Why is California on fire? and Oregon? Who's to blame?

[TSwizzle]

First off, Newsom is an insufferable, ignorant prick.

In what way will raising gas tax impact the global climate ? How many degrees will the average temperature decrease ? How many inches will the sea level decrease ? How many more inches, feet, miles of ice will be regained?

Superstitious nonsense.

You don't understand that drivers will reduce their consumption of gasoline if the price they pay is higher?

Perhaps some will but it will not change "climate" in any measurable way, ever.

California is on fire again because of shitty forest management policies combined with shitty PG&E equipment and idiots that light fireworks etc. It has nothing to do with so called climate change.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Yes, cap and trade is a farce. A pigouvian tax on fossil fuels would be much more effective. That, and a strong push towards nuclear energy.

And all of this needed to have happened like, two decades ago.

Yep, this could bridge the gap:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...nvent-nuclear-reactor-and-save-warming-planet

 

[Loren Pechtel]

First off, Newsom is an insufferable, ignorant prick.

In what way will raising gas tax impact the global climate ? How many degrees will the average temperature decrease ? How many inches will the sea level decrease ? How many more inches, feet, miles of ice will be regained?

Superstitious nonsense.

You don't understand that drivers will reduce their consumption of gasoline if the price they pay is higher?

Perhaps some will but it will not change "climate" in any measurable way, ever.

California is on fire again because of shitty forest management policies combined with shitty PG&E equipment and idiots that light fireworks etc. It has nothing to do with so called climate change.

Both are factors. Much of the western US in late summer is a tinderbox, but climate change makes it a bit warmer and drier--and thus the fires spread even more.

 

[blastula]

First off, Newsom is an insufferable, ignorant prick.

In what way will raising gas tax impact the global climate ? How many degrees will the average temperature decrease ? How many inches will the sea level decrease ? How many more inches, feet, miles of ice will be regained?

Superstitious nonsense.

You don't understand that drivers will reduce their consumption of gasoline if the price they pay is higher?

Perhaps some will but it will not change "climate" in any measurable way, ever.

California is on fire again because of shitty forest management policies combined with shitty PG&E equipment and idiots that light fireworks etc. It has nothing to do with so called climate change.

Stop with the fire hysteria hoax. The vast majority of California is unscathed. I'm on my way to a gender reveal party right now in the forest. I hear the fireworks show will be spectacular. Freedom!

 

[ruby sparks]

It has nothing to do with so called climate change.

That's untenable.

 

[TSwizzle]

It has nothing to do with so called climate change.

That's untenable.

I’ve explained it numerous times.

 

[Elixir]

The demand for gasoline is pretty inelastic.

Hahahahahaha....



...hahahaha

 

[ruby sparks]

It has nothing to do with so called climate change.

That's untenable.

I’ve explained it numerous times.

Yes. I'm always convinced when someone on the internet 'explains' this to me.

It's untenable. Sorry.

 

[J842P]

Yeah, and most of those electric vehicles will ultimately be powered by coal, and maybe natural gas. So, not a great trade off, really.

This is really a question of efficiency, right? Is it more efficient to create the energy at a coal/natural gas plant and transfer it as electricity to cars or to have each car have its own combustion engine converting gasoline to energy?

I'm sure somewhere this question has been addressed. But I'm guessing, perhaps naively, that producing electricity en masse at a power plant is more efficient than thousands of individual engines being run likely at sub-optimal efficiencies.

I don't think efficiency is substantially different enough to make a difference. The bottom line is, if we continue to use fossil fuels, we are fucked.

Sorry, the bottom line is "we are fucked". There is no way we are going to avoid an environmental catastrophe. Quite frankly, not enough was done, and not enough is going to get done. Like I said, we needed a transition to mostly nuclear like 20 years ago. We might be able to mitigate the worst consequences if we started a transition to nuclear right now, together with a huge shift towards things like electric vehicles, and a huge decrease in the consumption of animal products, but what are the chances of that happening? Alternatively, perhaps there are carbon sequestration strategies which will become viable. But I won't hold my breath. Because I am currently huddled around my air purifier trying not to breathe in toxic air.


Actually, it seems I'll get a bit of a respite tonight, the AQI in San Francisco is currently only 151!

 

[J842P]

Other countries will follow if the U.S. takes the lead. And actually most developed countries already tax gas higher than the U.S. current tax. If the U.S. took the lead, these countries would follow and do the same. China also would increase its gas tax.

So other countries are waiting for the U.S. to raise gasoline taxes, after which they'll gladly follow suit. But they have already raised gasoline taxes more than the U.S.

That doesn't make sense.

What Europe has done that the US has not done is to aggressively embrace efficiency in automobiles, HVAC, household appliances, industry, etc.

In the US, we are accustomed to cheap food and cheap fuel and being able to just go wherever we want without thinking very much about the consequences to anything other than our immediate pocketbook. And we've off loaded a lot of our more pollution dense industries to China and to other Asian countries and countries south of the US border with more lax labor laws and more lax environmental regulations. We also seem to believe that only what we personally do, as individuals and as a nation, counts. We seem to ignore that pollution knows no national or state boundaries and that the effects are felt thousands of miles away, and are cumulative.

We need to stop such self centered, short term thinking.

Yup, exactly. One big thing is we are too accustomed to very cheap beef, chicken, and pork.

Now, I've heard of so-called 'holistic' cattle grazing strategies promoted by Allan Savory, some people swear by them. I am skeptical, but at least intuitively to me it seems that there may be some way we could graze cattle responsibly and maybe even increase carbon sequestration. At the end of the day, though, beef will be more expensive. In any case, decreasing overall animal product consumption by increasing the price of meat and dairy would be a net benefit towards public health. So there's that.

 

[bilby]

You might find this article helpful -

An example is the comparison between an electric vehicle (EV) and a fossil fuel powered car. The EV has an overall efficiency of about 60% while the fuel powered car is about 20% (or less) efficient. When one considers the total path from primary energy, the efficiency of the electric car is 60% x 40% (grid efficiency) for a total of 24% while the fuel powered car has an efficiency of about 20%. When the bigger picture is considered, the two forms of transportation are not all that different.

There must be ways to make the electric grid more efficient, and if this can be achieved, the savings in both costs and emissions may be significant. If this can be done, the conversion to EVs may make excellent sense, while there is only a marginal difference on an average basis, if the EVs are charged randomly with electrical energy from the existing grid.

Must?

The electricity grid is very close to the maximum possible efficiency.

That's just physics. The only way to significantly improve electricity grid efficiency is to find a way to repeal the laws of thermodynamics.

 

[J842P]

Yes, cap and trade is a farce. A pigouvian tax on fossil fuels would be much more effective. That, and a strong push towards nuclear energy.

And all of this needed to have happened like, two decades ago.

Yep, this could bridge the gap:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...nvent-nuclear-reactor-and-save-warming-planet

Yes, and I am even more excited for various other new designs in the works. Just one example, the Aurora nuclear plant by Oklo:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a31045491/smallest-nuclear-plant-oklo-aurora/

The regulatory issues are complex, we shall see what happens.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/01/8971...nts-may-come-with-less-stringent-safety-rules

 

[barbos]

But I won't hold my breath. Because I am currently huddled around my air purifier trying not to breathe in toxic air.

Really that bad?
Here it's sunny +24C, I am going for a walk soon.

 

[J842P]

But I won't hold my breath. Because I am currently huddled around my air purifier trying not to breathe in toxic air.

Really that bad?
Here it's sunny +24C, I am going for a walk soon.

Yes, really. Check out the daily historical averages for AQI:

https://www.iqair.com/us/usa/california/san-francisco

It's been bad for a while but particularly bad since Wednesday.

This is what I woke up to, Wednesday:

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so-FcHTWEIY[/YOUTUBE]

This is during the day, mind you.


Here's a picture from my apartment window at 10 am:



My camera didn't quite capture the orange. It seemed much darker to me. I was very confused when I woke up, thought I had messed up my alarm or something.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Is cap-and-trade causing people to drive less? turn down the air conditioner? etc.?

Cap and trade isn't a farce. It's a recognition that pollution happens and that there's a cost to causing that pollution--a cost that should be borne by those who cause it.

Who's causing it?

Is it not everyone who burns fossil fuel (all the vehicles) and everyone who consumes electricity produced by coal?

So, why not put a heavy tax on those? Wouldn't that catch everyone causing the problem and make them pay for their share of the damage? Would that not create the incentive for every polluter to reduce their contribution to the problem?

But what is cap and trade doing?

Companies that avoid or minimize their carbon based pollution can sell their carbon credits to companies that are unable or unwilling to do what they can to keep their pollution under whatever cap is set.

What is the point of setting a "cap"? Why not just tax, or make them pay, for every unit of carbon they burn? The "cap" should be one atom of carbon, or 1000 atoms, or 1,000,000 whatever. Or a price per gallon.

The only complication would be to set the price differently for different forms of fuel according to the degree of carbon emission for that particular fuel. So there's the jet fuel, the diesel, and other forms. Determine the damage level for each and put a price per unit, to be paid by every consumer, private or business.

For each additional atom, you pay another unit of price. What is the point of selling "credits" to someone? This sounds like an artificial game they're playing, instead of simply charging a straightforward price, or penalty, on each unit of carbon burned. Or charging a price on each "watt" of electricity consumed. And electricity produced by something other than coal would not pay a tax.

It's a bitter pill to swallow that pollution is a necessary evil but truthfully, it is. In theory, companies would become more and more efficient with regards to their carbon output in order to generate income or avoid paying for more carbon units.

So is every truck driver paying the cap and trade tax somehow? Is every motorist given an incentive to reduce their driving, or to seek an alternative to their gas-powered vehicle? How does cap and trade cause motorists to reduce their driving? How does it cause homeowners to reduce their power lawnmower use? or reduce their electricity consumption? reduce their air conditioner use?

 

[barbos]

Here's a picture from my apartment window at 10 am:

View attachment 29360

My camera didn't quite capture the orange. It seemed much darker to me. I was very confused when I woke up, thought I had messed up my alarm or something.

Lots of alcohol bottles on your counter

 

[J842P]

Lots of alcohol bottles on your counter

Hey, only four of those are wine bottles. The rest are iced tea.

Is it better or worse that those are from the last month or so...?

 

[Swammerdami]

What is the point of setting a "cap"? Why not just tax, or make them pay, for every unit of carbon they burn? The "cap" should be one atom of carbon, or 1000 atoms, or 1,000,000 whatever. Or a price per gallon.

I agree that carbon tax would be much more sensical than Cap-Trade. Cap'n'trade was adopted as a political expediency: It could be enacted by Congress; a carbon tax could not be enacted.

And of course, Cap-Trade created no sudden losers. A law which abruptly erased many billions of valuation from various companies would, rightly or wrongly, be perceived as very unfair.

I am still quite curious why you advocate carbon tax in this thread, but unfettered markets in the Fair-vs-Free thread. If your essential dogma is that good government interventions are good, but bad government interventions are bad, I think you'll get broad support for that principle across the entire political spectrum!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And of course, Cap-Trade created no sudden losers. A law which abruptly erased many billions of valuation from various companies would, rightly or wrongly, be perceived as very unfair.

Which is why my position is that we cut corporate taxes by the expected take from carbon (and other pollution) taxes. Make it revenue neutral.

 

[bilby]

And of course, Cap-Trade created no sudden losers. A law which abruptly erased many billions of valuation from various companies would, rightly or wrongly, be perceived as very unfair.

Which is why my position is that we cut corporate taxes by the expected take from carbon (and other pollution) taxes. Make it revenue neutral.

Wouldn't that also render it effectiveness neutral?

You're proposing that we rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.