8 ms·

Honestly - the American right are not what concerns me - it's China, etc which seems to be gladly pumping out more and more CO2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L

by gedy 11y ago

Honestly - the American right are not what concerns me - it's China, etc which seems to be gladly pumping out more and more CO2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... We can hide behind per-capita stats but the global CO2 level and climate does not care about per capita.

epistasis 11y ago
I'm not worried about China at all, their leadership has a far better chance of listening to science and acting appropriately. As they grow their standard of living it will be using less carbon intensive methods. Meanwhile, the US is far too entrenched with ideology and vested interests that have captured the political machinery. Kind of sad that we're in this state, but people keep voting Republican...
- hjhgjtyhgdfi8 11y ago
  What solutions are you proposing exactly to reverse climate change? The trillions in investment so far in clean energy have yielded minimal results. What specifically are you recommending?
  - epistasis 11y ago
    As I mentioned in my other reply to you (which happened at the same time) revenue neutral carbon tax, or the equivalent righty version which is cap and trade. But really technology is going to drive this change, as long as the entrenched interests don't prevent the use of renewables that are cheaper than fossil fuels. Already ideally sited solar and wind are cheaper than coal, and learning curves are pushing that down all the time. Storage is also getting incredibly cheap, with lithium ion batteries it's around $0.08/kWh right now at the wholesale level. What we're really going to need is efficient carbon capture schemes though, because the feet-draggers have cost us an extremely valuable 15 years. If we can do capture at something less than $500/ton then I'm starting to feel a bit optimistic that we can head off the worst of it. But every. Single. Ton. That we emit right now is going to cost out children several times that amount. Improving efficiency of use and increasing the scale and efficiency of the renewable energy manufacturing is a massively important economic development for the US and the world.
    - hjhgjtyhgdfi8 11y ago
      Except cap and trade programs have done nothing to prevent or curb climate change. Oil companies just buy carbon offsets and continue polluting. Solar still depends on billions in subsidies to be viable, as with many other renewable energy sources. Solar is also extremely inefficient. It costs around 8 times more to output the same energy compared to natural gas for example. We've already invested billions in solar, and we've barely made a dent on solar costs. Oil is very cheap and affordable to the poor, which explains their continued use in the developing world over renewable energy.
      - epistasis 11y ago
        What carbon cap and trade programs? Is your contention that a cap and trade program could t reduce emissions? If it can't, then it's not a cap and trade program. Your pricing information on renewables is out of date, and quickly becoming more out of date. The renewable industry is changing fast, traditional energy industry changes slow. Those dinosaurs won't know what's hit them until it's too late.
      - codecamper 11y ago
        Not 100% sure about this, but if you rely only on a pure market approach, then oil & coal will become cheaper & cheaper while they become less popular. Their demand will drop & so the price will go down. The reality is that we must put an human mandated limit on the amount of carbon fuels to burn. Think of it another way: If burning carbon fuels causes major instability in the climate, then the fate of the human race should not be determined by the amount of carbon in the ground. It should be determined by humans being determined.
    - makomk 11y ago
      The trouble with the idea that technology will drive this change is that it's just driving down the cost of fossil fuels to below the new technologies as countries like Saudi Arabia desperately try and make sure they sell all of their oil. In order to avoid global warming we need to leave fossil fuels in the ground and that's just not in the interest of fossil fuel producers, and because for a lot of those fuels extraction is a tiny portion of the price they can afford to undercut renewables all the way down the cost curve until the pumps run dry or the renewable energy manufacturers give up and go out of business.
  - kingdomcome50 11y ago
    Are you insinuating that nothing can be done about climate change?
  - dd36 11y ago
    Higher prices on carbon fuels would be the simplest solution. Cap and trade works. It's not perfect but it works. Creating property rights for the sky lets markets do their magic. https://www3.epa.gov/captrade/documents/ctresults.pdf https://www3.epa.gov/captrade/documents/ctresults.pdf "A 2003 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) study found that the Acid Rain Program accounted for the largest quantified human health benefits of any major federal regulatory program implemented in the last 10 years, with benefits exceeding costs by more than 40:1." https://archive.epa.gov/clearskies/web/html/captrade.html https://archive.epa.gov/clearskies/web/html/captrade.html
  - arm85 11y ago
    If renewables did get trillions in investment this far, a reference would be nice, it wouldn't touch the subsidies fossil fuels receive annually at $5.3tn[0]. [0] IMF, How Large Are Global Energy Subsidies, 2015, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42940.0 http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42940.0
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      Accounting for environmental damage is important, but if you calculate the subsidies like that, it isn't just the energy industry that gets subsidized (as would largely be the case with renewables), it's the consumers using the energy (they receive most of such subsidies). So just to be clear: The $5.3 trillion is arrived at by counting untaxed environmental harm as a subsidy. Which I think it is interesting to consider the damage, but I don't think that is what people are going to think when they think energy subsidy.
      - arm85 11y ago
        I think my point still stands in response to his argument, if you ignore post-tax subsidies. The pre-tax sum is $333bn in 2015 and $541bn in 2013. So would easily accumulate to trillions over a short number of years. But I do think post-tax subsidies is a fair metric, for example, in places where there's state health care, my tax is being spent to care for people whose health has been affected by fossil fuels. So it seems like state subsidised to me.
        maxerickson 11y ago
        My primary interest was pointing out how the number was calculated, I'm not real worried about characterizing it.
      - makomk 11y ago
        No, this really is a subsidy to the fossil fuel industry: the amount they pay to obtain fossil fuels is less than the actual cost, which means they can sell them for prices which would be unprofitable if they paid for the environmental costs and for applications where they'd otherwise be replaced by other more environmentally-friendly options. The consumers definitely aren't the ones who are being subsidised here - they don't care where their energy is coming from, so the actual consumer benefit is only the difference between the cost of fossil fuels and the cost of the cheapest option if fossil fuel producers had to pay the full environmental price, minus the environmental harms to the consumers. (Which may well actually not be a net benefit to consumers at all.)
- stvswn 11y ago
  There are several examples in history of succumbing to hte logic "we need a single-party state in order to finally listen to scientists about the best way to run society!" It doesn't end well. I suppose if the scientists were in charge, we'd finally stop burning fossil fuels? That we'd force massive changes to resource distribution and reshape society in order to save the world? And if you don't agree, you're too dangerous, right? Off ot the gulags? Do you understand that millions and millions of people would die of starvation? It's amazing how eagerly people advocate for the right kind of totalitarianism.
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    I don't read that epistasis was suggesting it's because they're a single party totalitarian state. It's because their elected officials aren't loudly proclaiming that climate change doesn't exist, regardless of how many parties there are. Plenty of multi-party democracies have parties that somehow manage to agree on whether anthropogenic climate change exists and whether dinosaurs were real. America just isn't one of them. We don't need a single party state, we need parties that aren't embarrassingly out of touch with how the world works. When your presidential candidates take pride in not believing things despite overwhelming evidence, you have a problem.
  - epistasis 11y ago
    Hah, that's not even remotely what I was asking for, and very weird that you would put totalitarianism as words in my mouth. Most unfair. the way that parties change is that people stop voting for them. Any vote for such a stridently anti-science and anti-future party encourages them. That said, this is my most important issue. Others will rank other issues higher, and vote on that basis. But it will be at least a decade after the Republican Party apologizes and corrects their science mistakes that I will trust them to vote for them.
    - brbsix 11y ago
      Since when are any politicans forthright in correcting and apologizing for their mistakes? Barring prison or other legal woes, when was the last time the advocates of any government program awknowledged and sought to remedy the deleterious effects of their actions?
- elgabogringo 11y ago
  You should care about china if you care about CO2 levels. US CO2 levels are already going down, china's are accelerating up: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/a-fresh-look-at-chinas-long-march-on-energy-and-emissions/ http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/a-fresh-look-at...
  - epistasis 11y ago
    I care about China of course, I said I'm not "worried" about them. I'm not "worried" about those increasing emissions, that's completely expected, and better than what most people thought it would be in previous years. Now, India, there I'm a bit worried....
  - cadence 11y ago
    I'm not an expert, but from what I've read China's emissions growth has slowed dramatically, possibly even stalled. Here's a report from a few months ago: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-26/china-s-major-co2-emissions-seen-stalling-amid-climate-push http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-26/china-s-ma... This could be primarily because of the economic slowdown, but I've read other articles that report the change is more systemic and permanent as China seeks to lead in clean energy tech.
mikeyouse 11y ago
At least China is at least giving lip service to caring about CO2 reductions: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/30/china-carbon-emissions-2030-premier-li-keqiang-un-paris-climate-change-summit http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/30/china-car... Every single Republican candidate for president was openly mocking Obama when he was in Paris a few months ago for the climate talks. They're an absolute embarrassment: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/republicans-obama-climate-change-paris-216284 http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/republicans-obama-clim...
- hjhgjtyhgdfi8 11y ago
  Saying ISIS is a bigger threat to the global world than climate change is....embarrassing? Innocent people are being blown up and their heads are being cut off at this instant because of ISIS. They are committing a genocide at this very minute.
  - moyix 11y ago
    How many people per year would you estimate ISIS kills? Is it more than 150,000 people [1]? Because that's how many people the WHO estimates currently die right now as a result of climate change. And the number is expected to go up to 250,000 by 2030-2050 [2]. Other estimates have been even higher, e.g. [3] which came up with 400,000 extra deaths due to climate change per year already. [1] http://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/ http://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/ [2] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/ [3] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/27/climate-change-kills-400-000-a-year-new-report-reveals.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/27/climate-cha...
    - hjhgjtyhgdfi8 11y ago
      And yet, with the record levels of climate emissions, billions of people are living longer and healthier due to cheaper energy costs that keep them warm and fed at low cost. Why is the global world living longer despite its ever increasing usage of fossil fuels? Just to take one example, China's life expectancy has grown increasingly despite having record levels of pollution. You would think that more and more people would die as fossil fuels increase. Something doesn't connect here. Care to explain the conundrum for me? ISIS having their hands on a nuke would be catastrophic.
codecamper 11y ago
The US right wing is providing China with a very convenient excuse.
- whitegrape 11y ago
  China doesn't need anyone in the US to give it excuses, it can stand on its own logic.
jussij 11y ago
There is plenty of evidence China is working hard to close their dirty power generation plants and move to clean energy. Here's something from late 2015: China is totally crushing the U.S. on renewable energy http://grist.org/climate-energy/china-is-totally-crushing-the-u-s-on-renewable-energy/ http://grist.org/climate-energy/china-is-totally-crushing-th... Here's one that is just a month old: China set to surpass its climate targets as renewables soar https://www.newscientist.com/article/2079179-china-set-to-surpass-its-climate-targets-as-renewables-soar/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2079179-china-set-to-su...
- mapt 11y ago
  I would note that the graph does not show what the headline indicates. The graph BNEF prepared shows carbon emissions ~tripling from 2012 to 2040, due to substantial growth in non-OECD coal & gas consumption, which swamps the drop in these categories for OECD countries.
  - jussij 11y ago
    From the second link: Meanwhile, its consumption of coal – the dirtiest of the fossil fuels – dropped by 3.7 per cent, with imports down by a substantial 30 per cent. The country’s solar and wind energy capacity soared last year by 74 and 34 per cent respectively compared with 2014, according to figures issued by China’s National Bureau of Statistics yesterday. The latest figures state that “clean energy” – a combination of hydro, wind, solar, nuclear and natural gas – now accounts for 18 per cent of all its energy, up from 13 per cent in 2011. Such rapid changes in how energy generation in China is changing suggests to me, that graph projecting non-OECD CO2 emission is most likely be wrong and overly pessimistic.
pitchka 11y ago
American continents produce more CO2 than China. Much more. Animal agriculture has around 51% CO2 footprint. Bunch of it done on the rich soils of Amazon, and vast plains of USA. Meat, dairy and eggs is what is killing us. Not traffic, not heating.
- vancan1ty 11y ago
  Can you provide a link supporting your claim that animal agriculture has >50% of the CO2 footprint or that the American continents produce much more CO2 than China? The first claim seems to be incorrect at least based on simple googling to obtain the following link: https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/global.html https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/global.html According to that link agriculture/land-use appears to have about 1/6 the impact of industrial processes/fossil fuel. The second claim appears to be incorrect for "human produced" CO2 at least, using standard numbers. Perhaps there is another source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... Summing up the numbers there, I get the following results: Annual CO2 Emissions: (China): 10,540,000 kt (USA + Canada + Mexico + Brazil + Argentina + Venezuala): 7,245,000 kt
  - pitchka 11y ago
    http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM Here's an 18% estimate while transportation is 13%. Here's a 51% estimate, trumping everything else. http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294 http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294 I couldn't find the links for the second claim (its somewhere out there) but the ones provided don't account for animals, land use and rainforest elimination. All three are major factors of the animal agriculture.
    - vancan1ty 11y ago
      Note that these links are talking about total greenhouse gas production, not just CO2 as was originally stated in pitchka's comment and questioned in mine. Pitchka's "18%/51%" estimates are not actually talking about literal CO2 output, but rather about general "GHG" (greenhouse gas) emissions, including gases like methane.
nazka 11y ago
There is this scary video[1] done by NASA that shows the earth with the level of CO2 across a year. The CO2 from China goes right to SF... And then it goes crazy. You can also see why the amazon rainforest is named the lungs of the planet or in this video it looks more like the heart of our planet. But China seems now to be really willing to reduce its impact on the planet. There are the huge investments on solar panels for instance. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUUo2tL8rvQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUUo2tL8rvQ

by gedy 11y ago

epistasis 11y ago

I'm not worried about China at all, their leadership has a far better chance of listening to science and acting appropriately. As they grow their standard of living it will be using less carbon intensive methods. Meanwhile, the US is far too entrenched with ideology and vested interests that have captured the political machinery. Kind of sad that we're in this state, but people keep voting Republican...

hjhgjtyhgdfi8 11y ago
What solutions are you proposing exactly to reverse climate change? The trillions in investment so far in clean energy have yielded minimal results. What specifically are you recommending?
- epistasis 11y ago
  As I mentioned in my other reply to you (which happened at the same time) revenue neutral carbon tax, or the equivalent righty version which is cap and trade. But really technology is going to drive this change, as long as the entrenched interests don't prevent the use of renewables that are cheaper than fossil fuels. Already ideally sited solar and wind are cheaper than coal, and learning curves are pushing that down all the time. Storage is also getting incredibly cheap, with lithium ion batteries it's around $0.08/kWh right now at the wholesale level. What we're really going to need is efficient carbon capture schemes though, because the feet-draggers have cost us an extremely valuable 15 years. If we can do capture at something less than $500/ton then I'm starting to feel a bit optimistic that we can head off the worst of it. But every. Single. Ton. That we emit right now is going to cost out children several times that amount. Improving efficiency of use and increasing the scale and efficiency of the renewable energy manufacturing is a massively important economic development for the US and the world.
  - hjhgjtyhgdfi8 11y ago
    Except cap and trade programs have done nothing to prevent or curb climate change. Oil companies just buy carbon offsets and continue polluting. Solar still depends on billions in subsidies to be viable, as with many other renewable energy sources. Solar is also extremely inefficient. It costs around 8 times more to output the same energy compared to natural gas for example. We've already invested billions in solar, and we've barely made a dent on solar costs. Oil is very cheap and affordable to the poor, which explains their continued use in the developing world over renewable energy.
    - epistasis 11y ago
      What carbon cap and trade programs? Is your contention that a cap and trade program could t reduce emissions? If it can't, then it's not a cap and trade program. Your pricing information on renewables is out of date, and quickly becoming more out of date. The renewable industry is changing fast, traditional energy industry changes slow. Those dinosaurs won't know what's hit them until it's too late.
    - codecamper 11y ago
      Not 100% sure about this, but if you rely only on a pure market approach, then oil & coal will become cheaper & cheaper while they become less popular. Their demand will drop & so the price will go down. The reality is that we must put an human mandated limit on the amount of carbon fuels to burn. Think of it another way: If burning carbon fuels causes major instability in the climate, then the fate of the human race should not be determined by the amount of carbon in the ground. It should be determined by humans being determined.
  - makomk 11y ago
    The trouble with the idea that technology will drive this change is that it's just driving down the cost of fossil fuels to below the new technologies as countries like Saudi Arabia desperately try and make sure they sell all of their oil. In order to avoid global warming we need to leave fossil fuels in the ground and that's just not in the interest of fossil fuel producers, and because for a lot of those fuels extraction is a tiny portion of the price they can afford to undercut renewables all the way down the cost curve until the pumps run dry or the renewable energy manufacturers give up and go out of business.
- kingdomcome50 11y ago
  Are you insinuating that nothing can be done about climate change?
- dd36 11y ago
  Higher prices on carbon fuels would be the simplest solution. Cap and trade works. It's not perfect but it works. Creating property rights for the sky lets markets do their magic. https://www3.epa.gov/captrade/documents/ctresults.pdf https://www3.epa.gov/captrade/documents/ctresults.pdf "A 2003 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) study found that the Acid Rain Program accounted for the largest quantified human health benefits of any major federal regulatory program implemented in the last 10 years, with benefits exceeding costs by more than 40:1." https://archive.epa.gov/clearskies/web/html/captrade.html https://archive.epa.gov/clearskies/web/html/captrade.html
- arm85 11y ago
  If renewables did get trillions in investment this far, a reference would be nice, it wouldn't touch the subsidies fossil fuels receive annually at $5.3tn[0]. [0] IMF, How Large Are Global Energy Subsidies, 2015, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42940.0 http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42940.0
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Accounting for environmental damage is important, but if you calculate the subsidies like that, it isn't just the energy industry that gets subsidized (as would largely be the case with renewables), it's the consumers using the energy (they receive most of such subsidies). So just to be clear: The $5.3 trillion is arrived at by counting untaxed environmental harm as a subsidy. Which I think it is interesting to consider the damage, but I don't think that is what people are going to think when they think energy subsidy.
    - arm85 11y ago
      I think my point still stands in response to his argument, if you ignore post-tax subsidies. The pre-tax sum is $333bn in 2015 and $541bn in 2013. So would easily accumulate to trillions over a short number of years. But I do think post-tax subsidies is a fair metric, for example, in places where there's state health care, my tax is being spent to care for people whose health has been affected by fossil fuels. So it seems like state subsidised to me.
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        My primary interest was pointing out how the number was calculated, I'm not real worried about characterizing it.
    - makomk 11y ago
      No, this really is a subsidy to the fossil fuel industry: the amount they pay to obtain fossil fuels is less than the actual cost, which means they can sell them for prices which would be unprofitable if they paid for the environmental costs and for applications where they'd otherwise be replaced by other more environmentally-friendly options. The consumers definitely aren't the ones who are being subsidised here - they don't care where their energy is coming from, so the actual consumer benefit is only the difference between the cost of fossil fuels and the cost of the cheapest option if fossil fuel producers had to pay the full environmental price, minus the environmental harms to the consumers. (Which may well actually not be a net benefit to consumers at all.)
stvswn 11y ago
There are several examples in history of succumbing to hte logic "we need a single-party state in order to finally listen to scientists about the best way to run society!" It doesn't end well. I suppose if the scientists were in charge, we'd finally stop burning fossil fuels? That we'd force massive changes to resource distribution and reshape society in order to save the world? And if you don't agree, you're too dangerous, right? Off ot the gulags? Do you understand that millions and millions of people would die of starvation? It's amazing how eagerly people advocate for the right kind of totalitarianism.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  I don't read that epistasis was suggesting it's because they're a single party totalitarian state. It's because their elected officials aren't loudly proclaiming that climate change doesn't exist, regardless of how many parties there are. Plenty of multi-party democracies have parties that somehow manage to agree on whether anthropogenic climate change exists and whether dinosaurs were real. America just isn't one of them. We don't need a single party state, we need parties that aren't embarrassingly out of touch with how the world works. When your presidential candidates take pride in not believing things despite overwhelming evidence, you have a problem.
- epistasis 11y ago
  Hah, that's not even remotely what I was asking for, and very weird that you would put totalitarianism as words in my mouth. Most unfair. the way that parties change is that people stop voting for them. Any vote for such a stridently anti-science and anti-future party encourages them. That said, this is my most important issue. Others will rank other issues higher, and vote on that basis. But it will be at least a decade after the Republican Party apologizes and corrects their science mistakes that I will trust them to vote for them.
  - brbsix 11y ago
    Since when are any politicans forthright in correcting and apologizing for their mistakes? Barring prison or other legal woes, when was the last time the advocates of any government program awknowledged and sought to remedy the deleterious effects of their actions?
elgabogringo 11y ago
You should care about china if you care about CO2 levels. US CO2 levels are already going down, china's are accelerating up: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/a-fresh-look-at-chinas-long-march-on-energy-and-emissions/ http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/a-fresh-look-at...
- epistasis 11y ago
  I care about China of course, I said I'm not "worried" about them. I'm not "worried" about those increasing emissions, that's completely expected, and better than what most people thought it would be in previous years. Now, India, there I'm a bit worried....
- cadence 11y ago
  I'm not an expert, but from what I've read China's emissions growth has slowed dramatically, possibly even stalled. Here's a report from a few months ago: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-26/china-s-major-co2-emissions-seen-stalling-amid-climate-push http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-26/china-s-ma... This could be primarily because of the economic slowdown, but I've read other articles that report the change is more systemic and permanent as China seeks to lead in clean energy tech.

mikeyouse 11y ago

At least China is at least giving lip service to caring about CO2 reductions: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/30/china-carbon-emissions-2030-premier-li-keqiang-un-paris-climate-change-summit http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/30/china-car... Every single Republican candidate for president was openly mocking Obama when he was in Paris a few months ago for the climate talks. They're an absolute embarrassment: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/republicans-obama-climate-change-paris-216284 http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/republicans-obama-clim...

hjhgjtyhgdfi8 11y ago
Saying ISIS is a bigger threat to the global world than climate change is....embarrassing? Innocent people are being blown up and their heads are being cut off at this instant because of ISIS. They are committing a genocide at this very minute.
- moyix 11y ago
  How many people per year would you estimate ISIS kills? Is it more than 150,000 people [1]? Because that's how many people the WHO estimates currently die right now as a result of climate change. And the number is expected to go up to 250,000 by 2030-2050 [2]. Other estimates have been even higher, e.g. [3] which came up with 400,000 extra deaths due to climate change per year already. [1] http://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/ http://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/ [2] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/ [3] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/27/climate-change-kills-400-000-a-year-new-report-reveals.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/27/climate-cha...
  - hjhgjtyhgdfi8 11y ago
    And yet, with the record levels of climate emissions, billions of people are living longer and healthier due to cheaper energy costs that keep them warm and fed at low cost. Why is the global world living longer despite its ever increasing usage of fossil fuels? Just to take one example, China's life expectancy has grown increasingly despite having record levels of pollution. You would think that more and more people would die as fossil fuels increase. Something doesn't connect here. Care to explain the conundrum for me? ISIS having their hands on a nuke would be catastrophic.

codecamper 11y ago

The US right wing is providing China with a very convenient excuse.

whitegrape 11y ago
China doesn't need anyone in the US to give it excuses, it can stand on its own logic.

jussij 11y ago

There is plenty of evidence China is working hard to close their dirty power generation plants and move to clean energy. Here's something from late 2015: China is totally crushing the U.S. on renewable energy http://grist.org/climate-energy/china-is-totally-crushing-the-u-s-on-renewable-energy/ http://grist.org/climate-energy/china-is-totally-crushing-th... Here's one that is just a month old: China set to surpass its climate targets as renewables soar https://www.newscientist.com/article/2079179-china-set-to-surpass-its-climate-targets-as-renewables-soar/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2079179-china-set-to-su...

mapt 11y ago
I would note that the graph does not show what the headline indicates. The graph BNEF prepared shows carbon emissions ~tripling from 2012 to 2040, due to substantial growth in non-OECD coal & gas consumption, which swamps the drop in these categories for OECD countries.
- jussij 11y ago
  From the second link: Meanwhile, its consumption of coal – the dirtiest of the fossil fuels – dropped by 3.7 per cent, with imports down by a substantial 30 per cent. The country’s solar and wind energy capacity soared last year by 74 and 34 per cent respectively compared with 2014, according to figures issued by China’s National Bureau of Statistics yesterday. The latest figures state that “clean energy” – a combination of hydro, wind, solar, nuclear and natural gas – now accounts for 18 per cent of all its energy, up from 13 per cent in 2011. Such rapid changes in how energy generation in China is changing suggests to me, that graph projecting non-OECD CO2 emission is most likely be wrong and overly pessimistic.

pitchka 11y ago

American continents produce more CO2 than China. Much more. Animal agriculture has around 51% CO2 footprint. Bunch of it done on the rich soils of Amazon, and vast plains of USA. Meat, dairy and eggs is what is killing us. Not traffic, not heating.

vancan1ty 11y ago
Can you provide a link supporting your claim that animal agriculture has >50% of the CO2 footprint or that the American continents produce much more CO2 than China? The first claim seems to be incorrect at least based on simple googling to obtain the following link: https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/global.html https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/global.html According to that link agriculture/land-use appears to have about 1/6 the impact of industrial processes/fossil fuel. The second claim appears to be incorrect for "human produced" CO2 at least, using standard numbers. Perhaps there is another source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... Summing up the numbers there, I get the following results: Annual CO2 Emissions: (China): 10,540,000 kt (USA + Canada + Mexico + Brazil + Argentina + Venezuala): 7,245,000 kt
- pitchka 11y ago
  http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM Here's an 18% estimate while transportation is 13%. Here's a 51% estimate, trumping everything else. http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294 http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294 I couldn't find the links for the second claim (its somewhere out there) but the ones provided don't account for animals, land use and rainforest elimination. All three are major factors of the animal agriculture.
  - vancan1ty 11y ago
    Note that these links are talking about total greenhouse gas production, not just CO2 as was originally stated in pitchka's comment and questioned in mine. Pitchka's "18%/51%" estimates are not actually talking about literal CO2 output, but rather about general "GHG" (greenhouse gas) emissions, including gases like methane.

nazka 11y ago

There is this scary video[1] done by NASA that shows the earth with the level of CO2 across a year. The CO2 from China goes right to SF... And then it goes crazy. You can also see why the amazon rainforest is named the lungs of the planet or in this video it looks more like the heart of our planet. But China seems now to be really willing to reduce its impact on the planet. There are the huge investments on solar panels for instance. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUUo2tL8rvQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUUo2tL8rvQ