You ask: "And how does *also* allowing non fossil-fuel energy, like wind and solar, hurt any of that?"

Answer: intermittency. Adding wind and solar to the generating system just adds cost for no benefit.

If you want detailed case histories of this look at the UK, the usual canary. You will find that the useless intermittent supply from wind and solar comes in, on the bids, far higher than conventional. Regulation is needed to force utilities to buy it. And that is for an intermittent supply. There is no way to deliver dispatchable power from wind and solar at a cost which is competitive with conventional, ie gas or coal.

You doubt it? Go through the UK wind bids and add up the total cost of the UK electricity Net Zero push. Adding wind and solar to a conventional generation system just pushes up costs. Among the costs it adds are constraint payments. There are wind farms in the UK which are making a majority of their income from being paid not to generate, because the wind is supplying when there is no demand.

By the time you factor in the increase in gas consumption consequent on having to rely on open cycle rapid start gas to cover calms and nights its doubtful you even save any emissions either.

Its a great mystery why people who are persuaded of a climate crisis from CO2 emissions have this blind faith in wind and solar generation. Whether or not there is a climate crisis, wind and solar are not a viable generating technology and are not any kind of solution to it.

Paul Homewood has covered the UK wind constracting process in detail if you want that. Most advocates of wind do not. But here he is, as a for example, on constraint payments:
              https://notalotofpeopleknowtha...

and here he is on the recent AR7 auction
              https://notalotofpeopleknowtha...

Lots more on costs, subsidies and constraint if you explore the site. The political consensus in the UK seems to be turning against the so called energy transition. The situation in the Gulf is clarifying minds. The absurdity of the idea that moving to intermittent wind and solar is either possible or is going to increase energy security or reduce energy prices is becoming obvious.

Never really understood these suits. They ask for damages, but does this mean they envisage Exxon (just as a for instance) carrying on extracting and selling fossil fuels? Because that is where the money would have to come from to pay the damages if they won.

Or do they want Exxon to close down and stop extracting and selling? At which point the company would be worthless, so it would have little prospect of paying any damages to (for instance) the residents of Colorado (just as a for instance) or anyone else.

And then you have the problems of scale and attribution. Take the problem of scale first. If you look at the percentage of total global emissions that are due to Exxon, they are rather small. Chinese emissions from coal, for instance, will dwarf them. So there is a real problem proving that Exxon has caused significant amounts of the current warming. But it gets worse, the current warming is not itself very large, Globally its around 1C. Very hard to prove that this much warming has caused significant damage, and even harder to prove that anything Exxon has done has caused significant amounts of it.

This would be the first defense. But the second defense would be attribution. Colorado, for instance, is suing because of the damage done to its residents. How do you prove it was Exxon's emissions, as opposed to the Chinese emissions from burning coal? And if the remedy requested is to close down Exxon, how much effect will that have on global emissions, global temps and local weather?

They seem to be suing people for unproven damage which may have been caused (though you'd have to prove this) by a global phenomenon to which Exxon has been a minor contributor. And requesting remedies which will be either ineffective or impossible to obtain.

Its completely different from a case where a company pollutes a bay with mercury, it enters the local food chain and poisons the locals who eat the local fish. And then sue for being poisoned. Or asbestos, where the companies can be sued by people who worked with the stuff and got asbestosis. Or tobacco, where the product has harmed those who used it, and they can sue. Or a state government can sue based on damage to its citizens. The harm done by the habit to the damaged is provable.

Here we have Colorado trying to sue for damage which may or may not have been caused by global emissions, which have only been contributed to minorly by Exxon, and where there is no provable connexion between the damage and the Exxon emissions and where an award of remedy will either be impossible to pay or will have no effect on the problem..

Simply do not understand either how they are goiing to prove what they need, or what remedy they can obtain.

Sue China, maybe. China is mining and burning more coal than the rest of the world put together, and is accounting for more than one third of global emissions. China stops emitting, global emissions really do fall by an amount which will have an effect. Exxon,,,?

"It abandons its core mandate to protect human health and the environment to boost polluting industries and attempts to rewrite the law in order to do so."

This is complete nonsense. There is no threat to American health from American CO2 emissions. No-one has ever shown that.

Reducing US emissions will have no or minimal effect on the level of global emissions. So even if you think the level of global emissions will produce heat which is a danger to health globally (which is again pretty hard or impossible to prove) you still have no case for the Endangerment Finding.

The EPA is not concerned with the global, but with the American, not with global temps, global emissions, the welfare of the rest of the world. If you could show that US emissions were driving warming and that warming was a threat to health, maybe you'd have a point.

But US emissions are not driving global emissions, so you cannot show that. Its at the level of eat your dinner because of the starving children in Africa. How, asks the kid, will that help them? Don't argue with your mother, is the reply.

I think the idea was the same as the idea of runnng MacOS on generic Intel. People wanted to do that because they liked the OS but did not want to pay over the odds for generic hardware. The Mac people always claimed that the Apple hardware was premium quality, but it never has been, its always just been commodity stuff at an inflated price.

So finally Apple comes up with what seems to be genuinely better hardware - faster, lower power consumption in packages that are at least as good as premium Intel machines. They aren't cheap, but they do seem very nice as hardware.

But, people are now saying, yes to the hardware but no to that awful locked down OS. So they naturally enough try to get Linux working on the hardware.

The difficulty they are running into is the same in both cases. Apple is determined, whenever it gets a market lead in either OS or hardware, to use that to force sell the other. So back in the day we had an OS people really wanted, but which would only run, and later was only permitted to be packaged with, hardware which was either garbage stuff like the Motorola chips or later the PowerPC ones which were too expensive and also real heaters. But the idea was, force them to buy the hardware to get the OS.

Now its force them to use the OS they don't want to be able to use the hardware they want.

The solution is not to deal with these people. Wait a while and the industry will catch up on hardware. Meanwhile just buy the best hardware you can afford and run the OS you want on it. As long as you deal with Apple you will always be in a similar situation, the only thing on their mind is how to lock you in. The specifics will vary, but the song remains the same. Some people are fine with that, some even positively like it, it makes them feel safe and special.

A lot of us don't like it and won't have anything to do with Apple. And then there are the real open source heroes, like the Asahi team, who are ready to throw themselves into a real struggle, Applaud them, support them, and they seem to be winning bit by bit. But its a struggle, its a few guys against one of the largest tech companies in the world. Wish them luck, support them, but its a bit like Wine, its an uphill struggle and probably not ready for production yet, if it ever will be.

The Microsoft bluetooth keyboard is just about silent, as quiet as you can get, and excellent build quality. Do not, however, spill coffee on it!

"that will cause a major leap in planet-heating emissions"

As usual no quantification, just the usual hysterical alarmism. Current global emissions are about 37 billion tons a year. How much will these US installations add to that? And how much additional warming will this additional amount lead to?

Can you even say by how much its going to increase US emissions? When doing this, might be an idea to start by saying what these are right now. Then we can see how important it is.

'Planet heating' is a giveaway, by the way. Straight out of the Guardian style guide.

It would help if you could be more specific about who you want destroyed. If you read the detail of the report and look at the tables (which the Guardian fails to give much information about) you will find that most of the emitting is being done by entities which are

(a) outside the West
(b) doing something other than oil extraction and sale.

So are you urging people to get out there and destroy Chinese cement plants and the HQs of the Chinese cement producers? What about the Chinese coal extraction companies, do you want to head up a delegation which goes over there and destroys them? Good luck with that! Or do you want to try persuasion? Join the club, the West has been trying to persuade China and India etc to stop or slow down for the last 20+ years, with absolutely no results.

The key entities are the nation states. That is the only place you will ever get action on curbing emissions. China, for instance, is emitting over one third of global emissions. China is using and extracting more coal than the rest of the world put together. They could stop tomorrow if they wanted to. Which entities are doing this within China is immaterial, they all have such close ties to government that they can be considered extensions of government.

Slashdot should really stop linking to the Guardian. As in this report its disconnected hysterical alarmist rants put together by literature grad. Nothing wrong with being a literature grad. But keep them away from science and engineering topics. All you will get is vague rants, like this one.

The usual recent obsession on Slashdot, on an unimportant detail of the story.

The real story is the relative size of the US and China economies, and its the same story whether its electricity or steel. China is bigger. A lot bigger. And getting bigger yet all the time.

This is the important thing about this story, not how much wind they are using, which is an unimportant detail. This is what is changing the balance of power in the Pacific, this will lead to the fall of Taiwan one of these years. This is the important thing about the story.

For goodness sake raise your eyes from this myopic progressive obsession with the climate and renewables story and focus on the geopolitical issue here which is going to change the world well within in most of our lifetimes.

"....in ten years time, renewables will give them electricity so much cheaper...."

No it won't, this is nonsense.

  First because intermittency, which means it does not provide reliable dispatchable power without being supplemented by other conventional sources.

Second because even without providing for intermittency, for what it does produce intermittently its far more expensive.

Want proof? Look at the recent UK auction.

People keep claiming wind and solar are far cheaper than gas or coal, but they never give any evidence, and they are not. Which is why they always need subsidy and compulsory purchase regulations.

The question is whether the consequences have any bearing on the rightness or wrongness of the decision. Of decisions in general. The question is, should you consider the consequences at all? Are they relevant?

Whether there is agreement or disagreement as to what the consequences will be is not relevant to this particular question. The question is, are they, whatever they are, relevant?

Bennett tried to isolate this question by focusing on a case where there was no doubt at all about the consequences. His case was one in which most people would have strong feelings about what the certain consequences meant for the decision. Reflected actually in the laws of almost all jurisdictions - even in Ireland after a couple of well known cases revealed the consequences of a total 'whatever the consequences' ban. Then he could ask why those who thought the consequences were irrelevant took that view, what arguments they could have for that position. His conclusion was that the only argument they had was religious authority.

In the climate case there is little dispute about many of the consequences. You can take the IPCC sensitivity estimates for example. Then the argument will be, in cases where the proposed action will have minimal or no effect on climate according to them, should we still do it? Should the UK go to net zero when the effect of its doing so will be to reduce global emissions from 39 billion tons a year to 38.5, and this will have too small an effect to be measurable?

Put it in a simpler way, should the UK take some actions with the justification of reducing global emissions and temperatures if in fact those actions will not do that? And if so, why? Is it relevant that their actions will not have the desired effect? Or is it that emitting is just intrinsically wrong and should be stopped 'whatever the consequences'?

Yes, it is a slightly different form of the issue, but it touches the same point. The questions it raises in this form are probably harder ones.

In the Analysis paper (By Johnathan Bennett by the way) the case was of a real condition that does occur (or did occur in the day) where if an abortion was not carried out the mother would certainly die. The Catholic position (as argued by Elizabeth Anscombe) was that abortion was taking innocent life and so was wrong, absolutely. Anscombe argued that to take the consequences into account was arguing for doing evil for the sake of good, and that people who took that view were of 'corrupt mind' and there was no point talking to them.

This is a relatively simple case in that its a choice between two lives, or was in the scenario Bennett was considering. The public policy case seems to be more complicated and harder to see what exactly the issues are. You can imagine Anscome arguing, in the Texas case, that the link between the policy and maternal deaths was not at all clear. In Bennett's case there was an inescapable choice between two lives. Bennett was able to ask, of Anscombe's position, what other than a religions prohibition could justify taking the view that the mother's life should always be the one to go. Anscombe was able to argue that in principle it was wrong to kill one person to save another. The underlying issue was whether the consequences of the action are ethically relevant. Bennett was arguing yes, Anscombe no. It was about whether the goodness or badness of an act is intrinsic to it, or is a property it has in virtue of its consequences.

Part of the sharpness of the difference is caused by the fact, in the example, that there was no way out of the choice. So Bennett took some time to show that much of the theological pleading on these cases depended on refusing to accept this, arguing that the mother's death, in continuation, was not in fact certain, when it was.

In the Texas case this is an easier argument to make. There are, you could argue, many ways in which the maternal deaths can be prevented. Proper public policy can simply make abortion not a necessary choice for anyone by providing alternatives. The argument would be that it is the choice to go for backstreet abortion that is causing the death increase, so the ethical thing is to remedy that. The Texas argument might continue that the consequences of policies are of course relevant. But that its not correct to make public policy on this basis that if we do something ethically correct people will make bad and unnecessary decisions leading to harming themselves.

The difficulty with this argument occurs if you construct limiting cases, because the proponent will almost be forced into a position analogous to that Anscome was faced with: they will end up having to deny human nature as experience shows it to be. it may be that you just cannot provide alternatives which people will choose. At that point the Republicans are forced to the argument, explicit or not, that they wish to ban what they regard as just intrinsically wrong.

The climate and emission case is rather different from either of these. The consequentialist view here is just don't do things which have few or no effects on the supposed problem, but which (hypothetically) have very high costs. You can see it most clearly in the case of the UK, which emits about 450 million tons a year out of a global total of 39 billion. Cut it in half, even eliminate it, and it will make no measurable difference.

Now, do you argue that emitting is intrinsically wrong, and should be stopped whatever the consequences? Or do you try and construct climate consequences of stopping that will justify stopping? Its interesting that the UK has pretty much stopped doing that. They are no longer justifying Net Zero on climate grounds. Or do you decide that it may be best if everyone were to stop, but they are not going to, and so we, US or UK, are living in a world where for us to stop will make no difference, have no benefit, and so cannot be justified. Spend the money on health or literacy.

Its a bit more complicated than China isn't doing it as an excuse for the US not doing something which has a strong justification in itself. The question is what that justification is.

The question is whether you think that in evaluating whether to do an action you should take account of the consequences of that action.

If the US were to cut its emissions in half, total global emissions would fall from around 39 billion tons a year to around 36 billion tons. If everyone else continued to emit what they now are.

In fact, they are increasing their emissions, so the effect would be smaller.

So now, we also need to assess what the effect on global temperatures would be of that reduction.

Then we can decide whether the consequences of our proposed action justify the costs of doing it.

Or, we could always say, in a variety of different and more or less convoluted ways, that we want to do it 'whatever the consequences'.

The same question arises over the move to EVs and heat pumps. What are the consequences of doing it? And are they relevant to the decision? And if so, how do costs and benefit compare?

Notice this does not just come up about climate. A celebrated paper appeared in the philosophy Journal Analysis a generation ago, considering the question of abortion. The question it posed was whether the consequences are relevant to the rightness or wrongness of a decision to perform one, when the alternative of not doing so will lead to the death of the mother. Do we, should we, consider the consequences? Or is it just wrong, whatever the consequences?

"Eliminating that incredible poison, toxic in every stage of its extraction, use, and disposal, to the extent feasible is an obvious priority"

My point, which none of the replies address, is: who is it a priority for? Only for the countries that are doing about 5% of global emissions. Whether we believe there is a climate crisis or not, 95% of the world doesn't, and are acting accordingly.

What people in the English speaking countries need to recognize is that the world is not going to lower emissions. This is not about whether we believe, whether I personally believe, whether there really is a crisis or not.

Its about the simple fact that in 40 years of trying the advocates of the reality of a crisis have failed to persuade the world of their point of view. So any sensible policy has to accept this, and has to accept that global action is not happening and is not going to happen.

This is reality, and its the only sensible starting point for policy discussions. The world in which policy is formulated and implemented will be one in which only supplies of fossil fuel are the limiting factor for global emissions.

Accept this, because its reality. Then figure out whether in such a world your national policies make any sense, what effects if any they will have. The answer will mostly be that they do nothing at all.

For example, the UK is supposedly moving to net zero in power generation, and is also supposedly moving to ban the sale of all except EVs in 2030. The question to ask is: what difference will that make to the world and global emissions in a world in which 95% of the emissions are done by countries who don't care one way or the other and have no intention of reducing their emissions?

The answer is, it will make no difference whatever. Same goes by the way for the US, which has now opted out anyway. No presently proposed policies in the English speaking countries will make the slightest contribution to lowering global emissions. This is the way the world is, whether we like it or not.

Now the question is, why do you still want to do these things? This is the important, hard and inconvenient question. Its analogous to the question about antibiotics. Refusing to treat your child with them will make no difference to global antibiotic resistance. Accept that, because its the truth. Now, why do you still want to refuse?

Time for Slashdot to wake up. Along with the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Rightly or wrongly the vast majority of the world's nations don't believe in any kind of climate crisis. They don't believe there is any 'accelerating rate of climate change'. They don't believe anything much is going on. This includes the ones whose emissions are greatest and fastest growing. And even within the nations whose political leadership does still claim to believe in it, their populations increasingly do not.

Then you have to look at the measures proposed by those of the activist persuasion. They mostly boil down to electrify every use of energy, and get your electricity from wind and solar. Its not happening, and its not going to happen, at least not on any scale that will make any material difference to emissions. Even if you could convert generation to wind and solar, which you can't because of intermittency, that would only reduce 20% of so of emissions. Trying to electrify everything at the same time is just going to produce blackouts and rising prices, and no non-democratic country is going to try it, because they are terrified of the resulting unrest. And because they think its pointless. As for the democracies, any government trying it will just be voted out of office for a generation when the results become clear.

For a case history of how this will play out everywhere its tried, look at the UK.

What do you do about the UN if you are one of the biggest and fastest growing emitters? You send delegations to the climate conferences with a simple set of instructions: to prevent any significant and binding agreements on emission reduction. In which they have succeeded ever since Paris, and they aren't going to stop now.

My suggestion to Slashdot editors is that its time to wake up. First, there is no crisis. But second, even if there were one, there is no program to do anything about it, and there is not going to be. This last is just a fact about the way the world is. You may not like it, but there is no sense denying the undeniable. Its similar to proposing to cut teenage pregnancies by promoting celibacy while leaving current social mores unchanged. Its not going to happen. You may not like it, but if you really want to cut teenage pregnancies, you have to start from the way the world is, not from how you may wish it was.

If you really want to safeguard your population against the supposed climate crisis, do something that is achievable and effective if achieved. Moving your country to wind and solar is not going to work, and if it did would make little or no difference. And stop endlessly lamenting how we are all doomed from emissions with the implication that if we save a few million tons it will make a difference. It won't. Instead figure out what the real danger to our population is, and what is cost effective to do about it.

Global Net Zero is dead. You can tell this by looking at COP and at the policies of the largest and fastest growing emitters. None have any intention of reducing emissions, in fact their universal policy is simple, and consists of two elements:

1) Grow your economy as fast as possible and let emissions go where they may.

2) Attend COP and make sure it never agrees anything binding to do with reducing emissions or fossil fuel use.

Anyone who doubts this just has to look at the record, both of their conduct at COP and at what they are building themselves.

This means that what the English speaking countries do about energy is a matter of energy policy. Its not a matter of climate policy. You cannot have a climate policy when you collectively do about 20% and falling of global emissions, when the 80% are as a matter of policy growing as fast as unrestrained economic growth leads to. Nothing you do in the name of climate has any effect on it. This will greatly upset many people here. But just look up the numbers. What is China, what is India, building in coal fired power plants? How large are their plans in relation to the total power generation from fossil fuels in the English speaking countries? There is your answer. You may not like it, but its a fact.

So you have to look at Australia's situation (and that of the UK, Canada, US) in a different way and ask a different question. That is, are their Net Zero plans a feasible and sensible energy policy in the world as it is? The answer is becoming clear, and its pretty obviously negative. The UK is probably the canary in the coal mine on this. All it has managed to do, at great expense, is try to convert its electricity generation to wind and solar. Leaving untouched all the other sources of emissions. And the result of this has been to raise electricity prices and lower security of supply. Meanwhile it has also tried to close down domestic (North Sea) oil and gas production, and the result of this has not been to reduce demand but has been to increase dependence on imports.

The reason for this is just physics: its intermittency. The problem is the same everywhere in the world, but its most clearly documented on a daily basis for the UK, here:

www.gridwatch.co.uk/wind

There is no way to use such an unreliable supply to power a modern industrial society and economy. You have to get through periods of a week or more, in the coldest part of winter, where peak demand is around 45GW and actual wind output from 30GW installed plant is under 5GW for the whole period and under 1GW for several days within that period. There is no way of managing this.

This of course will not stop the current UK energy minister, Ed Miliband, from keeping on trying it, but the result will be blackouts. It will not stop New York State from keeping on trying it, but its not going to happen. The recent court case in New York shows the same thing - people in charge of policy having committed themselves in law to the impossible can see where its going, namely blackouts, and are frantically looking for the exit.

The best thing that could happen to Australia would be if it too would admit both the impossibility and the futility of Net Zero, make a realistic assessment of what risks global warming really poses to its citizens and society, and take measures to allieviate the worst effects. Which will not include reducing emissions.

At the moment the Western countries who remain committed to Net Zero because climate are like someone who refuses antibiotics for their child on the grounds that there is a global problem with antibiotic resistance. There may be. But you are not going to affect that one way or the other by depriving your child of life saving medication today.