“It’s Crunch Time and Biden’s Climate Gambit Faces Steep Hurdles.”
So many news
articles on the climate emergency are showing up on line. I just saw one titled
“It’s Crunch Time and Biden’s Climate Gambit Faces Steep Hurdles.” I want to
share some thoughts on some of its main points.
I am not going to comment on the political statements in this article and leave that to the political pundits. But I would like to make counter arguments to the scientific and economic arguments presented by the various groups mentioned in the article. Let’s start off with this statement from the article:
“Republican leaders on Capitol Hill say forcing utilities to turn away from coal, oil and gas will mean higher electric bills.”
At the very least this statement is false because coal has been priced out of the market by all other sources of energy. So saying that to ‘stop burning coal’ is going to make electric bills higher is ridiculous. It’s akin to saying stopping the production of buggy whips is going to increase the cost of automobiles! The better question is what is the true cost of electricity produced with greenhouse gas producing fuels? When you include the cost to the consumer of the increase in homeowner’s and flood insurance; the increase in taxes to pay for emergency services; and the cost of infrastructure damage caused by the storms, any fossil fuel produced electricity is too expensive.
The price of green energy has decreased dramatically in the past several years and will continue to do so. I’m no economist but I believe the economy of scale plays an import role in decreasing the cost of a product. The more it is supported the more its cost decreases. If we were to take the tax breaks away from the oil industry and redirect them to green energy businesses we might just make some headway in stopping the climate emergency.
Let’s take a look at this next comment in the article about the proposed clean energy standard:
“The administration has offered few details about such a standard, other than it should include nuclear energy and should also incorporate technology to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions, which could allow some fossil fuel plants to continue operating.”
The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster; does anybody remember that? Flooding of the electrical systems by a tsunami following an earthquake caused reactor meltdowns and an explosion of a spent fuel pool. They have still not cleaned up the radiation and it continues to put radioactive particles into the ocean. One hundred thousand people have been displaced. All of our nuclear power stations that are located at the coast are in jeopardy of the flooding of their electrical systems from the increasingly intense hurricanes and rise in sea level. The electrical systems are needed to keep the reactor cores cool, as well as the used fuel stored in the spent fuel pools. There will never be another nuclear power plant built simply because it is too expensive. As glaciers melt and global atmospheric temperature raises, the probability of existing nuclear power plants continuing to operate becomes less. Nuclear energy is a poor choice to depend upon for a secure electricity future.
As far as carbon capture, currently there are about twenty or so carbon capture facilities in operation associated directly with an industrial process. They reduce the amount of carbon the industrial process produces. There are only around 20 projects world wide that remove CO2 directly from the air. Because current carbon capture technology is not economically feasible, it is not used in any meaningful way to have an effect on carbon dioxide reduction. It is certainly better to have any amount of carbon captured than none, but this small amount of carbon capture cannot be used to justify the continued use of fossil fuels. The amount being produced far exceeds the amount being removed so the total accumulation of CO2 continues to increase. Currently the maximum ppm of CO2 measured this year was 415 and it is projected to increase by 2.5 ppm each year.
With less than 10 years to make a dramatic change in the heating up of the atmosphere, all methods of reducing greenhouse gases needs to be implemented. However, with limited resources efforts should be directed to those that can have the greatest effect.
What about that other greenhouse gas that is heating up the atmosphere, methane? When we compare the amount of heat each molecule of methane and carbon dioxide produces we see that methane heats the atmosphere at a rate that is 35 times more than carbon dioxide. Also, the time it takes for methane to break down and stop heating the atmosphere is around 12 years. Carbon dioxide takes hundreds of years so if we stop putting methane into the atmosphere today the existing methane in the atmosphere will be gone in 12 years. A huge source of methane is from animal agriculture. If we would stop eating animal products today we would significantly slow global warming and give us time to work on reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. No high tech solution needed there, just eat the ‘corn’ rather than feeding it to the animals. ( See our previous article for more information on animal agriculture and methane. https://planetearthneedsyou.blogspot.com/2020/09/lessons-from-pandemic-and-actions-that.html
We should also take steps to prevent the atmosphere from heating up by preventing the incoming sunlight from heating surfaces on earth. Dark colored surfaces heat up when sunlight strikes them, and send long wave radiation into the atmosphere which heats up the greenhouse gases. Light colored surfaces bounce back as short wave radiation which does not cause the greenhouse gasses to heat up.
If we remember that it is the greenhouse effect that is heating our planet and understand what the greenhouse effect is, we soon realize that simple actions like painting roofs white to reflect short wave radiation back into the atmosphere will help keep the atmosphere from getting hot. When you plant a tree it will shade the surface and keep the surface cool and also sequester CO2. There are a myriad of non-technical ways, that don’t rely on the government to implement, that will fight climate change. Find one that works for you.
References.
It’s Crunch Time and Biden’s Climate Gambit Faces Steep Hurdles (msn.com)
Carbon capture technology: Why we aren’t further along (cnbc.com)
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