see a lot of this. The trouble is it's baked in and the worst effects won't be seen for a few decades. Don't take my word for it, the IPCC is a non political group of experts. Take their words. The 30 year goal is exactly what you're asking for. They didn't pick 2050 out of a hat
Switching coal to natural gas is exactly what everyone's been trying to do for well over a decade. This isn't a new phenomenon. And yes Canada should ship it's natural gas
Quote:
n the scenarios we assessed, limiting warming to around 1.5°C (2.7°F) requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43% by 2030;
If that's the real assessment(meaning the modelling is accurate) we may as well just work on mitigation, because there is no possible way we get anywhere near this target globally. Like, it's just not going to happen. That's reality.
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If that's the real assessment(meaning the modelling is accurate) we may as well just work on mitigation, because there is no possible way we get anywhere near this target globally. Like, it's just not going to happen. That's reality.
The modelling has been pretty darn accurate. We already have to work on mitigation.
Again, 1.5° carries with it substantial effects on sea level, food production, and natural disasters. Mitigation is already understood to be required for what is already baked in.
The 2050 goal is to avoid much worse
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Sure, fine, but the reality is we are going to miss those targets by a long shot. I wouldn't be surprised if global CO2 emissions are higher in 2030 than today.
So as a bit of a side discussion - what is a reasonable level of sacrifice we should accept in order to get emissions down?
North Americans have the highest environmental impact of anywhere else in the world. This is driven by the requirement to fly across the country, requirement to drive given the layout of our cities, the requirement to road trip to get anywhere, the use of huge SUVs to carry our stuff, and our infrastructure is by far the largest. Hell, even look at our sports, we artificially create ice in warm climates, we have grass for sports like baseball and football, and we have air conditioning in huge arenas, and stadiums - not to mention our conference spaces.
Today the WSJ posted an article covering the huge protests going on in France right now.
Now, MathGod seems to want to use the argument that the Ukraine/Russia war is the culprit. Which according to every energy expert I have listened to is rubish. The Ukraine/Russia war may have accelerated some of the energy issues by 2 - 3 years however we were going to face this problem regardless. You cannot take down your base load power such as nuclear, and restrict the associated capital required to keep natural gas out of the ground and not face these issues. The supply crunch was inevitable and was almost entirely due to the ESG movement. We had activist investors changing company's capital plans from within, we had regulatory hamstringing development projects, and we had capital dry up for the industry as a whole restricting production. Just look at what happened to the US, a few years ago they were a net energy exporter, now they are back to an importer. This is what happens when you stop spending money!
Assuming this spending is not replaced and supply is capped for the next decade there will continue to be a deficit. The only other controllable variable will be demand. So that's back to the question - what are you willing to give up to curtail your demand? Especially being in North America where your footprint is already the worst percentile. Or do you refuse to give anything up that impacts your quality of life and end up protesting like 100,000 French who just realized how important Energy is to their daily lives?
You're blatantly conflating the sudden energy supply crisis in Europe with the overall concept of humanity weaning itself off of fossil fuel use (read: burning fossil fuels) over the next 30 years. In the very article you posted it LITERALLY SAYS that Moscow cutting off supply to Europe is what's causing the sudden supply crunch.
Germany's decision to shut down its nuclear plants was silly, I'll agree with you there. But I shake my head at your attempt to use what's happening in Europe as some kind of smoking gun example of why environmentalists are wrong, or why we shouldn't be moving as quickly as we feasibly can toward a clean energy future.
The idea here is to stop burning fossil fuels when we are ready to do so. We obviously aren't at this particular moment. That day will eventually come, and we ought to do what we can to make that day come as soon as possible.
So to answer your question, I'd be happy to see carbon pricing implemented in every G20 country, and increased in places where it's already implemented, including here in Canada. I already live a low consumption lifestyle compared to most middle class people. I avoid restaurants except for very rare occassions, and I avoid buying new things except when absolutely necessary. My vehicle trips are limited to very short trips to the grocery store about twice a month.
Being a fan of the local sports teams makes me a hypocrite, sure. But the day will come, hopefully soon, when airplanes are powered by non-fossil-fuel energy sources.
__________________
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So as a bit of a side discussion - what is a reasonable level of sacrifice we should accept in order to get emissions down?
North Americans have the highest environmental impact of anywhere else in the world. This is driven by the requirement to fly across the country, requirement to drive given the layout of our cities, the requirement to road trip to get anywhere, the use of huge SUVs to carry our stuff, and our infrastructure is by far the largest. Hell, even look at our sports, we artificially create ice in warm climates, we have grass for sports like baseball and football, and we have air conditioning in huge arenas, and stadiums - not to mention our conference spaces.
Let's start with this.
There is often no "requirement" to fly anywhere.
maybe If people quit flying for vacations, it would be a good start.
I bet almost every single poster here could still live just fine if they didn't fly places for holidays and family visits. Ban all cruise ships, too.
People over time have just gotten their wants confused with their needs.
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You're blatantly conflating the sudden energy supply crisis in Europe with the overall concept of humanity weaning itself off of fossil fuel use (read: burning fossil fuels) over the next 30 years. In the very article you posted it LITERALLY SAYS that Moscow cutting off supply to Europe is what's causing the sudden supply crunch.
Germany's decision to shut down its nuclear plants was silly, I'll agree with you there. But I shake my head at your attempt to use what's happening in Europe as some kind of smoking gun example of why environmentalists are wrong, or why we shouldn't be moving as quickly as we feasibly can toward a clean energy future.
The idea here is to stop burning fossil fuels when we are ready to do so. We obviously aren't at this particular moment. That day will eventually come, and we ought to do what we can to make that day come as soon as possible.
So to answer your question, I'd be happy to see carbon pricing implemented in every G20 country, and increased in places where it's already implemented, including here in Canada. I already live a low consumption lifestyle compared to most middle class people. I avoid restaurants except for very rare occassions, and I avoid buying new things except when absolutely necessary. My vehicle trips are limited to very short trips to the grocery store about twice a month.
Being a fan of the local sports teams makes me a hypocrite, sure. But the day will come, hopefully soon, when airplanes are powered by non-fossil-fuel energy sources.
To be clear, the statement I am making is this:
Environmentalists and propaganda put us in a precarious situation when it comes to energy security in the Western world. By pressuring oil and gas companies to cut spending before replacement technologies were economically feasible or scalable. The Ukraine crisis simply pushed us 2 - 3 years forward on what was inevitable based on the experts I talk to on a quarterly basis including the IEA, KAPSARC, the major Canadian and US economists for major banks, and the major oil and gas companies both state and public.
Government and regulators who don't understand the energy ecosystem as a whole are making decisions based off of knee jerk reactions rather than sound economical and scientific based fact. Including but not limited to constraining production, constraining egress, not allowing building of nuclear and other base load power solutions.
In short, idealists like yourself and Greta are to blame because you do not have an ounce of an idea how energy works and take it for granted. This has lead to public pressure which has lead to poor decisions on investment and regulation.
Let's start with this.
There is often no "requirement" to fly anywhere.
maybe If people quit flying for vacations, it would be a good start.
I bet almost every single poster here could still live just fine if they didn't fly places for holidays and family visits. Ban all cruise ships, too.
People over time have just gotten their wants confused with their needs.
Absolutely - the issue however is though that people have gotten used to this. To take it away from them now will lead to civil unrest and after civil unrest just give up on finding solutions together.
In theory we could all go back to living in huts, heating our homes with fires, wearing animal fur, etc. The point is who wants to do that? That is why I believe the targets will not be reached, so we better have a plan B which includes mitigating against climate change and do our best to lower emissions while beating the clock for technology to save us. Humans are pretty good at developing technology when we all work together, look at the COVID vaccine.
I'd like to believe that the goal is to reduce carbon emissions, but I'm starting to believe the goal is to be anti-fossil fuels, even if it leads to worse emissions. Which, in 2022 is what we now have. Coal being used more than it was in previous years.
Nothing like 1 step forward and 8 steps back.
But hey, lets worry about lawn watering instead while China builds out MASSIVE coal burning capacity, and exports it all to 3rd world countries who need cheap energy.
What magic powers do we have to force China to stop building more coal fired plants?
Yes Canada should ship out more natural gas to give developing countries a better option than burning coal. However, we can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. Anything we can do to help the world reduce emissions while at the same time move closer to a clean energy future, we should do.
Sure, fine, but the reality is we are going to miss those targets by a long shot. I wouldn't be surprised if global CO2 emissions are higher in 2030 than today.
I really disagree and refuse to say "it's too hard so we can't/won't do it". I'm not saying it's a shoe in or going to be easy, but thankfully we're seeing people start to see what's actually staring us in the face and taking action. Individual actions aren't going to get us there but governmental policies will. The conservatives in Britain may be racist and whatever else, but even they are trying hard to get to net zero by 2050.
As I've said earlier, things are happening fast that most aren't noticing. Who in Alberta knows that they've become the wind/solar capital of Canada? The amount of growth now and what's planned is staggering. China is building more coal power now, but they're also growing renewables at an exponential pace and it's intentional. The UK is seeing massive growth in zero carbon electricity in the last 7 years, imagine what 30 years can do?
I don't believe it's inevitable at all
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The Ukraine crisis simply pushed us 2 - 3 years forward on what was inevitable based on the experts I talk to on a quarterly basis including the IEA, KAPSARC, the major Canadian and US economists for major banks, and the major oil and gas companies both state and public.
Yeah, I'm sure their opinions on this are completely unbiased.
Could the actual culprit for the recent spike in gas prices be OPEC+ deciding to slash production? Naaaah, let's just blame it all on the filthy stinkin environmentalists.
A good time to revisit this video
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Environmentalists and propaganda put us in a precarious situation when it comes to energy security in the Western world.
Well this is completely inaccurate. The fossil fuel industry has been well aware of the damage they have been doing, since the 40s, and have been an active participant in establishing a cottage industry that would create propaganda to hide these facts and create counter narratives to conflate the issue of global warming/climate change. If the fossil fuel companies had been more focused on finding better solutions to problems and spent the money on R&D rather than on this propaganda campaign we would be way closer to a possible solution. Make no mistake, the car manufacturers have been co-conspirators in this criminal enterprise and also earn the amount of flak they take. Profit has been the primary driver for both of these industries and only an outside disruptor forced their hands. The problem is greed and not giving a #### about the future of this planet, and that lands at the feet of the two industries identified and the corrupt politicians who took money while ignoring the science behind the problems.
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Government and regulators who don't understand the energy ecosystem as a whole are making decisions based off of knee jerk reactions rather than sound economical and scientific based fact. Including but not limited to constraining production, constraining egress, not allowing building of nuclear and other base load power solutions.
Actually, the SMEs in government have a really good idea on these challenges and the entirety of the energy eco-system. The problem is the SMEs rarely see their ideas move forward and instead stalled by the corrupt politicians who take money from the industries who care more about short-term profits rather than the long-term health of their companies and the planet itself. Policy routinely runs over SMEs and the solutions that need to be put into play get buried under an avalanche of bad law, bad policy, and bad politics. Nuclear is a perfect example. The only thing holding that back is politics and lobbying money from the fossil fuel collective.
Quote:
In short, idealists like yourself and Greta are to blame because you do not have an ounce of an idea how energy works and take it for granted. This has lead to public pressure which has lead to poor decisions on investment and regulation.
Thank goodness we have experts like yourself to step in and save the planet. Amiright?
All snark aside, we should be working together to find solutions. Fossil fuels will continue to be a component of any transition to a newer technology and will still remain to be an energy source for the next 50 years, if our society holds together. If it begins to fail, all bets are off and we're probably headed back to the days of the wild west.
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