G8 declares goal of cuttting GHG by 50% by 2050

[KrazyHorse]

[RGBVideo]

Re: Re: Re: G8 declares goal of cuttting GHG by 50% by 2050

In other news: Sweden announced last year (or was it the year before, it was Persson's government I believe) that it would cut it's fossil fuel consumption to zero by 2020. This means that Sweden has an official goal of both getting rid of nuclear power and fossil fuels within the next decade. Realistic, isn't it?

Originally posted by lord of the mark
Considering that not so long ago the current admin was denying that human created warming was even real (pardon, that more research was needed to establish that) let alone accepting that cutting GHG emissions AT ALL was good public policy, this is a huge jump

This is a huge jump if you believe Bush was seriously believing what he said about global warming -- id est, if you're a sucker. I think it was pretty damn obvious the US admin was pretending that global warming didn't exist so it wouldn't have to do anything about it. Now that Bush indeed can't really do anything at it because of hostilities with Congress, he's free to announce that he has changed his mind about it.

[Patroklos]

getting rid of nuclear power

Since when was nuclear power a fossil fuel?

[Provost Harrison]

Re: Re: Re: G8 declares goal of cuttting GHG by 50% by 2050

Originally posted by lord of the mark


ZOMG! the Fizzocist found a typo. Congrats!

A typo in the one solitary word in the opening post

[Zkribbler]

Re: Re: Re: Re: G8 declares goal of cuttting GHG by 50% by 2050

Originally posted by VJ
... Sweden has an official goal of both getting rid of nuclear power and fossil fuels within the next decade.

Wear a sweater.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

[RGBVideo]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Since when was nuclear power a fossil fuel?

The "we'll get rid of nuclear power by year 2015" promise is from the 1980s.

I thought it was more commonly known, because it's a classic example of this kind of promise: After the politicians promised to do it, they did absolutely nothing about it. And have done absolutely nothing about it.

Poor Swedes, owned by their politicians.

[Patroklos]

So what kind of power to they plan on using? I hope they figure out how to build hydrogen powered merchant ships...

[RGBVideo]

Originally posted by Patroklos
So what kind of power to they plan on using?

Exactly.

[KrazyHorse]

I hear Sweden is well situated for solar power

[Zkribbler]

I, for one, am shocked SHOCKED that politicians would make promises they don't intend to keep.

[Eli]

Pointless.

There are two options here.
Either we move towards a completely new set of technologies, which will bring emissions down by ~99%, or we won't, and then there's nothing governments will be able to do about it without severely harming the economy.

[Japher]

http://environment.about.com/od/renewableenergy/a/oilfreesweden.htm

Looks like nuclear, wind, water, and ethanol

[Dinner]

If we're serious about ethanol then we need to stop tarrifing the hell out of foreign grown sugar just to please the corn farm lobby. Corn just doesn't produce as much sugar as sugar cane or sugar beets and it requires way to much petroleum based fertilizer to grow. They have literally tens if not hundreds of millions of starving sugar cane farms in the world's tropics who can grow sugar massively cheaper then the fat subsidized corn farmers in America. With this cheaper sugar you can make more ethanol more cheaply.

Also you'll know the US is serious about ethanol when we stop putting a 100% tariff on all ethanol imports. As usual Bush is all talk but no action. He just wants to pretend to be doing something so he stay popular but doesn't really want to shift where we get our energy.

[Patroklos]

Also you'll know the US is serious about ethanol when we stop putting a 100% tariff on all ethanol imports. As usual Bush is all talk but no action. He just wants to pretend to be doing something so he stay popular but doesn't really want to shift where we get our energy.

You can't help yourself can you.

50 years is at least an achievable goal. Plenty of time to implement a real plan that won't collapse our economies. Also a long enough time to let most tech initiatives mature naturally.