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[Loud Whispers]

I didn't expect that- SOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

<sub>Ssshhh

Soon</sub>

Could be, but the company has experience building towers of that kind, although none that big. They can probably deal with the ramp.

According to wikipedia, they wanted to make the tower a "mere" 660 m high, but the local authority wanted the highest building in the world. I'm afraid they're being pushed beyond their capabilities.

Tower of Jenga or tower of Lego? What are we calling it?

[Frumple]

Tower of Jenga or tower of Lego? What are we calling it?

"Property Devaluation"

[palsch]

So this came completely out of nowhere.

China agreed Saturday with the United States to scale back production of "super greenhouse gases" used in refrigerators and air conditioners in a joint bid to fight climate change.

The two nations made the pledge after a closely watched first summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping, who lead the world's top two emitters of greenhouse gases blamed for the planet's increasingly volatile climate.

In a statement, China and the United States "agreed to work together" through an international body to "phase down the production and consumption" of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), dubbed super greenhouse gases for their pollution.

The White House said that a global phasedown of HFCs could reduce carbon emissions by 90 gigatons by 2050—equivalent to around two full years worth of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

[Sheb]

I wonder what they'll replace them with. HFC are basically what they found to replace CFCs that where destroying the Ozone layer, that themselves were replacement for the ammonia and SO2 we used before, that were destroying anyone breathing them.

As far as I know, they want to go back to using ammonia, miwed with other things.

[palsch]

What I've seen suggests Hydrofluroroolefins (HFOs) which are themselves environmentally imperfect (at least one forms trifluoroacetic acid, although seemingly in negligible amounts, and they need to be used in combination with HFCs for now)  but at least climate neutral.

[Sheb]

Are they? They still have C-F bonds, so they should absorb in the infrared too.

Edit: Okay, the double bond makes them more reactive in the atmosphere, leading to a shorter lifetime.

Anyway, I wonder what will be the problem with this one. It seems that someone cast a malediction of refrigerant gases that always a new defect must arise.

[10ebbor10]

Maybe we should just switch some other refrigation system.

I heard that sound based refrigation worked.

[Another]

Peltier elements for the win!

[10ebbor10]

Sadly those are expensive and very power inefficient.

[Another]

Exactly the same problem as with all environmental-friendly energy applications.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Not so much anymore. Wind is on the same level as coal now and solar is going to hit it sometime between 2014 and 2018.

[Sheb]

Which is totally irrelevant because gas is so cheap thanks to fracking.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's only cheap if you don't consider making a superfund site that will be collectively the size of Lake Michigan to be cost.

[10ebbor10]

Not so much anymore. Wind is on the same level as coal now and solar is going to hit it sometime between 2014 and 2018.

Only for the construction of new plants. Continuing production in the older, more polluting plants is still cheaper.

It's only cheap if you don't consider making a superfund site that will be collectively the size of Lake Michigan to be cost.

I though they just reinjected the water in the depleted gas reserves. Besides, most of it can be recycled with  some basic filtration systems.

[alway]

Not so much anymore. Wind is on the same level as coal now and solar is going to hit it sometime between 2014 and 2018.

Only for the construction of new plants. Continuing production in the older, more polluting plants is still cheaper.

Until you take health costs into consideration. In which case they become much more expensive than clean energy.

Even the study’s most conservative estimate of the uncounted cost of coal — $175 billion a year — would more than double the average cost of coal-fired electricity, the authors found. At this lower range, roughly 80 percent of the costs were from well-documented public health impacts like lung and heart disease, with the rest of the costs attributed to climate change and other environmental impacts as well as local economic effects like lost tourism in coal-mining areas.

That's a best case, with the study's worst case being $500 billion, and even that not taking into account a variety of added costs of unknown size (not included because there wasn't sufficient data available to make an accurate estimate).