They "lost" the heat. (Rant)

Since all the world's reserves of fossil fuels come from previous generations of living plants and animals, that means at one time, all that fuel was in the form of CO2 that was in the atmosphere.

Is there any data that would tell us the earth's temperature, when life started to appear but before CO2 was sequestered by life to make fossil fuels? This would give us an upper limit of temperature, at the extremes of CO2.

There is also sequestered CO2 in the form of limestome and shells, but we can ignore this for the time being.

 

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"More solar energy is proportional more heat." This energy balance was made very simplistic.
The fossil fuels aren't solar energy? Plants don't use solar energy?
Example: Glucose (a simple sugar) is created in the plant by photosynthesis.
6 CO2 + 6 H2O + light → C6H12O6 + 6 O2

 

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And they ALL do.

If the EPA doesn't agree they take them to court and the court decides.
Hint, they don't always agree with the EPA, but if they do, then they always comply.

I disagree.
Environmental protection is not an absolute.
In the case I presented in Oklahoma the EPA made a fundamental error in pro-rating the cost of the fix over 5 times as long as the plants will last.

Sure we have poured Billions into making them cleaner, but then they produce half of our electricity, and will for the forseeable future, and the remain the lowest cost per kWh for our baseline needs. Your rant is ok, but not productive since you have no reasonable alternative.

You say use Natural Gas, but NG costs more than twice as much as coal, and if we seriously switched half of our coal use to NG it would drive up the price of NG, making it even more expensive, as well as driving up the price of cooking and heating for those many millions who use it for that purpose.
You say use Wind and Solar, but they cost more than three times as much as coal and without very expensive storage solutions, they don't work as baseline.
The only real alternative is Nuclear and I don't hear you singing it's praises.

So, except for Nuclear, there are no reasonable alternatives for the next several decades.
If the Feds FORCE us to use expensive alternatives they will help to bring about the end of most of our manufacturing base and maybe 20 million jobs.

No, it doesn't kill any normal healthy persons.
Not a one.
It might very slightly shorten the life of the very elderly and particularly those who have screwed up their lungs from smoking.
BIG DIFFERENCE.

I do, and I think it has absolutely nothing to do with the issue.

Not a non-issue, but it is one that we need to put in perspective.
The plants aren't killing anyone.

But we CAN provide ourselves with cheap power and then the rest follows.
In the meantime, the air is not going to kill them.
Indeed, our life expectancy continues to grow.

Big OOPS in your logic.

Arthur

 

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I don't know why Dr. Spencer bothers trying to debunk climate change. He doesn't seem to be very good at it, and he believes that god is in control anyway.

 

Nuclear, geothermal and hydro as baseline, natural gas as peakers, solar and wind as opportunity generators.

And its external costs are a tenth of what coal's are. From a societal perspective it's a lot cheaper.

Yes, it would. And more people would survive for longer - and live better lives while they are alive. I've seen people die of COPD, and it's not pleasant.

It's a good option. Why are you against it?

Again, you think the old and sick "don't count." No one agrees with you. The law certainly doesn't.

Then you have just invalidated your previous statement.

You are literally incorrect. Power is not cheap where I live.

However, change your statement to "we COULD provide them with cheap power" and you'd be correct. We could sell power at a cent a kilowatt, and give it away free to the very poor, so that no one would have to go without air conditioning, or have to starve to be able to afford to run their TV. We could give quality cars to poor people (or subsidize them to whatever level required) so that they do not have to suffer the (sometimes dangerous) indignity of walking, and do not have to drive in unsafe older cars. We could ensure they have cheap gas. Perhaps pass a law that requires stations to sell gas at 50 cents a gallon, or just plain subsidize it.

Would that be a world you wanted to live in?

You just admitted it would. (To be exact, you admitted it would kill the elderly and the sick, who you don't count as very important.)

 

Except Hydro and Geothermal leaves out most of the country and we don't have any new nuclear plants under construction nor a place to put their waste, so Nuclear is a NON-STARTER for at least a decade.

Based on WHAT rational analysis????
You don't think there are significant negative societal impacts from driving up the price of electricity AND natural gas?????

No they wouldn't live longer. When you account for our murder rates and higher infant mortality rates we live as long as anyone else on the planet. There is no evidence at all that coal has any significant impact on overall life expectancy.
COPD is not caused by the amount of pollution from coal. Our cities, like LA, are far more polluted (and have been) and they don't burn coal in LA.

I'm not against it, but the economics of building them suck and we have no place to put the waste and we quickly learned from Fuchishima that that seriously increases the risk and in general most of society is against it and after Fuchishima that is NOT going to change.

I didn't say they didn't count, but in terms of societal cost they don't count as much as the young and healthy. Rational people along with the insurance companies and juries certainly agree with that.

LOL, they must not burn coal then.
Yes, US Electric power IS cheap.
The US RETAIL average is 11c kWh and the Wholsale price is less than 5c

Your state may do things to drive the price up, but it's not because it costs that much to generate (unless you live in Alaska or Hawaii).

We can provide them with cheap power now. I didn't say anything about subsidizing the power. Our use of coal, and even with the billions to clean up the stacks, still results in fairly inexpensive power.

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Quit with the STRAWMEN.

No I didn't.
We all die, and the majority of people we are talking about, what kills them is NOT a tiny amount of SOx in the air, in most cases it is the long term impact of smoking, bad living or simply the impact of old age.

So while statistics can be used to show that there is a small but measurable amount of harvesting going on when pollution levels are higher (not all caused by power plants of course), but that's really not the same as saying people are being killed by them.

It's a pointless argument, or do you think that if the air was totally clean we would live significantly longer.

But that's NOT what the facts tell us:

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0030260

Being Black and Poverty (and especially being Poor and Black) are the big killers.

Driving up the rates of electricity will land more people in poverty and that will kill far more people in the long run.

Arthur