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Researcher: The US Owes the World $4 Trillion For Trashing the Climate
merbs writes: Climate change wasn't created equal. Rich, industrialized nations have contributed most of the pollution and gone way over their carbon budgets—while smaller, poorer, and more agrarian countries are little to blame. The subsequent warming will, naturally, impact everyone, often hitting the poorer countries harder. So should rich countries pay up? Researcher Damon Matthews has quantified how much historically polluting nations owe their global neighbors—and it's a lot.
What's the Chinese bill?
Often wrong but never in doubt.
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Everyone knows me.
TFS apparently calculates overall pollution since the dawn of time. In all fairness, it should be calculated since the moment people realized pollution hurts climate.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
And what about China and Europe? Why focus only on the U.S.?
Lots of the smog in LA has come 5000 miles away from China I read in a study. The US is a drop in the bucket these days with Industrial output
http://saveie6.com/
We pay for pollution. The can pay us back for defense, food, funding UN, and Foreign aid.
Says every shakedown artist in every government on the planet.
Just when they'd started to convince people that "climate change" was legitimately about real phenomenon. But, as we suspected all along, it's just another way to loot rich countries for the good of ... who? Who gets the money? Certainly not poor individuals in poor countries -- they never get the money.
What's the total the US owes the world, then?
Will this ensure the money will go to reversing damage that's been done and/or improvements?
Extortion and Fundamental Change. Marxism and Global Control.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
*NOW* we know why everyone is making such a big deal over an unproven theory about rising temperatures being caused by human beings. It always boils down to $$$, doesn't it?
Damon Matthews looks like one of those crazy anti-human scientists from Twelve Monkeys. Perhaps that's not relevant, but damned if it's not true.
So should rich countries pay up?
No. The real solution is to lower the birthrate and eventually reduce the world population. Shifting money around wouldn't solve anything.
This "researcher" owes me 5 minutes of my life back after reading his "study". It is pretty sad what passes for "research" these days.
and feel free to add a tip.
Thank you
trillion $ is the key here. This is not about the climate it is about the $. Pay your dues to the overlords and you are free to pollute.
They are still claiming that climate change isn't a thing.
Also, what about China?
Capitalist societies polluted far less than the communist societies did and still do.
Capitalist societies also lifted billions out of poverty while socialism killed 100 million.
If some bozo wants to start toting up a bill, I'd like to see his calculations for what he rest of the world owes the US.
In other words, fuck off and die, slaver. There are some things you just can't calculate on a balance sheet.
Infuriate left and right
Once you factor in the invention of peanut butter, they owe us.
Don't we get a discount for helping stop Adolf?
Table-ized A.I.
Oh, sorry, we already spent all of it on these guns, and bombs, and training this military force, and... I'm sorry, what were you saying we owed you?
Damon Matthews can GAGF
"Ha ha!" Good luck with that a-holes!
So who is going to pay for it?? now that the powers that be have assessed that people are to blame for climate change? (Even though we had climate change on Mars).
What are we going to do? Naturally, there will be an additional VAT tax (hidden in costs) on all goods we buy as well as the air we breathe (income taxes). After all, industry always passes the buck to consumers. Those additional monies will go into the treasury's general fund where it will disappear forever and our politicians will not have all the monies for "fighting climate change" like they claim. In fact, congress will get so used to the additional revenue stream it will be impossible to undo. It will be enforceable by the IRS.
At the end of the day even if income goes up to offset the rising cost of goods, the VAT will just be a higher amount, as will the tax on income. So making more money over time will play catch up to inflation like most of us are doing today.
So man's quest to think they can address a problem like changing climate...winds up creating bigger problems.
The developed world gave the developing world -- guess what -- *development*. Like, science, industry, modern agriculture, banking, communications -- all the things that enabled them to increase their populations by factors of 5 or 10, and their well-being by factor of 10 or 20. So the scale is tilted by some give as well as some take.
"Now, if you calculate the debt using the US’s own social cost of carbon—the dollar value damage each ton of CO2 pollution does, currently pegged at $40 a ton—then the climate debtors’ total is damage is massive."
I looked at the paper. There is no mention of this number. Regardless of the issues with the paper, this piece of unscholarly behavior is due to Brian Merchant.
Interesting how nearly every post by this submitter has to do with energy, climate change or some other bullshit social issue. Get off your soapbox, this is a TECH SITE not Climate Change News. Fuck off to Huffington Post or Salon with that garbage.
Every single day for decades, we have the strongest military of all times. We should invade other countries and take their wealth. Fuck them.
Kind of like what happened in Iraq, except Bush the Moron didn't take the oil and wasted our soldiers for nothing..
You are ignoring how other countries have benefitted from our pollution. China's economy would still be shit with 2 billion starving people instead of 1 billion.
I'll let someone else give you a better one, I'm moderating in this thread...
Go fuck yourself
-- Vast majority of Americans
If you want to look at it that way what does Germany owe us for two world wars and inventing the ICE?
We can bicker at shit like that all day, bitch. It doesn't help anyone.
That's right. and this climate nonsense is just the UN's attempt to create a World gvernment and make America weak. It's also a means of increasing taxes and justifying the confiscation of our guns.
But let's also remeber that being off of the gold standard and our phony fiat currency is all part of the UN plot and their cohorts, the Federal Reserve.
The French owe us for just being french and screw ups during ww2.
Also: comparing the entire US to individual countries in Europe.
Sorry, but you're talking about smaller populations in individual countries in Europe. If you wanted to compare apples to apples, you'd compare the US to the entirety of Europe since the populations are similar post-War.
The report also compares industrialized countries with non-industrialized countries who are trying like hell to industrialize, like India.
In short, this report does no per-capita analysis /and/ it compares countries that have industrialized with those that haven't gone through that phase fully yet (and lumps the post-1980 industrialization time in china /with/ its previous agrarian economy).
>brazil is a carbon creditor
Yeah, but not when you add in the coal mining and rain-forest stripping.
I am all for reducing pollution and carbon footprints. But the fact that we owe anyone for what went on in the past is nuts, especially to countries that have done the same damn thing or are making efforts to do so. We have been making efforts on pollution ever since the creation of the EPA. To say that the US is a big bad bully when it comes to the environment ignores the other countries that have done the same or are going through their own industrialization process.
I know that this is a schoolyard argument "but the other kid did it too!!" but fingerpointing over who is worse never does anyone any good especially when you go down this road because it becomes circular to the point of absurdity.
It's especially bad when you abuse statistics to do it and frame it as "science."
What is worse is that if I can come up with these criticisms in the time I read that article, the think-tanks for the fucking evil RWNJs disclaiming climate change (it's a fact guys, your insurance company and the Pentagon says it's real, and it's coming out of your pocket - you were saying something about fiscal responsibility, asshole?) will take this and run with it to deep-six any further efforts to reduce pollution, convincing people like Joe The (dumb) Plumber that it's all a conspiracy perpetrated by liberals.
This report is barely worth lining a bird-cage.
--
BMO
Thank goodness big brother BHO cannot be president for another term!
This was the main point behind the original Kyoto Accord. Of course it was not phrased this way, but this was to be the outcome.
4 trillion? Is that all? Why not make it 10 trillion? How much have industrialized countries given poor countries in foreign aid? Loan forgiveness? Accepting millions and millions of their citizens into our countries for better lives. Infrastructure, education, the list goes on.
The reason that many of these countries are poor is because they are run by dictators. Dictators that steal nearly every penny of foreign aid and either put it into their own pocket or use it to beef up the military to ensure that they are not thrown out of power.
Now some of the countries are genuinely poor and need our help. But many others (I'm talking about you, nearly every country on the African continent. And some south east asian countries - Indonesia and Philippines come to mind) are rife with corruption. Their people are poor not through their own fault but directly at the hands of dictators and ruling families.
Just suppose that we did cough up the 4 trillion. What do you suppose would happen? Does this guy really think that somehow, magically, all the people in these countries would be driving BMW's with their kids in boarding schools and a summer place in The Hamptons? Not fucking likely. It would all go into the dictator pockets.
Nice try though.
Can't we just make New Jersey pay?
The US is in second place emitting 5,300 gigatons of CO2, China is the top emitter with 10,330 gigatons. On a per capita basis they're doing better than us, but the article's claim that "Even China, “the world’s factory,” has nothing on the US’s past penchant for whipping up carbon pollution." is just wrong.
Insurance companies will say anything to jack up premiums.
We'll pay $1, because fuck you.
1. Showing the world what a constitutional representative democracy can do for governments, not to mention the free pursuit of happiness and private property can do for wealth creation.
2. Providing a destination for millions of immigrants who where allowed to come here, work hard, make money and obtain property. Immigrants who where allowed to become citizens and who's children automatically became citizens because they where born here.
3. Inventing the airplane, assembly line manufacturing, solid state electronics, digital electronics, integrated circuits, microprocessors, many petroleum based products, the bulk of the modern pharmaceutical advances and a whole host of things that has made life possible for millions and easier for hundreds of millions more.
4. Being the reserve currency of choice around the word for the better part of the last 100 years, by providing financial stability to not just ourselves but the whole world.
5. Providing BILLIONS of foreign aid annually, disaster relief and supplies on a regular basis though out the world without demanding to be paid in return.
6. Spending our resources, money and blood during WW1 and stopping the Germans in their quest to dominate Europe, not because it would have affected us all that much, but because it would have affected millions of Europeans greatly.
7. Committing resources, economy, industrial production, money and even more blood during WW2 to protect Britain and liberate the bulk of Europe from Nazi rule, then after capturing all this territory and paying for it in US blood, returning it to it's rightful owners and helping to rebuild by providing resources, taking only enough land to bury our dead in return. For liberating the Pacific including parts of China and protecting other countries in the area from being dominated by the aggressor Japan, yet returning even Japan to self rule. A conflict born out of the mismanagement of Europe after WW1 and mistakes which where NOT ours.
8. For out building, out flanking and overthrowing the old Russian empire and liberating the remaining remnants of Europe from being ruled by others.
9. For NOT using our second to none military forces to just take whatever land and resources we wanted or needed, not subjugating the world to live under OUR rules, but affording everyone the ideal to determine for themselves what they want.
So, for the above reasons, don't give me this "we owe the world" tripe because the truth is they owe US. We've more than paid what ever debt you can conjure up a reason to lay at our doorstep though our history though actual money, resources and blood. In reality the world owes US a debt it could never repay. But true to history, we are not demanding payment, nor are we forcing payment of these debts, not that we don't have both the right and the ability to make the rest of the world pay, but because that's what we do, that's what we've always done. So take your perceived "debt" you think we owe and go home, or we can start discussing what you own us from history...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Does livestock account for more than 50% of the CO2 emissions? If so, then meat-eaters owe us some cash too ;)
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
The U.S. can pay it off with a 100 trillion dollar Zimbabwean note. Get change back too.
Passionately Indifferent
No one owes anyone anything. Get a grip. "Climate change" has become a religion. It's gone beyond science now. Enough already. Everyone knows pollution is bad. Everyone knows spewing crap into the atmosphere is bad. But no one owes anyone anything. How utterly petulant.
Can we replace the real national debt of $18.3 trillion with this $4 trillion chump-change? 'Cause that would be shweet.
Considering how much the USA contributes to the world in so many areas, through humanitarian aide, jobs, science, opportunity, medicine, education, and defending other countries with our blood, I'd say the balance is zero. This researcher should collect his fee for another pointless study, then disappear into oblivion.
Shoot the researcher. Jury nullification shall follow.
But the fact that we owe anyone for what went on in the past is nuts, especially to countries that have done the same damn thing or are making efforts to do so. We have been making efforts on pollution ever since the creation of the EPA.
Come on officer, so what if I have been beating my wife for the last 20 years, WTF has that got to do with anything! That guy over there just shoved her, arrest his damn arse! Throw the book at him!
Oh, and if you think the EPA has ever lifted a finger to curb any CO2 emissions, then you severely misunderstand how the good ole USA works.
Is $4 Trillion the present value of all future cash flows that the US represents? If so, the US should buy this bargain basement deal and then tax Rest-of-World into oblivion. The world's last remaining engine of innovation -- driven by champion of individualism -- is priceless. The global ecosystem needs a driver, and for better or worse it's the USA. Don't worry, folks, the USA is in slow decline... it's likely that someday soon we'll all enjoy the pleasure of being equally poor in the fairest of all global societies. Extraction of bullshit penalties like this would certainly hasten the socialist, commie-bastard fantasies that illustrate man's fatal flaw: the combination of a sense of superiority, entitlement, jealousy, and sloth that subverts individualism and champions equality. Fuck if these mythical agrarian societies have been so wronged, tell them to turn in their cell phones, learn to speak Japanese, German, Chinese or Russian, decimate their populations, and we'll talk about the balance of their account. Bite me.
"Oh, and if you think the EPA has ever lifted a finger to curb any CO2 emissions, then you severely misunderstand how the good ole USA works."
Increased gas mileage==less carbon emissions.
CAFE works when it's not undermined by RWNJs and corporatists that insist everybody drive H-1s.
Your move.
--
BMO
Under proposed TPP laws, smaller environmentally lower impact countries will be able to sue the US for these damages. Ah the irony.
this is pure trash. wtf is wrong with your assholes. If anything the world owes there entire existance to the US. Fuck these people. The USA is a great place!
We already paid or fuel consumption carbon offset to the Middle East and South America. Screw the rest of the world!
The USA inventions that make the digital age possible: The transistor, the semiconductor integrated circuit, microprocessors, communication satellites, fiber optic cable, the internet, cellular telephony, laser, maser, optical disks, operating systems, Hamming code, compilers, atomic clocks
pay up !!
Isn't a shakedown what its always been about to the leftists? Go shit in your hat.
an ill wind that blows no good
And rock'n'roll. Levi's, too.
Hell yeah, they better start paying up. They probably owe us $4 trillion just for Michael Jackson, goddamnit.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The US has invented HALF the inventions in about the last 100 years. Much of the modern world is something we brought into being.
If the world would like to settle accounts then lets put that 4 trillion on the ledger for the sake of argument and then see how much the world owes us. When all is said and done I rather doubt the people making this charge will appreciate the irony of the outcome.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Maybe we should bill the rest of the fucking world for saving them from a world war and rebuilding their shattered nations.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Why do you not believe in the free market? What are you, a communist?
Do you think that Insurance Company A, betting against climate change and having lower premiums and having lower rates would have fewer or more subscribers than Company B betting on climate change and has higher rates?
If you think Company B can raise rates with impunity without driving customers to Company A, you're just nuts and need to take a refresher in Econ 101.
--
BMO
How much debt do they incur?
to US for the all the research and invention USA did. Transistor, computer, microwave, tv,...... Most of these inventions were done in US and Europe and neither have good record on climate. Something you give and something you take away. I still think that compare to Europe, the USA has taken away much less and contributed more (In fact USA was taken over by Europeans and so was South America and Australia and significant Asia and Africa was colonized by them)
We in the US will give Mr. Matthews and his study all the consideration it deserves.
As we've said all along, Climate Change is all about the money.
Now they come right out and say it and still the Face Painting Homers cackle about Climate Change.
If we pay it will you all fuck off and never ask us for any foreign aid or to save your dumb asses again?
Most of the tech the rest of the rest of the world uses and enjoys is developed in the US. Also, what price would you like to put on Japan taking over the Pacific in WWII if the US had of just kept out of it? And later becoming a super power and a pretty big deterrent to governments that dont care so much for the general population having any sort of freedom? If the US pulled out of every war tomorrow, packed up and went home, how well do you think that might work out for everyone else? Probably not very good at all. Yes everyone likes to point out what the US does wrong to make them selves feel a bit better. You're welcome.
Bullshit. The rest of the world owes the US and Europe every bit of technology they ever had beyond the simple wheel. Nobody beyond the Europeans had practical ocean-going ships; the Chinese junks and Polynesian twin-hulled canoes were primitive by comparison. Asian wheels were crude, "BC" cartoon quality.
This smacks of "Gimme, gimme, gimme!" from cultures that produce nothing.
We math and computer guys love models. But we also know that the only meaningful price of something is the actual price a buyer and seller agree upon in a transparent market. Models are used entirely to inform the participants, who ultimately "discover" the actual price.
We know with certainty that the US will pay at most $0 to "the world" for "trashing the climate". I've use that information to come up with a model to determine how much the US actually owes. My model is:
owes = max(0, 0)
Plugging in all relevant variables, I get 0.
I think I'd rather dodge this $4T bill by pointing out something in TFA that pissed me off.
At the top of the article is a picture of some godforsaken hellhole. My first thought was "holy shit, where is that horrible place? Is that somewhere on Venus?" Hovering over the image, told me the answer.
It says "Smog in New Mexico."
Yes, Albuquerque sometimes has a winter "inversion layer", bu there is no place anywhere in New Mexico that looks anything like that. On the worst day of the year during the worst forest fire ever, the sky doesn't look that bad, and hell no does any place in this state have a hundredth of that many tall buildings.
Click through the image credit to the wikipedia page, and they'll tell you it's Mexico City. But the TFA calls it "New Mexico," because some asshat retard who flunked first grade geography and got a job as an editorial intern at vice.com, doesn't know the difference. Oh, fuck YOU!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
What budget? The budget that every different research organization defines based on their own criteria and agenda?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
From the article, '“The idea of a carbon budget is gaining traction,” Mathews told me.'
The researcher has clearly been breathing very toxic fumes as part of his study if he believes that drug-induced fantasy. This whole study is a load of hogwash.
1) Is climate dump per capita the right measure? unclear.
2) Who counts for climate change? If a plastic product produced in China with chemicals from Southeast Asia and oil from the middle east shipped on a Bermuda flagged boat crewed by Philippinos is bought by an American, does the American get the entire "carbon budget"? What about beef raised in the US but exported to and consumed by Japanese? not specified.
3) it measures only fossil fuel emissions. What about the toxic chemical dumps from rare earth metals production, or the massive environmental damage from dams like 3 Gorges? These would bring China much higher on the scale but is completely ignored.
What drivel.
because all I see are a bunch of dictatorships who borrowed some of Marx's words. And please, don't trot out that old "No True Scottsman" bullshit. There is such a thing as misrepresenting yourself. If I say I'm I lawyer that's misrepresenting, because I didn't pass the bar. If you say Stalin was a commie that's misrepresenting, because he followed none of Marx's tenets.
Not that I'm a communism. What the hell do I care if you own property so long as you don't abuse that ownership to my determent. That's what socialism is about. You get to own stuff, but we regulate it so you can't use it to take advantage of people.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
1. Inventing aircraft, the light bulb, the transistor, airconditioning, refrigerated trucks and rail cars, the steel-framed skyscraper, the internet, the communications satellite, etc (including inventing and validating many of the devices used to measure the condition of the environment, without which these morons could not even make their idiotic claims)
2. Feeding much of the world for decades
3. Stopping NAZI Germany and Imperial Japan - and then re-building both nations
4. being home to much of the environmental movement that brought about many current environmental improvements. This ranges from the symbolic (our Apollo 8 mission's "Earthrise" photo) to the practical (inventing many of the cleaner technologies and trying them out) to the in-between (The invention of the idea of a "National Park")
I'd go on for a dozen more paragraphs but the educated and sane reader will get the point and the uneducated insane one never will.
LOL;
Seriously, this idea that CO2 is generated by ppl is the biggest crock that there is WRT climate. Think about it. Where is most coal burned at? Yes, in poorer nations, it is burned for heating and cooking. However, with more developed nations, coal is burned to make electricity and steel . Who decides to burn it this way? Businesses and Gov. As such, ppl do NOT decide it.
So, what is the CORRECT way to normalize this? PER $ GDP. That is really the best way. However, many ppl do not want it, because it will not pin the blame on America. It will pin it on China and other nations.
In addition, it is interesting that he ties this to 1960. That is nothing less than the TOTAL joke. Emissions has been going on since Christ. But, even then, many like to use 1850. But, the reason why this author chose NOT to do this, is because America is again not the big one. Even on a per capita basis, America is way down there. OTOH, China, UK, and other western nations are BIG emitters.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
THis study is a joke. It was purposely done from 1960 onwards, and on a per capita basis. This was intentional.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Says every one person asked for money for anything at all in every country on the planet.
Fucking eat a dick with this "research".
The idea of compensation is idiotic because score settling works both ways, the major CO2 emitters have also got global science and technology to the point it is today and if you want to say you have no part in that then you have to give back your compensation if you live longer than your pre-industrial ancestors did, because you have access to knowledge or material goods generated from the source of the CO2 you are seeking compensation for.
Yeah right, Damon Matthews tells us we owe the world money. Next Afleck Benjamin will release a studiy telling us we should all watch the new batman movies.
Countries aren't equal in their economic output and energy usage correlates with output per capita. Essentially this study says that non-advanced economies don't use much energy per capita. Well everyone knows that. To a great extent economic growth is all about boosting per capita energy consumption. Sustainable energy is all about trying to break the tie between energy usage and carbon emissions because of the tie between productivity and energy.
If you want to talk about some sort of energy debt a better unit might be something like CO2 emissions per unit of GDP.
Get this SHIT off Slashdot. Pure vile politically motivated tripe.
No. The real solution is to lower the birthrate and eventually reduce the world population. Shifting money around wouldn't solve anything.
The only proven way to reduce the birth rate is economic development and that demands a substantial investment of time and money. Graph of Total Fertility Rate vs. GDP per capita of the corresponding country, 2009
Whoever this researcher is, they need to be fired. Whoever thought it was a good idea to publish this needs to be fired. You're a bunch of idiots.
So the world is going to sue the US for 4 trillion in environmental damages... Where are they going to get a lawyer? HA HAHAHA!
As if the U.S. was known to pay its debts. And what are they going to pay them with? Dollar bills? You can't buy back your climate with them. You cannot even eat those. They are a Ponzi scheme where only those who cash out early will still get value for them.
Fortunately the climate has changed in meaningless ways.
What damage?
When it comes to Europe, you're STILL pissing and moaning about how we all "owe you" for stuff paid for decades ago after more decades of paying you off. But still we should bow our heads and say a prayer of thanks to you for what you did for the few years of the war you were actually fighting in rather than reaping investment dividends from the Nazi war machine.
Yet here you are, pissing and moaning about being told you owe everyone else for the crap you emitted for decades.
If we decided that the population were the problem, too many humans in other words, then we should kill people off. Euthanise them.
So we want the least harm done here, we're not monsters, but people die and people send others off to die in wars, and those people go knowing they can die willingly, so this is war footing here.
So do we kill off one African or one Australian? If we kill off the African, we've done less than a tenth of the benefit to the CO2 balance sheet than if we killed off the Australian. So to get the same end result, we would need to kill an order of magnitude fewer Australians than Africans.
Alternatively, what about if we, instead of killing people off, make each country below the average population count take on refugees from countries with above average population count. THEN work out how much CO2 production is done per country, rather than per capita?
After all, it's not fair that China has to deal with a billion people and Australia gets away with having to deal with a tiny population. They're not representative of humanity, are they. So it's unfair of them to hog all that space when we have so many problems with people unable to find a space to live.
Ask Canada how well the USA invades other countries.Then ask them to pay back for them burning Washington down.
You only won the War of Independence because you were part of the British Empire at the time. You've fucked up every other conflict since then.
Carbon per $ GDP isn't everything, if country with $10 trillion GDP has three times the efficiency of country with $10 billion GDP, the former still is putting out over 300 times the amount of the latter.
Also the GDP metric is muddied : former country likely has a lot of janitors, cooks, waiters etc. so that a lot of everyday tasks get in the GDP whereas the latter one has black market / undeclared work and people sewing their own clothes, making toys for their own children etc., not in GDP.
Leftist Caused Climate Hysteria is a HOAX to Control and Steal from YOU! It is a religion, not real science and I can't believe people on /. are falling for this crap.
goes hand in hand when it comes to Americans.
I don't see this being too hard to solve. Thanks to the massive capacity of their new fracking operations, they can probably pay it off pretty quickly now just by pumping more oil.
Time to plant Cannabis. Now I truly believe that 'hemp can save the world'. I thought the stoners back in the day just said that.
France does not show up in the picture, despite a high ranking GDP.
Does its 80% of electricity production from nuclear weight that much, that it cancels other contributions such as road transport? Or does the study fails to take the whole picture into account?
We will cut a check just as soon as the $5 trillion dollar payment the rest of the world owes us for protecting them from a Communist takeover is deposited.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
...the US can use all the money the world OWES IT to pay for it.
Joe Biden is a square shooter. Joe Biden 2016!
Also: comparing the entire US to individual countries in Europe.
Sorry, but you're talking about smaller populations in individual countries in Europe. If you wanted to compare apples to apples, you'd compare the US to the entirety of Europe since the populations are similar post-War.
One of the best ways to keep emissions to sustainable levels is to keep the population reasonably low.
What you are suggesting is that we should give leeway to overpopulated areas because they need more resources than available to sustain themselves.
Of course, the ironic thing is the article is not written in the world's alternative history native German. USA! USA! USA!
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
I'm not French, but that's not fair. They did a lot of underground work to undermine the nazis. If you're talking about the policy of appeasement, then Neville Chamberlain -and thus the UK- is more culpable than France.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
If we want to get involved in counting every possible debt and use of resources by one group or the other, where do we draw the line?
* Don't neanderthals owe modern generations for exterminating the mammoths, thus costing us the luxurious mammoth rib-wich sandwich?
* Don't Adam and Eve owe all of their descendants for mental anguish over Original Sin?
* Doesn't everyone in all of history, who has ever had children, owe the planet for the cost of the resources ever used by their descendants? (After all, if all of humanity abstained for a single generation, we wouldn't be polluting, now would we?)
Honestly, this kind of discussion is just silly. If the world really wants $4 trillion dollars, come to me, I'll write you a check for $4 trillion, and that will be the end of it.
This article fails to deduct from that $4T how much the rest of the world owes the US for all the technology that has come out of us being an industrialized nation. Sure, we could live like people in remote Africa, living off the land with a small carbon footprint, and then there would be probably a billion more people per year dying from diseases that have been cured or rendered treatable, starving from less food grown per acre, dying from dehydration since there would be less clean water technologies, etc. Almost all of this carbon usage was unavoidable if we wanted technology to advance. Even today, while people champion "green" energy, the fact of the matter is, "green" energy is still not even close to being a viable alternative to deliver the energy the world requires. We talk about "green" KILOwatt wind and solar farms in areas that have coal and gas power plants delivering MEGAwatts. One day "green" energy technology will be a viable option, but today it can only replace a small fraction of carbon-heavy power generation.
People who say "money does not buy happiness" are just people without money trying to make themselves feel better.
You can't express irreversible damage in an amount of money. It's like killing a person and trying to compensate that with an amount of money. It doesn't bring that person back to life.
I know that this is a schoolyard argument "but the other kid did it too!!" but fingerpointing over who is worse never does anyone any good especially when you go down this road because it becomes circular to the point of absurdity.
Overall I'd agree, but it goes a bit beyond a schoolyard argument with, "the other kid did it too" when the accuser is particularly singling out one kid among several guilty kids, and in order to support their bias, fails to take all factors into consideration or deliberately elects to ignore certain ones. That's an injustice.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Add more to CO2 than humans and there are more insects in developing countries therefore developing countries are responsible for more CO2.
At least the cat is now out of the bag on this global money grubbing scheme.
The US rebuilt much of the world after WWII, so everyone can take their 4 Trillion bill, roll it up real tight and stick it up their methane trap.
The family that lived in central america until 10 years ago and now lives on about $36k a year in california?
The family that lived in america until 10 years ago and now lives on $3 million a year in Monico?
The actual culprits in this story are mobile. And they are already moving around to avoid the bill due for their cost of living.
Almost by the definition of their immigration laws, most countries these days only accept people who are well off and probably would have the largest portion of the bill due for the pollution.
Is the bill to the country and who ever happens to live there now or is it to the wealthy few who may not even live in america any more and haven't for a generation or more.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The French underground was far smaller than the Vichy French government. By any measure the Frogs helped the Nazis more than they hindered it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You're forgetting the Europeans and other nations, which the Chinese do just as much work for.
I don't read AC A human right
I'm not French, but that's not fair. They did a lot of underground work to undermine the nazis. If you're talking about the policy of appeasement, then Neville Chamberlain -and thus the UK- is more culpable than France.
That's true. Plus the quick French defeat at the start of the war was more due to strategic errors than lack of effort. They relied on the imperviousness of the Maginot Line, the impenetrability of the Ardennes forest, and the neutrality of Belgium to protect their eastern border, and Germany invaded Belgium anyway and went through the Ardennes, rendering the Maginot Line basically useless.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
No, you dolt.
The population density of Europe is also similar.
>overpopulation
Birth rates in industrialized nations have fallen to below population replacement.
--
BMO
Hurry, everyone prostrate yourselves and beg forgiveness for your eco-sins! Yes, flagellate yourselves to prove (that is, to show off) how sorry you are. Oh, and in case you're just too busy but are never the less still very very sorry for all the eco-sinning that you've done then we've calculated it all up and converted the proper amount of sorriness into dollars. Just pay this amount to the eco pope and we'll call it even.
Is it any wonder why folks think all this green/tree-hugging/self-righteous eco bullshit is too much like a scam or a bullshit religion even worse than scientology?
Even if there's any truth to global warming articles and bullshit like TFA do far more damage to the cause than any amount of rhetoric from established religions or counter evidence/claims from deniers.
For myself I'll believe it's a problem when it actually starts impacting daily life-- PAH! Two degrees Celsius. No, global warming / climate change / whatever-you-want-to-call-it-today-so-you-don't-look-asinine-in-a-year is a strategic ploy to get us off of foreign oil or just a self-righteous new religion at best; at worst it's a scam
...is never having to prove anything you say. You just keep repeating the same accusation, and that's all the proof you need. Never mind that the UN's IPCC were caught doctoring their data. Never mind that they were "exonerated" and left in charge in spite of doctoring their data, global warming is forever.
On a more pragmatic note, assuming this lunacy is legit, it raises the national debt to $22.5 trillion dollars - and will neatly top off Obama's presidency with a nice, round $24 trillion dollars.
The sum total of every dollar in existence, printed or electronic, representing wealth or fraud, every single one, rich and poor, all the dollar-based money there is, can't pay even half that. So why even bother to talk about it? If people really expected it to be repaid, they blew that chance by electing Obama. Now, it's just 'well, you lose, sucker.'
When we deduct all of the trillions we've donated to the rest of the bottom-feeding countries of the world, and all of the helpless, thankless people we've given aid and amnesty to, the rest of the world actually comes out owing us a lot more.
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
The number itself is a total joke. I did a brief extrapolation five or six years ago working on the costs to fix the environment post climate change. The global figure I came up with was $40 trillion to $100 trillion - and that's still probably a conservative estimate. - If the figure is even in the right side of the park a liability of $4 trillion for the US would be the bargain of the century....
If I was going to guess a division in blame it might go :- 22% US, 12% USSR/Russia, 12% China, 10% UK, 8% S.Korea, 7% Germany, 7% Japan, 5% India, 4% France, 2% Australia, etc.. The real values are so complicated that they are virtually impossible to calculate. The UK is special because it was among the first industrial polluters and was the worlds biggest polluter until about 1930 - 1940. One of the most difficult & vaguest parts is the division between developed verses undeveloped nations. - The vast rump of the undeveloped/developing world is very hard to estimate..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Molon Labe
Nobody owes anything for CO2 emissions. CO2 is NOT a pollutant, is vital for life and the output by humans over the last 150 years has resulted in better plant growth which is feeding more people. CO2 up to 1000 PPM is a benefit to the planet and all life forms on it.
So the "ice age is coming" of the 1970s becomes "global warming" in the 1980s/90s and has now morphed into "climate change" because the warming stopped 18+ years ago. "Climate Change" is so nice because they won't have to change their scam's name every time the climate does something they don't expect .... like CHANGE! For goodness sake climate is always changing and humans for all their arrogance have very little to do with it. Urban heat island is proven and CO2 might have a 1 to 1.66 degree C change for each doubling. Nothing to get worried about (IPCC says so).
A question for everyone who thinks that CO2 controls the climate. How long with rising CO2 and flat or falling temperatures before you admit your theory is wrong? 20 years? 30? Never?
Both of the satellite datasets (RSS, UAH) show no warming for over 18 years. In that time CO2 has risen 8-10%.
Why do I use the 2 satellite measurements?
First they have the greatest coverage. RSS goes from 82.5N to 82.5 S and UAH, 85N to 85S.
Second they are the least adjusted. Unlike NOAA which makes completely unjustified adjustments by raising good data (ARGO bouy temps) to match what they themselves admit is bad, corrupted data (ship engine intake temps).
Lastly they are run by 2 scientists with good credentials (Dr Mears & Dr Spencer respectively) and despite looking at what is almost the same data come to different conclusions. Dr Mears thinks CO2 does control the climate and Dr Spencer does not. I like that. Not only does it keep them honest it makes me think and read both sides to see why they are so different in their conclusions despite almost identical data. So far I side with the position of Dr Spencer.
Here are 2 predictions. First I predict that CO2 will continue to increase because China and other countries don't care about CO2. They don't even care about real pollutants much less CO2. Second I predict it will get colder over the next 20-30 years. Why?
The PDO is in its negative phase, the AMO has peaked and is on the way down and the sun is in its quietest phase in hundreds of years. So we have a great opportunity to do real science. If CO2 does control the climate then we should get warmer despite all those factors. If it doesn't then expect it to get much colder over the next several decades. So far the evidence of science is that CO2 does NOT control the climate.
If you want to read a great explanation of why the IPCC models are broken beyond belief there was a great article describing that and all the other problems with climate science by Dr Brown of Duke university
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/06/real-science-debates-are-not-rare/
No, it is NOT everything, HOWEVER, CO2 emissions track far more with $ GDP then with per capita. China has proved that. So has America and even Europe now.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Let's see, we have more people on earth than ever, lifespans are rising, there is enough food in the world that even in poor countries folks can eat too much - tho I do know food isn't universally easy - the hurricane activity is at a 45 year low, ...
Yeah. We in the USA will start paying, and we will send you a bill for the American inspired technology, medicine, and food exports.
Time for aother round of QE?
Casteism
And I'm not talking about the sun, either. Closer to home stuff, like nuclear testing, power plant leakage and good old Little Boy and Fat Man.
Has the climate already been trashed or should we pay up based upon the predictions of our political leaders and their climate modeling lackeys?