Trump Administration Sees a 7-Degree Rise in Global Temperatures By 2100 (washingtonpost.com)

Last month, deep in a 500-page environmental impact statement, the Trump administration made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous 7 degrees by the end of this century. From a report: A rise of 7 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 4 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels would be catastrophic, according to scientists. Many coral reefs would dissolve in increasingly acidic oceans. Parts of Manhattan and Miami would be underwater without costly coastal defenses. Extreme heat waves would routinely smother large parts of the globe. But the administration did not offer this dire forecast as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet's fate is already sealed. The draft statement, issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), was written to justify President Trump's decision to freeze federal fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks built after 2020. While the proposal would increase greenhouse gas emissions, the impact statement says, that policy would add just a very small drop to a very big, hot bucket.

Comments

Best thing that could happen

[Anonymous Coward]

The best thing that could happen, for both the planet and human beings, is for the price of oil and coal to skyrocket. Would it cause an economic disaster? Perhaps, but I don't think that really matters at this point.

Re:Best thing that could happen

[Comrade Ogilvy]

It matters insofar as prosperity is the only know non-cruel means of drastic population control, because economically secure modernized families seem to trend towards less than replacement births voluntarily the world over. Even in India, educated women who can easily feed and get medical care for their children just shrug after two or even one baby -- they are not personally interested in a larger than small family.

It would sure be nice not to have severe climate transitions over a measly century or so to create poverty and cause a few billion people to "die off" by other means.

Re:Best thing that could happen

[bluefoxlucid]

It's actually the opposite: population in total is constricted by resource availability, and the microeconomics of individual family growth do not resemble the macroeconomics of population growth.

Each time technology has ticked forward or wages have risen less than productivity, jobs have become more-plentiful. The workforce and the population have expanded in these events, until the abundance of jobs ceases. People point to impoverished nations with large families or to welfare families with poor family planning (too many children) while ignoring the overall population trend.

You can enable population control by constricting the labor force size: increase minimum wages to hold a percentage of per-person productivity; shorten working hours to reduce the amount produced per person and push the hourly wage up (so the yearly wage remains the same percentage of productivity). Do this slowly so you don't create unemployment, but rather slow the growth of the labor force by not creating as much new employment.

Re:Best thing that could happen

[Anonymous Coward]

No worries. We are already on the way to creating the conditions necessary to reduce global population by billions. War is on the way and there is no sign of reversing course. Tensions between the major powers have been slowly but steadily increasing. It won't go nuclear early on but when one or more nuclear countries are on the edge of being defeated that will change. Hopefully in a few hundred years the survivors will start over and build something better.

Re:Best thing that could happen

[jeff4747]

It's actually the opposite: population in total is constricted by resource availability

[Citation Required]

Because what you're claiming flies in the face of what's happening. For example, first-world countries have very high resource availability, and have lower birth rates. Places with poor resource availability, (and high unemployment) have high birth rates.

Re:Best thing that could happen

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a great fool and need to look at Africa to understand that population can grow rapidly despite 40% unemployment rates.

Re: Best thing that could happen

[Anonymous Coward]

We said this throughout the duration of the 70s and 80s - never happened. We are likely going to actually have to address and deal with our problems.

Re:Best thing that could happen

[mujadaddy]

He's talking about all resources (education, healthcare, clean water, no militias-in-the-street), not natural resources.

Re:Best thing that could happen

[Attila Dimedici]

And the post you responded to is STILL correct.

Re: Best thing that could happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Precisely why we need to implement purging in third world countries. We can film it and sale the publication to first world countries!

It is a perfect plan.

Re:Best thing that could happen

[Anonymous Coward]

... have lower birth-rates

He didn't say birth rates, he said total population. More people, means more resources must be consumed, which in turn is possible if such consumption is more effective (re-use, recycling). The lower birth-rate and high resource-availability means the country is unlikely to be constrained by its production limit. A large population must use more resources for food, shelter, healthcare; leaving less for education, manufacturing and an energy-dependent lifestyle. When resources are difficult to access there, obviously, will not be adequate growth of education, manufacturing and lifestyle to increase the cost of child-rearing and discourage pregnancy.

Re: Best thing that could happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Flies right in the face of human nature. You can't regulate job growth! It's a failed plan in all Communist countries. Even China ababdoned the idea.

Re:Best thing that could happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus christ you people are stupid.

Resource availability, goes down with children. People with less children, have higher resource availability, to do meaningless, boring shit. But you're too fucking stupid to understand, that the only reason why your per capita income is higher, is that you have zero to one child. You're basically selling out the concept of family for worthless script, and bragging about it.

Don't be stupid for all your lives.

Re:Best thing that could happen

[jeff4747]

Resource availability, goes down with children.

Only if you're stupid enough to think more people can't produce more resources.

Hint: They can. We have not exhausted the raw materials of the planet, and more people is literally more resources when it comes to labor.

Re:Best thing that could happen

[jeff4747]

He didn't say birth rates, he said total population.

Birth rates are how you get population.

More people, means more resources must be consumed

Nope. People in the US consumes more resources than people in China.

A large population must use more resources for food, shelter, healthcare; leaving less for education, manufacturing and an energy-dependent lifestyle.

Only when standards of living are equal. And standards of living in the areas under discussion are very far from equal.

When resources are difficult to access there, obviously, will not be adequate growth of education, manufacturing and lifestyle to increase the cost of child-rearing and discourage pregnancy.

And again, the opposite is what is actually happening. Birth rates in Europe are below replacement. Birth rates in the most impoverished parts of Africa are many times higher. Resources are extremely easy to access in Europe. Resources are difficult to access in those poor parts of Africa.

Under your theory, Europe's easy-to-get resources should mean a high birth rate, and Africa's hard-to-get resources should mean a low birth rate. And we very much have the opposite.

Re:Best thing that could happen

[bluefoxlucid]

You're confusing population and birth rate.

Population of Uganda grew 88.8% from 1980 to 2010; United States, 36.5%. GDP-per-Capita of Uganda grew by 600%, GDP 1,620%; United States, 384% and 523%. Uganda is gaining access to resources at a higher rate and has a higher rate of population gain; both have relatively-low unemployment.

Albania's population grew by 23% from 1980 to 1990. From 1990 to 2010, it fell 2.6% (low point 2000, at 6.6% drop from 1990). Unemployment rate rose from 12% in 1997 to over 18% in 2000; unemployment was 22% in 1993.

People emigrate from these countries or die. They don't have social services to feed their excess children or jobs for people to work and feed themselves; they can have all the babies they want, and if they can't feed them they'll starve. Whether or not there's food is immaterial: if there's food over there but those people are relatively-wealthy and have well-fed guards, you're not eating.

Re:Best thing that could happen

[bluefoxlucid]

The United States gains around 1,000,000 legal immigrants per year since 2000, and currently has over 37,000,000 legal foreign-born immigrants.

Re:Best thing that could happen

[bluefoxlucid]

It's not a matter of natural resources, but rather a matter of the scaling of production. If you continue to expand, you can make more food... until you've exhausted fertile land and good climate, and then you're pouring in more irrigation, more tillage, more fertilization, getting less yield, and investing more labor (cost) to produce less food.

This scaling happens with all sorts of resources. At a point, a method of production can't scale with more human labor performing the same tasks. Productivity decreases once you hit that carry capacity. There are also bottlenecks such as shipping (moving stuff requires a lot of coordination and physical trafficking space), as well as the inertia of capital investment (you don't build another billion-dollar fabrication campus for a two-year, hundred-million-dollar market spike).

In educational terms:

A layman would perhaps expect that with doubling of all productive factors, the output will also double and with trebling of factors of production, production would also be trebled, and so on. But actually this is not so. In other words, when all inputs are increased in the same proportion, the total product may increase at an increasing rate, are a constant rate or diminishing rate. Accordingly the returns to scale could be ‘increasing, ‘constant’, or ‘decreasing’.

Early on, you have increasing returns to scale ("Economy of Scale"). In the middle, you have constant RTS. At the upper end, you have decreasing RTS. This is represented in introduction of new products, which we can see in cell phone technology, and is fairly generic.

Power is a simple example. If you run a motor at high output, it becomes less-efficient and consumes more fuel; you could build more motors, but single, large engines are more-efficient than several small engines. Eventually, you hit a feedstock problem: you need refined fuel to obtain maximum efficiency, yet fuel refinement also requires more resources, pumping raw fuel out of mines faster is difficult, and you wind up running burners hotter and losing more energy along the way.

This is all fine until you realize spreading out by building more power plants and more refineries raises complexity of some logistics geometrically, others exponentially, so you suddenly find yourself sitting on a superlinear factor: you can scale efficiently for a while, and then you need to find a way to more-efficiently generate power. Solar, wind, and geothermal energy don't require feedstock distribution, and so their much-lower logistics (to handle less-intensive maintenance) kicks you back down to the linear portion of the curve, restoring economies of scale.

You just need to figure out how to build those power sources efficiently.

This, of course, ignores basic economic policy issues like scaling minimum wage: if you scale it to inflation or otherwise less than productivity, you start creating poverty-stricken societies which can't purchase as much, and a demand bottleneck. If you scale it with productivity, you constrict job growth, although your economy stays healthy.

science not emotion

[iggymanz]

the big emitter is not the USA, it doesn't matter what the USA does. Some of you green tards are bad at math, but that's the reality.

Re:science not emotion

[Berkyjay]

Big claims. Where's your sources?

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

USA is 7th per capita and 2nd in CO2 production

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

Re:science not emotion

[Areyoukiddingme]

Big claims. Where's your sources?

Everywhere.

"China's Emissions: More Than U.S. Plus Europe, and Still Rising". New York Times. 2018-01-25.
  "Chinese coal fuels rise in global carbon emissions". The Times. 2017-11-14.
  "Yes, The U.S. Leads All Countries In Reducing Carbon Emissions". Forbes. 2017-10-24.
  "World carbon dioxide emissions data by country: China speeds ahead of the rest". The Guardian. 2011-01-31.
  "China now no. 1 in CO2 emissions; USA in second position". PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.
"China CO2 emission accounts 1997–2015". Nature. 2018-01-16.

The most recent numbers are for 2016.
Country Fossil fuel CO2 emissions (kt) in 2016
China 10,432,751
United States 5,011,687

See how that first number is bigger than the second one? See how that first number is in fact double the second one? The title of the first link is correct: add up US emissions and the emissions of every single EU country and combined they're still less than China. You can also perform the same exercise with the Americas. Add up US, Canadian, and Mexican emissions, plus the emissions of every single country in Central and South America, and that total is still less than China.

China is improving their standard of living. China has improved, past tense, their standard of living. They have gigawatts of electrical generation they didn't have 20 years ago. And before you start whinging about how other countries have outsourced their pollution to China, read the live link on Nature.com. Between 1980 and 2002, China's emissions were growing at 8% per year. Those were the outsourcing years. At the end of that period, they were only emitting 3,694,000 kt annually. After 2002, the number jumped to 13% per year, and sustained that through 2007. Those were their standard of living improvements. In 2018, China is estimated to emit 30% of all CO2 globally. The US is estimated to emit 15% of all CO2 globally.

The big emitter is China.

Re:science not emotion

[Berkyjay]

Awesome! Now was that so hard?

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

So that means everyone else should do nothing and accept the fate of humanity?

Re:science not emotion

[Ichijo]

Since the USA consumes much of what China produces, the USA has a lot of influence on China's emissions. For example, we could tax foreign carbon and thereby force China to find less carbon-intensive ways to make things. So even though our emissions are only half of China's (and more than any other country besides China), we have a lot of power to reduce emissions in both countries.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

China has 4x the number of people that the US has

Re:science not emotion

[LynnwoodRooster]

And so Chinese emissions only do 1/4 the damage as US emissions?

Re:science not emotion

[iggymanz]

wrong, fraction of what China produces. it's just a small fraction of China's emissions. China is huge, their emissions more than double the USAs. Soon India will join them as the #2 emitter. China is bigger than USA and europe combined, doesn't matter. It's due to their HUGE population and their c02 will only grow for decades. USA doesn't matter, we don't need to do anything because it won't matter what we do. That's hard math, that's reality.

Re:science not emotion

[bluefoxlucid]

So the US produces 3x as much CO2 output per person than China?

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

2/4

Re:science not emotion

[Barsteward]

Currently but the USA is the biggest per capita. China is actually investing heavily in renewables and leading in the field so their output will start to decline at some point. So you can help by not buying cheap chinese goods and not being so individually wasteful with resources and bring down the per capita usage levels.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

eat a dick wanker

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

And if the pollution causation were evenly distributed amongst the populace, you might have a point. Or if Global Warming cares where it comes from. Or if the pollution caused isn't preventable by half-assed attempts as reducing/containing/removing it.

I'll just leave you with this: India has the same population as China and only 1/4 their CO2 ( 2,454,968 source). If you want a better metric for comparing, do cities/regions with population densities for 'population pollution', and seperately factories to factories for Industrial. The China comparisons are entirely about lax environmental laws that make the USA look absolutely eco-hippie.

Re:science not emotion

[Barsteward]

on a person by person basis, china roasts most countries by using less. Its a bit embarrassing (or should be) when advanced nations are so profligate with resources and produces more CO2 per person than China.

Re:science not emotion

[Barsteward]

"USA doesn't matter, we don't need to do anything because it won't matter what we do" - that is the mantra of the defeatist and the "i don't care" brigade

Re:science not emotion

[LynnwoodRooster]

Let me try rephrasing this for you:

Country A has 100,000 people in it, and they emit 200,000 units of pollution. Country B has 400,000 people in it, and they emit 400,000 units of polution.

Question: which country hurts the environment more?

Re:science not emotion

[Berkyjay]

If you want to me take anything you say seriously then you best back up your words. I'm not doing the legwork for you.

Re:science not emotion

[bjdevil66]

That's an important point during negotiations, but the atmosphere isn't going to warm up unequally based on a per capita statistic.

CO2 output is CO2 output - and China is doing the biggest chunk of the damage right now.

They therefore need to unilaterally take action - regardless of what the rest of the world does - or Western countries will be at best offsetting China's increases.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

So that means everyone else can just give up and pollute more?

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is for to be able to tell the biggest polluters to get their shit together or we make economic difficulties for them. We can't really do that if we're not practicing what we preach. Fucking idiot.

Re:science not emotion

[sexconker]

China has 4x the number of people that the US has

So? Does the planet care about that? Does your environment get less smog rolling over from China based on population?

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to see the numbers on per-capita when the "capita" is based on some kind of above-poverty-level citizens that could have a meaningful impact on the CO2 production, as so many of China's citizenry lives in abject poverty in such conditions as to only have a meaningful impact on their country by soaking up any sort of per-capita measurements that look bad. India's kind of over there too.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't support the conclusion that "it doesn't matter what the USA does". We're still a huge emitter, we still have massive influence on what the rest of the world does, and (incidentally) a lot of that stuff being made in China is being made for U.S. consumption (and shipped across an ocean at tremendous environmental expense).

The fact is, if we want to avoid global catastrophe, we must all attack the problem.

Re:science not emotion

[iggymanz]

you're the one that needs to do legwork of very well known facts, including that China's emissions is more than twice the USAs and growing.

lazy git

Re:science not emotion

[sexconker]

If you want to me take anything you say seriously then you best back up your words. I'm not doing the legwork for you.

The bullshit argument of the loser. You're uneducated on a topic to the point that you don't know basic facts about it, then when presented with those facts you raise objection because you don't like them, but you still refuse to learn anything about the topic you're bitching about. Instead, you expect everything to be spoonfed to you.

Try stepping out into the real world. You're expected to have a base level of competency and familiarity about something before anyone will engage in that thing with you. Or you can pay them for education / training.

Re:science not emotion

[CanadianMacFan]

And how much of those emissions are due to making stuff for the rest of the world? Other countries have outsourced their CO2 to China.

Just because China is currently emitting the most in the past couple of years they haven't put most of the historical CO2. The developed nations have spewed CO2, and many other substances that have been found dangerous over time, for a long time while their economies grew up. Now as China tries to build up their economy they are vilified for doing the same steps as the other countries took before. (This also includes their policies on IP. The US stole a lot of IP from England when it was building up it's industry.)

Re:science not emotion

[WindBourne]

Careful. There are loads of far lefties here combined with trolls that will scream that China deserves to pollute. What amazes me, is that they continue to justify CHina's massive emissions as well as rising per capita, as being China's right.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

The bigger country is china you fucking moron. by your methods you just need to find the smallest country and claim the be the greenest on earth in spite of how inefficient they are. we all have our responsibility to the environment and it's proportional.

Re:science not emotion

[WindBourne]

uh no. You are correct in saying that America is neither the biggist nor the worst, HOWEVER, that does not mean that we are not big. We are 14% of the emitted CO2. To be fair, once OCO3 comes on-line and we can fully map the emissions around the world, I think that America's calculated levels will remain about the same, however, our % of the total will drop. BUT, we are STILL A LARGE EMITTER. Make no mistake about it. We are either #2, or possibly #3.

America has been headed in the right direction for the last 10 years. We need to continue that. Right now, it is the states that are doing it, not the feds. In fact, Trump's recent bill about methane emissions by oil companies may finally be the bill that increases America's GHG emissions.
OTOH, Tesla is continuing to push EVs at a faster and faster rate and consumers are walking away from ICE.

And yes, the HUGE emitter is China. The worst part is that they are continuing to grow and the far left along with trolls are good with that.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

the atmosphere isn't going to warm up unequally based on a per capita statistic .... They therefore need to unilaterally take action -

ok... is it even necessary to argue against this? let me just drop the word "responsibility" here... as in the US is not being responsible "oh were smaller so it's ok for us to pollute more", yeah that's totally fair.

Re:science not emotion

[mesterha]

While the US does well compared to China that's a pretty low bar. The real competition is Vatican City. That country is a model for the world.

Re:science not emotion

[hey!]

We in the US ranked second in the world for totally carbon emissions, and third in the world on a per capita basis. China is the largest emitter on a net basis, but emits less than half of what we do on a per capita basis.

Now we green tards may be bad at math, but it's not really about math: The US emits 4x the CO2 that Japan does, but we have 2.5x the population of Japan, spread of 26x the area. It's apples to oranges.

Geographically large countries like Australia emit more carbon per capita than comparable but more compact countries like Austria, which has almost the same per capita GDP. Rich countries like Japan emit more carbon than poor ones like Zimbabwe, which has almost the same land area.

What this means is that there are endless arguments you can make about who is the most carbon-virtuous country on the planet, because every country is a special case.

This isn't about winning brownie points in a contest to see who can make his neurotic self-image concerns the center of attention. A 4C temperature increase by 2100 would be catastrophic for everyone. Well, most people, specifically non-rich people.

So we shouldn't judge countries by how much carbon they emit, but by the steps they could be taking to reduce their carbon footprint.

Re:science not emotion

[WindBourne]

You are missing the big pix. We cannot tax just CHina's. That is a tariff and is illegal. HOWEVER, we CAN put a slowly increasing tax on all CONSUMED goods/services based on which STATE and NATION that the WORST SUB-PART/SERVICE comes from. BUT, they must all be treated the same. Then it gets past WTO. To keep it fair, we use sats to track CO2 in and out of regions. And then normalize based on CO2 emitted per $ GDP.

Re:science not emotion

[WindBourne]

No, America DOES matter. Look, all nations have to drop emissions OR we fail. It is not fair to say that America or China or India or whomever needs to drop. Instead, if we quit adding new emissions while dropping esp across the worst nations, then it will work.

Re:science not emotion

[N1AK]

Which means that Australia and a bunch of middle eastern countries potentially don't get enough attention for being even more polluting, but given that 5 of the 6 combined add up to 10% of America's total emissions and the other, Australia, produces less than 10% of America's emissions it's hardly suprising that they don't.

China, America, and the EU produce over 54% of CO2 emissions. Hand waving at a few countries that produce fractions of a % can't possibly have a notable impact. The EU produces less CO2 per capita than America or China and also emits least in total out of the 3, they can do their part but they can't make a meaningful difference unless America and China act. China produces the most CO2 but does so while producing less than half as much per capita as the US so expecting China to act while America doesn't is unrealistic. So it all comes back to America. They have the influence that they could if they were willing to restrict their own emissions lead the way on handling this issue, but if they won't then nobody else can.

Re:science not emotion

[Berkyjay]

Nope, sorry. The burden of proof is on you sir or madam.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Country B. Carbon aside, there's 300,000 more peoples' shit to deal with.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

So... Lichtenstein could still go up with its emissions up to the level of the USA before anyone should complain. And Eurasia needs to stop emitting anything while Australia still can emit many dozen times more.

Are you really going to run with the really silly premise we should regard emissions only per country / per continent and not per-capita?

Re:science not emotion

[Berkyjay]

It's sad to see people throwing a fit over being asked to cite their sources. Sorry, but your words are shit unless you back them up.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

So what that means is that the Chinese have succeeded in doing what EnviroWackos want to do in the West...Reduce us to living in grass huts or shacks, and scrounge for food.

Go Fuck Yourself.

Re:science not emotion

[shaitand]

Have you ever heard the phrase "the bottom line" China's bottom line is bigger than the US, it wouldn't matter if five people lived in the US and produced 1/4 the CO2 output of billions of Chinese, per capita the US would be way worse but China would still be polluting 4x more than the US.

Re:science not emotion

[jeff4747]

Per-capita indicates how much the country needs to change to reduce their emissions.

China has lots of very large emitters. That's relatively easy to change because there's not that many places that need to reduce their emissions. Replacing a coal plant with something that doesn't emit CO2 is relatively easy.

To reduce emissions in the US requires a much larger change. For example, large SUVs driving us as individuals to sprawling suburbs/exurbs is harder to change, because it requires fundamental changes to our culture. We have to start wanting smaller cars and wanting to live in denser communities or spend a fortune actually building a workable public transit infrastructure.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

So? Does the planet care about that?

I was unaware the planet had any feelings whatsoever.

Re:science not emotion

[shaitand]

That is a good point.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you're saying Trump is playing this wrong. He should be placing a carbon tax on the rest of the world to decrease the trade deficit.

Re:science not emotion

[shaitand]

No it isn't. You aren't a professor and he isn't your student. This isn't a court and you aren't a judge. He is expressing information and has done whatever assessment meets his standards to verify it, the obligation to perform critical analysis of information before you accept it is on you, not the source which is him/her/it/them/other in this case.

Re:science not emotion

[thegarbz]

There are loads of far lefties here combined with trolls that will scream that China deserves to pollute.

They do not. But what they also don't deserve to do is get criticised for producing 1/3rd of the emissions per capita compared to the USA.

Physician heal thyself.

Re:science not emotion

[Areyoukiddingme]

Awesome! Now was that so hard?

Not hard for me. Probably too hard for iggy. (I'm not the original poster.)

Re:science not emotion

[ath1901]

Your numbers do not support the statement "the big emitter is not the USA, it doesn't matter what the USA does.". 5 Gt is not insignificant compared to 10 Gt. But, even if it was, the argument would still be flawed which can be easily seen if you bring it full circle:

1. France only emits 300,000 kt which is "nothing" (6%) compared to the US 5,000,000 kt so it doesn't matter what France does.
2. USA only emits 5,000,000 kt which is "nothing" (50%) compared to Chinas 10,000,000 kt so it doesn't matter what the USA does.
3. China only emits 10,000,000 kt which is "nothing" (30%) compared to the total of 36,000,000 kt so it doesn't matter what China does.

So, by that logic it doesn't matter if China reduces its emissions unless everyone else does since China emit "nothing" of the total. But all countries (like France) emit "nothing" of the total so it doesn't matter what anyone does.

The obvious solution is of course global cooperation and international agreements but... I guess you don't like that either, especially since good arguments are made why the developed world should take a larger part of the costs than the developing world (historical emissions, economic headroom, emissions per capita etc).

I used the numbers from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:science not emotion

[Areyoukiddingme]

Are you really going to run with the really silly premise we should regard emissions only per country / per continent and not per-capita?

First, it's not my really silly premise. It's yours. Second, yes, per country is all that matters in this case because the only way it changes (bar magical technology like fusion finally working) is through political action, and that operates only per country.

Re:science not emotion

[Berkyjay]

If he/she does not provide sources then I disregard what they say. It's as simple as that.

Re:science not emotion

[Berkyjay]

Hah! Yeah I realized that after the fact. But good on you any ways for being a responsible part of the community.

Re: science not emotion

[Tailhook]

It means the days of trying to force agreements that exempt the worst emitters while saddling the US with huge economic burdens are over. If you think we must "Do Something!!" you can no longer pretend that China doesn't exist and isn't an enormous contributor while dreaming up schemes to downsize the US to 1700's emission levels. None of that is politically feasible any longer — if it ever was — so you need to get your mind right and start imagining solutions that also burden China and whatever other economies emerge to replace China as well. The simple minded and foolish la-la land climate politics of the last 20-30 years have failed. Catch up, son.

The People are on to you. They understand that the wealthy establishment, its well-employed professional class and the coddled tech bros of the Valley with their Internet amplified voices won't suffer one iota of pain under the energy poverty schemes they've been threatening to inflict on the hoi polloi, and the hoi polloi gets it. So you must change. Either figure out some way to supply clean, low cost, abundant energy or get to work on a GULAG system to dispose of the folk, because they are no longer sleep walking into energy poverty on behalf of your anxieties.

Re:science not emotion

[shaitand]

Which would be fine but you didn't disregard it, instead you created the impression the information wasn't true. Your demand of sources (his work) created the impression you'd done your due diligence (your own work) and could not replicate his conclusion. This is nothing but a cheap trick to make his well known already now well sourced information look false.

If you are a professor in school you don't have the time and you need people to prove they haven't stolen work. In the real world the last thing you should be judging information by when critically assessing it is the sources being provided by one trying to persuade you. You have to do your own legwork.

Re:science not emotion

[Luckyo]

This is the same kind of speculative propaganda as "as China becomes wealthier, it will become democratic". It's a mix of bigoted assumptions that Chinese culture will for some strange reason follow Western development model and just blind naivete driven by Chinese state propaganda.

Reality stands in stark contrast to these claims:
https://www.bbc.com/news/scien...

Re:science not emotion

[Ichijo]

It would certainly confuse the liberals!

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Country A and Country B are arbitrary delimitation. People and units of pollution are comparable.

If you split your example country B into 4, you would have country A with 100000 people emitting 200000 units of pollution and countries Bx (with x going from 1 to 4) with 100000 people each emitting 100000 units of pollution.

Which country hurts the environment more? Obviously, it's country A.

I mean, what's your point here? How daft do you have to be to try making the point that since the US is only emitting 15% of the CO2 emissions globally, while the rest of the world is emitting the remaining 85% then clearly the rest of the world hurts the environment more and clearly the rest of the world should restrict their emissions to what the US is currently emitting before the US considers doing anything?

How about checking the US's cumulative emissions to see its share of responsibility here?
https://www.wri.org/blog/2014/11/6-graphs-explain-world-s-top-10-emitters
Guess what? One single country emitted more then the European Union, which is a whole bunch of countries.

Re:science not emotion

[Berkyjay]

I'm gonna ask for sources. If you or anyone else has a problem with that then too bad. The way I see it, people who complain about having to cite their sources are people who don't know what the hell they're talking about and most likely can't cite any sources because they are just regurgitating something they read in an online forum.

Re:science not emotion

[Areyoukiddingme]

Careful. There are loads of far lefties here combined with trolls that will scream that China deserves to pollute.

My karma can handle it.

I don't often agree with you, so I'm immediately suspicious when you agree with me, but in this case yeah, it's long past time to call out the lunatics on their hypocrisy. Unfortunately in this brave new world, that no longer has any effect on people's behavior. Hypocrisy is just fine.

What amazes me, is that they continue to justify CHina's massive emissions as well as rising per capita, as being China's right.

In point of fact, it is China's right. Improving the standard of living of its citizens is the right of every country. Them turning around and saying the US is evil for having done it first is their hypocrisy, and it's long past annoying.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

I see two responses to this.
1. Which country needs to achieve carbon neutrality? Both.

2: If one person is emitting 10 units, and another person is emitting 5 units, which person's habits should be changed first? Assume all people have equal rights.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Then shouldn't you compare like people to like people?

There are more people, as a percentage, of people in cities in the US as compared to China. There are more people, as a percentage, living dirt poor with no electricity in China. This skews the per capita because there are millions of people in China that don't live in a modern life. The US has high per capita because more people live a modern life.

Compare similar socioeconomic positions of each country and then tell me how that works out because per capita is meaningless when there is a huge percentage of people in China that skew the figure for Eurosmugs and Chinese claim moral high ground.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the comparison like when you compare similar socioeconomic populations?

Re:science not emotion

[AmiMoJo]

China is now four years past peak coal. They are fixing their problems.

http://ieefa.org/ieefa-update-...

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Which would be fine but you didn't disregard it, instead you created the impression the information wasn't true.

I wouldn't say the information is false, but it's used for deceptive purposes. Using per country instead of per capita emissions is disingenuous, a way to pretend that the US's emissions are less than what they are.

Re:science not emotion

[Areyoukiddingme]

Currently but the USA is the biggest per capita.

So? Per country is the only thing that matters, because the only way it changes, except for magical new technology like fusion, is through political action, and that applies only per country.

China is actually investing heavily in renewables and leading in the field so their output will start to decline at some point.

US output has already declined, so bully for China.

So you can help by not buying cheap chinese goods and not being so individually wasteful with resources and bring down the per capita usage levels.

Cheap Chinese goods are a microscopic fraction of any US person's CO2 emission share. I already brought my emissions down radically by installing a high efficiency furnace when I didn't have to and by buying an electric lawnmower, which eliminated the equivalent of 11 new cars worth of volatile organic compounds and nitrous oxides from my emissions hour for hour I run it. What have you done?

Re:science not emotion

[crunchygranola]

Geographically large countries like Australia emit more carbon per capita than comparable but more compact countries like Austria, which has almost the same per capita GDP. Rich countries like Japan emit more carbon than poor ones like Zimbabwe, which has almost the same land area.

What this means is that there are endless arguments you can make about who is the most carbon-virtuous country on the planet, because every country is a special case.

...

So we shouldn't judge countries by how much carbon they emit, but by the steps they could be taking to reduce their carbon footprint.

You basic point is valid but I do want to point that there useful ways to compare countries. What is most significant is energy intensiveness, the amount of energy used for product each unit of GDP. This automatically levels out differences in wealth alone, and reveals countries that can do better by simply mimicking less intensive, but similarly wealthy countries.

Here is useful map, it was prepared in 2015 from the latest data then available (2011) but since depicts countries in broad intensity categories a map of the world today (if we had one) would most likely be identical.

A very clear pattern is that energy exporting countries, regardless of size, tend to be more intensive than ones that aren't. Thus Russia, Iran, Libya, Canada, Syria, are in the top intensity tier. There are some non-energy exporters that are in the same tier: China, South Africa and Ukraine principally. The U.S. is in the next tier down. Despite what some here like to claim the U.S. in not a net exporter of energy - our net petroleum import has four times the energy content of the coal we export.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

No each US inhabitant is hurting at least 3x more the plant than any other human being on the planet. There is no American exceptionalism that allow US inhabitant to say that they still pollute less than the rest of the planet combined and that the rest of the planet should do something as they produce more than the USA.

Re:science not emotion

[aquacrayfish]

Productive question: what can we do better?

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's why the only figure that matters is the per capita one. The rest is just bullshit to pretend that nothing happen.

Re:science not emotion

[Tailhook]

China has 4x the number of people that the US has

Indeed. China has greatly overpopulated their nation. Now China is filling the oceans with plastic. And China is the main source of illegal CFC production. In addition to being the largest sovereign source of CO2 emissions.

So be sure to continue exempting China from every agreement in order to get their signature. At some point we're sure to fall for that like Europeans do if you just keep trying..............

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

That’s fair. Absolutes are absolutes.

USA and Chine should reduce their populations immediately to approx that of Tonga.

or

Realise the certain countries, mine included have massive efficiencies to gain in order to at least behave equitably on the world stage. At the same time mankind’s emissions may well be reduced sufficiently as a result.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah yeah we get it you're from the US and proud that you're twice as wasteful. Want a cookie?

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single American is doing 3x as much damage as a Chinese.

When the reckoning comes, a calculation will be made, what shall we get rid of to fix this? Low hanging fruit probably goes first!

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much. If US cut it's per capita emissions down to equal the per capita emissions of the 2nd biggest emitter, that would still be a 8% overall reduction globally.

But nope, got to have the coal and the overcompensating vehicles.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice framing.

The correct question is, of course, Which country has the greater potential to save the environment?

Hard Mode: Forcefully culling the population is not allowed.

Re:science not emotion

[LynnwoodRooster]

The US is reducing its emissions; China is not. Yet somehow the US is the bad guy...

Re:science not emotion

[LynnwoodRooster]

Then we take country A, and split it into 50 smaller countries, and... The reality is that the environment doesn't care about per capita pollution, it cares about total pollution. Who pollutes the most? Why, the country that is basically exempt from the goals. Because - fairness?

Re:science not emotion

[LynnwoodRooster]

The one with the higher population? Especially if we correlate GDP and quality of life with emissions (which is generally true) per capita.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite clearly a person in Country A does twice as much harm to the environment as a person in Country B, or is that OK because you happen to live in Country A?
Ideally, everyone in whatever country they live in would be doing what they can to protect the global environment because we're all screwed once that has been irretrievably damaged. The worst argument for not doing something is because some other country isn't also doing it. If Country X is deemed to be producing unacceptable levels of pollution then that would be a valid reason for imposing trade restrictions and additional tariffs.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

There are loads of far lefties here combined with trolls that will scream that China deserves to pollute.

They do not. But what they also don't deserve to do is get criticised for producing 1/3rd of the emissions per capita compared to the USA.

Physician heal thyself.

So what we need to do for a more eco friendly profile is triple our population and send all the new comers to farm dirt in flyover country. We’d have to prohibit pesticides and make them squash bugs by hand for jobs, and frankly eat the bugs too if we’re serious about hitting the same per capita ratio. Fuck it, bug farms.

#winning

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

unless you are a young boy....then its not the City for you to be safe in at all.

Re:science not emotion

[sjames]

So, does that mean that if I personally emit only 9 million Kt of CO2, it's cool because it's less than China?

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Just looking for any convenient excuse for your individual excess and waste right?

Doubtless your free-range, organic laptop is running on your excess virtue.

Re:science not emotion

[Your.Master]

The environment doesn't care about countries. It cares about total pollution. Countries is a completely arbitrary delineation that has no bearing on anything. People is a concrete delineation -- to support people, some pollution must be produced. To support countries, in theory, nothing has to be produced because you can draw a line on a map and have a country of 0.

If the world had two countries, and one had only one person in it and did 49% of the pollution, and the other had the other 7 billion people, everybody else and did 51% of the pollution, which country has the most opportunity to reduce pollution? Unless you have a damn good rationale, it's the country of one person. Because the environment doesn't care about countries. But the country of 7 billion people is strong evidence that the other country is polluting almost 7 billion times as much as it needs to.

Especially since it's conceivable that the country of 7 billion is using the absolute minimum possible pollution to support 7 billion people at an acceptable level. But it's not possible for the country of 1 to be doing so.

None of that is to say that China is perfect. Eg. if you dug up evidence that 1/10th of China's population is responsible for almost all the polluting and the other 9/10ths are in abject poverty and should really be brought up to a higher standard even at the expense of polluting *more*, then you could make the argument that China is the bigger problem.

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's true what they say in China - "CHINA NUMBA ONE!!"

Re:science not emotion

[Your.Master]

The one with more "wasted" pollution, as opposed to pollution that is thoughtfully and gainfully incurred in order to increase quality of life.

If one country has a higher per capita rate of emissions, that's evidence that it is wasting more pollution. You can counter that with quality of life evidence and then you try to dilly around with the right specific solution.

Note that pollution reduces quality of life directly, so it's not entirely the case that quality of life goes up with emissions. It's complex. Quality of life in several cities went up when stricter car emissions standards were applied, even if it made cars more expensive for a time, since it ultimately also improved air quality and gas mileage. The straw man of "ban electricity and fire" would certainly reduce quality of life. The opposite straw man of "emit for the hell of it for no reason; dig up oil just to burn it to stare into the flames" would also certainly reduce quality of life. Clearly there's some kind of curve in between, not a linear relationship.

Re:science not emotion

[Your.Master]

What are you talking about? Per country is almost irrelevant. As you said, political action is necessary, but emissions per capita is the measure of opportunity for a country to apply political action.

There is no reason whatsoever to expect that a country with 4x the population has 4x the opportunity to do better. It's everybody that contribute, not lines on maps. Country lines are meaningless in terms of what is causing the problem.

Re:science not emotion

[Your.Master]

You're confusing the mechanism to enact change with the the opportunity to enact change. The former is at the country level. The latter is based on per capita emissions compared to the quality of life they buy. The resolution is to get each country to normalize their per capita emissions to a similar level, one which makes all capable of achieving a high quality of life, but which is sustainable. It's completely absurd to ignore the latter.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Country A. Their citizens are spending more of the planets resources per capita and polluting more than their share.

Pretend we split up Country B into four countries, B1 through B4. Can you now see why Country A is the villain. All four countries are equally big, but Country A pollutes twice as much as everyone else.

So it is the lifestyle of Country A that is harmful. Or can Country A say that since they are fewer that can do shit that Country B isn't allowed to, like owning bigger and more gas guzzling cars just because? If everyone wants the lifestyle found in the US, what would happen then? Or should the US be allowed to continue being the environmental jerks of the world (together with quite a few other countries) just because they were first at large-scale global polluting?

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Hoe about if country A claims and kills 51% of country B? They would have reduced pollution per citizen below 1.0 units per.

Or maybe being a bad pendant when asked which "country" is worse per criteria X and trying to read it as criteria Y isnt something you should do.

If i have 3.0 resource production and 2.0 pollution level per capita, and you have 1/1, I am producing more per unit of pollution that you are.

Does that mean organic farmers should be allowed to murder and seize the property of big agribusiness? Should small apartment urban dwellers be given the land of rural Americans, because they live more energy efficient lives?

Pick a metric, any metric. But be prepared to be consistent if it is applied against you. Ya hypocrites.

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Still better than lardy CDR, the child diddling retard at least.
Oh, you said CO2, not methane.

Re:science not emotion

[LynnwoodRooster]

So then scale pollution by GDP, or GDP per capita. We'll do this:

Country A has 100,000 people in it, and they emit 200,000 units of pollution, and generate 800,000 units of money. Country B has 400,000 people in it, and they emit 400,000 units of pollution and generate 700,000 units of money.

Which country harms the environment more, and which country benefits society more?

Re:science not emotion

[LynnwoodRooster]

The environment doesn't care about countries. It cares about total pollution. Countries is a completely arbitrary delineation that has no bearing on anything. People is a concrete delineation -- to support people, some pollution must be produced. To support countries, in theory, nothing has to be produced because you can draw a line on a map and have a country of 0.

CORRECT! Which means those who ignore China's massive CO2 output are simply being disingenuous and are using CO2 as a political hammer to attack certain countries, not deal with a perceived environmental issue.

IF you want to deal with CO2 emissions, you should start with the biggest source of CO2 (by a long shot): China.

Re: science not emotion

[argStyopa]

Per capita is a meaningless statistical game deployed to try to disparage the US specifically.

If something is truly an emergency, you analyze actual totals, not per capita.

If a 1000-person hospital and a 1 person house are on fire and you can only stop one, which do you put out? The house, because the "per capita fire" is greater?

Shall we talk about co2 per unit of GDP produced?

Re:science not emotion

[iggymanz]

nonsense, the claim is that the USA's output is inconsequential compared to China's. per capita is irrelevant

Re: science not emotion

[fred6666]

To solve the environnement problem, China should split into 10 countries. Any of them would pollute less than the USA.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

America emits more than 194 countries, and less than just 1, and yet you conclude that America should do nothing. If you've ever wondered why so many people around the world hate America, this is the perfect example of why. You are selfish and deluded.

Re:science not emotion

[drinkypoo]

They do not. But what they also don't deserve to do is get criticised for producing 1/3rd of the emissions per capita compared to the USA.

Nobody here is blaming the average Chinese citizen, so that's not actually what's happening. What people are doing is blaming the Chinese government for not growing their energy output using sustainable technology. It would take longer, but it is feasible. Their recent rate of growth was not sustainable, their growth has slowed considerably which is why Pooh Bear has to tighten the screws now. A lot of people have been lifted out of poverty, but a lot more were expecting the same treatment and aren't going to get it — probably ever, but certainly not soon.

Re:science not emotion

[drinkypoo]

In point of fact, it is China's right.

In point of fact, if it dooms much of humanity because of climate change, it's not right — it's wrong. Especially since lots of the people who die are going to be them.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

China is estimated to have 18% of world population
America is estimated to have only 4%

Still think that 30% and 15% CO2 is comparable...

The big emitter is China

The worse emitter is America.

Re:science not emotion

[rkordmaa]

Historic emissions are largely a moot point, the world is currently outputting over 6X as much as it did 1950 and anything before 1900 is negilible. Besides, what's done is done, we can only change the future.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as bad for America at every level.
Our rich are way worse than their rich.
Our poor are way way way worse than their poor.
Our middle are way worse than their middle.
The only think making America look good is the size of the population is so small compared to China.

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

You just contradicted yourself when you said Who?

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes Tax Americans more than every other country bar China. That's sure to win you votes.
You thought you had a problem with Indian outsourcing now, wait until you realise you are going to also tax them 1/10th your level...

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

America has been headed in the right direction for the last 10 years.

Yet you are still the 2nd worst in total.
Far worse per person than any other decent sized country.
Much worse than any similarly developed country.

What makes you think you are doing good again?

Re:science not emotion

[quenda]

China has 4x the number of people that the US has

Which is a problem. China is terribly overpopulated.
China has less arable land than US, Russia or India. Only twice as much usable land as Australia, but sixty times the population, and 25x the emissions!

Does adding more people to lower their per-capita emissions help or hinder the world?

Would you say that the US is allowed to pollute more because they have more cars and trucks?

Re: science not emotion

[quenda]

To solve the environnement problem, China should split into 10 countries. Any of them would pollute less than the USA.

The 10 countries would still be overpopulated. But credit to China for dealing effectively with population explosion since 1979.
Now we should worry about India and more so Nigeria.

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Manufacturing was moved to China and hence the pollution with it.

Re:science not emotion

[thegarbz]

Nobody here is blaming the average Chinese citizen

Only the Mao government for the unfortunate position at which the last war drew the Chinese border and the number of people who happen to be within that arbitrary line.

What people are doing is blaming the Chinese government for not growing their energy output using sustainable technology.

The Chinese government accounts for half of the global investment in green energy at over $120bn.
In 2017 the Chinese increased this investment by 30% over the previous year.
In 2017 the USA decreased their investment by 6% over the previous year.

Per capita China is spending more that the USA on green energy and the trend is going upwards.
The USA in the meantime seems dedicated to a policy of sticking their head deeper in the sand.

But hey, credit where credit is due. I'm Australian and our government is king of the stupid environmental policies https://www.theguardian.com/au...

Their recent rate of growth was not sustainable

Their recent rate of growth produces a fraction of the CO2 that their past rate of growth has. That's the thing with green energy investment. Speaking of growth and clean energy that never makes the "green" energy news: http://www.world-nuclear-news....

As I said, the USA needs to step up it's game. China is beating you, and investing heavily to beat you even further.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are we to tell the Chinese how fast they need to develop solar and wind? (already the fastest and most money invested in the world)

Why doesn't that work both ways? How long should it take for Americans to drop back to levels comparable with similar countries? We could do it very quickly and easily if we lowered our living standards to that of other places.
Obviously we don't want to do that, we take our time. Why expect developing countries to take their time and stay crappy when there's an alternative? Why can't they be like us, we're certainly not willing to be like them.

Re: science not emotion

[fred6666]

The 10 countries would still be overpopulated.

So? From a CO2 emissions perspective, it doesn't matter if people live in small apartments with no land. Actually it does, people living in small apartments consume less energy and therefore emit less CO2 than those living in big houses in suburbs or rural areas.

My point was that as long as China emits less per capita than the USA, the USA is more to blame for the CO2 problem.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

So how better to solve the problem? Eliminate 300 million Chinese? Much better for the environment to eliminate 300 million Americans.
That's where the problem is.

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA is one of the highest emitters per capita. Now you will probably say that doesn't matter because China still emits more. China could then solve that overnight by splitting itself into two dozen officially separate states under some sort of customs union. The emissions would be unchanged, per capita in total, but be less per nation. And then the USA could respond by claiming it is fifty separate states... Etc.

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who bring up china's emissions tend to be those who use to use big > small to justify not reducing their own emissions. And it's absurd because you can always find some value of small that is big-delta such that big > small, always excusing yourself.

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely the right answer. Can we (USA, China, EU, Somewhereistan) produce the same quality of life for everyone more efficiently?

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

If I am going at 60 in a 30 zone, and decelerating will hit 35 in a little while, I'm currently more of an issue that the person doing 25 in a 30 zone who might hit 35 in a little while, even if we are both going to end up technically speeding at 35.

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Correlation with GDP only makes sense if you are correlating that with exported value. An analogy might be someone who dumps their trash over the fence into their neighbors' yard. If they earn more than their neighbor it doesn't justify the behavior. If they were a policeman serving the community, and the other person was just dealing weed, it still wouldn't be neighbourly, but you might be more prepared to let it pass.

So a better metric might be export/ton of CO2.

But then even that metric is flawed, as you can draw lines on a map to make it look good. E.g. Germany looks amazing on that basis (better than the USA) as it exports a lot. But if you look at the EU, it is less impressive, as a lot of goods travel from one part of the EU to another.

Re:science not emotion

[fred6666]

so you are saying that it doesn't matter what the second largest emitter of the planet does? And one which happens to be one of the higher emitter per capita?

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

China doesn't make a huge proportion of laptops, phones, routers, electronic gizmos, musical instruments, screwdrivers, kettles or toasters used in Western nations. If you subtracted exported carbon and added it to importing, it is probably a better measure, and then importing nations should demand exporting be more efficient.

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

GDP consumed in domestic production benefits those living in that country only, but the pollution is a cost borne by those outside. Pollution /unit GDP is thus a spurious measure to use except to measure efficiency for internal accounting.

Re:science not emotion

[shaitand]

"people who complain about having to cite their sources are people who don't know what the hell they're talking about and most likely can't cite any sources because they are just regurgitating something they read"

You mean like this one? This is an informal message forum, asking for sources is akin to asking for sources at a dinner party. To not have sources is not the same as being wrong and having sources has little to no relationship with knowing what you are talking about. For that matter the veracity of information has no direct connection to the authority of the source at all. A completed fabricated statistic may well be correct. A logical argument supported by one may well be correct. Someone who wants to outlaw dihydrogen monoxide may well be correct about the best way to handle the EPA for all the wrong reasons or after a climatologist or organic chem expert converts their argument through a filter of logical charity into the strongest argument they can make it.

In any case, good luck with asking others to verify information for you and with the faulty conclusions that comes from trusting information or not based on their ability to pull a citation out of memory in a setting where academic citations aren't merited. Unlike providing a contrary source or failing to find support for their claim calling for them to provide a source adds nothing legitimate. I will continue to make sure people know you are being contrary with random comments simply because you don't like them and that you in turn... aren't citing any sources.

Re:science not emotion

[shaitand]

The US is a country, the per country statistics define what a country's emissions are. How is that misleading? Per capita not only is a red herring to distract you from the actual bottom line but also from the impact measures would have. The US has a dramatically smaller population, any sort of measure to curb emissions would have a smaller impact. There are lot more homes in China than the US, switching them to solar water heating is going to have a much more substantial impact.

Of course we both know that isn't true, because China has a few highly developed areas that emit most of the pollution. Solar water heaters only help where you've actually developed your nation enough to benefit from them. If you only counted the people in areas developed to US equivalent level or above your per capita statistics wouldn't be likely to favor China at all and if you pretend China is not continuing to expand the developed portion of its nation while failing to improve the greenhouse gas factor you'd also be willfully misleading.

In conclusion, accounting for the full logical argument improvements in China would almost certainly have a stronger immediate impact and impact over time than changes in the US. That isn't to say the US isn't exporting emissions to China or that China's emissions justify the US ignoring the problem. That is more than I care to get into, I'm just saying the per capita statistics are being brought up for political expediency in making an oversimplified argument to avoid admitting fault or paying for improvements in China.

Re:science not emotion

[iggymanz]

per capital irrelevant, china emits more than twice what the USA does and is growing. Soon India too will pass up the USA

we should judge countries because the USA doesn't matter

Re:science not emotion

[drinkypoo]

So how better to solve the problem? Eliminate 300 million Chinese? Much better for the environment to eliminate 300 million Americans.
That's where the problem is.

The solution is not eliminating people, it's addressing failures of government. Americans and Chinese alike will do better if their governments demand it.

Re: science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

and in relation to the population?

china has 4 times the population of the USA.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

But the American government is much worse. 1/2 China with about 4.5x the people...
If Chinese were as polluting as Americans, GOD save us cause it would be unstoppable.

Re:science not emotion

[easyTree]

With greater technological avantage comes greater freedom to get creative on reducing per-capita emmisions. Where there's a will, there's a way.

Re:science not emotion

[easyTree]

Yes, only when the US produces 1g or more of emissions per year than China is there a problem.

Re:science not emotion

[easyTree]

I started to type "I'm not sure there's political will to avoid a global catastrophe", intended somewhat ironically but then that does appear to be the actuality, based on the logic employed in USAHQ.

Re:science not emotion

[easyTree]

Action can be crowdsourced. All it takes is a miniscule efficiency tweak by everyone on the planet for massive gains.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you really mean to say the Chinese government is over twice as good as the US?

Re: science not emotion

[bluefoxlucid]

The effort to put out the hospital, if given constricted resources, will save more lives per unit of energy expended extinguishing building fires; thus you put out the hospital fire first due to the higher per-capita access to lifesaving emergency services in this triage strategy.

You do actually have to feed people. If you have 1,000,000 people to feed and the next town over has 1,000, the large town can reduce its per-capita CO2 output to meet that of the small town by letting 999,000 people starve to death. By contrast, if the town of 1,000 has 1/200 of the CO2 output of the large town, it can take up the technological processes of the larger town and reduce its CO2 output by 80%, whereas the large town is already at the forefront and will have more difficulty making a proportional decrease--and will only need to reduce its output by 0.4% to achieve the same total reduction.

You do understand twice as many people mean twice as much food and water necessary, right? Do you buy the same amount of dog food every month after getting a second dog?

Re:science not emotion

[sexconker]

So, does that mean that if I personally emit only 9 million Kt of CO2, it's cool because it's less than China?

If you're providing value (economic, industrial, agricultural, etc. etc.) to the world on a scale that justifies it, then yes, it's cool.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/0...

India is dropping.

Oh you didn't mean currency.
India is far below the US. Only the king of idiots would be calling on them to drop.

Re:science not emotion

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is a country, the per country statistics define what a country's emissions are. How is that misleading?

Because it doesn't tell the most important information -- how well people are doing, how well they are meeting their targets, how wasteful they tend to be.
If one group of 10 people generate 10x emissions, and another group of 30 people generate 15x emissions, who is doing better? Which group needs to work harder to improve? IE, which group is more wasteful, which group is generating more than their fair share? If the country of Lichtenstein suddenly started generating 1/5th of the emissions of the USA, we'd want to REALLY lean on Lichtenstein, even though the US is a much larger target.

I think you have a good point about the impact of various measures, going after larger, low-hanging fruit. What we are seeing is that the more that other countries like China and India industrialize, the more their per-capita pollutants rise, and that's truly alarming. That's why I think per-capita emissions are more important. Everyone is going to want to do the things that the most-successful are doing. Everyone's going to want to increase their emissions to USA's levels.

Re:science not emotion

[shaitand]

"Because it doesn't tell the most important information -- how well people are doing, how well they are meeting their targets, how wasteful they tend to be."

That would only be important if the objective were to make people stop being wasteful and correct their behavior. The objective is to reduce greenhouse gas and resolve the negative effects of climate change. The ideal solution would be one that requires no significant change in human behavior or consumption at all and further would support unlimited growth of the same.

That isn't likely to happen anytime soon but in the meantime where changes need to made to have the largest impact is what matters. I think we agree on that much at least. I don't entirely disagree with you about having metrics but entire nations aren't as meaningful in a per capita sense. It actually might make more sense to split things up into emission per square mile/km. That should start highlighting the bad apples pretty quickly.

"What we are seeing is that the more that other countries like China and India industrialize, the more their per-capita pollutants rise, and that's truly alarming. That's why I think per-capita emissions are more important. Everyone is going to want to do the things that the most-successful are doing. Everyone's going to want to increase their emissions to USA's levels."

My conclusion is just the opposite. The most successful aren't the US. China, South Korea, Singapore, all have areas with infrastructure to put the US to shame. It is far easier to head off the activities of these nations and more effective.

As for fair share, it isn't a given that is a per-capita figure either. Over population shouldn't be rewarded, it is the problem, even in the US.

idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least it's good for some corporations.

Eh, he's right

[Anonymous Coward]

We're going to burn all the things. We should be focused on what to do about that.

You think an impoverished dude in Indonesia isn't going to burn all the things ? What are we going to do to stop him? Start a war ... burning all the things ?

Maybe we have co2 sinks, maybe we pepper the ocean / clouds with *whatever* - but we ARE GOING TO BURN ALL THE THINGS.

Sure but...

[mujadaddy]

It looks smaller in Celsius!

Re:Sure but...

[quenda]

FFS! Please put "Fahrenheit" in the subject line!

I know it is only a slashdot headline, but the thought of a 7 degree increase that soon gave me a brief panic. 4 degrees in my kids' lifetime is bad enough.

Even the United States uses metric units for science.

Re:Sure but...

[Anonymous Coward]

And, something else looks bigger in cm than inches. Metric FTW!

Sensible

[110010001000]

Since the EU and Asia has only increased their emissions year after year it makes sense. The EU in particular increased their carbon emissions by 1.7 percent in 2017. The problem will continue to exist until countries reduce their emissions.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

Not sure why I was marked troll. The EU has increased their carbon emissions by 1.7 percent in 2017. This is a fact, not a troll.

Re:Sensible

[GameboyRMH]

It's probably the cherry-picking. Although the US did better than the EU in 2017, if you look at the last decade or more, they're on a similar reduction trend, and Asia (mostly China) has also reduced emissions sharply in recent years, although from a very high level.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

You are absolutely a troll for conveniently omitting that the US has the greatest emissions per capita in the world, and its federal administration is staffed by climate change deniers.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

What makes it a troll? The EU and Asia continue to raise their carbon emissions. A global rise of 7 percent F is a very sensible projection. It makes no difference if the US changes their car emissions standards: it isn't going to help or hurt. I think Europeans just get upset when I point out that they are all talk and no action.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

citation needed

Re:Sensible

[LynnwoodRooster]

You were marked troll because people don't want to believe the facts if they run counter to their world-view of USA evil. China and the EU - in fact, pretty much the rest of the world - saw their emissions rise. China emits the most CO2 by a large margin. But somehow it's always twisted around to be the US' fault. Reminding people of the actual facts is now considered a near-hate-crime so you were modded troll.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

Actually the US trend is much better than the EU trend. But I guess reality doesn't matter in 2018, just perception.

Re:Sensible

[GameboyRMH]

http://www.climatechangenews.c...

Re:Sensible

[GameboyRMH]

Look at the graph on the page I linked here:

https://slashdot.org/comments....

Show me how the US trend is much better...or better at all.

Re:Sensible

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Isolated facts that appear to be purposefully isolated in that specific manner in order to obscure the big picture could reasonably be interpreted as trolling.

I am not offering an opinion on whether that applies to your earlier post BTW.

Re:Sensible

[LynnwoodRooster]

Germany is being fined 2 billion euros because it missed it's CO2 commitment by 3%. But that's just cherry-picking again, right?

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

You were marked troll because you're trolling.

Even if EU emissions did rise by 1.7% in 2017, that EU still only has emissions of 3.6million for a population of 535million vs. the US' 5.5million for a population of 330million.

That means the US still pollutes grossly more than the EU both overall and per capita.

It's easy to reduce when you've got so much low hanging fruit, but not so easy when you've already done way better.

The only reason to bring up the EU in an article about the US is to try and justify the US' massive amounts of carbon emissions, and the only way you could do that was to cherry pick.

But when you look at the real picture - that the US still pollutes way more than the EU both in absolute value and per capita then it tells a different story - and that's why you're trolling, because you're cherry picking to try and push an agenda, which is really no different to lying, which is trolling.

Re: Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

*crickets*

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah our fate is sealed if China India and the eu are all going whole hog to increase emissions.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

No one can read a graph like that. Look at the raw numbers and you will clearly see that the US is on a better reduction trend than the EU. I know it hurts Europeans to hear it, because they think they are progressive, but their greenhouse gas emissions rose 1.7% in 2017, and it looks like 2018 is going to be worse, so the numbers don't lie. It just shows all the promises and treaties don't mean a thing. A global temperature rise of 7 degree F is very feasible at this point.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

I looked. That graph is not very accurate and is produced as a rough graph for journalistic purposes. You need to look at the raw numbers. In addition, the EU has increased its carbon emissions in 2017 by 1.7%. You guys talk a good game though!

Re:Sensible

[GameboyRMH]

No, it's a red herring. It doesn't affect the CO2 emissions record.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

How does that change anything I said? I didn't say anything about the US. All I said is that the EU increased their crabon output as did Asia. I didn't say anything about the US. You Europeans get triggered easily by facts, but that isn't my fault. You need to clean up your act. A 7 percent change in climate is very feasible and having the EU and Asia increase their carbon output is hurting, not helping.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

My point was that the EU and Asia were increasing their emissions in 2017. The US has not. The point is that the projection of a 7 degree rise in temperature is sensible because there aren't any real reduction efforts going on. You guys are too sensitive. Learn to take criticism.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

What facts am I "isolating"? The EU and Asia have been increasing their emissions. That means that there is no progress, and thus a climate change is likely. I hardly think that is trolling.

Re:Sensible

[Zocalo]

Oh, come on Kendall, it's all down to how you fit the curve to the data points (oblig. XKCD) and you know it. Depending on the approach you use, you can make any one of the lines in that graph other than India's have the best overall downward trend over the next few years. It's lies, damn lies, and statistics, pure and simple, so unless the person making the claim that A is doing better than B is caveating it with their methodology they're just as credible/full of it as someone claiming that B is doing better than A.

Re:Sensible

[GameboyRMH]

Also, regarding your sig, have any Nazis other than Jakiw Palij been deported under Trump?

You might also want to note that he didn't just deport a Nazi, but a Nazi war criminal. People who adhere to Hitler's national-socialist ideology, wear swastikas, and perform Nazi salutes but who have not committed war crimes, have not been deported, but rather referred to as "very fine people" by Trump himself. Very different treatment.

Re:Sensible

[LynnwoodRooster]

It just documents and confirms the record - German emissions (and EU emissions) as a whole are up; US emissions are down.

Re:Sensible

[LynnwoodRooster]

How many were deported by President Obama or President Bush?

Re:Sensible

[Reaper9889]

I agree! If EU continues like this, then, in just a few years the average European will produce HALF as much as the average American!

I do not know the total emission by Asia and I could not be bothered to calculate it by adding up the countries, but the average person in Asia still produces much less than the average American.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

Correct. The European trend upwards is concerning. The trends should be downward. Unfortunately the EU and Asia trends are upwards. I am glad you agree with me.

Re:Sensible

[GameboyRMH]

Show me a graph that supports your point then. 2017 is just one year, stop cherry picking and show me a trend.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

I'm not going to do your homework for you. The fact is that the EU increased their emissions by 1.7% in 2017 and 2018 looks worse. I am sorry that hurts your feelings, but those are the facts. Until the trends are downward (and significantly downward) there is still a problem. That is why I said the projection is sensible.

Re:Sensible

[GameboyRMH]

In the last year, yes, that's the cherry picking I was complaining about. Look at the larger trend, not just the last two data points.

Re:Sensible

[MrL0G1C]

Use the flag, users who abuse mod points like that shouldn't get mod points.

I am surprised Europe isn't doing better, the UK has been doing a good job of reducing CO2, but we tories in power now and they're only paying lip-service to doing anything. They're more keen on doing the most crony things possible and wasting huge amounts of money on white elephants like hinkley.

Re:Sensible

[GameboyRMH]

Stop this cherry picking nonsense involving only the last two data points of many, there are only three ways out of this for you:

1: Find a credible source for a graph that backs your assertion regarding the US vs. EU CO2 emissions trends.
2: STFU
3: Accept your status as a liar and continue lying.

Re:Sensible

[jbengt]

Three were deported by ICE under Obama.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

Yes the UK has been doing very well, and had a marked decrease in 2017. Unfortunately Spain, France and Italy and some of the other countries are not doing the same and have been increasing their emissions in 2017.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

The most recent data points are the most important ones. The trend should be downward, not upwards. Not sure what you aren't understanding. The EU is going in the wrong direction.

Re: Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly you didn't say anything about the US in an article specifically about a report from the US.

Re:Sensible

[GameboyRMH]

You clearly don't understand how trends work:

https://study.com/academy/less...

https://serc.carleton.edu/quan...

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare you bring facts into the discussion?

Re: Sensible

[110010001000]

Ah, I didn't realize I had to say something about the US too. How about: the US has been decreasing their emissions, unlike the EU which increased their emissions in 2017? Would that help you guys out?

Re:Sensible

[GameboyRMH]

You seem to not understand trends. Educate yourself.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem will continue to exist until countries reduce their emissions.

How would you propose solving that problem?

Re:Sensible

[Reaper9889]

Sure, I agree that it would be better if the trends in EU and Asia were downward.

I just do not see any way that this fact means that the US, who is a lot worse than either, can point to them and say that they, the US, need do nothing.

In a nut shell, the problem is not the trends. The problem is the absolute numbers (per person)!

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

Either way, the EU is headed in the wrong direction. They increased their emissions in 2017 and it is going to be even worse in 2018. Sorry you are so upset about it, but no reason to take it out on me!

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

Thanks. The trend for EU is upwards, not downwards. 2018 will be even worse. Truth hurts I guess. Did you get your Tesla yet? It might help.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

It wuold be "better'? Christ, it is critical that this happens, not just "better". When did I say the US needed to do nothing? Yes, the problem IS the trends. If countries emit MORE (like the EU did in 2017) then the problem gets WORSE. The trend should be downwards. You guys are denialists!

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem wrong. Look at eurostat, there has been a lot of action, and further regulation and investments into cleaner energy and railroads and the like continue:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Greenhouse_gas_emission_statistics

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:CO2_emissions_%E2%80%94_production_and_consumption_perspective,-_EU-28,_2008-2016_(index_2008_%3D_100).png

Re:Sensible

[WindBourne]

EU has done a good job of lowering their emissions over the last 20 years.
America has done a good job over the last 10 years. Note that the first 10 years, America was still continuing up.
Asia is a fucking disaster. China is not only building out massive new coal plants (not just replacing old ones), but, is building out another 300+ GW of new coal plants around Asia, Africa, and South America, along with another 300+ GW in China, just over the next 2-3 years.

Re:Sensible

[Reaper9889]

From 2010 to 2016, emission in Europe has gone from 6137 to 5608 (I think million ton CO_2). Yes, it is bad that it is not getting better every year, but these are quite complex things to change, so it seems reasonable that it takes a few years.

Data from http://globalcarbonatlas.org/e...

Re:Sensible

[N1AK]

The EU emits less than half as much per capita as America and accounts for about a 1/3rd less emissions than America. It's a convenient dodge to try and point the finger elsewhere but most of the world and plenty of American's won't fall for it. It's especially unhelpful when this exercise in handwaving is being used to distract from US administration attempts to allow more polluting.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

"A lot of action"

Yeah, a lot of shiny glossy reports coming out and nice dinners while they discuss things and sign treaties. Meanwhile the EU has increased their emissions in 2017 by 1.7%. You guys are in denial.

Re: Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are my favorite person on Slashdot, and your patience to keep fighting the rest is remarkable. I gave up and became AC long ago.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

I don't agree that it is reasonable. After all the planet is at stake. Why does the EU allow their emissions to increase in 2017 (and worse in 2018)? You are in denial. The only reason it went down in 2010 to 2016 is due to a recession.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

Obviously more Paris accords need to be signed and more glossy EU reports need to be produced. Apparently that is the solution.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

No, the EU has NOT been doing a "good job". Their emissions INCREASED in 2017 and will be worse in 2018. The EU trend is not enough, and is getting worse. How is that a "good job"? You guys are denialists.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

Again, you guys can't take criticism. It always "but look at America"! The EU is increasing their emissions, not decreasing it. In 2017 they went UP. 2018 will be worse. Until countries get serious about reducing emissions there will be no solution to the climate change problem. The report is sensible in making reasonable projections for warming targets. Changing the car emissions standards in the US will make no difference to the issue. I know you guys have been brainwashed into thinking Europe==good==green, but it is not true. Sorry the truth hurts.

Re: Sensible

[110010001000]

There are only a few types I dislike: space nutters, technocrats, AI nutters and Eurosnobs. Typically they are the same people.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

America has done a terrible job any way you look at it.
The 2nd highest absolute level in the world.
Twice the percapita of Europe, twice the percapita of China even.
To think you are doing good just shows how far up your ass your head must be.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

Who said the US was doing "good"? I merely mentioned that EU has been increasing their emissions, not decreasing them. They went up in 2017. I fail to understand the anger.

Re:Sensible

[Reaper9889]

You, in your original post, state that it is sensible for the US to do nothing, because in the last year EU and Asia has gotten worse. Doing this you are disregarding that in the years before that they have gotten better - e.g. EU went from 6137 to 5608 from 2010 to 2016. Using your 1.7% EU is at 5704 in 2017. Yes, that is worse, but it is still much better than just a few years before.

Regarding trends vs. absolute numbers: If we had a million times less global emission, global warming would not change much based on even a doubling of emission from that. Thus, the problem is the absolute numbers and not the trend.

Numbers from http://globalcarbonatlas.org/e...

Re:Sensible

[cyberchondriac]

Facts are facts, and these facts are germane to the discussion.

Re:Sensible

[thegarbz]

But somehow it's always twisted around to be the US' fault.

When your emissions per capita start getting as low as the people you criticise then we can talk about giving the USA a pass. Until then, fuck you for being the most polluting people in the world.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

I never said it was sensible for the US to do nothing! The US needs to reduce its emissions too (by more than it is now). I said it the report was sensible, because the 7 degree rise in temperature was accurate, considering the EU and Asia are choosing to INCREASE their emissions, not reduce them. What the US does with car emissions won't make any meaningful difference. And basic math tells you if the trend increases the absolute number increases as well. You guys are so overly sensitive when someone dares to criticise your holy EU.

Re:Sensible

[Kielistic]

You can't raise everyone in your country into the lap of energy-wasting luxury and cut emissions. The two are intrinsically linked. China can have a better emissions rate per capita because so many of their people live under conditions Americans would consider oppression.

Re:Sensible

[mujadaddy]

The only reason it went down in 2010 to 2016 is due to a recession.

This is in line with what I said earlier and was completely misinterpreted by the greens.

Re:Sensible

[AmiMoJo]

Here's the official data: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/...

EU CO2 emissions have been falling for a long time. There has been a bit of a stall recently due to a bit of a transition, but we are still on track for some very aggressive targets. The IEA is predicting wind to be the dominant source of electricity in 2027, with coal down to just 10%.

https://arstechnica.com/scienc...

Re:Sensible

[AmiMoJo]

Everyone knows that China's emissions are still rising. It was accepted that they would have to peak instead of falling immediately. And China is well ahead of the curve of where it agreed to be.

See, environmentalists are not calling for economic suicide as is often claimed. They worked with China to come up with sensible, workable proposals and got them accepted. Expecting them to stop growing instantly is unrealistic and would just ruin any negotiation or hope of tackling the issue.

And so now you switch from claiming they are trying to send us back to the stone age to pointing out that emissions are still rising so it's all failing anyway.

We can keep warning under 2C if China keeps up its efforts and we keep pushing the targets.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

> It makes no difference if the US changes their car emissions standards: it isn't going to help or hurt.

Of course it makes a difference. The difference might be small, but that's a different issue. So, give up and don't even try to be more efficient? Is there truly no other incentive to having more fuel efficient vehicles besides a slight reduction in CO2 as a result?

Of course there is: less emissions of other types (NOx, SO2, etc.), reduced fuel demand and therefore prices (the US still net imports over 3 million barrels of oil a day, which is money flowing out of the country to the tune of billions a year), and probably less road wear because of the strong correlation between vehicle weight and efficiency (i.e. lower taxpayer cost for roads).

The reality is, even if you ignore CO2 emissions, stopping efficiency improvement standards is stupid.

> I think Europeans just get upset when I point out that they are all talk and no action.

A slower rate of rise is still progress. It's not *enough* progress, but it is better than doing nothing.

Re:Sensible

[archer, the]

Are you really going to say an American should be allowed 3 times the carbon output of a Chinese citizen? If you aren't willing to cut your own output significantly, you have no right to bitch about another human, regardless of whether they are your neighbor or on the other side of the planet.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry you can handle the fact that per capita US produces 260% more CO2 than EU... now tell us how many year EU will need until it reaches the same level of emission than the US (per capita) with an increase of 1.7% to level thing out? Until that time USA is not doing enough straight simple.

 

Re:Sensible

[Reaper9889]

Ahh! I (and I think many others based on the posts) read the title "sensible" to be for the last line of the summery and not the title.

It is true that what the US does with car emission won't make a meaningful difference, in the same sense that a relative small change anywhere does not make a meaningful difference if that is the only thing. But it would make some difference if the US got anywhere close to the current amount of emission per person of either EU or Asia. That does require making a lot of small changes like that.

I disagree that one year is a meaningful length of time for this kind of thing. It is like doing a diet and looking at the day-to-day changes. Sure, one day the person weight a bit more and one day a bit less. There is too much noise (like the person is slightly more to the one side of the weight than normal or similar) in that to be truly a good way to measure the weight. Similarly, one year of change in carbon emission is a very noisy measure. Pick a bigger number, like 5 or 10 years.

Regarding the math comment: Sure. But as you also just said, if there is no meaningful difference it does not matter. There would be no meaningful difference for climate change even with a doubling of the CO_2 production, if the absolute amount of CO_2 emission were much much smaller (this is because there are many other things that contributes to climate change besides CO_2 production). E.g. 51+0.0001 is not meaningfully different from 51+0.0002, even though the additional number in the second is twice as big.

Btw. I am unsure about why you keep on making ad hominem attacks. I am fairly sure that I have said nothing negative about you as a person.
I did agree with you that EU should do better. I just also said that the US needs to improve much more, which should be comparatively easy. It is much easier to cut 10% out of daily food budget of 10$ than cutting 10% out of a daily food budget of 5$.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

No one can read a graph like that.

I didn't think it was that hard to read the graph. I think it shows that both US and EU emissions have declined, but that the US's emissions declined more of a percentage in the past decade. That's counterbalanced by the 20 years of much more rapid emissions growth previously. But it doesn't change that the US has declined faster than the EU has. I can't say for sure WHY, but I suspect that while many emissions types have dropped in the EU, it's been counter-balanced by the precipitous decline of nuclear power.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

But somehow it's always twisted around to be the US' fault.

This is why there are climate change deniers and more people are becoming apathetic. Even when the US makes progress, they are still criticized. Gives zero incentive to do anything but be selfish after that.

Why spend resources and reduce quality of life if everyone else does nothing concrete and blame you regardless?

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean facts like every other country over the last decade has had a much higher reduction rate than the US? Or US still has the highest carbon footprint by 2x per population wise. The rest of the world knows US is full of greedy self-centered people.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm not going to do your homework for you.

LOL.

Whilst trends are important it's absolute numbers that are key and, currently, the US emissions are approximately twice per capita those of the EU.
Given that it's difficult to believe you're too stupid to understand what is being said, the only possible conclusion is that you're a dickhead.

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

Correct. The US isn't doing enough. Where did I say it was? Stop being so hurt.

Re:Sensible

[LynnwoodRooster]

You mean facts like every other country over the last decade has had a much higher reduction rate than the US?

[Citation needed]

Re:Sensible

[110010001000]

No, you Eurosnobs jumped on me because I DARED to point out that the EU has been INCREASING their emissions in 2017, not decreasing. You can make all the excuses you want, but the EU is headed in the wrong direction. The US is as well, but we don't have an excuse for everything and pretend that signing accords are going to do a darned thing.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

> Since the EU and Asia has only increased their emissions year after year it makes sense.

The rise in Asia comes from outsoured ex-US manufacture, but the produce (shoes, clotching, LCD screens, everything and more) as still consumed by americans, carried by a huge fleet of very large cargo container ships across the Pacific ocean.

E.g. the average american person purchases 9 (nine) pairs of shoes every year, which is completely unnecessary from a practical point of view and is simply greed. Smartphones are replaced every 6-12 months over subjective issues like TV ads for next gen device, boredom, peer pressure. Why blame Asia for the wastefulness of the totalitarian US consumer culture, where the value of people are measured by their purchasing frenzy?

As for the EU, a lot of new members are ex-soviet satellite states, were consumer culture didn't exist due to lack of supply in un-efficient planned economy (empty shelves in stores were the norm during communism). People there are now building ranch houses to move from 10-storey pre-fabricated concrete blocks of flats, buying cars where only public transport had been allowed by the reds, mobile phone and data networks are established, highways are built. That means a lot of activity and emissions and the EU central budget finances the catch-up of the eastern EU members.

That much is necessary, else the EU would be split internally and erupt in war due to extreme inequality of wealth and development within the continent. Don't forget that both World Wars thus far started in Europe and USA eventually became involved with both with a large loss of life. The EU has just that simple stated purpose above and before anything else: to prevent another major war starting in Europe and spreading to the rest of the world like wildfire. And still, the average EU emission per capita is only 45% that of USA.

Re:Sensible

[Quantum gravity]

According to the International Energy Agency (https://www.iea.org/geco/emissions/):

"Emissions in the European Union grew by 1.5%, adding almost 50 Mt of CO2, reversing some of the progress made in recent years mainly due to robust growth in oil and gas use."

As for China: "China’s economy grew nearly 7% last year but emissions increased by just 1.7% (or 150 Mt) thanks to continued renewables deployment and faster coal-to-gas switching."

And as for the US: "The biggest decline came from the United States, where emissions dropped by 0.5%, or 25 Mt, to 4 810 Mt of CO2, marking the third consecutive year of decline."

The US emissions have been declining for about the last ten years or so, and as for the EU the trend was decreasing steadily for the last twenty years. And for China the sharp increase the last 25 years appears to have mostly leveled of.

If you want to make comparisons the emissions per capita for China it is 7.7, for the US 16.1 and for the EU 6.9.

Re:Sensible

[Sir_Eptishous]

Your posts here are some of the most ridiculous nonsense I've seen regarding climate change and carbon emissions.
Please do some research before you post and make yourself look the fool.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

You were marked troll because people don't want to believe the facts if they run counter to their world-view of USA evil.

Woody-Lynn and his Numbered Pal never stopped enjoying having their balls licked by dogs.
See, I too can spew facts that are the best kind of correct.

BTW, your ass pollutes less than half as much as Texas. You can be proud of that!

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

You were marked troll because people don't want to believe the facts if they run counter to their world-view of USA evil

Oh, come now, nobody has said the US are evil (OK, Iran does say that sometimes), we've said you're assholes.

It's an important distinction.

Re: Sensible

[TimMD909]

Trolling with facts is called 'education.' Trolling with lies or distortions is 'asshattery.'

Re: Sensible

[Reaper9889]

Look, you keep focusing on 1 number (relative change in the EU over the last year) and dont explain why this is the most important.

Let me come with an attempt for most important relative number (I still think absolute is better but fine): it is reasonably well-known that when you are talking climate, the standard periode of time to look over is 30 years. If you look over the last 30 years, EU has cut roughhly 1/3 and the US 1/4.

To argue that 1 year is the wrong amount of time, observe that it has roughly proceeded as follows over those 30years in EU: it is relative stable for some years followed by a sharp decline, then relative stable for some years followed by a sharp decline and so on. Yes, we entered a relative stable periode 3 years ago and as part of that went up a bit (1.7% is a bit compared to the 5% to 10% of a sharp decline). That is ok as long as we can continue the overall pattern!

Btw. I have not attacked you personally but you keep on doing that to me. While I understand the US political system (i.e. 2 parties) and culture (most people live around people with similar pov) makes attacks more attractive on people that belive something else, it still makes it harder to convince others.

Re:Sensible

[drinkypoo]

China can have a better emissions rate per capita because so many of their people live under conditions Americans would consider oppression.

We could have a better emissions rate per capita under better conditions if we would spend more of our manufacturing capacity on wind and solar and if we had widespread pushes for higher efficiency. We're effectively throwing a whole lot of energy away, which AFAICT only really benefits energy companies.

Re:Sensible

[dryeo]

What is the European trend? You just keep parroting one number (possibly 2) instead of a trend. If a country or area drops 10% each year for a few years then goes up by 2% for a few years, it is still a downward trend.
You're like a space nutter, repeating the same shit over and over without considering the whole picture.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not European or American, so I don't care either way, but you are making a complete ass of yourself in this thread. Maybe you could try reading your posts from other people's point of view and you will see it for yourself.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

Lying scumbag WindBourne, who they replied to.

Re:Sensible

[thegarbz]

You can't raise everyone in your country into the lap of energy-wasting luxury and cut emissions.

No America can't. Too insistent on burning coal to generate luxury.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

2 data points don't make a trend.

Re:Sensible

[Anonymous Coward]

Caffeinated Bacon/Crimson Tsunami;
Always getting your head pounded by whoever's cock you are sucking on. You are such a lying and trolling douche.

Re:Sensible

[strikethree]

Are you really going to say an American should be allowed 3 times the carbon output of a Chinese citizen?

It is not the citizens of either country that are directing the CO2 output of either country. It is the corporations and governments doing so. It is uselessly stupid to measure by population.

To take it to an absurd example: Let's say that all manufacturing happened in one country with only one citizen. Is it useful to say that a single individual is blowing out gigatons of CO2? Ok, it is useful. Let's penalize him by executing that person. Now, what about the billions of people who were relying on that manufacturing?

They're just going by what the consensus said

[Spy Handler]

The analysis assumes the planet's fate is already sealed.

Leading climate scientists issued dire warnings many years ago, "We have 5 years to cut carbon emissions by ____ amount or the global warming will be irreversable"

Well, the deadline already passed quite a while ago and carbon emissions not only did not get cut, we kept increasing them. So yeah, if you go strictly by what the scientists said, planet's fate IS already sealed. Nothing we can do now will fix the irreversable warming that will doom the planet.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Anonymous Coward]

source for that quote?

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Anonymous Coward]

Civilization will adapt itself to higher temperatures. There is no doubt about it. There is no reason to panic. It will happen because it always does; there have always been challenges to civilization and we've always adapted. How do I know this? Because we're here. Hell, if we spend a lot of time and resources to adapt to our new warmer reality, maybe it will mean less time and fewer resources devoted to killing each other.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[GameboyRMH]

And here we have it folks, the endgame of climate denialism/conspiracism - climate obstructionism disguised as climate defeatism.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[GameboyRMH]

Waste heat isn't the problem, it's the atmosphere's capability to retain heat which mostly comes from the sun. Human-generated waste heat is a gnat's fart in the Cat6 hurricane of the sun's heat.

Re: They're just going by what the consensus said

[Anonymous Coward]

We donâ(TM)t live in a closed system. It is possible to remove the excess heat. We just need time for technology to get there. Its suicidal to refuse to do anything until we have a 100% complete solution.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Anonymous Coward]

So no point in steering now? I mean, I guess it's not going to affect me, we're probably not going to slow down the rate of warming during my lifetime and I don't have any kids to worry about, but I'm not so ridiculously selfish that I'm going to knowingly make things even worse for future generations. At some point we have some viable geoengineering solutions, but the more we add now, the more difficult it is going to be for future generations to mitigate it. What I'm trying to say is: don't be such an asshole.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[mujadaddy]

Cool, now convince me that attempting to engineer the atmosphere *consciously* is going to go exactly how you plan it.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[GameboyRMH]

Convince me that trying to *consciously* engineer the atmosphere is not as good an idea as continuing to negligently and now *consciously* make it worse, particularly if we were to make it better by sequestering the CO2 we've released.

We're already centuries into an unplanned and unmanaged atmospheric engineering experiment.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Rick Schumann]

Do you not understand what 'greenhouse gasses' are? Or are you being intentionally dumb, what, for laughs? Trollololol, perhaps?

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Rick Schumann]

Bullshit. You're an intellectual coward.

Re: They're just going by what the consensus said

[Rick Schumann]

The 'technology' already exists, it consists of ceasing to dump assloads of CO2 into the atmosphere (mainly by not burning fossil fuels anymore) coupled with planting more forrests and other plants that magically eat up CO2 and produce O2. Might take a century but the reduction of CO2 would mean a reduction in trapped heat buildup and eventually a cooler planet.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Anonymous Coward]

Waste heat is still a problem locally. Different problem though.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Rick Schumann]

I mean, I guess it's not going to affect me, we're probably not going to slow down the rate of warming during my lifetime and I don't have any kids to worry about

..and THAT is precisely the attitude that way too many people have, which is what brings us to this point of crisis: "doesn't affect ME, why should I care?". Humans, stop being so gods-be-damned myopic!

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[GameboyRMH]

I do, where do you think I've made a mistake?

I'm not saying that the atmosphere's capability to retain heat isn't affected by greenhouse gases, if I wasn't clear there. I'm saying that human-generated waste heat is a negligible problem compared to human-released greenhouse gases increasing the atmosphere's capability to retain heat, and practically all of that heat comes from the sun.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Dragonslicer]

...an increase in global GDP will always have waste heat. That's a law of physics.

I guess we skipped that chapter in my physics textbook.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[GameboyRMH]

Even waste heat isn't a problem beyond individual building scale. Urban heat islands are a problem, but that's not the same as waste heat.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Rick Schumann]

Okay.. but I don't think anyone is concerned about human-caused waste-heat, it's our greenhouse gas generation that's causing the problem overall. That plus destruction of natural CO2 conversion (i.e. rainforests, and so on) are what are causing solar radiation to be trapped in our atmosphere; anyone who thinks it's human-generated waste heat clearly doesn't understand the problem.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Anonymous Coward]

>climate denialism/conspiracism
>climate obstructionism
>climate defeatism.

lol. climate hysteria

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[GameboyRMH]

I agree. This poster was (incorrectly) concerned about waste heat though.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[mujadaddy]

It's not an experiment. This is where we live.

I'm all for reducing emissions (I'm a solar+pebble beds guy, myself), because it makes sense to reduce emissions to have clean air.

But my point, simplified beyond the ability of the greens to notice its wisdom, natch, is that entropy increases, and it's not possible to reverse it. If it took centuries to DO it, it is going to take at least DOUBLE that to get back to whatever the utopian ideal carbon emission is.

So pack some canned food and a shotgun.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the world and environment favor and stop breathing. Your CO2 is destroying the planet.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Anonymous Coward]

Waste heat isn't the problem, it's the atmosphere's capability to retain heat which mostly comes from the sun

Yeah so fuck it, right?

Seriously though, how about we look for possible SOLUTIONS instead of trying to point the finger at someone/something else? I can't believe we aren't all banding together as a species to FIX THE ISSUE, REGARDLESS OF THE REASON(S). Not to sound alarmist but the human species (as well as most others) will be fucking goners before we all agree on working on a solution to cool the planet, or GTF off of it to survive. But, as a friend recently said (regrettably), 'Well humans had a good run'. What a way to die out, to just fucking give up. Fuck.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[mujadaddy]

You don't know me. Come at me with some words that form a position with which I disagree and you'll find out which of us is a coward.

Please note I didn't say we shouldn't be reducing emissions. Please attempt to argue with what I said.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[mujadaddy]

"Entropy increases"? You skipped that?

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[mujadaddy]

Ohhhhh, I see, you were aiming at me.

I'm all for reducing emissions (I'm a solar+pebble beds guy, myself), because it makes sense to reduce emissions to have clean air. But my point, simplified beyond the ability of the greens to notice its wisdom, natch, is that entropy increases, and it's not possible to reverse it. If it took centuries to DO it, it is going to take at least DOUBLE that to get back to whatever the utopian ideal carbon emission is.

So pack some canned food and a shotgun.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Dragonslicer]

I certainly don't remember it saying anything about global GDP.

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up faggot

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[mujadaddy]

Let's reset, because you completely missed the point of what I said, and instead attacked what I had not said.

Did I say that "waste heat is the problem"?

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[mujadaddy]

Wow, you really are a literalist, eh?

Let's reset: Does entropy increase? If so, would human activity, an organizing activity, increase entropy?

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Barsteward]

In the grand scheme of things, we've only been on the planet for a short time relative to the age of the earth (unless you are young earth creationist). Just wait until it gets too hot/cold for anything to grow..

Re:They're just going by what the consensus said

[Anonymous Coward]

This was always the endgame -- delay, delay, deny, and obstruct, until it's too late. Then switch your argument to "well, it's too late to do anything about it, so why should I do anything about it?" Nothing else matters beyond "I got mine, and I don't care if everyone else has to pay for it."

Nuclear power is the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Greens hate fossile fuel. Repubs hate green energy because they view it in regressive. (Mindmills were around in the 15th century). Nuclear energy can be the compromise. It will look like we are moving forward, while not producing evil carbon dioxide. We will need to lesson the regulatory burdern but not eliminate it. As it is we have a stalemate.

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[GameboyRMH]

. Repubs hate green energy because they view it in regressive. (Mindmills were around in the 15th century).

Proving once again that conservatism's arguments are stupid (although it doesn't really matter since they're just a cover for mustache-twirling villainy). How long ago do you think the first caveman burned a lump of coal or peat? The first known use of coal was in China 3000 years ago. Solar cells are a helluva lot newer than most, odd that they don't love photovoltaic...

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[GameboyRMH]

You may be confusing the issue because you conflate the non-support of government subsidies for your pet "green" projects with "hate" when the motives are simply not wanting to waste more of the countries debt load on non-economic energy supplies. In short, you are just blathering environmentalist rhetoric about how Republicans want dirty water, and dirty air, when it's not at all true.

Renewable (especially photovoltaic) is already price-competitive with coal etc, and that's not even accounting for subsidies or the massive cost of defending oil supplies around the world (estimated to be at least $81B/yr for the US).

And If they don't love dirty water and dirty air then why do they keep voting for it?

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[LynnwoodRooster]

Renewables are only cost-competitive if you do not factor in the cost of alternative backup generation - like gas and coal.

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[GameboyRMH]

Currently that backup generation costs nothing, because the sort of power suitable for backup generation makes up most of the existing grid power capacity. Eventually backup power will be needed. We know how much hydro costs, that can be used as energy storage. We now know how much battery arrays cost, those can work too.

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[CanadianMacFan]

We're not building windmills today. They don't mill anything. Grains aren't turned into flours. Turbines are being built today.

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[LynnwoodRooster]

Oh no, you don't get to do that... You're getting to ignore the costs of maintenance and operations of fossil fuel plants that way. That's why your analysis is wrong. If you did a renewable-based system, you'd have to have these backups - they are a required cost of doing business as a renewable. Flat out. Only by ignoring your required backup can you get to cheaper renewables.

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[GameboyRMH]

First of all, who said that fossil fuel plants are necessary as a backup for a renewable-based grid? They're not. Energy storage (kinetic/hydro/battery), nuclear, biofuel, and traditional hydroelectric can all take that role, no fossil power needed.

Second, remember that we're comparing the cost of renewable to fossil fuels. And now you're arguing that renewable is more expensive than fossil because...some fossil power would have to be kept around? Those plants won't be sitting idle waiting for the sun to go down while everyone collects wages, they'll just be running at lower than peak capacity when renewable power is doing the heavy lifting.

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[LynnwoodRooster]

The problem is that costs of energy do NOT include the storage costs needed for renewables - and in many places (like California) hydro is not considered renewable. So factor in the battery costs and again - you'll find it doesn't match up to fossil fuels. Yet the costs for fossil fuels include not just the generation plant, but the cost of the fuel (which includes extraction and transportation of the fuel, baked into the cost) and of course all the "externalities" always put on. So how about renewables with full backup/storage for 24 hour periods?

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[GameboyRMH]

At some point renewables will require storage, but it's not until the grid consists of mostly renewables. It's a cost that can be phased in slowly over time. By the time it's necessary to add storage, fossil fuels would probably be more expensive and both renewables and storage would probably be cheaper. So it seems unfair to ask that storage should be accounted for in the present cost of renewables - it just isn't right now, won't be for a long time, and prices will likely be radically different when the cost finally becomes a reality.

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[Mike Van Pelt]

Repubs hate green energy because they view it in regressive. (Mindmills were around in the 15th century).

People who can do arithmetic hate the headlong-rush to replace base load generating capacity with sunny-days-when-the-wind-is-blowing energy.

Nuclear energy can be the compromise. It will look like we are moving forward, while not producing evil carbon dioxide. We will need to lesson the regulatory burdern but not eliminate it. As it is we have a stalemate.

Yeah, I've been advocating phasing out coal in favor of nuclear for ... oh, about 40 years now. The so-called "Greens", of course, hate nuclear with an undying white-hot hatred. They will hate any energy source that threatens to be able to supply industrial/technological civilization. ANY energy source. Mark my words. If flow batteries threaten to actually make "sunny days when the wind is blowing" energy sufficient to keep industrial/technological civilization running, they *will* find some reason that it's The Most Horrible Evil Ever. Guaranteed.

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[LynnwoodRooster]

So what you're saying is that renewables get a pass for the cost of their storage right now, to make them viable (since there is backup power from fossil fuels)? Sorry - I don't buy that at all. If you don't have storage now, and you have to rely upon fossil fuels for backup - then the cost of renewables MUST include the cost of the backup. Because otherwise it's simply not a realistic or viable energy system.

It's like talking about how a diesel electric train is totally pure because it's an electric motor (we don't talk about the fact it's a diesel generator) and that a diesel train is terrible because it's a diesel motor. If the renewable grid requires fossil fuels for backup, then the cost of that fossil fuel MUST be included in the cost calculations.

And, since you typically need 80-90% capacity as fossil fuel as backup, that means renewables will ALWAYS be more expensive (at least now) than fossil fuel, because it's in-addition-to the entire fossil fuel power grid.

If you want to talk about how it's deployed costs and can be counted on, then we can of course completely discount any operational costs (sans fuel) for fossil fuel plants - because it's already deployed. And we CANNOT talk about externalities of fossil fuel plants without applying the same externalities to renewables that rely upon fossil fuel backup.

So it comes down to fossil fuels, or fossil fuels + renewables. No surprise which is more expensive, since one is more complex, has more capital and operating costs, and essentially requires as a base-load capacity the other option.

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[GameboyRMH]

You continue to assert that the backup source must be fossil fuel. It does not. I don't know where you got the 80~90% base load number from since there are places that already exceed 20% renewable energy:

https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/...

And places that have almost gone fossil-fuel-free:

https://mashable.com/2017/01/0...

But if you must include these distant and difficult to estimate costs, let's include them on both sides.

On the fossil fuel side, let's include the flooding, the levy-building/land reclamation costs, the refugee crises, the wars, the oceanic mass extinctions, everything bad that global warming has in store for us. These are about as far off as renewables' storage costs and we don't know exactly what they'll be. Do you think those will be cheaper than renewables and energy storage? Looks like it won't:

https://www.greentechmedia.com...

And that's not even accounting for the wars and such.

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[LynnwoodRooster]

So what would be the alternative base load source be? Hydro's not considered renewable, at least in California... Nuclear? Would love that...

And for all that stuff about fossil fuels and environmental damage? Lay that on renewables too - because without that fossil fuel base, renewables couldn't survive and provide the power needed. That's the point - you want to remove any damages from fossil fuels from renewables, but you HAVE to rely upon fossil fuels to even make renewables partially viable.

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[GameboyRMH]

So what would be the alternative base load source be? Hydro's not considered renewable, at least in California... Nuclear? Would love that...

Physics doesn't care about California's laws. Hydro is sure as hell not a fossil power source and seems to match the definition of "renewable," which might explain why the rest of the world defines it as such. Nuclear would be great. Tidal power is also reliable as...the tides...and could work for baseload power. Geothermal is another always-on non-fossil power source.

And for all that stuff about fossil fuels and environmental damage? Lay that on renewables too - because without that fossil fuel base, renewables couldn't survive and provide the power needed. That's the point - you want to remove any damages from fossil fuels from renewables, but you HAVE to rely upon fossil fuels to even make renewables partially viable.

WHY DO YOU KEEP SAYING THIS. WHY WHY WHY. I just linked to a country that used less than 2% fossil fuel over the course of a year, less than 1/5th of their wind power alone. How does this mesh with your assertion that some meaningful amount of fossil power is necessary to use renewable power?

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[LynnwoodRooster]

Because that solution - hydro - isn't allowed by POLITICS in many places in the US. And it's for a country with a tiny population (about equal to Los Angeles proper- not the larger LA area) and a small territory that is highly mountainous (half the size of the State of Oregon). I've been to Costa Rica many times, it's beautiful - Jaco is a perfect beach town! And it rains a lot, and is very mountainous.

But in the US - hydro isn't a solution, and we've supposedly capped out all big hydro installs - so that's a no-go. So you HAVE to rely upon fossil fuels - no choice otherwise. So if you're going to have an honest accounting of of renewables, you HAVE to include the backup energy source - and in the US, that's gas and coal. Those costs HAVE to be included in the calculus of "renewables are cheaper" - otherwise it's simply a lie.

Re:Nuclear power is the answer

[GameboyRMH]

OK, let's assume that hydro is not a solution at all. No pumped hydro storage, no traditional hydro. Why is fossil power immediately the only solution again? Why not geothermal, tidal, nuclear (politics again?), biofuel, kinetic storage, pneumatic storage, hydrogen storage, thermal storage (for example solar-thermal with integrated thermal storage), or battery storage (for example solar-PV/flow battery hybrid units)? Why is fossil power immediately the only solution out of all these?

Solved, and then some

[Tablizer]

The Space Force will fix it by orbiting thousands of sun umbrellas, and all the rockets will be made in the former rustbelt in bustling rocket factories. We thought he was a babbling lunatic, but it all makes sense now! Sorry I doubted. MAGA!

Re:Solved, and then some

[Anonymous Coward]

You laugh but the USA still leads the world in greenhouse gas reduction. Even if you let up on some policies we still lead the world in reductions.

Re:Solved, and then some

[Opportunist]

I can also easily give you a 50% discount if I first triple the price. In other words, it's kinda easy to lose the most weight in your Weight Watchers group if you got the fattest ass to begin with.

Re:Solved, and then some

[Anonymous Coward]

And now I need to read Ringworld again. Damn you...

Re:Solved, and then some

[110010001000]

Unfortunately the EU has been increasing their weight, not decreasing it. They were supposed to decrease emissions, but increased it instead. Inexplicable to me. After all, they signed the Paris accord with much fanfare. Maybe they forgot to read it?

Re:Solved, and then some

[mujadaddy]

The word being searched for is "parasol".

Re:Solved, and then some

[sjames]

Don't worry, Trump is preparing to fix that.

We can't have those upstart Euro people emitting more than US!

Re:Solved, and then some

[Tablizer]

The word being searched for is "parasol".

That's an unpatriotic French word. How about "Freedom Shades".

Re:Solved, and then some

[Anonymous Coward]

And the US is actually cutting carbon emissions...
https://www.weeklystandard.com/tony-mecia/u-s-greenhouse-gas-emissions-falling-under-trump-european-emissions-rising

Praise Republicans

[Anonymous Coward]

The Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt they have sewn on climate change of the last 30 years has blessed us with the grim, dark future of a climate apocalypse. Our inaction a beacon of leadership, an example for less developed nations to follow in to the future as we doom billions to die.

Re:Praise Republicans

[Anonymous Coward]

USA leads the world in greenhouse gas reductions. The less developed nations needs the coal, gas and petroleum to lift themselves out of poverty.

It's never sealed.

[fred6666]

It might be too late to avoid a 3C raise, but maybe not too late to avoid a 5C raise. And if we can't stop a 5C raise, then maybe it's not too late to stop a 8C raise. Every 0.1C we save is a win. Trump is too stupid to understand that.

Re:It's never sealed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be a downer but the whole point of the 1.5 degree upper limit target was to avoid hard to quantify feedback effects. The oil and gas companies strategy was was to run out the clock. I'm concerned they seem to be getting close to mission accomplished. We should be asking ourselves what more radical strategies might be employed at this late stage to interrupt fossil fuel supplies and force lower emissions immediately. Logically there is only one (scary) strategy left that might work on the scale and timeline required from what I can tell

Re:It's cooling anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding is the grand solar minimum lasts only ~5years and then warming continues.

Re:It's cooling anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell does anyone still repeat those tired debunked talking points? This even goes beyond LALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU denial, it is like living under a rock for the last five years.

Re:It's cooling anyway

[olsmeister]

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

Re:Nuclear.

[alvinrod]

You'd still want to develop alternative forms of energy. Eventually we exhaust the world's supply of fissile materials in much the same way that the coal or oil runs out. Granted, that will take a long time even with the currently explored deposits, but nuclear is not the end game itself. Assuming your civilization lives long enough to explore and master space, you'd eventually want to build a Dyson sphere or a Ringworld. There are no downsides to solar when the sun is always shining.

Pointless outrage

[magzteel]

This is an NHTSA study to weigh the costs and benefits of automobile fuel efficiency standards.

A more fuel efficient car may be trading passenger lives for higher miles per gallon. It makes sense to determine what the benefits are.

In this case the preliminary study is saying the beneficial impact on warming may be insignificant. You can argue about those conclusions, but arguing about climate change as a whole is irrelevant to the point of the study.

Re:Pointless outrage

[Anonymous Coward]

Further more, holding the current standards (or standards for 2020, which are still an improvement over current standards) constant for a few years will encourage car prices to drop and encourage a greater percentage of the population to migrate to new cars.

Right now the American Automotive fleet is older then it ever has been (See NHTSA report), because not as many people can afford a new car, and if more people purchased newer cars (even at current standards) you would actually see a greater reduction in green house gasses, then if they continued to raise standards (and raise new car prices) and discourage new car purchases.

The people who are really annoyed by this are the electric-car manufacturers. Unfortunately, if the internal combustion cars prices drop, it will make completion that much more difficult (especially since fuel prices have continued to stay relatively low). The electric cars kind of need fuel prices and new car prices to climb, in order (financially speaking) to compete.

Re:Pointless outrage

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, such a stretch.
I think it more likely you're a fucktarded Trump supporter, and possibly a Dominionist, and are quietly gleeful that The End Of The World Is Nigh, so Zombie Jesus will come take you home to Heaven.
SPOILER: None of that is going to happen! There is no God, no Jesus, no Heaven, there is only oblivion after death
Please just kill yourself now and don't wait, the rest of the world will thank you. The fewer of you fucktards there are on the planet, the better our chances of pulling the planet out of the death-spiral we've put it in.

Re:Pointless outrage

[Anonymous Coward]

That’s a complete lobbyist lie and you fucking know it

Re:Pointless outrage

[Anonymous Coward]

New car/truck sales in the US for 2015-2017 was ~17M/yr. That means with current trends, only ~5% of the entire US population ever buys a new car in any given year.
Of course it's not that simple; there are those who buy/lease a new car every year just because they can, and others who hang onto their three decade old truck just because they like it.
The _average_ US car is ~12 years old, a number that has been increasing steadily for decades for a number of reasons, not just sheer economics.
So in terms of overall effect on the environment, sales of new cars are barely above the noise level. Unregulated Shipping; trucks, trains, planes and ships are more in need of some serious consideration.
" Unless market constraints are put in place, this growth in aviation's emissions will result in the sector's emissions amounting to all or nearly all of the annual global CO2 emissions budget by mid-century, if climate change is to be held to a temperature increase of 2 C or less." -Wikipedia

"The electric cars kind of need fuel prices and new car prices to climb, in order (financially speaking) to compete." -You
No. For any comparable vehicle, an Electric car is cheaper to manufacture, own, and service. The problem is and always was the cost of the Batteries, and the new Infrastructure needed to feed them. BTW, this is true also for Ethanol/Methanol, Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, or Gerbils.
In the US, the Infrastructure needed to convert and support just half the Fleet simply doesn't exist. Gasoline/Diesel has a century head start here.
However, if I was actually ever going to buy a new car, it would be Electric.
Or I would convert my old Ferrari. Hell, that Colombo 3 Litre V12 is worth more than the rest of the car.

Re:Pointless outrage

[Anonymous Coward]

"A more fuel efficient car may be trading passenger lives for higher miles per gallon."

Oh, please do elaborate on this....something from a study outside the Trump administration, as what you wrote parrots a "study" under his watch almost word for word.

What a joke.

Re:Pointless outrage

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case the preliminary study is saying the beneficial impact on warming may be insignificant.

Government's job is not to say, well it doesn't seem to hurt me or my immediate kids too terribly, so why bother. Government's job is to think long term.

What is the total all in cost of the next thousand years? Do the children in that time have clean air and clear skies? Do they die from environmental causes sooner than they might have otherwise? Is it cheaper to address it now than to address later? What is the cost of the environmental debt now if paid later?

It's a bit like taking out a mortgage on your house. If you can't afford to pay for the debt, well you might lose the house and of course we only have the single habitable planet...

Making global warming great again

[Anonymous Coward]

Why even stop at 7 degrees as we are on track for? By killing emission standards, etc America can be number one in global warming! We can go for a full 10!

Uh oh!

[Locke2005]

I sure hope Trump manages to sell Mar-a-lago before it's completely underwater!

Re:Uh oh!

[bmimatt]

Are you sure he actually owns the terrain and buildings, not a line of credit?

Re:Uh oh!

[EnsilZah]

It's ok, he's gonna build a dike and make the mer-people pay for it.

Reality is trolling you

[Anonymous Coward]

> You are aware that it's entirely possible to troll with facts

If you're being triggered by facts, then just maybe you should reexamine what you believe and why.

Reality does not have a magical liberal bias and it won't go away just because you don't believe it.

Why bother with climate science?

[ilsaloving]

I dunno why climate scientists even bother anymore.

Scientists: "The world is going to overheat if we don't do something!"
Everyone else: We don't believe you cause I had to put on a sweater yesterday! And your data is wrong and sketchy!

Scientists: "Ok it's even worse than we thought and we're already starting to see the effects!"
Everyone else: Oh well, too late now. Fuck it. *throws environmental standards out the window*

It's awe inspiring. It really is.

Re:Why bother with climate science?

[Anonymous Coward]

You define massive solar/wind installations, implementing advanced technology to improve fuel/energy efficiency & building structures with significant improvements in their insulation/HVAC systems to be "Hectoring people back into a pre-industrial existence"?

Re:Why bother with climate science?

[Tailhook]

Here is the actual narrative:

Establishment: We have to downsize you to an efficiency apartment where you may eat kale and soy to save the planet. And we're exempt. And so is China.
Everyone else: Fuck right off.

Re:Why bother with climate science?

[Merk42]

The climate scientists are the establishment? lololol

Re:Why bother with climate science?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many desolate planets had life and then elected a Trump.

Re:Why bother with climate science?

[sjames]

Hectoring people back into a pre-industrial existence was never going to work

Nice strawman you have there. That was never suggested.

Re:Why bother with climate science?

[Anonymous Coward]

You define massive solar/wind installations, implementing advanced technology to improve fuel/energy efficiency & building structures with significant improvements in their insulation/HVAC systems to be "Hectoring people back into a pre-industrial existence"?

Standard argument practice for both left and right wings is to take the most extreme voices advocating the most extreme positions, and painting them as representative of what the mainstream of the other side wants.

Re:Why bother with climate science?

[Ferretman]

Well said sir.

Ferret

Re:Why bother with climate science?

[Anonymous Coward]

Technological Solutions to what? We hear continuously that global warming is a hoax. Why would you develop a solution to a non-problem? That's the problem with the denial tactic that has been used for the last 20 years. Instead of arguing about which solutions to implement, deniers instead argued about the very presence of the problem. We could have had solutions in place by now, but instead we are still arguing about whether there is actually warming, or if it is man-made.

We've lost this environmental battle, now it the time to figure out how to live peaceful lives in a warmer world. History will judge the deniers, and thanks to the internet their views will be remembered forever.

Re:Why bother with climate science?

[Anonymous Coward]

Technology got us into this mess, surely it will fix it!

The Planet wll be fine. it's our fate being sealed

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a minor correction.

Must have slipped the censors

[gweihir]

While the chief pussy-grabber tries to get his preferred alleged rapist into the supreme, they probably missed that one about them having a significant part in making the planet inhabitable.

Re:It's cooling anyway

[GameboyRMH]

"Make the lie big, keep it simple, keep saying it and eventually they will believe it." - Joseph Goebbels

Re:It's cooling anyway

[mnemotronic]

We're in a grand solar minimum, so the rest of this century will be much cooler, not warmer.

First part of that appears to be correct (From WikiPedia):

During 2008–2009 NASA scientists noted that the Sun is undergoing a "deep solar minimum," ... "We're experiencing a very deep solar minimum," says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center ...

. And yet

Their non-linear character makes predictions of solar activity very difficult. ... Scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) also developed a computer model of solar dynamics (Solar dynamo) for more accurate predictions and have confidence in the forecast based upon a series of test runs with the newly developed model simulating the strength of the past eight solar cycles with more than 98% accuracy.[5] In hindsight the prediction proved to be wildly inaccurate and not representative of the observed sunspot numbers.

which basically says "we don't know what's going to happen next". It reminds me of the standard disclaimer: Past performance is not indicative of future outcomes, which indicates that claiming that solar activity will make the earth cooler is misleading. Also consider that the report may have taken the Grand Solar Minimum into account (TL;DR).

For me, the Bottom Line is that the Trump Administration, a bastion of vociferous climate change deniers, has decided to agree with the "climate change hysteria". Their approach though is "We're gonna get buggered anyway, so forget the vaseline. Let's use Capzasin.". I guess when you control 40% of the wealth, you can build temples to yourself on the bodies of the middle-class.

Que Sera...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've long been a firm believer we should be better stewards of our planet, and use new technologies to make things cleaner and better. But apparently, the vast majority don't give a @#$%... So, since I'll be long dead by then anyway, I officially no longer give a @#$% either. PTTTHHHBBBTTT!!!

Re:Que Sera...

[Opportunist]

Yes, come over to the dark side. We have Air Conditioning.

Totally ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

The earth has been cooling for the last couple of decades. Solar activity is distressingly low. And 7 degrees is just as ridiculous as saying a million degrees. Not credible.

And in Washington...

[Anonymous Coward]

The posers and perverts in the Senate are busy trying to get one of their own appointed to the Supreme Court. Business as usual.

Moronic.

[Rick Schumann]

'nuff said.
Get Trump and the rest of these idiots OUT, NOW. Then we can get some people in who will at least TRY.

Re:Moronic.

[Anonymous Coward]

but he tells me what I want to hear, therefore he is the best #KAG

The "Buy they murder people too!" argument. --.--

[Anonymous Coward]

So "because" we, as a humanity, have now proven, that we have committed the most atrocious crimes in the history of humanity, and will literally ruin the planet with that if we don't make a massive effort,

and "because" the EU (not the same thing as Europe, by the way) and "Asia" have committed this crime that makes genocide look like a minor misdemeanor,

that now makes the US committing the same horrible crimes "OK" too?

HOW the fuck do you think you're gonna explain that to your grandchildren? Hm? You fucking selfish mass-genocidal piece of shit!
Trust me, you won't find an excuse that will make us forgive you. You better get your ass up and fix this shit, before we "fix" you!

Re:It's cooling anyway

[LynnwoodRooster]

Local minimums tend to last 5 years but long term trends oscillate over the course of multiple decades to a century or two. NASA is showing the cooling trend coming, with the last 6 cycles showing the downward trend in solar output.

Re:It's cooling anyway

[LynnwoodRooster]

Because it's true. NASA shows that solar output is steadily declining:

“We see a cooling trend,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center. “High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.”

That's at least what NASA sees happening...

Rothchild Stooge

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like the Democrats too.

Mother Nature asked for it

[PopeRatzo]

If I understand this correctly, the Trump administration is saying, "Catastrophic climate change is inevitable, so just lay back and enjoy it."

I guess that's fitting.

Stage 4 already?

[Opportunist]

That was quick. Wait ... I have a strange deja-vu... right, I just recently said that already.

Well, cut Trump some slack, old people take a bit longer to catch on.

Re:The "Buy they murder people too!" argument. --.

[110010001000]

Where in my post did I say anything about the US? The US is even worse in carbon emissions. You guys are so sensitive whenever anyone dares to criticize the holy EU.

Re:The Planet wll be fine. it's our fate being sea

[Opportunist]

Old joke

Two planets meet.
"Dude, you look terrible, what's bugging you?"
"Man, it's horrible, I got a bad case of homo sapiens."
"Ah. I had that too. Don't worry. It will pass."

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no Climate Change, but if there were, it's too late or too little to do anything about it.

Either way we will Bravely & Courageously Do Nothing!

yes, the pollution was exported

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, by moving the world's manufacturing to China the pollution has been exported, not sure I see your point.

There is no doubt about it,

[fredrated]

this administration is pure evil.

Re:There is no doubt about it,

[Ol Olsoc]

You prefer vainly trying to curb emissions, blowing all kinds of money on marginal gains that won't change the situation, rather than stockpiling resources in the hope of surviving what's coming?

You go ahead and do that.

Its like refusing to use the brakes to stop your car when it's hurtling toward a cliff.

Airbags are awesome, they might save you.

You go ahead and do that.

Re:There is no doubt about it,

[mujadaddy]

Its like refusing to use the brakes to stop your car when it's hurtling toward a cliff.

No. It's much more like an aircraft than a car.

Want to know who has power over you? That person you dare not criticise.

Lol, like the greens? Who did you mean?

Re: There is no doubt about it,

[Anonymous Coward]

Greens arenâ(TM)t ever going to matter as long as they keep hanging out with nazi types.

Re:There is no doubt about it,

[Anonymous Coward]

I pray you never face real evil. You think this is evil you have no idea what evil is. Enslaving a populace by making them completely dependent on their overlords.....that is truly evil. But you keep thinking you are free and all that....you are not....not at all.

Re:There is no doubt about it,

[Locke2005]

Nobody is pure evil. Not everything Trump does is wrong or harmful, in the same way that even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. But I do honestly believe he will go down in the history books as the worst US president of all time, and that record will likely outlive the country.

Re:There is no doubt about it,

[jcr]

Oh get a fucking grip. Trump won't even make the top ten.

-jcr

Re:There is no doubt about it,

[Tuidjy]

I came to the US in 1992. My landlord in college thought that Clinton was the worst president ever, and could not shut up about 'his ugly daughter'.

And then there was Bush the Junior (Worst President Ever!) and Obama (Who Destroyed the Country!) and now Trump (The End of Democracy!)

Eh. There's still no country is which I'd rather live, and I still think that things in general are getting better every day. Or at least, I feel much better thinking that way. Lah-Lah-Lah, can't hear you!

Now, one may make the argument that it's just the presidents that are getting worse with each iteration. Hard to explain all of them getting second terms, but what do I know.

I just hope that life does not imitate the art of Transmetropolitan. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmetropolitan).

Because if we got the Beast now, we are getting the Smiler next.

Re: There is no doubt about it,

[Anonymous Coward]

What, like starting a trade war, taxing the domestic populace via tariffs, and then forcing the farmers to require subsidies to survive? Sure we be bad if those farm subsidies were then lost. Better vote for the bread and circus guy.

Remember when Republicans were the family values, anti divorce, free trade, not picking winners, party? Then they got into power and it flipped.

There is plenty to dislike about the Dems, but there's not much that they are hypocrites about... And the Repubs are worse on every flaw the Dems have.

Re:There is no doubt about it,

[Ol Olsoc]

Lol, like the greens? Who did you mean?

Anyone, left or right

Re: There is no doubt about it,

[Anonymous Coward]

After this weekâ(TM)s farce of a hearing, Iâ(TM)ll never vote for a democrat again.

Re: There is no doubt about it,

[Anonymous Coward]

citation?

Re: There is no doubt about it,

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because the people punching Nazis are totally Nazis. God, my eyes can't roll hard enough.

Re: There is no doubt about it,

[Anonymous Coward]

Using violence to suppress counter argument? Sounds facist to me...

Re: There is no doubt about it,

[Anonymous Coward]

There's not that much they are hypocrits about? Are you talking about the same Democratic Party?

The "Party of Women" that throws a woman victim of sexual assault under the bus by sitting on her accusations until the last minute before outing her when she wanted to stay anonymous, just to derail a Supreme Court nominee and try to delay the seat being filled until after an election... all the while bitching and moaning about not having the option to filibuster candidates any more (which they started down the road of removing) and crying about the nomination of Garland being shitcanned in the exact same manner they would like to do here... Except for two years instead of 4 months.

Yeah, no hypocrits in that party...

Re: There is no doubt about it,

[MachineShedFred]

He'll have to get a pretty bad swing of bad luck combined with his current horrific policy of formenting trade war in order to pass Herbert Hoover.

I'll bet there is a lot of people that were bitching about GWB that are nostalgic for the old days now though...

Re: There is no doubt about it,

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to mention the #metoo movement of which most tof the abusers have been Democrats

Re: There is no doubt about it,

[Locke2005]

Good points. I used to consider GWB to be the worst president ever, mostly because of the unjustified invasion of Iraq. But that was before Trump. Also, to be fair, a presidency can really only be judged in retrospect a while after it is completed, so you are correct, the Trump presidency could still go either way. Today, it looks like he might have actually improved the trade relationships with Mexico and Canada, but again, the effectiveness can only be judged years later.

America is still the 2nd worst...

[Anonymous Coward]

And how about the 3rd and 4th and 5th etc up to the 200th on the list?
America is still the 2nd worst...

You keep blaming China and pretending you aren't part of the problem. Hint - China is actually more than 4x bigger than America... Shhhh don't tell anyone.

4 degrees Celsius

[Anonymous Coward]

Number might be small but during the last ice age the average global temperature was 4 degrees Celsius cooler than it's now. Be ready for water and food shortages just to start things and global wars to follow.

Just look at the moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

That's OK, there are even more morons like you who who claim America deserves to pollute more than Canada, Australia, Germany, UK, France, the whole of the EU, the whole of Africa,the rest of the Americas, the whole of Asia bar China.

It's America's right to be the second worst.

Re:Just look at the moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

Cafinated Bacon/Crimsom Tsunami; you never change. You obviously have had your head pounded against the wall by the guys that you are sucking off.

Re:It's cooling anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe, pissing our money away trying to minimize the inevitable is the capsaicin, and focusing on survival makes for more effective vaseline?

WTH Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Normally I would be all in favor of displaying the temperature increase in Fahrenheit instead of Celsius, because the average American is probably looking at the 4 degree number and thinking "oh no it'll be 104 instead of 100 in summer, big whoop". But since you've been using Celsius for literally years, I (and probably everyone else) of course automatically assumed the 7 to be in Celsius. When it turned out the headline was in Fahrenheit, it felt like you are trying to be deliberately deceitful. Are you trying to get people to ignore everything you post? Because lying like that is how you get people to ignore everything you post.

Re: It's cooling anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly would we survive a climate like Venus again?

Re: 8==T=R=E=A=S=O=N==C=U=C=K==D -~-_.

[Anonymous Coward]

nrsilver@fivethirtyeight.com

Wonderful.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Climate change isn't real. Nothing to worry about, we don't need to change anything."

"Climate change isn't real. Nothing to worry about, we don't need to change anything."

"Climate change isn't real. Nothing to worry about, we don't need to change anything."

"Climate change IS real and it's too late to do anything about it, so changing things won't affect the fact that we're fucked anyways."

Fucking assholes.

Re:Wonderful.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Climate change IS real and it's too late to do anything about it, so changing things won't affect the fact that we're fucked anyways."

The truest thing this Administration has said.

It's too bad humanity is unwilling to adapt to a changing environment. Many people ARE going to die because they don't want to change.

Re: Trump's always wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

LIFE ENCOMPASSES A 4-16 CUBE PRINCIPLE

Fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump has been saying it loud and clear, climate change isn't a thing, the planet isn't heating up, it's all a conspiracy from China, hence why he's giving coal miner their jobs back!
If the president says it, it must be true!

Re:Nuclear.

[themusicgod1]

OP might be talking about nuclear winter, rather than nuclear power - which could buy us some much needed time.

Corollary

[DavidMZ]

A more fuel efficient car may be trading passenger lives for higher miles per gallon.

A heavier, less fuel efficient vehicle may be trading safety of the occupants of other vehicles it may get into an accident with for the safety of its occupants.

Another Cheap Dopamine Hit for the NonTrumpers.

[Anonymous Coward]

More bullshit from the Bezos blog.Phulease..... these reporters are NOT to be trusted.

Computer models are just models ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration know about climate? I'm no climate denier but no one know what the climate will be a 1000 years from now. All they can do is run computer models. That's all they are, models.
It's amazing how scientific speculation is now rampant in media everywhere ... very bad.

Re: Trump's always wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Trump's legacy will be death by Big Mac in the Oval Office while a bleached blonde porn star plays with his mushroom.

Re:Nuclear.

[hviniciusg]

Nop, we can also:

Go nuclear AND go extinct.
 

Curious acceleration in temperature rise needed

[ishmaelflood]

Let's see, in 140 years the temperature has risen by 1 deg C. Now suddenly it is going to rise by a further 3 times as much in half the time. Well, I suppose it could happen, but it had better start soon.

I'll look forward to the actual temperature record.

I haven't delved into the original document, but I'd guess they've taken IPCC at face value and used RPC 8.5, which is quite a ridiculous scenario.

Re: Trump's always wrong!

[Locke2005]

To clarify, that would be a bleached blonde porn star with a magnifying glass!

Yes, it's good old RCP 8.5

[ishmaelflood]

Yup, WaPo have included the relevant table in TFA and they've used RCP 8.5

Rather famously this assumes that the world population will be 12 billion people, and that of those 1.5 billion (ie twice the current population of india) will be squeezed into Nigeria. That's quite a step up from the current 200 million. It'll be about as crowded as say Vatican City. GIGO at its best.

Re:Yes, it's good old RCP 8.5

[quenda]

of those 1.5 billion (ie twice the current population of india) will be squeezed into Nigeria. That's quite a step up from the current 200 million. It'll be about as crowded as say Vatican City. GIGO at its best.

Are you from 1983? India is already over 1.3, and headed for 1.5b in about ten years.
Many projections show around a billion people in Nigeria by 2100, giving a population density similar to present-day Bangladesh, about 4 people per acre.
Nigeria, like much of sub-Saharan Africa, is not showing a significant reduction in birth rate from prosperity, the way Asia and the rest of the world has done.

Vatican city, BTW, is crowded from all the visitors, not the small number of residents from which your population density numbers come.

Re:The "Buy they murder people too!" argument. --.

[jareth-0205]

Where in my post did I say anything about the US? The US is even worse in carbon emissions. You guys are so sensitive whenever anyone dares to criticize the holy EU.

And you are disingenuous. Desperate to stick a criticism into the EU despite it being not the subject of the story, and then play the innocent fact-giver when people get pissed off. "where in my post did I say anything about the US"... well exactly, the story is about the US.

So that's why the closed the Scientific Advisory

[Anonymous Coward]

The EPA can't do anything about what it doesn't know I suppose.

another hommer simpson moment

[Anonymous Coward]

MAGA and GOP, the stupid blaming their lack of intellect on the intelligent.

Maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

...we shouldn't let people who are going to all die in the next 20 years make these decisions?

Why should 72-year-old Trump or any of these other crusty old FYGM farts in Congress give a shit what condition the world is going to be in?

Trump Administration Sees a 7-Degree Rise in Glob

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh.. It's a Washington Post article. (yawn)

Re:The "Buy they murder people too!" argument. --.

[Anonymous Coward]

You go on a rant, regurgitating the same shit over and over again, and you feel misunderstood?

The US has one of the highest per capita emissions of carbon dioxide. Sure, China might be worse in total, but as long as the US feels they can keep "overspending" the planets budget, why should other countries feel that they need to to better?

And all you say is "whatabout the EU". I have lost the number of times you use whataboutism as an argument, and I am not even halfway down the thread.

As for trends, you know that it is not about short term changes, right? Yes, it is bad that it seems to be going the wrong way, but that in no way defends others bad behavior.

Re: 8==T=R=E=A=S=O=N==C=U=C=K==D -~-_.

[Anonymous Coward]

Reid.Magney@wisconsin.gov

Re: 8==T=R=E=A=S=O=N==C=U=C=K==D -~-_.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oopsie seriously when commenting anonymous remember your freaking IP shows lulzzzzzz

BTW that's a massive penis lol tiny hands yo

V-tec kicked in brah

Re: 8==T=R=E=A=S=O=N==C=U=C=K==D -~-_.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who am I kidding most Republicans can't get it up anyways. That's why they're so outraged and are so rapey

Re:It's cooling anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

You should check this quote. He actually said (translated obviously):

"The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous."

Goebbels definitely lied, but he thought good propaganda was actually based on the truth.

Re: Trump's always wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake news!

WOLF!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

WOLF!!!

Is not Trump to be disbelieved

[Anonymous Coward]

And if this is a lie it must mean he has saved the planet... or we will not live to see Christmas.

Credible source

[Anonymous Coward]

Credible source

Same data as time series of total emissions of all developed countries in a JSON format, make your own graph.

More about the dataset and how to get disaggregated data (by sector, source etc.)

The last two years were not the best but as GGP pointed out this is irrelevant. EU emissions are in a stable downward trend since the beginning of UN-watched observations (1990). US emissions were growing till 2007, and show a slight downward trend since.

Which explains his obsession with Israel... End Ti

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick, let's slaughter all the Muslims, get all of Israel back to the Jews and get all of the lost tribes of Israel on it, build a temple and have Jesus come down from the sky and go, "LoL Jews told ya I was real!".

Then he'll take care of the rest.

To Elaborate

[Anonymous Coward]

To elaborate on the Parent's post:

1. There is no climate change. ...and entitled Republican leaders & followers don't have to do anything.

2. Ok, there is a climate change, but it's normal, not man made. ...and entitled Republican leaders & followers don't have to do anything.

3. Ok, it is man made, but it's been warmer before, so no problem. ...and entitled Republican leaders & followers don't have to do anything.

4. Ok, it is a problem, but it's too late anyway. ...and entitled Republican leaders & followers don't have to do anything.

Gee, maybe there's a pattern here? Nah, couldn't be!