U.S. Energy Experts Announce Way to Freeze Global Warming
Spectacular report at:
http://www.ases.org/climatechange/
And intro at
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/partner/story?id=47403 U.S. Energy Experts Announce Way to Freeze Global Warming
ASES unveiled a 200-page report, Tackling Climate Change in the U.S.: Potential Carbon Emissions Reductions from Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy by 2030. The result of more than a year of study, the report illustrates how energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies can provide the emissions reductions required to address global warming. ... The report illustrates how energy efficiency measures could keep U.S. carbon emissions roughly constant over the next 23 years as the economy grows, and how renewable energy technologies could make deep cuts below today's emissions.
The title is a bit deceptive ''Freeze Global Warming" - implying stopping the effects of GW - which will likely continue even if we stopped 100% of our emissions. But freezing CO2 emissions, well, it's certainly a start, however short it falls to reducing GW effects in the future.
I can play the "republican" side and ask - "What effect will this have on our economy?" And I refuse to play games to say that there are costs to be borne. I will just say the costs are there sooner or later, and we're better off acting sooner. I admit there's aways a danger in "rushing" things - basically there is a rate of progress in any technology, and if you push that rate higher, you can end up wasting resources on deadend technology. As well, central decisions on any one technology can cause ultimately more promising alternatives to be underfunded and even delayed.
I can also play the "environmentalist" side and question if decisions are being made with bad assumptions that are unsustainable by any technology. Certainly some believe that humanity is past the point of sustainability in energy consumption, that no combination of technology in renewable energy can meet our needs, and holding delusions that they can allows us to continue further on an unsustainable path that will be that much harder later to change. This point of view says conservation is the most important response in the long run - learning to do more with less, or less with less as the case may be!
The problem is as long as we're dependent upon cheap energy (from one-time sources of ancient stored solar energy) there's no clear measure for what is possible under a post-fossil fuel world, what we ought to be able to expect.
A proper development of alternatives would assume a very conservative assumptions of available energy, design society to be able to function under that level of energy, and then devote R&D that can gradually expand alternatives as they become competitive and then let things move as they can.
What we're ideally trying to do is gradually move from a cheap-energy economy into an expensive-energy economy while making no allowances for our high expectations. This failing means we'll go on subsidizing ethanol simply because it has potential even as the methods of production now offer minimal gains in energy or pollution.
I would look at farms as the starting point, since food is an essential production. The question I have is what methods of farming do we have that exist between the subsistence farming of the Amish, using horses and biomass fertilizers, and the "industrial farming" which is fully dependent upon external inputs of energy and fertilizers? The first won't work for a modern culture of 2% of the people in agriculture. The second won't work if we have to reduce our CO2 emissions and run our farms from local resources.
Do we want to expand that 2% farmers? Do we want to restore some animal labor on the farm to help reduce the energy demands of farming? Can a farm produce energy to run a farm?
I don't know the answers at all. It seems like using biomass to produce a liquid fuel isn't an energy winner, but perhaps wind power could be used to power equipment, and perhaps even power reactions to create fertilizers locally? As a country, I would think experiments in farming that reduce external inputs would be a great virtue, and make us more secure.
So lots of good questions. I hope experiments and R&D continue to looking at these questions and solutions.
http://www.ases.org/climatechange/
And intro at
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/partner/story?id=47403 U.S. Energy Experts Announce Way to Freeze Global Warming
ASES unveiled a 200-page report, Tackling Climate Change in the U.S.: Potential Carbon Emissions Reductions from Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy by 2030. The result of more than a year of study, the report illustrates how energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies can provide the emissions reductions required to address global warming. ... The report illustrates how energy efficiency measures could keep U.S. carbon emissions roughly constant over the next 23 years as the economy grows, and how renewable energy technologies could make deep cuts below today's emissions.
The title is a bit deceptive ''Freeze Global Warming" - implying stopping the effects of GW - which will likely continue even if we stopped 100% of our emissions. But freezing CO2 emissions, well, it's certainly a start, however short it falls to reducing GW effects in the future.
I can play the "republican" side and ask - "What effect will this have on our economy?" And I refuse to play games to say that there are costs to be borne. I will just say the costs are there sooner or later, and we're better off acting sooner. I admit there's aways a danger in "rushing" things - basically there is a rate of progress in any technology, and if you push that rate higher, you can end up wasting resources on deadend technology. As well, central decisions on any one technology can cause ultimately more promising alternatives to be underfunded and even delayed.
I can also play the "environmentalist" side and question if decisions are being made with bad assumptions that are unsustainable by any technology. Certainly some believe that humanity is past the point of sustainability in energy consumption, that no combination of technology in renewable energy can meet our needs, and holding delusions that they can allows us to continue further on an unsustainable path that will be that much harder later to change. This point of view says conservation is the most important response in the long run - learning to do more with less, or less with less as the case may be!
The problem is as long as we're dependent upon cheap energy (from one-time sources of ancient stored solar energy) there's no clear measure for what is possible under a post-fossil fuel world, what we ought to be able to expect.
A proper development of alternatives would assume a very conservative assumptions of available energy, design society to be able to function under that level of energy, and then devote R&D that can gradually expand alternatives as they become competitive and then let things move as they can.
What we're ideally trying to do is gradually move from a cheap-energy economy into an expensive-energy economy while making no allowances for our high expectations. This failing means we'll go on subsidizing ethanol simply because it has potential even as the methods of production now offer minimal gains in energy or pollution.
I would look at farms as the starting point, since food is an essential production. The question I have is what methods of farming do we have that exist between the subsistence farming of the Amish, using horses and biomass fertilizers, and the "industrial farming" which is fully dependent upon external inputs of energy and fertilizers? The first won't work for a modern culture of 2% of the people in agriculture. The second won't work if we have to reduce our CO2 emissions and run our farms from local resources.
Do we want to expand that 2% farmers? Do we want to restore some animal labor on the farm to help reduce the energy demands of farming? Can a farm produce energy to run a farm?
I don't know the answers at all. It seems like using biomass to produce a liquid fuel isn't an energy winner, but perhaps wind power could be used to power equipment, and perhaps even power reactions to create fertilizers locally? As a country, I would think experiments in farming that reduce external inputs would be a great virtue, and make us more secure.
So lots of good questions. I hope experiments and R&D continue to looking at these questions and solutions.
posted by Ares Olympus at 6:21 PM
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