Have we reached a tipping point?

[CaptSpiff]

This is not a political objective and curse Al Gore for making it one.

This thread brings to mind my state's governor Andrew Cuomo. He self declares as a "Green Champion", then applies muscle to close the Indian Point nuclear power station, at the same time fast tracking the building of two new monster size natural gas power plants in the same region. He doesn't support new fossil base electric generation but his experts advised that downstate (ie NYC) could see summer supply shortfalls and possible rotating blackout if the Nuc power wasn't replaced in that part of the electric grid.

Now we have a new Gas power station in Middletown NY making 750MW, and the Cricket Valley Gas power station east of Poughkeepsie
NY schedule to be commissioned in 2020 making 1000MW. The Indian Point Nuc site will shut down its two units over the next two years (-2000MW).

So here's a "green" guy who thinks it's good to shut down 2000MW of zero carbon energy, and replace it with 1750MW of fossil production.

It may be "real" to you BeGreen, but to most it's a political tool, and we pay either way.

 

[begreen]

Indian Point is old. It went in when I was a young lad. I can see decommissioning it. The licenses expired about 5 yrs ago right? And yes the trend is to replace cheap natural gas plants, but that is not a great solution. It's still fossil fuel based and the methane leakage from the thousands of fracked wells is significant. Replacing it with a modern nuke (or thorium?) reactor would probably be a better move, but wildly unpopular, so what were his choices?

 

[CaptSpiff]

Indian Point is old.

Yup. No doubt the same can be said of us.

I would have preferred he use his "green" muscle to convince the plant operators to rebuild the cooling system to use dry condensers. Indian Point was fighting a loosing battle with the DEC to re-license using the Hudson River water. It would have been a big score to improve river quality, save jobs and the tax base in Buchanan NY, and not suck the nipple of the "fracking" industry which he personally banned in NYS.

 

[ABMax24]

I'm not sure how others feel but I personally would rather live next to a gas power plant or gas processing plant vs a nuclear plant. I really like the idea of Nuclear and believe it can be done safely, but having worked in construction of gas processing facilities my entire career I understand the risks, fire, gas release and explosion are a lot less widespread than a radioactive release.

Until the public accepts nuclear energy or large scale energy storage comes to fruition a large portion of the energy supply will come from hydraulically fractured natural gas wells.

 

[Chas0218]

I find it ironic how so many are for change and needing for this or that. How many of you have given up burning wood and fossil fuels, added solar panels to your houses and became 100% self sufficient? How many own only electric cars (I won't debate how bad they are compared to ICE cars)?

I'm sorry climate change, global warming, whatever name you want to call it has been going on for 1000s of years. Last I checked we don't have the glaciers in NY forming the Great Lakes Still. Granted humans may have sped it up but it was going to happen even if we were still living in caves and communicating by grunting and hand gestures. Eventually we will be in a cooling cycle probably not back to the Ice age kind of cooling but it will happen. Hell the sun will be gone at some point too are we to blame for that too, using up too much of it's energy? I mean how long has the Sun been burning and how long do we have left from it? I don't think anyone really knows the answers to all this. Even articles published back in the 90s said we wouldn't be alive 9 years ago but here we are. It's cyclic just grab a seat we are all along for the ride lets not make it more turbulent.

 

[Chas0218]

I think free education and Healthcare would also go a long ways in reducing the carbon footprint. More educated folks working on the problem, the better and a healthier population is a less needy population.

Yes lots of free things would be nice but unfortunately these things all need money. Doctors aren't going to work for free and what is the point of doing well in college if it's free? If something happens to me I want the best doctor top of his class to work on me, I don't want some person that barely made it through to work on me. If education was free how many people would strive to do better? I don't think anything good would come from free healthcare and education.

I feel that there should be discounts given to those students that excel and are top of their class. Also think their should be different trigger points for financial aid. How about degrees that matter will be discounted? Trade school incentives? I mean there are 100s if not 1000s of ways to create some sort professional competitive edge to motivate people. If you aren't a competitive kind of person go flip burgers you need to have drive to get things done and be a productive member of society.

 

[SpaceBus]

Yes lots of free things would be nice but unfortunately these things all need money. Doctors aren't going to work for free and what is the point of doing well in college if it's free? If something happens to me I want the best doctor top of his class to work on me, I don't want some person that barely made it through to work on me. If education was free how many people would strive to do better? I don't think anything good would come from free healthcare and education.

I feel that there should be discounts given to those students that excel and are top of their class. Also think their should be different trigger points for financial aid. How about degrees that matter will be discounted? Trade school incentives? I mean there are 100s if not 1000s of ways to create some sort professional competitive edge to motivate people. If you aren't a competitive kind of person go flip burgers you need to have drive to get things done and be a productive member of society.

The money is already there, being wasted on new Tanks, the Joint Strike Fighter, and many other monetary black holes.

The more educated people there are, the more people are working on solutions. Not everyone was lucky enough to be born into the middle class. There are millions of kids that will have no opportunity for any kind of higher education. You all focus on free degrees, what about free trade school? That's a part of education. Not eveything is a degree in basket weaving.

Access to Healthcare should be a right. My MIL can't afford to get a flu shot. If we weren't paying for her to get it then she could lose her job, health, or die. Every year thousands of people die because they can't afford a flu shot. You guys act like this is a game, but people are dying. Think about the economic burden that puts on the American people. Nobody can be denied health care, so when poor people without insurance go to the emergency room tax payers are footing the bill anyway. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and costs about one tenth as well. We would likely pay less tax with a universal Healthcare system, which the military and federal employees already have access to! This is just one example. Think about the myriad of health problems that Americans face that are preventable. Diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and countless other potentially life ending diseases are easily prevented with regular routine health care. If folks were educated on top of universal health care, then Americans really would be unstoppable.


Would you rather have more tanks collecting dust in a field or not have to worry about what happens if you get hurt on the job?

 

[Seasoned Oak]

The money is already there, being wasted on new Tanks, the Joint Strike Fighter, and many other monetary black holes.

Well there's on thing we completely agree on is the war machine has been out of control for a long long time. I'm with Tulsi on that one. The insanity of getting involved in every skirmish on the globe will sap our resources for things we really need. But as far as college ,we are in desperate need of trades people. We already have plenty of philosophers and only 52 % of college students actually graduate. And plenty of that number are on free grants. More free college only seem to make the colleges richer and drive the tuition higher. And all the crying over student loans , the average student debt is 30 k ,the price of a car today. If you cant buy a car with your college degree salary,then youve wasted your time there.or picked the wrong degree. Not my problem or my responsibility to pay for it.

 

[Chas0218]

The money is already there, being wasted on new Tanks, the Joint Strike Fighter, and many other monetary black holes.

The more educated people there are, the more people are working on solutions. Not everyone was lucky enough to be born into the middle class. There are millions of kids that will have no opportunity for any kind of higher education. You all focus on free degrees, what about free trade school? That's a part of education. Not eveything is a degree in basket weaving.

Access to Healthcare should be a right. My MIL can't afford to get a flu shot. If we weren't paying for her to get it then she could lose her job, health, or die. Every year thousands of people die because they can't afford a flu shot. You guys act like this is a game, but people are dying. Think about the economic burden that puts on the American people. Nobody can be denied health care, so when poor people without insurance go to the emergency room tax payers are footing the bill anyway. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and costs about one tenth as well. We would likely pay less tax with a universal Healthcare system, which the military and federal employees already have access to! This is just one example. Think about the myriad of health problems that Americans face that are preventable. Diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and countless other potentially life ending diseases are easily prevented with regular routine health care. If folks were educated on top of universal health care, then Americans really would be unstoppable.


Would you rather have more tanks collecting dust in a field or not have to worry about what happens if you get hurt on the job?

How do you correlate free education means more people working? People that currently pay for college still don't work so how would it being free make people want to work? Lucky to be born in middle class? If lucky means have $75,000 in school loans to become a teacher that (in NY) requires a Masters Degree to Make $41,000? My parents couldn't help me out with college so I was all on my own. I worked hard to get my degree and am awarded with a job. It all comes down to life decisions, I started my college career as a machinist at that point all the trade jobs were moving over seas, I made the decision to change to education.

So you're telling me that Obamacare doesn't take care of your MIL? How would a government based universal healthcare be different, isn't that what Obamacare is? Your MIL can't afford a flu shot, Walmarts nationwide give them out for $20 with NO health coverage. I had a grandmother that was on a fixed income with medicare and it covered her flu shot.

Military wise I would prefer to have stuff we don't need than need stuff we don't have. The calculated cost of healthcare is $3.5 trillion/year for our nation, please tell me how we will get all the money from some tanks "sitting in a field"? Hypothetically lets say you're right maybe the first year not building tanks would pay for it but what about the next year lets project out 10 years growing at 4% like years past how will the added 4% cost of healthcare be covered? How about with the universal healthcare that says your MIL isn't sick enough to get treatment or what about you? Universal healthcare doesn't guarantee treatment! I know there are people that are denied on current healthcare systems but not for treatment but for tests. I'm also confused as to how anyone is denied healthcare Obamacare is healthcare for everyone, you have to deny healthcare through the gov't and pay a fine if you don't take the coverage or don't have your own healthcare. When the gov't owns the healthcare system they will decide whether you get treatment plan not you and/or your doctor. My father retired military I have seen and heard the stories of VA care you have no idea how bad the VA system is. Federal employees have healthcare through providers just like everyone else that has healthcare through a provider their plans are just different. Lets put it this way, unless all government officials and employees go on universal healthcare the rest of the public shouldn't.

Your logic is flawed there is no way support a universal healthcare system without taxing every individual $10,000 more ($10,739 was the healthcare expenses per a person in the US last year) per a year, and that doesn't cover any free education that you would like everyone to receive.

 

[Ashful]

I'm sorry climate change, global warming, whatever name you want to call it has been going on for 1000s of years.

Not to pick nits, but this is a pretty serious error. Climate change has been happening for 4.54 billion years, give or take 50 million years.

We have good data on the climate change over the last several hundred million years, and written records covering the last several thousand years. This same data is parsed differently to both prove and disprove man’s effect on climate change, depending on your politics.

I feel that there should be discounts given to those students that excel and are top of their class. Also think their should be different trigger points for financial aid. How about degrees that matter will be discounted?

This is already the case. I received full tuition, plus salary, for pursuing a Ph.D. in engineering, as do many others. Good luck in getting the same for philosophy, but for hard-working students in technical disciplines, there is always funding. 88% of undergraduate students at the university where I did my graduate studies received some sort of financial aid, and 50% of that was academically based (top performers in high school). So, I’m not really sure what argument you are trying to make, here.

 

[Chas0218]

Not to pick nits, but this is a pretty serious error. Climate change has been happening for 4.54 billion years, give or take 50 million years.

We have good data on the climate change over the last several hundred million years, and written records covering the last several thousand years. This same data is parsed differently to both prove and disprove man’s effect on climate change, depending on your politics.


This is already the case. I received full tuition, plus salary, for pursuing a Ph.D. in engineering, as do many others. Good luck in getting the same for philosophy, but for hard-working students in technical disciplines, there is always funding. 88% of undergraduate students at the university where I did my graduate studies received some sort of financial aid, and 50% of that was academically based (top performers in high school). So, I’m not really sure what argument you are trying to make, here.

I'm referring to the amount of time we (humans) have been impacting the environment. Anything before us we can't change because we weren't in the equation (depending what you believe). My point was more that we have been warming since the ice age. Yes the climate is changing.

It isn't across the board and in all concentrations with worker shortages. In the near future in NY we are going to have a teacher shortage. If that is the case why not give incentives. There are very few jobs that will pay for higher education and even less state and federal gov't incentives. The governor of NY just came out with free college for illegals and free college for anyone with household income less than 100k and willing to stay in NY 4 years after graduating.

 

[spirilis]

For those spouting various facts or factoids about climate changing over X number of billions of years or whatnot, take a look at this free online course:

SDGAcademyX: Climate Change: The Science and Global Impact

We need to understand the science behind global warming to avoid the most damaging and irreversible climate change impacts on people and planet.

www.edx.org

Dr. Michael Mann (PSU) will set the record straight for ya.

Yes climate has changed for billions of years, no we don't have any evidence from paleoclimatology yet that it's ever changed AS FAST as it is right now! We're shifting the climate at least a million times faster than the fastest we've ever seen from paleoclimatology research.

There are many feedback systems in play here that alter what Earth's atmosphere and biosphere will do under these conditions, we have no real precedent for how it will react with the speed of climate change we are observing. (Btw, it is fossil fuels responsible for most of it, we have isotopic fingerprints from the atmosphere's CO2 to thank for verifying this.)

 

[Chas0218]

Not to pick nits, but this is a pretty serious error. Climate change has been happening for 4.54 billion years, give or take 50 million years.

We have good data on the climate change over the last several hundred million years, and written records covering the last several thousand years. This same data is parsed differently to both prove and disprove man’s effect on climate change, depending on your politics.


This is already the case. I received full tuition, plus salary, for pursuing a Ph.D. in engineering, as do many others. Good luck in getting the same for philosophy, but for hard-working students in technical disciplines, there is always funding. 88% of undergraduate students at the university where I did my graduate studies received some sort of financial aid, and 50% of that was academically based (top performers in high school). So, I’m not really sure what argument you are trying to make, here.

I forgot to mention that financial aid also is consider federal subsidized loans, not free money. Almost all students qualify for some sort of subsidized loans just different amounts based on household income.

 

[spirilis]

The basic problem over all is, how do we retool modern society into one that uses largely non-GHG emitting energy sources, and can grow its energy usage commensurate with our desire to improve our lifestyle, while allowing those less endowed to improve their lifestyle as well.

Burning things is a bad deal for this. Every BTU of heat you get from burning things adds another 100,000 BTUs of heat to the planet over a ~300 year horizon of CO2 residence by way of infrared radiative forcing.

But we're really good at burning things, and lots of burnable things give us dense energy that batteries can't match. I'm hopeful carbon-neutral fuel technology (active CO2 sequestration and conversion into synthetic hydrocarbons) will get its due attention and effort, so long as we can power the process with non-burned fuels. I am hopeful agriculture can provide us biofuels that don't cost us more carbon than they provide, but I am also leery of land-use-case concerns and unintended consequences from that.

I don't believe anybody is truly "guilty" of "causing" global warming, it's the sum of quadrillions of choices made with good intentions in mind along with the basic reality of exponential growth from humanity's enormous success with technology since the industrial revolution. We are running up against the mother of all growing pains.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

The governor of NY just came out with free college for illegals and free college for anyone with household income less than 100k and willing to stay in NY 4 years after graduating.

4 YRs ? That could be a deal breaker right there. I guess they figure they could tax it back out of you in 4 short yrs.

 

[begreen]

4 YRs ? That could be a deal breaker right there. I guess they figure they could tax it back out of you in 4 short yrs.

Looks like things are drifting off topic today. Start a new topic on education in the Inglenook.

I find it ironic how so many are for change and needing for this or that. How many of you have given up burning wood and fossil fuels, added solar panels to your houses and became 100% self sufficient? How many own only electric cars (I won't debate how bad they are compared to ICE cars)?

Yes to all the above, except burning wood which is more carbon neutral. Fossil fuel furnace was pulled in 2006. Plus we grow a lot of our own food and try to buy locally.

 

[ABMax24]

I find it ironic how so many are for change and needing for this or that. How many of you have given up burning wood and fossil fuels, added solar panels to your houses and became 100% self sufficient? How many own only electric cars (I won't debate how bad they are compared to ICE cars)?

In the last 2 years we have: installed 3kw of solar panels to cover 100% of our annual electrical needs, replaced all lights with LED, increased the attic insulation to R-50, Installed a wood stove to hopefully cover ~75% of our heating needs displacing natural gas, we have parked my diesel F350 driving my gf's diesel Colorado instead that gets twice the mileage as our commuter vehicle.

I figure that for 2020 our CO2 emissions from fossil sources will be less than half that of 2018. And our quality of life hasn't changed. We drive a nicer riding vehicle that's easier to park, we have to get and split wood but we like drives in the country anyway, and a little exercise does us good.

 

[Microduck17]

I have a 5kw solar system that has reduced my grid power consumption by about 3/4 and we heat by wood exclusively using keroseane and electric as backup. I plan on moving to a larger property and rasing most of my own food. The path humanity is currently on is not sustainable long term. My goal is to get as far removed from the failing systems as possible before they crash down around us.

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

 

[Ashful]

With options to support and drive expansion of clean power generation thru deregulation, is the manufacture, installation, and eventual disposal of private solar and the often associated storage really a more environmentally responsible choice? In other words, if you can sign up to buy your energy from companies employing renewable sources, wouldn’t this be more efficient and promote more widespread change than installing your own less efficient private system?

 

[Seasoned Oak]

All a drop in the bucket IMO as long as the population continues to increase. Most especially the population in developed countries even if thru immigration. As well as most of the population doing nothing but consuming ,and not much is the way of substantial changes to lifestyle. Sorry to sound so pessimistic, but that seems the reality to me.

 

[Zack R]

With options to support and drive expansion of clean power generation thru deregulation, is the manufacture, installation, and eventual disposal of private solar and the often associated storage really a more environmentally responsible choice? In other words, if you can sign up to buy your energy from companies employing renewable sources, wouldn’t this be more efficient and promote more widespread change than installing your own less efficient private system?

I'd say the best approach is to encourage both. For folks with the space and resources to install their own solar system they should be encouraged. For everyone else we should continually modernize and clean up the commercial power generation system as a whole.

One major change that is currently underway and will only accelerate in the coming years are improvements in energy storage (on a commercial scale). Increased adoption of energy storage will take away the key disadvantage of renewable energy (variable output) further driving down the cost of renewable energy and therefore increasing development nationwide.

Here's an example from this morning. Notice how the natural gas energy production is displaced by solar as soon as it ramps up for the day. Now imagine if there was a massive storage reserve that could carry some of that load, which would reduce the need for natural gas usage. Of course you would need to "fill" the battery storage from somewhere and that could come from increased wind energy development since wind power output is often higher at night, while at the same time electricity demand is lower.

http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.aspx

 

[Ashful]

One major change that is currently underway and will only accelerate in the coming years are improvements in energy storage (on a commercial scale). Increased adoption of energy storage will take away the key disadvantage of renewable energy (variable output) further driving down the cost of renewable energy and therefore increasing development nationwide.

I’ve been saying it since nearly the day I saw my first EV, this is going to solve our storage problem. 100 million EV’s plugged into the grid at any given time, if properly managed by a smart company like Tesla or other third-party, can provide a massive amount of storage. Furthermore, with the nation’s fleet of EV’s charging primarily overnight, it’s an opportunity for more nuclear baseline, which can’t be throttled on a daily time scale.

 

[begreen]

For those that think some warmer temps could be a good thing, here is another domino effect discovery by an experiment in Minnesota on how accelerated warming affect the local ecosystem. It's funded by the US Department of Energy and is a collaboration between the USDA Forest Service and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Tucked away in a northern Minnesota forest, researchers work on first-of-its-kind climate change experiment

Only a few years into the decade-long experiment, researchers are starting to see results - and they're not good.

www.kare11.com

 

[spirilis]

For those that think some warmer temps could be a good thing, here is another domino effect discovery by an experiment in Minnesota on how accelerated warming affect the local ecosystem. It's funded by the US Department of Energy and is a collaboration between the USDA Forest Service and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Tucked away in a northern Minnesota forest, researchers work on first-of-its-kind climate change experiment

Only a few years into the decade-long experiment, researchers are starting to see results - and they're not good.

www.kare11.com

Wow. More positive feedback in the climate system--all that peat moss decomposing accelerates the process faster.

 

[Where2]

With options to support and drive expansion of clean power generation thru deregulation, is the manufacture, installation, and eventual disposal of private solar and the often associated storage really a more environmentally responsible choice? In other words, if you can sign up to buy your energy from companies employing renewable sources, wouldn’t this be more efficient and promote more widespread change than installing your own less efficient private system?

Answer to second question NO: For starters: my 4.4kW PV system doesn't have the inherent energy losses between the generation facility and my house (Grid losses). My array's cost also doesn't have the overhead for flying the CEO of the local power company over my house at 7:50AM, five days a week in a helicopter from Miami, the stock options they give him as a perk, his employer 401k contribution, his health insurance expenses, nor does my PV array have the expense of shareholder profits for a monopoly company. Quite honestly, the power company seems to be doing quite well without my monthly payment. They installed several 75MW PV installations last year, without my monthly contributions.

As for "disposal of private solar": Main components of my array are Glass, Aluminum, Copper, the silicon cells themselves (which still produce power if you break them in two), the plastic back sheet, and the encapsulant (with a consistency of silicone RTV). I'm not quite sure why anyone envisions "disposal of PV array components" to be difficult? They don't contain nearly the crazy cocktail of hazardous fluids that a modern automobile contains, and yet as a society we somehow manage to recycle cars, trucks, and semis without destroying our environment. A PV array doesn't contain trace amounts of radioactive material like a smoke detector, but everyone can have a smoke detector in their house...

As for personal energy storage, I have a 35kW battery. It has four wheels, and a VW badge on it. When the grid monopolist figures out a way to tie my over-generating home PV array to my EV sitting in my office parking lot 5' from a power outlet together, then my overproduction at my residence at solar noon can go into my EV battery. In the meantime, I just use Net Metering to give me the same result, and charge the EV on the weekend at the house.