The 'settled science' actually isn't, dissent is being suppressed.

The question is about US policy, not China's policy.

Our people and our government can affect OUR policy.

 

Making people in Nebraska warmer is NOT a US policy.

 

At the moment - this is not going to happen overnight


And please get away from the “I” - impossible Expectations as for issues with Geothermal - take it up with the Kiwis they have been using geothermal generation since 1958 but have been using geothermal for cooking since the Māori first came to Aotearoa

 

It’s a huge “whataboutism”. What I like to call the “dirty bedroom excuse”. “ But Muuuuuuuum! Billy doesn’t clean HIS bedroom so why do I have to clean mine?

 

Lols! The old saying “When it comes to climate change Canadians are sitting on icebergs waiting for it to warm!

 

It is not being "impossible" with expectations, it is simply being realistic.

This should give an idea how realistic it is in the US.

]img]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Geothermal_springs_map_US.png[/img]

That is all the locations in the US where you even have hot springs that can be exploited for geothermal power. And of all of those, only the red dots are hot enough to even consider exploiting for power production.

Get the idea now? And most of those are in sparsely populated areas, so then you have a lot of other issues like transmission of the power produced.

And that is how they get 18% of their power. But the city of Beijing alone has about 4 times the population of the entire country of New Zealand. And the entire geothermal power output of New Zealand is about half as much as what is needed to supply the city of Liuzhou, the 51st most populous city in China.

It is simply never going to happen. It is not having "impossible expectations", it is simply realizing the limitations and reality of that as a power source. True fact, the largest geothermal plant in the world is in California. It produces an entire 6.5k gigawatt hours per year. That is quite a bit less than the 8k gigawatt hours of the entire nation of New Zealand. And the newest field in California opened just this year, with a capacity of 140 mw production. That is just a bit over half the power production of one of the six gas powered power plants that powers El Paso. That should give you an idea how insignificant of an amount that really is.

 

It's more a matter of whether there are sites that are cost effective, not whether it is of the size necessary to replace an existing power plant.

The existing sites in CA are not justified by comparing them in output to El Paso.

This is the same with other sources, too. Wind is far cheaper in terms of cost per KWH.

On the other hand, nuclear is free of greenhouse gas emissions, but it is incredibly expensive per KWH. So, we don't have a push for more nuclear.

 

Is it? Is it “realism” or pessimism? And geothermal does not rely just on “hot springs”. Apparently we can use “hot rocks”


https://www.economist.com/united-st...wks-and-big-oil-alike-cheer-geothermal-energy

And the USA is more blessed than Australia in that regard

But how about “Green Hydrogen” or “green Ammonia”


https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/green-ammonia-stop-fossil-fuels/

Aus is going into both of those

 

And then there is Vanadium batteries
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-23/vanadium-flow-battery-south-australia/102515616
With that kind of storage in the grid it becomes not only more stable but gives emergency back up I.e. in case of generation failure like Texas

 

I’m a negative carbon entity. I sequester more carbon than I emit. China isn’t cleaning their room. I cleaned mine and I’m cleaning YOURS.

 

The entire collective human population benefits from warming, not just Canadians. Warming is reducing net mortality around the globe.

 

Interesting.

Though, local solar doesn't need large transmission lines. This is partially how Aus is getting good results. Sometimes on top of the roofs, in fact. I don't see how the transmission problem in China is exclusive to renewables (I know you didn't say that), or is solved by Coal power plants (you did imply that).

Agree China is in trouble. Since their machinations are all about energy security, if renewables triumph long-term as the major energy source then it won't have been through artifice, but rather competitive advantage.

Sorry for the delay. I have been sucked into Israel War

 

Really? What is so special about the power produced from solar to eliminate that need?

Other than most are really small and do not produce much power in the first place.

 

For some reason (I’m not an expert on Chinese geography and solar aspect) solar farms are often far from population centers. I suspect it’s very difficult to have meaningful arrays in cities anyway as densely populated as they are. I believe they put wind and solar in desert regions but can’t remember for sure.

Apparently they have to bundle coal sourced power with those renewables to justify expense of super high voltage transmission lines. That’s part of the reason renewables aren’t replacing coal 1:1.

Yeh, the new war is something else. Just watched a clip of the music festival where between 200-300 young people were massacred by Hamas. Maybe Americans aren’t the most violent gun happy people on the planet. We have stiff competition anyway.

You and I are blessed my friend. These wars hurt our hearts, but those poor souls are suffering and dying.

 

I think the larger solar farms would probably need to be further away for the lower land cost. And I imagine they can't share land with agriculture as readily as wind. Utility-level plants could be closer in, though.

We are blessed indeed. Some parts of the world are literally hell on earth.

 

Nothing special. I said local solar, which by definition doesn't require large transmission lines. Smaller plants can be closer in.
........

And some are large and can power a 1/4 million homes.

Not sure what you point is.

 

Good point about land being valued more for habitation. Not sure how that works with the government owning all the land though. Leases I suppose? I tried to figure out their system for land being government owned but allowing private home ownership on that land once. Just gave me a headache. Apparently THEY don’t even understand it fully. Or the government kept changing the rules.

Yeh, those poor people probably aren’t too concerned about how much solar power China has. It’s interesting to ponder the odds of successfully joining together and cleaning up our planet when a good share of folks are still killing each other wantonly and teaching their kids to carry on with it when they are dead.

 

That also produces very little electricity. It is at most just a supplement and can not even close to replacing the actual power needed.

To give an idea, the entire amount of "local solar" installed in LA is just under 650 megawatts. That may sound nice, but it is not even a fraction of the over22,000 gigawatts needed to run the city.

If you want to be taken seriously, you really have to bring up solutions that can only amount to less than 1% of the demand. And 650 megawatts is not even that, it is not even 0.03% of the power required.

And a quarter of a million homes, big whoop-de-doo. You are aware that is almost nothing, right? That means you are talking about it ultimately powering a city the size of Wafangdian. The 190th largest city in the country. Or if it was the US, about the power needs combined of Lincoln, Nebraska.

All the solar combined in LA County can barely power Lincoln, Nebraska. That should give an idea how small of an amount that actually is.

 

What about them? I’ve been cleaning your room and advocating for green Ammonia for years.

I was advocating for storing excess wind generated power as fertilizer before your link was published!

 

No. You asked about policy for EARTH. China is on earth.

 

Nobody said anything about making Nebraska warmer. You asked about policy for EARTH.

Please read the actual content I’ve posted and refrain from further fallacy. If you don’t want policy relating to EARTH, don’t specifically ask for policy pertaining to EARTH. China is on EARTH. The US is on EARTH. Even Nebraska is on EARTH. Try making an argument based on science or that has intellectual underpinnings. STOL with the pure fallacy. This is a forum for science, not your fallacies.

 

Oops! I meant OUR policy for a warming Earth.

As you note, you said:
"I live in Nebraska. AGW here is a blessing. It’s allowing greater production of food and consumer items for the entire planet. If granny Johnson in Ainsworth ends up in the hospital of heat stroke in August the correct policy to solve that problem isn’t harping on China to do something they are never going to do. The correct policy is to figure out how to get granny Johnson a bloody air conditioner."

We can't make Chinese policy, obviously.

>>>So, what should OUR policy be, in recognition of AGW?

 

First, a "recognition" that we are coming out of an ice age. Global warming can be expected to melt the glaciers and polar caps. Florida and NY city will be underwater. Current policy of modern advanced nations reducing CO2 while "developing" nations continue to increase, simply moves manufacturing away from modern nations and into developing nations, then putting them on ocean freighters, shipping the goods back to the modern nations. MORE CO2 because ocean freighters spew the substance AND because the electric energy in China or India from coal is more polluting than more modern coal and gas burns in advanced nations.

 

Second a recognition that current "AGW" policy is about-

“We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrialized civilization to collapse.” Maurice Strong

“We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” Senator Timothy Wirth

“A global warming treaty [Kyoto] must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the [enhanced] greenhouse effect.” Richard Benedick

“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…climate change [provides] the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” former Canadian Minister of the Environment, told editors and reporters of the Calgary Herald:

“The threat of environmental crisis will be the international disaster key to unlock the New World Order.” Mikhail Gorbachev

“For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global governance, one that should find a place within the World Environmental Organization which France and the European Union would like to see established.” President Jacques Chirac

“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,
We redistribute de facto the worlds wealth by climate policy,
the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the worlds resources will be negotiated.
Ottmar Edenhofer

To do that, we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of the doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” Stephen Schneider

 

I can kick it through the goalposts no matter where you move them to.

I’ll reiterate the overarching most important policy in the US should be truth. Not part of the truth. Full disclosure.

For example:

When we report on granny Johnson getting heatstroke we shouldn’t focus exclusively on her condition. We should inform folks that over 10 times as many people die from temps below optimal globally than from temps above optimal. We should tell people that in the US twice as many people die from extreme cold as from extreme heat. We should let people know net all cause mortality related to temperature is decreasing as the planet warms. We should just tell people the truth.

Here’s an example of correct policy to deal with increasing precipitation totals and intensity. Correct policy would be to encourage appropriate runoff mitigation works like terraces and swales to slow movement of water down slope. Also, waterways should include appropriate species to ensure as much of the slowed downslope migration of water is directed into deep soil layers as possible. This ensures the blessing of increased precipitation not only can be used for in-season water uses for agriculture etc., but that aquifers benefit as much as possible from the excess not used in season. This way municipalities and industry can benefit from the increased precipitation as well.

The beauty of the above policy is that it is the correct policy to deal with droughts as well. Whether or not they increase in a particular area or not.

Again, when an extreme precipitation event occurs it should be reported on honestly. If basements are flooded, report on that. But let folks know the economic benefit to agriculture and main street from that event as well. Stop only reporting negative effects of climate/weather and let folks know about the benefits as well. Tell them the aquifers are being recharged. Tell them fossil fuel usage decreased as a result of the event and less particulates and ozone pollution exist in the local area because of it.

In places where sea levels are an issue, give people the truth. If subsidence from their use of local groundwater is responsible for local sea level rise, tell them so they can solve the problem. Don’t tell them ice melting in Greenland is the only issue. Let them know about things they can do NOW to solve their local problem. Tell folks that because costs of disasters is decreasing as percentage of GDP that also means mitigation infrastructure built ahead of disasters is decreasing in cost relative to GDP as well and a good investment.

If we wish to help others around the globe with our policy we can encourage use of and provide solar cooking equipment to third world countries. This will not only help eliminate deforestation and desertification, but will also decrease black carbon emissions that are responsible for more glacial loss than CO2 driven warming in some places. We can supply these same places with better plant genetics to further slow desertification while vastly increasing food security.

In short, US and state policy should address localized issues. AGW is not a universal problem. It’s closer to a universal blessing with some sharp edges that need the file of pointed, focused local policy.

Policy aimed at reducing fossil fuel usage should be predicated on particulate pollution and ozone etc., not on CO2 driven AGW. Again, we should tell the truth. Lying has begun to decrease the percentage of the population who are concerned about the environment. That’s not what I want. I want honest policy that addresses actual problems and actually helps people. Not policy that may help to a minuscule degree sometime in the distant unspecified future IF we can convince everyone to stop emitting greenhouse gasses (and cutting down and burning forests and creating deserts, but that’s another story).

We should start with a policy of truth and full disclosure. Then citizens can decide what policies are correct. Right now the average citizen of the US can’t make an educated decision on policy because they simply aren’t educated.