I agree, there are other sources of lead that are worse, and we should certainly fix those too. But that does not make the central issue here any less valid. We don't have to work on these one at a time.
And your point? The limit for candy is also in the report - but rice cereal is not candy, few babies would eat anything like 100g of candy daily, and TFA makes no claims that the levels found in various foods are all necessarily illegal under current limits (which are being reassessed).
Once again, I draw your attention to the point of the article.
it's pointless trying to avoid exposure to "ANY level of lead."
Sure, but we can keep exposure down to undetectable levels - as we manage to do pretty well with adult foods. Again, not so much for baby foods.
It's the higher concentrations of lead which you have to worry about. So OP is correct that without knowing how much lead was found, it's pointless.
So why not read the source report that the article cites? The actual numbers are all right there (I quoted some in a different comment). But the overall conclusion, that there is more lead found in baby food, still leads to the not-at-all-pointless question of "Why?"
Just as a guess, I'd say because baby food is finely minced into a gruel, any contamination is spread throughout the product instead of just sitting on the surface where it can be easily washed off
Your guess doesn't explain why simple drinks like apple juice are more than twice as likely to contain detectable lead if they're produced for babies (55% of samples vs 25%). There are many other examples in the report, and in other citations from the Ars article.
Except the report makes it very clear at the beginning (page xi) that the only subsidies it describes, including tax expenditures, are given solely to the energy industry. Tax breaks that are also available to a different industry were not included in the report, which means depreciation of capitol is not shown, and all the figures in the Tax Expenditures column are indeed actual energy industry subsidies.
If you read the report; you'd see full breakdowns in Tables 2 & 6 of the specific tax subsidies that makes up those numbers. Capitol depreciation is not one of them, nor are specific subsidies like "Temporary 50-Percent Expensing for Equipment used in the Refining of Liquid Fuels" ($600M in FY2013) available to other industries.
Then how do you explain the Air Force launching their recent NROL-76 satellite with SpaceX?
When you're saving that much money every successful launch (enough to cover the whole cost of the average satellite if Musk is right), you can easily afford a 5.7% loss rate. And replacing a satellite means more jobs, right?
Falcon 9 has had 2 failures out of 35 launches. Even if you assume they're not still improving those odds, when it's $300M cheaper every launch, the $9.9 billion saved on the 33 successful flights would be many times the cost of two lost satellites.
Non-idiots would have simply checked the cited source, where all the numbers you're looking for are clearly displayed, before declaring it not worth reporting.
If you had, you'd see the 1993 FDA lead limit was no more than 6 micrograms/day for young children - and that e.g. baby rice cereal was found to contain up to 82 parts per billion. Which means that feeding your baby 100g of that cereal would already exceed the daily limit by 37%, without including other sources.
And again, you missed the whole point of the article, which was asking why baby food has more detectable lead in it than similar adult foods, especially as babies are so much more sensitive to its toxic effects.
If you'd read the rest of the article, you'd see that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends lead levels in drinking water be kept below 1 part per billion - a thousandth of the amount you're talking about, even with imperfect absorption. And if you followed up the article's sources, you'd see data showing that e.g. Walgreen's 100% Grape Juice was found to contain around 15 ppb. FDA levels for e.g. grape juice are currently 50 ppb, so it can legally contain far more than the AAP considers wise, which is why the article noted that the FDA is currently reviewing its 20 yo standards to account for more recent research.
But again, that's not the actual point of the article. To repeat; if we can keep lead below detectable levels in most adult foods, why are we not doing at least as much for the baby versions of those same foods?
Maybe you missed the part of the article citing research that showed ANY level of lead was unsafe.
The whole point being, why does baby food contain *more* lead than adult food?Particularly considering how babies are the most vulnerable to its neurotoxic effects.
Even if you accept that report as the whole picture (and it says right at the beginning that it isn't), it says very clearly in Table ES2 that your "$150 million" figure is low by well over an order of magnitude.
The question stands: why does any industry as mature as coal and oil *still* need billions in direct annual subsidies, on top of the $400+ billion it's already received in recent decades?
Plenty of people are still denying that the climate is changing, and many more deny that humans have anything to do with it. We call these people "deniers" and not "skeptics" because real skeptics don't ignore all the evidence, when it's this overwhelmingly strong. The deniers refuse to consider any of it, and just spout the same old irrelevant nonsense like "the climate has always changed".
And if you're looking for groups that have strong reasons to con people out of their money - wouldn't you agree that fossil fuel industry executives have far more billions at stake than a bunch of middle-wage climatologists?
You may be right, though I think other factors will be more important than America's production levels - US production has ramped fast, but demand could fall just as fast. And Russia has been out-producing the Saudis for years anyway, plus there's a number of other non-OPEC countries which add up fast too.
These improvements are not going to "unhappen", so it is unlikely that we will every again see $100/barrel oil.
Improved techniques have often reduced the price of production and expanded accessible reserves in the past - yet the price still went up later, despite those improvements not "unhappening".
It's pretty naïve to think that the price of a finite resource, subject to regular market manipulation, that has fluctuated wildly and often in the past, and now with the prospect of significant carbon prices hanging over it, isn't likely to go up ever again, or even soon.
Like I thought, you have no actual examples of your fears coming to pass elsewhere, so it's just hypothetical FUD that someone's likely passed on to you.
Most likely, any money would be moved from the existing foreign aid budget, not hospitals. There won't be a shortfall because there's no minimum requirement specified, no need to come up with more than you already have available.
The reason I can be confident about this (and you should be too) is because, last I checked, Congress still holds the purse strings - and the current Congress is even more unlikely than ever to divert significant funds from domestics, let alone impose new taxes. Second, since Paris was an executive agreement rather than a ratified treaty, it can't possibly commit the US to any specific extra funding because POTUS doesn't have that power. Third, the text of the treaty clearly requires no such specific commitment anyway, as I should hope would be clear by now - it's all voluntary. And finally, none of it is legally binding in the first place.
Given that, your conviction that the Paris Agreement will inevitably lead to taxing the fuck out of the public is not only laughably implausible, but seems a clear tactic to frighten others away from thinking anything through.
Then of course there's the flip side of the Agreement, all the reasons and benefits for agreeing to it - the climate mitigation and large future costs it will save, the lucrative new energy industries (that China has already taken leadership from you), the international trade advantages of not being the only country besides Syria to ignore where the world is heading etc. But that's a separate discussion.
Just point to one example of a US federal tax that's been added to support climate action. Doesn't even have to be onerous. Again, I'll wait.
Even if the Paris agreement actually asked for such an additional tax, do you think Congress would agree?
If you're actually complaining about where your existing tax dollars are being spent, then sure, that's reasonable. You may have the opinion that the government is already "taxing the fuck out of the people", which you're also of course entitled to.
But that's unrelated to the Paris agreement. You've completely failed to demonstrate that the Paris agreement would, in any way, require taxing the fuck out of anyone. At best you've implied that "political speak" means that they probably will, but unless you can show any examples of new taxes to support the Paris agreement, in any country, I'm not placing a lot of credibility there either.
Heard of government bonds? Loans that get paid back? Loan guarantees, where you usually don't exchange money at all? These are just a few of the "financial resources" available to governments.
If you measure production by GDP, Australia is about level with Germany per capita, somewhat below the US and #17 in the world.
By far the biggest reason we have such high emissions per capita is that we burn a lot of coal. There's not a lot of hydro power, and no nukes. We do have perhaps the highest residential solar adoption, but little large-scale solar and wind. We sure do love our dirty brown coal though - our previous PM stood with his biggest campaign donators and proudly declared that "coal is good for humanity".
9(1) says developed countries "shall provide financial resources" to undeveloped countries. That's it. Nothing about tax, nothing about how much, nothing even says it has to be beyond existing foreign aid. Countries can provide whatever they like, including loans or loan guarantees. Nothing says it has to be taxpayer money.
9(3) says developed countries should take the lead in "mobilizing climate finance from a wide variety of sources, instruments and channels, noting the significant role of public funds". Again, I'm failing to see anything about new taxes, or specific amounts, or anything beyond a suggestion to also consider public funds, in addition to the many other forms finance can take.
9(8) and 9(9) say only that the existing Financial Mechanisms should be used as intermediaries, i.e. the Global Environment Facility and the Green Climate Fund.
This whole "tax the fuck out of your people" invention is pure FUD, as anyone who takes the time to look for themselves can see. It's been literally made up to frighten people away from even considering the consequences of inaction.
First, if you read that in context, Edenhofer is clearly just reminding people that environmental policy is inextricably tied to economic policy, which seems obvious enough - if you accept that emissions are tied to growth. However, since that 2010 interview, and for the first time in history, that's clearly no longer the case - growth has continued, while emissions have actually slowed. A big reason for that is another thing he's been proved wrong about - gas is cheap now. The dramatic drop in cost of renewables is another.
But none of this is particularly relevant, because the IPCC does not set policies - countries do that. The IPCC's primary role is science - citing the evidence for climate change, and assembling the best predictions we can make, so that countries can make informed policies instead of reacting blindly. The science of what's happening to the planet exists independently of any responses we might choose to take.
Comments like yours are designed as distractions, attempts to discredit the organisations, but they can't make the evidence go away. You can certainly argue for your preferred policies or solutions, but you can't challenge the science with FUD about bureaucracies. Nature doesn't care, and closing your eyes to what's really happening is only going to raise the cost of coping with it.
Why not actually read it for yourself? It's only a few pages of relevant text, minimal legalese, well within high-school capabilities. Counting words tells you nothing, any more than the instances of "shall" in the US Constitution.
Then you'll see for yourself that there really are no specific commitments, and all actions are nationally determined and best-effort. Nothing is legally binding.
And yes, it's all largely symbolic, but statements of intent are still important. If Trump stays or withdraws, it changes no laws either way, but sends a clear signal to heavily-emitting industries that they either need to clean up their act, or that they're free to continue dumping their external waste costs on the public.
Here's a radical thought: why not read it for yourself? It's quite short. Until you do that, you're just echoing the opinions and preconceptions of others.
If you do, you'll note:
- the word "tax" does not appear in the Agreement
- the word "must" does not appear in the Agreement
The vast majority of it simply encourages parties to use their best efforts to reduce their domestic emissions. Nowhere does it lay down specifics as to what or how, and nowhere does it commit anyone to anything. It's all very vague and voluntary.
For the paranoid, Articles 9 and 11 are the ones about helping less-developed countries - let me know if you can find any onerous commitments in there. I'll wait.
If it's the case that permission for one domain allows recording by a different domain, that's an entirely different issue, and much more serious for security.
If you don't trust Google to not abuse the ability to record you, why did you give it explicit permission in the first place (or even install Chrome)?
If you think showing a small red dot somewhere on the screen counts as "security", then I assume you also never take your eyes off the screen, or leave a website open when your back is turned, or cover up the browser with another window, or let your screen go blank, or have enough tabs that there's no room to display the indicator, or use fullscreen mode, etc etc.
That said, I agree there is room for improvement. Firefox shows a fingernail-sized window that remains visible in a couple of these cases - hardly enough to be considered "security" but still a little better for awareness. Chrome could do the same.
Because the user still has to explicitly grant permission for mic/camera access first. There is no unauthorized recording, so no security breach.
The issue is that Chrome's red-dot recording indicator UI can get hidden. This isn't ideal of course, but isn't unique either - there are many cases where this might not show, such as in fullscreen mode or in mobile browsers.
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I agree, there are other sources of lead that are worse, and we should certainly fix those too. But that does not make the central issue here any less valid. We don't have to work on these one at a time.
And your point? The limit for candy is also in the report - but rice cereal is not candy, few babies would eat anything like 100g of candy daily, and TFA makes no claims that the levels found in various foods are all necessarily illegal under current limits (which are being reassessed).
Once again, I draw your attention to the point of the article.
it's pointless trying to avoid exposure to "ANY level of lead."
Sure, but we can keep exposure down to undetectable levels - as we manage to do pretty well with adult foods. Again, not so much for baby foods.
It's the higher concentrations of lead which you have to worry about. So OP is correct that without knowing how much lead was found, it's pointless.
So why not read the source report that the article cites? The actual numbers are all right there (I quoted some in a different comment). But the overall conclusion, that there is more lead found in baby food, still leads to the not-at-all-pointless question of "Why?"
Just as a guess, I'd say because baby food is finely minced into a gruel, any contamination is spread throughout the product instead of just sitting on the surface where it can be easily washed off
Your guess doesn't explain why simple drinks like apple juice are more than twice as likely to contain detectable lead if they're produced for babies (55% of samples vs 25%). There are many other examples in the report, and in other citations from the Ars article.
Except the report makes it very clear at the beginning (page xi) that the only subsidies it describes, including tax expenditures, are given solely to the energy industry. Tax breaks that are also available to a different industry were not included in the report, which means depreciation of capitol is not shown, and all the figures in the Tax Expenditures column are indeed actual energy industry subsidies.
If you read the report; you'd see full breakdowns in Tables 2 & 6 of the specific tax subsidies that makes up those numbers. Capitol depreciation is not one of them, nor are specific subsidies like "Temporary 50-Percent Expensing for Equipment used in the Refining of Liquid Fuels" ($600M in FY2013) available to other industries.
Then how do you explain the Air Force launching their recent NROL-76 satellite with SpaceX?
When you're saving that much money every successful launch (enough to cover the whole cost of the average satellite if Musk is right), you can easily afford a 5.7% loss rate. And replacing a satellite means more jobs, right?
Falcon 9 has had 2 failures out of 35 launches. Even if you assume they're not still improving those odds, when it's $300M cheaper every launch, the $9.9 billion saved on the 33 successful flights would be many times the cost of two lost satellites.
Non-idiots would have simply checked the cited source, where all the numbers you're looking for are clearly displayed, before declaring it not worth reporting.
If you had, you'd see the 1993 FDA lead limit was no more than 6 micrograms/day for young children - and that e.g. baby rice cereal was found to contain up to 82 parts per billion. Which means that feeding your baby 100g of that cereal would already exceed the daily limit by 37%, without including other sources.
And again, you missed the whole point of the article, which was asking why baby food has more detectable lead in it than similar adult foods, especially as babies are so much more sensitive to its toxic effects.
If you'd read the rest of the article, you'd see that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends lead levels in drinking water be kept below 1 part per billion - a thousandth of the amount you're talking about, even with imperfect absorption. And if you followed up the article's sources, you'd see data showing that e.g. Walgreen's 100% Grape Juice was found to contain around 15 ppb. FDA levels for e.g. grape juice are currently 50 ppb, so it can legally contain far more than the AAP considers wise, which is why the article noted that the FDA is currently reviewing its 20 yo standards to account for more recent research.
But again, that's not the actual point of the article. To repeat; if we can keep lead below detectable levels in most adult foods, why are we not doing at least as much for the baby versions of those same foods?
Like these? Or these?
Maybe you missed the part of the article citing research that showed ANY level of lead was unsafe.
The whole point being, why does baby food contain *more* lead than adult food?Particularly considering how babies are the most vulnerable to its neurotoxic effects.
Even if you accept that report as the whole picture (and it says right at the beginning that it isn't), it says very clearly in Table ES2 that your "$150 million" figure is low by well over an order of magnitude.
The question stands: why does any industry as mature as coal and oil *still* need billions in direct annual subsidies, on top of the $400+ billion it's already received in recent decades?
Plenty of people are still denying that the climate is changing, and many more deny that humans have anything to do with it. We call these people "deniers" and not "skeptics" because real skeptics don't ignore all the evidence, when it's this overwhelmingly strong. The deniers refuse to consider any of it, and just spout the same old irrelevant nonsense like "the climate has always changed".
And if you're looking for groups that have strong reasons to con people out of their money - wouldn't you agree that fossil fuel industry executives have far more billions at stake than a bunch of middle-wage climatologists?
You may be right, though I think other factors will be more important than America's production levels - US production has ramped fast, but demand could fall just as fast. And Russia has been out-producing the Saudis for years anyway, plus there's a number of other non-OPEC countries which add up fast too.
These improvements are not going to "unhappen", so it is unlikely that we will every again see $100/barrel oil.
Improved techniques have often reduced the price of production and expanded accessible reserves in the past - yet the price still went up later, despite those improvements not "unhappening".
It's pretty naïve to think that the price of a finite resource, subject to regular market manipulation, that has fluctuated wildly and often in the past, and now with the prospect of significant carbon prices hanging over it, isn't likely to go up ever again, or even soon.
Like I thought, you have no actual examples of your fears coming to pass elsewhere, so it's just hypothetical FUD that someone's likely passed on to you.
Most likely, any money would be moved from the existing foreign aid budget, not hospitals. There won't be a shortfall because there's no minimum requirement specified, no need to come up with more than you already have available.
The reason I can be confident about this (and you should be too) is because, last I checked, Congress still holds the purse strings - and the current Congress is even more unlikely than ever to divert significant funds from domestics, let alone impose new taxes. Second, since Paris was an executive agreement rather than a ratified treaty, it can't possibly commit the US to any specific extra funding because POTUS doesn't have that power. Third, the text of the treaty clearly requires no such specific commitment anyway, as I should hope would be clear by now - it's all voluntary. And finally, none of it is legally binding in the first place.
Given that, your conviction that the Paris Agreement will inevitably lead to taxing the fuck out of the public is not only laughably implausible, but seems a clear tactic to frighten others away from thinking anything through.
Then of course there's the flip side of the Agreement, all the reasons and benefits for agreeing to it - the climate mitigation and large future costs it will save, the lucrative new energy industries (that China has already taken leadership from you), the international trade advantages of not being the only country besides Syria to ignore where the world is heading etc. But that's a separate discussion.
Just point to one example of a US federal tax that's been added to support climate action. Doesn't even have to be onerous. Again, I'll wait.
Even if the Paris agreement actually asked for such an additional tax, do you think Congress would agree?
If you're actually complaining about where your existing tax dollars are being spent, then sure, that's reasonable. You may have the opinion that the government is already "taxing the fuck out of the people", which you're also of course entitled to.
But that's unrelated to the Paris agreement. You've completely failed to demonstrate that the Paris agreement would, in any way, require taxing the fuck out of anyone. At best you've implied that "political speak" means that they probably will, but unless you can show any examples of new taxes to support the Paris agreement, in any country, I'm not placing a lot of credibility there either.
Heard of government bonds? Loans that get paid back? Loan guarantees, where you usually don't exchange money at all? These are just a few of the "financial resources" available to governments.
If you measure production by GDP, Australia is about level with Germany per capita, somewhat below the US and #17 in the world.
By far the biggest reason we have such high emissions per capita is that we burn a lot of coal. There's not a lot of hydro power, and no nukes. We do have perhaps the highest residential solar adoption, but little large-scale solar and wind. We sure do love our dirty brown coal though - our previous PM stood with his biggest campaign donators and proudly declared that "coal is good for humanity".
9(1) says developed countries "shall provide financial resources" to undeveloped countries. That's it. Nothing about tax, nothing about how much, nothing even says it has to be beyond existing foreign aid. Countries can provide whatever they like, including loans or loan guarantees. Nothing says it has to be taxpayer money.
9(3) says developed countries should take the lead in "mobilizing climate finance from a wide variety of sources, instruments and channels,
noting the significant role of public funds". Again, I'm failing to see anything about new taxes, or specific amounts, or anything beyond a suggestion to also consider public funds, in addition to the many other forms finance can take.
9(8) and 9(9) say only that the existing Financial Mechanisms should be used as intermediaries, i.e. the Global Environment Facility and the Green Climate Fund.
This whole "tax the fuck out of your people" invention is pure FUD, as anyone who takes the time to look for themselves can see. It's been literally made up to frighten people away from even considering the consequences of inaction.
First, if you read that in context, Edenhofer is clearly just reminding people that environmental policy is inextricably tied to economic policy, which seems obvious enough - if you accept that emissions are tied to growth. However, since that 2010 interview, and for the first time in history, that's clearly no longer the case - growth has continued, while emissions have actually slowed. A big reason for that is another thing he's been proved wrong about - gas is cheap now. The dramatic drop in cost of renewables is another.
But none of this is particularly relevant, because the IPCC does not set policies - countries do that. The IPCC's primary role is science - citing the evidence for climate change, and assembling the best predictions we can make, so that countries can make informed policies instead of reacting blindly. The science of what's happening to the planet exists independently of any responses we might choose to take.
Comments like yours are designed as distractions, attempts to discredit the organisations, but they can't make the evidence go away. You can certainly argue for your preferred policies or solutions, but you can't challenge the science with FUD about bureaucracies. Nature doesn't care, and closing your eyes to what's really happening is only going to raise the cost of coping with it.
Why not actually read it for yourself? It's only a few pages of relevant text, minimal legalese, well within high-school capabilities. Counting words tells you nothing, any more than the instances of "shall" in the US Constitution.
Then you'll see for yourself that there really are no specific commitments, and all actions are nationally determined and best-effort. Nothing is legally binding.
And yes, it's all largely symbolic, but statements of intent are still important. If Trump stays or withdraws, it changes no laws either way, but sends a clear signal to heavily-emitting industries that they either need to clean up their act, or that they're free to continue dumping their external waste costs on the public.
Here's a radical thought: why not read it for yourself? It's quite short. Until you do that, you're just echoing the opinions and preconceptions of others.
If you do, you'll note:
- the word "tax" does not appear in the Agreement
- the word "must" does not appear in the Agreement
The vast majority of it simply encourages parties to use their best efforts to reduce their domestic emissions. Nowhere does it lay down specifics as to what or how, and nowhere does it commit anyone to anything. It's all very vague and voluntary.
For the paranoid, Articles 9 and 11 are the ones about helping less-developed countries - let me know if you can find any onerous commitments in there. I'll wait.
If it's the case that permission for one domain allows recording by a different domain, that's an entirely different issue, and much more serious for security.
If you don't trust Google to not abuse the ability to record you, why did you give it explicit permission in the first place (or even install Chrome)?
If you think showing a small red dot somewhere on the screen counts as "security", then I assume you also never take your eyes off the screen, or leave a website open when your back is turned, or cover up the browser with another window, or let your screen go blank, or have enough tabs that there's no room to display the indicator, or use fullscreen mode, etc etc.
That said, I agree there is room for improvement. Firefox shows a fingernail-sized window that remains visible in a couple of these cases - hardly enough to be considered "security" but still a little better for awareness. Chrome could do the same.
Because the user still has to explicitly grant permission for mic/camera access first. There is no unauthorized recording, so no security breach.
The issue is that Chrome's red-dot recording indicator UI can get hidden. This isn't ideal of course, but isn't unique either - there are many cases where this might not show, such as in fullscreen mode or in mobile browsers.