6 ms·

> let's just curtail CO2 emissions We are though. Most people I talk to don't know that the US peaked CO2 emissions ten years ago and it's been falling every

> let's just curtail CO2 emissions We are though. Most people I talk to don't know that the US peaked CO2 emissions ten years ago and it's been falling every since - in per capita, per GDP, and absolute terms.

ForHackernews 8y ago
It's not even nearly enough. According to the recent UN report, we need cut global net emissions by 50% in the next 12 years, and get to zero net CO2 by 2050. This is a slow-motion catastrophe and people aren't nearly worried enough to take the steps necessary to avert it. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/un-says-climate-genocide-coming-but-its-worse-than-that.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/un-says-climate-genoc... https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fossil-fuels https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fos...
- deialtrous 8y ago
  But that UN report is based on predictions we know with 100% certainty to be incorrect. That's politics, not science. Science says "learn to do math before telling everyone the world is ending".
  - igor47 8y ago
    [citation needed]
  - bloaf 8y ago
    All models are wrong. Some are useful. Basically every organization that has looked at the issue and built a serious model has reached the same conclusion. From early studies done by engineers at oil and gas companies, to research undertaken by skeptics, the message is the same: we're not in Kansas anymore, and we're running out of time to turn around. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of...
    - deialtrous 8y ago
      Which organizations are those? Ones that are funded based on how much hysteria they whip up to justify stealing from people? I don't care about organizations opinions or statements, I care about the math. When the math is clearly incorrect, and we keep being told the world is ending because the incorrect math says so, there's a problem. Climate hysterians hate Monckton, and rage about how evil and wrong he is because "his opinions do not match the scientific consensus", but none of them refute the simple, factual errors he brought up. Mathematical errors that have been confirmed by mathematicians: https://mythesmanciesetmathematiques.wordpress.com/2016/09/11/londres-god-bless-you-lord https://mythesmanciesetmathematiques.wordpress.com/2016/09/1... All of the models you mention use the completely incorrect math for feedbacks that will worsen warming caused by CO2. They literally all use the 3K per doubling figure. Despite it being proven wrong mathematically, and proven wrong historically as these models have all been wrong for the last 20 years of observed data.
      - igor47 8y ago
        reference on monckton for others: https://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton_Myths_arg.htm https://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton_Myths_arg.htm
        deialtrous 8y ago
        Yes, precisely like that. He makes a simple, objective claim that a specific formula used in the models is used incorrectly, and the self proclaimed "skeptics" who see themselves as the arbiters of science can make no objective response. Instead the compile a list of strawmen and ignore that the very references they are using to "debunk" those strawmen are the ones proven wrong by the corrected math in question.
      - bloaf 8y ago
        I'm sure you're aware that one of the "engineers from oil and gas companies" that I mentioned is Dr. Flannery, an author of the literal bible of computational numerical methods [1]. I'm sure you're aware that Monckton has no formal mathematical training and that his complaints against terrestrial climate models include the "fact" that they didn't predict warming on Pluto. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_Recipes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_Recipes
- PeterisP 8y ago
  It seems obvious to me that this is unrealistic - that we're not going to do the cuts that we "need"; People will not get worried enough to take the steps necessary to avert it, it's simply not going to happen, and it's wishful thinking to expect that people will change their behaviour so much before they have immediate first-hand horrible effects (and those effects won't happen before it's too late). If that is our plan, then why not just wish for rainbow-farting unicorns to fix our ecosystem, it's just as likely to happen but more effective? Everything we know about people's psychology, social structures and politics seems to indicate that if the global population will be given a choice between those reductions and a slow-motion catastrophe, they'll pick policies that result in this catastrophe. Such reductions won't be made unilaterally or willingly, they might happen only if enforced with extreme violence (i.e. short-term threats instead of long-term horrible expectations) but no one sufficiently powerful seems willing to fight internal unrest or threaten international wars to enforce drastic measures for the sake of preventing climate change. So we have to start with an assumption that emission cuts of the required scale are not going to happen (or, at least, are not going to happen soon enough), and look for more realistic alternatives than convincing 7 billion people to voluntarily downshift their lifestyle by 2050. Large scale carbon sequestration is one such alternative option.
romed 8y ago
But the decline hasn’t been monotonic. There have been several years of the past ten where absolute and per-capita CO2 emissions in the US have increased year-over-year.
vkou 8y ago
Just because you've taken the foot off the accelerator, doesn't mean that we're going to stop before we drive off a cliff. I've yet to see a plan for a transition to a carbon-neutral economy, even on a 30-year timeline.
- intended 8y ago
  There isn’t. There won’t be. Fair warning, this is a cynical, but honest comment, and it’s not defeatist, but acceptance of our collective nature. I’ve roughly gauged most of our species moves on climate accurately so far. I bet that We are going to go full bore on geo engineering. It’s the perfect eco-poli-socio fix, and is a perfect storm to fill a lot of our mental blind spots. Geo engineering is jobs, and economic spending. It’s great PR, and it’s a BIG moonshot style project, so the optics are stupendous. Which politician wouldn’t like to say “we secured billions in funding for jobs protecting our environment, by creating factories that absorb carbon from the air” It doesn’t even have to work, for people to sell it. Create a military industrial complex style system with geo engineering at its root, and soon humanity will be performing biospheric surgery. There’s a specific vein of cynical realism, that acknowledges both humanities ingenuity and it’s emtrapment to its darker natures. We will stick to a carbon positive economy, because no one can turn around and tell the world “its over, the good days are gone, and now when we price environmental costs to everything, the markets will tank.” Too many goods are cheap because externalities aren’t priced in. A price rise in plastic costs will end product lines and packaging. This will push people to alternatives which are worse (paper takes more water than plastic, and decays causing eventual spoilage and replacement.)
  - njarboe 8y ago
    Plastic releases little CO2 into the air and its environment negatives are minimal if deposed of in a landfill. If CO2 and other external pollution sources were highly taxed, plastic prices could even go down as burning oil for energy is phased out and non-taxed oil used for plastics drops in price.
    - intended 8y ago
throwaway5752 8y ago
If only there weren't other countries that we import goods from. If I drive a car made in Canada, Mexico, China, and the US what do I contribute as a consumer to CO2 production?
joe_the_user 8y ago
But this achievement is less even impressive than a "OK, we've done the US, now let's look at other countries" The problem is that the US can export it's carbon-intensive industries and even consume new carbon intensive entities produced by other countries. For example, US investors certainly consume a modest fraction of bitcoins mined in China and bitcoins wind-up consuming not just a lot of energy but also form a new source sort of carbon-intensive production. Solar and wind power are becoming competitive with oil in general but this can never by itself halt hydrocarbon-energy production 'cause as it's relative price drops, there's always a practical use for hydrocarbon-energy close to the source, where pumping it out of the ground is nearly free.
astrodust 8y ago
The United States fully intends to reverse course on that and fire up coal plants in order to something something jobs. The reason it was falling was because of strict emissions standards and a strong EPA, both of which are basically gone.
- beat 8y ago
  That's just angsting about short term partisan politics. The trends remain positive for the longer term. Don't let whatever Trump says this week blind you to the long term.
  - martythemaniak 8y ago
    Trends are whatever people make them and many people don't appreciate both the fragility and reversibility of "progress". Things don't just work out, they get worked out. Telling people to stop worrying, relax and become lazy and complacent is extremely counterproductive.
    - beat 8y ago
      I'm not saying to "relax and become lazy and complacent". I'm saying that attitude that nothing can be done, because we happen to have a crap president at the moment, is far more counterproductive. Yes, the EPA is taking a beating. But within my lifetime, the EPA didn't even exist. We did something about it. The EPA can and will be rebuilt. The benefits of solar/wind power are real market benefits, and will triumph, despite the desperate resistance of the coal industry. Etc.
  - mcculley 8y ago
    Do you think the United States is capable of reliably thinking about the long term and electing a President that does the same? As long as the planet can be impacted in such a large way by myopic leaders, I don't see what can be done.
    - beat 8y ago
wott 8y ago
Not exactly. The sharpest drop happened "thanks to" the financial crisis, and after that, it has been bouncing up and down depending on the year. The overall trend is downwards though. But not enough, by far.

ForHackernews 8y ago

It's not even nearly enough. According to the recent UN report, we need cut global net emissions by 50% in the next 12 years, and get to zero net CO2 by 2050. This is a slow-motion catastrophe and people aren't nearly worried enough to take the steps necessary to avert it. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/un-says-climate-genocide-coming-but-its-worse-than-that.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/un-says-climate-genoc... https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fossil-fuels https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fos...

deialtrous 8y ago
But that UN report is based on predictions we know with 100% certainty to be incorrect. That's politics, not science. Science says "learn to do math before telling everyone the world is ending".
- igor47 8y ago
  [citation needed]
- bloaf 8y ago
  All models are wrong. Some are useful. Basically every organization that has looked at the issue and built a serious model has reached the same conclusion. From early studies done by engineers at oil and gas companies, to research undertaken by skeptics, the message is the same: we're not in Kansas anymore, and we're running out of time to turn around. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of...
  - deialtrous 8y ago
    Which organizations are those? Ones that are funded based on how much hysteria they whip up to justify stealing from people? I don't care about organizations opinions or statements, I care about the math. When the math is clearly incorrect, and we keep being told the world is ending because the incorrect math says so, there's a problem. Climate hysterians hate Monckton, and rage about how evil and wrong he is because "his opinions do not match the scientific consensus", but none of them refute the simple, factual errors he brought up. Mathematical errors that have been confirmed by mathematicians: https://mythesmanciesetmathematiques.wordpress.com/2016/09/11/londres-god-bless-you-lord https://mythesmanciesetmathematiques.wordpress.com/2016/09/1... All of the models you mention use the completely incorrect math for feedbacks that will worsen warming caused by CO2. They literally all use the 3K per doubling figure. Despite it being proven wrong mathematically, and proven wrong historically as these models have all been wrong for the last 20 years of observed data.
    - igor47 8y ago
      reference on monckton for others: https://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton_Myths_arg.htm https://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton_Myths_arg.htm
      - deialtrous 8y ago
        Yes, precisely like that. He makes a simple, objective claim that a specific formula used in the models is used incorrectly, and the self proclaimed "skeptics" who see themselves as the arbiters of science can make no objective response. Instead the compile a list of strawmen and ignore that the very references they are using to "debunk" those strawmen are the ones proven wrong by the corrected math in question.
    - bloaf 8y ago
      I'm sure you're aware that one of the "engineers from oil and gas companies" that I mentioned is Dr. Flannery, an author of the literal bible of computational numerical methods [1]. I'm sure you're aware that Monckton has no formal mathematical training and that his complaints against terrestrial climate models include the "fact" that they didn't predict warming on Pluto. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_Recipes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_Recipes
PeterisP 8y ago
It seems obvious to me that this is unrealistic - that we're not going to do the cuts that we "need"; People will not get worried enough to take the steps necessary to avert it, it's simply not going to happen, and it's wishful thinking to expect that people will change their behaviour so much before they have immediate first-hand horrible effects (and those effects won't happen before it's too late). If that is our plan, then why not just wish for rainbow-farting unicorns to fix our ecosystem, it's just as likely to happen but more effective? Everything we know about people's psychology, social structures and politics seems to indicate that if the global population will be given a choice between those reductions and a slow-motion catastrophe, they'll pick policies that result in this catastrophe. Such reductions won't be made unilaterally or willingly, they might happen only if enforced with extreme violence (i.e. short-term threats instead of long-term horrible expectations) but no one sufficiently powerful seems willing to fight internal unrest or threaten international wars to enforce drastic measures for the sake of preventing climate change. So we have to start with an assumption that emission cuts of the required scale are not going to happen (or, at least, are not going to happen soon enough), and look for more realistic alternatives than convincing 7 billion people to voluntarily downshift their lifestyle by 2050. Large scale carbon sequestration is one such alternative option.

romed 8y ago

But the decline hasn’t been monotonic. There have been several years of the past ten where absolute and per-capita CO2 emissions in the US have increased year-over-year.

vkou 8y ago

Just because you've taken the foot off the accelerator, doesn't mean that we're going to stop before we drive off a cliff. I've yet to see a plan for a transition to a carbon-neutral economy, even on a 30-year timeline.

intended 8y ago
There isn’t. There won’t be. Fair warning, this is a cynical, but honest comment, and it’s not defeatist, but acceptance of our collective nature. I’ve roughly gauged most of our species moves on climate accurately so far. I bet that We are going to go full bore on geo engineering. It’s the perfect eco-poli-socio fix, and is a perfect storm to fill a lot of our mental blind spots. Geo engineering is jobs, and economic spending. It’s great PR, and it’s a BIG moonshot style project, so the optics are stupendous. Which politician wouldn’t like to say “we secured billions in funding for jobs protecting our environment, by creating factories that absorb carbon from the air” It doesn’t even have to work, for people to sell it. Create a military industrial complex style system with geo engineering at its root, and soon humanity will be performing biospheric surgery. There’s a specific vein of cynical realism, that acknowledges both humanities ingenuity and it’s emtrapment to its darker natures. We will stick to a carbon positive economy, because no one can turn around and tell the world “its over, the good days are gone, and now when we price environmental costs to everything, the markets will tank.” Too many goods are cheap because externalities aren’t priced in. A price rise in plastic costs will end product lines and packaging. This will push people to alternatives which are worse (paper takes more water than plastic, and decays causing eventual spoilage and replacement.)
- njarboe 8y ago
  Plastic releases little CO2 into the air and its environment negatives are minimal if deposed of in a landfill. If CO2 and other external pollution sources were highly taxed, plastic prices could even go down as burning oil for energy is phased out and non-taxed oil used for plastics drops in price.
  - intended 8y ago

throwaway5752 8y ago

If only there weren't other countries that we import goods from. If I drive a car made in Canada, Mexico, China, and the US what do I contribute as a consumer to CO2 production?

joe_the_user 8y ago

But this achievement is less even impressive than a "OK, we've done the US, now let's look at other countries" The problem is that the US can export it's carbon-intensive industries and even consume new carbon intensive entities produced by other countries. For example, US investors certainly consume a modest fraction of bitcoins mined in China and bitcoins wind-up consuming not just a lot of energy but also form a new source sort of carbon-intensive production. Solar and wind power are becoming competitive with oil in general but this can never by itself halt hydrocarbon-energy production 'cause as it's relative price drops, there's always a practical use for hydrocarbon-energy close to the source, where pumping it out of the ground is nearly free.

astrodust 8y ago

The United States fully intends to reverse course on that and fire up coal plants in order to something something jobs. The reason it was falling was because of strict emissions standards and a strong EPA, both of which are basically gone.

beat 8y ago
That's just angsting about short term partisan politics. The trends remain positive for the longer term. Don't let whatever Trump says this week blind you to the long term.
- martythemaniak 8y ago
  Trends are whatever people make them and many people don't appreciate both the fragility and reversibility of "progress". Things don't just work out, they get worked out. Telling people to stop worrying, relax and become lazy and complacent is extremely counterproductive.
  - beat 8y ago
    I'm not saying to "relax and become lazy and complacent". I'm saying that attitude that nothing can be done, because we happen to have a crap president at the moment, is far more counterproductive. Yes, the EPA is taking a beating. But within my lifetime, the EPA didn't even exist. We did something about it. The EPA can and will be rebuilt. The benefits of solar/wind power are real market benefits, and will triumph, despite the desperate resistance of the coal industry. Etc.
- mcculley 8y ago
  Do you think the United States is capable of reliably thinking about the long term and electing a President that does the same? As long as the planet can be impacted in such a large way by myopic leaders, I don't see what can be done.
  - beat 8y ago

wott 8y ago

Not exactly. The sharpest drop happened "thanks to" the financial crisis, and after that, it has been bouncing up and down depending on the year. The overall trend is downwards though. But not enough, by far.