Comments hapa has made

i know what his point is/was.

i also know he was talking about pure politics. pure politics exists on only one side of this argument. on the other is the welfare of living things and, for all intents and purposes, the habitability of the universe.

knowing what we know today
what would he have told pompeii or
black death europe or banda aceh.

a lot of the people who appear loss averse have good reason. the elite of the country have screwed them and taxed them flat. repeatedly. and now, from the frying pan into depression. very very easy for the lawyers and flacks and radio attackers to dress transition up like "nafta, the sombrero'd hoot owl." but i think if you listen the fear isn't about whether the new equipment program would work, it's about another round of carpetbaggers. it's about people and trust.

as for the anti-science washington politicos, they're lying. their loss aversion has to do with their desire to command. i'm down with the nixonland argument: anti-hippie autopilot. nothing to do with real concerns. it's divide and conquer.On Superb NYT story captures both coal's peril and the barriers to its elimination posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago 38 Responses

bulletin!

bill becker broadens barbara boxer's benchmarksOn Markey on cap v. tax and ways to properly regulate carbon markets posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago 9 Responses

yeah you should LISTEN to the economists.

they'll NEVER steer you wrong. not a political or biased bone in their bodies.

"the cost of BAU is greater than the cost of avoiding the iceberg" is about as obvious a conclusion as one can reach without being a bad gambler.

"the cost of mitigation is minimal" is an argument for a world that doesn't care about its own future. smart people define their goals and then figure how to pay for them.

and apparently not "needless to say," ordinary budgets end at boundaries -- i need only enough money to cover MY  expenses, and if i screw up, many people in my network can catch me. this operation is bounded by the top of the atmosphere and the sea floor and has no safety net. underspend as you will.

maybe the little depression will help people recognize the risks of lowball public service. On Most economists agree on the economics of climate change mitigation posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 6 Responses

trouble is...

US corn policy is like a toggle switch on mexican and central american farms. sane ag policy has to go with higher labor standards here, putting people in both countries to work where they are, or the loop won't close.On Is the U.S. ready for sane ethanol policy? posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago 6 Responses

mmmmmmm

I (and I'm sure many others) would be very skeptical of a new program that not only brings in ~$120 billion annually, but still costs the government billions of dollars annually as well in new deficit spending.

OK then. the congresscritters will pay for what you want with carbon revenue and put borrowing and other taxes to work on other projects.

do you have a political objection or an economic objection.

Since "revenue-neutral" has become such a rallying point for a carbon bill, would you really be able to tack on an unaccounted for $X billion without losing votes/PR?

i myself can't do anything and i can't really predict what will be done or how the inherent compromises will be peppered throughout federal spending.

"revenue-neutral" is a stupid concept -- aside from the complete lack of interest in how much is too much military spending, even though its multiplier is terrible -- and it's a stupid concept because if we need to do something and the gains are in the future, we borrow the money we can't raise as investment. that's what one does. that's how things work unless you're just going to print the money or otherwise will it into existence.

i actually think the finance sector has had its turn at money creation and now it's time to push new money directly into the real human economy and the green overhaul is an excellent way to do that but nobody wants to take the bottle away from wall street baby.

If its worth doing, and is necessitated by the carbon pricing itself (which is the proximate cause of the economic dislocation), why not carve out some (admittedly hopefully small) portion of the carbon revenue to address it, and keep the program revenue/deficit neutral?

because we should buy what we need at the prices we need and not force the carbon price to serve two masters.

and

because the carbon pricing is not the cause of the dislocation. the massive effort -- to switch fuels, reduce impact, and clean up -- will be the dislocation. carbon price will only be part of that.

3) Coal and manufacturing jobs may be going slowly either way. That's easy for you and me to say, since presumably neither of us are planning on applying for a coal mining job either way. Somehow I think you'd see it differently if you were 45-55ish with kids to feed and put through college, and faced legislation that could wipe out your employer and pension virtually overnight.

years ago when i was working on a political campaign, a proposition to use transit instead of new car capacity to service a museum, the pro-car people kept saying my side was trying to prevent kids, the elderly, and the disabled from going to the museum. nobody thought existing access was insufficient and nobody was proposing to remove it (or even leave it as was, if there were real concerns) but they made their case and probably won with it.

i hate that kind of crap.

did you or did you not just read that i want social spending to help those people?On Peter Barnes chats about cap-and-dividend posted 9 months, 4 weeks ago 8 Responses

BTW.

• requiring continuing polluters to buy "certified offsets" is not the opposite of permit trading.

• being concerned about un-auctioned permits under any likely federal carbon trading program (as defazio says clearly)...

To add insult to injury, proposals in Washington, D.C., and Oregon would give a large portion of the pollution credits to the energy industry based on historical emission levels free of charge.

...is not the same thing as advocating pollution for free. neither is the difference subtle. eric, defazio's piece is not what you say it is. do you have other articles supporting your assertion that all those who oppose cap-and-trade oppose making polluters pay?

* it's possible another commenter in this thread knows these things -- knows that defazio's proposal has both market-like carrots and sticks -- and praised the misrepresentation anyway.On Why a cap without the trade is the worst of all worlds posted 10 months ago 8 Responses

there is one street whose support matters

if your street address contains the word "wall," as ed mcmahon used to say, "you may already be a winner"

handling of the econ collapse tells the story brilliantly about the future of carbon pricing in DC!

1. shrink the finance sector to something socially useful? "not if we can help it"

2. soften the landing of consumer economy in-re deleveraging? "not if we can help it"

3. fire the fraudsters and tax the bejeezus out of their stolen property to pay for the repairs? "not if we can help it"

4. invest more, borrow less, and stop robbing ordinary people with asset bubbles? "ha ha ha, you funny"

economic meltdown proves markets work!

next up: why supply-side regulation of finance was america's best choice to bring gas prices down.On Magic exists: It's called 'cap-and-trade' posted 10 months ago 12 Responses

correction/clarification

So if all the oil gets used up in 20 years, is Hansen saying that that by itself won't significantly increase ppm levels?

all the conventional oil.On We need to cut emissions faster than 80 percent by 2050, but how fast? posted 10 months, 1 week ago 39 Responses

yeah ok.

i would file the original article in the "how far we have to go" drawer and forget it. wow, the transport infrastructure in the USA is browner than a coal-burning stove. SHOCK.

run through the list of crimes that the movie critic talked about and every one of them has a near-term policy response ready and waiting.

it WOULD be pretty easy for sundance -- one of the world's biggest media confabs -- to pass the hat to the industry and raise capital for a true push past offsets into zero-ness for the event -- consistent with redford's own environmental activism -- and it would be a good chance to highlight the work of neighboring RMI.

but i think when you look at a big event like this -- an institution -- i don't think it's quite the same as what you would expect from an individual; for instance, my home does NOT run on renewable energy but no one in their right mind would describe my advocacy of clean power as "greenwashing" -- because it's advocacy -- not public relations.

i'm not a public figure, it's not about "my image," it's about "our future."

still -- at every level you have to ask, "what have you really accomplished"  -- but once you get up to that institutional level the motives really start being important.

(al gore's rep is an open target, rightly so. he's loaded and he's heavily invested in clean tech. what he has is both a very productive commitment to a greener future and a conflict of interest. although he's also "doing good and doing right" so where's the conflict. he thinks it's the future. he's investing in the future. SHOCK.)

the main crime of the NYT writer was in not interviewing someone from the festival about their greening plans. that oversight, because the writer is not a real reporter, with a real news editor watching over.On Media Matters commenter provides one of the greatest snarks at the denier wingnut mentality posted 10 months, 1 week ago 11 Responses

dr amazing person,

it was always going to take a cast of millions pushing to get the standards set high.

i'm just now packing up a copy of "plan b" to send to my big-southern-repub-donor/hunter-steward relative. i'm wondering if i should deliver it in person. maybe we can talk about it maybe not but there's no one person in one place who can make this monster machinery turn fast. everybody needs to get closer and closer to wanting it.

if the people who are really hardcore and really well-versed right now are the only ones who can make it work, it will fail at lower levels. but it works at lower levels it can be universalized, i think.On What Obama's green team has to say about coal posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 26 Responses

"today's air quality standards

but not tomorrow's, please."On Modernizing the auto fleet will benefit the earth and the economy posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 4 Responses

damn this is one of the best talks i've ever seen

i feel like the only thing nobody said, or touched on, was that the job coming is so big, even if whatever work you're talking about is something that would be offshored some other decade, "offshore" is gonna have its own work to do.

this here be the time of unplanned obsolescence. transition-specific factories; prohibitive shipping fuel costs; a different dynamic. wartime without war.On Robert Stavins can't walk and chew gum at the same time posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 40 Responses

practicalpolitik

1. going green: not optional. we are in trouble.

2. nuclear: not a bridge. in 20 years we'd have our work cut out just keeping up with replacing today's nukes that are going out of service. and if you think they're affordable to build, i have an atomic-powered bridge to sell you.

3. after moving current dirty investment over to clean and spending some of the military make-work money on buying us real security, the remaining out-of-pocket costs aren't much.

gasoline experiment not controlled.

without basis, positing: that the "easy credit" factor softened the impact of the most shocking gas prices (after summer 2007). then when it got so bad people started yelling for a shift, hell arrived and the waters were further muddied? oil prices will keep wobbling with the rest of it. households are not familiar with seasickness.On Question of the day posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 15 Responses

more than normally confused.

scenarios:

1. party A originates or imports the coal and pays a fee, possibly passing less than 100% of that fee downstream (depending on local elasticity); but in

2. "party B end-buys the coal and pays a fee," the price that party B is willing to pony up for coal is unaffected by the oncoming fee?

maybe need to talk about process heat and electricity generation separately...?On They affect consumers the same either way, and upstream is simpler and more transparent posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 27 Responses

oo-wee, that's a selective quote.

what was quoted:

That said, it's clear the TDI was designed to perform at the pump, not on twisting back roads ...

what was said:

That said, it's clear the TDI was designed to perform at the pump, not on twisting back roads, as evidenced by the immediate desire of the stock 205/55R16 rubber to relinquish its feeble grip on the asphalt. The brakes make a similar statement when jammed on before a tight corner ("Please stop driving like this"). Despite this, the Jetta TDI is quite fun to drive aggressively, thanks to a well-tuned suspension and good steering.

"quite fun to drive aggressively"? is that the "attendant engineering compromises" you're talking about?

the brakes are probably standard non-sport jetta, no reason to have changed them. the tires are the difference but even so, by hunting around on the net for reviews, as one would expect, the grip, control, power, and handling feel of the jetta are all much better than the "car of the future" prius.

(i agree with the green-ness, operating cost, and interior design comparisons.) (except for comparing refinery footprint while omitting battery manufacture byproducts.)

i'd really rather read a showdown between a prius and a train.On Diesel technology has peaked posted 10 months, 4 weeks ago 12 Responses

they'd be voting.

public equity in power generation (including negawatts, tee hee) would not very popular among rentiers. we do not have the politicians in place now, including the next president, for a new generational commitment to maintaining public anything. unbelievably, those who greatly accelerated planetary and finance disaster have nearly as much political capital as before, because they are seen not as having done the wrong thing, but the right thing the wrong way. a majority of democrats act of the belief that the stock market is a power-sharing institution -- equivalent to collective ownership.On Two questions for James Hansen posted 11 months ago 8 Responses

going back to nader....

a few months ago ralph nader wrote a sweet column on how to reform finance and finance regulation and i do wish i could find where i put it.

this NYT piece on wall street collusion brought it to mind.

but in the middle was an important point about "public" and "private" in today's america.

there's no line. there's a door, it goes around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around until you get the job you want at the company you want.

i mean if everybody in government -- even "career bureaucrats" -- sees their current job as a stop on the way to a fully padded nest -- really, isn't that the end state of thatcherism, you want public service but you get the public served on a tray as individuals compete to be most cooperative -- try to imagine a legal system where jurors were eligible to be hired directly by the law firms presenting the cases.

you don't have to! it just cost you trillions of dollars.

such a systematic corruption -- mundane -- blended with some kind of chicago school-flavored stockholm syndrome -- and you're talking about not just deprogramming, you're talking about generations of central people for whom "long-term" and "risk" have little real meaning outside personal finances and some narrow job-related sense.

there's no commons, no common good, no common ground, except job hunting, house hunting, personal faith, family, and the undergirding automaticity of markets.

when people say "ecological imbalance is in large part due to multiple catastrophic market failures" they might as well be speaking sumerian. the market is all-encompassing, there's nothing outside it, failure is impossible. the "public" is a branch office.On Regulation and public investment are more efficient means to reduce GHGs than emissions pricing posted 11 months ago 12 Responses

*borne

On Institutions, motivations, and assumptions in economic analysis posted 11 months ago 17 Responses

kites would be in use for freight today

if there were freight.On Robert Rapier on ever-delayed cellulosic ethanol posted 11 months ago 50 Responses

teleconferencing push.

true broadband everywhere will also cut air travel. should aim for 100Mbps standard to allow 4-party HD conferencing from any computer.On Robert Rapier on ever-delayed cellulosic ethanol posted 11 months ago 50 Responses

that aspect of hayek/friedman

i was just listening in on that modeling-is-justification aspect of their thinking get debated elsewhere. as i understood it the crux of the problem is in the "compares favorably" part. if one monkey picks up a hammer and another an apple, the hammer-wielder isn't suddenly much more likely to build a cabinet.On Faster, climate change! Kill! Kill! posted 11 months ago 22 Responses

at night

the great planetary heating element is made of trillions of moths, drawn to the sun's glow. this is why the dark side becomes colder. On Planting trees and managing soils to sequester carbon posted 11 months ago 19 Responses

no greenhouse effect at all.

the real bottom of the barrel now.

next it will be proven by real scientists that warmth comes from inside the earth; the sun is a heatless sparkler for our pleasure.On Planting trees and managing soils to sequester carbon posted 11 months ago 19 Responses

sharon

by the time organized efficienservation measures reach the real planning stages we'll know better who's solvent and what assistance is right and good. now there's too much fog.On McKinsey 2008 Research in Review: Stabilizing at 450 ppm has a net cost near zero posted 11 months, 1 week ago 6 Responses

post-everything politics.

top republicans will call it a failure regardless. they're already busy blaming obama for the bank crash. mitigation of their torch-and-pitchfork gasbagging is impossible.

similarly, the economy around the world will shrink, right? the level of spending during the credit bubble is finished, the downswing will hurt, and wherever things stabilize -- under whatever additional constraints -- they will likely remain below bubble levels while obama is president. again, this can be cast as failure, regardless of how well benefits of a more sustainable economy are distributed.

and it will be very easy for dishonest people to say that mext year's contraction is because of irresponsible deficit spending. not only do these people have no political interest in cooperating, that economic school is famously horrible and cruel in its handling of downturns.

and plenty of conspiracies being built around everything, especially sovereignty. the sticky problem of needing a one-planet civilization in a society that is (justifiably) worried about corporatist NWO monsters.

the question is, to me, whether team obama (a) wants to -- and (b) can -- deliver service -- get real gains to the underemployed and under-water while getting everybody hip to the nature of the new ground rules for success.

the well is well and truly poisoned. it's gonna be a mess.On Future of Obama presidency hinges on ability to adapt to changing circumstances posted 11 months, 1 week ago 6 Responses

back to lester & co

they figured defense-level spending to build grid, efficiency, and renewables by 2020 would anchor at least 4 times as much matching private investment.

i don't think anybody is talking about government-only. it's too big a change.

the hoover dam is a sad story. a beautiful engineering project that could fail because, with every opportunity in the world, we didn't tend the underlying natural processes. a dry reservoir is a planning debacle and an insult to the sacrifices involved in building.On How the U.S. and China can help, not harm, each other posted 11 months, 1 week ago 19 Responses

why didn't the new deal solve the problem?

conservative economists think, "because it was broken."

keynesian economists think, "because it was too small."

who's right? [tik tok, tik tok, tik tok]

THE KEYNESIANS. why? because when everything is kaput and only the government is willing to take risks, government spending is the demand-of-last-resort that kicks everything back into action. but the new deal didn't aim to meaningfully make up the difference between the supply and demand so it couldn't serve as a full kicker. the war, however, put government spending into the stratosphere.

this has been another installment in the ongoing series, "safety nets and protecting the commons are not a communist plot."On How the U.S. and China can help, not harm, each other posted 11 months, 1 week ago 19 Responses

unwise investments

michael hudson and others gave me the sense that CDOs etx were the only opportunity the bushies offered for "dollar recycling." outside of the US there weren't a lot of places to park that kind of money no matter how hard the washington consensoids worked to force people to sell out. inside china (and petrostates), inflation worries.

so "unwise" is one way to put it, "harried" and "cornered by policy" is another. i thought it was plain that if they wanted to raise money fast they'd have to undersell. the whole "finance is reality" thing got started because there were too many cooks in the kitchen, it seems like. the low road was an easy choice, that and knowing japan's experiences starting up at the low end and stalling at the higher end and getting into carry trade....

anyway it's not all china's choice. their regional partners would also have to agree to shifting to selling into china and of course we never really heard the end of the oil story, in terms of chinese industry, at whatever scale and whatever cleanliness.On How the U.S. and China can help, not harm, each other posted 11 months, 1 week ago 19 Responses

not there yet

sustainability aside/assumed, chinese domestic market is a long way from having a US/EU-style trade relationship with US. purchasing power is not in parity. they can't even buy much more of the stuff they make themselves.On How the U.S. and China can help, not harm, each other posted 11 months, 1 week ago 19 Responses

no.

we have 20 years to get things turned around. that's time enough only to address symptoms. so, we have a physical problem created by destructive processes, clumsy tools, and incomplete accounting. that's what we fix.

social and personal needs -- metaphysical needs -- should be given higher standing but that's part of our accounting problem.

or would you argue we let nature die as self-punishment for not discovering a secular spiritual path for the world?On Deep Christmas thought posted 11 months, 1 week ago 13 Responses

variable and intermittent as i understand them.

wind and solar, without storage, are both both intermittent and variable, to different degrees. both wind and sun change availability predictably by time of day and time of year (intermittent) and experience local fluctuations (variable).

CSP -- what joe romm calls "solar baseload" -- is the most compatible with the current grid because it generates heat which is much easier to store than pure juice. just needs insulation. so you get smoother ouput.

i honestly don't know why people call solar PV intermittent, though. storage is integral. a solar PV system requires storage the same way coal, oil, and natural gas require storage. the difference is the PV commodity needing handling comes after generation. batteries=pipelines, except that pipes and tanks are using physical properties so they're even simpler than insulation.

but when you bring these things up to a grid level, storage becomes less and less necessary. when you don't need it someone does; when you don't have it someone does. this is where a national HVDC network and regional supply consolidation -- making that up, i know there's a word but i can't remember it -- to aggregate many variable sources -- variable both by weather fluctuation AND local demand -- to maintain voltage -- this consolidating network is crucial and must and will be built.

this is actually the biggest reason we need to commit to efficiency first and always. application by application, the smaller we can make the differences between "on" and "off" the smaller will be the differences between peak and trough. negawatts are also negastorage.
 On The VC models are to blame, not the green technologies posted 11 months, 1 week ago 34 Responses

tethers yeh

i've been listening to their heady stuff, wondering how it will develop as they get closer to advocating building our way out, right. mostly i'm curious when the more humane elite econ people will start talking about tight schedules and making the money work. the question of how to work a crowded world with good idea-based exchanges instead of bad idea-based -- i think dealing with switching us from asset bubbles is the first stage -- and that's the conversation those people are getting started -- kicking the greenspan habit, right.On The economy is an ecosystem, and industrial policy will help that ecosystem posted 11 months, 1 week ago 24 Responses

BTW

in conversation at TPMcafe book club, about krugman's "depression economics" book, reich had another (familiar?) idea, for post-bubble, post-disposable economics, without reducing "velocity" too much. people buy what they want and need -- more modestly -- and the difference is covered/added through public sector spending to protect and restore the commons, funded by more progressive taxes, OC.

very american realist....On The economy is an ecosystem, and industrial policy will help that ecosystem posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 24 Responses

correction

the newt talks about "minimizing the carbon loading of the atmosphere." it's much too early yet to talk about cuts isn't it.On Gingrich summarizes the state-of-the-art delayer line posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 5 Responses

naw that's too slow.

i'd think maybe that would be revised upward again, above half, maybe around this time next year, after awareness of the new science and the federal seed money have saturated the organizational thinking processes...? On Where will we find infrastructure funding under cap-and-dividend? posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 13 Responses

ken, i know i know i know

but this is where the federal ability to create money and the state-level pay-go differences show up. if we're talking about a "we don't control the world's reserve currency" kind of budget -- which is california or western states or whatever -- then transition funding is a worlds-apart difference. but if we're talking about meeting a 350 schedule then regular taxes and bonds are insufficient.

cap-and-dividend to me is a national-only proposition. same way: science-appropriate mitigation requires DoD-scale spending. once you're inside "money is what you say it is" space then you can have your household transition cash cake and "repower america" too.On Where will we find infrastructure funding under cap-and-dividend? posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 13 Responses

ken

if there's no carbon phase-out plan, no steps downward, no agressive replacement/displacement, then rent-seeking would be the least of our worries....

we are similarly screwed if we can't run a 20-year economic intervention without crippling the real economy. anyway, notice, most of the damage done to the economy lately was generated by the people who "work hard for their money"?On Where will we find infrastructure funding under cap-and-dividend? posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 13 Responses

green non-mushroom clouds.

a couple years ago i think it was me and some were talking about this stuff and i decided the cloud-making idea was the best because it was the only really good application of nuclear power i could think of. what're nukes famous for? heat! but this was stupid. adding heat is no good. you'd want to use (or displace) solar energy already in the surface system to vaporize the water. not nukes, not geothermal, not tidal.

jamais casco wrote something last year maybe about the potential for "first strike" terraforming -- some industrial state engaging in planet-scale de-solation all by their lonesome, with unproven techniques, because they panicked in face of catastrophic near-term risks that hit them first and hard. this isn't hard to imagine, right, since industrial states are following exactly the same logic right now with coal.

this brings up the question -- is the US being stupid-stupid about stewardship because our elite does not respect, and thus does not anticipate, network effects? does all this go back to being the walled community, resource-rich and protected from other hungry eurasians by big oceans? ok yeah sure.

coal plants are our modern proliferation problem, there's no such thing as a winnable global warming, etc.

anyway, intervene to give the greening breathing room, and green to reduce the scale of the artificial components of the intervention, that's what i think, and thought.On Desperate enough to contemplate geo-engineering posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 22 Responses

hmm

pay-as-you-go is incompatible with a 350 situation.

after local public investment, after business investment, after cooperative investment, after GSEs and development banks, there is the simple fact that the government controls the money supply.

as i've seen them estimated, after all profitable aspects are financed, the costs remaining are pretty small, in relation to economic activity. the worry of inflation would restrain this kind of spending.

whether "farm" or "defense" or "energy" subsidies are sensible or cost effective is another debate. whether taxes need to be more progressive -- and better targeted -- is another debate. likewise who should own the means of energy production.

if no taxes are desired, borrowing is unacceptable, and investors can't be found, gosh, wouldn't it be a shame for work to go undone, when currency is a figment of the imagination?On Where will the money for public investment come from? posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 10 Responses

good enough

this is not an ordinary recession.

oil prices did not drop 70% because of single-digit percentage drop in miles driven.

i don't know what's going to happen to oil prices. you do. lucky you!

i never said the suburbs were dying. i said they were being subsidized by means that just stopped being available. you know where is another source of reliable financing. lucky you.

and you're bullish on detroit and your tenants appear to be solvent and you can wave your hand to make oil emissions leave the atmosphere and you're really lucky.On Kunstler's tips to prepare for a post-oil society posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 83 Responses

that casual approach

will change.On RGGI auction: CO2 trading at $3 per ton posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 10 Responses

ps.

70% of the US economy is consumer spending, but it's not a market-based solution when a vendor can offer consumers a cheaper, cleaner product?

i like carrots. i know, adam stein said we're not supposed to talk about this, but we put carrots out there for the banks, to encourage lending, we incentivized loan creation, by allowing it out into the wilder market world.

now we have nothing but carrots everywhere! yay.

you really have to be nuts or worse, not to address that hole. talk about carrots: it's a market of trillions of dollars, dangling in the face of a finance industry in desperate straits. no such market can possibly be ideal. it could even be -- shall we say -- sub-prime.On A carbon tax has efficient sticks, but what about carrots? posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago 19 Responses

VMT per person went started down years before.

i think people are supposed to ignore me but in this case i might be right and i wish someone would notice that.

if you adjust that total miles traveled curve for population, without adding in the spike in undocumented population, you get a drop in person-miles starting in 2005 or even 2004, close to when gas prices started rising. if you then look at something like krugman's recent employment chart post and then think about underemployment and hours available and stuff, you see that probably along with corporate route-consolidation and stuff, there were a lot of people who were vulnerable to gas prices, and they were likely doing some mild conservation already; when the housing bubble burst and commodities went nuts (in response), it exacerbated an existing problem and moved it into the nielsen family homes, where it got noticed.

i wish somebody would do a more thorough study of this. it behooves greenish people to better understand what happened to the lowest three quintiles in the bush years (and before) in order to set an ecological course that serves all.On The transportation story at the heart of a history-making crisis posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago 9 Responses

that was via TOD.

On Transportation stuff posted 1 year, 2 months ago 10 Responses

worth noting

dan denning wrote the oil shale piece for the daily reckoning in late 2005.

here he is two months ago:

The efforts to turn Canada's tar sands and Colorado's oil shale into energy are really just efforts to speed up what would happen naturally over time. But we don't have time. So we throw excess energy at the problem, trying to cook shale in situ or use huge quantities of natural gas to increase oil production via the tar sands. We don't have much excess energy, either.

Both processes use tremendous amounts of energy for a small net energy yield (energy returned on energy invested, or EROEI). Yet free solar income rains down on the planet each day. The sun is eight-minute energy! We simply don't have an industrial system built to run off the modest amounts of energy we can convert from sunlight. We need a new system or a way to convert a higher percentage of sunlight into usable energy.

It's not the sort of thing you design on your kitchen table. It's the sort of thing that evolves out of necessity and experimentation. Its evolution obeys the same basic laws that govern the evolution of species...variation, mutation, adaptation. Australia has a wide variety of clever and well-managed companies working on different aspects of the problem.

But in the big picture, we think human beings are pretty good at adapting when they have to. The alternative is non-survival, which also goes by the name of death. True, civilisations seem to through a life cycle of their own. And perhaps this oil-based one is past its prime. People are quarrelsome and stupid. We may not adapt our way out of this problem before it overwhelms us. But it would be unnatural not to try.

the rest, whatever.

it's not my decision. i saw the cogen stuff, it looks cool and i guess it'd be even cooler at scale. if it works with the carbon price, if it works for the water demand, if it doesn't leave the watershed in a mess, i'm sure people will go for it.

as for how the land is being used now, i hope you'll understand, i don't take the advice of libertarians in economic heat about how to manage open space.On New sea-level rise research, part 1: 'Most likely' 0.8 to 2.0 meters by 2100 posted 1 year, 2 months ago 178 Responses

that

was not fun.

earlier this year TOD ran (what i thought was) a great series on energy-return-on-(energy)-investment, or "net energy." here's the one about oil sands and oil shale.

AS A REASONABLE PERSON WOULD EXPECT, the reason oil shale isn't the top energy source in the world today is that it isn't cheap, it isn't easy, it isn't clean, and it isn't fast to market.

this is why oil-tech's breakthrough technology is being promoted mostly by a press release and an electioneer and not by former peak-oil experts whose lives were changed when they read the pamphlet.

the biggest issue the article raises about OT's machinery, though, apart from water inputs and waste in the watershed -- a double-whammy mountain state people are supposedly thinking about? -- is,

A problem that is obvious from the data is that shale oil is always waiting for oil to reach a given price level at which point it will become economic. But as that price is reached and surpassed (even over time by a factor of ten) it remains uncompetitive because the cost of the extraction and processing has increased (Hall et al. 1986). The problem here as with many other alternatives to what we do today, is that as the price of oil (or fossil fuels more generally increases so does the price of everything made directly or indirectly with oil, which is essentially everything from steel to chemicals to water to labor.

this points to why the big boys haven't jumped at the chance.

but if i were advising someone who actually made decisions in the affected area, concerning the chance of becoming the next alaska, for instance, i would show them this:

In the U.S., a large-scale commercial oil shale operation could have a significant impact on any nearby communities, the extent of which depends on the existing infrastructures and many other factors. As such, in a case where shale oil development overlaps an area with increasing tourism and recreation opportunities and an expanding urban population, on top of this existing network of energy development and changing land uses it is likely to put much more pressure on an already fragile ecosystem and public temperament (Committee on Resources 2005). An important issue is that most oil shales exist in areas very far from any infrastructure (housing, water, schools and so on) so that either very large daily transportation would be needed or whole new towns would need to be constructed.

op-por-tu-ni-ty cosssss-t.

my take from the article is that -- oh, wait, i don't have to say anything more, joe romm crushed this, stomped on it, and lay it in its grave just a few weeks ago.On New sea-level rise research, part 1: 'Most likely' 0.8 to 2.0 meters by 2100 posted 1 year, 2 months ago 178 Responses

tom is weird

used to be the world was flat because it was economically integrated. now it's flat because there is growing economic equity (meeting in the middle) among the bourgeoisies. well, as long as it's flat. maybe next time it will be flat because it has run over a nail and needs replacing.

i know the crowd will probably like it, as a step from "energy independent" toward some kind of resource management truth, but the "earth race" thing gives me ugly shivers.

there's a couple ways i can imagine such a winner-take-all thing resulting in no prize.

the world is flat but can't cooperate. can't see past its nose. so why would such a world compete to save itself? tom is his own counterargument.On Tom Friedman talks up the need for an 'energy revolution' on 'Meet the Press' posted 1 year, 2 months ago 5 Responses

dem's fightin' words

as opposed toOn Wow posted 1 year, 2 months ago 6 Responses

my own suspicion

is best summed up thus:

McCain is a shadow of his former … self.

period. i think this has been a very long campaign and he's one tired old man.On The dynamic behind the GOP's mockery of community organizing posted 1 year, 2 months ago 22 Responses

stranger things...

maybe she'll switch parties and change her views after the election?

she'd be a tough convert. extractive-state nativist, possibly with millenarian tendency, and a household built on fossil income. taken together, pretty good personal reasons to give the evidence a pass.

but then, the lady huffpo was a shocker. her deep-red-trophy-wife-ness gave no hint about her future. maybe just too much time in the california sun!On Note to media: Pork queen Palin is an earmark expert, not an energy expert posted 1 year, 2 months ago 15 Responses

whiskerfish

Isn't it scary that someone sitting in Cape Town, South Africa, has a better idea of Ketchikan than the New York Times does?

would we be talking about the same NYT that ran war propaganda in 2002-3? the one that consistently runs foreign affairs articles with no named sources and none outside the government? the one that writes authoritatively from inside the green zone?

the one that refused to tell the iran-contra story and held back the information on FISA avoidance until after a new supreme court justice had been seated?

that NYT?On VP acceptance speech hits on energy issues posted 1 year, 2 months ago 41 Responses

good

for a minute there i was worried you swam in the deep end of the pool. pretty dangerous to be over your head like that.On Excerpt from acceptance speech released posted 1 year, 2 months ago 12 Responses

she'd like you to think she's perfect for you

tell you anything you ever want to hear.

a small-town frontier gloss on a frighteningly urban world,

predictions of bright futures for dying dirty industry and the global power it created,

complete motherly forgiveness for the consequences of your favorite policies over more than a decade.

i mean really you got everything you could have asked for and look how deep you're standing in it.

first rule of holes, right? stop digging.On Should environmentalists jump on climate disasters? posted 1 year, 2 months ago 15 Responses

dear sarah,

i was saying, "drilling won't solveany of our energy problems." i think a few people were. you should check that before tonight's speech so you don't, um -- trip up -- in front of a national audience.On Excerpt from acceptance speech released posted 1 year, 3 months ago 12 Responses

"grand challenges"?

grand challenges.

Make solar energy economical
Provide energy from fusion
Develop carbon sequestration methods
Manage the nitrogen cycle
Provide access to clean water
Restore and improve urban infrastructure
Advance health informatics
Engineer better medicines
Reverse-engineer the brain
Prevent nuclear terror
Secure cyberspace
Enhance virtual reality
Advance personalized learning
Engineer the tools of scientific discovery

it's the hammer show! all nails, all the time.On A presidential pop quiz on energy, water, scientific integrity, oceans, and climate change posted 1 year, 3 months ago 18 Responses

jonas

if europe has that much extra time and energy to sit around blaming the whole thing on the USA -- having profited handsomely from USA stocks and bonds and from sales to USA consumers -- why not use some of your spare human capital to give us discounted training and equipment?

europe looks much less smart when it patiently waits for america to sink the boat.On The eco-rundown on Alaska guv Sarah Palin, John McCain's veep pick posted 1 year, 3 months ago 120 Responses

conversation in sarah palin's head

"obama's going to beat him real bad."

"but think about the good press for alaska!"

"oh! right! i'll call him back right now!"

"and have those ANWR talking points ready."

"hey, someone's forgetting about a certain bullet-list tattoo...?"
On McCain's veep pick talks energy, ANWR, and the improbability of being tapped for VP posted 1 year, 3 months ago 7 Responses

reminder

now = laterOn Obama calls out climate and energy in his big acceptance speech posted 1 year, 3 months ago 16 Responses

que sera sera.

i guess i should preserve the hair on my head. five years from now i'll probably really want to have some left to pull out.On Obama's VP talks energy and Amtrak in his acceptance speech posted 1 year, 3 months ago 5 Responses

more numbers

~1,000,000 sq.km. to generate world energy

~50,000,000 sq.km. worldwide "desert area"

And this is nowhere close to 1% of our desert areas.

yeah, more like 2%.On A choice of primary energies: renewable electrons win the gold posted 1 year, 3 months ago 58 Responses

sean

why would i bash big business? because...

Ignore the labels though and business is simply the vehicle by which resources are allocated (financial, human, and otherwise).

exactly. and how have we allocated those resources? we blew them away. spent several lifetimes' supplies of good provisions to puff ourselves up and pad our bank accounts.

do i get to thank a business for the dark hole in front of us? no! for that, i have to thank, what, providence? bad luck? poor governance maybe?

anybody but the nice ladies and gentlemen in the middle class homes and nice cars and all that. they're following their dreams.

So do entrepreneurs start businesses just to "feel good about themselves"?  Not in my experience.  Indeed, most of the small - and large - business owners I know are motivated much more by a desire to impact the wider world in some way beyond what they can accomplish elsewhere.

and they have. they built the best possible fictional future and made themselves stars of it. all of us have.

you think i don't know that big name business school grads are idealistic. i know that. the issue that has to be raised is why anyone whose ideal is making the physical world irrelevant to human affairs should ever be allowed to wield power.On NYT Magazine probes Obama's economic thinking posted 1 year, 3 months ago 46 Responses

class dismissal

(After all, there's not much incentive to start a small business if you don't have the chance to someday become a big one!)

well, there's tradecraft. not something you can brag about in the wharton alum magazine, though. unless your trade is "business."

but i forget, all our purpose in life now is to make MBAs feel good about themselves. everybody else, everyTHING else, can go hang!

even when you're looking into the abyss as a civilization, the business class's self-image is the most important aspect to protect.

how very skunky.

this isn't really about capital or whatever. this is about the problem with big institutions, what galbraith attributed once to corporations but i think works for public institutions also, in that you can work all your life in one of these offices and never know what real effect your personal work had on the wider world. you're blurred out of the overall picture of your organization.

and big civilization begets big institutions. with their own internal mercantilist tendencies. unstoppably so.

because of this, it's really important to get "the system" to "tell the ecological truth," as lester brown puts it, and The Question we face now is whether the momentum of the big insitutions' outdated thinking, outdated assumptions about resource use -- will "the ecological truth" ever get told while it matters.On NYT Magazine probes Obama's economic thinking posted 1 year, 3 months ago 46 Responses

heh

This is not to say that there are not unethical people in financial services.  But there are also unethical people in government.

and with a carbon market, you get both!On NYT Magazine probes Obama's economic thinking posted 1 year, 3 months ago 46 Responses

weird tho.

hansen pushes a distributed national grid as the key first step in switching our fuel. then gore elaborates and draws the diagram and paints the picture for the wider audience and he's definitely talking to congresscritters, backstage. his offer to inhofe for a climate chat, last year, was memorable.

many other big players talking "grid." and europe, planning on building one. (i still think we need a pretty map like was made for their proposal.)

not that anyone asked me or would but i like the legislation route being proposed. i'd also like -- maybe first -- a list of bottlenecks to be addressed. trained hands and trained eyes that are missing from the picture, whose absence causes delays and economic hardship.

home energy auditors. well drillers for ground-source. bright green town planners. energy co-op coordinators.On In either an Obama or McCain adminstration, climate legislation will be back-burnered posted 1 year, 3 months ago 33 Responses

ok

another site pointed to biden's strong support for the 2005 bankruptcy changes as a queer indicator of obama's direction on finance, which actually is very important in-re greening 100 million households and billions of vehicle miles. i don't think it says that much because

1. a senator from delaware would have insider ties to the credit industry that the veep wouldn't have to keep up

2. outside the bush-cheney white house, the veep doesn't set bank policy

GO PLAN B GO!

On Al Gore details plan for exclusively carbon-free electricity in U.S. by 2018 posted 1 year, 4 months ago 21 Responses

it's still about discretionary income

$100/mo/car extra in a two-worker household that's seen other costs rising much faster than income, and now maybe more mortgage than there is house, but the gas cost is the one everybody can see and nobody likes the oil companies and they're obviously bad guys, unlike the insurance industry and the mortgage bankers and the "wage inflation" cops and the "deficit hawks" who only care about food stamps -- all of that, you can't see or taste or smell without a score card -- so there it is, the pain at the pump, a couple bucks you shouldn't really be feeling like a spike through your hand when you "select grade" but you do because the rest of it has gone worse than you expected -- and then the nice lady and the camera come up and say, "what are you doing to save money on gas?" and you almost say, "i'm sending my son to state college," but you don't.On Yes, Americans are a bunch of whiners ... posted 1 year, 4 months ago 21 Responses

mr pickens' answer to peak oil:

replace oil energy with natural gas, replace natural gas electricity with wind electricity, replace coal with-- huh.

must be here somewhere. maybe he left that part of the plan in his other jacket.

except when he and the wind energy whatsamahoozy association when to ask for transmission lines they weren't asking for anything fancy in the wiring. just "transmit that energy to cities and towns." no solar or storage or distributed or nuthin. 20% of electricity's plenty.

it's win-win-win-win-win-win-win!On No easy explanation for continued price increases in the oil markets posted 1 year, 4 months ago 48 Responses

you should...

...get a divorce. don't wait to be dumped, it's not manly.On U.S. driving declines posted 1 year, 4 months ago 18 Responses

i'm

tiger woods.On Don't be afraid to claim the term 'environmentalist' posted 1 year, 4 months ago 13 Responses

PHEV break even points

there's a linked study (pdf) -- they assume $2.50/gal for that "break-even" estimate. from page 5:

Figure 1 shows the life-cycle-cost analysis results for purchasing and operating a PHEV compared with a conventional high-fuel-efficiency vehicle such as a Honda Civic. The results are expressed by diagonal break-even lines for varying gasoline prices. Each break-even line in the figure assumes a specific gasoline price and delineates a region below and to the left of the line in which a PHEV would have a lower life-cycle cost than a conventional vehicle and therefore would justify a premium purchase price. This is described as a cost-effective region. Above each line is the region where the PHEV is not cost effective. The premium can be read off the horizontal axis for a given electricity price. For instance, using California average residential rates of 12 cents per kWh and a price of the gasoline of $2.50 per gallon, the break-even point for the purchasing premium is $2,000 for California.  In the state of Ohio, with lower electric rates, the break-even point at the gasoline price of $2.50 per gallon is $3,000 (see Figure 1).

estimating based on their chart, at current CA residential electricity price (rounding up: 15¢/kWh) and gas price ($4.50/gal) i think the break-even point -- the sticker price difference between honda civic and honda civic plug-in at which the "plug-in" pays for itself over the life of the car -- is somewhere above $6,000.

current price difference between civic and civic hybrid is a little hard to figure out because the range for civic sedans runs from $15,000 (stick shift and spartan trim, compared to hybrid) to $21,000 depending on options. hybrid price is about $22,000.On U.S. driving declines posted 1 year, 4 months ago 18 Responses

must verify this

it looks to me like, based on a USA population growth rate of ~0.9%, VMT per capita has been dropping for at least three years, before (and not including) the recent plummet.On U.S. driving declines posted 1 year, 4 months ago 18 Responses

wikipedia says

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

If passed, the ballot measure would provide $9 billion for the construction of the core segment between San Francisco and Los Angeles/Anaheim and an additional $950 million for improvements on local railroad systems, which would serve as feeder systems for high-speed rail mainline. However, the project would still depend on federal matching funds, since a $9.95 billion bond issue would cover at most half of the estimated cost of the initial core segment.

According to a 2004 estimate, the complete system from Sacramento to San Diego would likely have a [total] cost of more than $30 billion, with 2007 estimates of the cost being $40 billion. Moreover, historically, rail projects' cost estimates have been far less than the final amount required. The California High-Speed Rail Authority plans to use the projected operating profit from the initial San Francisco-Los Angeles line to finance further extensions to Sacramento and San Diego.

and

it's not like we get a free vacation for unused negamiles. just the opposite, now.

though i'm still convinced it's how much we're overpaying for other services in this economy that makes us very sensitive to gas prices, at the level of personal transport. we shouldn't look at it as a percentage of income but as a percentage of a household's financial headroom.On Drilling offshore vs. fuel efficiency posted 1 year, 5 months ago 12 Responses

i don't want to mess with the desert.

i'm very cautious about solar thermal.

but put the water use in perspective.

Overpumping of groundwater by the world's farmers exceeds natural replenishment by at least 160 billion cubic metres a year.

that's 42,267,528 million gallons of groundwater over replenishment. 42 million million gallons in excess.

so you have a solar thermal plant taking maximum of 800 million gallons of groundwater, without counting how much they could be taking, just the gross input, without anybody tellling them they need to use minimum and site responsibly, and you separate that from the total groundwater take.

i don't know how the changing climate will alter them and i don't know what people are going to do. i strongly prefer wind and small solar exactly because they don't need cooling. we just killed a million people in iraq on a hunch so i don't have many fantasies of the energy transition being other than ugly with such a clueless citizenry driving it.

this document -- "plan b" -- is all about what can be done. implementation is not included.On Lester Brown unveils plan for 80 percent cuts by 2020 posted 1 year, 5 months ago 42 Responses

who pays for what

i love when people start saying they don't want to pay for some program in some other part of the country. most states either get as much spent on them as they pay in taxes, or get more than they pay. it's only the big economic engines that pay more than they get.

so since most people's states come out basically even, why doesn't everybody just compare expenses to income and say, "i pay my taxes for the things my area gets," and then shut up? i think it's because it really bugs some people that people over there spend their money on the wrong thing.

like welfare, for instance. why are people in rural areas so angry about the social safety nets in cities? the cities are paying for them. it's not coming out of the countryside's (relatively empty) pocket. and it's not like white people in the countryside aren't on the dole, for really good reasons.

same thing with amtrak. don't want to pay for amtrak? pretend you're not. it's not a lot of money.On McCain just not that into Amtrak posted 1 year, 5 months ago 39 Responses

ah i see

in the booklet, in the stacked bar graph on p.6, the nuclear % of electricity supply is down because 30% more electricity is being generated.

~~

no box but is there a stream?

did they record the conference call? i loved listening in on the 350.org chat. no link (yet, i guess) on their site, but there is a nice set of videos.

~~

and

if a glass is almost full of water and i put more in and it overflows, that's got nothing to do with me. the rest of the water in the glass is at fault! i had no reason to think that the top of the glass was any kind of limit to its capacity.

~~

someone needs to sketch out these scenarios

it feels like on-site solar will always be improving faster than other generation -- possibly excepting geothermal -- because PV relies on more elementary physics, where discovery yields greater returns. but we also always have these timeline problems. like, eventually, photosynthesizing organic robots! but not before 2030.

2010-2020: efficiency standards. retrofits. deployment of existing tech to replace remaining dirty watts. refinement of near tech.
2020-2030: coup de grace to gasoline/diesel. deployment of near tech to replace natural gas. further cost focus. world-round push to eliminate coal in global south.
after 2030: green growth. retirement/refit of first decade industrial sites if applicable.

actually i was thinking of it more like overlapping 20-year cycles, like the hadley center's "decades."On BLM contemplates two-year moratorium on solar power plant construction in the West posted 1 year, 5 months ago 68 Responses

ordinary people

may drive SUVs but the mcmansions are high income.On Day four of the UN Dispatch-Grist collaboration posted 1 year, 5 months ago 10 Responses

wolverine

oh no no no no. i don't blame or position bears in our place doing the same. or ever really imagine bears driving cars, outside the circus, and i know that's a trick. you can tell because the car only goes around in a circle. but anyway.

nor do i put a sit around pointing out biological imperatives in daily human life though you know it's not hard to see some of them in operation.

all i meant was to say that species-centrism, which for us includes a hefty social pressure sensitivity, makes genuine individual ecological insight -- without the constant reminder of actual resource constraints -- very hard to create or maintain. and when you pair that species-centrism with our unique capabilities you get the rest of nature getting out-competed.

i don't think that's necessarily our destiny but it is how the whole shebang is set up and for us to have wiped out ecosystems by growing out of our niche -- maybe because our niche was fundamentally changed by the glacial period -- that doesn't surprise me at all.

it's to us to discover that we as a river jumped the levees and to find a new course that lets the rest of nature grow. but it's not an inherent responsibility and that's part of our trouble. we just don't have to built-in wiring to make this leap of understanding easily. we have a hard time seeing past our own tribe's grasp of the environment.

and as that social grip on reality got further from the physical, into the metaphysical -- everybody seems to get to the point where they feel like their gods are irrelevant to their lives, those gods being various metaphors for important physical and social limits to be taught, but with time you just beat those old limits, and then you tumble -- with that dynamic always at work, our wiping out the world in which we live is so predictable, and so regular, you can see the predictions and the results throughout history.

my feeling is that we got where we are more through error than trial. our competitive advantage is we're ass-stupid reckless but can insulate our own groups from the worst of the consequences. this is a very different idea than that of us as essentially rational.

my favorite justification for this is that, if we were built from the ground up to take responsibility for our actions, we wouldn't have such complicated court systems.On Hansen's message to the planet posted 1 year, 5 months ago 17 Responses

note:

an electranet, electrification, efficiency, and renewable supply IS A CLASSIC SUBSTITUTION. just a lit-tle big-ger.On Cornucopian thinking about oil posted 1 year, 5 months ago 58 Responses

sean

the war itself was a pre-emptive strike in a peaking world. it's easy to say all the market volatility since then is an anxious/tight future brought into the present by force.On Cornucopian thinking about oil posted 1 year, 5 months ago 58 Responses

lorna

Overcoming anthropocentrism and the assumption that humanity must take precedence, and that progress is measured only by the improvement of human society, must be our first order of business.

i think the best we can do on this is get people headed in that direction. beyond that i'd expect it to be about as successful as any other abstinence program. there's not a species on earth that doesn't prefer itself. for a darn good reason, if you ask me. i mean, i'm glad to be here. but of course that's wired in. if i weren't i'd be defective.On Hansen's message to the planet posted 1 year, 5 months ago 17 Responses

re: Predictions

on the subject of choices, and putting politics and vision to work with market support, this is from the economist's special report,

Whether [the clean energy] boom will happen quickly enough to stop the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reaching dangerous levels is moot.

and so's this:

[An important] difference [between the coming energy boom and its recent predecessors] is that new information technologies tend to be disruptive, forcing the replacement of existing equipment, whereas, say, building wind farms does not force the closure of coal-fired power stations.

isn't that nice? everybody gets to keep making money.On Business consulting firm projects robust growth for solar and grid parity in many locations by 2020 posted 1 year, 5 months ago 7 Responses

the futures is now

in my house, oil price explanations are a drinking game. every time someone offers a new reason you have to do a shot. a US petrodollar conspiracy to "manage" foreign debt and force north american alternative fossil fuels into profitability -- that one almost finished me -- but i was saved by multiple rounds of "increased demand."

it will be very hard for us to answer the many questions about why guzzling gas went south in 2007. the combination of market pressure on oil price, housing-burst-escapee pressure on oil price, consumer debt implosion, housing-starts-drop-driven drop in pickup truck purchases, guzzler-depreciation knock-on effects, health-housing-education-tax inflation... wait where was i....On Lessons from Europe and Japan posted 1 year, 5 months ago 10 Responses

money is an object

we have a money crisis and a lot of things to do. wouldn't sharing revenue from larger facilities empower? households and businesses will have their hands full with demand reduction costs.

"bang for buck" is not undemocratic....On A Cambridge physicist's cooling summer treat posted 1 year, 5 months ago 27 Responses

street stacking

is much more expensive to build and maintain than service expansion of subways and other transit. NYC isn't starving to drive more. multiple layers of PRT -- in tubes or covered, against heavy weather -- makes sense though.

in the event of fast sea rise i think they'd be screwed, they have so much important infrastructure underground. rather than raise the roads all the way around the city they'd probably isolate the harbor with a barrage like in cardiff, but, you know, bigger, as is their way. well, they'd have a big silt issue.

anyhow it's a tougher problem for them than for london and other big cities that aren't right on the water.On Carmaker knows most efficient freight system: trains posted 1 year, 5 months ago 25 Responses

many prisons

are a state of mind. you don't sound very free.On Carmaker knows most efficient freight system: trains posted 1 year, 5 months ago 25 Responses

oh but their ad today told me

their minivan is green. it gets 23mpg on the highway! and it's displayed with a green background, on television!On Carmaker knows most efficient freight system: trains posted 1 year, 5 months ago 25 Responses

real RD&D subsidy/small country=higher price

denmark and germany are eating cost after cost so they'll have something good in every category to sell us when we finally start buying efficient and green. and because they've made some political choices about their national environmental footprint that we don't feel like paying for. but you pay. if not literally, then metaphorically.

but: we have developed awesome jetfighters! that even we don't think we want. and missile systems! that shoot down things you throw at them.

in terms of subsidy, we separated the costs of developing nuclear technology into piles of "electric bills" and "federal taxes devoted to national defense." we'll never really know how much a KWh from a nuclear reactor cost us on those first plants, in current dollars. black budget, black opportunity costs.On Massachusetts town could be first to build offshore wind farm in U.S. posted 1 year, 5 months ago 31 Responses

yes

but that 20MW project estimate is from early last year. they're talking more concretely about installing 15MW now as has been quoted. so it's in the 30% range, for capacity factor.

i don't have a lot of opinion about the cost here because i'm not that big a fan of piecemeal wind installations like this. i'd rather have the install and wiring costs drawn down by doing larger farms in which many muni utilities participate. if it pays for itself, which it will, the question of being able to get the money together shouldn't be the deciding factor.

but if people want to pay a little extra for something that's theirs, that's something to think about. if they want it now and not in ten years, financed in current not future dollars, that's something else to think about.

comparing a wind facility that will be up and running basically shortly after they get the deal inked with a vaporware fission capacity is a little silly.On Massachusetts town could be first to build offshore wind farm in U.S. posted 1 year, 5 months ago 31 Responses

oh for pete's sake

600KW.
5MW.

kids, don't type and run at the same time.On Massachusetts town could be first to build offshore wind farm in U.S. posted 1 year, 5 months ago 31 Responses

project pdf

treasure chest of info about hull proposal (pdf) says:

The Proposed Hull Offshore Wind Project

• Four wind turbines, 3-5 MW (295' - 417' rotor diameter)
  
• (Hull Wind 2: 1.8 MW, 262' rotor)
  
• Installed in vicinity of Harding Ledge
  
• 12-20 MW total generating capacity
  
• Energy production (on average) could approach 100% of Hull's electricity consumption

also, if you take the "12 percent of its electricity from two land-based wind turbines" and using the stats available at hullwind.org we see that those two turbines average to about 1MW 100% capacity device and the estimate that 15MW would "cover the balance of the town's demand," which would be about 8MW, maybe they're hoping for a capacity factor of a little over 50%.On Massachusetts town could be first to build offshore wind farm in U.S. posted 1 year, 5 months ago 31 Responses

things definitely not known

a. how much longer RPS will be how we look at this, compared to fossil phase-out

b. whether governors and business leaders faced with phase-out would rather act more separately or together

c. how much federal assistance will be involved and how that will shape regional planning?

d. demand efficiency's faster out the door and will be a big job; meantime how long will it take us to figure out a new reliable grid given the extent of fuel-switching and diversity of new inputs?

e. are we really going to play a game of "competitive advantage"?On Considering recycled energy will politically facilitate a national clean energy plan posted 1 year, 5 months ago 12 Responses

another wind map

also: windnavigator!

lets you pick hub height (60/80/100m). googlemaps controls. onshore only.

i got it from clicking around on the NREL site a couple days ago after the union of concerned scientists' greentip on small wind.On Considering recycled energy will politically facilitate a national clean energy plan posted 1 year, 5 months ago 12 Responses

it's the archer/jacobson thing

they did it up for every continent, i adjusted the colors and faded out the low classes for readability.

original study web site.
On Considering recycled energy will politically facilitate a national clean energy plan posted 1 year, 5 months ago 12 Responses

trollwatching

it's just better during presidential elections. it's like a little quadrennial renaissance.On The goal of climate policy is not high GHG prices posted 1 year, 5 months ago 69 Responses

it's early

too early to dismiss offshore wind and biomass/gas for the north atlantic coast. too early to assume revenue sharing deals couldn't be arranged, since it's an emergency and local economics are going to be disrupted no matter how things are done.

not too early to talk about local reliability, redundancy, conservation, efficiency.On RPS distribution posted 1 year, 5 months ago 12 Responses

and if the republicans cared

about stopping warming, any of this would have mattered, why. in terms of winning votes.

are we seeking to present a bill in congress that makes it impossible for republicans to present an argument that doesn't embarrass themselves?

or are we trying to curb warming.

i'm all for getting pollution-based representatives out of office. i think putting this bill forward drew a line between arsonist dinotrolls and forward-thinking "moderates." republicans reacted to a carefully-negotiated bipartisan bill on the issue of our times like it was poison, in a presidential election year.

now they and their shock troops have to go around the country dissociating every weird weather event from their own candidacy. then they have to say why the oil companies deserve public subsidy and deference. then they have to explain why they oppose wind energy development, quickly becoming the great green hope of the heartland. then they have to defend a war for oil.

i don't want to say they're toast but i also think to look at B-L-W through the lens of republican critiques is dumb. they made their bed and deserve to be beaten to political death with it.

expert critiques are worthy.On What went wrong on Lieberman-Warner? posted 1 year, 5 months ago 7 Responses

michael: was anybody talking about...

a) swappable batteries?

b) standardized batteries? this one's really bugging me. why all these proprietary systems? this should be opened up. i want easy upgrades.

c) sub-$12,000 cars and sub-$20,000 minivans, with range, for transitional purposes, because people are broke and may stay broke for years?

d) anybody talk about the credit crunch and general financial ugliness, in relation to selling these "premium" cars?

e) transportation negawatts, by reducing VMT through urban planning (particularly services distribution)?

f) electric bicycles and scooters? or are we trying to save the car industry.

thx!On Notes from a plug-in hybrid conference posted 1 year, 5 months ago 14 Responses

how would you adapt rail?

when i looked at this in 2006, i put more energy into thinking about much-better-buses than rail, precisely for the difficulty of protecting rail from tough weather, or rail investment from expanding into areas that were soon/later abandoned or heavily depopulated.

i mean for passenger rail you'd need to protect the tracks, the control and power infrastructure, the stations, the access roads to the stations... it got gloomy.

per person mile though i guess trains would offer the cheapest weatherproofing? then your local "protected routes" would focus on the train station and other major services.On Climate chaos shuts down trains posted 1 year, 5 months ago 3 Responses

ok

all doneOn Mainstream media misses connection between global warming and Midwest floods posted 1 year, 5 months ago 120 Responses

oh congratulations!

if local temperature spikes were readable as a trend, you've also just disproven the "solar radiance" theory, and the existence of transoceanic shipping, since rogue waves are by your argument the only waves on the ocean. keep up the good work!On Mainstream media misses connection between global warming and Midwest floods posted 1 year, 5 months ago 120 Responses

should have previewed that.

it's supposed to be an outline in the style of "1.a."On Peter Barnes' carbon policy proposal would not spur the economic changes we need posted 1 year, 5 months ago 19 Responses

@tasermons partner

you're getting confusticated. let me explain something important.

a "tax" -- as you call it -- is any money gathered for any purpose other than making the already rich, richer. this is because the point of democratic government, in the enlightened view, is to ensure that only people who have money, get money, and the reason this is democratic is that in a market economy, spending money is like voting, and the more you vote, the better it is for democracy; so the people who don't have much money to spend, who don't vote very often, are making democracy weaker, and don't deserve any money at all.
On Boucher and Upton introduce bipartisan legislation to invest in carbon sequestration technology posted 1 year, 5 months ago 9 Responses

if i could walk that way,

i wouldn't need the talcum powder:

"If severe emissions reduction requirements in a cap and trade system take effect before the carbon capture and storage technologies are available, the effect on coal fired utilities [in] particular would be severe,"

GROUCHO: well that can't stand. take a note: the next person i catch acting severely will get their arms cut off!

ZEPPO: their arms! isn't that a little severe?

GROUCHO: no, i said the next person.On Boucher and Upton introduce bipartisan legislation to invest in carbon sequestration technology posted 1 year, 5 months ago 9 Responses

@mad mac

so, what you're saying, is that central americans -- and migrant workers world-round -- would rather live thousands of miles away from their families, under degrading conditions, including prostitution for women and children, instead of meeting their costs at home, in a well-built and locally-productive economy, and this is good for us because they perform work that could be done other ways.

i appreciate your point of view and your economic savvy.On Anti-immigrant groups hide agenda behind environmental concerns posted 1 year, 5 months ago 17 Responses

oops!

*maybe any and all low-skill industries.On Anti-immigrant groups hide agenda behind environmental concerns posted 1 year, 5 months ago 17 Responses

@patrick henry

Until climatologists understand what is causing the unusually cold water in the Pacific, they should keep their mouths' closed.

la ninaOn Mainstream media misses connection between global warming and Midwest floods posted 1 year, 5 months ago 120 Responses

oy! OY!

la nina! low temperature end of "southern oscillation"! nothing-to-very-little to do with greenhouse gases!

it's like, "drought? what drought! there's water coming from this tap!"On Mainstream media misses connection between global warming and Midwest floods posted 1 year, 5 months ago 120 Responses

the floaters are better though

more resilient. won't get drowned if there's a surprise water level rise that pushes high tide waves above "spec."On Cool idea of the day posted 1 year, 5 months ago 10 Responses

found something good

looking for info on offshore wind i found this facilities tour diary on TOD:

It seems to me that Gulf of Mexico production will drop to non-economic levels for many of these fields within the next few years, even with secondary recovery methods. I asked whether the Brutus platform could be moved to another location, since it still has most of its 30-year lifetime left. I was told that the only way this would work is if a new location is found that is of approximately the same depth (2,985 feet) as the current location.

At this point, few new drilling sites are opening up in the 3,000 foot depth range. I expect that this is one reason that Shell (and others) are very interested in getting the portion of the Gull of Mexico near Florida opened up for exploration. If further Gulf exploration is delayed for 15 or 20 years, it may be necessary to start over with new platforms. By that time, onshore pipelines may also have deteriorated with disuse, and trained personnel may be unavailable.

what comes next is 350

and needing to have most of the work done in the time it takes to say "investment cycle."On What we learned from the stymied Climate Security Act, and what comes next posted 1 year, 5 months ago 5 Responses

they farm for hire here

because it is illegal for them to farm for themselves there.

it is a fine, fine setup. kinda one-sided but it has the extra benefit of being a clean, renewable source of scapegoats.

one day we will even own their national oil company! and even more of them will come work in our factories and our shops and our restaurants, without legal protection, and it will be even more beneficial to our economy.

we could make ourselves a nice mint julep, sit out on the swing, watch them work out in the fields as we play cards. a fine life.On Anti-immigrant groups hide agenda behind environmental concerns posted 1 year, 5 months ago 17 Responses

rats

there are supposed to be asterisks. there is no warning that asterisks don't work. there's some secret text interpreter?On The silver-lining of Lieberman-Warner's demise posted 1 year, 5 months ago 11 Responses

maybe the release version

will be full of all the imported water they had to pour out.On Eco-diaper bag has good cause, lousy price posted 1 year, 5 months ago 9 Responses

it can be

but why don't we get to ask whether the multinational corporation is the right tool for that job? sclerosis, right? not until the heart attack can you change. growth is defined by what grew. instead of what needed to grow.

we got monsanto instead of food security, we got GM instead of sustainable transportation, we got aetna instead of dependable affordable health care, we got coca-cola machines everywhere instead of a decent maintenance schedule on our water systems, and on, and on and on on on on.

it doesn't even look like a hammer seeing a nail. it's like we were playing baseball, with the hammer, and now we need to switch to soccer and our sponsors are refusing to let us play without the hammer in our hand and the referee -- "gaia," one name, must be brazilian -- refuses to let us on the field while we're holding a weapon.On Gus Speth chats about his new book and increasingly radical green views posted 1 year, 5 months ago 28 Responses

it looks like...

what needs to counted up is days-per-week, not weeks-per-quarter, away from the office. my friend who does this, living about 90 miles from work, as an accountant/manager, goes in a couple times a week. drives a prius on a fast highway.

i thought tech -- software -- would develop to make an offsite person's presence more present. i'm a little surprised, considering the relative wealth of the people to whom this ... ah! i know what happened! lawyers, accountants, programmers, none of the geeks care about eye contact videochat! an email, a phone call.

oh, was i disappointed that the new iphone has no videoconferencing. oh oh oh. i thought maybe that would get things moving. but maybe there's a battery issue.

if there are more days to be found out there, the question is, how much will it grow. nursing from home? warehouse work from home? plumbing from home. maybe an LCD screen on the counter at macdonalds and your order is taken by someone in india? who doesn't eat meat. or... the haunted drive-thru! nobody at the window.…

and the customer drives-thru from home. and the burger is eaten by someone somewhere else. vegetarian offsets!

the other thing, brought up in that talk about cleantech finance, was making sure you unhook estimates of telework growth potential from past results, largely driven by the wandering and once-hugely-growing herd of software engineers. bricks-and-mortar is the future.On Today's gas consumption shows that price increases are only one part of the solution posted 1 year, 5 months ago 17 Responses

oh! no! not criticism!

serious questions! honest questions! it's an informal survey. lots of people are in your situation and many are skirting bankruptcy. i'm really asking!

however if the 4-day week helped, don't thank me, that's an old idea.On Today's gas consumption shows that price increases are only one part of the solution posted 1 year, 5 months ago 17 Responses

WTO maybe not so big a deal

it's balanced by the crappy dollar and the price of shipping, innit. maybe resulting in domestic manufacture by foreign producers. and local experience. and local parts manufacturing. and so on.On Report: Strong climate policy would protect 14 million American jobs posted 1 year, 5 months ago 17 Responses

@keng

ooh! do you know about cooling!!!? can you talk a little about open, tower, and closed loop cooling, in terms of efficacy and input requirements for solar, geothermal, and fission? other than solar not really using towers.

and do you know anything about the costs involved.

i haven't been able to assemble good information on this. it's been frustrating. input dependency and effectiveness during heat waves being important.On First deal inked for maker of modular, utility-scale solar thermal power plants posted 1 year, 5 months ago 10 Responses

so...

wall street people are thinking the action's in technologies that might be in play after 2023? because wind and solar thermal returns are too "nuts-and-bolts pig iron implementation"?

would rather own the super-valuable key technology than a whole plant. aiming to win the lottery, then the fight. happy to play a few hands of "electricity generation" while waiting but -- waiting.

then you have others, looking at the regulatory situation maybe in the next couple years, taking their guidance from 40-year decarbonization curves, all signs saying that emissions reduction is a stable business model for a nice infrastructure investment cycle of 20 years, taking us to 2030. they plunk money into that. lots of money.

two years later -- "oops"? so does that mean our intrepid project financiers will have to figure out for themselves that the washington people aren't up to date?On Good big-picture view of the emerging cleantech market posted 1 year, 5 months ago 2 Responses

@wiscidea

hypothetical questions.

how much do you think you could swing for a commuter car, something yaris-size or smaller, maybe electric? don't think of a particular vehicle; just the price.

would you ride a scooter, maybe electric? not every day.

if yours is a two-income household, how much of a tax reduction, a medical cost reduction, or a combination would get you within reach of the high-efficiency vehicle of your choice?

can you change your schedule, work one less day a week, for a couple more hours a day? you know, all those kinds of options.

(gotta say, about 3 years ago, i had the feeling bubble-sprawl combined with average-to-low fuel efficiency would lead to inelasticity in gas demand.)On Today's gas consumption shows that price increases are only one part of the solution posted 1 year, 5 months ago 17 Responses

@gmobus

well you did throw away tons of arguments for new building based on the equipment's time to pay back its investment in energy. no timeframe seemed to be short enough. it wasn't a strawman -- you seemed to be broadly rejecting EROEI.

and i do think it's irrelevant that we're at peak efficiency for various equipment, quite seriously, because what we're doing with that equipment is in some part useless except to have money change hands. money can change hands while broader social needs are being met.

and you kept saying that you thought there was no margin for error and there was one right track. i don't agree with that, at all, that seeking of perfection. we don't even know all the ways we can use the equipment we've got and we won't until we bring more people in on the conversation.

and everybody will check back in a few years. what we know in 5 or 10 years will be clearer. hopefully we won't wait until then to make apparently durable changes.

i wish i could remember the exact quote, i think it was rumsfeld, maybe quoting clausewitz -- wait, let's just go for clausewitz.

The great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently -- like the effect of a fog or moonshine -- gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance.

i think it was credit

Why are producers able to raise prices so dramatically now, when a decade ago they could not? What's changed?

free! money! while home equity lasts!

oops. all gone. quick, close the barn door, the horse's running away! what do you mean, "closing the barn door is a dangerous market intervention?"On High oil prices are our lot until demand is destroyed, but no peak posted 1 year, 5 months ago 11 Responses

ooo! i wanna try to answer these!

george those are awesome questions!!!!!!

it strikes me that they suffer a chicken-egg problem. you can't know the answers until you've in progress. you have to eyeball it (to the 9th power) beforehand. still i wanna try!!!!

where will the energy to build out the alternative source infrastructure come from?

let's say there are three parts to this:

1. retooling
   
2. manufacturing
   
3. installing

what will the decline in fossil fuel rates be over the same time horizon?

this question needs to be broken out by sector. until we know what we're going to try to do, how fast we can do it is hard to say. if we take james hansen's advice into account, which means, basically, getting rid of coal use in this country by 2025, then obviously a major focus of early efforts would be to green the grid, because that's where coal is largely used. during that time, for, say, the first decade, we could be concentrating on making the most efficient gas-powered cars possible -- in terms of both operation and manufacture -- and worry about how to shift away from gasoline once we were confidently moved away from coal.

will the population increase and development in under-developed countries eat the profits?

only if their focus continues to be generating cash (mostly of benefit to the local rich) instead of raising standard of living through service provision. i would say that for about the next 25 years, the focus should be on setting and maintaining baselines without regard to means because means will be changing as costs and circumstances change. "making more billionaires" is not the right plan for this particular time.

Until the analyses can be shown to take these and factors I haven't mentioned, like cost of adaptation to whatever climate change takes place, into account I remain skeptical of the promise of a bright future with no (or even little) pain.

you won't get an analysis with this level of detail. it's unknowable, except for saying that without action, the situation will be worse.

you basically have to look back to the other major shifts and satisfy yourself that it's possible or not.On Act now with clean energy or face 6 degrees C warming; cost is not high; media blows story posted 1 year, 5 months ago 9 Responses

example: kerosene

this is too abstract for me. i need to hear how long it would take to get somewhere else.

lester brown's plan includes shifting from using kerosene (for lighting) to solar (PV).

how long would that take?On Five nations agree to think about ending oil subsidies posted 1 year, 5 months ago 16 Responses

correction

last week we said brian west was dead. we meant bruce west. brian is 100% alive and wants his family to let him back in the house; he is not a ghost.On An acknowledge-and-do-nothing strategy is little better than denialism posted 1 year, 5 months ago 11 Responses

but that's the beauty of it

if you don't try to push the harm on others, your revenues aren't docked. a conservative-in-practice would be as strongly against externalizing pain -- through careful accounting and prevention -- as against socializing pleasure, on the understanding that euphoria is a menace to civilization.On An acknowledge-and-do-nothing strategy is little better than denialism posted 1 year, 5 months ago 11 Responses

looked at this last year.

PRO: easy soft-ration. introduces the idea of equal ecosystem shares.

PRO: the direct distribution of prevention money, helping to finance demand changes without creating more consumer debt, and saving valuable post-collapse civil court time (that might be better used screaming; this is the fundamental difference between carbon dioxide and tobacco smoke).

PRO: includes end customers in the carbon market, giving us a say, by giving us financial wiggle room. this may not work; debt is too heavy. dividends would have to be protected from asset seizure. (this is already done with some entitlements, i think.)

PRO: IMO, lets the government focus on what it does better, which is setting standards, organizing shared costs, providing neutral support, and inspecting. all those things get corrupted when the government is paying industries to be in business for political reasons, instead of either doing the work itself, acting as a broker, or maintaining the field of play. global warming is two problems: one of reality and one of perception. i think this tax-and-send idea gets the gummint people out of their perception business -- taking actions with the money that prove actions are being taken with the money -- and into the preferable "what holes do we need to plug" frame of thinking.

CON: look at the regressive tax shift since 1980 and tell me you think a carbon tax would be invulnerable to political interference.

CON: hansen -- loudly -- blew off the problems this would cause for paperless workers -- saying "it will yield strong incentive for aliens to become legal" -- a completely wrong-headed picture of north american labor economics. this potentially huge gotcha i think shows the need to pull NAFTA and replace it with something that works for the planet and the people, under the current circumstances.

CON of some imaginary "no regulations, no coordination, no safety net" version: you can buy a lot of snake oil with free money. choosing a less costly piece of equipment isn't easy and people will be doing it quickly and there isn't a lot of other money floating around if they get snookered.

CON: even with aggressive ground-laying by government equipment standards and teaching and such, the refund doesn't help meet both the cost of new equipment and the radical depreciation of current non-green property.On Now that L-W is dead, Barnes' sky trust is looking good posted 1 year, 5 months ago 18 Responses

@sean

i don't support ZPG. i wasn't clear; "the early adopters" was about the industrial countries -- the former colonial powers -- who are finished with their population increase and are now having trouble convincing themselves to live softer on the planet, because individually, people don't feel like they're living in luxury, and they can't see the forest for the trees.

don't take this wrong. i think you move goalposts, in conversation. it's something to avoid.On Coal is no longer cheap -- so what comes next? posted 1 year, 5 months ago 43 Responses

it won't take ten years to pick the low fruit.

not by a mile. you can feel it in the air.On Peter Barnes on cap-and-dividend in U.S. News & World Report posted 1 year, 5 months ago 14 Responses

@sean, ok i see what you're saying.

my problem basically stays, though.

1) i don't see how coal use is being reduced. it looks like the coal that isn't being burned is virtual -- for argument, let's say the electricity being replaced here was generated in a single central power plant -- and freeing up capacity that plant can/will/must then sell.

it's odd for me to end up writing opposite of negawatts, but how energy is bought and sold now, across the country, means that there is no closed system of demand how it seems like you're implying. someone will buy what that plant can sell.

is there actually a net reduction in coal use here?

2) we are talking about the need to eliminate fossil fuel power generation, coal first. feedbacks going from bad to worse as sinks fill up or die.

a plan to have some fraction of fossil use doing double duty, reducing the growth in that sector, is completely blown away by what i've been reading for a couple years now as a need to phase out coal by 2030, absent massive CCS, which itself faces the very capital cost hurdles you talk about.

3. in your estimation, how many of the plants you've installed would continue to operate, at a $50/ton carbon price? $100? let's assume there's a commensurate cut in payroll taxes. would the facilities with which you contract choose to keep their cogen setup? if we're talking about a space-heating furnace, would they be able to replace that furnace with something that burns safer material, and still use your CHP installation?

4. in a more drastic example, let's say we -- not you, just someone, one of our fellow countrypeople -- installs heat capture on a petroleum refinery, lowering the cost of operating that refinery. or a cement factory. pick your poison. it looks like the incentive is there. for the power-sector facility, they could even be imagining selling energy back to the grid. we've helped them cut their costs and reduce the impact of carbon pricing on their business. yay!

5. jevon's paradox is why the population's so big. we fixed a variety of problems impeding the smooth flow of reproduction and we got a mess out of it. in the early adopter countries, the new population equilibrium continues to find ways to justify its far greater resource consumption, on the grounds of per capita thrift and productivity. missing nature's screaming point entirely.

sean

i wrote a long thing. it was full of common mistakes.

just say it again.

you think electricity demand is not increasing and will not increase.

you think people will build cogen only to meet their current needs, better.On Coal is no longer cheap -- so what comes next? posted 1 year, 5 months ago 43 Responses

inhofe knows from what he speaks

for he speaks as a living refutation of evolution.On Inhofe: Gore wrong 100 percent of the time posted 1 year, 6 months ago 10 Responses

beyond coal and oil -- to coal! and oil!

it's ugly, not saying what the major base fuel for this cogeneration capacity would be: coal-fired power generation and petroleum refining.

quite the admission, in that omission.On Coal is no longer cheap -- so what comes next? posted 1 year, 6 months ago 43 Responses

elevation

this is all pretty funny, isn't it, like, "why don't we just build another new york city? that'll fix it." and everyone's like, "oh, yeah, i like new york! and it's much more efficient!"

the proposals for PRT, because they're very light cars, use very light structures. we find ourselves building a great deal in the imagination and it starts adding up, much of it using metal or concrete, and building new elevated rail corridors inside cities or between, for full-weight trains, might be too much, considering. elevated bustransit, like at airports, shuttling people to important places from city-limits intercity depots, might be better -- loop service with elevated stations and various entry/exit ramps for returning to street-level -- might be less resource intensive and allow greater route flexibility.On Rail and the coming changes in transport posted 1 year, 6 months ago 17 Responses

no

"This is what the global warming issue boils down to, folks, just as it does for every environmental and ecological issue. You prioritize either the Earth or money sunk costs."On Global warming draws heat from Dems posted 1 year, 6 months ago 11 Responses

mixed messages

does he see nuclear and other centralized-generation options as competing with distributed generation, in terms of shaping the future electrical grid?On What should I ask the efficiency guru about nuclear power? posted 1 year, 6 months ago 67 Responses

@colin

chinese growth expectations are BS. our consumer spending drop -- unrelated to peak oil -- combined with the rest of the impact of the credit problem, and their own horrible pollution and resource problems -- will kick their butts.

our standard of living will go down but it was already bound to do that, without anything peaking, because we were driven to insane measures like using our (and each others') homes for gambling collateral and borrowing money to pay our health insurance. for many of us this is the second or third generation in a row that's treading water. slowly creeping up the ladder.

the resource use reckoning that's upon us shouldn't be blamed for our bad money management. they come from the same "no tomorrow" mindset but to say, for your mid-pack family, that flashy living will decrease -- or something like our HDI rank will drop -- because of energy alone -- is wrong. we've been cooking the books. that's the main reason.

in terms of future prosperity, it's not a lie or fairy tale to say it. the end of the energy-intensive throwaway society doesn't necessarily mean the end of glamor, because people like glamor and will work to maintain it, to an extent, and because what wind, solar, etc can or can't do is something we need to learn, not something we know.

liebig's law is for unthinking plants in a closed system with strictly-limited goals. that's got nothing to do with us. not even with our agriculture -- today we know that there are more ways to make a field productive than to force feed it nutrients chemically; better crop rotation and soil management are a key part of the latest UN recommendations relating to food security.

it's a 200-year-old rule doesn't even stand up to scrutiny in its own area of expertise. don't let it run your life.On Climate action advocates need a simple, compelling message on costs posted 1 year, 6 months ago 15 Responses

should be able to route it, right?

simple switches to liberate light from unoccupied rooms? kinda tricky i guess.On Hybrid solar lighting: a solar retrofit for hot climates posted 1 year, 6 months ago 7 Responses

the speed is the thing

because traction kites generate a certain amount of energy per unit of time, at higher travel speeds kites contribute less energy to the whole trip. even with larger kites, their contribution to JIT-speed shipping would be much less than advertised.

slowing down the ships would improve fuel use and maximize kite performance, but 70% of speed would require a 43% increase in the number of ships to maintain the same cargo throughput. let's say, roughly, as best-case using that 50% number and skysails's 30% savings number, and without including the shift of freight from air to sea, we were talking about using 35% of the fuel.

or about 50% of the fuel, if we add 10,000+ ships for throughput. har har har.On Airlines, cargo ships increasingly desperate due to rising fuel costs posted 1 year, 6 months ago 11 Responses

milton friedman

i'm reminded of him. some time ago i found an interview where a market-libertarian reporter got him to admit that environmental protection -- as no one had direct standing to sue over the third party harm -- was an example of a transaction in which it was right for the government to act as plaintiff-of-last-resort, including prevention.

he also went to his death denying the seriousness of global warming -- long, long after his great mind could be forgiven holding reasonable doubt. can't say whether his opposition to intervention on principle got in the way of him publicly facing up to physical reality but i know what i think.

what i know about every kind of "propertarian" libertarianism though is that the commons exists in all of them -- it's not pinko to talk about that -- it's the big dilemma, the central dilemma, about how to manage what is not property in a system based on property, right?

1. Do you agree that - when they can - markets trump government regulation?

this is a fake question. there's not a market in the world that exists outside of rules set in the political sphere. it's a government regulation that requires these businesses to grow for their shareholders. it's a court decision that gives them the right to lobby for grandfathering and waivers, strongly against the desires of the general public. it's public/private practice that allows the revolving door to make a joke of transparency, encouraging criminal behavior -- which can't be effectively remedied afterward -- only beforehand, because the cost of prevention is a price the consumer can pay.

whereas the cost of redress is out of reach and much less effective. compared to payment in advance for ecosystems services rendered, in this case. besides, personal bankruptcy -- however caused, in whatever form -- is a lousy place from which to launch a lawsuit.

standing here, right now, looking at global warming -- nicholas stern's "greatest market failure in history" -- and the many resource screw-ups and the froth of "dark" leveraged gambling -- at the wonderful intersection of regulatory failure and disingenuous market zealotry, in awe -- and here you are talking about markets as some frictionless perfect agents that yearn to breathe free when all the "paths" in boxer-lieberman-warner-et-al are there because past and would-be market participants use their efficiently-gained proceeds to make their own gain part of the goal.

ok, so you said that a carbon tax might not be permanent -- which in itself is funny, considering the number of times wall street said "this economic sector has entered a permanent double-digit growth rate, just give us your money" in the last 20 years -- might one ask why such a tax wouldn't be permanent?

wouldn't that impermanence be caused by the same forces that would rip the carbon market off course from a carbon target, to a financial target -- i.e., the gigantic amount of money to be made by borrowing-and-betting instead of doing?

it's right there in lieberman-warner: the right to borrow from the future. carbon leveraging. if you think by an act of will, or faith, you can prevent that gambling, ending up with some pure unambiguously emergency-focused market, recent history argues against. this is biggest "as if" one can imagine.

2. Do you agree that GHG emissions can be priced and traded in a competitive market?

they can be! will they be, this time?

if our theory doesn't work, it can evolve into one that does.

things don't always evolve, right? extinction's another option, a perfectly natural and organic result of a deregulated system. how is one supposed to ignore the miserable results of the kyoto mechanisms in the light of the 350 finding?

i feel like -- you know, these f*ckers have lobbied to prevent all forms of prevention, for years on end -- if they can't now take their unbelievable -- historic -- profits and find themselves another line of work -- how business people always say they can -- their behavior is my best evidence against your faith.On Well-informed Republicans are not concerned about climate change posted 1 year, 6 months ago 60 Responses

plus

the costs of the taxes and permits would be passed on to the end consumer and this money would be returned to them, on average, through the dividend. so it's really a way to tip the consumer market away from dirty equipment without costing anybody extra. if people want or need to keep applying fossil fuel to something, they can, up and until they run out of dividend money, which for most people would be enough; beyond that general level of use you're either a parasite or you're making more money from it than it costs.

how a tax is not a price signal is beyond me.

how families are supposed to budget around market-driven carbon prices is even more confusing. is there some impression that the average american has 25% disposable income, to handle spikes? take a look at the savings rate.

we want steep cuts, we need steep prices and high standards. those can't be turned over to the casino crazies.On Well-informed Republicans are not concerned about climate change posted 1 year, 6 months ago 60 Responses

we have an important nit to pick.

which is this: i've already said that big efficiency commitments, for demand and supply, are needed to reduce the cost of building clean supply and new transmission, because i'm just another net-parrot, everybody says "efficiency," i've never read people saying elsewise who weren't selling fission plants or other BAU.

but, if you're asking me, who'm of no consequence, to support fossil-powered cogeneration where biomass or biogas or geothermal or whatever would do the job, you're the one putting some technologies ahead of others. none of the fossil fuels are safe. extending the oil and gas's availability for their hard-to-replace aspects is as important to me as reducing CO2 in the atmosphere and ending the damage done to ecosystems by extraction -- and all of that means reduced fuel use is a near-term band-aid stop-gap until we can get rid of it all.

we all know, i think, that there are applications for fossil heat and power we can't easily replace. that's where cogeneration should be focused -- by law -- because anybody who can go to zero emissions on a daily basis, should. we basically need to do an inventory of this or something like an inventory.

so, from what i can tell, more-efficient central (or medium) fossil-fuel generation is a completely different and somewhat budget-incompatible strategy with building smart transmission for a very high solar/wind percentage of power, because the higher variability and periodiciticity of local-only wind and solar resources seems ok when you have lots of "cleaner" fossil peak capacity. and all of that wonderful cleaner investment is paid off over the period of when we need to be building for the future and this is during now when loans are not the easiest or getting easier.

this is why i want supply efficiency applied with great care, on the understanding that it will absolutely not interfere with building local, regional, and continental wiring that will allow very high percentages of near-zero-footprint power in the next 20 years.On Nevada Solar one is a better and smaller neighbor than a coal mine posted 1 year, 6 months ago 80 Responses

no i think it's interesting

how the different tracks are running.

i don't have the US numbers at hand but my understanding is that with aggressive efficiency measures, we'll have our work cut out to keep today's types of electrical demand flat overall. depending what happens.

that basically counts only population growth as pressure upward. other pressures include switching away from hydrocarbon space heating, extended hotter summers, electric transport.

(before, i should've said "nothing but electricity can move people and cargo," and i meant that to be talking about inside the next 15-20 years.)On Nevada Solar one is a better and smaller neighbor than a coal mine posted 1 year, 6 months ago 80 Responses

*"next to nobody's"

we will need every last economy of scale available.On Nevada Solar one is a better and smaller neighbor than a coal mine posted 1 year, 6 months ago 80 Responses

three big ideas

small government, achieved by redefining the military out of the public sector.

personal freedom, achieved by warrantless wiretapping.

adam smith, rolling in his grave at cronyism, "too big to fail," bubble economics, and market destruction by merger.

these aren't big ideas that went bad in practice, they're lies. intellectual fig leaves in front of anti-democratic politics. if outright lies are political heroism -- and if playing one group of americans against another to achieve the goals of a minority is honorable -- then this country is lost.On Well-informed Republicans are not concerned about climate change posted 1 year, 6 months ago 60 Responses

CCAs and negawatts

this is a strong advantage of muni power -- cross-planning generation with transit, zoning, and building, to reduce supply costs -- especially if one assumes increasing electrical use in transportation.

ugh, though, about the federal boondoggles. how many trillions were just blown away in the housing-credit fiasco? ah but that's not a boondoggle. that's youthful exuberance.On Nevada Solar one is a better and smaller neighbor than a coal mine posted 1 year, 6 months ago 80 Responses

brush too broad

how many people does this "base of the right" include, and is it the same people who said they know all about climate change? are you sure their certainty isn't another story being propagated by the media that surrounds them, to enforce the hierarchy? the people watching have less to gain from the lies.

further, the norms, habits, and values of the epistemological realists also seem to be interfering with getting a grip here; believers in political non-violence taking a butter knife to a gun fight.On Well-informed Republicans are not concerned about climate change posted 1 year, 6 months ago 60 Responses

do not underestimate the power of peace over money

WAR has contributed mightily to the commodity price increase, debt, and poor domestic investment that are piling on top of the credit baloney and making US the sandwich. people aren't stupid, they can see this.

the federal executive branch is by no means the only hope anyone has. the bush-cheney people are a reflection of our own inattention and passivity. the worst reflection, yes, but a new administration will still only be a reflection, not the power itself.On Militarization and progressive change are not compatible posted 1 year, 6 months ago 27 Responses

hm

suzlon, the largest wind power company in india and all asia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzlon

wind capital group, a broker based in missouri.
http://www.windcapitalgroup.com/support.html

john deere, who entered the business of wind finance in 2005.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U83BvRvfmw

missouri electric cooperatives.
http://www.ruralmissouri.org/08pages/08MayWatts10.html
The need for more power led Missouri's electric co-ops to wind developers who needed buyers for their proposed wind energy in northwest Missouri. By agreeing to buy the entire output of the state's first three wind farms, the cooperatives made these projects a reality.

that bit about "rates being stabilized for 25 years" is the terms of the financing. i hope that doesn't interfere with anything else in that timeframe. in particular, the question of transmission -- i wonder if building a renewable-friendly grid runs against the desires of wind financiers looking to lock-in local buyers. it looks like people are arguing that wind is an alternative to rewiring the country?
http://www.ruralmissouri.org/08pages/08FebWatts7.html

other people want to wheel electricity; we just want to bring down the local cost of compliance.
http://www.ruralmissouri.org/07pages/07SeptWATTS2.html

trouble.On Somebody forgot to tell Rockport that coal is cheap posted 1 year, 6 months ago 5 Responses

thanks

that was helpful to hear.

you know i'm sort of shocked the implications of the 350 target weren't explored more. "huge mobilization" didn't really seem to be on the minds of many participants even after hearing much material. the difference between aiming to cut OUR pollution and aiming to reduce CO2 in the air-- with or without artficial miracles -- is staggering. it's the right approach tho. no more abstractions.On 350.org conference call posted 1 year, 6 months ago 1 Response

still floors me

it still floors me that people separate adaptation and mitigation. look around: the big work will be done within the next 20 years. OF COURSE we will install better water fixtures as we go through the houses. OF COURSE infrastructure changes will incorporate climate variables. and OF COURSE we won't really know what we're adapting until the fix-it work starts taking shape. except for water. we know we have a lot of planting and restoration to do.

all the timelines have fallen in on us -- nothing like 40+ years is really available. so it will be one big project.

nuclear and CCS won't scale up affordably. GMO plants are more expensive and less reliable than MAS. wow, look, i'm a luddite.

investment vs regulation. only in america would this false dichotomy be made and debated seriously. thank the stars the europeans and japanese are placing tough standards on their equipment so we'll have affordable refrigeration a few years from now. if it were left up to us we'd be calling spiced meat high tech. never surrender!

limits to growth vs green growth: like we're in a period of stability now, walking into a period of greater stability, and GNP will be a useful measure. go ahead, forecast the next 50 years. or the next 25. i know someone whose house isn't up for auction! his name is michael.On Wired magazine bursts a blood vessel doing its contrarian thing posted 1 year, 6 months ago 18 Responses

plan

1. draw up a national grid proposal, with pretty maps, that plays to the distributed strengths of renewable energy. even if it's the european super-grid proposal traced onto a kids' wooden USA puzzle it would be better than "our target should be 20-60% in no less than 25 years, if practical." it's practical. the obstacles, as ralph nader recently put it, are "non-technical."

2. stop talking about climate as though it were separate from groundwater supplies, fisheries, credit shortages, falling wages, and anything else big going on now. this is all part of one big resource-management screwup and no part alone can be fixed without the others drawing it back into the red.

3. yes to jon rynn. the fact that this changes the economic picture for billions of people -- for the bad if we quit, for the good of we try -- shows that it's a real story worth telling. A WORLD-ROUND MOBILIZATION MEANS THERE WILL BE TONS OF WORK. some will work in bad faith and screw things up. that will take watching. some will work on whatever, not caring why. that's totally okay. you need to take a step back if you think of this as saving souls. the first business of any good religion is to help with the daily chores.

4. stop harshing on the lightbulb message -- we all know it's huge -- one of the biggest changes we can make. worthy of law, including practical disposal preparations. instead, go get mad at the "check your tire pressure" people. driving with a lighter, steadier foot, closer to the speed limit, would get most people 20-30% better gas mileage. part of being serious means we scrub out the tips that don't work and concentrate on the good ones. (i'd give a kidney if this otherwise wasted election eon could be used to teach people about embodied energy and the other core concepts of smartening up our equipment buys.)

5. start talking about complications of implementation. say, "okay, we're working on building our wind power, and that's good, but we're already outgrowing the grid we have and we may have some raw materials problems -- the answer to which is probably recycling more of our current deadweight, faster. let's figure out what we'll be tossing and see if deconstructing it gets us closer to our materials needs."

6. never show fear to a camera. tell people what will happen. a contraction of one industry, growth in others. tell them washington's job now is not to tell nature what to do or legislate science, it's to divide the work effectively, thoughtfully, attentively, and fairly. we can save our dirty industries from getting beat by the new and clean, or we can save our beloved planet. people know polluting businesses have been living on borrowed time and political favoritism. they just need to know they have a way out that isn't marked "bankruptcy."

7. for luck, because we need it, and that's actually an optimistic point of view.

8. work from a plan. if you don't like lester brown's numbers, say why. if they're okay, show them to people, talk about how they're practical, how they are economical and create wealth and opportunities while blowing the doors off the polluters' estimates of how fast we can afford to change.

9. get used to saying the word "trillion." it's a big number because there are a lot of us and together we make a big economy. but the money all shifts from other places. we can afford to be amazing.

"ambitious but achievable"

oh yeah, carly's the poster girl for that. even her wikipedia entry agrees.

On 10 October 2006 while she was interviewed on the Charlie Rose Show, Fiorina asserted that her leadership [of hewlett-packard] was strong throughout, and that the Compaq merger was well conceived, but misunderstood by the Board.

doesn't that sound like the humility of a moderate pragmatist? it's not a bad way to put the mccain environmental agenda, either.

his leadership was strong throughout, and the climate action plan was well conceived, but poorly executed by nature.

tough luck! try again in another hundred thousand years.

the end is nigh, but so's the beginning, so, 's'ok.

fun fact

one person, pitching hay into the ghawar oil field at 100 bales a day, would be done in just under 2,000,000 years.

the end is nigh, but so's the beginning, so, 's'ok.

and there's that other thing

where a particular highest-polluting country -- with an ugly trade balance, a tanking currency, and a financial plan that consists of fifty single-spaced typed pages of nothing but "chindia" -- wouldn't want to encourage carbon tariffs in world markets

"ahem of course i meant, how can we help you"

economy's wrecked, climate's melting, oil's scarce, green's the way out.

let him talk

to prove it was safe for pedestrians, he marched through the streets of baghdad in full jacket, protected by soldiers and helicopter gunships. now he will present his climate plan that proves only mild corrections are needed to deal with emissions and consequences. good for him, he wows the crowd.

8 million households use heating oil. the last winter put most of them on the edge of their money and oil prices might double by the end of the year. there's no way those people can go green before then with the money they have, or by other means.

li'l help, senator?

economy's wrecked, climate's melting, oil's scarce, green's the way out.

i think

we'll end up using waste oils for intercity bus service -- a very stable market and good technical match

economy's wrecked, climate's melting, oil's scarce, green's the way out.

link fixes

at the bottom of the SFBG CCA FAQ, FYI, there are links for more info, they're old, here are corrections.

northeast ohio public energy council
http://www.nopecinfo.org/

local government commission
http://www.lgc.org/cca/

SFPUC CCA overview
http://dead.and.gone/boo+hoo+hoo

sierra club sf bay area energy committee
http://sanfranciscobay.sierraclub.org/energy/

economy's wrecked, climate's melting, oil's scarce, green's the way out.

dadgummit

i'd already picked out the central park to buy with my windfall fraudulent research grantOn Climate change must be examined over decades, not years posted 1 year, 7 months ago 68 Responses

what we need...

is a bridge over the 21st century.

i thought maybe we could trick the rest of the biosphere and just change all the calendars to 2109, in january. that would effectively reduce our emissions over the next century to <1%. we'd have to teach plants to count but that might be easier than convincing georgia pols (or anywhere pols) to just-say-no to blood money.

we're thinking of the wrong incentives in some ways. the base conversion thing generally didn't work unless there was economic development associated. you can't just pull the plug on these command economies. they have to understand, like the companies looking (a little like idiots) for signals in future carbon price -- or really, for an accounting change -- before becoming more help than harm, they have to understand how the new system will work and how they will directly benefit. they are in a planned economy and they aren't leaving it without a fight because they know how people get treated when the train leaves the station.

an easy thing to say is that industrial areas gone quiet and farm areas gone military get dibs on new equipment production. don't "cut the military budget" -- build security with turbines instead of tanks.

then everybody gets to share in the new energy system's localized revenue. that's a program, i think.

i've been trying to think of what to call it, as an anchor for a safer economy. the windobahn has such negative connotations. clean'lectricity superhighway is too partisan. dunno.On Diverting war spending to green investments is both politically possible and neccesary posted 1 year, 7 months ago 14 Responses

ugh

aside from the subsidies and unassessed externalities giving us a false price on hydrocarbons, the US blows away trillions a year on insurance and finance overhead, social and industrial welfare through the military,

we just blew away trillions more in real estate equity because our geniuses thought a good way to heat your home was to set it on fire.

we have no problem with spending stupid money here. we have no problem with wind potential here. throwing money at turbines would -- maybe for the first time in decades -- actually get us a return on our investment.On Existing technology is faster and far more practical than hypothetical new inventions posted 1 year, 7 months ago 22 Responses

*i*

was talking to the post-writer person, tho.On Lieberman-Warner criticism, Part 1 posted 1 year, 7 months ago 9 Responses

how scared am i?

lessee

hansen says 350's the target and we can solidly expect to capture 50 with plants, making 400 the safe peak

wall street's itching for a new bubble to save itself from jumping out the window and L-W provides a frictionless market for hucksterism

and you display a tin ear for whole policy, questioning the necessity of ensuring school access as part of guaranteeing education

i can feel my chances of survival slipping away.On Lieberman-Warner criticism, Part 1 posted 1 year, 7 months ago 9 Responses