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Greenhouse Emissions Drop Less During Economic Downturn Than Expected
An anonymous reader writes with a quick bite from Nature World News: "The contribution of economic decline in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is very low, reveals a new study. Researcher Richard York of the University of Oregon studied data collected between 1960 and 2008 from more than 150 nations in order to analyze the impact of economic decline on greenhouse gas emissions."
From the paper: "In Model 2, the percentage of the population living in urban areas and the percentage of GDP from the manufacturing sector were included as control variables. This model has lower data coverage than Model 1 (154 versus 160 nations, and 4,134 versus 5,630 nation-year observations) owing to missing data on the control variables. The coefficients, at 0.752 for growth and 0.346 for decline, are similar to those from Model 1 and, as in Model 1, are both significantly different from 0 and significantly different from each other."
My guess is, that despite the cut in GDP, and the long, painful period of high unemployment, the economy hasn't actually been that bad. And that most of us have not had to change our habits much to cope.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It turns out economic output was never a good excuse for the West's (and particularly USA's) high per-capita greenhouse gas emissions in the first place.
This is not really surprising.
Apart from people generally not changing their habits during a recession, there is the fact that the recession itself didn't hit all countries with the same intensity. Some (e.g. China, India and South Korea) are still doing well, and as a consequence, their greenhouse emissions haven''t decreased much.
While the developed countries did diminish their total emissions (e,g, UK, Japan, US, Germany), there is still the fact that the manufacturing sector ha been mostly transferred (outsourced or lost to) to the developing markets.Not surprising that the overall emissions have not dropped, at least in the same proportions that it increased during economic expansion.
150 nations + not all going in the same direction. Do the math.
Simple. If the three billion poorest people go from earning $3,000 per capita per year to $6,000 per capita per year, the economy can slump and carbon increases.
Gently reply
(well its as good as any other theory I've read)
My guess is, that the effects of the recent economic downturn has yet to be realised - it's been kicked down the road by the creation of trillions of dollars and increased debt to offset its effect
Seriously, don't worry about debt, it's all hype, nothing to worry about... When wheels start spinning again, and you're not paying for two wars, that debt will be gone in no time...
Keep in mind that interest rates are so low, that take loans and investing it in education, research, infrastructure, etc. is very likely to pay of, big time. With a much bigger interest than you're charged for borrowing the money (which is practically free today).
Anyways, just my two cents... Keep in mind that when the state invests in people, that pays off because people pays taxes. And not bank can offer the same kind of investment.
It's a model. A model is a hypothesis. The "results" are correlations and as we all know, correlation is not causation.
Meanwhile, can someone explain what this means ...
York revealed that the rate of reduction in carbon dioxide emissions was slightly more than half the rate of carbon release when the economy was booming.
"We all know people who are suffering terribly due to the economic crises."
I can't actually name a person who I personally know who has been affected by the economic crisis, on average, more than would have happened by chance anyway. I can name someone who lost their job and was offered a replacement - but they worked in libraries that have been scheduled to close for decades, and they moved 400 miles in between jobs to a very rural area, so their present situation is more related to that.
I have Italian friends (supposedly "the next big country to go") - don't know any of them where the economic situation has changed their life for the worse. Actually, the opposite (promotions, more work etc.) and they gave my Italian girlfriend a lot of money to help buy a house. Incidentally, she's been taken on by a hospital as permanent staff to supplement those already there (she's been doing the job for years on a contract basis, and now she's staff).
In fact, even in my work, we now hire more staff than we did before the "crisis", on longer basis, more hours, more pay (and now they get a new pension on top, by law!). We had a few people retire, one left due to work circumstances that they didn't agree with (nothing to do with pay, hours, or anything like that) and the replacements outnumber them by quite a few. I've had a raise every year (at least) for the last four years.
The situation is pretty much the same throughout my family (one of whom is an electrician and I've never seen anyone go on quite so many holidays abroad as they have recently), my friends, etc. from delivery drivers to electricians to builders to teachers to management to trained professionals to medical staff.
Personally, I think the "economic crisis" was much shorter-lived than people would have you think. Sure they'll be some people who lost their jobs, even companies that shed thousands of workers, but nothing out of the ordinary when taken as a whole. Unemployment in my country is "the highest since 2004" or something ridiculous (so, in fact, not as high as it's been historically, not as high was it was before the crisis, etc.).
(Meanwhile banks still aren't offering loans, mortgages etc. even though they're being given billions to do so. It all seems strangely fishy to me. Which actually stops people going into debt, though, and is better for the country actually even if I keep being told that the economy is faltering because nobody is spending, buying houses, etc.)
The "economic crisis" was nothing more than a short-lived blip. It started in 2008. That's far enough ago that there's still traces of its effects in some ledgers somewhere but not far enough away that people can't have carried on with their lives by now and not blame everything on 2008.
Perhaps that's what people did, even if it's a convenient excuse why they can't pay a bill or why they lost their job (which, on average, they probably would have by now anyway). Perhaps people just carried on regardless and didn't get into scrimping and saving as much as we're led to believe.
The "economic crisis" was nothing more than a short-lived blip
I know many people who are out of work and can't find any. Some of them went to live on other people's property. Now instead of work, their facebook status updates are about things like mending fences and repairing barns. They're not making any money though, so they're also full of things like "I need a ride to x on y date" and so on. The "unemployment" figures are based on the number of people recieving unemployment benefits, so your speculation about unemployment based on the official figures is fallacious at best. This is the same government (faces and names have changed, but the game is the same) that told us Saddam definitely had WMDs. And if you think that Obama is on a different team from Bush, then you cannot be helped anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Until they start asking the half of America that pays no income tax to start contributing something, or to sacrifice some services, the teensy amount they can raise by asking the one percent tthat pays the most (and receives little in return) to pay more won't even be a drip in the bucket.
Bolstering the economy by theft only goes so far.
You can't pay taxes if your income doesnt even cover food, shelter and medical care for you and your dependables but if you're making millions you wont even notice a drop in your living standards even if you paid half of your income in taxes. Taxation aside, US is also spending more on healthcare than any other country while getting worst return-per-dollar of any industrialized nation.
My theory is that between all the hot CO2 coming out of the economists, plus the off-gassing of freshly printed money, greenhouse gases are expected to increase during a downturn.
Log in or piss off.
Well with the global warming, it was a hotter than normal summer, so people would have used the AC more
Americans are so obsessed with the idea that cutting down CO2 emissions would also cut down the economy.
That is basically a brain dead idea.
Lets see where CO2 is coming from:
o heating of houses (coal/gas/oil)
o heating and cooling of houses (electricity)
o cars / trucks
o power plants (coal/gas/oil)
o cargo ships / diesel trains
o and everything that uses electricity, but the prime source is the plant where that electricity is produced
o industries with a huge energy hunger like steel plants / or any other factory that partly or in whole produces its own power (glass or porcelain producers, brick producers etc.)
Now we have to look what kind of industries or businesses are effected in an economic crisis and how much that does affect the energy consumed.
Do houses need less heating or cooling? Or do people change their cooling/heating habits during a crisis? Is there a significant different amount of homeless people during a crisis (wich don't power their own flat)?
Same for cars, commuting, trucks with goods etc. etc. etc.
I would say there is only a small group of industries that is affected by the crisis (look whose shares are dropping and whose are rising). And even if a factory is laying off 10% of its staff, I doubt it is directly reflected in 10% energy savings and CO2 reduction.
As far as I know the american economy is far over 70% based on services. So only the remaining 30% are industries and manufactoring etc. To reduce CO2 emissions by 15% you would need an effect/crisis that drops the 30% above significantly. I doubt a change in services (people employed, people buying a service etc.) has any noticeable effect on CO2 emissions.
And finally: no one is asking the USA to cripple their economy. We only ask to switch to more efficient machines, better insulation, more efficient means of transportation, burn less oil and build up a better grid. All those activities would create a lot of jobs and instead of having a crisis you would have a boom.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I didn't pay income tax for the last 10 years. I know I'm a lazy no good son of a bitch. My wife was a full-time nursing student, and I was a part-time comp sci student while holding down a full-time job and we had 4 kids. Had plenty of money to spend, didn't qualify for food stamps or govt aid, had our own health insurance, but we did qualify for earned income credit (which is a form of welfare). Just about everyone I worked with fell into the same category. We all averaged about $45k a year doing manual labor.
I don't have exact numbers, but I wonder how many people who pay no income tax fall into this category. I would argue about half of them. They make enough money to live "well" (all depends on you're definition of "well"), but since they don't make some magic number in income they get all their "tax" money back at the end of the year plus some.
21st Century Renaissance Man
It's unfortunate that the "they-pay-nothing" argument is made by so many, including a presidential candidate. This statement is false.
Even the bottom 20% pays an average of 17.4% of their income in taxes. It is absurd for anyone to say that some group "pays nothing." It is grossly absurd for a well-educated, former governor and many supposedly informed supporters, including a member of the House Budget Committee, to say "they don't pay anything."
Here is one summary of the overall tax burden as a % of income in 2011:
17.4% - Lowest 20% (Avg cash income: $13,000)
21.2% - Second 20% ($26,100)
25.2% - Third 20% ($42,000)
28.3% - Fourth 20% ($68,700)
29.5% - Next 10% ($105,000)
20.3% - Next 5% ($147,000)
30.4% - Next 4% ($254,000)
29.0% - Top 1% ($1,371,000)
Source (pdf): http://www.ctj.org/pdf/taxday2012.pdf
Oh...that explains why my ex, who makes around $30k gets money back every year (in excess of her withholding) due to the various programs such as the earned income tax credit and child tax credit, etc. etc.
I guess the Citizens for Tax Justice forgot those small details.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
People need to get to work and people tend to drop things like air conditioning and most energy usage after going out to eat and new appliances vehicles etc. The overall effect is that what people tend to cut first during a recession are large purchases, like a new refrigerator/washer/dryer/car that would have been more efficient than the one they're now keeping. The old vehicles/appliances continue to put out a higher amount of CO2 and there is a noticeable delay in the decline of production after demand for a product has gone down, meaning that the CO2 from manufacturing is still present for a time. The notion that CO2 emissions would drop significantly during a recession doesn't really make a lot of sense to me to be honest. When you look at it on the micro scale instead of the macro scale it's hard to identify changes in behaviour that would result in a large decrease in CO2 production.
There is no memory shortage. yes I have heard of XFCE. Go away.
This - from the Economist http://www.economist.com/node/21563343 :
Only 8% of households pay no federal tax at all...
For the more numerate among you: a progressive income tax + a lot of poor people = many people paying little or no income tax. They still pay all sorts of other taxes.
Also, what proportion of serving members of our armed forces come from families in the "47%" - do you think it's proportional to the population as a whole or perhaps the poor are hugely over-represented here?
Yes, it seems fairly systematic. When talking about the budget, they emphasize the amount of spending on Social Security and Medicare, but when talking about taxes, they shift to the percentage of income taxes paid by the top of the scale, ignoring the fact that Social Security and Medicare are funded almost entirely via payroll tax and not income tax.
I find the "they-pay-nothing" argument pretty disgusting given the fact that the bulk of the working poor are probably paying a higher rate than the likes of Mitt Romney.
Asymmetric effects of economic growth and decline on CO2 emissions (full text).
It appears to be open access.
She gets money back becasue she is having them hold to much.
Getting money back doesn't mean they pay nothing, dimwit.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Maybe you should stop guessing and look up the numbers. Cause you look like an idiot.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"gets money back every year (in excess of her withholding) "
I'll cut you some slack because I know people usually just skim the posts.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'm sorry...EVERYONE should have to pay into federal taxation...to have some 'skin in the game' so to speak.
Everyone could at least afford to pay at least $1-$2....and no one should get more money back than they put in.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
In other news, US energy-related CO2 emissions are now at a 20 year low.
The credit is split between cheap, fracked natural gas replacing coal and herbicide-resistant GM crops needing less plowing (and thus lower tractor fuel use).
US CO2 emissions per capita are now lower than they have been since at least 1973.
Coal has remained cheaper during most of this period, and half of all US energy use is for heating and cooling buildings, with little incentive to get new high mpg cars, since people can't afford new cars.
Here endeth the lesson.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Most of the people who pay no federal income tax are still paying FICA tax if they are working. Any they also pay sales taxes and various other state taxes. Another substantial chunk of them are retired and receive so little income they pay no federal income tax. Surprisingly it includes around 160,000 people who are in the top 10% of earners. I Googled "who are the 47% not paying taxes" and found a number of articles. Here is one of them.
Everyone who has a job pays FICA taxes. A substantial number of people who pay not federal taxes are retired with (almost) no income other than their SS payments.
If you say that no one should get back more money than they put it then you're probably talking about increasing the welfare departments because the Earned Income Tax Credit is in some ways a substitute for welfare for people with children they are responsible for. It's probably a cheaper way to do it than explicitly giving them welfare too.
And no, I don't think you should get tax credits for kids...why? You get a credit for fucking? It isn't like people will stop fucking and reproducing just because there is no longer a tax credit for it.
Besides, that's unfair for those with few or no kids as that they basically are subsidizing YOUR reproduction, you know?
Stop giving welfare. I don't mind a safety net...if you're infirmed, or elderly...fine. If it is temporary...lose job, etc...fine.
But welfare and more tax money returned than paid should not be a continuous way of life.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Every dollar you and all your 300 million americans pay in income tax (federal) goes directly to pay back debt, ie it goes directly to the BANKS.
So if the govt had zero debt, they wouldnt need your income tax.
Get a clue, income tax was only invented to pay for the war, the WW1 WW2 is OVER.
Give us our fucking money, govt theives.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.