Just read a great article from @The Brawl Street Journal where a German research institute shows clearly that the green claims about EVs depend a lot on where they are made and the CO2 content embedded in the car. For instance, China’s CO2 generated per ton steel is ~ 2.5X that of European steel. Once again, the reason that many things from China are cheap is that they generate the pollution over there, but in the case of global CO2, it comes back in the end. See Brawl Street Journal recent post entitled “Autosterben”.
Correct, so when Bush negotiated China into the WTO in December 2001 shipping manufacturing jobs to China was an aspect of his energy policy to head off the inevitable energy crisis. So the other three important aspects were getting Iraq to 10 mbd and then developing Qatar’s LNG export industry and then obviously regime change in Iran. Unfortunately Iraq oil production actually declined and Katrina caused an energy shock in North America and prices got too high too fast. Now the high energy prices had the effect of making alternatives more economical which is how fracking became economically viable.
Interesting but the whole notion of optimal temperature is suspect. The UK recently declared a heat emergency. Doing the conversion, I discovered that the predicted high was 78. Here in Vegas we don't get that warning until it reaches 105. On the other side, a lot of the cold deaths are in the Delhi area with people sleeping rough with inadequate clothing. Winnipeg, on occasion, gets colder than Mars with no disaster.
One of my favorite examples of technological innovation rather than government regulation leading to environmental improvement is the steel industry’s transition from charcoal to coking coal to make steel.
That only happened because the thermodynamics of blast furnaces improved the larger they got. The reason being that the increase in volume was a cubic function whereas the increase in surface area driving thermal losses was only a squared function.
Without this change there would have been practically no forests left in North America by now.
Without regard to spending more money to improve the technology used to save people from environmental harms, I am all for it.
But the level of carbon dioxide emissions drives the harm done to every other living thing on the planet as in the acidification of the ocean, the severity of droughts, etc.
Thinking we will be fine while the rest of the natural world goes down the drain is not particularly plausible.
And then Nucor and scrap and mini mill technology bankrupted Big Steel. So the biggest beneficiary of Trump’s steel tariffs was the company that bankrupted Big Steel. And through 2008 American coal production increased but Wyoming coal is what bankrupted West Virginia coal which is why Trump and Manchin ended up paying reparations retired white coal miners from West Virginia.
Without tariffs and trade rulings Nucor would go bankrupt too. Minimills have about a 70% share of the domestic market. I don’t think they have any significant exports.
In the end things like renewables EVs, minisplits, win and displace all their competitors. Minisplits now outsell gas furnaces. In some markets EVs vastly outsell their ICE peers. Renewable energy growth far outstrips gas, nuclear etc. And they make peoples lives better.
Displacing competition without any subsidies is clearly sensible, but that would exclude renewables and EVs in most jurisdictions. Certainly in Canada, where I live, EVs do not outsell ICE cars. Also, for Canada, wind & solar increased generation between 2015 to 2025 by 24GWH, while NG increased by 79GWH.
Minisplits is a great solution for ductless scenarios since it provides both heating and cooling, especially in areas without natural gas, moderate winters and reasonably priced electricity. My home has duct work and available natural gas, so we use a NG furnace with Central Air. It can get down below -30C occasionally in the winter, with more normal lows in the -10s.
I would argue subsidies actually make a great deal of sense if we want to move the inevitable victory of EVs, etc. up. And you make a good point that there are always edge cases where none of it makes sense. An aircraft carrier will always be better powered by nuclear than anything. As to hoje heating the big factor is relative cost of NG vs electricity.
Mr. Myers is starting to make sense; I wish I could say that for the other two contributors.
I will not take this witch doctoring seriously until:
1. Every witch doctor (sorry, should've said researcher) a) reads and understands Walter Shewhart's 1931 book "Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product", b) is able to talk about variation in terms of the mean and the standard deviation, and c) demonstrates an understanding of the difference between normal and abnormal variation.
2. Every (choose your own word) signs a statement to the effect that a) consensus is the antithesis of science and b) extrapolating from a single point is fundamentally dishonest. For the record, the industrial revolution began 300 years ago. That represents 0.0000067% of the guesstimated age of this planet. Single point anybody?
3. [Somebody] produces definitions of weather and climate and using those definitions is able to differentiate between the two in a manner that is clear, understandable and that does not require revision every couple of years.
Ther is a near zero possibility of getting all the countries of the world to agree on -- well anything much. The only "solution" is for humans to use their incredible adaptability to -- adapt to whatever changes are coming.
We adapted our way from the last Ice Age to today's inter glacial period and i have no doubt we can do so again and again and again.
Try to get "the government" to plan this out isn't going to work. We've seen what that leads to time and again. With the ex-Soviet Union being the prime example.
I think temps will rise far faster than most people imagine and I also think there is very little the developed world can do about it. I just asked Claude how many households in East, South, and Southeast Asia are currently without AC and would benefit from having it. The numbers were way over a billion new units, and the AC tends to run for much longer periods than we are used to, in many places it would run all the time, 24/7.
I've lived in the tropics without AC, far from the ocean but with very high humidity. It's hot. Much hotter than Europe or here. There comes a point where the humidity is so high, and the temperature is so hot, that water won't evaporate off your body. Many people will die and those who live will want to have AC, and who can blame them.
I'm sure we will reduce our carbon footprint from transportation and electrical generation to near zero. What I'm not sure about is what the world will be like then. I will say I'd never bet against the human race, we have ways to invent and innovate and our abilities seem to be accelerating. I'll be checking out long before we figure it out.
Just read a great article from @The Brawl Street Journal where a German research institute shows clearly that the green claims about EVs depend a lot on where they are made and the CO2 content embedded in the car. For instance, China’s CO2 generated per ton steel is ~ 2.5X that of European steel. Once again, the reason that many things from China are cheap is that they generate the pollution over there, but in the case of global CO2, it comes back in the end. See Brawl Street Journal recent post entitled “Autosterben”.
Correct, so when Bush negotiated China into the WTO in December 2001 shipping manufacturing jobs to China was an aspect of his energy policy to head off the inevitable energy crisis. So the other three important aspects were getting Iraq to 10 mbd and then developing Qatar’s LNG export industry and then obviously regime change in Iran. Unfortunately Iraq oil production actually declined and Katrina caused an energy shock in North America and prices got too high too fast. Now the high energy prices had the effect of making alternatives more economical which is how fracking became economically viable.
Cold kills 10x the number that heat does.
Here is a more nuanced take. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(25)00054-3/fulltext
Interesting but the whole notion of optimal temperature is suspect. The UK recently declared a heat emergency. Doing the conversion, I discovered that the predicted high was 78. Here in Vegas we don't get that warning until it reaches 105. On the other side, a lot of the cold deaths are in the Delhi area with people sleeping rough with inadequate clothing. Winnipeg, on occasion, gets colder than Mars with no disaster.
One of my favorite examples of technological innovation rather than government regulation leading to environmental improvement is the steel industry’s transition from charcoal to coking coal to make steel.
That only happened because the thermodynamics of blast furnaces improved the larger they got. The reason being that the increase in volume was a cubic function whereas the increase in surface area driving thermal losses was only a squared function.
Without this change there would have been practically no forests left in North America by now.
Without regard to spending more money to improve the technology used to save people from environmental harms, I am all for it.
But the level of carbon dioxide emissions drives the harm done to every other living thing on the planet as in the acidification of the ocean, the severity of droughts, etc.
Thinking we will be fine while the rest of the natural world goes down the drain is not particularly plausible.
And then Nucor and scrap and mini mill technology bankrupted Big Steel. So the biggest beneficiary of Trump’s steel tariffs was the company that bankrupted Big Steel. And through 2008 American coal production increased but Wyoming coal is what bankrupted West Virginia coal which is why Trump and Manchin ended up paying reparations retired white coal miners from West Virginia.
There was nothing but workplace culture that stood in the road of the integrated mills from getting into the mini mill business.
Eventually even Nucor was unable to compete with imported steel.
lol, no. Nucor is a top 200 Fortune 500 company. Once again, foreign steel didn’t bankrupt Big Steel, Nucor bankrupted Big Steel.
Without tariffs and trade rulings Nucor would go bankrupt too. Minimills have about a 70% share of the domestic market. I don’t think they have any significant exports.
In the end things like renewables EVs, minisplits, win and displace all their competitors. Minisplits now outsell gas furnaces. In some markets EVs vastly outsell their ICE peers. Renewable energy growth far outstrips gas, nuclear etc. And they make peoples lives better.
Displacing competition without any subsidies is clearly sensible, but that would exclude renewables and EVs in most jurisdictions. Certainly in Canada, where I live, EVs do not outsell ICE cars. Also, for Canada, wind & solar increased generation between 2015 to 2025 by 24GWH, while NG increased by 79GWH.
Minisplits is a great solution for ductless scenarios since it provides both heating and cooling, especially in areas without natural gas, moderate winters and reasonably priced electricity. My home has duct work and available natural gas, so we use a NG furnace with Central Air. It can get down below -30C occasionally in the winter, with more normal lows in the -10s.
I would argue subsidies actually make a great deal of sense if we want to move the inevitable victory of EVs, etc. up. And you make a good point that there are always edge cases where none of it makes sense. An aircraft carrier will always be better powered by nuclear than anything. As to hoje heating the big factor is relative cost of NG vs electricity.
Mr. Myers is starting to make sense; I wish I could say that for the other two contributors.
I will not take this witch doctoring seriously until:
1. Every witch doctor (sorry, should've said researcher) a) reads and understands Walter Shewhart's 1931 book "Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product", b) is able to talk about variation in terms of the mean and the standard deviation, and c) demonstrates an understanding of the difference between normal and abnormal variation.
2. Every (choose your own word) signs a statement to the effect that a) consensus is the antithesis of science and b) extrapolating from a single point is fundamentally dishonest. For the record, the industrial revolution began 300 years ago. That represents 0.0000067% of the guesstimated age of this planet. Single point anybody?
3. [Somebody] produces definitions of weather and climate and using those definitions is able to differentiate between the two in a manner that is clear, understandable and that does not require revision every couple of years.
Ther is a near zero possibility of getting all the countries of the world to agree on -- well anything much. The only "solution" is for humans to use their incredible adaptability to -- adapt to whatever changes are coming.
We adapted our way from the last Ice Age to today's inter glacial period and i have no doubt we can do so again and again and again.
Try to get "the government" to plan this out isn't going to work. We've seen what that leads to time and again. With the ex-Soviet Union being the prime example.
I think temps will rise far faster than most people imagine and I also think there is very little the developed world can do about it. I just asked Claude how many households in East, South, and Southeast Asia are currently without AC and would benefit from having it. The numbers were way over a billion new units, and the AC tends to run for much longer periods than we are used to, in many places it would run all the time, 24/7.
I've lived in the tropics without AC, far from the ocean but with very high humidity. It's hot. Much hotter than Europe or here. There comes a point where the humidity is so high, and the temperature is so hot, that water won't evaporate off your body. Many people will die and those who live will want to have AC, and who can blame them.
I'm sure we will reduce our carbon footprint from transportation and electrical generation to near zero. What I'm not sure about is what the world will be like then. I will say I'd never bet against the human race, we have ways to invent and innovate and our abilities seem to be accelerating. I'll be checking out long before we figure it out.
I think we will see and are seeing a lot more small scale Solar being installed and paired with battery and minisplits