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Fighting Climate Change With Trade
mdsolar writes with this story about the possible elimination of tariffs on environmental goods between the world's largest economic powers. The United States, the European Union, China and 11 other governments began trade negotiations this week to eliminate tariffs on solar panels, wind turbines, water-treatment equipment and other environmental goods. If they are able to reach an agreement, it could reduce the cost of equipment needed to address climate change and help increase American exports. Global trade in environmental goods is estimated at $1 trillion a year and has been growing fast. (The United States exported about $106 billion worth of such goods last year.) But some countries have imposed import duties as high as 35 percent on such goods. That raises the already high cost of some of this equipment to utilities, manufacturers and, ultimately, consumers. Taken together, the countries represented in these talks (the 28 members of the E.U. negotiate jointly, while China and Hong Kong are represented by separate delegations) account for about 86 percent of trade in these products, which makes the potential benefit from an agreement substantial. Other big countries that are not taking part in these talks, like India, South Africa and Brazil, could choose to join later.
Eliminating market inefficiencies in a way that benefits the environment seems like something everyone could find a reason to support.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Tool elitist scams that go together like chocolate and peanut butter. It was only a matter of time. The 1% will eat this peanut butter cup, while the rest of us get laid off yet again "for the benefit of humanity".
Dickhead
The Jurassic period opposes reducing sanctions? Are you sure?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It appears that a country has to be more or less third world (2001-2002 data for the most part) in order to have 35% tariff rates (under the WTO scheme). Most of the countries in the current negotiation already have tariff rates near or under 5% including the US, the EU, Australia, Japan, and probably South Korea and Switzerland. In the link above, China had tariffs a bit over 5% on most goods aside from a few entries (it may be better now since the report is ten years old). The worst at 40% was ethanol (good "220710" in the "Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System"). Looks like China has 35% tariffs on water heaters too (841911 and 841919) and 30% on mufflers and exhaust pipes (870892).
At a glance, I'd say the countries with the highest tariffs are probably Costa Rica and China. But maybe there's some high tariffs between individual members of the group in addition to the above list.
You are making stuff up. We know the Jurassic was much warmer, being tropical or sub-tropical over most of the world. We think the sea level was much higher. There is no evidence of ice at either pole. Pangaea was starting to break up.
We have no reliable measurements of either O2 or C02 in the Jurassic.
The point you seem to be missing is that the climate change we are experiencing now is happening MUCH faster than any in the past, and we are causing it. Yes, life will go on, but it will disrupt millions of people if we do nothing about it. I'm not sure why so many people think the short term profits of large energy companies are more important than the general welfare of millions of people.
Anarchists never rule
The words you are looking for are 'electrostatic precipitators'.
They're not perfect but 99% better than nothing. Last I heard there were still many old coal plants in the USA grandfathered so they don't need them. They should finally be getting retired or retrofitted real soon now.
Always thought an emission allowance certificate would be a good gift for a greeny. They could frame it and act even smugger, knowing that, for example, 100 tons of SO2 would not be emitted and dirty old plants retired sooner.
I'd be selling them on Ebay today, but couldn't find an original to copy.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
with stuff that's crappy but incredibly cheap in 3...2...1...
The United States exported about $106 billion worth of such goods last year.
It's one thing to export $106 billion more than you import and quite another to export $106 billion while importing $250 billion.
A good rule of thumb is that if an article doesn't explicitly tell you that it's a net export, it's because it's a puff piece with a bias and the truth would harsh the whole slant.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
If people really care about global warming and economic activity, they should read the latest IPCC report. It says that the best way to avoid warming is economic development. If the economy freezes in place (something a high carbon tax could do) then the warming will be about 4C by the end of the century. If the economy in all the "third world" countries develops into something like first-world conditions by the continued march of progress, then the warming will be closer to 1C.
Anything that stands in the way of that development is going to contribute to the warming. Removing these tariffs is a good thing, but to get maximum environmental benefit they need to get rid of the rest.
I know, Overton's Window and all.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Actions like this are how you get the other half to agree to do things to reduce CO2 emissions.
Good step: Offer to eliminate tariffs on solar panels and other things.
Bad step: Call anyone who so much as questions ANYTHING a denier.
Good step: Get behind building LOTS of modern nuclear plants. LOTS.
Bad step: Say that anyone who so much as questions ANYTHING should be arrested. https://theconversation.com/is...
Good step: Get behind building LOTS of electric cars, and the technology to increase batteries' energy density.
Bad step: Say that anyone who so much as questions ANYTHING should be killed. http://www.americanthinker.com...
Much of the political opposition that the Global Warming people get is because they believe that all of their solutions are so good that they should be mandatory. They come to you and say that you'll have to give up your money, your freedom, your independence, and your quality of life. This is all demanded at the barrel of a gun with the implication that if you don't capitulate, you'll also have to give up your life itself.
Environmentalists have made many great missteps, the two largest being not loudly denouncing those among them that call for murder of anyone who dissents, and continuously pushing plans that they know half the population will never get behind.
You want to reduce CO2 emissions? Suggest plans for it that everyone can support. Leave the death threats at home. ; )
Climate change denialism was already debunked. Enough of this spam of mine already.
There, FTFY.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
The US uses tariffs to offset subsidies by China, for example, on PV panels. If you agree to eliminate the tariffs without addressing the subsidies, then it doesn't solve the problem, and it certainly doesn't "increase American exports" as the summary suggests. Of course, you'd have to eliminate the US's green subsidies, too.
I'm sure you're all in favor of that, right?
> The point you seem to be missing is that the climate change we are experiencing now is happening MUCH faster than any in the past
Serious question: how could you possibly know this with any reasonable degree of reliability? Even in the last 70 years, our ability to measure global average temperatures has become orders of magnitude more precise, let alone O2 and CO2 levels. There is no way to determine whether tangential methods of measurement, like ice cores and tree rings, are accurate.
The Jurassic period. O2 in atmosphere was 130% modern levels
And all of the species that were dominant during the Triassic period did really well throughout the Jurassic...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Who gave you the idea that we have to significantly reduce our standards of living to combat global warming? Only the CO2 production causes problems, and there's lots of alternative energy technologies on the cusp of being truly cost competitive - if not for the vast direct and indirect subsidies to the fossil fuel industry it would already be crumbling under the onslaught of cheaper alternatives.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The US government applied tariffs to Chinese solar panels because the Chinese were dumping them in the US market. If they can agree to see their product in our market for a fair price, sure we can climate the tariffs; otherwise, forget it cause we're not killing our on shore manufacturing and watching the prices skyrocket.
http://rt.com/business/163552-...
The Jurassic period. O2 in atmosphere was 130% modern levels. CO2 was at 1950ppm, 5-7 times modern levels. The temperature was a whole 3 DEGREES C over modern times! Oh noes!
And the continents were of completely different shape, and the solar constant was something like 2 % lower, which corresponds to an equilibrium temperature 1.5K lower. (I don't even remember the orbital parameters of Earth at that time, ditto for the axial tilt.) So it's not like the things you're mentioned are the only variables.
Ezekiel 23:20
The United States Imposes Steep Tariffs on Importers of Chinese Solar Panels
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06...
Good step: Offer to eliminate tariffs on solar panels and other things.
Good step: Get behind building LOTS of modern nuclear plants. LOTS.
Good step: Get behind building LOTS of electric cars, and the technology to increase batteries' energy density.
Three great steps!
As to "and other things..." I have always favored a move in the direction of free trade in all things, as Jefferson (not Hamilton) intended. In modern context this involves rolling back tariffs altogether, including ones for which a reciprocal arrangement exists, with the objective of simplifying things in general, and Federal law in particular. Henry George's 1886 treatise Protection or Free Trade remains as relevant and thought-provoking as ever. I agree with other posters who have said that tariffs are a market distortion -- and would add that selective tariffs by technology category (within the classification of power generation) are an even more awful distortion. You're taking the rudder from market forces -- which reflect a combination of necessity and desire -- and placing it into the hands of those who get to decide what is save-de-planet environmental and what is not.
I consider the present worldwide system of tariffs a form of pollution and wasted energy. I believe the only sustainable form of wealth creation is meaningful innovation, not the borderline kind that results from some tech firm beating another to the patent office. I mean something new that can reduce the cost of living by reducing expenses. My chosen (workable) path is to reduce the cost of grid electricity delivered (and remaining hydrocarbons extracted) in North America by harnessing Thorium.
And it so happens that NOT ONE of those politically correct green solutions generates the base load energy necessary to survive a harsh Winter, let alone grow. It really has been two decades of bad road. "Cheaper" Chinese solar panels or wind turbines will not keep us all alive during a continent-wide hard freeze. Until the "Green" parties of the world agree on a some method of generating an incredible amount of energy 24x7 reliably, something that will work, we're screwed.
Suggest plans for it that everyone can support. Leave the death threats at home. ; )
Okay. Remember in all of this... NO PRESSURE!
It's fun to discuss nuclear energy on Slashdot ... sometimes you just have to point things out point by point ... some confuse Weinberg's '300 year best-fit for waste' two fluid design for other single fluid designs ... or using solid fuel Thorium, which is pointless so long as uranium is available ... yes it's full of dangerous glop, but it is useful and happy glop ... yes, I think a LFTR could be developed and built within $4B ... every path to biofuels leads to scorched-earth disaster, Thorium energy gives us the surplus to generate synfuels ... a move to LFTR may be the only way to preserve modern society in the face of disaster (volcanism, Maunder minimum) ...
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
it's getting warming, so just live outside!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
climate change we are experiencing now is happening MUCH faster than any in the past
citation?
Okay. Remember in all of this... NO PRESSURE!
OOPS... a link to a youtube-censored video. Try this one: NO PRESSURE!
Bad taste should never be flagged 'inappropriate' for kids of any age.
How else would they learn what it is?
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
So, the US Government is trying to capitalize politically on its effort to "save the environment" by removing tariffs it only imposed on Chinese solar panels LAST MONTH?
I see what they did, there.
An incompetent comedian blames his audience.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You know, we have $10/gal gas in Denmark, and are not exactly in the poor house. In fact whenever I travel to the U.S., it seems third-world in comparison, full of crime, poverty, and pollution. Maybe you want to get out of the dark ages and become an advanced, first-world society?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Fact checking is good advice, you ought to try it sometime.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You can friggin walk across Denmark in a hour.
Think of me as the Trix Rabbit of Thorium.
Thorium is for kids?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Sure glad to see all of the shipyard employees are no longer toiling all day. Now days the billionaires do business in public with our tax dollars and everyone wonders why there are so many billionaires these days.
He is crazy if you think about it; I am not.
I am all for energy independence. But energy independence and fossil fuel reduction are not the same thing and have very different cost profiles. So if the path is: (1) do nothing --> (2) energy independence with fossil fuels --> (3) energy independence with less/no fossil fuels at much higher cost, your argument doesn't get me to #3. I love a lot of "green" technologies like PV due to their decentralization of power generation, so I will probably go that route anyway. But most people don't care about decentralization, so there would need to be a justification for why they need to invest in PV that takes 15-30 years to pay for itself (minus subsidies), especially since americans live in a given house for an avg of 7 years.
Ah, I think I read your piece explaining this in PNAS.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Actually scientists reinterpret old data all the time. You think they don't make relativistic corrections to estimated velocities from data pre relativity ? And you think that actual temperature data now that we have it should not be used because it no longer correlates with tree rings from the far north? Because that's more logical then to hypothesize that something might be happening in places like Alaska over the past 50 years that might affect tree growth? But you fudge the central question; if you don't know of any models that don't overestimate recent warming, then do you know of any models with no agw term at all that do a decent job of estimating recent temperature at all? The way they estimate 19th and early 20th century temps? It's a pretty standard axiom of modeling that if a term improves the model fit, it's a valid effect. What's the denials logic; models with the AGW term overestimate the warming in the most recent years, whereas models without agw are completely useless for the past 50 years, thereby disproving AGW?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Come on. You know that "environmentalist makes death threat" is news, but "other environmentalists say nobody should be threatening anybody" isn't. "Western civilization doomed unless we go back to the 1700s" is news, but "carbon cap and trade will mitigate much of the effect" isn't. Is it your opinion that any loose grouping of people around an idea should take out full-page ads in major newspapers to denounce their idiot fringe?
The issue with denialism is that the science is pretty well established in broad outline. In that case, people disagreeing with it really do need to have some solid evidence or reasoning. Instead, we see a whole lot of people nitpicking and making ad hominem attacks and straw-man arguments, and, what's worse, they don't have anything new to say. Somebody who hasn't studied the issue and won't make pronouncements is a skeptic. Somebody who has a new theory that more or less matches the observations and is vaguely plausible is a skeptic. I really don't see those (and wouldn't notice the first class of skeptic). The people disagreeing substantially with IPCC are not basing their arguments on evidence, and hence I call them deniers.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That gives China the market for solar panels and wind turbines to the detriment of US producers.
If you have a model showing warming, you still have to show that it's due mostly to man, and you have to show that making a given change would slow, stop, or reverse it. That is all very difficult to do. But the current state of the science is that they can't even reliably predict the warming. That doesn't mean they are wrong. I have my method of study be flipping a coin and I could end up with the right conclusion. But the burden is on those who want to radically change energy consumption habits and/or cost structure, and that's where people, including me, aren't convinced. Trying to turn it around as if the burden is on "the deniers", as you say, is an old enough trick that I don't think anyone will fall for it.
If you have a model showing warming, you still have to show that it's due mostly to man, and you have to show that making a given change would slow, stop, or reverse it. That is all very difficult to do. But the current state of the science is that they can't even reliably predict the warming. That doesn't mean they are wrong. I have my method of study be flipping a coin and I could end up with the right conclusion. But the burden is on those who want to radically change energy consumption habits and/or cost structure, and that's where people, including me, aren't convinced. Trying to turn it around as if the burden is on "the deniers", as you say, is an old enough trick that I don't think anyone will fall for it.
As in, http://www.ipcc.ch/publication...? As I said, "models without agw are completely useless for the past 50 years" How does this not show that it's due mostly to man? Compared to the size of the miss without an AGW term, the overshoot in recent years is negligible. Of course, if anybody anywhere does have a model which does match climate history without including an AGW term, this is a great chance to post it and show how those IPCC folks are cherry picking, right? Anyone? Hello? If not, then any honest scientist is essentially required to include AGW in any climate hypothesis. Otherwise, you are indeed a denier. You don't have to show that making a given change would slow stop or reverse it. I have a model that suggests that if you swallow 200 mg of cyanide you will die. I strongly urge you to accept this model and not disregard it on the basis that it does not have a mechanism that would slow stop or reverse it. "If you have a model showing warming, you still have to show that it's due mostly to man"
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
> As I said, "models without agw are completely useless for the past 50 years" How does this not show that it's due mostly to man?
Models without the average shoe size of red-headed clowns are completely useless for the past 50 years. How does that not show that it's mostly due to clown shoe size?
Incidentally, what size are you wearing?
> As I said, "models without agw are completely useless for the past 50 years" How does this not show that it's due mostly to man?
Models without the average shoe size of red-headed clowns are completely useless for the past 50 years. How does that not show that it's mostly due to clown shoe size?
Incidentally, what size are you wearing?
Because when you put in an AGW term, the models do much better than if you leave out any AGW term. As is abundantly clear from the link I provided. http://www.ipcc.ch/publication.... If you can demonstrate that models with the average shoe size of red-headed clowns as a factor do better than those without, then I will absolutely accept it as a parameter. Kind of have to, mathematically, and by the definition of mathematical model. Or, if you can provide a model without AGW that does anywhere near as well as the models with. How is it you are so ignorant of what is, not only the basic tenet of mathematical modeling, so completely intuitively obvious, that factors which make the model fit significantly better are kept, those that don't are dropped? Are you expending a lot of mental energy to maintain this impenetrable denseness? Why?
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
> Because when you put in an AGW term, the models do much better than if you leave out any AGW term
And what if they did better by subtracting in the average clown shoe size at the time to the computed average global temperature?
> If you can demonstrate that models with the average shoe size of red-headed clowns as a factor do better than those without, then I will absolutely accept it as a parameter
Then I believe this proves you are an idiot.
> Kind of have to, mathematically
Only if you don't understand math.
> How is it you are so ignorant of what is, not only the basic tenet of mathematical modeling, so completely intuitively obvious, that factors which make the model fit significantly better are kept, those that don't are dropped? Are you expending a lot of mental energy to maintain this impenetrable denseness? Why?
I get it. Rather than understanding why a model that fits best doesn't mean the model is correct or even close, you spend time convincing yourself you should dismiss me.
Enjoy:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...