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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.
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.
It looks smaller in Celsius!
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
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.
Big claims. Where's your sources?
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.
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!
Table-ized A.I.
My understanding is the grand solar minimum lasts only ~5years and then warming continues.
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.
It's not a bug, it's a feature!
And here we have it folks, the endgame of climate denialism/conspiracism - climate obstructionism disguised as climate defeatism.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Big claims. Where's your sources?
Everywhere.
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.
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.
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.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
Awesome! Now was that so hard?
I sure hope Trump manages to sell Mar-a-lago before it's completely underwater!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
> 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.
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.
Just a minor correction.
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.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
"Make the lie big, keep it simple, keep saying it and eventually they will believe it." - Joseph Goebbels
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
China has 4x the number of people that the US has
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.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Cool, now convince me that attempting to engineer the atmosphere *consciously* is going to go exactly how you plan it.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
'nuff said.
Get Trump and the rest of these idiots OUT, NOW. Then we can get some people in who will at least TRY.
So the US produces 3x as much CO2 output per person than China?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
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.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
“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...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
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.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, come over to the dark side. We have Air Conditioning.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
"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
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
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."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
Do you not understand what 'greenhouse gasses' are? Or are you being intentionally dumb, what, for laughs? Trollololol, perhaps?
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.
Bullshit. You're an intellectual coward.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
this administration is pure evil.
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.)
...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.
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.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
Chris Mesterharm
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
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.
Nope, sorry. The burden of proof is on you sir or madam.
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.
I agree. This poster was (incorrectly) concerned about waste heat though.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
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.
That is a good point.
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.
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.
Awesome! Now was that so hard?
Not hard for me. Probably too hard for iggy. (I'm not the original poster.)
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/...
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.
If he/she does not provide sources then I disregard what they say. It's as simple as that.
Hah! Yeah I realized that after the fact. But good on you any ways for being a responsible part of the community.
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.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
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.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
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.
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...
It would certainly confuse the liberals!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
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.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
"Entropy increases"? You skipped that?
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
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.
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.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
OP might be talking about nuclear winter, rather than nuclear power - which could buy us some much needed time.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
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.
I certainly don't remember it saying anything about global GDP.
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.
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"?
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Wow, you really are a literalist, eh?
Let's reset: Does entropy increase? If so, would human activity, an organizing activity, increase entropy?
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
China is now four years past peak coal. They are fixing their problems.
http://ieefa.org/ieefa-update-...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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?
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.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Productive question: what can we do better?
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..............
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
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..
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The US is reducing its emissions; China is not. Yet somehow the US is the bad guy...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The one with the higher population? Especially if we correlate GDP and quality of life with emissions (which is generally true) per capita.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Nop, we can also:
Go nuclear AND go extinct.
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.
To clarify, that would be a bleached blonde porn star with a magnifying glass!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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.
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, does that mean that if I personally emit only 9 million Kt of CO2, it's cool because it's less than China?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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?
-Styopa
nonsense, the claim is that the USA's output is inconsequential compared to China's. per capita is irrelevant
To solve the environnement problem, China should split into 10 countries. Any of them would pollute less than the USA.
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.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
"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.
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.
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
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
With greater technological avantage comes greater freedom to get creative on reducing per-capita emmisions. Where there's a will, there's a way.
Requiem for the American Dream
Yes, only when the US produces 1g or more of emissions per year than China is there a problem.
Requiem for the American Dream
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.
Requiem for the American Dream
Action can be crowdsourced. All it takes is a miniscule efficiency tweak by everyone on the planet for massive gains.
Requiem for the American Dream
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?
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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.
"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.