Hawaii Decarbonization Settlement 2045

[Punatang]

So Punatang, you've asked for a lot of info and I think have been given it. I'd be interested in your reply to your own question - "Is switching our power generation from oil to LNG, for a day or longer, going to retard climate change.  Yes or no. please =)"

It was an honest question. I do not know. That is the reason I ask questions. I do hope that a solution the Gov is checking into and that my old friend who is the climate Tzar for the state has advocated for decades is going to help but you, who I don't know from Adam, have given me some doubt.  That's the problem with all of this settled science flying around, no one really knows. There are simply too many variables yet undiscovered. You kind of demonstrate that yourself by qualifying your statements with "it can be" and "when compared to renewables".

Giving all of the claims the benefit of the doubt, which we absolutely should do, the kids failure to carry out inter-generational justice immediately if not sooner is itself a crime against the remainder of humanity, both born and unborn, and Mother Earth. 

Still yet, once us lead addled polluters are gone, the kids are still going to have to commit to the things I mentioned that originally set you off, or their kids will want to off them too.

[HiloJulie]

HiloJulie - You seem quite adept at telling EVERYONE else specifically what THEY should do, and yet, I find you to be very nonspecific as to what it is YOU have done.

I already did this here, but can rehash for those slow on the uptake. If you have any questions about choosing to have fewer kids, or limiting driving to once a week or less, or not flying to the mainland for 5+ years, or choosing local fruits & veggies & limiting meat consumption (especially beef) or using off-grid solar, or buying used like clothes by the pound at Redemption, or washing clothes and hanging them on the line during sunny days like today, or tending goats & gardens, or repurposing & recycling, I'd be happy to discuss further.

All that said, I recognize that I have a background and skill set that allows me to live a particularly low-carbon lifestyle in Puna, with features that may not be possible for everyone. However, anyone can limit their number of kids, reduce unnecessary travel, eat less meat, contact their representatives to push for removing fossil-fuels from the electrical and transportation system, and support actions to address climate change like the youth advocates winning their decarbonization lawsuit, if they want to.

HiloJulie - I wrote the CEO's of both the insurance company and the medical center about not only the unnecessary cost the insurance company paid but the carbon footprint needlessly wasted.
Letter writing is a great first step. If it doesn't accomplish your goals, hopefully you'll keep trying additional tactics. Please let us how it goes and how to help.

Yes, I read that. And in as much as I’ve more or less done the same things, including going virtually 99.99% solar, purchasing a hybrid plug in car, limiting trips to town at most times every other week, however, since I mostly retired a little over a year ago, I’ve become an errand girl for several elderly neighbors, but even then limiting trips to doctors etc. to only when necessary as well as planning various shopping and other activities having to be done in town when chauffeuring a neighbor to a doctor appointment etc. 

I even, although it was a tremendous amount of work on my part, but I got the two drunk old men who live about a mile from my home, both on SNAP and SS and who had a daily routine of driving to Keaau EVERYDAY to buy their one 1.75 liter bottle of vodka into first, giving up their car, and secondly, letting me buy them 30 bottles of vodka each month (saving them almost $300.00 a month) and making them walk down to my gate each day for their daily bottle. 

As for limiting children, could not agree more. My husband and I had two children, now middle aged adults, one with no kids the other with 2. 

However, as society evolves through this climate change crisis, one has to take pause in that in the last 2 years a political/religious crowd has found it necessary to virtually control the birth of any child conceived regardless of reason. Including criminal charges against a woman who may decide that having a child is not good for herself, the child or society. Further coupled with mainstream television shows glamorizing families with a dozen plus kids and then having even more. All under the “what god wants” mantra.

But nonetheless I’m trying. As you are. Maybe you being “slow on the uptake” does not allow you to see that.

---

Thank you for that colorful whataboutism HJ LOL.

Im not so sure it’s a whataboutism as much as it’s the truth. 

But, yes it was colorful!

[Punatang]

 letting me buy them 30 bottles of vodka each month (saving them almost $300.00 a month) and making them walk down to my gate each day for their daily bottle. 

Well at least we solved something!!!  HJ's house will be The PWB&G and she will pick us all up and take us home - sans carbon.   

Thanks for doing all you can, for so many, on so many levels HJ.  

Edge, did you stop doing all of that great stuff?  It's all past tense in your post.  We did all that stuff before COVID and we still do it today.  You have us beat on the solar and car though.  Working on it!

[HiloJulie]

How about the “work from home” discipline a significant amount of people did during COVID?

Granted, there are numerous jobs that must be done in person, but even if major corporations allowed for say 10% of their administrative, data entry type workforce to even work a day or two from their home would be a significant step. 

But no. The big whigs, like Elon, Jeff et al, as they climb aboard their owned private jets, their attorneys suing a high school kid for tracking them, all think that working from home is an unproductive way of working and is because the workers are just lazy.

As for my home being the new PWB&G&NPSK, it’s not a feasible option. But, I’m sure the two drunk old men may be willing to host!

[ironyak]

HiloJulie - Maybe you being “slow on the uptake” does not allow you to see that.
While I may have missed you discussing your contributions outside of driving an EV & adding solar, much of what I've seen is you post is about flying to Honolulu to hang out with friends and excitement over the Boeing 787. As you aren't a climate change denier, I honesty have to ask how you can both acknowledge the damages from climate change and yet celebrate more and even larger fossil-fuel powered transportation? It would seem the cognitive dissonance would be overwhelming, so I am curious how you manage to reconcile those ideas and actions.

Punatang - I do hope that a solution the Gov is checking into and that my old friend who is the climate Tzar for the state has advocated for decades is going to help but you, who I don't know from Adam, have given me some doubt.
Well the next time you talk to your friend the "climate tzar" you can blow their mind by asking about the problem of methane slip and whether the current assessment underway takes into account the impact of total emissions of LNG/methane from extraction to combustion. Ignoring these contributions to climate change is just trying to make methane look good compared to bunker fuels, while ignoring how bad methane is compared to renewables.

Punatang - That's the problem with all of this settled science flying around, no one really knows. There are simply too many variables yet undiscovered. You kind of demonstrate that yourself by qualifying your statements with "it can be" and "when compared to renewables".
Not sure where this assertion of "no one really knows" comes from. "Is methane better than bunker fuels?" depends on how it's being used, how much is leaking, and to question why it's only being compared to bunker fuels and not other energy sources.  Is a poke to the eye better than a kick in the crotch? Well, is there a sharp stick or steel-toed boots involved? How swiftly are each moving? So many unknown variables, but maybe there are other approaches, like recognizing both suck regardless and picking neither?

Qualifying statements are made to pin down precisely what is being said. While this may sound like uncertainty to the lay person, it's just the linguistical precision commonly used in scientific discourse to avoid overstating a claim that the evidence does not support. As HiloJulie's old quote used to note an educated populace is critical to a functioning democracy so hopefully some of the links provided help bring people up to speed on the science and avoid the merchants still using the old playbook to peddle doubt: “Doubt is our product since it is the best way of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” British American Tobacco memo from 1969.

Punatang - Still yet, once us lead addled polluters are gone, the kids are still going to have to commit to the things I mentioned that originally set you off, or their kids will want to off them too.
That's the whole point of decarbonization is so that people can have the same conveniences like driving and flying, without causing the damages by burning fossil fuels in the process. It's not that walking or biking is inherently morally superior - if people walked everywhere burning torches filled with bunker fuel that would still be damaging. Removing fossil fuels from the activity allows for it to be far less harmful, but if the activity can't be done without fossil fuels, then perhaps curtailing or forgoing it entirely is the best choice.

Punatang - the kids failure to carry out inter-generational justice immediately if not sooner is itself a crime against the remainder of humanity, both born and unborn, and Mother Earth.
Well, like I said, they seem to be pretty tuned into issues including the difficulties of the problems, such as the systemic constraints that limit an individual's choices. That said, if I was to blithely go about creating pollution that was harming their health and ecosystems, and I didn't stop after years, decades even, of warnings and pleadings, and yet there was no legal recourse, and nowhere to run to, wouldn't they be justified in defending themselves and going all "Children of the Lilikoi"?

[HiloJulie]

HiloJulie - Maybe you being “slow on the uptake” does not allow you to see that.
While I may have missed you discussing your contributions outside of driving an EV & adding solar, much of what I've seen is you post is about flying to Honolulu to hang out with friends and excitement over the Boeing 787. As you aren't a climate change denier, I honesty have to ask how you can both acknowledge the damages from climate change and yet celebrate more and even larger fossil-fuel powered transportation? It would seem the cognitive dissonance would be overwhelming, so I am curious how you manage to reconcile those ideas and actions.

Well, I see you read a particular thing I have said in the past and conflated to mean something else. 

Yes, my husband and I flew to Honolulu for a long weekend to visit with very dear friends we had not seen in over 20 years. Maybe you can’t grasp what having dear friends means to you. Maybe it’s a lack of having any friends on your part, or you only just care about yourself and to hell with the rest. 

And yes, I extolled the virtues of the new 787. Despite all of Boeing’s internal failures and quality control problems etc., the 787 is a (even at 10 plus years old already) state of the art aircraft, that, in addition to being constructed with composite materials which significantly lowers its weight, it was designed with newer jet engines that are 25 to 30% more efficient than the 777 which is now going on 30 years old. 

Furthermore, my full time job prior to my semi retirement a little over a year ago, saw me (and my husband) in jets crossing gods green earth so many times that there were times I forgot what city I was in. My husband and I worked in copyright law. Specifically working with clients who wish to use a copyrighted musical work of another artist for their own profit as well as then generating a new copyright for the use of the original artist’s work. A good example is one of the first copyright case that I worked on back in 1986/87 involved a certain airline who wanted to use a certain song composed by a certain person, then already deceased and his estate represented by his brother. It’s a catchy little tune, from the big band and jazz era. Our client finally agreed to a $300,000 annual fee to use that song, and still does so today, even though the song is now past its 100 year old anniversary and now resides in the public domain. The last rather large copyright cases I worked on was for the FOX TV show “Glee.” In retrospect, having daily root canals would have been much easier and with significantly less pain. 

Unfortunately, that industry works on “in person” negotiations, with both the original artist and the using entity/artist. So, yes in my and my husband’s career, we both were carbon footprint pigs. But regardless, with or without my husband and myself in that line or work, nothing would have been done differently. 

Even with one client, who I represented back in 2015 and having won his copyright use case after almost 2 years of a prolonged needless litigation, but the losing clients attorneys demanding “wet” (original) signatures on a host of documents at the very last minute that were required to be filed by midnight of the last day of the year of 2015, with those attorneys knowing full well that I was in Hawaii. As such, I was required to fly to LAX from Kona to sign a dozen documents, which I did, never setting foot outside of LAX only to return to Kona hours later. (And then being accused of being a drug/money laundering suspect)

I did not set the rules, nor would my refusal of doing what I did have changed anything in the end. 

The issue that I have is you seem to expect that the burning of fossil fuels will change immediately overnight and life will go on as normal. But then, your normal seems to be much different than most people’s normal. 

The climate change debate gets muddled down into the abyss that it is with that logic. Just like the logic some use to deny climate change in the first place. It’s like expecting a newborn child to run the Boston Marathon the day after the child’s birth. 

But, as we know about child rearing, first the baby learns to roll over. Then crawl. Then slowly walk, falling more times than actually making a step. So on and so forth. 

The time wasted in climate denial as well as not seeing “baby” steps in energy production efficiency is mind boggling. 

For example, is LNG better than bunker oil? (By the way, the link provided about “methane slip” is about burning LNG in 4 cycle marine engines and not that of steam boilers used for power generation) And yes, there is a certain amount of methane slip when used for power generation, but through innovation, technology and regulation, can be significantly minimized. But, in the interim, it’s still better than burning bunker oil. And keeping the fingers crossed that there are no major spills or other disasters while transporting that bunker oil to the shores of Hawaii. 

At any event, climate change is not going to be solved by snapping your fingers and expecting immediate change. Maybe instead of criticizing every other person who does not think or act like you just might one day get you a near and dear friend whom you just might one day go fly to somewhere and see them!

I’d also point out that you are very well versed in imbedding links into your post which is nice and helpful. But that does show that you spend significant amounts of time on the internet. Are YOU on solar? And while you claim that you minimize trips and carpool etc., but you don’t state if you have a car or what kind of car you have if you have one. If you have an old pre 21st century vehicle, even if you use it once a month to go to town , you’re spewing more carbon into the air than I would if I drove my hybrid car to town 4 times a day for a month.

I also find your attempted dig on cognitive dissonance to be quite humorous. Maybe you should study “Psychological Projection”

[Punatang]

Here is the University of Hawaii's take on the matter.

Liquified Natural Gas: A cleaner fossil fuel that's cheaper than oil and pairs well with renewable energy
By Sherilyn Wee and Michael Roberts

https://uhero.hawaii.edu/liquefied-natur...le-energy/


Apparently Hawaii is looking at a number of alternatives due to costs and funding issues  that have been exacerbated by the Maui fires.  Here is an article that echoes much of your opinion ironyak, and it has a very nice picture of Mark.

https://www.civilbeat.org/2024/06/state-...or-hawaii/


Liquefied Natural Gas: A cleaner fossil fuel that’s cheaper than oil and pairs well with renewable energy
Liquefied Natural Gas: A cleaner fossil fuel that’s cheaper than oil and pairs well with renewable e



Liquefied Natural Gas: A cleaner fossil fuel that’s cheaper than oil and pairs well with 

Liquefied Natural Gas: A cleaner fossil fuel that’s cheaper than oil and pairs well with renewable energy

[HiloJulie]

Let’s also keep in mind that the discussion of converting from bunker oil to LNG is now going on 15 plus years. Of discussing. Not implementing. Discussing. 

Imagine if we converted to LNG 15 years ago and THEN embarked on a massive solar project on each island. Look how far solar has become in the last 3 years. What if we were 13 years down that path?

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Edge, did you stop doing all of that great stuff? 

Punatang, still doing great stuff, but with changes here and there.  A couple of quick examples:

* Garden and greenhouse growing better than ever; cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, salad greens, more, more, more
* Driving a bit more these days, but as HiloJulie noted multiple trips in an EV can have a carbon footprint less than a single gas powered trip every six weeks
* Still flying very little, twice in the last four years.  But full disclosure, I never flew much before that either.

The climate summit my son is working on in Uganda has a great deal of emphasis on electric bikes. 
The @GovUganda has announced plans to phase out petrol-powered motorcycles (bodabodas) in favour of electric bikes by December 2026. This initiative is part of a broader effort to reduce the nation's carbon emissions

Great for Africa, probably not the best for rainy Puna.  But we have other options and probably greater opportunities as long as we’re in America, and America stays America.

Like this recommendation from Uganda:
Highlights from Human Capital Panel:
• Africa needs competency-based education for climate innovation.

Think of what could be accomplished by 2030 or 2040 with competency based education in Pahoa High & Keaau High!

[HiloJulie]

”Think of what could be accomplished by 2030 or 2040 with competency based education in Pahoa High & Keaau High!”

Too bad the Big Island doesn’t have an industry that requires highly technical and advanced education and skills based in science, engineering and chemistry, as well as other highly specialized fields right here in our backyard. Oh wait…

At any event, I guess we can be quite certain that the Pahoa class of 2030/2040 might just get that competency based training if we simply put a Bible and a poster of the Ten Commandments in each classroom. That ought to do it!

ETA: HOTPE, I am proud of your son and his work!