Global Warming does not matter

[blastingcap]

I didn't want this to get lost in the other thread about tangentially related matters, so I'm starting a new one.

To be blunt, global warming does not matter as far as energy policy goes, because whether or not CO2 emissions are a problem, we have to change anyway. It is getting so much harder to get cheap energy that we are desperate enough to drill underwater, break down shale, etc. Oil cost between 10 and 20 dollars per barrel for most of the 1980s and 1990s; now it's 50 and people think it's cheap? No it's not cheap, it's vastly more expensive, and even 50 won't last long as it's too low relative to the cost of producing the last (marginal) barrel of oil in global supply.

Therefore even if CO2 were not a problem at all, you STILL need to go to renewables because the world economy is way too dependent on fossil fuels, which do eventually get scarcer and scarcer as we're seeing before our eyes. If we wait till hydrocarbons are in such scarce supply that the price is untenable and destabilizes countries and so forth, that's just plain stupid; it's like waiting until the last second to write that final paper for a class--that you were given weeks to prepare for. The economy is crippled by that point and leaves even fewer resources to do the hard R&D work to transition away from hydrocarbons.

You get a 3-for-1 benefit from switching to renewables: lower energy prices so we don't spend so much money on freaking electricity bills and gasoline every week (hydrocarbons are heavily subsidized; see below), lower CO2 just in case it's a problem, and hurting people like Iran's leadership which sponsors terrorism worldwide. Most of the top oil producers are unfriendly regimes like Venezuela, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia (in theory we're friends but in practice their subsidizing hardcore Islam has lead to much more conservatism in the Muslim world over the last several decades), etc.

Side note: even if we manage to switch to renewables faster than the slothlike pace we're on now (look at the % share of renewables globally or even nationally and it's still just a drop in the bucket compared to coal/oil/gas and that's been true despite all the news you hear about how we're allegedly switching to renewables that quickly... we're NOT!), the ultimate problem is overpopulation. But nobody wants to touch that politically so you have to attack it indirectly like promoting women's education in areas where women breed like rabbits. (More edu leads to lower birthrate.) A lot of those "breeder" countries are jihadi factories so the sooner we shut those down via education, the better. You get a 2-for-1 benefit from increasing female education in those countries: the actual benefit of education, plus the side benefit of breeding fewer jihadis. Do you guys realize that a global population growth rate of only 1% still means a DOUBLING of population every 72 years? We're currently at 1.14%?

"Climate change" or "global warming" shouldn't be the issue. The real issue is why we're so slow in switching to renewables and lowering population growth. If you don't give a shit about temperature rise--due to the overdue ice age or whatever--you should still support switching out of fossil fuels ANYWAY for the reasons stated above (and some others I won't get into here).

Addendum, for those who are naive enough to believe that "the market will sort it out":

1) Energy is far from a free market. For about 50 years from 1949 to ~2000, 94% of energy subsidies went to coal, oil, gas, and nuclear and to this day we still subsidize those industries to the tune of $billions of direct and implied subsidies (e.g., Price-Anderson Act).

Furthermore the negative externalities of things like acid rain, smog, and water pollution (not just fracking but also things like tailings) are not being accounted for with fossil fuels, though to be fair you should also do that with waste products from solar/wind turbine/etc. production.

The energy market is NOT a free market due to these distortions. Congress meddles with it at every turn, just like with agriculture and how heavily subsidized corn is once you factor everything such as water subsidies and the ridiculous ethanol mandate.

Furthermore, even if energy were perfectly free of distortions and market failures, the transition time can be painful and destabilizing to various countries. It would be preferable by many to have a smoother transition away from hydrocarbons than willingly plunge ourselves into boom-bust spikes/recessions.

2) The flipside of 1): Renewable energy costs are plummeting as technology keeps improving, whether in solar efficiency or battery storage tech. Also, a lot of the price of power is due to transport lines; with distributed generation you save a bundle on distro and transmission lines.

Look at Africa for instance. They aren't burdened by legacy costs of stringing wire. They don't have as much land-line phone service or electricity service because that's expensive and requires a lot of density. So what they've found is that in some parts of Africa it's more economic to simply use a solar panel and battery. Similarly, mobile phones are way popular there because it's cheaper to wire up transmission towers than each individual home.

3) Energy policy should not be short-sighted. As hydrocarbons become harder to extract, price WILL keep going up. A lot of numbers people throw around #s about how we have x number of years of coal/gas/oil at present rates of consumption, ignore how we are consuming such hydrocarbons at an increasing rate, and how the low-hanging fruit gets picked first. The cheap stuff gets used up first and as we get more desperate we reach for higher and higher fruit like arctic oil or deepwater oil. Same for gas, nobody was desperate enough to frack shale for gas on a large scale until 2004, and while you might hear talk of "cheap" gas, historically gas has been cheaper than it is today. Similarly, the high-grade, easy to reach coal got depleted first.

Long story short, hydrocarbon costs will rise more as more people (literally, more population) uses more energy per capita. Rather than wait till the last minute, we should be trying to get ahead of the curve.

 

[michal1980]

Sky is falling. Watch out.

 

[realibrad]

...

So yes to most everything you said, except the assumption that prices will go up on extraction. I see the intuition behind your statement, but the presupposition is that the technology/process will not reduce the costs beyond the difficulties of drilling deeper and in different places. You are likely right that it will get more expensive, but I think its not an irrelevant point.

As for the current price, pollution is not being factored into the price of fuel. A major source of mercury in the oceans comes from coal plants. This effects the global markets, but the impact is not put into the cost of coal. I think one of the biggest benefits of solar, and other energy sources is the ability to better internalize externalities. Global warming aside, there is a very measurable impact that current energy sources create. Even the production of solar panels has a lot of environmental impact.

 

[Jaskalas]

If Global Warming mattered... we'd have to do all this crap yesterday, and it would still scarcely be enough to avoid their long term projections.
Anything that exists under that notion is TOO LITTLE and TOO LATE.

If we remove that sense of urgency from the table, then we are left with a much more reasonable discussion. My plan / vision of how to move forward with energy:

IMO, the only way forward is with a technological revolution in cleaner energy. Today it's natural gas, to halve energy plant emission... tomorrow it needs to be nuclear energy. Before the end of the century it needs to be widespread solar energy. Then next century, hopefully dreams are realized and fusion ends our dilemma.

Policy that is needed:

• Support the market growth of Natural Gas.
• A comprehensive energy plan that builds and deploys over a hundred nuclear power plants using the safest modern designs and thorium where available.
• Continued R&D into solar tech and fusion.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

I look at how much technology has developed in the past century and can't help but wonder where we'll be in another 100 years. I'm optimistic that we'll eventually deal the problem quite effectively.

 

[Subyman]

IMO we aren't going to change global warming in the near term. We need to quit focusing on trying to go all solar, water, wind power, etc and focus on mitigating the effects of a warmer climate. In other words, we have to learn to live with it and work toward minimizing our impact. We will not get of of fossil fuels in the next 100 years IMO.

 

[realibrad]

IMO we aren't going to change global warming in the near term. We need to quit focusing on trying to go all solar, water, wind power, etc and focus on mitigating the effects of a warmer climate. In other words, we have to learn to live with it and work toward minimizing our impact. We will not get of of fossil fuels in the next 100 years IMO.

If you can weigh the costs of both options, then you can make that decision. Honestly, we dont fully know the impacts of a warming world. We dont know what it will do to seasons, water patterns ect. It could be that its more efficient to deal with warming, or it could be more efficient to work on new energy technologies. It could even be a mixture of the two. The problem is that we are so bogged down in politics that we have not been measuring the variables to know which would be better.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

IMO we aren't going to change global warming in the near term. We need to quit focusing on trying to go all solar, water, wind power, etc and focus on mitigating the effects of a warmer climate. In other words, we have to learn to live with it and work toward minimizing our impact. We will not get of of fossil fuels in the next 100 years IMO.

I agree with this approach and as Jakalas has stated we also need to change over to natural gas for power/develop safer nuclear power. Carbon tax or other tax schemes will do nothing but cost the customer more in the long run without doing anything to improve the climate.

 

[realibrad]

I agree with this approach and as Jakalas has stated we also need to change over to natural gas for power/develop safer nuclear power. Carbon tax or other tax schemes will do nothing but cost the customer more in the long run without doing anything to improve the climate.

At some point, if the market wont do it, you have to internalize the externalities of carbon into the price. If not a carbon tax, then how would you want to apply the cost of pollution?

Not an attack, just want your thoughts.

 

[Subyman]

I agree with this approach and as Jakalas has stated we also need to change over to natural gas for power/develop safer nuclear power. Carbon tax or other tax schemes will do nothing but cost the customer more in the long run without doing anything to improve the climate.

I agree, carbon tax or offsets just shift money between countries, where money goes energy follows.

Case in point, mega corps give tribes in africa money for their trees. Tribes then buy power plants, light their homes, buy cars, etc etc. It is a dumb idea to do cap and trade.

The warming will be slow enough where people can move inland a few miles. Some people will lose property value while others gain. Luckily the US is huge and we have plenty of land. Other countries are really going to be hit hard, especially the tropical regions. From what I remember, China is not going to have a good time with warming, but the US will be well off after coastal cities are dealt with.

Then again, that is all speculative and best-guess. We will live an interesting life time.

 

[blastingcap]

So yes to most everything you said, except the assumption that prices will go up on extraction. I see the intuition behind your statement, but the presupposition is that the technology/process will not reduce the costs beyond the difficulties of drilling deeper and in different places. You are likely right that it will get more expensive, but I think its not an irrelevant point.

As for the current price, pollution is not being factored into the price of fuel. A major source of mercury in the oceans comes from coal plants. This effects the global markets, but the impact is not put into the cost of coal. I think one of the biggest benefits of solar, and other energy sources is the ability to better internalize externalities. Global warming aside, there is a very measurable impact that current energy sources create. Even the production of solar panels has a lot of environmental impact.

I know what you are saying, but oil extraction is a pretty mature technology so the really big cost gains from technology are probably over. And do we really want to rely on being able to squeeze a little more efficiency out of non-renewable fuels, as an energy policy? Of course not.

As a resource becomes harder to extract, the price does not necessarily go up monotonically--in fact it never does and in some cases it actually declines as customers try to find substitutes or try to be more efficient. Booms and busts in the economy also drive price swings. But over long enough periods of time you can see that something is happening in hydrocarbon markets. It's very difficult to substitute vs oil, and although we've gotten more efficient at extracting and using it, the population keeps growing and we keep using more per person, with the result that we're nearly 20 years into a jagged runup of prices. And that won't change anytime soon. The marginal cost of new barrels of oil is higher than before. Around the world, we're replacing old, cheap-to-produce oil fields with new, more-expensive-to-produce oil fields. We picked the low hanging fruit first (it makes business sense to do so), and now we're reaching for the higher branches.

Gas is somewhat different due to the promise of things like methane clathrates, but even that is exhaustible. It's an important bridge fuel but not a long-term solution the way that geothemal, wind, solar, etc. are.

I disagree with people saying we should spam nuclear plants. The true cost of nuclear fission is covered up by stuff like Price-Anderson subsidies, and the super-long-term nature of the costs of things like security (did you know that in mock attacks on nuclear plants in recent years, most plants failed? This is low tech stuff like simulating a band of AK47 carriers, not even high tech stuff); and disposal/storage. Also, a single dirty bomb can cause literally $100B in damage if detonated in Times Square. Nuclear FUSION on the other hand, I think everyone agrees would be terrific, but it's so difficult to do that it doesn't look like we're going to reach that level of technology anytime soon if ever.

As for your 2nd paragraph, and I agree. I did mention those externalities including those of solar tech.

 

[Subyman]

At some point, if the market wont do it, you have to internalize the externalities of carbon into the price. If not a carbon tax, then how would you want to apply the cost of pollution?

Not an attack, just want your thoughts.

I addressed that a bit in my post above yours. The problem with using monetary means to deal with carbon emissions is, like I said, where money goes energy follows. Carbon offsets are purchased from poor countries, who will likely use those millions to industrialize. Sadly, instead of monetary barriers, we may need to do it the old fashioned way. Rationing, pure and simple.

 

[realibrad]

I addressed that a bit in my post above yours. The problem with using monetary means to deal with carbon emissions is, like I said, where money goes energy follows. Carbon offsets are purchased from poor countries, who will likely use those millions to industrialize. Sadly, instead of monetary barriers, we may need to do it the old fashioned way. Rationing, pure and simple.

Then I don't think you understand what price does in a market. Price is the best way to ration a product.

If the reason we should move away from oil is because its very costly to the environment, then the price should go higher to capture the impact. That would send a signal to the consumer that if you are going to use oil, it better be for a damn good reason. A tax would be one way, as the money could then be used to repay the damages to 3rd parties, or undo the damage done.

 

[Subyman]

Then I don't think you understand what price does in a market. Price is the best way to ration a product.

If the reason we should move away from oil is because its very costly to the environment, then the price should go higher to capture the impact. That would send a signal to the consumer that if you are going to use oil, it better be for a damn good reason. A tax would be one way, as the money could then be used to repay the damages to 3rd parties, or undo the damage done.

As I said before, where money goes energy follows. Where are those damages paid? What do they spend that damage money on? Take the money out of the pocket of the consumer and give it to the government, what does the government spend that money on? It is a web of money that would need significant regulation to insure the money siphoned from the energy market does not find its way back into the energy market in the form of released carbon.

Instead of pricing people out of the market and figuring out a web of regulation, it may be easier and much more straight forward to do straight up rationing.

Let me be clear, I do not think we will ever do that at least in the next 30 years. I'd love taxing to work. I am for trying taxes first, but I'm not completely satisfied that it will solve the real issue (global carbon output.)

Our reach is only as far as our borders as well. Higher gas prices here due to taxes will only make the price of gas cheaper worldwide and increase consumption abroad. FWIW, rationing has the same effect. This is a global problem and can only be tackled globally.

 

[realibrad]

As I said before, where money goes energy follows. Where are those damages paid? What do they spend that damage money on? Take the money out of the pocket of the consumer and give it to the government, what does the government spend that money on? It is a web of money that would need significant regulation to insure the money siphoned from the energy market does not find its way back into the energy market in the form of released carbon.

Instead of pricing people out of the market and figuring out a web of regulation, it may be easier and much more straight forward to do straight up rationing.

Let me be clear, I do not think we will ever do that at least in the next 30 years. I'd love taxing to work. I am for trying taxes first, but I'm not completely satisfied that it will solve the real issue (global carbon output.)

Our reach is only as far as our borders as well. Higher gas prices here due to taxes will only make the price of gas cheaper worldwide and increase consumption abroad. FWIW, rationing has the same effect. This is a global problem and can only be tackled globally.

What if the government set the base tax rate, but the actual enforcement would be handled by the industry, kind of like how the ESRB does game ratings? The spending would also be decided by the separate industry body, and not by a government.

 

[werepossum]

I didn't want this to get lost in the other thread about tangentially related matters, so I'm starting a new one.

To be blunt, global warming does not matter as far as energy policy goes, because whether or not CO2 emissions are a problem, we have to change anyway. It is getting so much harder to get cheap energy that we are desperate enough to drill underwater, break down shale, etc. Oil cost between 10 and 20 dollars per barrel for most of the 1980s and 1990s; now it's 50 and people think it's cheap? No it's not cheap, it's vastly more expensive, and even 50 won't last long as it's too low relative to the cost of producing the last (marginal) barrel of oil in global supply.

Therefore even if CO2 were not a problem at all, you STILL need to go to renewables because the world economy is way too dependent on fossil fuels, which do eventually get scarcer and scarcer as we're seeing before our eyes. If we wait till hydrocarbons are in such scarce supply that the price is untenable and destabilizes countries and so forth, that's just plain stupid; it's like waiting until the last second to write that final paper for a class--that you were given weeks to prepare for. The economy is crippled by that point and leaves even fewer resources to do the hard R&D work to transition away from hydrocarbons.

You get a 3-for-1 benefit from switching to renewables: lower energy prices so we don't spend so much money on freaking electricity bills and gasoline every week (hydrocarbons are heavily subsidized; see below), lower CO2 just in case it's a problem, and hurting people like Iran's leadership which sponsors terrorism worldwide. Most of the top oil producers are unfriendly regimes like Venezuela, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia (in theory we're friends but in practice their subsidizing hardcore Islam has lead to much more conservatism in the Muslim world over the last several decades), etc.

Side note: even if we manage to switch to renewables faster than the slothlike pace we're on now (look at the % share of renewables globally or even nationally and it's still just a drop in the bucket compared to coal/oil/gas and that's been true despite all the news you hear about how we're allegedly switching to renewables that quickly... we're NOT!), the ultimate problem is overpopulation. But nobody wants to touch that politically so you have to attack it indirectly like promoting women's education in areas where women breed like rabbits. (More edu leads to lower birthrate.) A lot of those "breeder" countries are jihadi factories so the sooner we shut those down via education, the better. You get a 2-for-1 benefit from increasing female education in those countries: the actual benefit of education, plus the side benefit of breeding fewer jihadis. Do you guys realize that a global population growth rate of only 1% still means a DOUBLING of population every 72 years? We're currently at 1.14%?

"Climate change" or "global warming" shouldn't be the issue. The real issue is why we're so slow in switching to renewables and lowering population growth. If you don't give a shit about temperature rise--due to the overdue ice age or whatever--you should still support switching out of fossil fuels ANYWAY for the reasons stated above (and some others I won't get into here).

Addendum, for those who are naive enough to believe that "the market will sort it out":

1) Energy is far from a free market. For about 60 years from 1949 to ~2000, 94% of energy subsidies went to coal, oil, gas, and nuclear and to this day we still subsidize those industries to the tune of $billions of direct and implied subsidies (e.g., Price-Anderson Act).

Furthermore the negative externalities of things like acid rain, smog, and water pollution (not just fracking but also things like tailings) are not being accounted for with fossil fuels, though to be fair you should also do that with waste products from solar/wind turbine/etc. production.

The energy market is NOT a free market due to these distortions. Congress meddles with it at every turn, just like with agriculture and how heavily subsidized corn is once you factor everything such as water subsidies and the ridiculous ethanol mandate.

Furthermore, even if energy were perfectly free of distortions and market failures, the transition time can be painful and destabilizing to various countries. It would be preferable by many to have a smoother transition away from hydrocarbons than willingly plunge ourselves into boom-bust spikes/recessions.

2) The flipside of 1): Renewable energy costs are plummeting as technology keeps improving, whether in solar efficiency or battery storage tech. Also, a lot of the price of power is due to transport lines; with distributed generation you save a bundle on distro and transmission lines.

Look at Africa for instance. They aren't burdened by legacy costs of stringing wire. They don't have as much land-line phone service or electricity service because that's expensive and requires a lot of density. So what they've found is that in some parts of Africa it's more economic to simply use a solar panel and battery. Similarly, mobile phones are way popular there because it's cheaper to wire up transmission towers than each individual home.

3) Energy policy should not be short-sighted. As hydrocarbons become harder to extract, price WILL keep going up. A lot of numbers people throw around #s about how we have x number of years of coal/gas/oil at present rates of consumption, ignore how we are consuming such hydrocarbons at an increasing rate, and how the low-hanging fruit gets picked first. The cheap stuff gets used up first and as we get more desperate we reach for higher and higher fruit like arctic oil or deepwater oil. Same for gas, nobody was desperate enough to frack shale for gas on a large scale until 2004, and while you might hear talk of "cheap" gas, historically gas has been cheaper than it is today. Similarly, the high-grade, easy to reach coal got depleted first.

Long story short, hydrocarbon costs will rise more as more people (literally, more population) uses more energy per capita. Rather than wait till the last minute, we should be trying to get ahead of the curve.

Exquisitely well said, sir. I could quibble here and there, but what I'd really like to do is elect you President instead.

So yes to most everything you said, except the assumption that prices will go up on extraction. I see the intuition behind your statement, but the presupposition is that the technology/process will not reduce the costs beyond the difficulties of drilling deeper and in different places. You are likely right that it will get more expensive, but I think its not an irrelevant point.

As for the current price, pollution is not being factored into the price of fuel. A major source of mercury in the oceans comes from coal plants. This effects the global markets, but the impact is not put into the cost of coal. I think one of the biggest benefits of solar, and other energy sources is the ability to better internalize externalities. Global warming aside, there is a very measurable impact that current energy sources create. Even the production of solar panels has a lot of environmental impact.

Good points.

If Global Warming mattered... we'd have to do all this crap yesterday, and it would still scarcely be enough to avoid their long term projections.
Anything that exists under that notion is TOO LITTLE and TOO LATE.

If we remove that sense of urgency from the table, then we are left with a much more reasonable discussion. My plan / vision of how to move forward with energy:
Policy that is needed:

• Support the market growth of Natural Gas.
• A comprehensive energy plan that builds and deploys over a hundred nuclear power plants using the safest modern designs and thorium where available.
• Continued R&D into solar tech and fusion.

Agreed, but . . . We know the Earth has exquisite (yeah, I like that word) control systems built in, but we don't really understand them. So it's possible that we're neither too early nor too late.

Solar panels coupled with better construction are already good enough to make most 1-2 story buildings energy neutral. Only cost remains an issue, and even that mostly with the solar panels which aren't economically feasible without heavy subsidies. So to my mind, one of the biggest focus points should be cheap solar panels at (or reasonably close to) today's efficiencies.

 

[Jaskalas]

Imagine if Congress green lighted a $200 billion nuclear energy project tomorrow.

When would the first, new, plant become fully operational? I'm thinking... 2030... maybe? If we ever want to see ourselves get _started_ in our life times, we need to move fast.

Our people, however, do not appear to be very interested in this. Or even worse... their interest would be in opposing it due to the failings of older designs from 40-50 years ago.

 

[blastingcap]

I am familiar with the "new" fission nuclear reactor designs. The issue is not just short term safety, it's also cost. There's the cost of procuring and processing fuel into usable increments. There's the cost of construction and shielding that from the population. The cost of securing, transporting, and storing waste. There's a long tail of costs, and it adds up. You have no such long tail of security/pollution/terror risks with other energy supplies.

I would much rather we spend more money on leapfrogging to fusion. In the meantime, solar, wind, geothermal, wave, tidal, hydro, ocean thermal power. Natural gas as a bridge fuel, taking up the slack that oil and coal leave behind. Reserve oil for industries that have no viable substitutes, like airlines.

 

[blankslate]

As far as thorium fuel for reactors goes... we were in the cold war... so a fuel that can be weaponized was used instead of thorium...

Thorium can be safer than Uranium with the proper reactor designed but the memory of 3 mile island, Chernobyl and Fukushima will be used by some to shut down any conversation about thorium reactors...

As far as solar goes... the Saudi's efforts to lower the price of oil will impact that as well as tar sands oil... double win for them.

It's not just the "suspicion" that ice is melting... CO2 in the oceans is thought by some to be having an impact on species that are important to the food chain...


....

 

[blastingcap]

Thorium can be safer than Uranium with the proper reactor designed but the memory of 3 mile island, Chernobyl and Fukushima will be used by some to shut down any conversation about thorium reactors...

As far as solar goes... the Saudi's efforts to lower the price of oil will impact that as well as tar sands oil... double win for them.

It's not just the "suspicion" that ice is melting... CO2 in the oceans is thought by some to be having an impact on species that are important to the food chain...


....

Safer doesn't mean safe, the risk is less a traditional nuke, but you can make a different kind with more effort. Also, any high-level radioactive waste means more opportunity for a dirty bomb. Estimates of $100 BILLION in damage just from a dirty bomb detonated in Times Square, might be low. Plus the long tail of costs of security and storage.


http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jun/23/thorium-nuclear-uranium

http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2334778/exposing_the_thorium_myth.html

KSA can't hold prices low for long. Anyone who knows anything about the industry knows how thin of a margin we have of spare capacity--and that the price of the marginal barrel of crude is what sets the oil price in the long run, not Ghawar. Those marginal barrels are coming out of $75/barrel sources like oil sands.

And yes, higher acidity of oceans is already having an impact. Global warming does matter, of course, just not in the way that most people think.

http://seattlemag.com/article/ocean-acidification-global-warmings-doppelg-nger

http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/alaska-crab-industry/

 

[realibrad]

I am very surprised at how quickly people have started accepting fracking. It was a super big deal, until prices started to fall. I think that if we started to internalize costs, you would see nuclear become a lot more popular.

 

[blastingcap]

What is it with the nuclear myths that won't die? Nuclear only appears cheap because it's been very heavily subsidized directly and indirectly via things like Price Anderson. The long tail of costs to deal with radioactive waste ALONE should be enough to rule out nuclear fission reactors. They also get socked with transmission/distro line costs same as any other centralized plant located far away from population centers.

Furthermore, the nuclear fuel is not renewable, so why bother? If we switched from hydrocarbons to nuclear, we'd chew through fuel (uranium or otherwise) at a much higher rate than today, and it'd get worse as populations and energy demands grew. Going from hydrocarbons to nuclear fission is trading one non-renewable fuel source for another. It's not a real solution.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

At some point, if the market wont do it, you have to internalize the externalities of carbon into the price. If not a carbon tax, then how would you want to apply the cost of pollution?

Not an attack, just want your thoughts.

Easy, monitor the plant exhaust stacks like they currently do and fine the companies that exceed prescribed limits. Fines increase with occurrences and/or excursion from limit amount.

Then I don't think you understand what price does in a market. Price is the best way to ration a product.

If the reason we should move away from oil is because its very costly to the environment, then the price should go higher to capture the impact. That would send a signal to the consumer that if you are going to use oil, it better be for a damn good reason. A tax would be one way, as the money could then be used to repay the damages to 3rd parties, or undo the damage done.

Very little if any oil is used to produce electrical power and in most cases it's an emergency source (diesel genset) during power failures to restart the plant. Most of the oil in the US is refined for use in motor vehicles.

 

[biostud]

As long as there's oil and gas in the ground and it can be extracted with a profit, we will do it, no matter how many different energy sources we come up with. Sad but true.

 

[realibrad]

What is it with the nuclear myths that won't die? Nuclear only appears cheap because it's been subsidized directly and indirectly via things like Price Anderson. The long tail of costs to deal with radioactive waste ALONE should be enough to rule out nuclear fission reactors. They also get socked with transmission/distro line costs same as any other centralized plant located far away from population centers.

Furthermore, the nuclear fuel is not renewable, so why bother? If we switched from hydrocarbons to nuclear, we'd chew through fuel (uranium or otherwise) at a much higher rate than today, and it'd get worse as populations and energy demands grew. Far from a thousand-year supply of fuel, we'd have a lot less, and at increasing prices as we pick through the low hanging fruit (high-grade ore) first.

Nuclear fission reactors--of any fuel--are nothing more than expensive ways to boil water to run turbines. We can and should do better.

Nuclear becomes far cheaper if you internalize the expenses of the power generated. Gas and coal are cheaper, but thats because the 3rd party costs are not applied. If you were to somehow measure the cost of say mercury pollution from coal, and add that to the cost of coal, then add the cost of extra carbon into coal, it gets way more expensive. Nuclear already has much of the costs internalized because politically it had to. If you were to do the same to all other types of energy production, then Nuclear becomes far more usable.