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"empty gestures" hun? Care to back that up somehow?

They've been more or less continuously reducing gross (and even more so per captia) CO2 emission for years now. E.g. About 10% reduction in gross emission since 2005 (while growing both population and GDP).

Source.

According to the world bank data set here the US has reduced its gross C02 emissions to about 90.7% of its 2005 levels while Germany is at 90.3%. So Germany is marginally better but they are pretty comparable really in terms of achievments. China, on the hand, has about doubled their emissions in the same time frame. :-/

Whats more worrying though when comparing the US to Germany is that over the last year or two the trend in reduction is accelerating in Germany while in the US CO2 emissions are actually starting to increase! Plus the looking at the new white house administration I'd expect that will only get worse, not better.

Don't really agree with that sentiment.

For example, according to the world bank data they've reduced their gross CO2 emission by about 10% since 2005. (Meanwhile their population has grown by .7% and their GDP by around 21% over the same time span.) In my book thats not really "nothing to show".

Don't really agree with that sentiment.

For example, according to the world bank data they've reduced their gross CO2 emission by about 10% since 2005. (Meanwhile their population has grown by .7% and their GDP by around 21% over the same time span.) In my book thats not really "nothing to show".

First off, the per capitia emissions does not matter. It is a totally worthless form of normalization WRT any form of pollution esp CO2.
Secondly, America's emissions continues downwards while Germany's, like China's, continues upwards. You used old numbers.
Finally, the best form of normalization on this would be emissions per $ GDP (real, not PPP). The reason is that emissions are not tied to you and me. They are tied to businesses and gov. For example, did YOU choose to build more coal plants and cut back on nukes? Nope. That was your gov. Likewise, did YOU choose to lie about diesel emissions from German-made cars? Nope. That was a decision made by your executives, along with your gov (and yes, your gov DID know that they were cheating). Fastest way to get a nation to drop their CO2 is for them to cut their exports (as in other nations do not import from them). This is why it is a much saner form of normalization.
Like yours, this is still 3 years old, but, it is a much saner normalization

In spite of the riff everybody is doing on germany not doing enough, they are a western country which has a high standard of living and have about half the emission per capita of CO2 than the US has... https://data.worldbank.org/ind... for those not wanting to click : per capita USA 16.5 metric ton per person, Germany 8.9 metric tons per capita. And that is in spite of all that lignite burning.

Manufacturing in the US is only down 4.3% in the last 20 years (as % of GDP).

And thus, installed solar capacity can't be counted on to be there at any particular point in time and requires fossil fuel capacity as a backup.
Or you do what others do: you have a back up solar plant. Wow that was so simple again.
When was the last time that whole Africa was under clouds? Or whole USA?

Yeah, lets completely ignore the energy loss due to transmission. Europe hasn't been able to economically transmit electricity from solar power stations in Africa. That's changing through new power line technology and system upgrades. But if they can barely get energy to Europe from North Africa, what makes you think that they can transmit energy to the US?

http://blogs.worldbank.org/ene...

http://www.reuters.com/article...

https://www.scientificamerican...

Power is still so cheap is not an issue. As long as my power bill is a 1/3rd of yours, you are the one who should think about power costs, not me.

What is the average electricity consumption per person in the USA and Germany?
https://data.worldbank.org/ind...
Germany 7,035 kWh
United States 12,987 kWh

What is the average price paid for the electricity by people in the USA and Germany?
http://www.worldatlas.com/arti...
Germany 19.21 cents/kWh
United States 10.00 cents/kWh

Multiply one by the other....
Germany $1352.42
United States $1298.70

Thats bollocks, google is your friend.

Indeed, Google is my friend. Americans pay less than half the rate for electricity and use nearly double the electricity, resulting in a smaller average electric bill than the average German.

Perhaps I can introduce you to Google? It seems that you've never met before.

yeah, GNI is the only thing that matters, right ?

GDP (per capita) matters too, I suppose... But do propose some other criteria — the only requirement is that it be objectively measurable...

idiot

Don't be name-calling, asshole...

Look where Belgium and the Netherlands

But not Sweden, Denmark, and Norway... And yet, their performance is rather unremarkable — matching, rather than vastly exceeding America's. Only Norway does much better than US — but it also does much better than others, so it can't be the Socialism (it is oil).

Well what do you know?
I still haven't run out of copy/paste NOR has the reality abruptly changed to fit delusions of pathetic creatures who can't face facts.
How's them mod points working for ya, snowflake? Still downmodding facts and arguments you can't accept?
Aaaaw...

Anyways... as I was saying above to that CUNT who's accusing people promoting renewables of genocide...

Those hundreds of thousands you mention have NO energy, if by energy you mean electricity.
Nor the means to get it. There is no electric grid in most those places. Nor will there be as long as there's money in stealing copper cables.

And guess what?
Those "douche bag westerns preaching about global warming" are actually a part of the solution.
Cause all that preaching is the reason why western governments have pumped in billions of dollars into renewable energy (and continue to do so), increasing production and lowering prices of solar and wind power (particularly solar) - thus creating conditions for all those hundreds of thousands you clearly care sooooo much for to get electricity for the first time.
Electricity from renewable sources, that is.
Which is not only cleaner now, thanks in part to those "western douche bags", it is also cheaper than the same electricity from coal.

Which kinda makes you a part of the problem, doesn't it?
So... how does it feel to be "actively killing real people right now"? Does it get your limp dick hard enough to see it?
Without a microscope?

Poor snowflake can't face reality.
Snowflake want rubber ball? Squeezed between its ties it might feel like a testicle? Maybe?
Maybe then snowflake can face reality instead of being a pathetic loser who can't accept factuality of arguments, forced to throw mod-tantrums instead?
Like a retarded baby with diarrhea. Only more retarded.

Anyways... as I was saying above to that CUNT who's accusing people promoting renewables of genocide...

Those hundreds of thousands you mention have NO energy, if by energy you mean electricity.
Nor the means to get it. There is no electric grid in most those places. Nor will there be as long as there's money in stealing copper cables.

And guess what?
Those "douche bag westerns preaching about global warming" are actually a part of the solution.
Cause all that preaching is the reason why western governments have pumped in billions of dollars into renewable energy (and continue to do so), increasing production and lowering prices of solar and wind power (particularly solar) - thus creating conditions for all those hundreds of thousands you clearly care sooooo much for to get electricity for the first time.
Electricity from renewable sources, that is.
Which is not only cleaner now, thanks in part to those "western douche bags", it is also cheaper than the same electricity from coal.

Which kinda makes you a part of the problem, doesn't it?
So... how does it feel to be "actively killing real people right now"? Does it get your limp dick hard enough to see it?
Without a microscope?

The best part of all this is - facts still remain facts.
I.e. My downmodders are proving themselves to be SUCH pathetic cognitively dissonant losers with each downmode it's so HI-LAR-I-OUS it's almost tragic.
Like watching a brat writhing on the floor, kicking and screaming "IT'S NOT! IT'S NOT! IT'S NOT!".
And then you say "Oh yes it is." And kick it in the face.

You snowflakes realize you're more likely to run out of mod points while trying to bury facts than I am to run out of copy/paste?

Aaaaw... someone don't likey facty-facty? Boo-hoo... Poor snowflake. Don't you know that global warming is bad for you?
Too bad copy/paste is my ally.

Anyways... as I was saying above to that CUNT who's accusing people promoting renewables of genocide...

Those hundreds of thousands you mention have NO energy, if by energy you mean electricity.
Nor the means to get it. There is no electric grid in most those places. Nor will there be as long as there's money in stealing copper cables.

And guess what?
Those "douche bag westerns preaching about global warming" are actually a part of the solution.
Cause all that preaching is the reason why western governments have pumped in billions of dollars into renewable energy (and continue to do so), increasing production and lowering prices of solar and wind power (particularly solar) - thus creating conditions for all those hundreds of thousands you clearly care sooooo much for to get electricity for the first time.
Electricity from renewable sources, that is.
Which is not only cleaner now, thanks in part to those "western douche bags", it is also cheaper than the same electricity from coal.

Which kinda makes you a part of the problem, doesn't it?
So... how does it feel to be "actively killing real people right now"? Does it get your limp dick hard enough to see it?
Without a microscope?

Aaaaw... someone don't likey facty-facty? Boo-hoo... Poor snowflake. Don't you know that global warming is bad for you?
Too bad copy/paste is my ally.

Anyways... as I was saying above to that CUNT who's accusing people promoting renewables of genocide...

Those hundreds of thousands you mention have NO energy, if by energy you mean electricity.
Nor the means to get it. There is no electric grid in most those places. Nor will there be as long as there's money in stealing copper cables.

And guess what?
Those "douche bag westerns preaching about global warming" are actually a part of the solution.
Cause all that preaching is the reason why western governments have pumped in billions of dollars into renewable energy (and continue to do so), increasing production and lowering prices of solar and wind power (particularly solar) - thus creating conditions for all those hundreds of thousands you clearly care sooooo much for to get electricity for the first time.
Electricity from renewable sources, that is.
Which is not only cleaner now, thanks in part to those "western douche bags", it is also cheaper than the same electricity from coal.

Which kinda makes you a part of the problem, doesn't it?
So... how does it feel to be "actively killing real people right now"? Does it get your limp dick hard enough to see it?
Without a microscope?

Those hundreds of thousands you mention have NO energy, if by energy you mean electricity.
Nor the means to get it. There is no electric grid in most those places. Nor will there be as long as there's money in stealing copper cables.

And guess what?
Those "douche bag westerns preaching about global warming" are actually a part of the solution.
Cause all that preaching is the reason why western governments have pumped in billions of dollars into renewable energy (and continue to do so), increasing production and lowering prices of solar and wind power (particularly solar) - thus creating conditions for all those hundreds of thousands you clearly care sooooo much for to get electricity for the first time.
Electricity from renewable sources, that is.
Which is not only cleaner now, thanks in part to those "western douche bags", it is also cheaper than the same electricity from coal.

Which kinda makes you a part of the problem, doesn't it?
So... how does it feel to be "actively killing real people right now"? Does it get your limp dick hard enough to see it?
Without a microscope?

Oh, it looks like I found where some of that Canadian healthcare money is coming from.

Canadian defence spending among lowest in NATO . . .
Military expenditure (% of GDP)

Maybe the US should stop picking up the slack for NATO.

Hmmm....

Report Says Canada’s Socialized Medicine Failing Canadians

Canada’s socialized health care is driving more than 63,000 Canadians out of the country for medical assistance — largely to the U.S.

A new report from the Fraser Institute, a conservative think-tank, estimates that more than 63,459 Canadians traveled to find the health care that is often unavailable in Canada, usually due to long wait times for operations. That number is a 40 percent increase from the previous year, CTV News reports.

The Pitfalls of Single-Payer Health Care: Canada’s Cautionary Tale

Until we stop breeding as rabbits

We already did: http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

The continued population growth is because people are living longer, but it's levelling off. We are on target for about 10-11bn by the end of the century, which is sustainable with modern farming methods. The main issues now are all to do with the politics of handling the increase.

This is actually a myth: http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

The global fertility rate is nearing zero growth. The world population is still rising because the people already born are living longer so there are more generations alive today than ever before, but it is levelling off.

The only way to do what you suggest would be to actually create a decline in population, which has other extremely negative consequences for the economy and society.

Fortunately all we really need to do is plan better. Get rid of 5 year budgets for roads, go to 50 years. Build new towns around public transport, and fix old ones by demolishing a few things to put some in. Plan for the pay back to be in the 50 year range, not shareholder dividends after breaking ground.

We have enough resources, we just don't allocate them well.

Data source please?
Nevermind, try this:
http://data.worldbank.org/indi...
Fertility rate in the 1960's was 4 to 5 children per female, which was definitely meant upward population.
Only in recent years has the global average gotten down towards 2.4, which is still greater than replacement (i.e. growing population).
Places like US, Western Europe, and Japan have sub-replacement fertility, but are still more than made up for by developing countries.

According to the ORNL data from 2013, the US doesn't make it into the top 10 of per capita CO2 emissions.

Even Eurostat's 2012 data lists Luxembourg as higher CO2 emissions per capita than the US.

The US can and should improve, but we're not the worst by the metric you've selected. And the numbers I found imply that there are some real hypocrites over in Europe.

The US is the most business and investment friendly country on the planet.

Actually, Singapore and Hong Kong are consistently rated as more business friendly.

Low taxes, low energy prices, cheap infrastructure in the form of affordable land and office space

If those were so important, American AI labs would be in Louisiana rather than California.

Uh, no, they've actually declared to be aiming pretty high.

Nicaragua expects to get 90% of it's electricity from renewables by 2020.

It may be true that the US has been the largest contributor to long term CO2 emissions, however since 2005, China has been emitting more CO2 than the US, and much more.

Be careful to not just look at CO2 from energy - CO2 from cement production is also important (though typically smaller than energy-related emissions).

and it will continue to grow.

I think it's time you update your prejudice. China is doing more to stem emissions than most of the west while still rising out of poverty and increasing its energy demand at the same time. Compared to the USA it's CO2 emissions per person are far lower. Investment in renewables dwarf the USA, as does production of renewable energy sources.

So much BS here.
1) China's electrify is around 82-85% from coal. Because china is adding 30-50 GW of NEW COAL PLANTS each year, while at the same time, adding less than 30 GW of wind/solar/hydro/nukes each year, they will actually maintain OR increase their emissions from coal by 2030. In fact, right now, they are around 1.1 TW of coal-powered electricity. In 2030, they are projecting to be ~ 1.75 TW. IOW, China will add more coal plants in the next 13 years, than America and EU28 can cut because together, we are less than 500 GW TODAY.

Yet, idiots are worried about a nation that emits less than 14%, and is dropping fast.

Nope, smart people are worrying about idiots who rest on their laurels while the rest of the world is investing in solving the problem. The idiots here are the USA, comfortable in the fact that their emissions are only 14% of the total due to the abuse of a statistic that ignores the fact that they are the 3rd largest emitter per person in the world and more than double that of China. Then these idiots (I'm talking about you here) will claim that they are dropping fast abusing the same statistic which when realised per capita actually puts you pretty damn far down on the list of countries solving the problem.

Per person you are performing worse than China. Per person you are solving the problem slower than China.

From behalf of the rest of the world: Fuck you for even daring to compare yourself to a country like China who are actually making an effort.

America continues to develop the majority of AE that is going on. Far far more than China does. FOr example, the vast majority of the companies in China that do solar, were basically stolen from the US to China.
In addition, idiots, like you, will use emissions per capita as a line which is a joke. In the first case, America has NEVER been in the top 3 per capita. Many other nations emit a lot more than America does, in Per capita.
We regularly rate in the top 10-15, but top 3? Nope. As it is, America's per capita continues to drop, while China's grows massively. They are just under America as it is

But, per capita is about the worst normalization going. WHy? Because ppl in general do not decide what plants utilities will use. Basically, gov and businesses decide this. As such, emissions per $ GDP (real) is a superior measure. And it turns out that America was in the middle, with China at the bottom clear back in 200*s time. Now, America is in the top 25% for low emission, while China remains in the bottom 5 nations.

In fact, even in per capita, America continues DOWNWARD, while CHina continues upwards.
And one reason why you idiots LOVE to use 10 year old data, or just make wild claims with nothing to back it up, is that America continues to lower our output, while Europe and CHina continue to grow theirs.

Electric power in Germany is more than twice as expensive as it is in America

German also use about half as much electricity as Americans (per capita) [alternate ref], so I'd say it roughly balances out. And Germany's GDP per unit of energy is also higher than the U.S., so higher energy prices don't seem to be killing their economy. If anything, Germany gets a lot of flack from its neighbors and trading partners that it's economy is too strong.

Just because something is more expensive on a per unit basis doesn't necessarily mean that you'll end up paying more. If demand is elastic, you'll reduce usage as a result. Here in the developed world, and particularly the U.S., where our use of electricity is fantastically wasteful an inefficient, demand is VERY elastic.

Electric power in Germany is more than twice as expensive as it is in America

German also use about half as much electricity as Americans (per capita) [alternate ref], so I'd say it roughly balances out. And Germany's GDP per unit of energy is also higher than the U.S., so higher energy prices don't seem to be killing their economy. If anything, Germany gets a lot of flack from its neighbors and trading partners that it's economy is too strong.

Just because something is more expensive on a per unit basis doesn't necessarily mean that you'll end up paying more. If demand is elastic, you'll reduce usage as a result. Here in the developed world, and particularly the U.S., where our use of electricity is fantastically wasteful an inefficient, demand is VERY elastic.

4.4% is slightly better than Zimbabwe at 5.1%.

source: http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

Unfortunately, the unemployment rate says little about how many people are actually working. In Zimbabwe, about 95% of the population do not have gainful employment.

However, 200k new jobs is good news.

You don't need to actively prevent births. The easiest way to reduce the total human population is to spread prosperity. Every country that's undergone an economic revolution has seen their birth rate drop to near or below replacement levels.

World Bank Data on population growth

Overpopulation - The Human Explosion Explained

The concern is that past a certain point automation stops spreading prosperity and starts concentrating it in the hands of a small wealthy class.

There has been a very strong downward trend in population growth worldwide, as you can see by looking at the World Bank data

India in fact is part of that steep decline, as you can see in the per-country breakdown. On average the "Middle East & North Africa" has also seen a moderate reduction over the last 50 years, from 2.7 to 1.8, while the "Arab World" has gone from 2.7 to 2.0. The only region with a generally upward trend over that time is "Sub-Saharan Africa", and even that has started to level off.

The reasons for this are fairly well understood, and are covered in this Kurzgesagt video on Overpopulation.

TLDW: disease, war, and famine are not a result of population growth so much as they are a cause. The more people fear their children won't reach adulthood the more children they have. The more developed the country, the more likely children are to reach adulthood, the less children they have. Every country that has undergone significant economic development experiences a (relatively) brief "bubble" in which the older birth rate exceeds the newer death rate before everyone realizes so many children aren't necessary.

Overall Africa is one of the last areas in the world to undergo this normal economic/technological transformation of population growth so they're at the tail end of this cycle. However current data seems to indicate that they're finally moving into Stage 3. So unless something (more) happens to wreck their economy they should start progressing into Stage 4 within a few decades and pretty much all areas of the world will have declining population growth.

U.S. military spending as a percent of GDP is actually only about 1.5x the world average. If you sort that list by percentage, the U.S. just barely makes the top 20 (it's #20).

If you factor in Japan's GDP (the U.S. is obligated to provide for Japan's defense per the terms of the peace treaties ending WWII), U.S. military spending is only 1.15x the world average.

The U.S. military budget is huge mainly because the U.S. economy is huge.

I'm not sure the argument flies with actual humans.

Just look at the data.

The main reason behind the dramatic decline in children per woman, even in developed countries, is probably the similarly dramatic improvement in infant and childhood mortality seen over the last several decades (and not scarcity as suggested above).

Even in developing countries, people prefer quality to quantity when it comes to children. If they're confident their children will survive to early adulthood, they have fewer children.

Brutal repression happens in those places because the wealthy there are an exclusive group. They maintain their status by actively preventing others from becoming wealthy, thus others cannot join their group and dilute their economic power (as a percentage of the country's economy). They maintain their big fish in a little pond status by making sure the pond stays small. A side-effect of this repression is that it keeps the average citizen stuck in poverty. This repression results in the average GDP per capita in those countries (a measure of each person's productivity) being mired down around $10k/yr (Mexico = $10,300/yr, Brazil = $11,200/yr).. The wealthy there won't allow it to go any higher. And because they control most of the wealth, most of the economic activity in those countries is wealthy people buying and selling to each other.

It can't happen in the U.S. because the wealthy here haven't been an exclusive group for a long time. Most people in the U.S. lead fully productive lives (by modern standards - $53k/yr GDP per capita). Consequently, most of the economic activity in the U.S. is from average (and even low) income people buying stuff. If you look at the IRS income tax statistics, a full 44% of gross individual income goes to people making less than $100k/yr. 68% by people making less than $200k/yr. If you say "the wealthy" comprises anyone making over $1 million/yr, they account for less than 10% of U.S. income.

This means that in order for those U.S. millionaires (and billionaries) to stay millionaires, people with lower income must maintain their income so they can continue to buy the stuff that the millionaires are selling. If everyone but the millionaires in Mexico and Brazil lost their jobs, it wouldn't affect most of those millionaires' incomes since they're mostly selling to each other. If everyone but the millionaires in the U.S. lost their jobs, the millionaires would panic because 90% of their income comes from selling to those now-unemployed people.

If the U.S. were to fall into brutal repression like Central and South America with widescale loss of jobs, it would result in about an 80% reduction in GDP per capita, meaning those millionaires would lose about 80% of their income. They don't want that. They want to see the lower and middle classes continue to make decent incomes almost as much as the lower and middle classes do. If widescale job losses were to begin among the middle and lower classes in the U.S., the wealthy would start to panic as the loss of customers affected their bottom lines. And you'd see all income classes in the U.S. working together to figure out ways to get those people employed again.

You can see the same thing if you compare GDP (PPP) per capita - the mean - vs the median income. The mean spreads the income of the wealthy across all citizens, while the median tells you how much income the 50th percentile citizen is making. The ratio of the two gives you a sense how much the economy is skewed towards the wealthy. For the U.S., these numbers are a mean of $56,115.7 vs a median of $30,960. A 1.81 ratio. For Mexico it's $16,988.4* mean vs $5,160 median, a 3.29 ratio, indicating a much larger share of each worker's productivity is diverted into income for the wealthy. (And for comparison, since everyone seems to like comparing the U.S. with the Scandinavian countries, the ratios for Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Demark are 1.63, 1.79, 1.72, and 1.77.)

* (Yes $16,988.4 is different from $10,300. Difference between nominal and PPP GDP.)

To elaborate a bit, it's obvious that Africa isn't in great shape right now. But it should also be acknowledged that things _are_ improving, at least at the moment.

Extreme poverty is on the decline, though work is ongoing (poverty statistics, poverty report) and it seems like Africa is overall starting to move into Stage 3 of population growth (In a Nutshell - Overpopulation)

So colonialism fucked the place up, things are _generally_ getting better since then, but it's still going to take awhile (and more hard work.)

To elaborate a bit, it's obvious that Africa isn't in great shape right now. But it should also be acknowledged that things _are_ improving, at least at the moment.

Extreme poverty is on the decline, though work is ongoing (poverty statistics, poverty report) and it seems like Africa is overall starting to move into Stage 3 of population growth (In a Nutshell - Overpopulation)

So colonialism fucked the place up, things are _generally_ getting better since then, but it's still going to take awhile (and more hard work.)

Worldwide, millennials are doing great. The World Bank Forecasts Global Poverty to Fall Below 10% for First Time.

The problem for Americans is that we can't exactly ask the Chinese to go back to having 45 million people starve to death in a new "Great Leap Forward", no matter how much taking their labor skills off the capitalist market might improve the labor demand for unskilled white Trump voting high-school dropouts. Globalism is a bitch if you were used to getting a free ride.

Just had to bitch about "white" people didn't you? Your inner douche bag is showing you racist pile of shit.

Worldwide, millennials are doing great. The World Bank Forecasts Global Poverty to Fall Below 10% for First Time.

The problem for Americans is that we can't exactly ask the Chinese to go back to having 45 million people starve to death in a new "Great Leap Forward", no matter how much taking their labor skills off the capitalist market might improve the labor demand for unskilled white Trump voting high-school dropouts. Globalism is a bitch if you were used to getting a free ride.

That's more or less the amount of CO2 - one of the key "greenhouse gases" blamed for global warming - produced by the average American in a full year, according to World Bank data.

India has now hit replacement level 2.1 children per woman. Most of India is still pretty empty (at least emptier than Europe).

Population density of India is 442 people per square kilometer. Population density of Europe is 127 per square kilometer: France is 122, Germany is 234, Belgium 373.

So I don't think you can accurately say "emptier than Europe". It is lower than the Netherlands, though (503 people per square kilometer).

Source: http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

There is a lot of room between severely limited resources and unlimited resources. Sufficient resources is doable in many cases if we had the will to invest in the future as a society instead of leaving the funding of science to profiteers.

Last I checked as a percentage of GDP (keep in mind that GDP has been increasing for everyone as well over the span of decades), research funding, including public funding, is as high as it's ever been outside of the Second World War (such things as the Manhattan Project). I can't find any support for that, but I do see solid indications that research spending has been going up over the recent past (here and here).

Maybe more money isn't going to fix a problem that wasn't due to level of funding in the first place?

Rapid changes in global temperatures can absolutely cause mass extinctions.

Rising sea levels are "easy" to adapt to for us - but not cheap. We have a lot of valuable property on low-lying coastal areas, and billion-dollar floods from storm surges will only get more common, until we either build massive levees (where possible) or start relocating vast amounts of city infrastructure. Who gets stuck with that bill, the taxpayers? Owners of private homes who can no longer insure them? And that's assuming it doesn't turn out to be a lot worse than we expected.

Rising sea levels are not so easy to adapt to for the hundreds of millions in less-developed countries, where e.g. tens of millions of people depend on river delta farmland that will get flooded with salt water. (BTW, claiming there's no evidence of that is simple denial).

As for food production, the research shows both positives and negatives up until about 3K warming - and then highly likely to be negative after 3 degrees. It also shows that again, developing countries are least able to adapt and will experience more of the negatives (in part due to lower latitudes).

it is going to happen no matter what policies we adopt

Citation certainly needed for that. Sure we're stuck at 400ppm and probably higher, but we can still avoid far larger increases by phasing out fossil carbon as soon as practical. We're locked in to significant warming and we'll have to deal with that, but it will certainly get far worse (and far more expensive) if we stick our heads in the sand. The business-as-usual case is likely to see 3.7 to 4.5 degrees this century - much higher than the 2.0-2.5 we're hoping we can keep it to.

We import over 20 trillion in goods and services.

Implement a 10% VAT tax. Small by European standards.

10 times cheaper, 3 times worse...

Seriously, they simply don't value human life as much as we do. Whereas Western governments consider a human life to be worth nearly $10 million, Russia, for example, values theirs at no more than $2 million. In China, according to WorldBank study, it is less than 2 mln yuan, or less than $300K.

So, it may make sense for NASA to spend an extra $1 million to reduce a risk to one human's life by 10%. But for the Chinese to spend $1 million, the risk has to be 30+ times greater...

The male Russian life expectancy is actually around 64. It dipped mid 90s but has rebounded up to 64.7.

Here's the data when you account for GDP:

http://data.worldbank.org/indi...

The United States barely makes the top 20.

We've found that when people aren't threatened with dire poverty and are provided with easy access to contraception, they'll take care of the population growth all on their own, to the point where it's a problem going the OTHER direction. Link

The entire field of economics is predicated upon the idea of 'endless growth', the implementation of which is trashing the planet. It would be good if we could do something about that first.

Actually, growth leads to the sort of prosperity that is conducive to environmentalism. It is really only after people can afford food, shelter, power, heat and medicine that they chose to stop trashing the planet. Until that point, worrying about the planet is a luxury they cannot afford. If you want to save the planet, your strategic aim should be to ensure that your protections allow sufficient economic growth to make the third world comfortably middle class enough that they actually care about it and are willing to shoulder the additional expense and brake on growth inherent in the environmental tradeoff.

There's a reason India is building 100s of coal fired power plants and mocking the US and Europe when we tell them to switch to more expensive sources even when they already have 30% on hydro/solar.There are still 250 million Indians without power -- why would a democratically accountable government put more priority on reducing emissions than on providing a basic need to them? And given this is a basic need that westerners have for decades taken for granted, what right do we have to lecture them?

I don't mean to say that I don't believe in environmentalism. I do, even though I think it has significant tradeoffs (and is sometimes executed inefficiently, in the sense that I believe we could have more protection at less cost, making everyone happier all at once). But it does have to be placed in the right spot in the list of priorities.

We've gotten a bit off track here.
I originally responded to a post which proposed making H2 from electricity, storing it and then converting that back to electricity. I pointed out that this is very inefficient (you only recoup about 30%). This is a very poor method to store electricity. I also pointed out that there is no need for long term battery electricity storage since short term fluctuations in wind, solar, hydro tend to even out. Recently published models of electric production from renewables have show that it is possible to support the grid entirely with renewables.
http://www.worldbank.org/en/ne...
http://www.nrel.gov/electricit...

CH4 production and use for heating is a different subject.

According to http://data.worldbank.org/indi..., the UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Netherlands, Italy, Ireland, France, Genrmany, Denmark, Austria all have about 1 murder per 100,000 people. Australia also has about 1 murder per 100,000 people. The US has about 5, including those gang-related killings. My point was that a small fraction (gangs) of the population here accounts for a huge percentage of the murders, and excluding those murder committed by that small fraction the murder rate in the US is about the same as all the oh-so-enlightened countries in Europe.

According to that same table, the Isle of Man doesn't rate any murders. Must be nice. Maybe we can send you some of our gangs, you know, as refugees?

I'm sure it still sucks to be poor in Botswana, but it is better than in other sub-Saharan African countries with lower levels of economic freedom. Botswana is slowly growing out of poverty.

From World Bank Botswana Poverty Assessment 2015

"Living conditions of Botswana have improved over the past decade and poverty has reduced significantly. This decrease was accompanied by a considerable decline in both depth and severity of poverty, indicating that consumption has improved among the poor. While rural areas led the poverty reduction, the share of the poor living in urban areas has increased. Botswana's progress toward reduction of extreme poverty and inequality was among the world's strongest in the second half of 2000s. During this period, the economic growth has been strongly pro-poor. Botswana is one of the top performers in Africa when measured by annual consumption distribution growth for the bottom 40 percentile...Botswana has a historical opportunity to build on recent achievements and move towards eradicating extreme poverty within one generation."