Whilst ultimately the effect of CO2 is likely to be bounded by negative feedbacks, in certain regimes it is amplified by positive feedbacks, such as the changes in albedo that bring us out of ice ages, or the potential for clathrates to be released. The temperatures at which positive feedbacks are likely are still not fully understood, but loss of polar ice is understood, and is happening.
You also need to take into account repairs, which are likely higher for an ICE as it's more complex mechanically. It still probably doesn't eat up the cost difference, though.
The boom in the US economy I'd attribute to plentiful oil from the Middle East and the economies of Europe and Japan picking up offering trade options. The US economy wasn't doing so well in the 70s.
I'd suggest looking at the work of the likes of Ricardo (labour theory of value - roughly the value of a good is the value of the labour embedded in it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) and others. There are several other theories of values that emerged and withered. Value really has perplexed economists.
Even then, except for those at the top, life was still very much hard work, as just about everything was created by hand, and whilst specialisation helps a bit, it only helps a cerrain amount. I'd argue that what led the mass of people to significantly better their lives as the exploitation of energy and mineral sources, combined with mechanisation and automation, along with a relative shortage of labour to fully exploit that automation, combined with improvements in governance.
The amount of value you derive can vary, though. If you buy a burger for $5 when starving and you don't die it has a lot of value. If it's what tips you over into a cornonary not so much. That's an extreme, but the definition of value has perplexed economists for over 250 years.
The logic is that the government is less efficient, but private industry can be efficient through competition,but you'd be relying on competition making various underpinning technologies cheaper (computers, materials). However, if there is a lot that is novel, that might not happen (i.e. it's new stuff with a single creator, not cheap existing tech). Where a company could get additional profits is through a technology development bonus (selling things that came out of government funding of development), but some people get unhappy when government funded research is privatised, and it would be hard for a company to assess what might be achieved in terms of a technology dividend. The other potential source of profits would be selling the rights to televise the trip, or a seat on the journey. Where society might benefit, beyond the basic science, is in new products, but not much new really came out of Apollo (no, not Teflon or Velcro).
I'm not in principle against nuclear power, not at all, but all options considered need to have all the pluses and minus considered. And renewables have issues too.
I'm against their stupid nuclear ideology which prevents any useful progress on anything. They say "Nuclear is perfect and solar/wind/geothermal isn't good enough" and neither is true.
Indeed, and we most likely need a mix of sources to cope with things such as risk, investment issues, weaponisation and uranium supplies with nuclear, and managing intermittency and scale of renewables.
I could really do this. I could easily cut half... three quarters of meat out of my diet. I love meat- but there are lots of meatless dishes that are good too. India has some fantastic vegetarian dishes. I could quite happily eat some vegetarian Indian meals a couple days a week. I love red beans and rice (and black beans and rice too).
I love meat- but I could adapt to eating less without it impacting my life in a major way.
I was a vegetarian for a decade. Once avoiding meat is habitual it is easy, as long as you remember to still cook decent food, not just cook vegetables to a pulp and slap them on top of some sort of starch - if that was your only form of vegetarian food you'd give up pretty quickly. But you can make salads, pies, pasta, quiches, souffles, breads, soups, and many other things. Best of all, chocolate is vegetarian. It's not for everyone, of course. And I have had terrible vegetarian food as well as good. And some really terrible stuff.
It's easier when most people you know are vegetarian, or mostly so, though, or those that do eat meat do it at work and don't demand it at dinner parties. But there was a point that most of my friends were wholly vegetarian or mostly so, or even vegan, but that's not a common thing. And it was pretty accidental in terms of how that worked out, but there was a lot of cross over between folk-music nerds and vegetarians at the time.
I'm not in principle against nuclear power, not at all, but all options considered need to have all the pluses and minus considered. And renewables have issues too.
If you think that most grass used to feed cattle, outside ranches in the USA (which I wouldn't count as 'a plot'), is untended, then I take it you are not a farmer. In the UK, certainly, you need to go and make sure that poisonous weeds have not ended up in the pasture, and potentially also add fertiliser in addition to what the cows provide (depends on density of grazing). Goats are probably more efficient at grass to meat.
40 years worth of construction, so about 10% of British houses?
40 years ago central heating was still relatively uncommon (it was about then my childhood home had it fitted), but 99% of houses now have it now. This requires a new hot water tank and often new pipes too, even in addition to those running to the radiators. It's very hard to even sell a house in the UK without it.
And the methane has a rather short half-life in the atmosphere before it breaks down, much MUCH shorter than CO2.
Which, somehow, the IPCC DOES NOT allow for in their calculations - gee, what a surprise.
I take it you have never read the IPCC, looked at any climate models or talked to any climate scientists, as it is most certainly part of the calculations.
The methane produced by the breakdown of crop waste, although nicely ignored by the IPCC in general, is estimated by other sources to contribute over 2 TIMES the amount of Methane as meat
Citation? I have talked to people working on various effects of crop and land use on climate change (and vice versa) and would be happy to send them details of this research they've neglected.
To turn your anecdote into a data point, we need to know how batshit and bipolar you are.
I'm pretty dull and normal. Talking to my wife she says vegans in the USA are often more vociferous, but I haven't personally experienced that in the UK. The craziest things my vegan friends do is like folk music. The UK is pretty tolerant of eccentricity.
'Never met any remotely like' sure sounds like bullshit.
In my case it's true. I know four vegans, and shared a house with one, and folk music is as weird as they get.
The plant takes CO2, turns it into plant. The cow turns some of it into methane which is a more potent greenhouse gas, so you are missing the point. The methane eventually ends up as CO2 again. But it's not a big effect overall.
If reducing meant consumption required 50% of the current plant production, but you then needed to cultivate twice as much land if not using pesticides, etc, it would even out. So it's not a given that it's an issue, but it does depend on details, and those were contrived example figures to make a point, and not accurate. Some crop rotation methods, and the use of biochar might improve soil fertility, and some forms of intercropping can result in reduced pests (although relatively few and it's a while since I last researched this so I am a bit rusty)/
It depends where/how. If you are talking sheep on steep uplands raised for meat, you aren't going to really be replacing that with crops, so you might continue to raise sheep that way, but you might reduce corn production for feeding beef cattle, although you might continue to raise corn-fed chicken. There are some instances where grazing is required to maintain certain habitats (some upland ones being examples).
Slashdot Mirror
Whilst ultimately the effect of CO2 is likely to be bounded by negative feedbacks, in certain regimes it is amplified by positive feedbacks, such as the changes in albedo that bring us out of ice ages, or the potential for clathrates to be released. The temperatures at which positive feedbacks are likely are still not fully understood, but loss of polar ice is understood, and is happening.
You also need to take into account repairs, which are likely higher for an ICE as it's more complex mechanically. It still probably doesn't eat up the cost difference, though.
The boom in the US economy I'd attribute to plentiful oil from the Middle East and the economies of Europe and Japan picking up offering trade options. The US economy wasn't doing so well in the 70s.
Ah... the intrinsic or customary value arguments...
I'd suggest looking at the work of the likes of Ricardo (labour theory of value - roughly the value of a good is the value of the labour embedded in it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) and others. There are several other theories of values that emerged and withered. Value really has perplexed economists.
The space program was a boost to technology
It's often said, but has it been shown to be true?
Even then, except for those at the top, life was still very much hard work, as just about everything was created by hand, and whilst specialisation helps a bit, it only helps a cerrain amount. I'd argue that what led the mass of people to significantly better their lives as the exploitation of energy and mineral sources, combined with mechanisation and automation, along with a relative shortage of labour to fully exploit that automation, combined with improvements in governance.
The amount of value you derive can vary, though. If you buy a burger for $5 when starving and you don't die it has a lot of value. If it's what tips you over into a cornonary not so much. That's an extreme, but the definition of value has perplexed economists for over 250 years.
The big value of the space program of the 60s wasn't even in engineering. It was in process management.
Good point, although some of that had been done in the US Navy prior to that IIRC, so there was some base there.
The logic is that the government is less efficient, but private industry can be efficient through competition,but you'd be relying on competition making various underpinning technologies cheaper (computers, materials). However, if there is a lot that is novel, that might not happen (i.e. it's new stuff with a single creator, not cheap existing tech). Where a company could get additional profits is through a technology development bonus (selling things that came out of government funding of development), but some people get unhappy when government funded research is privatised, and it would be hard for a company to assess what might be achieved in terms of a technology dividend. The other potential source of profits would be selling the rights to televise the trip, or a seat on the journey. Where society might benefit, beyond the basic science, is in new products, but not much new really came out of Apollo (no, not Teflon or Velcro).
I'm not in principle against nuclear power, not at all, but all options considered need to have all the pluses and minus considered. And renewables have issues too.
I'm against their stupid nuclear ideology which prevents any useful progress on anything. They say "Nuclear is perfect and solar/wind/geothermal isn't good enough" and neither is true.
Indeed, and we most likely need a mix of sources to cope with things such as risk, investment issues, weaponisation and uranium supplies with nuclear, and managing intermittency and scale of renewables.
I could really do this. I could easily cut half... three quarters of meat out of my diet. I love meat- but there are lots of meatless dishes that are good too. India has some fantastic vegetarian dishes. I could quite happily eat some vegetarian Indian meals a couple days a week. I love red beans and rice (and black beans and rice too).
I love meat- but I could adapt to eating less without it impacting my life in a major way.
I was a vegetarian for a decade. Once avoiding meat is habitual it is easy, as long as you remember to still cook decent food, not just cook vegetables to a pulp and slap them on top of some sort of starch - if that was your only form of vegetarian food you'd give up pretty quickly. But you can make salads, pies, pasta, quiches, souffles, breads, soups, and many other things. Best of all, chocolate is vegetarian. It's not for everyone, of course. And I have had terrible vegetarian food as well as good. And some really terrible stuff.
It's easier when most people you know are vegetarian, or mostly so, though, or those that do eat meat do it at work and don't demand it at dinner parties. But there was a point that most of my friends were wholly vegetarian or mostly so, or even vegan, but that's not a common thing. And it was pretty accidental in terms of how that worked out, but there was a lot of cross over between folk-music nerds and vegetarians at the time.
I'm not in principle against nuclear power, not at all, but all options considered need to have all the pluses and minus considered. And renewables have issues too.
If you think that most grass used to feed cattle, outside ranches in the USA (which I wouldn't count as 'a plot'), is untended, then I take it you are not a farmer. In the UK, certainly, you need to go and make sure that poisonous weeds have not ended up in the pasture, and potentially also add fertiliser in addition to what the cows provide (depends on density of grazing). Goats are probably more efficient at grass to meat.
That doesn't matter. The whole point is that people do it, people get sick from doing it.
Having tea that awful would make me ill...
40 years worth of construction, so about 10% of British houses?
40 years ago central heating was still relatively uncommon (it was about then my childhood home had it fitted), but 99% of houses now have it now. This requires a new hot water tank and often new pipes too, even in addition to those running to the radiators. It's very hard to even sell a house in the UK without it.
And the methane has a rather short half-life in the atmosphere before it breaks down, much MUCH shorter than CO2. Which, somehow, the IPCC DOES NOT allow for in their calculations - gee, what a surprise.
I take it you have never read the IPCC, looked at any climate models or talked to any climate scientists, as it is most certainly part of the calculations.
The methane produced by the breakdown of crop waste, although nicely ignored by the IPCC in general, is estimated by other sources to contribute over 2 TIMES the amount of Methane as meat
Citation? I have talked to people working on various effects of crop and land use on climate change (and vice versa) and would be happy to send them details of this research they've neglected.
To turn your anecdote into a data point, we need to know how batshit and bipolar you are.
I'm pretty dull and normal. Talking to my wife she says vegans in the USA are often more vociferous, but I haven't personally experienced that in the UK. The craziest things my vegan friends do is like folk music. The UK is pretty tolerant of eccentricity.
'Never met any remotely like' sure sounds like bullshit.
In my case it's true. I know four vegans, and shared a house with one, and folk music is as weird as they get.
The plant takes CO2, turns it into plant. The cow turns some of it into methane which is a more potent greenhouse gas, so you are missing the point. The methane eventually ends up as CO2 again. But it's not a big effect overall.
You can tip hats too.
There's a difference between free to buy and cost to the environment. But then wasting it would not be prudent either.
If reducing meant consumption required 50% of the current plant production, but you then needed to cultivate twice as much land if not using pesticides, etc, it would even out. So it's not a given that it's an issue, but it does depend on details, and those were contrived example figures to make a point, and not accurate. Some crop rotation methods, and the use of biochar might improve soil fertility, and some forms of intercropping can result in reduced pests (although relatively few and it's a while since I last researched this so I am a bit rusty)/
It depends where/how. If you are talking sheep on steep uplands raised for meat, you aren't going to really be replacing that with crops, so you might continue to raise sheep that way, but you might reduce corn production for feeding beef cattle, although you might continue to raise corn-fed chicken. There are some instances where grazing is required to maintain certain habitats (some upland ones being examples).
I know several vegans, and never met any remotely like what you describe.
But tea made with water at 70C tastes bloody awful! That's saving two minutes to complain for the next ten it tastes horrible.