He cites in particular a paper by Jan Christoph Steckel, Ottmar Edenhofer, and Michael Jakob. Of all of the factors affecting carbon dioxide emissions, the most important is probably the increase in the carbon intensity of energy use in Asia and in developing countries, fueled (so to speak) by coal. Taylor notes that simply going for a global crackdown on coal use would punish countries that are well behind the U.S. and other developed countries in terms of wealth. He concludes,
if you aren’t a big supporter of near-term, large-scale, non-coal methods of producing electricity around the world, you aren’t really serious about reducing global carbon emissions.
This is silly to me. So non coal equals natural gas, basically. So, IIRC that is something like 30% less co2, which I don’t even really believe. But let’s say half. Even if they could use natty gas, which they can’t, they aren’t planning to double electricity use?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/09/140924-natural-gas-impact-on-emissions/
It isn’t enough to be anti coal. You have to be pro nuclear and solar.
Link to Taylor
But the Greens are anti-nuke, anti hydro and anti natural gas. In what logical universe can those policies be reconciled with their professed belief that we face the end of civilization unless we immediately and drastically reduce CO2 emissions?
They don’t like wind either if it spoils the view or chops up a lot of big, rare birds (all over). They don’t like solar in the Mohave or Nevada either if it might hurt the desert tortoise or whatever.
Also, though it’s rarely noted, these green items- like the Prius and other ‘eco-signalling’ cars – aren’t even that green. A gigantic amount of emissions is generated making the huge amounts of cement that go into a wind-turbine’s anchor foundation. (Coal to heat the limestone to thousands of degrees, and then CO2 direct emissions in the reductive reaction to make clinker (CaCO3 -> CaO + CO2). Likewise for smelting all the steel and copper needed for the infrastructure to transmit the energy from farther away, or refining the lithium for batteries. Likewise for smelting the pure silicon via Czochralski process (again, intense amounts of heat and direct CO2 emissions to remove the oxygen) to make solar cells.
Ironically, when people boast of the prices of these devices coming down a little recently, a lot of it has to do with production being moved to China, where the cheapest, dirtiest coal is consumed and plenty of CO2 emitted to make the basic components. No one wants to bother with these gloomy facts, which is revealing.