Slashdot Mirror
Massive Government Report Says Climate Is Warming and Humans Are the Cause (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: It is "extremely likely" that human activities are the "dominant cause" of global warming, according to the the most comprehensive study ever of climate science by U.S. government researchers. The climate report, obtained by NPR, notes that the past 115 years are "the warmest in the history of modern civilization." The global average temperature has increased by about 1.8 degree Fahrenheit over that period. Greenhouse gases from industry and agriculture are by far the biggest contributor to warming. The findings contradict statements by President Trump and many of his Cabinet members, who have openly questioned the role humans play in changing the climate. The report states that the global climate will continue to warm. How much, it says, "will depend primarily on the amount of greenhouse gases (especially carbon dioxide) emitted globally." Without major reductions in emissions, it says, the increase in annual average global temperature could reach 9 degrees Fahrenheit relative to pre-industrial times. Efforts to reduce emissions, it says, would slow the rate of warming.
Twitler will have it pulled.
News for 'tards; Jewish propaganda.
Jeezuz, the trolls are getting pathetic. Do you think you can sow doubt by sounding like a third grader on Ritalin? Thanks for playing though.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked. How has this been allowed to go on without anyone warning us?
You are welcome on my lawn.
"the increase in annual average global temperature could reach 9 degrees Fahrenheit"
It's ok, we just build some more coal power stations, turn up the air-con, and it's all good..
The reason why the report had such an easy passage out the door, all too late, no stopping it now, damage done, all we can do now is attempt to mitigate harm. No deny it, because it will be worse next year and the year after that et al and in fact realy catastrophic years could be in there, really catasrophic. Denial and fucking around and fuck everyone I wont more money now, too late even for that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?.... You are already sinking and it will start to happen faster, done deal, you bought and you own it whether you want it or not.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I suspect that
Translation: I don't actually know this, but I want to say something that sounds smart (to me at least), so I'm going to move my head aside far enough to pull this statement out of my ass.
on Ritalin
I think you mean off Ritalin.
Want to see something cool?
Even with your cherry picked data, guess what?
http://init.sh/wp-content/uplo...
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
We're talking about average temperature - daily temperatures that swing wildly by up to 20 degrees F or more every day. If that averages out to a half a degree higher per year on average, it's absolutely measureable.
"The assessments are required by an act of Congress; the last one was published in 2014. "
So we have these laws requiring the government workers to model climate change and make assessments of it, those models are used by military and civil planners to anticipate flooding, food shortages, etc. Driven by the best models the scientists can build from all the data.
And we have Scott Pruit, head of the EPA, climate change denier, essentially driven by Hannity of Fox News, who in turn is simply sponsored propaganda of a dying coal industry. Pruit repeats basic flawed logic and misdirections to pretend its not happening.
Notice the split? Scott isn't working from the science or the data from under him, he's working from the sponsored commentary on Fox News. But then that's just paid for propaganda, it's not science. So you have one group working from real data and models that bypass his agency, and his agency working from PR puff pieces written by industries looking for favors.
That's not healthy.
What if the head of the Defense Department did that? Suppose US was at war with Russia and Russia hired Hannity to push its propaganda. Instead of making choices based on all the data and science the government could muster, you'd have a military undermined from the top by its own boss. You can see that now with the Russian cyber attacks against USA, Fox is doing a full on deflection. Not a denial, a deflection. They know Russia is doing that, yet trying to get their viewers to ignore it as a non-story.
Glad that's over. Next issue?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I thought he was being generous with 'third grader'.
Actually, tons of people are building coal plants. The Chinese are planning 700 more coal plants:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
Or maybe we open these things called pores.
Here in the Netherlands all electric trains ride on wind energy.
-- Cheers!
Cue the level headed debate with a focus in facts, solutions and mutual respect.
You need to get your priorities figured out. CO2 is on track to wreck society in a way far more serious than not being able to easily drive your car 9000 miles in 10 days.
Ok. Feeding the troll here, but I have a super serial question then:
Obviously when we dump shit into the atmosphere, it creates a net positive increase in temperature. Even if it's not the primary contributor, why the fuck are you retards so hell bent on doing nothing about it?
What's the harm in reducing emissions? If we're not causing it then cutting emissions can't hurt. If we are causing it, then cutting emissions will help. Seems like a win-win to me.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Ahh, so you're moving the goalposts now. It's no longer about long term trends, but that the news is claiming it's the "hottest year on record"
You do you. Good job!
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Yeah, globally it is cooler than 2016 and may or may not end up being cooler than 2015 but that's all. 2017 is going to end up being the 2nd or 3rd warmest year in the temperature record.
Most people don't need to drive 9000 miles. 20 to 50 a day will work. We can still use some fossil fuels but not more than can be absorbed by the environment. Energy can be stored in many ways. My favorite Idea is to use excess production of wind and solar to pump water into reservoirs (fishing anyone?) and then release as needed, e.g. at night.
Battery tech keeps getting cheaper and more capable. We can already move submarines for a week on lithium batteries. Over time more batteries will show up in heavy equipment.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I would say believe the opposite of corporate propaganda.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Nope. You can't legislate or decree away reality. Reality always wins.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Is this a report by a massive government or is the report itself massive? How big does a report have to be to be called massive?
The problem isn't denying that there are environmental problems with our industry. The problem here is that most of the international agreements being done in regards to the environment gives exemptions to China and India, because they have to "Catch up". China gets a free ride to build some of the most polluting industry in all of our history because of political interests and business interest, meanwhile, the western world needs to go back to medieval times, but without the wood burning in the winter.
The fact is, unless we all have a fair agreement in dealing with these problems, it will never work and we'll be back at square one. Trump is correct that these agreements aren't fair to the US, because they really aren't at all. The exemptions give more reason to outsource to China, meanwhile increasing China's industrial capacity. It doesn't solve our environmental issues when it's just being outsourced to another country in a far worse scale. All of you are guilty for accepting this and buying their products as well, even if you live in fancy Germany. This problem needs to be tackled together and our technology needs to be shared to do so. Blaming "Republicans" or Donald Trump is just silly, when we all know China and India is heavily influencing these agreements for their own benefit.
Here we go:
https://www.nrdc.org/trump-wat...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
That's poetic in a way. Riding on the wind.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
What's the harm in reducing emissions? If we're not causing it then cutting emissions can't hurt. If we are causing it, then cutting emissions will help. Seems like a win-win to me.
You just proved that sometimes sensible things actually get posted on /. Thank you. The approach you suggest ought to satisfy most anyone ... but of course it won't.
You mean, they'll be from China? Did you even bother to read what I even wrote? You realize the USA has some of the most aggressive environmental protection than all of the world, right?
There are none so deaf as those who will not listen.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Okay, enough already! I got it. We are all doomed unless we lower our carbon footprint and the reason for out carbon footprint is the burning of coal, petroleum oil, and natural gas.
We'll we can't just turn everything off, that's just asking for death. We can scale back our energy consumption in some ways. We got our LED lights, low flo toilets, four cylinder aluminum cars running on ethanol (which is alcohol abuse in my mind), we got public busing running on natural gas (better than diesel but not best), electric trains, planes(?), and automobiles. Our houses have triple panes and double insulation and not a single pet, heat pump HVAC, and wood burning furnaces. And we are recycling, reducing, and redoing, or something like that. But that's just nibbling about the edges really.
To kill the big beast that is coal and oil we need a rethink. We should look at the goals here:
- Provides heat, light, electricity
- Cheap as coal
- safe as coal
- greener than coal, at a minimum, greener than natural gas is great, but getting as close to zero CO2 is best
- as reliable as coal
- domestically sourced
- domestically built, operated, and maintained
- available today
- did I miss something?
Stretch goals (goals we can strive for beyond having met the main goals):
- provides transportation (including to Earth orbit and beyond)
- Cheaper than coal
- Cheaper than natural gas
- Cheaper than wind
- Cheaper than solar
- even more reliable
- safer that coal
- safer than wind
- not just domestic but locally sourced
- did I miss something?
What energy source can meet the most of these points? I know of a few options but I'd like to hear others come up with answers and we can discuss. We hear the term "all the above" when these questions are asked so give me some all the above solutions for the all the above requirements.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
What I take away from the headline is that size does matter.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Double my expenses? Sure. I've lived in a country where most of my expenses were up to 5x what I'm currently paying in the USA. Medicine? Don't take any. Insurance? that's already 4x the norm for the rest of the world here. How far would I be willing to go? Whatever it takes. You short term thinkers have no place in the world. Most of the things you take for granted, and complain that they are already too expensive, like gasoline and electricity, are downright dirt cheap by the rest of the world's standards. I say remove the government subsidies in the USA and let you people discover what it's like in the rest of the civilized world.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Maybe we need a new paradigm : anyone retardedly trying to deny global warming at this point gets their non-functioning testicles removed and fed to them with tartar sauce.
You have stumbled upon one positive aspect of global warming without even knowing it. The potential reduction of human population by DANGEROUS GLOBAL TESTICLE WARMING.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
I, for one, welcome our climate-changing overlords!
Seriously, it's way too cold out there.
Here we go: https://www.nrdc.org/trump-wat...
What they are doing was already done in Canada by Stephen Harper. It was the major reason why he and his so called Conservatives got their ass handed to them on a plater in the last election. What they did was try to muzzle and pre-screen scientific data findings coming out of all scientists hired by the government of Canada. HOWEVER the Canadian public saw exactly what the assholes were up to and turfed their collective asses out of Ottawa. What happened afterwards was a purging of most the right wing nut jobs in the conservative party and some positive changes to bring some sanity back into the party.
Let us hope that the US does the same thing to Mr Trump next year by cutting the balls off the Republican controlled house and senate and turning Mr Trump into a yellow headed toupee sporting lame duck for the remainder of his term in office. I doubt that he is stupid enough to do something to cause his impeachment or that the whole Russian thing will bring down his castle, but trying to muzzle and castrate scientists could and should be an issue that will make enough intelligent Americans hand him his ass on a platter in 2018.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
Typical /. response.
A. Study produced by eminent scientists based on lots of research, taking many man-years of effort to produce, shows clear conclusion.
B. Random /. poster, misrepresents article, then says: "nope, I know better".
[Misrepresentation is pointing out the article doesn't explicitly say that most CO2 is produced by humans, but ignores the clear statement at the beginning of the article that says: 'It is "extremely likely" that human activities are the "dominant cause" of global warming,' ]
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I think you misspelled "allow my authoritarian government to tax the freedom of its citizens to force my vision of social change".
Gasoline and electricity are cheap in the USA because we're sitting on one of the largest pockets of natural gas in the world, and we just spent the last 10 years retiring our clunky coal plants to upgrade to natural gas. That's why emissions are going down without a loss of quality of life. Just look at Germany and Australia to see how green power can fuck up reliability and cost effectiveness.
You realize the USA has some of the most aggressive environmental protection than all of the world, right?
Do you realize that Americans emit twice as much CO2 per capita as China, and eight times as much as India? Expecting them to make equal cuts is ridiculous. The cuts need to be where the waste is.
List of countries by per capita CO2 emissions
The problem is that cutting emissions when they're not the cause of global warming *does* hurt oil company profits without fixing anything. Just like how they didn't remove lead from gasoline until kids started getting brain damage.
Tell me, how is your standard of living right now?
Pretty good.
Mind you, I'm not a blue collar worker who lives in a single-industry town where the industry was closed due to globalisation. So I don't really need the low-carbon economy so that new industries get kickstarted as much as many do.
Can you afford to double your expenses?
No. Your mileage may vary, but my expenses lowered when we started buying low-emission electricity and got a lower-emissions car.
Double the cost for medicine, insurance, etc.?
Erm... are you living in a country without a real public health system or something?
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
As Einstein said, everything is relative...
Einstein never said that. He said that inertial motion is relative. Rotational motion is not inertial, and is not relative. Objects move linearly relative to other objects. But objects rotate in an absolute sense.
If you are locked in a black box, there is no way to determine if you have constant linear velocity. There is also no way to distinguish between gravity and acceleration. But you can detect rotation by using a Foucault pendulum or other scientific instruments.
The rationale is that there are economic externalities. Having established that, the argument goes that if Europe and USA did not absorb the cost of these externalities, then why should other nations?
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
This doesn't tell the full story.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-08/14/c_136525357.htm
China is also halting the construction of many new coal plants as well.
In addition China is also closing down a lot of plants that were inefficient and polluting too much in favor to newer versions. Lastly, a lot of these coal "plants" that are being constructed are actually just an expansion of another coal plant that already existed.
I think you don't realize how good you have it. Without those subsidies, gasoline costs north of $8/gal (~$2/l) at the pump. Just like it does in the rest of the world. You're changing your argument again. Nobody was talking about clean energy in the thread you're responding to. We were talking about the price of gasoline and electricity. People in the USA bitch about electricity being $0.10 per kWh. Try around $0.80+ for the rest of the world.
I have a 5 bedroom 4 bath house in the USA and my electric bill is $60/mo because I turn shit off. Same habits when I lived overseas? $200+/mo
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
So here's the discussion and I'll keep it brief.
When you have "elites"; UN, Government Officials, Corporate Tycoons; all proposing a carbon tax in order to reduce CO2 emissions. It takes a really special kind of a-hole, who's lived such an ivory tower kind of life that they've never experienced a discussion with a truly innovative and intelligent person, to think a tax is actually going to save the world.
Literally, the reason why that one gets proposed is because innovation in energy sourcing and energy transmission technologies threatens an established elite and they know it. You make energy cheap all of a sudden people can move around more, fly in machines, communicate freely, foreign countries catch on and bring their holy wars here just for fun. That tax, by the way, you and I get to pay by living in abject poverty with lifespans of maybe 30 years, and that's after engaging in warfare against foreign countries who don't follow along or who decide "good the Americans aren't polluting as much? That means we can pollute more!".
In the business world there's a saying; first generation builds a business, 2nd runs it, 3rd ruins it. This is no different.
Add to this we have an epic media oligopoly that literally has drowned out any reasonable debate, and a public school system that teaches affinity for news brands instead of news literacy. Finally, add to this the public's been taken advantage of for generations by one scam after another becoming law; the public doesn't know how to ascertain the accuracy of information and that has produced a situation where people are just plain angry and distrustful. You won't get anywhere with them coming off as a selfish uppity yuppie liberal who wants to maintain their perfect little habitat and thinks they are so much better than everyone else.
Frankly, understanding our manufacturing processes well enough to eliminate pollution while at the same time cleaning up the mistakes of past generations is something that has to happen, But before that can happen, you have to move beyond "the climate change debate", which is as sullied as the "Hillary Clinton should be in jail" or the "Trump is a traitor" debates. The new discussion needs to be "0 generational debts"; what are we leaving our kids?
Of course, with marriage rates at a record low, with about 20% of women and around 25% of men never having kids or getting married in the US, meaning about a quarter of society is completely disinterested in the long-term interests of "someone elses little sh!t", combined with record immigration levels, that's going to be a really hard sale in a democracy just from the voting numbers alone.
So installing Wind and Solar is a compromise and passes the buck. Real solutions in energy generation and energy transmission are needed and no amount of self-aggrandizing regulatory pressure is going to make those happen. You have to fix the societal and government issues and restore our country to an actual republic and restore free markets first. Well over 50% of the population want this, the problem now is leadership.
If you want to do something about it, start up a PAC and begin advertising to people they are making an investment with an ROI for certain laws. E.G. You get 10 to 20 million people to make a $10 a month donation to the EFF, you can be pretty certain telco's don't have that kind of money for political discussions, and those 10-20 million people, after 4 or 5 years of investing in the EFF, will see a lower bill. You can do the same thing, but package environmentalism into it; e.g. we can decide not to do business with China and instead of business here so we can encourage the market to innovate which creates jobs and opportunities for US Citizens. You begin innovating, all of a sudden investments start to look good.
So, China & India get to execute the work exported by Western corporations at lower costs due to softer environmental rules and slavery conditions and wages hm, hm, somobody makes fat profits from this ideal combo and I wonder who doesn't see it ...
Just so you readers know, that very long post above was copypasta'd from an anonymous coward on a Tesla public forum.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The empirical data show the Transient Climate Response is 1/3rd the modeled value, down by nearly a factor of 10 from the modeled value a decade ago. The ECS is about half the modeled value. See Figure 7 of the following peer-reviewed paper:
http://www.iieta.org/sites/def...
Stop listening to people and look at the empirical evidence of the satellite and balloon datasets for yourself. The UN IPCC AGW Hypothesis is now falsified at the 95% level and the observed rate of warming matches the rate for the last 150 years where changes in solar magnetic activity cause the well-attested Little Ice Age and we've been warming out of it ever since. If you deny the 3 satellite and 7 balloon datasets in favor of the Lysenkoist Government position then you are an anti-scientific Flat Earther.
Buzz Aldrin (Second Man to walk on the Moon) and a lot of other astronauts are skeptical about the UN IPCC AGW Hypothesis:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
You would think the doomsayers would be happy that the Earth was not being destroyed by modern technology. but no, they appear to want to cling to their apocalyptic delusion in defiance of the observed data.
ps. the surface data sets are completely worthless. Most people who cling to them don't know that nearly 50% of the data is now 'estimated' based on assuming the IPCC model is true. The surface data sets are no longer 'observations' according to the Scientific Method, they are in fact 'hypothesis'. The data are the satellite and balloon data sets.
Using facts as an argument... How rude.
Yes. We are seeing warming at 1/3rd the rate of the UN IPCC AGW models. That rate of warming is consistent with NATURAL effects due to solar magnetic variability and its effects on water vapor (a much more potent gas than CO2). This is a continuation of the warming since the end of the Little Ice Age. The following paper shows in Figure 7 how badly the AGW models are wrong;
http://www.iieta.org/sites/def...
The observed warming you are showing is consistent with NATURAL warming for the last 150 years. It is a whopping factor of 3 below what we would observe if CO2 caused water vapor effects that the UN claims.
You can call me any label you like, but you are not practicing science until you address the 3 satellite datasets and 7 balloon datasets that all show warming consistent with NATURAL causes. nb: the surface dataset is now 50% estimated and is completely worthless, but I'm sure you already know that, right?
Why not reduce emissions? I'm a skeptic: CO2 is a minor problem - there is exactly zero evidence of positive feedbacks. Nonetheless, you are absolutely right - there is no reason not to reduce emissions. However, it is a question of price. Where emissions can be reduced with a reasonable effort, then absolutely, there is every reason to do so. However, I disagree with efforts that are disproportionately expensive.
What I'm not seeing - from either side - is any attempt to produce a prioritized list. Either it's "OMG we're all gonna die - let's destroy civilization in order to save it", or else its "go away, don't bother me".
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Per capita rates are a red herring.
The environment does not care about per capita rates. The environment is affected by absolutes.
China is pumping out more than the US and EU combined. They are set to double their output in less than a decade while the rest of us are reducing our CO2 emissions. There's plans in the works for 700 new coal power plants to be built in China. We just had this discussion yesterday.
Everyone knows that ShanghaiBill is a Chinese shill living in SV. Let's not allow shills to run this discussion.
Yes compared to developing poor countries.
Compared to other western civilised countries no not so much.
First of all, the problem with the treaties is that because the large polluters (US included) have such a varying level of enerfy infrastructure the treaties signed are not binding. The Paris agreement is about common emission goals that countries ought to strive to reach, there are no mechanisms in it to impose sanctions on nations that fail to meet theirs. So to speak of 'exemptions' in such a treaty is nonsense to begin with, you can't be 'exempt' from sanctions that do not exist in the treaty. Would it be good to have some kind of sanction system in place? Yes, yes it would, but if you think the US government would ever agree to internationally binding treaties that would impose sanctions on US trade should its goals not be reached, you're occupying an entirely different political reality than I am.
Second of all: why do you think it'd be realistic not to account for the fact that massive infrastructure overhaul will not happen immediately and give these countries realistic timeframes in the treaties? China at the moment gets roughly 2/3rds of all its energy from coal and has 4 times the population of the US with increasing private car ownership and you think giving them 13 years time to turn their greenhouse emisions downward (the paris agreement limit for when China's promised it will reach peak CO2 emissions is 2030 and they've also agreed to reduce their carbon intensity by 60 % by the same date, which means they have 13 years time to essentially redo the majority of their energy production) is somehow excessive? Wtf?
Thirdly, do you realize that China has very much woken up to the fact that it is within their own national interests to cut down on emissions? The level of pollution in many Chinese megacities is so bad (quivalent to smoking 1.2 packs of cigarettes just for breathing the air) its having significant adverse health effects leading to increased health care costs and declined productivity if they are not addressed. It's a major issue in domestic Chinese politics because the people don't like the status quo at all, which means if they keep making things worse they'd push the country towards increasing political instability which is certainly not something they want. The idea that China will just keep building polluting tech even though they're already struggling with massive pollution issues is not based in reality. They're building massive amounts of nuclear power plants and heavily focusing on renewables, but as is obvious to anyone with half a brain, this level of change will take a few years to accomplish. They're currently on the track to meeting their 2030 goals.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Actually, tons of people are building coal plants. The Chinese are planning 700 more coal plants:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
While not an optimal solution building new coal plants that can be fitted with modern carbon and sulfur dioxide scrubbers is a damn sight better than keeping old highly inefficient coal plants in operation. So if people have their hearts set on building more coal plants at the very least I'd prefer them to build the new, more efficient and reasonably clean variety. Plus, there is always the option of punishing coal plant building countries with carbon tariffs on their exports if they slack off on scrubber installation.
"will depend primarily on the amount of greenhouse gases (especially carbon dioxide) emitted globally." NOT saying 'by humans'.
True. Large-scale carbon dioxide emissions from any other source would be just as problematic wrt. global warming. However, I'd consider those somewhat unlikely to happen, though not impossible (two obvious possibilities would be alien invaders from outside the solar system setting up carbon-dioxide-emitting facilities, or large scale spontaneous coal seam fires).
Also: it does not say humans emit the greater part of all CO2.
Yes. Some things are omitted, either because they are well known (like humans emitting the greater part of carbon dioxide, or Earth being a planet), or because they are to be implied from context (such as the report referring to Earth, not Mars by "globally"). This has the benefit of a finite report length, which helps with writing and reading.
Philipp
Doesn't help the USA a bit. Hardly anyone here rides trains. If we did, we'd still need to rent a CAR(!) to get where we're going from the nearest train station, and that might STILL be 500 miles.
If it won't do that - if it won't perform as well as a 1987 Yugo, people will not buy it. If they don't buy it, then you have no solution to your problem. Hey, I'm just re-stating the problem, and noting that it has no solution. There's no point in whining about the problem unless you can provide a viable solution.
Want a solution? OK, here's one. Build the hyperloops big enough to carry cars. Build it out so it covers the entire USA such that there's a terminal within 50 miles of absolutely everywhere. An electric car will have not problem handling driving 50 miles. So move the electric car at 700 miles per hour in a hyperloop sled. Pricey? You bet, but it would at least work, that is, if you can get enough solar and wind and such to power the hyperloop in a the first place. I see that the trend has become to at least plan to tunnel the hyperloop instead of raising it on pylons into the air. I'm sure that will destroy the economy of it, making it far too expensive to actually complete when trying to tunnel 600 miles across Kansas, and then doing it about 70 times in order to have terminals absolutely everywhere you need them to allow the pitiful short-range electric cars to work. I'm not sure there's enough cubic money in the universe to do it...
Anything looking expensive before the tipping point will be peanuts in a hurricane compared to the expenses afterwards.
If you could convince people there was going to be a tipping point, they'd be willing to spend more money now.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
But what if we accidentally create a better world for no reason?!
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Plus, there is always the option of punishing coal plant building countries with carbon tariffs on their exports if they slack off on scrubber installation.
Good luck doing that under WTO rules. Also enjoy your trade war.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Here in the Netherlands all electric trains ride on wind energy.
No, they don't. All that "100% wind" comes down to reality is about whom do they pay their electricity bill, nothing more.
To elaborate on why it's impossible for NS to run on "100% wind":
1. It gets its electricity simply from the grid and thus it is impossible to control or even to tell where the actual electricity does come from - however, knowing the actual dutch electricity mix, an overwhelming majority of it comes from burning coal.
2. Wind is a rather unreliable source of power - it may happen that the actual power usage of the trains exceed the actual power output of all the contracted wind farms (as the latter number may very well drop down to practically zero) and thus it would be very inconvenient to really run trains with just wind-generated electricity.
Real life is overrated.
If you are locked in a black box, there is no way to determine if you have constant linear velocity. There is also no way to distinguish between gravity and acceleration. But you can detect rotation by using a Foucault pendulum or other scientific instruments.
That's not entirely correct, I think. Acceleration is constant across the entire black box, but gravitational force depends inversely on the squared distance to the attracting mass, i.e. the force should be slightly different at the top and bottom of the box.
Translation: You want me to pay for your low-cost lifestyle by externalizing your costs.
Fuck off.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
that's a pretty stupid point. it seems pretty fucking obvious that it takes more energy to keep 1.4 billion people alive than it does 300 million. ignoring reality is not going to win anyone to your stupid misguided side.
China's emissions per year has been falling, and they canceled all new coal power plants 2 years ago.
"Per capita rates are a red herring" - only to those that are total wasters. China's population is many times larger than most places so their total pollution is bound to be larger, just imagine if its "per capita" usage was the same as the USA. They are also leading the world in solar and also shutting down polluting factories, they are working on their problem. Those 700 coal power stations are around the world, not just china. China has big paws in Africa and many other small struggling nations.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
And it's too hot down here in the summer.
Plus Donna's crazy claims were debunked as her intentionally lying to sell a book by the DNC producing the actual documents she lied about in under an hour after her claim.
Here's a hint, Donna thought July 2016 was August 2015 and confused two documents.
all you are doing is inviting mass migration to your area as it gets too hot, dry and a lack of water in those hotter areas.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
What is the European Foundation?
I assume a made up organisation that sounds vaguely official?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
thats what ignorant trolls do best as they have a lack of understanding.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
my heart bleeds for the oil companies who have poisoned the world for decades and kudos to the renewable industry for picking up those profits (mind you oil companies are getting into renewables to keep themselves relevant)
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
It was also debunked, 3/4ths of that paste is drivel that has no basis in facts, and the last 1/4th require you to have quit studying science after learning step 3 of the scientific method.
Reports of China's coal-fetish are greatly overstated.
https://www.americanprogress.o...
TL;DR version is that a lot of those plants won't get built or will be white elephants. China is aiming for 1000GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030 as part of its Paris agreement, although so far they are exceeding that by a wide margin.
Same with their nuclear programme. Basically everything that wasn't already being built has been cancelled. As their battery production ramps up basically everything other than renewables is looking shakey, with profitability looking increasingly unlikely.
And even the coal plants they are building are better than the US ones, because they have stricter emissions standards for them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
i can't tell if you're deeply stupid, or if you merely think the people reading your post are deeply stupid.
Not or, but and.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Plus, there is always the option of punishing coal plant building countries with carbon tariffs on their exports if they slack off on scrubber installation.
Good luck doing that under WTO rules. Also enjoy your trade war.
Actually, the WTO has rules about tariffs because some country is unfairly subsidising or otherwise favouring domestic industries but I wasn't aware that the WTO had any regulations on punitive tariffs on a country's exports because they are dumping their carbon/acid-rain and/or toxic sludge onto your territory. Of course if turns out that WTO rules guarantee a country the right to pollute without any limits I'm willing to stand corrected. However, as climate change gets worse and the damage from it increases something tells me that such rules will appear. In fact one might actually make the case that deliberately neglecting to scrub the carbon emissions from your coal plants to lower your energy price actually constitutes unfairly and irresponsibly subsidising your own industrial base at the expense of a neighbouring country which has chosen more responsibly to use cleaner energy sources, not to mention the damage caused by acid rain clouds that blows onto the neighbouring country's territory. The neighbour deserves to be compensated for that. Your next door neighbour has a lot of latitude when it comes to what he decides to do on his own private property, but if he sets a big heap of rubber tyres on fire and the smoke blows onto your land, you gain the right to interfere with what he is doing on his private property.
The American public is strongly influenced by lobbyists without being aware of it.
On a conference we've hosted in July, I've seen research on the disinformation infrastructure of the US oil companies. The researchers used web scraping and data mining software (basically the same as what intelligence agencies would do, just on a smaller scale) to trace the funding and organization of the networks of the petrochemical industry in the US. The graph of their network is huge. There are more than a hundred different lobby organizations, including fake research institutes, strongly biased "think tanks", and various P&R institutions cleverly disguised as interest groups that are all directly sponsored by millions if not billions of dollars from the petrochemical industry. It's a complicated network, but all of these organization have as their main purpose to further the interests of their sponsors. But some of them are very sneaky about it, you wouldn't realize their real agenda by looking at their web page.
The US chemical and petrochemical industry and corresponding political groups spends a lot of money on this in the US. It's no wonder that the perception of ecological topics is so different in the US from the rest of the world. I believe that they spend way less in Europe and other regions but have to admit that I haven't been able to check that - the research I've seen was only about the US.
We burn carbon in order to do useful things. We measure the usefulness of things with money. "Waste" means burning carbon without doing something useful.
So the relevant metric isn't a country's total CO2 emissions, or CO2 emission per capita, but CO2 emission per dollar of GDP. If one country emits more CO2 per GDP than another one, you can decrease CO2 emissions by moving production from the former to the latter, while maintaining the same total production.
And on that score, the US is around the middle of the pack, producing value of $2,291 per ton of CO2 emitted. China is one of the worst, at $435/ton. European countries (Germany, Netherlands, UK, etc.) are around $4000/ton.
I'm pretty sure a question can't be contradicted, only answered with some form of, "you're wrong".
I thought we were still in a glacial period. We still have ice caps and high altitude glaciers.
How do you say Ritalin in Russian?
You are ignorant. Most of the price of gas world-wide is not dominated by subsidy but by tax. The U.S. taxes its gas LESS than Europe. This you would be able to find trivially if you bothered rather than taking in the swill.
Certainly owning the dollar diaspora right now exports inflation to the rest of the world, and that should be taken into account, but for gasoline, the case is trivially made that tax is the cost differential between here and there prices.
http://www.blacksunjournal.com/m/world-gas-taxes.jpg
Choke on your borscht, Alexei.
There are a few reasons, some are economic like the direct costs and concerns about competitiveness, but there's also the problem of how it was presented. Concerns about pollution impacting the climate began to rise back in the late '60's and early '70's. At first they gained real traction among conservatives (Nixon even created the EPA), but rather quickly the messaging was taken over by some real wackos who wanted massive, immediate, de-industrialization. Suddenly instead of, "we need to clean things up or we'll make a mess of the climate", the message was, "OH DEAR GOD THE WORLD WILL END IN 15 YEARS IF WE DON'T TEAR DOWN ALL THE POWER PLANTS AND STOP DRIVING!!!! AAAHHHHHHH!!!!"
So, that closed a lot of ears real quick. Nobody wanted to hear a lot of crazy nonsense from a bunch of dirty, tree-hugging hippies. And it didn't help that every single prediction was totally wrong for decades. According to the early warnings, the planet should have frozen solid before Reagan was out of office. Then runaway greenhouse was supposed to render the planet uninhabitable 20 years ago. Given all that, it shouldn't be a surprise people would have a hard time accepting climate change arguments. The people making them turned it into a whole "Chicken Little"/"boy who cried wolf" situation.
It takes time to overcome that history.
GP's post is slightly inaccurate in that China haven't cancelled all of their plants, but they have massively scaled back. In the meantime Trump has pulled us Out of the Paris Accord and is actively planning To ramp up coal use.
Tell me again which country is the bad actor?
You're right. The environment doesn't care who you are or where you arbitrarily draw some boundary. So we're back to what is *your* emission, and guess what, it's a fuckload higher than those of your Chinese counterpart.
Okay, a troll?
No. Absolute disgust.
I know climate change is real and happening.
But conclusions like this help exactly nothing.
It's about as useful to furthering climate science and solutions as the kid from Kindergarten Cop standing up with the "boys and girls" genital line.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Gasoline and electricity are cheap in the USA because we're sitting on one of the largest pockets of natural gas in the world
Do you actually believe your own bullshit? For both oil and natural gas the USA barely scrapes in the top 10 in reserves, which is kind of why you're now trying to shatter the earth under your feet to look for more.
Where emissions can be reduced with a reasonable effort, then absolutely, there is every reason to do so. However, I disagree with efforts that are disproportionately expensive.
It's also a smart move to transition away from fossil fuels before they get too expensive.
about whom do they pay their electricity bill, nothing more.
That is all you need. When you preference giving company extra money over their competition because they are greener then the competition starts dying. You can see this too in the Netherlands who just opened a new coal plant last year. The company who did so immediately wrote down 2.9bn euro off their value and questioned the long term viability of what they just built as the cost of wholesale electricity plummets due to customers literally gifting the greener part of the industry in exchange for killing the dirty.
Directing your money in the appropriate direction is making your energy green. That's how market forces work.
2. Wind is a rather unreliable source of power
I see you've never been to the Netherlands. :-) The only thing more reliable than the wind is the fact that the sun won't shine again until April.
Keep up on the news it was both Elizabeth Warren and Donna that claimed the same things; and it was warren who is being blamed for making up some stuff.
But then you're assuming there's subjective context. Just because the President thinks smoking or leaded gasoline don't cause health problems, doesn't mean objective scientists should be ignored.
Satellites don't measure surface air temperatures. They measure troposphere.
It's not a "fuck you". It's reality. It's physics, chemistry, and thermodynamics. Do you think mother nature has a personal vendetta against you when an acorn falls from a tree and hits you in the head? Or a seagull decides to drop a deuce on you while flying overhead?
~X~
What's the harm in reducing emissions? If we're not causing it then cutting emissions can't hurt. If we are causing it, then cutting emissions will help. Seems like a win-win to me.
Of course it can hurt -- it's more expensive to build fuel efficient cars. It's less comfortable to live in a house heated to 68F rather than 72F in the winter, or cooled to 78F instead of 75F in the summer. It's nice to fly over oceans to visit other continents, to eat a nice steak or drive a fast car.
I'm not saying that we can't live without those things, but holy hell it will surely hurt to reduce emissions. And if I didn't fully believe in climate change, there's no way I could support any of these proposals to lower our standard of living or to put more of these amenities out of reach of the lower classes.
So even as an avid believer in climate change, what you wrote is completely bonkers. My support for reducing carbon emissions is absolutely contingent on the facts. If I were convinced tomorrow that facts were different (quite unlikely, I believe that these things are known with significant certainty) then I would of course have different policy preference.
Or maybe, I can rephrase it another way: if you would still advocate for the same policy irrespective of the underlying facts, then that is the definition of unscientific reasoning because it's not falsifiable. Every scientific belief necessarily has to come "built in" with some kind of a statement like "I would not believe this to be true if _____" or else it's not science, it's faith.
To be fair the Netherlands have solved only one small part of the problem. We are very good with localised initiatives (getting cars out of the cities, polluting cars out of the population, running green trains, powering energy efficient homes), but we suck quite badly on the broader country policy. A policy that emphasises making it easy to get around by bicycle, but also does nothing to stop people driving literally halfway across the country for their daily commute to work with more cars per capita than much of the rest of Europe, highways in gridlock that are the stuff of legends. Or broader energy policy that allowed a brand new coal plant to open in Maasvlakte and then didn't punish the company when the proposed CCS project didn't get bolted on top of it.
We're one of the few countries in the EU where CO2 emissions were worse last year than the year before, and already one of the most polluting per capita (though I disregard that last statistic as a large portion of that comes from the industry that exists solely to support the rest of the EU).
Running trains on wind energy is something that can be considered both a no brainer and a good start, but hardly an answer.
Ritalin in Russian is spelled with a 'V'.
"Vodka"
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Since they are planning to build 700 new coal fired power plants.
on Ritalin
I think you mean off Ritalin.
Good correction!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Stepping aside from what happens with the wind isn't blowing (I'll assume they have some other 'green' source of energy for those times, although maybe they don't?)...
When you say they can't work out where the power comes from, do they not have some sort of electricity meter? Surely they must have to pay an amount of money for an amount of usage to some sort of electricity company, right?
Can that electricity company not say "they used X units of electricity last year, and we bought Y units of electricity from a wind/renewable generator, and we sold Z units to other people". Assuming Y > X, and that the "Z" consumers weren't contracted to buy 'green' (or not contracted to buy more than Y-X units of green), then they can quite reasonably say "all trains run on wind power", can't they?
This is how it works in the UK for domestic (and at least some commercial) electricity purchase. If it's not true because of some reason, then I'd like to know why I've been mis-sold electricity for over 15 years.
Since Republicans are in power, they will stop this socialist global warming in it's tracks . Problem solved!
Since it's all a Chinese hoax, there's nothing to stop. Donald of Orange is always right, right?
I never could figure the Chinese hoax angle. Musta been something he picked up from his Leninist buddy Steve.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There are several points you are missing. Everyone may need a car that can go more than 200 miles, but they don't need every car they own to have that capability. Families with two or more cars may prefer an electric car and a hybrid or gas car. I don't drive my car 9000 miles in a year, and would be fine with one short range electric and a longer range car for my family. My situation is far from unique. Many people would accept renting a car the few times a year they needed more range. Your prices are way off too- there are several all-electric cars available with MSRP in the high $20ks, way less than $100k. Yes, more than $12k but most people don't want a $12k car, electric or gas. Your strawman who is going to Vail isn't going to want a $12k car either. If I'm comparing a ~$30k gas car vs a ~$33k hybrid or electric, the hybrid or electric is probably still a better deal when you factor in fuel costs, maintenance costs, and rebates. I drive less than 30 miles a day, why would I care about extra range that I would rarely use?
Also- 200 miles to escape a wildfire- is that a wildfire or a meteor impact?
Nope. You can't legislate or decree away reality. Reality always wins.
This reminds me of a story in I think either Discover Magazine or Scientific American. It was referencing novel about a Government that decreed that humans would become aquatic, and grow gills and live underwater. Update reports on the effort were pretty funny.
Written during the cold war era, and in Eastern Europe, it was obvious in hindsight that it was a jab at Lysenkoism, the communist party dogma alternative to evolution and biology.
Now that I had that memory awakened, do any of our Eastern European friends have a clue about the title and author?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The oil companies have been caught falsifying reports, burying science and otherwise lying.
They're known fraudsters. Not to mention the coups they arranged.
Sorry, but your chutzpah is a joke.
Blaming "Republicans" or Donald Trump is just silly, when we all know China and India is heavily influencing these agreements for their own benefit.
Cool story bro. So you are saying that unless every single nation on earth is 100 percent online, we just go ahead and drive the bus off the cliff because it's more fair to do that.
Especially odd that the present solution of the Republican party is to re-open the mines and emulate China.
You don't realize it, but your argument - which brings up some very good points about the politics of the situation, exactly proves my point.
You gloss over the science facts then dive right into the politics. That does ignore completely that The Republican party overwhelmingly and their leader uniquivocally deny that there is sich a thing as greenhouse gas global warming.
Meanwhile, you argue for allowing China to control your actions.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You mean, they'll be from China? Did you even bother to read what I even wrote? You realize the USA has some of the most aggressive environmental protection than all of the world, right?
We're working on ending that now. Be a little patient, m'kay?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Looking at that list, you should be shifting your outrage from the US to Qatar, Trinidad and Tobago, and Curacao.
Yeah, per capita is dumb when comparing pollution rates between countries. Per country independent of population is much smarter. *rolls eyes* Do me a favour and punch yourself in the face.
"Old man yells at systemd"
You realize the USA has some of the most aggressive environmental protection than all of the world, right?
Do you realize that Americans emit twice as much CO2 per capita as China, and eight times as much as India? Expecting them to make equal cuts is ridiculous. The cuts need to be where the waste is.
List of countries by per capita CO2 emissions
We'll all drive the bus off the cliff with our different political spin to make us happy. Meanwhile I suggest you move to Beijing to enjoy the air quality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_in_China
Note he was writing of the USA's environmental protection laws, not just CO2.
And he's right. We do have some good Environmental protection here. It isn't perfect, but it does allow us to have a better environment than we would otherwise. Water is cleaner, we're recycling a lot of stuff that used to go into landfills - it isn't perfect, but then again, perfect is often the enemy of good. The one-time air pollution capitals of Los Angeles and Pittsburgh now have remarkably clean air. The times I was in LA I was surprised that it was pretty clear, and Pittsburgh which I am very familiar with, is now a jewel of a city.
We really need to do something about CO2. Squabbling about the talking points will ensure that we don't.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If you are locked in a black box, there is no way to... distinguish between gravity and acceleration.
That's because there isn't a difference to distinguish. If you're in a gravitational field, you will accelerate. You may not move, though, if you're subject to a force accelerating you in the opposite direction; e.g., if you're sitting on the floor of the box.
If you don't like NPR, here are some other sources:
https://phys.org/news/2017-11-climate-real.html
http://blog.ucsusa.org/rachel-licker/what-is-the-national-climate-assessment-the-most-comprehensive-report-on-climate-change-in-the-u-s
http://www.themorningsun.com/article/MS/20170822/LOCAL1/170829886
And links to the actual document:
PDF file draft as of June 2017: https://assets.documentcloud.o...
New York Times link to the draft report: https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
National Academy of Sciences Review of the Draft report: https://nas-sites.org/americas...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I do have to say that comments on this thread have the lowest signal to noise ratio (or I should say "signal to troll ratio") of any comment thread I've ever seen on slashdot.
Anybody have anything to say about the actual report? (or about the draft report-- NPR apparently got a prerelease version, but the actual final version is due to be released at 2pm today.
Did you know that China is one of the worst nations wrt co2 / $ GDP, while America is in the lower 1/4 for emissions / $ GDP. This is far more important of a normalization since it is businesses and gov that decide, not u and I.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Please list the specific government subsidies which you believe make living in the U.S. less expensive than elsewhere.
Then we can evaluate whether it is government subsidies in the U.S. or government charges and regulations elsewhere which make the difference.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
So many things wrong with your posting as well as paris agreement. I'm on a phone so will answer this fully later on. However, China says that they will reduce 'intensity', which is another way to say emissions / $ GDP. 2 ways to reduce this. First is simply lower emissions. This is the honest way. However, with china building 35-50 GW of new coal plants, and not simply replacing old plants like so many claim,ZERO shows it will not happen. The second is to change the metric from emissions / $GDP to emissions be/$ GDP(ppp). This is what China is arguing for. By lowering their money relative to Dollar, they encourage more factories there without having to worry about emissions. Iow, China is cheating on that one as well. Then u have ppl like you arguing that China is burning less coal, as well as building fewer plants. China has stopped some coal plants from being built, but those were simply the areas. Iow, it has nothing to do with stopping co2, just where it occurs at. However, China is converting those 'stopped' coal plants to burning methane. Where is the methane coming from? Not natural gas. They are building massive numbers of factories that convert coal => methane. This process is not horrible since it gives u a nice stream of CO2 (i.e. 1/2 of the co2 that coal would have produced ) that can then be buried. What is China doing with it? Dumping to the atmosphere. Iow, they are cleaning up city air, while emitting even more CO2. Finally, China's emissions numbers do NOT match up with OCO2 and Japan's co2 sats measurements. According to them, China's emissions numbers are not only low, but are still increasing. Keep in mind that China is one of a few nations that does not allow outsiders to take measurements, nor allows Chinese scientist to publish those numbers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes, trump has said that he will push coal. However, American utilities are not building any new coal plants AND we are closing them quickly. America is already around 200 GW of coal plant capacity and is expected to be around 150 GW by 2020. The problem is that China continues to add 35-50 get of new coal plants ( not replacements ) AND are converting coal to methane which will generate a great deal more CO2.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The word is logorrhea. No need for a phrase.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Who no doubt copy-pasted from some kock bros site.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That really only works if are all working towards that. China and others are not. Heck, even Germany's emissions are climbing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The problem is, that the new coal are not replacements for old coal plants. In addition, increasing CO2 while dropping sulfer dioxide ( which actually reflects light and cools the planet ) will make things worse WRT heating ( though China's acid rain is killing coral all over, so some good ).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And American plants are being closed. By 2030, America will not have a single coal plant left. Otoh, China will have 1.7tw of coal capacity. And that does not include their conversion of coal to methane which is even worse.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Modern civilization dates from the first widespread use of the automobile, i.e. from about 1910. Thus the snippet reads
the past 115 years are "the warmest in the last 107 years."
There's a problem here.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
It's simple: If mining fossil fuels is banned by law, then people will buy electric cars or use alternatively-derived fuel. This is no different than what happened with CFCs, lead paint or asbestos. We already have REAL solutions that work well enough for most people, and more progress is being made every day to improve them.
That would not be the equivalent of returning to "hunting and gathering", and your assertion that it would just proves that you're an ignorant whiner with no grasp of the gravity of the current situation. For example, you don't think that letting most of the world's coastal cities end up under water would "diminish quality of life and harm prosperity"?
US is around the middle of the pack, producing value of $2,291 per ton of CO2 emitted. China is one of the worst, at $435/ton
The numbers are distorted because a lot of the US/Eur manufacturing is outsourced to China.
A Chinese factory makes a widget for $5 that gets sold in the US for $35. All the CO2 produced to create the widget is counted as China's emissions towards the $5, while the US claims $30 added value for zero CO2 emissions.
In the Netherlands
Journey on electric trains
I ride on the wind
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
But only from an objective viewpoint!
You can delude yourself for decades, infect others, and go to your grave without ever knowing what you missed.
Memes that defy reality do not necessarily get selected out, and memes based on reality do not necessarily survive. Reality is merely a factor within the fitness function.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
This report was issued as the collaborative work of hundreds of serious scientists over years of work.... ...and is really intended as a giant "fuck you" to President Trump.
So, you're saying that if Clinton had won they wouldn't have published it? I think that's unlikely. I think it was published when it was finished, and that would have happened regardless of who was in the Oval Office.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Doesn't mean Trump won't tweet about how it's 'fake news' or 'fake facts' or 'they need to be fired' or writing up some bullshit Executive Order that declares the whole study and all the data to be false. I'm just waiting for that to happen. Or at the very least he'll order it all burned and ignorned and go on dragging us back to the 1950's.
I keep piling on blankets, putting on MORE thermal underwear, and throwing more and more logs on the fire, and I just keep getting hotter and hotter!
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Actually, not to be argumentative, but birds DO use their waste as a weapon--a sick, nasty, disgusting weapon. You're right on the other point though.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
And who really believes all this global warming stuff, not many unless they are getting paid to do so.
Yes there are plenty of people who demand you give lip service to it but as long as you do that there is no threat where anything actually has to be done.
Stop increasing the number of heat producing humans.
Per capita rates are NOT a red herring.
What gives a person in the US the right to dump more CO2 into the air than a Chinese person?? Yes China is increasing CO2 output rapidly, but that's because they are becoming more wealthy, closer to the US. If the world were to catch up to the US standards of energy and resource consumption we'd be totally screwed.
Yes absolutes are what matters but it is the absolute as a species which matters, not absolutes along national boundaries. And every person within this species has just as much responsibility as another person.
That's ridiculous. By that logic, smaller countries like New Zealand and Australia that have high per-person emissions but low absolute emissions because of low populations, should be given a free ride?
You could define any arbitrary sub-division to support a given position. For example, California total emissions would be way more than Rhode Island, but that is completely meaningless because the populations are so different. Should we apply much stricter reductions to the californians more than the rhode islanders? No one would advocate that, but that is similar to the approach of viewing China vs USA on total emissions.
In terms of managing the effect people have on the environment, it makes much more sense to compare the per capita emissions of those regions (or any regions), because it relates closely to what people *need* to be using and emitting, because requirements are also per person.
If we want to work out how much people should pay for government services (aka taxes), are the rates based on the the total contributions of the two regions, or is it per person?
You're right that nature doesn't care about how we measure. In that sense, the choice to measure in these groupings we call "nations" is completely arbitrary and counter productive. Nature doesn't know about China or USA, it's knows about 7 biliion people that are all contributing to the problem. Just some people are contributing more than others.
-- the only thing we have to fear is really scary things
You also are missing many things. First is that not everyone can afford 2 cars. I have 2, but one is 19 years old. I can't buy one for long distances and one for around town, especially since the one for long distances has to also be relatively new or it will be breaking down 1500 miles from home, which sucks. You also miss the fact that if someone is buying gasolinre cars because their electric won't do the job, then they're still buying gasoline cars, so why the H would they drive an electric with a 200 mile range when they can drive a gasoline car with a 400 mile range. My Subaru WRX has a 400 mile range.
OK, you don't need a 200 mile car to get out of a fire, but if your loved one is on his / her deathbed and has maybe days to live, and you're 2000 miles away, and don't fly, then you've got a 30,hour drive ahead of you. That's with gasoline. It would be much longer stopping for a few hours every 200 miles.
And yeah, lots of people drive very long distances in a year. I sold my 3 year old WRX a couple years ago with 124,000 miles on the odometer, for a 41,000 miles per year average. I get around. An electric just would not do, and I can't afford a 3rd car to be driving in less than 100% of the time. Nice that you can get by with 9,000 miles a year, but I can't. There's lots of us, BTW, that drive a lot 'cuz air travel sucks now. The TSA wants to feel you up and the airlines want to beat you up, and I'm not up for either of those, so I drive. Been that way since the flight back from Iraq in 2011. Took just one flight since then, and that's it. So I drive.
Build the automotive hyperloop and I'll ride it unless they get the damned TSA involved with that too, but that should be rich trying to search every vehicle that drives onto the thing.
The bottom line is that with your consideration of short-distance electrics and hybrids, you STILL can't leave the oil in the ground, and so it will STILL be emitting CO2. That's not a solution. There is presently no solution, and may or may not ever be a solution. Casting huge percentages of the population into poverty and therefore an early grave (poverty kills) is no sort of humane tradeoff for forestalling a fraction of a degree temperature rise by 2100. Implement a real solution, or at least propose one that gets to 0 CO2, or quit trying to diminish everyone's prosperity for no actual solution.
Says the AC.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It would penalize regular people more while leaving the policymakers untouched.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
No, we are in an interglacial.
Blame the stupid scientists who misnamed ice ages and glacial periods to confuse the general public.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The official report with revised language has more validity than this.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
How much are you paying for those externalized costs? Are they even measurable?
If we can quantify that accurately, then there's justification for imposing internalization of the costs of carbon emissions. Until then, it's just pointing fingers and saying "You are bad and should pay more because you don't ascribe to my political philosophy!"
Knowledge Brings Fear
and thus it would be very inconvenient to really run trains with just wind-generated electricity.
Obviouslly, the railways use a grid. So obviously they know how much wind power they feed into the grid.
2. Wind is a rather unreliable source of power - it may happen that the actual power usage of the trains exceed the actual power output of all the contracted wind farms (as the latter number may very well drop down to practically zero) ... ... and then find a plausible reason why they should have zero wind. Hu?
You are so smart and nevertheless so dumb.
Ever looked on a map? I suggest to look up where Netherlands are
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Per capita is the most important metric.
Every human who is above acerage *easily* can refuce his CO2 output.
And every government governing over such poeple should enforce it.
You are just an idiot.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
We are in a fucking interglacial, it is SUPPOSED to be warming. However, overall trend of the entire Holocene is down. Eventually we will freeze dickhead.
Actually if you pay attention to the state of Milankovitch cycles the interglacial reached its peak about 8,000 years ago and are going in the direction of cooling now. And in fact that is what was happening. There has been a very slow cooling trend since about 8,000 years ago. So no, it's not supposed to be warming now.
There are literally hundreds of studies on the cost of pollution and global warming. You need to provide some evidence that the costs are negligible.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Don't worry; global warming makes volcanic eruptions much more probable, and the eruption of the Yosemite supervolcano will cause a nuclear winter-like event that will more than compensate for the warming caused by massive C02 and methane emissions. Face it, in the long run the Earth does regulate it's own temperature, and massive global extinction events are just part of that regulation mechanism. Just like parents used to say whenever we whined about something terrible happening to us as kids: "100 years from now, nobody will know the difference!"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"The planet isn't f-ed... we are!" https://www.goodreads.com/quot...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
That's just silly. They interview Republicans, conservatives, even David Duke for cryin' out loud. And this morning I heard the reporter challenge a Democratic senator on a point about the GOP tax plan. There's a reason NPR was rated as more balanced than most news organizations back in 2011 or so, even leaning slightly right.
Actually, NPR leans FAR right, or else
WHERE IS THE LAS VEGAS BASED GUN CONTROL NEWS instead of endless loops about a truck driver
Yes but we can always reinterpret reality to suite our whims. Extreme weather? Cities getting swamped by hurricanes? Rising sea levels? Melting glaciers and sea ice? Obviously God's punishment on the illegal alien Islamic homosexual libtards who have corrupted our country with this satanic lie of climate change in order to steal our coal jobs and decrease shareholder value. Harrumph!
Yes, trump has said that he will push coal. However, American utilities are not building any new coal plants AND we are closing them quickly. America is already around 200 GW of coal plant capacity and is expected to be around 150 GW by 2020. The problem is that China continues to add 35-50 get of new coal plants ( not replacements ) AND are converting coal to methane which will generate a great deal more CO2.
Well then, We should get busy releasing as much CO2 as we can! That'll show those Commies! 8^)
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
why? Just because China is a joke and many on the left continue to let them be, does not mean that America or the west should be.
America continues to drop our CO2 on a yearly basis. And in spite of the idiot that we have in office, we will continue to drop our emissions.
BUT, in order to stop the CO2 growth, we need all nations to first stop building new coal plant and then start replacing them with AE and nukes.
In fact, America needs to start replacing our Nat Gas electrical plants sooner, not later. Problem is, that in America, we have about 200 GW of nat gas capacity and most is relatively new. As such, we will end up like China and will take decades to phase these out.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I've read a bunch of those studies. They only thing they seem to agree on is that the error bars are large.
Knowledge Brings Fear
What a pile of entitled assholery. Most of the "useful" things you wank on about are either 1) burning over a trillion a year on the imperial budget or 2) banks passing other people's money back and forth, claiming fees along the way.
Neither of those things are in any way useful to the human race.
Its simple. If mining fossil fuels is banned, many people will not be able to afford cars at all, thus increasing the poverty level when they have to take jobs within walking distance of where they live (and zoning laws have made sure that they are miles from their work, ANOTHER modern self-inflicted problem by the so-called "planners", 18 wheelers will cease to move at all because there are no batteries that big, and airliners will sit motionless for the rest of time. Oh, you might get nukes into cargo ships, but the terrorists would just hijack them and use the cores to build dirty bombs all over the world. Ban fossil fuels and society would come to a screeching halt, with economic suffering on the scale of Venezeuela. IOW, it just won't work, we don't have the tech, your law would kill millions, impoverish most of the country.
Again, you have no answers. This is not going to be solved by any legislature, it is going to have to be solved by armies of scientists and engineers, or it won't be solved at all. Geoengineering is probably the best approach, but as I've written elsewhere here, the "environmentalists" have a cow rather than to shortcut their bid to inflict maximum harm on the USA with austerity measures to punish this "evil" country, and of course cart trillions out of this evil country to distribute to the world's poor (which will end up in various dictators' and politicians' wallets worldwide.)
They will be using this latest report to (politely) beat some sense into their fellow conservatives. The CCL training is for politeness, the Chair of the Conservative Caucus likes to tell conservative members of Congress that others will rant and chant and block your doors, but CCL will walk with you, talk with you and open doors to new solutions.
Libertarians often lurk within the conservative caucus, since they are often more liberty-oriented and individualistic than the liberals.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Gott in himmel, political ideologues.. this is not about politics or gdp or borders or..
We can collectively choose to save the planet (and ourselves), or individually choose to perish. You think there's somebody out there writing about who was right when we're done?
This is the way of humanity. Especially when the money is in the hands of the people causing the problem, and the inertia of the others.
It isn't like this is not exactly what has been going on for many years.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Gott in himmel, political ideologues.. this is not about politics or gdp or borders or..
We can collectively choose to save the planet (and ourselves), or individually choose to perish. You think there's somebody out there writing about who was right when we're done?
This is the way of humanity. Especially when the money is in the hands of the people causing the problem, and the inertia of the others.
It isn't like this is not exactly what has been going on for many years.
And I've come to the final conclusion is that people who don't give a damn about shorelines and other life simply like the warmer weather
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So people have to spend more for energy, what happens to the people who's stuff and services they used to buy with that money? Either way fossil fuel use has to decrease so can renewables power the same amount of economic productivity? Actually they will have to produce more economic activity to make up for the increased costs.
What happens to China's economy if Americans can not afforded to by their stuff? We may need to get off fossil fuels to save the planet but everyone will have to understand that we all must live a much reduced lifestyle.
I guess the fact that the guy that just left NPR was also the head of the NY Times escaped you.
Here - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...
They are about as leftist as they come.
Actually, NPR leans FAR right, or else
WHERE IS THE LAS VEGAS BASED GUN CONTROL NEWS instead of endless loops about a truck driver
Only if you are one of those people that thinks someone can lean so far to the left they're on the right.
No, they'd slap you if you said they were on the right and you were close enough to slap.
Why do people think this is a left / right issue? The left and right wing of government constitute one bird of prey, and the people are the field mice.
Because it is. Controlling CO2 is just a means to an end. The left wants to control you and everything about your life. Health care, education, jobs, political boundaries (aka state lines, etc), even where you can crap and park your own tractor, car, trailer, etc. Regulate everything. Obummer did a LOT of that. CO2 is just another way to bankrupt everyone so they can take over. Guys like Algore get really rich over something that is happening anyway and has been underway for over 1000 years. Just look it up, when Romans invaded England, they grew grapes there and the sea was much higher. So we're returning to where we were. Coming out of a little ice age.
CO2 is a green gas, as in plants use it. Plant more stuff. Not hard.
Per capita is the most important metric.
Why not per societal contribution or per dollar earned per person pe ton of CO2 output.?
People can pick whatever metric they want that requires them to do the least amount of effort. Per capita is a nice metric and all, but then you can argue that India and China are completely justified in bringing up their CO2 emmmissions to the pointy where they are putting out the same per capita as the enemy, the USA.
US by the way, is number 14 on the per capita greenhouse emmissions list, down around 3.25 million tons of CO2 per capita since 1990. from 23.23 per capita, to 19.9 per capita in 1013.
So do we decide that the USA must reduce their per capita output to Burundi's? Or India's per capita as it is now, while allowing India to raise theirs to ours present per capita?
Does the planet's atmosphere pay attention by the per capita emissions? If we had 10 times the population but emit the same per capita as say Armenia's at 2.9, it's all good, no problem at all?
Dunno about you, but I was taught that the energy retentian characteristics of an atmosphere is directly related to the amount of greenhouse or anti-greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, not how many people place the gases there.
In the end though, we are all simply going to argue until it doesn't much matter any more. Don't buy a house in the Florida Keys, Outer Banks, or Houston Tx - that's for certain.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
US is around the middle of the pack, producing value of $2,291 per ton of CO2 emitted. China is one of the worst, at $435/ton
The numbers are distorted because a lot of the US/Eur manufacturing is outsourced to China.
A Chinese factory makes a widget for $5 that gets sold in the US for $35. All the CO2 produced to create the widget is counted as China's emissions towards the $5, while the US claims $30 added value for zero CO2 emissions.
If the US is therefore responsible for China's emissions, the cure for that is for the US to not buy anything made in China, and when we do not buy their goods, they do not produce any emissions that the US is then responsible for. And the only country that is not responsible for the emissions caused by China's exports is therefore China, following your logic.
That sword bites both ways though, because the US also exports goods. Therefore, other nations are then responsible for the CO2 Emmissions we produce as part of exported goods. Indeed if China chooses to bootstrap their economy by ignoring safety and environmental basic concepts, and not use pollutino controls, it seems like they are responsible for their emissions. Because the counter argument is no one is responsible for theirs either. Fuggidaboudit.
I know a lot of people are going to try to argue that it is somehow "different" in the case of the US's export product caused CO2 emissions, but if I don't get marked down to troll immediately I'd love to hear the logic behind that.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And who really believes all this global warming stuff, not many unless they are getting paid to do so. Yes there are plenty of people who demand you give lip service to it but as long as you do that there is no threat where anything actually has to be done.
Let the grownups talk, will.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The rationale is that there are economic externalities. Having established that, the argument goes that if Europe and USA did not absorb the cost of these externalities, then why should other nations?
Well then, I'm happy I live in the Northeast US at 1500 foot altitude. It'll be pretty warm here in the winter during my lifetime, but some miles less drive to get to the beach.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And it's too hot down here in the summer.
Plus Donna's crazy claims were debunked as her intentionally lying to sell a book by the DNC producing the actual documents she lied about in under an hour after her claim.
Here's a hint, Donna thought July 2016 was August 2015 and confused two documents.
What is "Donna's" Curriculum vitae? Or is this just another always never relevent to science political talking point?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
20 gallon car fuel tank consumes 20,000 cubic feet of Oxygen i.e 2500 sq.ft. house https://animagraffs.com/how-a-...
Casteism
Per capita is a nice metric and all, but then you can argue that India and China are completely justified in bringing up their CO2 emmmissions to the pointy where they are putting out the same per capita as the enemy, the USA.
No one is arguing that. Especially as it is complete nonsense. Why, how and for what purpose should China or India or any other aim for reaching the same per capita CO2 production like the USA?
The argument is that the stupid american a*****es should cut back to sane levels.
So do we decide that the USA must reduce their per capita output to Burundi's?
This is called a straw man.
And bottom line: all nations have to cut down to ZERO, and that quite quickly.
Does the planet's atmosphere pay attention by the per capita emissions?
It doesn't, another straw man. However the one with the economic power to do so, should do it, especially when they are the worst polluters.
no about you, but I was taught that the energy retentian characteristics of an atmosphere is directly related to the amount of greenhouse or anti-greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, not how many people place the gases there. So, we demand that the biggest per capita polluters cut down, and hence in the long run, the amount gets reduced in the quickest way. Of course you could start with those who produce the least ... with no measurable effect :D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Are they the same ones who got positive and negative charges backwards or the ones who thought it would be okay for modernism to come after futurism, then have a post-modernism that somehow isn't futurism, followed by neo-futurism which isn't either of those, and isn't even modern despite being the modern style?
I have no idea :D
But obviously Ice Age and Warm Age should be called Ice Epoch and Warm Epoch, and glacial and inter glacial should be called Ice Age and Warm Age (like every layman calls them anyway), and voila: no need to mix english terms with latin terms and reverse their meaning.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It is a false assumption, likely pushed by lobby groups and other propaganda agencies, that reducing our use of fossil fuels will increase the costs of goods and services.
I think we should just all say "prove it or shut up" every time some AC or other user posts made up bs like that.
Wind and solar are already cheaper than coal. This isn't science fiction. No need to speculate. We have proof. We have countries overseas that are already using mostly renewable energy and their costs have not doubled, or whatever the favorite made up number is by deniers.