ABG: U.S. carbon emissions spike in 2018 after years of falling

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Oilpan4 said:
If they cared so much about the environment then why do they burn all that coal and eclipse the US in CO2 production?
It might have something to do with China having over 4x the population. And being the country of origin of a large fraction of what the US consumes.
 
WetEV said:
California has the highest population density in the country.

Well, no. NJ has the highest population density in the country. Although their air quality isn't something to brag about either (so your point still stands). California is #11 by population density (it's a geographically huge state).

But looking at the whole state doesn't matter much when you care about the air in LA. Just picking nits.

https://state.1keydata.com/state-population-density.php
 
GetOffYourGas said:
WetEV said:
California has the highest population density in the country.

Well, no. NJ has the highest population density in the country. Although their air quality isn't something to brag about either (so your point still stands). California is #11 by population density (it's a geographically huge state).

But looking at the whole state doesn't matter much when you care about the air in LA. Just picking nits.

https://state.1keydata.com/state-population-density.php

Amusing nit. By state, sure. But the air isn't bad in Crescent City, now is it? But yes, I should have said L.A. had the highest population density of any large city in the USA.
 
Since we haven’t heard back from Oilpan4 yet and we are discussing CA and the largest metropolitan area: LA, here are relevant historical air quality trends in LA:

PARRISH_4823_Fig-2_rgb.jpg
 
I just checked again.
California still has the worst air quality in the country.
It has gotten better over the years, I never said it had stayed the same. Just every other city with poor air quality has been able to clean it up better, faster and presumably for less money.
The air quality has gotten better over the years but still worst in the country.
That's like training hard for a 5k run, cut your run time in half and still come in last. That's what California is doing.

My "unbiased claim" is only what the American Heart and lung association has been saying for years about cities in California.
So the American Heart and lung association just makes up their assessments?

I have been in LA in 2005 when there was an ozone air quality warning. It was awful. I can't belive people who say they care about the environment allow it to happen or can stand to live there.
I can't imagine what it was like in the 1970s.

1.2 Terra watt hours is what the IEA website said.
I think you are confusing generating capacity with total production.
Or the IEA is wrong.
 
Oilpan4 said:
I just checked again.
Data...read...learn..then post data....checking in with yourself prevents you from learning this stuff, then you just spread your false beliefs.

Oilpan4 said:
California still has the worst air quality in the country.
No one is debating that. It's just a straw man placed by you. It was already explained to you about inversion layer geography which makes CA naturally the hardest to abate air pollution which is why they must do more. They have improved drastically.

Oilpan4 said:
Just every other city with poor air quality has been able to clean it up better, faster and presumably for less money.
No, you made that up in your head, but that does not make it true. Again, post your data to support your claim.

Oilpan4 said:
My "unbiased claim" is only what the American Heart and lung association has been saying for years about cities in California.
So the American Heart and lung association just makes up their assessments? .
No, you are the one fabricating assessments. They never said or suggested as your did that "Just every other city with poor air quality has been able to clean it up better, faster and presumably for less money".

Oilpan4 said:
I have been in LA in 2005 when there was an ozone air quality warning. It was awful. I can't belive people who say they care about the environment allow it to happen or can stand to live there.
I can't imagine what it was like in the 1970s.
Good for you. I lived there half my life and still visit. The numbers posted above for the massive air quality improvements in air pollution are very real. I lived through this.
 
Oilpan4 said:
Yeah its gotten better but still worst in the nation.
The idea behind not being the worst is to improve faster than some one else and let them be the worst.
Because that's not the list you want to be in the top 5 to 8 spots on.
That completely ignores the reasons it was so bad in the first place. As others have pointed out to you, it's due to a combination of the largest state population with fairly high levels of auto ownership despite our heavily urbanized population, auto-generated sprawl and topography (early on, California led the nation in both car ownership per capita and total numbers, just as we do now with the % & # of PEVs; we're now around #29 in % of car ownership/cap. @ 840/1,000, with Wyoming #1 @1,140/1,000 followed by a whole host of other rural states). The L.A. area and the Central Valley are both basins surrounded by mountains on three sides with ocean to the west, which regularly traps emissions under a thermal inversion during hot summers. Which is why L.A. acted as the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the country. California was the first to suffer the effects of large numbers of cars for those reasons, and everyone else followed as their populations and the density of cars in their area increased, with variations depending on the local topography and climate.

We're stuck with the topography and climate (we can make the latter significantly worse, as now seems to be occurring) and at least for the foreseeable future the population (we're taking measures to try and reduce the sprawl and the car ownership). It's for those reasons, despite the fact that we've gone further than any other state in cleaning things up, that we've got so many cities high on the most polluted air in the U.S. list. Any other area facing the same issues would be as bad or worse, even though they'd spent a lot more cleaning things up (as we have) than states not facing those conditions.

OTOH, while we've also cleaned up our water in a big way, we never had rivers like the Cuyahoga in Cleveland regularly catching fire (not just the most widely reported one in 1969, it had happened many times before), as it used to before passage and enforcement of the Clean Water Act and various other acts and establishment of government agencies like the EPA. From the wiki:

A 1968 Kent State University symposium described one section of the river:

  • From 1,000 feet [300 m] below Lower Harvard Bridge to Newburgh and South Shore Railroad Bridge, the channel becomes wider and deeper and the level is controlled by Lake Erie. Downstream of the railroad bridge to the harbor, the depth is held constant by dredging, and the width is maintained by piling along both banks. The surface is covered with the brown oily film observed upstream as far as the Southerly Plant effluent. In addition, large quantities of black heavy oil floating in slicks, sometimes several inches thick, are observed frequently. Debris and trash are commonly caught up in these slicks forming an unsightly floating mess. Anaerobic action is common as the dissolved oxygen is seldom above a fraction of a part per million. The discharge of cooling water increases the temperature by 10 to 15 °F [5.6 to 8.3 °C]. The velocity is negligible, and sludge accumulates on the bottom. Animal life does not exist. Only the algae Oscillatoria grows along the piers above the water line. The color changes from gray-brown to rusty brown as the river proceeds downstream. Transparency is less than 0.5 feet [0.15 m] in this reach. This entire reach is grossly polluted.[14]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River#Environmental_concerns

Is this 'pretend' environmental damage'?

In addition to the recent wildfires, we also had the Aliso Canyon NG leak in 2015-2016, which negated our carbon savings for that year. From the wiki:
The Aliso Canyon gas leak (also called Porter Ranch gas leak[1] and Porter Ranch gas blowout[2]) was a massive natural gas leak that was discovered by SoCalGas employees on October 23, 2015.[3] Gas was escaping from a well within the Aliso Canyon's underground storage facility in the Santa Susana Mountains near Porter Ranch, Los Angeles.[4] . . . On January 6, 2016, Governor Jerry Brown issued a state of emergency.[5] The Aliso gas leak's carbon footprint is said to be larger than the Deepwater Horizon leak in the Gulf of Mexico.[6] On February 11, 2016, the gas company reported that it had the leak under control.[7] On February 18, 2016, state officials announced that the leak was permanently plugged.

An estimated 97,100 tonnes (95,600 long tons; 107,000 short tons) (0.000097 Gt) of methane and 7,300 tonnes (7,200 long tons; 8,000 short tons) of ethane were released into the atmosphere,[8] The initial effect of the release increased the estimated 5.3 Gt of methane in the Earth's atmosphere by about 0.002%, diminishing to half that in 6–8 years.

It was widely reported to have been the worst single natural gas leak in U.S. history in terms of its environmental impact.[9][10][11] By comparison, the entire rest of the South Coast Air Basin combined emits approximately 413,000 tonnes of methane and 23,000 tonnes of ethane annually. . . .[12]

Local residents have reported headaches, nausea, and severe nosebleeds.[4] About 50 children per day saw school nurses for severe nosebleeds.[29] There have been more than usual eye, ear and throat infections.[21] By December 25, 2015, more than 2,200 families from the Porter Ranch neighborhood had been temporarily relocated, and more than 2,500 households were still being processed.[34] As of January 7, 2016, 2,824 households or about 11,296 people had been temporarily relocated by SoCal Gas,[28] while more than 6,500 families have filed for help.[37] Two schools were relocated in January. . . .[14]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliso_Canyon_gas_leak#Effect_on_local_community
Is this another case of 'pretend' environmental damage? Should we have not taken the following action (among others) in response (also from the wiki):
The unavailability of the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility has caused insufficient delivery of gas to power plants, leading to a strained electricity grid. The CPUC has ordered Southern California Edison to install a 20 MW (80 MWh) lithium ion battery storage capacity at the utility's Mira Loma substation near San Bernardino, California to mitigate power failures during winter. . . .[53][54]
In 2018 SoCalGas agreed to payments of $119.5 million to several government entities over the incident.
 
Oilpan4 said:
1.2 Terra watt hours is what the IEA website said.
I think you are confusing generating capacity with total production.
Or the IEA is wrong.
The confusion is yours
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01

You *could* apply a little common sense here ...
EIA tells you that coal is 0.3 of total electricity generation.
If coal was 1.2 TWh then total utility electricity generation is 4 TWh per year
There are ~ 120M households in the US. If all the electric generation went to homes (far from true) then per day each home would use

4*10^12 Wh / (1.2*10^10*3.65) = ~ 90 Wh a day, about 1 penny a day. Sound correct to you ?

Once you figure out your error here, I look forward to reading that you have learned how to convert PV STC watts into annual generation. You may want to put your opinions on pause until you can solve simple energy arithmetic.
 
I have no idea why oilpan is bashing CA. That state is not the cause of the rising US carbon emissions.
 
Oilpan4 said:
That's like training hard for a 5k run, cut your run time in half and still come in last. That's what California is doing.
No, wrong use of a 5k analogy.

It's instead like an athlete born without fully formed legs competing with those born with fully formed legs. The athlete who made the most progress was not the one with the best 5k run time who cut his run time in half. Instead it was the one born without fully formed legs who developed himself, built himself prosthetics, didn't consider himself some sort of lost case, and was able to run with those who had no disability to overcome by cutting his run time to a twentieth. That later person was "better" and made far more progress.

Oilpan4 said:
1.2 Terra watt hours is what the IEA website said.
I think you are confusing generating capacity with total production.
Or the IEA is wrong.
No, neither the IEA or the EIA said that. Post your source data.

The EIA said that in 2017 coal generated 1,206 billion kWh. That is NOT the same as 1.2 TWh. If you did a conversion on this, you may have lost the "k" in kWh.

SageBrush said:
I have no idea why oilpan is bashing CA. That state is not the cause of the rising US carbon emissions.
Perhaps thought he stumbled on a bunch of suckers, maybe the shenanigans worked before.

Some see CA as renegades for renewables? Forcing their clean air ways on the others? Leading in the fight to reduce GHG and suggesting that we all need to look beyond our own fences to not poison our neighbors?
 
iPlug said:
The EIA said that in 2017 coal generated 1,206 billion kWh. That is NOT the same as 1.2 TWh.
The generation is in trillions of kWh rather billions. To Americans anyway. My wife pointed out to me yesterday that the US uses 'billion' to mean 10^9 while Europe uses it to mean 10^12. You are right though, he "lost" the 'k'

Some of these errors could be avoided if we just stuck to scientific notation or used the "digital" prefixes of mega, giga, tera and peta to reference exponents of 6, 9, 12 and 15 respectively.

As for oilpan's conversion of STC watts to annual kWh, I cannot even guess at his errors although it takes work and a divorce from reality to be off by 480,000 fold and not realize that the numbers are nonsensical. Apply his methods to US household income and you end up with a person confidently declaring that the mean US household income is one penny a month.

Addendum:
Arithmetic corrected. Sorry iPlug
 
As much as I am enjoying this conversation (so don't stop sharing facts on my account!), I don't think anyone's facts are going to change OilPan's mind. It seems to be a classic case of Confirmation Bias.
 
This site
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/us-states-by-carbon-dioxide-emissions-per-capita.html

tallies per capita CO2 emissions by state. Sort of interesting although it lacks climate and urban density context.
 
GetOffYourGas said:
As much as I am enjoying this conversation (so don't stop sharing facts on my account!), I don't think anyone's facts are going to change OilPan's mind. It seems to be a classic case of Confirmation Bias.
In a round about way, that is why I respond to him at all.
If I thought he was just another Trumper moron I would ignore him as a waste of time. But he was schooled to be a technician of PV and wind. That gives me hope that he just needs an arithmetic refresher rather than a brain transplant.
 
Also, consider that others are reading this thread, and may be more open to the facts. At some level, you are doing them a disservice to leave his unsubstantiated claims unchallenged.
 
SageBrush said:
iPlug said:
The EIA said that in 2017 coal generated 1,206 billion kWh. That is NOT the same as 1.2 TWh.
Actually, it is. But the generation is in trillions of kWh rather billions. To Americans anyway. My wife pointed out to me yesterday that the US uses 'billion' to mean 10^9 while Europe uses it to mean 10^12. You are right though, he "lost" the 'k'

Some of these errors could be avoided if we just stuck to scientific notation or used the "digital" prefixes of mega, giga, tera and peta to reference exponents of 6, 9, 12 and 15 respectively.
Trying to understand what is going on here, do our numbers disagree? EIA specifically says coal generated 1,206 billion kWh in 2017:
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

So:
1,206 billion kWh = 1.2 trillion kWh = 1,200 trillion Wh = 1,200 TWh
Numbers check out here:
http://extraconversion.com/energy/terawatthours/terawatthours-to-kilowatt-hours.html


Unfortunately not the first I have seen a guy involved in the world of solar where one would think would have a better understanding and position on solar/renewables and California's place in this domain.

A couple years ago I went to a city run science fair at the neighboring municipality (Roseville). They had a solar booth so I was excited and went over to chat up the attendant there thinking he would be a solar advocate since he was stationed there. Turns out he was a high voltage electrician for the city, but he was not particularly friendly to solar and renewables. He trash talked solar and federal incentives and felt they were harmful to the grid. I brought up data such as mentioned in this thread and he did not seem to be aware or care. Would have put more credibility in what he was saying, but he had so many basic stats wrong that I went over with him. There were no harsh words, but left feeling bad that the city put this guy in charge of the booth.
 
iPlug said:
iPlug said:
The EIA said that in 2017 coal generated 1,206 billion kWh. That is NOT the same as 1.2 TWh.
Trying to understand what is going on here, do our numbers disagree? EIA specifically says coal generated 1,206 billion kWh in 2017:
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

So:
1,206 billion kWh = 1.2 trillion kWh = 1,200 trillion Wh = 1,200 TWh
Exactly correct.
Or as I am fond of saying, 1.2 PWh (10^15 Wh)

Please excuse my brain fart from earlier today, I've amended the post
 
Back
Top