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UN Climate Treaty Will Cost $100 Trillion and Won't Work

longview said:
We need to remember that Standard Oil's first commercial product was kerosene to replace whale oil for lighting.
kerosene filled the need at a much lower price.
Refining was used to lower the volatility of kerosene, by stripping off the bad things like gasoline.
People will switch to alternate fuels, when those fuels are naturally the lowest cost option that still fills their needs.
I think the cost of making fuel from scratch, will soon be more profitable for the oil companies than crude oil.
If people want to improve the environment and help humanity, they should do all they can to drive down the price
of wholesale electricity, as that is what will cause the cost lines to cross quicker.
What does that really mean to the normal person, mostly what they were doing anyway, adding things to your home
to reduce the amount of your electric bill, insulation, better windows, more efficient air conditioners, ect.
There is usually better savings on the simple stuff, before solar will help much.
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This is natural progress.

longview said:
As people add solar to their homes, the government needs to unify the grid attach laws, so the grid owner
has a reason to allow you to input power to his grid.
Here in the US, solving the unknown problems that will accompany such a transition, will position us to
expand the concept to nations around the world.
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I'm not agreeing with that so much.

You are asking to make a power company, a storage of energy. You are asking them to take your extra energy, when in a short time, they too will be creating an excess with their own solar systems. Once they also have an excess, this is an unethical demand on business.

The solution is storage systems to be made.
 
Jack Hays said:
Greetings, longview.

From further down in the text:

. . . And the shale revolution has yet to go global. When it does, oil and gas in tight rock formations will give the world ample supplies of hydrocarbons for decades, if not centuries. Lurking in the wings for later technological breakthroughs is methane hydrate, a seafloor source of gas that exceeds in quantity all the world’s coal, oil and gas put together.
So those who predict the imminent exhaustion of fossil fuels are merely repeating the mistakes of the U.S. presidential commission that opined in 1922 that “already the output of gas has begun to wane. Production of oil cannot long maintain its present rate.” Or President Jimmy Carter when he announced on television in 1977 that “we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”
That fossil fuels are finite is a red herring. The Atlantic Ocean is finite, but that does not mean that you risk bumping into France if you row out of a harbor in Maine. The buffalo of the American West were infinite, in the sense that they could breed, yet they came close to extinction. It is an ironic truth that no nonrenewable resource has ever run dry, while renewable resources—whales, cod, forests, passenger pigeons—have frequently done so. . . .
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Jack, I think fracking shale for natural gas has a long future, oil is really a different story.
Many of the crews that did that as well as the well owners who hired them have gone out of business.
The problem was that it was too effective, and drove the price of oil below the profit margin.
So the well owners now have a well that produces three times as much oil, but they only make 1/10the the gross profit on each barrel,
and the little profit was offset by the cost of the fracking operation.
 
longview said:
Jack, I think fracking shale for natural gas has a long future, oil is really a different story.
Many of the crews that did that as well as the well owners who hired them have gone out of business.
The problem was that it was too effective, and drove the price of oil below the profit margin.
So the well owners now have a well that produces three times as much oil, but they only make 1/10the the gross profit on each barrel,
and the little profit was offset by the cost of the fracking operation.
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Time will tell.
 
Jack Hays said:
Time will tell.
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That is true!
Keep in mind that enhanced recovery techniques, shorten the life of oil reservoirs.
The get more oil from the well quicker, but the supply does not last as long.
In the long term, I think once the refinery operators move away from the volatile pricing of oil,
they will be somewhat hesitant to move back, businesses like predictability.
 
LowDown said:
This, again, is assuming the UN's climate models are accurate. But we know they aren't. So in addition to spending a lot of money to get nothing it will have been for nothing, a complete and utter waste of wealth for no good reason.

Climate scientist John Christie has said the same thing.
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2 out of thousands? False equivalency?
Like putting a creationist arguing with an evolutionist. Implies they are equal.
Whoops, forgot, 1/2 of americans don't believe in evolution
 
Jack Hays said:
Cover up?


[h=1]Climate Hypocrite Trudeau Government Blocks Canadian Carbon Audit[/h]Guest essay by Eric Worrall Auditor General Michael Ferguson has complained to the Canadian Parliament that the finance ministry refused to hand over documents required for him to complete an audit of Canadian fossil fuel subsidies. Canada blocked climate change audit: official May 16, 2017 by Michel Comte Canada’s auditor general blasted Prime Minister Justin…
Continue reading →
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They may not have to for long:

China is the world's largest market for both photovoltaics and solar thermal energy. In 2013, China was the world's leading installer of solar photovoltaics reaching a total installed capacity of 35.78GW by end-June 2015. Solar PV is a growing industry with over 400 photovoltaic companies.
Solar power in China - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/solar_power_in_china
Click to expand...
 
LowDown said:
This, again, is assuming the UN's climate models are accurate. But we know they aren't. So in addition to spending a lot of money to get nothing it will have been for nothing, a complete and utter waste of wealth for no good reason.

Climate scientist John Christie has said the same thing.
Click to expand...

The UN is trying to be the first of the world governments. Any really any surprise they fail in 'world government' sized way? :lamo
 
Lord of Planar said:
I don't think you will find anyone who denies that notion. The problem is that reasonable people wish to allow a natural transition instead of forcing it at a higher cost.


Oh please. Are you really that ignorant?

The conservative approach would be to find some way to raise them like livestock, increasing their numbers. Not dwindling them. That not being practical, there would be something other than wiping them out.


Who listens to the wackiest voices, other than what might be in people's heads?
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So, if conservative ideology had prevailed, we'd have whale farms instead of oil wells. Now, that sounds nice and practical.

And yes, people do listen to the wackiest voices, including the ones who say the transition from fossil fuels will cost a hundred trillion dollars. If it were not so, this thread wouldn't exist, would it?
 
Dittohead not! said:
That's what they said about whale oil and tallow.
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Dittohead not! said:
So, if conservative ideology had prevailed, we'd have whale farms instead of oil wells. Now, that sounds nice and practical.

And yes, people do listen to the wackiest voices, including the ones who say the transition from fossil fuels will cost a hundred trillion dollars. If it were not so, this thread wouldn't exist, would it?
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The situations are not remotely comparable.
 
Dittohead not! said:
That's what they said about whale oil and tallow.
Click to expand...

The issue was quite a bit more complicated than that.

[h=3]The "Whale Oil Myth" | PBS NewsHour[/h]www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/this-post-is-hopelessly-long-w/



Aug 20, 2008 - The fact is that kerosene did not simply replace whale oil. ... So I thanked Professor Kovarik, and copied the entire exchange to Lave, not only a ...
 
Dittohead not! said:
So, if conservative ideology had prevailed, we'd have whale farms instead of oil wells. Now, that sounds nice and practical.

And yes, people do listen to the wackiest voices, including the ones who say the transition from fossil fuels will cost a hundred trillion dollars. If it were not so, this thread wouldn't exist, would it?
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I envision the transition to alternate fuels to be almost completely transparent.
The price of gas at the pump goes up as the price of oil increase (not an unheard of pattern).
At some point they change the color of one of the pump handles, and while the old handles prices increase,
the new color pump seems fairly stable, and the prices are passed up by the older choices.
People find out the new fuel does the same thing as the old fuel, but is cheaper, so they choose it.
The refinery operators like the idea that the cost of the feedstock is more stable than buying organic oil,
and the man made olefins contain less variation, and are easier to process.
Refinery profits are up, fuels prices are down, and the new fuel does not add any CO2 to the atmosphere.
Organic oil still has a well established market with plastics, and other chemicals, but the demand will be much lower.
The things that could slow down this process, are actually the lapel environmentalist, who in
an effort to display how much they love the environment, they will pay a higher price for the new fuel.
This would delay mass adoption, because price is what drives the mass market.
 
longview said:
I envision the transition to alternate fuels to be almost completely transparent.
The price of gas at the pump goes up as the price of oil increase (not an unheard of pattern).
At some point they change the color of one of the pump handles, and while the old handles prices increase,
the new color pump seems fairly stable, and the prices are passed up by the older choices.
People find out the new fuel does the same thing as the old fuel, but is cheaper, so they choose it.
The refinery operators like the idea that the cost of the feedstock is more stable than buying organic oil,
and the man made olefins contain less variation, and are easier to process.
Refinery profits are up, fuels prices are down, and the new fuel does not add any CO2 to the atmosphere.
Organic oil still has a well established market with plastics, and other chemicals, but the demand will be much lower.
The things that could slow down this process, are actually the lapel environmentalist, who in
an effort to display how much they love the environment, they will pay a higher price for the new fuel.
This would delay mass adoption, because price is what drives the mass market.
Click to expand...

Sounds about right, except for the last part: The price of fuel depends on supply and demand, not on a "lapel environmentalist."
 
Dittohead not! said:
Sounds about right, except for the last part: The price of fuel depends on supply and demand, not on a "lapel environmentalist."
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This is true except when a group is willing to pay more for a commodity than it is actually worth.
The seller will gladly accommodate people willing to pay more for a product than the market forces demand.
My overall point was that we may be able to transition to alternate fuels without the large expense, or much Government involvement.
 
longview said:
This is true except when a group is willing to pay more for a commodity than it is actually worth.
1 The seller will gladly accommodate people willing to pay more for a product than the market forces demand.
My overall point was that we may be able to transition to alternate fuels without the large expense, or much Government involvement.
Click to expand...

1 That does work with wine and pre worn jeans.
2 I think your overall point is right on. The only government involvement needed is to not subsidize dying industries, and perhaps to fund research and so give technology a boost.
 
Jack Hays said:
So you disavow your #32 and #34?
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You mean this response to Lord's assertion that conservatives would have farmed whales?

So, if conservative ideology had prevailed, we'd have whale farms instead of oil wells. Now, that sounds nice and practical.
Click to expand...

Did the irony of that statement somehow escape you?
 
Dittohead not! said:
Tell Lord of Planar. He's the one who suggested it.
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Suggested what?

I was making the claim that for the example given, conservatives would raise and increase the species numbers instead of carelessly dwindling them. However, in the natural course of events, fossil fuels came along.
 
Lord of Planar said:
Suggested what?

I was making the claim that for the example given, conservatives would raise and increase the species numbers instead of carelessly dwindling them. However, in the natural course of events, fossil fuels came along.
Click to expand...


Exactly that. Conservatives would have raise whales for whale oil, had fossil fuels not been discovered.
 
I toss this out for comment... and contradiction, if my sense of previous enviornmental problems and their solutions is inaccurate. It seems to me that we have resolved or improved the following: acid rain in the northeast, the ozone hole problem, and smog in LA and elsewhere. This has been done with government action and through corporate response, the latter required or not. There were no doubt skeptics, whose arguments, when valid, affected for the better the rate and caliber of changes made.

In addition, my impression is that 190 or so countries agreed that there is a problem with climate change and we should take steps to do something about it. That presumably means that scientists in many of those countries advised them to do something. If this whole enterprise has been built on fraud or panic, it surely is one of the largest incidents of fraud or mass hysteria in history, rivalling Trump's three million illegal votes story as an epic catastrophe, so grand a illusion that oil companies, who acknowledge the problem, have themselves been taken in.

John McCain seemed to have the best take on this for skeptics: if human caused climate change is real, they we should do something about it, he said. If not,most of what's proposed is probably good anyway. I am told that the Pentagon, not know for hysteria, factors climate change a it's disruptive effects into its plans.

Finally, if this is all a mistake, wonderful! Then we liberals can get on to other issues, letting our socialist tentacles run wild in other fields. (I know, tentacles can't run). But the paranoia in some sectors on the right is laughable at times. I heard Limbaugh claim a few months ago that the reason scientists speculated that water on Mars could have come from melting polar ice caps came from their desire to advance the climate change agenda. Doesn't get weirder than that.
 
Dittohead not! said:
You mean this response to Lord's assertion that conservatives would have farmed whales?



Did the irony of that statement somehow escape you?
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It was a silly digression, and misrepresented LoP's point, as he points out in #45.
 
Lord of Planar said:
So, what is your problem with progress?
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I have no problem with progress. I'm not sure how you could have gotten that from any of my posts. I've said that old industries, such as coal, will gradually end to be replaced by new technologies. That is progress, don't you think?

If backward thinkers had been in control, who knows if we might still be farming whales instead of drilling for oil?
 
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