(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)
Objection: The kind of drastic actions required to mitigate global warming risk the destruction of the global economy and the deaths of potentially billions of people.
Answer: Is this supposed to mean the theory of anthropogenic global warming must be wrong? You can not come to a rational decision about the reality of a danger by considering how hard it might be to avoid. First things first: understand that the problem is real and present.
Once you acknowledge the necessity of addressing the problem, taking action suddenly become less daunting. There is no point in discussing the best solutions or the cost of those solutions with someone who does not yet acknowledge the problem.
But even if mitigating global warming would be harmful, given that famine, droughts, disease, loss of major coastal cities, and a tremendous mass extinction event are on the table as possible consequences of doing nothing, it may well be we are faced with a choice between the lesser of two evils. I challenge anyone to conclusively demonstrate that such catastrophes as listed above await us if we try to reduce fossil fuel use.
Now, in terms of conservation and a global switch over to alternative fuels, the people who oppose doing this for climate change mitigation are forgetting something rather important. Fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource, and as such we have to make this global economic transformation regardless, whether now or a bit later. Many bright minds inside the industry think we are already at peak oil. So even if it turned out that climate mitigation was unnecessary, we would still be in a better place as a global society by making the coming switch sooner rather than later.
Seems like a win-win situation to me.
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Comments
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Nucbuddy Posted 6:08 am
25 Jan 2007
Limiting growth in energy use lowers the extinction-event survival-potential of the human species.
personals.galaxyinternet.net/tunga
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Palaces Posted 8:20 pm
25 Jan 2007
$0.10 x 24 x 365 x 25 = $21,900. That's the cost of doing nothing, business as usual. It also assumes no inflation or price increases for 25 years.
The cost of PV is currently price-fixed by a global cartel, and the market is rigged. Every so often somebody writes a book about it, and we have a 30 year track record of those books and magazines reports. A few examples from the past decades:
http://ScienceCop.info/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=TheSunBet...
http://sciencecop.info/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=TheCarbon...
http://sciencecop.info/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Cartel+So...
Rationally, the cost of PV is somewhat the same as the cost of beer cans and beer bottles, as they are made from the same starting raw materials and go through equally complex industrial machines and processes. Picture beer cans and bottles melted down to a puddle the thickness of a business card. How much materials is that?
Generously, with a fat profit margin built in, that solidified puddle one foot square should cost no more than 30 cents installed on the rooftop and making 12 watts of electricity each bright sunny hour.
That is of course not today's price. Chevron execs bragged that they made retail-ready PV for $1/watt several years ago. That would make that square foot of PV $12 at their manufacturing costs. The difference between $12 and $0.30 is 40 multiples of 30 cents.
There's a transitionary time between $1/watt and 30 cents a dozen. Stern intolerance of delays by corporations who have already delayed it for 30 years will shorten that transition time. The public must inform itself on how PV is made sufficiently to be able to make it if the corporations will not.
It seems terribly bold, but a PV casting furnace is the heart of PV. Seven wheelbarrows of sand processed yesterday becomes four wheelbarrows of sand then becomes 2 wheelbarrows of polycrystal PV cast ingots (12 cubic feet) in one 24 hour day in one furnace. The technology uses three expired-patent public domain processes.
http://h2-pv.us/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Bulk_Sand
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Fixsen Posted 11:14 am
09 Jan 2008
Second, he ignores the interest on the PV cell which must be paid while the PV cell is cranking out the electricity. This will tend to double the effective price of the PV cell.
Third, he ignores the price of installation. Suppose that the PV cells are free (Slightly less optimistic than Grist). Assume that the PV cells are twice as expensive as shingles to install (about 3K$ per roof). So 6K$ per roof will cost ~600$/yr interest. So this eats up most of the price of electricity.
Fourth, he is overly optimistic on how much electricity one can get. If the PV cells are optimally placed, with no clouds, you get 25% (i.. 6 hours per day); with clouds and random placement, 7% is more likely, or about 1.7 hours not 5.5. This, of course, multiplies all of the costs, so the cost of installation is too high.
Fifth, he ignores the chemicals needed to process the PV cells. If we get the cells down to 1 mm thick, that's about 1000 lbs. per house, x 100,000,000 or 50 MT of cells. That probably is at least 100 MT of chemicals....
Sixth, he ignores the problem of storing that electricity. For a small fraction (maybe 20%) of the electricity, that is not a big problem in that the use of electricity is higher during the day, and also higher in the summer (air conditioning), but PV for all electricity is MUCH harder.
Dale Fixsen
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Cacaoatl Posted 12:30 pm
05 Jun 2008
He believed that human beings could use natural resources with an eye to the future. He believed that it was possible to have a high standard of living without using up all our resources and destroying the wilderness in the process.
Stopping global warming may be economically difficult but in the end will have greater benefits for our species and the planet than any temporary hardships that may arise from switching to more sustainable sources of energy and wiser use of our resources. Denying global warming is nothing more than rationalization of selfishness. Our generation doesn't own this planet, we're just borrowing it from the next one.
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brownbat Posted 7:26 pm
17 Jun 2008
That's not necessarily true, it depends on the costs of energy sources and the time value of money.
Might be true, just ain't necessarily so, depends on the numbers.
Might be oil saves you a dollar today, but switching to solar today saves you a dollar tomorrow. If climate mitigation was unnecessary, then save the dollar today, even if just to put it in the bank for a year and give the interest to your favorite charity.
Course, might be that oil saves you a dollar today, but solar saves you ten dollars next week. The ten dollars is almost certainly a better deal.
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brownbat Posted 4:58 am
23 Jun 2008
Nobel winning economist Gary Becker is skeptical of Peak Oil. While consensus is mixed, other commentators have speculated a retreat in oil prices over the next few years.
Just because a resource is non-renewable, it doesn't mean that a peak price situation is inevitable in the short term. Tungsten isn't renewable, and the world consumes tens of thousands of tons each year. It has unique properties in hardness at high temperatures, making substitutes far less viable than our current substitutes for oil (which are simply a little more expensive). All the same, I don't lose much sleep over peak tungsten.
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