They "lost" the heat. (Rant)

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You know it's a good thread when this guy gets cited.

Dr. Roy Spencer:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/roy-spencer-on-intelligent-design/

Things don't look too great for his climate science either. http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Roy_Spencer

 

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That's because States are allowed to consider the remaining Useful life of the plants in implementing their State Implementation Plans of the CAA.
So like I said, it might take time but still it is a reasonable cost effective approach to the problem.

BART = Best Available Retrofit Technology

The EPA can take them to court if they don't agree.

http://www.occeweb.com/pu/EPA/Haze Comments/Comments of OCC PUD_05-23-2011.pdf

Again, this is limited in scope and we are able to be deal with it via stricter regulation, but all sources of power have negative impacts, even gas.

http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-09-...explosion-wind-whipped-blaze-smoke-inhalation

No, you set reasonable standards, which are not necessarily one size fits all, but are based on the societal cost/benefit.

Yes, but raising the price of electricity has just as high a societal cost, if not higher than your proposed solutions. Electricity is factored into the cost of almost everything, raising it's cost is a highly regressive tax on the poor, and poor people also die each year because they can't afford it at today's rates.

Exaggerate much?
The report you posted estimates that it is about half that amount, and it is going down at a good clip simply by installing scrubbers.
More to the point, the report is a statistical analysis of death rates and does not at all segregate out deaths of otherwise healthy people caused by Coal plants, and that number would be ZERO. A more rational explanation is that Coal emissions (along with O3 from automobile exhaust) result in a little exaggerated "harvesting" of generally very sick people, mostly from the effects of heart and lung disease primaily from OTHER causes (mostly smoking). You can use statistics in a lot of ways, but this is one that is used to prove a partisan point but does not illuminate the issue at all.

It would proceed faster but:

So when that's done the supposed "death toll" from coal will be again be more than cut in half.

Arthur

 

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Yes, companies save a lot of money by not complying with EPA standards for power plant emissions. We are fortunate that most other agencies do not have such loopholes; imagine airlines operating unsafe aircraft because they're about to retire them anyway.

Agreed. Coal is, by far, the dirtiest and most damaging of all sources of power, even though all sources have negative impacts. So the question is - should we be pursuing the dirtiest, most damaging generation source we have, or one of the many cleaner options?

You set reasonable standards determined by societal impacts to health and maintenance of our ecosystem, not on what makes power plant operators more money.

Killing someone directly is far, far different than killing someone by making something more expensive. This is well codified in our laws.

Prove it.

Ah. Well, some "harvesting" of people must be acceptable, then. What standards do you use to determine who is "harvestable?" Age? Health? Socioeconomic status?

So only 6000 people a year would be killed? An odd way to try to argue for a source of power.

 

You could indeed. Of course, you have posted a link to a joke that mocks people who believe in such things.

You could. But you would then be moving out of the realm of science into the realm of emotion and politics.

It's quite possible to have a mature discussion about AGW; thousands of scientists do so all the time. Or one can have a discussion about alarmism vs denialism; that's the political side of the argument. The two are not the same, although are often confused.

 

So anyways that's my point...dirty coal is "evil". I challenge environmentalists to make it a HUGE priority and get it "fixed"(lobby/science/whatever). Then I will be confident they can actually do something about bigger problems.

 

billvon, my argument is emotional BECAUSE the issue has become political. I'm not a denier (more like a very mild skeptic) but the science is really irrelevant because the conclusions drawn and solutions offered by the loudest AGW proponents all tend to head in the same direction...political power grabs with an undertone of a global redistribution of wealth.

You, billvon, probably have very sincere intentions and seem reasonable but in my experience the correlation coefficient between Socialist Utopian Dreamers and the Green Movement is very close to 1. Truly impartial scientists are just collateral damage in a larger movement.

 

I'd characterize deniers the same way, and they have the strength of the oil and coal industries behind them (as well as the republican party.) Indeed, they use denial as a very powerful tool to increase both their profits and their power, and overall I have little tolerance for those find environmental damage an inconsequential side effect when profit is to be had.

But yes, in general I agree; both deniers and alarmists are generally more interested in what the theory can do for them than the theory itself.

 

Well, to this point I've seen flat-out deniers as "useful idiots" whose interests happen to be aligned with my own. I have faith that humans can alter the ecosystem in theory, which seems to be what some deniers take issue with.

The Forbes piece really nails things though.

I would expect that those on the side of Truth and Science would be the first to own up to such a large discrepancy between presumptions and subsequent observations. I DO NOT SEE THIS HAPPENING. I haven't seen any minds being changed on the side that has been embracing "the science", even though there appears to be some evidence that the prediction models are deeply flawed. This is sufficient proof to me that my original suspicions about people's motives are correct.

 

Virtually all Power Companies are regulated by PUBLIC SERVICE commissions.
They would make the same amount of money regardless of fuel they use.

It is the STATE's public service commissions that are pushing back against the over-zealous Feds, not businesses.

Which is why the OCC is pushing back on the EPA for requiring (EPA estimates) about $299 million for the Sooner plant, $307 million for the Muskogee plant, and $274 million for the Northeastern plant.

But the units in question have already been in operation for over 31 years and so by the time the scrubbers are installed three years from now, the plants would have about five years of remaining life.

Therefore, the approximately $300 million investment required for each of the plants would only be amortized over a short number of years and then the ratepayers would incur the costs to replace the retiring coal plants with new generation.

The EPA's flawed analysis amortizes the cost of installing scrubbers over 30 years and thus vastly underestimates the real cost impact to ratepayers

Well Coal is also the cheapest large scale base-line power generation system we have in place and we have done a significant amount to clean them up and so we need to continue to do what we can to make energy as inexpensive as possible because energy costs are a key factor in the competitiveness of our industries and we need to, at the same time, make our energy generation clean and environmentally sound as is economically prudent.

There is a balance.

Again, power plant operators profits are REGULATED.
Quit trying to paint this as some corporate rip-off of the community.
It isn't.
The OCC I quoted above works for the interests of the people, not the power companies.

BS, they are both dead.

Well your link didn't prove causation either. It's a statistical analysis, and clearly the people who are dying are predominately the elderly else this wouldn't be true:

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_le00_in&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=us+life+expectancy#ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:USA&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en

Our air is not going to kill any reasonably healthy individual.

In fact it's pretty obvious that background levesl of SOx, O3 and NOx primarily affect those in very poor health (only the first is from power plants).

To dispute this means only means you simply haven't been in a hospital recently.

I'd pick extremely old Age and self induced bad health over poverty because the latter is correctable. The first two aren't, and SOx selects from the first two while raising the price of electricity both selects from the lower socioeconomic status group but also pushes more into that group.

The fact is there is no pure/safe baseline power as every one of them has risks and societal impacts. More to the point, Wind and Solar aren't yet workable for Baseline power.

No it's not.
Since no baseline source of power is without it's hazards, and the people supposedly "killed" by this are most likely from a little early harvesting of those who have severely damaged their lungs and circulation system from smoking friggin cigarettes their whole life. Again, you have to look at total societal impact and the negative impact of higher electricity prices would likely yield much more pain and suffering.

Arthur

 

Again, though, this is an emotional argument, not a scientific one. Wanting scientists to "eat crow" has nothing to do with the science behind the issue, nor is it all that important.*

You don't need to make doctors admit that they were wrong about smoking to validate the research that links smoking and cancer. Indeed, if you tried, you'd likely get somewhat indignant responses from doctors saying "I never said it was safe; I had nothing to do with that research!"

(* - I didn't see any deniers admit their mistakes back when they claimed that "climate change ended in 1998", or when they predicted that the planet would start cooling. But again, that doesn't matter much; what matters is what is actually happening.)

 

It isn't about eating crow, it's about willingly incorporating new data into the theory. When one side is claiming that "the science is settled and undebatable" then you'd better be pretty damn sure that's the case. That is simply not the case, and the scrambling to sweep new data under the rug (such as the "missing heat" in the OP of this thread, or the ignoring of the Forbes piece) exposes ulterior motives of the movement beyond pure Science.

 

Global warming is real, the cause of it is somewhat less certain. Let's please make that distinction. The article referenced did not imply that there was no detectable global warming, only that it seemed to warm less than predicted given the increase in greenhouse gasses. If this causes you to reject all of climate science, you have no credible intellect to criticize science at all.

 

Sure. We are 1.5 F warmer than 100 years ago. It seems man-made. Beyond that, here be dragons as far as I'm concerned.

We could have a nuclear holocaust a lot sooner than 100 years from now. Let's solve that one, it's easier to solve than global warming. We could generally run out of food long before that, let's make sure Africa can get it's bread baskets going...generally get the 3rd world into the 21st century. We could have 3-5 economic catastrophes causing all kinds of potential mini-extinction events, before "global warming" is even a factor about our survival.

Frankly we cannot solve these problems...how are we going to solve an issue that will absolutely require the cooperation of at least the majority of the planet?

 

Global warming is already causing real human impact, including possibly droughts in Africa. The good thing is that transitioning to sustainable sources of energy will also be good for the economy, since an economy based on a limited resource is doomed to fail.

 

Yes. And thus there would be resistance in the future to employing inherently dirty technologies, since they would understand that they might have to pay to clean it up. I see this as a good thing.

In a purely internal monetary sense - absolutely. It pushes the cost into the environment, and so the actual monetary cost to the generator is considerably lower, even if the societal cost is higher. There are a great many ways to externalize costs - not treat sewage, harvest forests unsustainably, skimp on public safety measures, reduce oil rig mitigation measures and just live with more spills - and all of them make that industry cheaper and more efficient monetarily. Fortunately we have come to realize that external costs are real as well, and are thus coming up with methods of requiring such industries to account for external costs as well.

Absolutely! And when we have a choice of energy technologies, choosing those that DO maintain a good balance between energy, pollution, risk and CO2 emissions is an excellent idea.

Are you serious? Are you really going to tell me that if someone you cared died because they couldn't afford an expensive course of chemo vs. seeing them killed by a drunk driver, you would feel the same way towards the drunk driver as towards cancer researchers?

I don't believe you.

Which is akin to saying "drunk drivers don't kill anyone with reasonable reflexes and a safe car." That may well be true - but is sort of immaterial.

Definitely true. So we should choose those sources with the least risks and the least societal impacts, eh?

Agreed.

To use your argument, the people who will suffer are the very poor, and they don't matter much; a little "early harvesting" of people who would probably die anyway.

Does that argument work as well?

 

Yes but so far most impact appears to be positive with actual documented negative impact minimal at best.

More of Africa is greening.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html

Or compare 2003 Grain production vs 2009

Maise 637 MMT at 3.41 t/ha vs 817 MMT at 5.12 t/ha
Wheat 549 MMT at 2.75 t/ha vs 681 MMT at 3.02 t/ha
Rice 588 MMT at 3.37 t/ha vs 678 MMT at 4.2 t/ha

http://nue.okstate.edu/crop_information/tables12.html
http://nue.okstate.edu/crop_information/world_wheat_production.htm

In every catagory the total and the yield per acre continues to increase.

Arthur

 

Not at all.
It is quite a different thing to build a new clean plant, then to spend nearly a billion dollars to clean up a plant that will be torn down in 5 years anyway.
Save the money so you can afford to build the new plant.

Yup.
Doesn't mean it makes sense to pour money into a plant which will be retired in a few years.
Clearly we have been cleaning up our coal plants, to continue to say otherwise is simply ignoring what has been going on in the industry.

And our new Clean Coal plants fit that bill.

Not at all what I was saying. quit making strawmen.

No it's not at all the same thing.
Come on, you're smarter than that.

Yeah, clean coal technology is pretty well proven to meet those requirements.

No, you are the one who favors policies that clearly don't give a shit about the poor because increasing the cost of electricity is VERY regressive.

Arthur

 

If you're going to use the fear of death-by-pollution as a justification for the Green Movement, my retort is that global economy growth is BY FAR the number one factor in preventing premature death. Pollution-related death is infinitesimal compared to starvation and disease in poor countries. To the extent that the Green Movement wants to force regulations upon producers that grossly affect productivity in the name of being Green, they are essentially murdering the very people they are supposedly concerned about. Red herring.

 

Sounds good. In the meantime, meet requirements.

I agree; it often does not make economic sense. However, that takes a back seat to environmental protection. "That well wasn't a great well anyway; we didn't want to pour money into a well that wasn't going to produce much" is a good excuse to perhaps abandon the well. It is not, however, an excuse that justifies skimping so much that the result is an oil spill, for example - even if it makes good economic sense.

Does that mean that poor drivers will not be able to afford gas to get to work? Perhaps. We can't make gas cheap. All we can do is try to avoid the worst of the oil spills.

I agree. Indeed, the fact that we have poured billions into cleaning up coal power plants - and the fact that they are STILL the dirtiest source of power around - is one of the strongest condemnations of them.

By the numbers you yourself suggested, we may get to a point where we kill "only" 6000 people a year with coal power. No other power source has that level of risk associated with it. It's definitely cheap and profitable for a great many people. That does not excuse the risk.

BVN: "Killing someone directly is far, far different than killing someone by making something more expensive. This is well codified in our laws."

AD: "BS, they are both dead."

So which is it? Is killing someone directly different than killing someone by making something more expensive? Or is it BS? If it's BS, and you really see no difference between the two, then that drunk driver who killed your friend is no different than the cancer researcher who came up with an expensive treatment. In both cases, your friend is dead.

But again, I don't think you believe that, and you don't really think it's BS.

And you seem to be making the argument that we should not care about whether the old or the sick die; indeed, you think that "harvesting" them is a non-issue.

We cannot make everyone rich. We cannot provide them all with cheap power, cheap gasoline, nice cars, warm houses, air conditioning and chemo. We can, however, make sure the air they breathe doesn't kill them. People can work hard and become wealthier. No one can avoid breathing.