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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
China has 4x the number of people that the US has
So the US produces 3x as much CO2 output per person than China?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
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)
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!
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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/...
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.
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.
So, does that mean that if I personally emit only 9 million Kt of CO2, it's cool because it's less than China?
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.