Slashdot Mirror

http://www.climatechangenews.c...

The problem is much greater than being down “a couple of nukes.” You’re going to lose all of your nukes, including the newer ones with highest efficiency. To avoid the embarrassment of an all-lignite baseload, you have now agreed to fracked gas, so long as it’s being produced in Russia.

http://www.climatechangenews.c...

LOL.
America is switching to EVs at a rather quick pace. Right now, we have been behind Europe, but that is changing quickly due to Model 3. Then add to that, the coming electric semi-tractors which will make a HUGE impact on America's emissions.

Finally, CHina is NOT only the most aggressive investor in renewable energy, but also the most aggressive investor in coal plants. In fact, they are building over 700 over the next couple of years.
This lead to China having a 5% CO2 emission rise for 2017. China's coal consumption is jumping to deal with the extra electricity demands by these buses and China trying to force GDP increases.

Sadly, this article points out the real facts and skips the BS from so many.
In short, for all of Europe’s posturing and moralizing about the Paris climate accord, Europe continues to do relatively little to address carbon dioxide emissions, other than to neither increase nor decrease its own emissions. That leaves it up to the United States and China to sufficiently reduce emissions to compensate for growing emissions in developing nations. And China, despite modest reductions from 2015 through 2017, has increased emissions this decade – and this century – more than any other nation in the world. Even the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) acknowledges that America’s emissions comprise only a small portion of global emissions. According to UCS, the United States accounted for only 15% of global emissions in 2015, and that percentage continues to fall. Declining U.S. emissions simply cannot keep pace with rising global emissions unless there are substantial reductions in the pace of global emissions growth. Chastising America for declining to join an agreement of nations, by nations, and for nations that continue to do little if anything to reduce emissions may satisfy anti-Trump anger, but is ineffectual and meaningless in the effort to reduce global emissions.

How about this one? http://www.climatechangenews.c... That appears to be a news report on this study: https://www.nature.com/article...

1. Feeding, clothing and sheltering around 1.7 billion people--around 20% of Earth's human population.

This is just stupid Goldilocks talk, we get that a lot on /. from people with no arguments... the nations in Europe are too small. China is too big. The US is different from everyone else and just right. Bovine excrement.

2. A massive air and water pollution problem that is already affecting the health of many Chinese.

Life expectancy is 76 years, far above the world average of 71.5 years and trailing the US by <3 years. China's GDP/capita is now around the world average, half the world is poorer than China and in total they're second only to the US. They have a huge net export ($500,000 million/year) and very low national debt (41% compared to 106% in the US). Basically they're already in good health and have a massive unused economic muscle they could use to buy polluting goods from others, create greener tech, subsidize greener tech, levy taxes on polluting goods they produce and so on.

Truth is that China is far from worst in class: Smog-cloaked Delhi looks with envy at Beijing's cleaner air. Not only particulates, but China's Sulfur Dioxide Emissions Drop, India's Grow Over Last Decade. Those are the two biggest local pollution issues. Their total energy consumption and CO2 emissions are growing but that's a global problem that won't more adversely affect China than anyone else. If you think any of these are "collapse of China" class problems you're wildly delusional.

Start with the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we know precisely how much of it is emitted when fossil fuels are burnt. We've known that CO2 is a greenhouse gas for a lot longer than 50 years.

http://www.climatechangenews.c...

1856, we've known CO2 is a greenhouse gas for over 160 years now!

[quote]China has pledged to reduce its emission intensity (CO2 emissions per unit of economic activity) to 60-65% below 2005 levels by 2030, increase the share of non-fossil energy to 20% of total energy consumption in 2030, and to peak carbon dioxide emission before 2030.[/quote] http://www.climatechangenews.c...

Coal already gets massive subsidies http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind... http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... http://www.climatechangenews.c... and that doesn't count the huge cost to health care and lost worker productivity: http://www.fastcompany.com/172...

DOE did a study on savings to date through the Clean Air Act (passed through Congress without a single vote against it!) which found the Act had a *net benefit* to the economy for that reason. Nuclear sucks too, but Coal kills more than Nuclear https://www.newscientist.com/a... If someone can get alternative up to coal and nuclear then all the more power to them! :-)

Environmental policy used to be bipartisan https://www.washingtonpost.com... Fuck partisanship!

That 14,000 abandoned wind turbine claim is bullshit: They are old ones which were decommissioned and replaced, so it's like claiming the automobile is a failed idea because there are so many cars have gone to the wreckers. Just more Nimby bullshit. http://skeptics.stackexchange.... http://www.wind-works.org/cms/...

Germany is the country with the highest reduction of CO2 of the world.

Fantasy.

In 2014 German CO2 emissions dropped by 4.3% -- the first drop in three years.

In 2015 German CO2 emissions rose by 1%.

Germany emits nearly twice the CO2 per capita that France emits. France reduced its CO2 emissions in the 1990's. Germany could have reduced its CO2 emissions by closing coal fired electricity generation plants but decided instead to keep emissions more or less constant by replacing low carbon nuclear plants by low carbon renewables.

Almost every post you make is full of unsupported lies.

Come back when your country has build a few nukes successfuly and/or has at least reached a fraction of the CO2 reduction Germany has.

I live in France you moron.

Arctic vs Antarctic ice
https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/s...

http://www.nasa.gov/content/go...

http://www.climatechangenews.c...

***

The truth is, there have been times when the Earth did not even have polar ice caps. But I have a hypothesis regarding this scenario.

The orbital plane of earth is slightly lower. Think about it. The Earth's orbit around the sun is not perfect - no celestial body is. Look at the moon sometimes it's higher in altitude and sometimes lower.

So what if the Earth is slightly lower in altitude of it's planar orbit around the sun? The northern hemisphere would be warmer, ice would melt. The southern hemisphere would experience the opposite, with the antarctic increasing in the accumulation of ice.

Yet I have seen very little research into this possibility that could pose a valid explanation for Earth's present climate changes.

***

None of this means we shouldn't clean up our act, stop pollution, and move to clean renewable energy. Far beyond CO2, look at the damage coal mining has done to the neighboring environments. Streams poisoned until no life is in them. I think we can ALL agree we need to clean up our act.