PeterPage’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Biofuels can be sustainable

  Buried deep in the story on this in the NY Times is recognition that sugarcane-based ethanol from Brazil is efficiently produced and the EU has imposed sustainability standards. The point is that how we produce biofuels now - which is to say no more sustainably then we do anything else - does not mean we can't. Please, google BioPact to learn the best under-appreciated idea for saving civilization, to produce biofuels sustainably in poor countries and export to rich countries. Check out biochar and pyrolysis to see how biofuel production can become carbon-negative, eventually reducing atmospheric CO2 to something like Gaia has in mind.
  We have to stop believing there are no solutions or else the solutions will never be recognized.On Biofuels not helpful in climate-change fight, new studies say posted 1 year, 9 months ago 28 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  It's the cars

  Two facts.
  

  1. We could turn every acre of Middle America into a corn field and not produce enough biofuel for our current fleet of cars and trucks.
     
  2. We can't resolve our climate change crisis without (along with a long list of other things)drastically reducing gasoline consumption.

   The solution is 100 mpg plug-in electric hybrids. With cars like that we won't be burning enough gasoline to matter very much and it won't be very difficult or destructive to produce sufficient biofuel.

  Peter PageOn With the right rules in place, it could work posted 2 years, 5 months ago 115 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  It's a rebate, not a tax

  This is hard enough, don't make it impossible by beginning the sales pitch for carbon tax substitution by exulting over the unimaginably expensive gasoline, etc., that is the goal.  
     Get people imagining much larger tax refunds. That is how we'll get this started. Just a little tax that collects enough money to give a rebate check, no matter how small, to everyone in America who files a 1040.
    We need to keep a laser focus on, say, "Rebate of every cent of tax on the first $25,000 including sales taxes.''
     On Albert, Martin, and ... Ralph? Solving the real energy crisis posted 3 years, 3 months ago 26 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Keep the nukes we have but build no more

  We need to run the nukes we have for as long and safely as we can. The carbon investment is made and we ought to amortize it as long as we can.
    New nukes are another matter. My bet is an honest carbon impact analysis would conclude a new will have to run as long as our old nukes have already just to offset the CO2 emissions needed to build, fuel and maintain the plant.
    Not that we ought to be guessing.On How to tell future generations about nuclear waste posted 3 years, 3 months ago 40 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Keep the nukes we have but build no more

  We need to run the nukes we have for as long and safely as we can. The carbon investment is made and we ought to amortize it as long as we can.
    New nukes are another matter. My bet is an honest carbon impact analysis would conclude a new will have to run as long as our old nukes have already just to offset the CO2 emissions needed to build, fuel and maintain the plant.
    Not that we ought to be guessing.On Nuclear power is complicated, dangerous, and definitely not the answer posted 3 years, 3 months ago 40 Responses