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Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

160 points by gigama 8y ago

paulddraper 8y ago
Relatively ignorant observer here. I thought things were looking pretty good on this front. How does this headline square with "The U.S. Leads All Countries In Reducing Carbon Emissions" (Oct 2017)? [1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-leads-all-countries-in-reducing-carbon-emissions/#1b29459f3535 https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-...
- cbkeller 8y ago
  Yeah, this is a new development: > United States emissions are expected to rise 2.5 percent this year after several years of declines > “We thought oil use had peaked in the U.S. and Europe 15 years ago,” he said. “The cheap gasoline prices, bigger cars and people driving more miles are boosting oil use at rates that none of us expected.”
  - cronix 8y ago
    That's the result, and we can probably see the cause here with the number of environmental rollbacks we've had. Read them, especially the ones related to oil/coal. I'm sure there will be even more to come now that Andrew Wheeler is the new head of the EPA (a former coal lobbyist): http://environment.law.harvard.edu/policy-initiative/regulatory-rollback-tracker/ http://environment.law.harvard.edu/policy-initiative/regulat...
    - cbkeller 8y ago
      Pretty scary that it seems to have happened this fast!
- gilbetron 8y ago
  The were, from the article though: "United States emissions are expected to rise 2.5 percent this year after several years of declines." Also, the article you sourced is about what Scott Pruitt said, and he's not exactly unbiased!
- yongjik 8y ago
  > The U.S. Leads All Countries In Reducing Carbon Emissions I guess that's technically not false (depending on the definition of "leads"), but it's like saying "Flint, MI leads all US cities in reducing the amount of lead in tap water".
- hwillis 8y ago
  The article directly addresses the US: > United States emissions are expected to rise 2.5 percent this year after several years of declines, and despite a shift away from coal toward cleaner sources of energy. Dr. Jackson attributed part of the increase to a colder-than-normal winter in some parts of the country and a hotter summer in other parts, which inflated demand for heating and cooling. October 2017 was before the cold winter and hot summer. Not to mention that the US output falling 1% per year is not nearly as big of an impact as China's growing by 5% per year. As the article mentions, US emissions are only 15% of global.
- merlincorey 8y ago
  The article states that China accounts for twice as much emissions as the United States: > The world’s largest emitter is still China, which produces 27 percent of global carbon emissions, according to the report. The United States accounts for 15 percent of emissions, the European Union 10 percent and India 7 percent. > China’s emissions are projected to rise 4.7 percent in 2018, the report said. The country is stimulating manufacturing to counterbalance its slowing economy, allowing more coal-based manufacturing that it had avoided in the past, Dr. Jackson said. > United States emissions are expected to rise 2.5 percent this year after several years of declines, and despite a shift away from coal toward cleaner sources of energy. Dr. Jackson attributed part of the increase to a colder-than-normal winter in some parts of the country and a hotter summer in other parts, which inflated demand for heating and cooling.
  - sologoub 8y ago
    EU seems to be doing way better than the US on a per capita basis - 10% for 512 million people versus 15% for 325 million in US.
    - rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
      Population density (people/km2) - EU: 116 - US: 33 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density#Main_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
      - paulddraper 8y ago
        You didn't explain, but I assume your point is that it's easier to reduce emissions per capita when populations are more dense. E.g. less transportation required.
        DoctorOetker 8y ago
        Yes, its the "we have so much space that we are doomed" argument. If they believe the EU is cheating through higher population density, just move your population closer together?
- sambull 8y ago
  It means the natural means of sequestering carbon are being overloaded
fromthestart 8y ago
It's hard for me to take climate science seriously when 1. We know of the state of crisis that all other soft sciences are in (p-value abuse, publish or perish, institutional bias, replication crisis) [3] 2. We know that the earth has been substantially warmer in the past (with accompanyingly higher CO2 levels) and life thrived [2] 3. We know that we've been coming out of an ice age since long before the industrial revolution [1] 4. It is nearly impossible to find studies for possible benefits of a warmer earth, because the subject is, frankly, taboo. For example, expansion of arable land from melting permafrost. 5. We are extrapolating a ~hundred year old trend in a system which normally evolves on scales of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, and sudden historic shifts are likely beyond the resolution of geologic records (ice cores only get you ~<1ma, older records have substantially lower temporal resolution) Modern climate science is extremely biased, does not allow for skepticism, and is therefore bad science. Of course, none of that precludes erring on the side of caution. But dogma is bad for everyone. 1.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_glacial_retreat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_glacial_retreat 2.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Cha... 3. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328717301969 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001632871...
- YaxelPerez 8y ago
  In response to #2 and #3: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ Also, yes. Earth has been substantially warmer in the past. Earth's atmosphere also had higher oxygen levels in the past[1], but it would be very bad for most life on earth if we suddenly returned to those conditions[2]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity
  - fromthestart 8y ago
    >Exposures, from minutes to a few hours, to partial pressures of oxygen above 1.6 bars (160 kPa)—about eight times normal atmospheric partial pressure—are usually associated with central nervous system oxygen toxicity You need 8 times current oxygen levels. This is a non issue.
phkahler 8y ago
>> Even as coal has fallen out of favor in some markets, the rise in emissions has been driven primarily by stronger demand for natural gas and oil This is interesting. If you care about CO2 emissions, you don't want to use coal because it's mostly carbon. But if you care about the greenhouse effect, you probably want to burn coal rather than gas or oil because those contain a lot of hydrogen which forms water vapor when burned. And water vapor is a far stronger greenhouse gas. Either way I'd prefer if planes burned coal so they wouldn't produce contrails. Yeah, I know why that's not going to happen.
- upofadown 8y ago
  Water vapour from burning fuel does not contribute to climate change: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Role_of_water_vapor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Role_of_water_v...
- Oletros 8y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jan/28/water-vapour-greenhouse-gas https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jan/28/water-va...
calvinbhai 8y ago
I cannot take any of these reports seriously unless they are comparing emissions from each country on a per capita basis. This is an easy way to make US look like a responsible polluter compared to India and China. Its a different ball game, if you factor in the total emissions per capita over last 100 years, in which case, US emissions are probably a few multiples over China and India combined (that's my guess. I'm too lazy to calculate these numbers).
- pixl97 8y ago
  Eh, that doesn't necessarily provide fair statistics. Lets use this contrived example with made up numbers where the US has a population of 500 million and China 1 billion. US per capita: 1000 tons of CO2 per year China per capita: 1000 tons of CO2 per year. Looks like China is twice as good. But if you break out population statistics and 500 million of them live in mud huts and produce almost no CO2, then the other half that have moved to US like living conditions produce US like carbon.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
    How much of China's CO2 is emitted to produce things for the US to consume?
    - lastUsername 8y ago
      Exactly, China emissions are also the result of European and American companies producing products in China for all the world.
    - hwillis 8y ago
      China's GDP is 13.5 trillion nominal USD and their annual trade deficit with the US (their largest export) is 335 billion USD. So not much.
    - thinkcontext 8y ago
      Carbon Brief has data on this on a worldwide basis https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-importers-exporters https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import...
mberning 8y ago
That is a pretty staggering amount of uncertainty. The US for example looks like it could be anywhere from 0.5% to 4.5%. That is something I would like to know with more certainty before undertaking any major public policies. From a simple triage standpoint it would seem that focusing on developing economies would hold the most promise. China and India are the likely leaders and given the population and current state of development could get much worse.
- paulsutter 8y ago
  From a simple standpoint massive multigigaton reductions are needed in all sectors and countries. Which was true 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and remains true now with little change. Fracking has been pretty much the biggest net reduction in carbon (nat gas has half the emissions of coal). So far solar, wind, etc has made little dent. This isn’t a political issue and politicizing it by claiming sudden urgency is an error - merely changing leadership won’t matter. Major changes are needed yesterday, and so far neither party in the US has ever proposed anything resembling the scale of change needed.
  - usaar333 8y ago
    > Major changes are needed yesterday, and so far neither party in the US has ever proposed anything resembling the scale of change needed. No, but at least Democrats proposed and passed something. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Clean_Energy_and_Security_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Clean_Energy_and_Se...
    - paulsutter 8y ago
      Yes with little actual impact. Something far more courageous is needed
- perfunctory 8y ago
  I am not sure how you or I or US can focus on developing economies. We should focus on ourselves. Do our part first and negotiate with the rest of the world second.
fromthestart 8y ago
If you want proof as to how taboo climate science skepticism has become, look at how quickly (less than ten minutes) my sourced, rational comment in this thread was down voted and flagged. Flagged! For skepticism!
- cbkeller 8y ago
  Your flagged post began with an allegation of bad faith against the entire field of climate science. edit: looks like it's not even flagged anymore.
  - fromthestart 8y ago
    My "allegation of bad faith" is a regular topic on HN, because it is plaguing most soft sciences in modern academia. Climate science is not immune - especially because of it's practical unfalsifiabity. If science is broken then it's conclusions must be treated with skepticism - even if researches are on average well meaning.
    - black6 8y ago
      Without another Earth-like planet to act as a control, and geologic time-scales in which to perform the experimentation, the science is bunk. Climate science must rely on models -- models which are constantly being tweaked as they continue to fail to accurately predict reality. But the groupthink here just cannot objectively look at climate science, compare it to the scientific method, and realize there may be something amiss.
      - cbkeller 8y ago
        Let's try applying the same logic to another field. "Without another solar system to act as a control, and astronomical timescales in which to perform the experimentation, the science is bunk. Our understanding of the solar system must rely on models which are constantly being tweaked to better fit the observations (first Newtonian gravity, now special and general relativity too!)"
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
It seems to me we are truly and globally fucked: 1. There were just massive protests and riots in France (a relatively ecologically-aware country) due to an increase in the diesel tax of about 8 cents a liter meant to help wean the country off carbon. As a result of the riots, the tax was cancelled. 2. Current US administration is going 180 degrees in the other direction, i.e. doing everything it can to support coal. 3. Even if places like China and India go all out to try to reduce their reliance on carbon, their huge populations and still relatively low level of development mean that there is a tidal wave of new "carbon users" coming. It's pretty clear to me that the short/medium term incentives to cheap energy are just much too great to counter the long(er) term impact of climate change. Major change (i.e. in the 3-4 degree range or more) appears completely inevitable to me, and we should at least start recognizing and dealing with that fact. The only thing that can possibly counter this is if the economics change drastically in favor of non-polluting sources, but given the timescale in which that would be necessary and the natural equilibrium economic forces fighting against this (e.g. if wind and solar get much cheaper, could lower demand for oil, but that would also lower price for oil - some alternative oil sources might become uneconomic but I'm certainly betting that all the carbon under Saudi Arabia is eventually going to be in the air), at best we're just extending the inevitable a little bit. Drastic climate change is coming, and it is unavoidable. The planet (and I believe humanity) will most definitely survive, but sunken cities, mass starvation, climate-change induced wars, stronger and more powerful storms and fires are coming, and at this point there isn't much we can do to stop it.
- orblivion 8y ago
  > 2. Current US administration is going 180 degrees in the other direction, i.e. doing everything it can to support coal. And apparently failing miserably in this effort: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/17/epa-cheers-decline-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-und/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/17/epa-cheers-...
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    I think this article helps me clarify a great point, mainly in these sentences: "The yearslong decline in U.S. emissions has been widely credited to the oil and gas boom. Power plants increasingly turned from coal to natural gas as innovations in extraction technology resulted in lower prices." Lots of people talk about carbon emission reductions, but there is a much simpler way to think about it. There is a lot of carbon stored in the ground in the form of coal, natural gas and oil. What's the probability that a great deal of that carbon will be left there, permanently? The only way this will happen is if the production costs of non-emitting forms of energy (mainly solar, wind and nuclear) are fundamentally less than the extraction costs of the carbon forms in the ground. That may be possible for some high-cost carbon sources like coal, but the cost of production of some traditional oil sources (like Ghawar field) are ridiculously cheap, and tech like fracking has made other carbon sources like natural gas also cheaper. Thus, the idea that reducing the production cost of natural gas is good for the environment is ridiculous. At the end of the day you've made another huge carbon source that much cheaper to extract. It may temporarily switch from some more polluting source, but at the end of the day all of that (now cheaper) gas is coming out of the ground and going into the air. So instead of looking at emission rates, we should be asking "What is the probability that non-carbon-emitting forms of energy will eventually be made cheaper than carbon-emitting forms of energy". If you do the math on this one, even leaving a lot of uncertainty that tech on one side or the other will change the equation a bit, the only conclusion you can come to is that there are still huge amounts of carbon to be released. We're inevitably fucked.
hwillis 8y ago
The article offhand mentions that we're on track for RCP 8.5, or 8.5 W/m^2 additional heat in 2100. That should fucking terrify you. That's 4 C global temperature rise, a .75 meter sea level rise, and a doubling of ocean acidity. Page 82 of the IPCC report[1] has some fast facts- at RCP 8.5 most of the wild animals on earth will start dying out from lack of freshwater. Corals and molluscs will die out, and all ocean species will be affected. All coastal settlements will need extensive protection from higher sea level, and some will just be overwhelmed by the ocean. By 2300 they will all be overwhelmed by rising sea levels. Human food supply is greatly affected in the next 20+ years under RCP 8.5: > All aspects of food security are potentially affected by climate change, including food production, access, use and price stability (high confidence). For wheat, rice and maize in tropical and temperate regions, climate change without adaptation is projected to negatively impact production at local temperature increases of 2°C or more above late 20th century levels, although individual locations may benefit (medium confidence). Projected impacts vary across crops and regions and adaptation scenarios, with about 10% of projections for the 2030–2049 period showing yield gains of more than 10%, and about 10% of projections showing yield losses of more than 25%, compared with the late 20th century. Global temperature increases of ~4°C or more above late 20th century levels, combined with increasing food demand, would pose large risks to food security, both globally and regionally (high confidence) The accompanying chart shows that human food yield is expected to decrease by ~25%. > By 2100 for RCP8.5, the combination of high temperature and humidity in some areas for parts of the year is expected to compromise common human activities, including growing food and working outdoors (high confidence). What the report doesn't talk about is that by 2200, global temperature rise would be 6 C. 8 C by 2300. Those are both apocalyptic. The earth has only been that hot once before[2], and the warming period occurred over 20,000 years, caused by CO2 being released 20 times more slowly than we add it. Unlike the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, species would not be able to adapt to this change. The mass die-offs would wipe out everything but the most resilient and isolated disaster species, and the Earth would enter an anoxic event. Methane and levels of other toxic gases would skyrocket and oxygen levels would suddenly plummet. Humans would need sealed shelters to survive. There would be no natural ice anywhere on earth. Any worse than RCP 8.5 and the earth enters a runaway greenhouse. At that point the atmosphere turns into Venus, and life on Earth really would be over. [1]: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/SYR_AR5_FINAL_full.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/SYR_AR5_FINA... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...
zackmorris 8y ago
What does everyone think about an open source project to find and eliminate all personal nonrenewable carbon emissions? Something like a spreadsheet across all features that can be optimized, possibly with machine learning. For example: * Best/cheapest/easiest rooftop solar parts and suppliers * Best/cheapest/easiest electric/hybrid cars * Most practical home greenhouse and hydroponic kits (for growing all non-grain fruits and vegetables at home) * Most sustainable and local sources of free-range and grass-fed meat and dairy products * Most feasible carpool/ride sharing services * Most feasible group living arrangements Etc etc etc (I'm sure I'm forgetting a few). I know that all of these services exist in various forms, but we need a plan yesterday that people can just jump onboard with. I have friends installing amortized solar panels paid for by the installer, others with backyard chicken coops, some with hybrid and electric vehicles, and so on. Things are changing but not nearly at the speed they could be if we made this all more accessible. I used to be blocked by lack of income, now it's lack of time. For most people it's probably lack of information and willpower. None of these are technology reasons. Which suggests to me that these are logistical problems that we could finally solve relatively quickly.
- ip26 8y ago
  These things are a lot more complicated than that, with a million permutations across all the zip codes of the world. You're better off focusing on tools to help people find what suits them, rather than a ten line list "best solar panel, best car, best rideshare..." For solar, try: https://www.energysage.com/ https://www.energysage.com/
- discordance 8y ago
  Great idea and an easy one to start
jhcl 8y ago
US comments are pretty staggering: "We're probably not the biggest problem so we won't do anything." Let's see how many decades it will take before we all find out that this isn't a country but a world problem.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  “Fuck you, got mine”
jf22 8y ago
I know cryptocurrencies are popular here but IMHO crypto should be immediately banned before they start generating more and more emissions.
- reidjs 8y ago
  How do you propose we ban them?
  - paulmd 8y ago
    Begin tracking and disrupting the node networks via which blocks are propagated. Run tainted nodes which track IPs submitting transactions or full-clients requesting blocks, use Tor traffic analysis to work back to any cloaked users. Disrupt the IRC channels that allow bootstrapping, poison P2P listings. ISP-level/backbone-level deep packet inspection to identify nodes (doesn't need to be unencrypted, you can fingerprint connections from deep-learned traffic analysis and connection characteristics, see: Great Firewall). Then traffic/network analysis working from known nodes to identify other likely nodes in the network. General attacks on any crypto services or infrastructure advertised in public fashion (eg light-client providers, exchanges, tumblers). (the NSA has all these cool toys... it'd be a shame not to use them!) You can also make it virtually impossible to interchange cryptos into real cash, which guts the utility of it for most users. Ban exchanges from operating or offering services to customers in first-world countries, extradite those who persist. Sting operations on local-btc transactions. Apply RICO/war-on-drugs style roll-em-up tactics on those who persist - you're going to jail for 20 years unless you give up someone worth knowing or help us break some network worth breaking. The achilles' heel of the crypto world is that it's anonymous until you try and do something in the real world, and the financial system is an obvious point to attack from. If we can take down Silk Road, we can take down other things in the crypto-world as well. I'd much rather our law enforcement concentrate on fighting a War on Cryptocurrency than a War on Drugs. Would certainly take cooperation from most of the first world as well as China, but China already imposes some pretty draconian stuff on their internet users. They're not thrilled with people using it to move money offshore, they're not thrilled with all the crypto users stealing electricity, they'd probably be down for cracking down too. Oh yeah, legalize a bunch of drugs and decriminalize everything else, and you pretty much gut the crypto-economy. A massive amount of the crypto-economy centers around Silk Road-style operations and you can easily gut those with the stroke of a pen. Most users stop caring and the crypto-economy then largely collapses. The number of people who actually want murder markets or kiddie porn and are willing to do shady cash-for-bitcoin deals in a van in a Wal-Mart parking lot is not enough to actually sustain the market on their own. Crypto only works because there's a veneer of legality, drug markets that people want to access, and relatively easy interchange to and from FILTHY GOVERNMENT FIAT, and we can nuke all three of those. Then you just clean up anyone still stupid enough to participate.
cwperkins 8y ago
Part of me hopes there's some strange conspiracy theory like the US is sitting on some amazing new battery tech, but won't release it until the trade spat with China is over with. I know I sound like a loon, but a revolutionary new durable battery will be the holy grail of this century.
nategri 8y ago
How is it the string "corporat*" only shows up twice (in the same comment) in all these (as of writing) 103 comments.
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
  I checked it out 17 hours later, yours is the third mention. Compa* is not much better. What do we do nategri? Hard not to feel hopeless about it all.
libraryatnight 8y ago
Things are just fucked. It's already too late, the drastic changes are needed for mitigation at this point - not prevention - and we as a species can't even accomplish that. Things are going to get much, much worse. It kills me how many people think the debates that are going now are to "prevent" climate issues. The time to prevent passed, and now the time to dampen the blow is passing. I feel terrible for kids being born right now. They're inheriting an absolute disaster of a planet.
systematical 8y ago
The solution is to dump money into R&D and figure out how to "scoop" the C02 out of the air and then break it apart into carbon and oxygen. A series of solar powered drones could hopefully do this. This may sound far fetched, but I think global political action before its too late is even more far fetched. Send the money into DARPA and call it increased defense spending to appease the elephants.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  We know these methods. They're not high-tech. Swamps, wetlands, tropical rainforests. The same landforms which are most under assault by human activity. http://www.esassoc.com/projects/wetlands-carbon-sequestration http://www.esassoc.com/projects/wetlands-carbon-sequestratio... https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=carbon%20sequestration%20wetlands&btnG=Search&as_sdt=800000000001&as_sdtp=on https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=carbon%20sequestration%... https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2002GB001917 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2002... https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=carbon+sequestration+swamps&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=car... https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/environment-and-development-economics/article/simulating-options-for-carbon-sequestration-through-improved-management-of-a-lowland-tropical-rainforest/E6F2DA439C2E0CAC5C5863E1B1FB3E7A https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/environment-and-deve... https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=carbon+sequestration+rainforest&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=car...
  - systematical 8y ago
    The hurdle isn't clean renewable or CO2 sinks, its Republicans. They don't want to vote on latte lefty soy-boy stuff like this. Which leads me back to my previous comment. Call it defense spending and scoop it out of the air.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  And for fuel synthesis, seawater is a vastly more viable source, and the research more than a half-century old: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28nqoz/electrical_fuel_synthesis_from_seawater_older/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28nqoz/electri...

160 points by gigama 8y ago

Relatively ignorant observer here. I thought things were looking pretty good on this front. How does this headline square with "The U.S. Leads All Countries In Reducing Carbon Emissions" (Oct 2017)? [1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-leads-all-countries-in-reducing-carbon-emissions/#1b29459f3535 https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2017/10/24/yes-the-u-s-...

cbkeller 8y ago
Yeah, this is a new development: > United States emissions are expected to rise 2.5 percent this year after several years of declines > “We thought oil use had peaked in the U.S. and Europe 15 years ago,” he said. “The cheap gasoline prices, bigger cars and people driving more miles are boosting oil use at rates that none of us expected.”
- cronix 8y ago
  That's the result, and we can probably see the cause here with the number of environmental rollbacks we've had. Read them, especially the ones related to oil/coal. I'm sure there will be even more to come now that Andrew Wheeler is the new head of the EPA (a former coal lobbyist): http://environment.law.harvard.edu/policy-initiative/regulatory-rollback-tracker/ http://environment.law.harvard.edu/policy-initiative/regulat...
  - cbkeller 8y ago
    Pretty scary that it seems to have happened this fast!
gilbetron 8y ago
The were, from the article though: "United States emissions are expected to rise 2.5 percent this year after several years of declines." Also, the article you sourced is about what Scott Pruitt said, and he's not exactly unbiased!
yongjik 8y ago
> The U.S. Leads All Countries In Reducing Carbon Emissions I guess that's technically not false (depending on the definition of "leads"), but it's like saying "Flint, MI leads all US cities in reducing the amount of lead in tap water".
hwillis 8y ago
The article directly addresses the US: > United States emissions are expected to rise 2.5 percent this year after several years of declines, and despite a shift away from coal toward cleaner sources of energy. Dr. Jackson attributed part of the increase to a colder-than-normal winter in some parts of the country and a hotter summer in other parts, which inflated demand for heating and cooling. October 2017 was before the cold winter and hot summer. Not to mention that the US output falling 1% per year is not nearly as big of an impact as China's growing by 5% per year. As the article mentions, US emissions are only 15% of global.
merlincorey 8y ago
The article states that China accounts for twice as much emissions as the United States: > The world’s largest emitter is still China, which produces 27 percent of global carbon emissions, according to the report. The United States accounts for 15 percent of emissions, the European Union 10 percent and India 7 percent. > China’s emissions are projected to rise 4.7 percent in 2018, the report said. The country is stimulating manufacturing to counterbalance its slowing economy, allowing more coal-based manufacturing that it had avoided in the past, Dr. Jackson said. > United States emissions are expected to rise 2.5 percent this year after several years of declines, and despite a shift away from coal toward cleaner sources of energy. Dr. Jackson attributed part of the increase to a colder-than-normal winter in some parts of the country and a hotter summer in other parts, which inflated demand for heating and cooling.
- sologoub 8y ago
  EU seems to be doing way better than the US on a per capita basis - 10% for 512 million people versus 15% for 325 million in US.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
    Population density (people/km2) - EU: 116 - US: 33 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density#Main_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
    - paulddraper 8y ago
      You didn't explain, but I assume your point is that it's easier to reduce emissions per capita when populations are more dense. E.g. less transportation required.
      - DoctorOetker 8y ago
        Yes, its the "we have so much space that we are doomed" argument. If they believe the EU is cheating through higher population density, just move your population closer together?
sambull 8y ago
It means the natural means of sequestering carbon are being overloaded

fromthestart 8y ago

It's hard for me to take climate science seriously when 1. We know of the state of crisis that all other soft sciences are in (p-value abuse, publish or perish, institutional bias, replication crisis) [3] 2. We know that the earth has been substantially warmer in the past (with accompanyingly higher CO2 levels) and life thrived [2] 3. We know that we've been coming out of an ice age since long before the industrial revolution [1] 4. It is nearly impossible to find studies for possible benefits of a warmer earth, because the subject is, frankly, taboo. For example, expansion of arable land from melting permafrost. 5. We are extrapolating a ~hundred year old trend in a system which normally evolves on scales of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, and sudden historic shifts are likely beyond the resolution of geologic records (ice cores only get you ~<1ma, older records have substantially lower temporal resolution) Modern climate science is extremely biased, does not allow for skepticism, and is therefore bad science. Of course, none of that precludes erring on the side of caution. But dogma is bad for everyone. 1.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_glacial_retreat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_glacial_retreat 2.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Cha... 3. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328717301969 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001632871...

YaxelPerez 8y ago
In response to #2 and #3: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ Also, yes. Earth has been substantially warmer in the past. Earth's atmosphere also had higher oxygen levels in the past[1], but it would be very bad for most life on earth if we suddenly returned to those conditions[2]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geological_history_of_oxygen 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity
- fromthestart 8y ago
  >Exposures, from minutes to a few hours, to partial pressures of oxygen above 1.6 bars (160 kPa)—about eight times normal atmospheric partial pressure—are usually associated with central nervous system oxygen toxicity You need 8 times current oxygen levels. This is a non issue.

phkahler 8y ago

>> Even as coal has fallen out of favor in some markets, the rise in emissions has been driven primarily by stronger demand for natural gas and oil This is interesting. If you care about CO2 emissions, you don't want to use coal because it's mostly carbon. But if you care about the greenhouse effect, you probably want to burn coal rather than gas or oil because those contain a lot of hydrogen which forms water vapor when burned. And water vapor is a far stronger greenhouse gas. Either way I'd prefer if planes burned coal so they wouldn't produce contrails. Yeah, I know why that's not going to happen.

upofadown 8y ago
Water vapour from burning fuel does not contribute to climate change: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Role_of_water_vapor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Role_of_water_v...
Oletros 8y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jan/28/water-vapour-greenhouse-gas https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jan/28/water-va...

calvinbhai 8y ago

I cannot take any of these reports seriously unless they are comparing emissions from each country on a per capita basis. This is an easy way to make US look like a responsible polluter compared to India and China. Its a different ball game, if you factor in the total emissions per capita over last 100 years, in which case, US emissions are probably a few multiples over China and India combined (that's my guess. I'm too lazy to calculate these numbers).

pixl97 8y ago
Eh, that doesn't necessarily provide fair statistics. Lets use this contrived example with made up numbers where the US has a population of 500 million and China 1 billion. US per capita: 1000 tons of CO2 per year China per capita: 1000 tons of CO2 per year. Looks like China is twice as good. But if you break out population statistics and 500 million of them live in mud huts and produce almost no CO2, then the other half that have moved to US like living conditions produce US like carbon.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
  How much of China's CO2 is emitted to produce things for the US to consume?
  - lastUsername 8y ago
    Exactly, China emissions are also the result of European and American companies producing products in China for all the world.
  - hwillis 8y ago
    China's GDP is 13.5 trillion nominal USD and their annual trade deficit with the US (their largest export) is 335 billion USD. So not much.
  - thinkcontext 8y ago
    Carbon Brief has data on this on a worldwide basis https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-importers-exporters https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import...

mberning 8y ago

That is a pretty staggering amount of uncertainty. The US for example looks like it could be anywhere from 0.5% to 4.5%. That is something I would like to know with more certainty before undertaking any major public policies. From a simple triage standpoint it would seem that focusing on developing economies would hold the most promise. China and India are the likely leaders and given the population and current state of development could get much worse.

paulsutter 8y ago
From a simple standpoint massive multigigaton reductions are needed in all sectors and countries. Which was true 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and remains true now with little change. Fracking has been pretty much the biggest net reduction in carbon (nat gas has half the emissions of coal). So far solar, wind, etc has made little dent. This isn’t a political issue and politicizing it by claiming sudden urgency is an error - merely changing leadership won’t matter. Major changes are needed yesterday, and so far neither party in the US has ever proposed anything resembling the scale of change needed.
- usaar333 8y ago
  > Major changes are needed yesterday, and so far neither party in the US has ever proposed anything resembling the scale of change needed. No, but at least Democrats proposed and passed something. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Clean_Energy_and_Security_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Clean_Energy_and_Se...
  - paulsutter 8y ago
    Yes with little actual impact. Something far more courageous is needed
perfunctory 8y ago
I am not sure how you or I or US can focus on developing economies. We should focus on ourselves. Do our part first and negotiate with the rest of the world second.

fromthestart 8y ago

If you want proof as to how taboo climate science skepticism has become, look at how quickly (less than ten minutes) my sourced, rational comment in this thread was down voted and flagged. Flagged! For skepticism!

cbkeller 8y ago
Your flagged post began with an allegation of bad faith against the entire field of climate science. edit: looks like it's not even flagged anymore.
- fromthestart 8y ago
  My "allegation of bad faith" is a regular topic on HN, because it is plaguing most soft sciences in modern academia. Climate science is not immune - especially because of it's practical unfalsifiabity. If science is broken then it's conclusions must be treated with skepticism - even if researches are on average well meaning.
  - black6 8y ago
    Without another Earth-like planet to act as a control, and geologic time-scales in which to perform the experimentation, the science is bunk. Climate science must rely on models -- models which are constantly being tweaked as they continue to fail to accurately predict reality. But the groupthink here just cannot objectively look at climate science, compare it to the scientific method, and realize there may be something amiss.
    - cbkeller 8y ago
      Let's try applying the same logic to another field. "Without another solar system to act as a control, and astronomical timescales in which to perform the experimentation, the science is bunk. Our understanding of the solar system must rely on models which are constantly being tweaked to better fit the observations (first Newtonian gravity, now special and general relativity too!)"

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

It seems to me we are truly and globally fucked: 1. There were just massive protests and riots in France (a relatively ecologically-aware country) due to an increase in the diesel tax of about 8 cents a liter meant to help wean the country off carbon. As a result of the riots, the tax was cancelled. 2. Current US administration is going 180 degrees in the other direction, i.e. doing everything it can to support coal. 3. Even if places like China and India go all out to try to reduce their reliance on carbon, their huge populations and still relatively low level of development mean that there is a tidal wave of new "carbon users" coming. It's pretty clear to me that the short/medium term incentives to cheap energy are just much too great to counter the long(er) term impact of climate change. Major change (i.e. in the 3-4 degree range or more) appears completely inevitable to me, and we should at least start recognizing and dealing with that fact. The only thing that can possibly counter this is if the economics change drastically in favor of non-polluting sources, but given the timescale in which that would be necessary and the natural equilibrium economic forces fighting against this (e.g. if wind and solar get much cheaper, could lower demand for oil, but that would also lower price for oil - some alternative oil sources might become uneconomic but I'm certainly betting that all the carbon under Saudi Arabia is eventually going to be in the air), at best we're just extending the inevitable a little bit. Drastic climate change is coming, and it is unavoidable. The planet (and I believe humanity) will most definitely survive, but sunken cities, mass starvation, climate-change induced wars, stronger and more powerful storms and fires are coming, and at this point there isn't much we can do to stop it.

orblivion 8y ago
> 2. Current US administration is going 180 degrees in the other direction, i.e. doing everything it can to support coal. And apparently failing miserably in this effort: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/17/epa-cheers-decline-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-und/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/17/epa-cheers-...
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  I think this article helps me clarify a great point, mainly in these sentences: "The yearslong decline in U.S. emissions has been widely credited to the oil and gas boom. Power plants increasingly turned from coal to natural gas as innovations in extraction technology resulted in lower prices." Lots of people talk about carbon emission reductions, but there is a much simpler way to think about it. There is a lot of carbon stored in the ground in the form of coal, natural gas and oil. What's the probability that a great deal of that carbon will be left there, permanently? The only way this will happen is if the production costs of non-emitting forms of energy (mainly solar, wind and nuclear) are fundamentally less than the extraction costs of the carbon forms in the ground. That may be possible for some high-cost carbon sources like coal, but the cost of production of some traditional oil sources (like Ghawar field) are ridiculously cheap, and tech like fracking has made other carbon sources like natural gas also cheaper. Thus, the idea that reducing the production cost of natural gas is good for the environment is ridiculous. At the end of the day you've made another huge carbon source that much cheaper to extract. It may temporarily switch from some more polluting source, but at the end of the day all of that (now cheaper) gas is coming out of the ground and going into the air. So instead of looking at emission rates, we should be asking "What is the probability that non-carbon-emitting forms of energy will eventually be made cheaper than carbon-emitting forms of energy". If you do the math on this one, even leaving a lot of uncertainty that tech on one side or the other will change the equation a bit, the only conclusion you can come to is that there are still huge amounts of carbon to be released. We're inevitably fucked.

hwillis 8y ago

The article offhand mentions that we're on track for RCP 8.5, or 8.5 W/m^2 additional heat in 2100. That should fucking terrify you. That's 4 C global temperature rise, a .75 meter sea level rise, and a doubling of ocean acidity. Page 82 of the IPCC report[1] has some fast facts- at RCP 8.5 most of the wild animals on earth will start dying out from lack of freshwater. Corals and molluscs will die out, and all ocean species will be affected. All coastal settlements will need extensive protection from higher sea level, and some will just be overwhelmed by the ocean. By 2300 they will all be overwhelmed by rising sea levels. Human food supply is greatly affected in the next 20+ years under RCP 8.5: > All aspects of food security are potentially affected by climate change, including food production, access, use and price stability (high confidence). For wheat, rice and maize in tropical and temperate regions, climate change without adaptation is projected to negatively impact production at local temperature increases of 2°C or more above late 20th century levels, although individual locations may benefit (medium confidence). Projected impacts vary across crops and regions and adaptation scenarios, with about 10% of projections for the 2030–2049 period showing yield gains of more than 10%, and about 10% of projections showing yield losses of more than 25%, compared with the late 20th century. Global temperature increases of ~4°C or more above late 20th century levels, combined with increasing food demand, would pose large risks to food security, both globally and regionally (high confidence) The accompanying chart shows that human food yield is expected to decrease by ~25%. > By 2100 for RCP8.5, the combination of high temperature and humidity in some areas for parts of the year is expected to compromise common human activities, including growing food and working outdoors (high confidence). What the report doesn't talk about is that by 2200, global temperature rise would be 6 C. 8 C by 2300. Those are both apocalyptic. The earth has only been that hot once before[2], and the warming period occurred over 20,000 years, caused by CO2 being released 20 times more slowly than we add it. Unlike the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, species would not be able to adapt to this change. The mass die-offs would wipe out everything but the most resilient and isolated disaster species, and the Earth would enter an anoxic event. Methane and levels of other toxic gases would skyrocket and oxygen levels would suddenly plummet. Humans would need sealed shelters to survive. There would be no natural ice anywhere on earth. Any worse than RCP 8.5 and the earth enters a runaway greenhouse. At that point the atmosphere turns into Venus, and life on Earth really would be over. [1]: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/SYR_AR5_FINAL_full.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/SYR_AR5_FINA... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...

zackmorris 8y ago

What does everyone think about an open source project to find and eliminate all personal nonrenewable carbon emissions? Something like a spreadsheet across all features that can be optimized, possibly with machine learning. For example: * Best/cheapest/easiest rooftop solar parts and suppliers * Best/cheapest/easiest electric/hybrid cars * Most practical home greenhouse and hydroponic kits (for growing all non-grain fruits and vegetables at home) * Most sustainable and local sources of free-range and grass-fed meat and dairy products * Most feasible carpool/ride sharing services * Most feasible group living arrangements Etc etc etc (I'm sure I'm forgetting a few). I know that all of these services exist in various forms, but we need a plan yesterday that people can just jump onboard with. I have friends installing amortized solar panels paid for by the installer, others with backyard chicken coops, some with hybrid and electric vehicles, and so on. Things are changing but not nearly at the speed they could be if we made this all more accessible. I used to be blocked by lack of income, now it's lack of time. For most people it's probably lack of information and willpower. None of these are technology reasons. Which suggests to me that these are logistical problems that we could finally solve relatively quickly.

ip26 8y ago
These things are a lot more complicated than that, with a million permutations across all the zip codes of the world. You're better off focusing on tools to help people find what suits them, rather than a ten line list "best solar panel, best car, best rideshare..." For solar, try: https://www.energysage.com/ https://www.energysage.com/
discordance 8y ago
Great idea and an easy one to start

jhcl 8y ago

US comments are pretty staggering: "We're probably not the biggest problem so we won't do anything." Let's see how many decades it will take before we all find out that this isn't a country but a world problem.

village-idiot 8y ago
“Fuck you, got mine”

jf22 8y ago

I know cryptocurrencies are popular here but IMHO crypto should be immediately banned before they start generating more and more emissions.

reidjs 8y ago
How do you propose we ban them?
- paulmd 8y ago
  Begin tracking and disrupting the node networks via which blocks are propagated. Run tainted nodes which track IPs submitting transactions or full-clients requesting blocks, use Tor traffic analysis to work back to any cloaked users. Disrupt the IRC channels that allow bootstrapping, poison P2P listings. ISP-level/backbone-level deep packet inspection to identify nodes (doesn't need to be unencrypted, you can fingerprint connections from deep-learned traffic analysis and connection characteristics, see: Great Firewall). Then traffic/network analysis working from known nodes to identify other likely nodes in the network. General attacks on any crypto services or infrastructure advertised in public fashion (eg light-client providers, exchanges, tumblers). (the NSA has all these cool toys... it'd be a shame not to use them!) You can also make it virtually impossible to interchange cryptos into real cash, which guts the utility of it for most users. Ban exchanges from operating or offering services to customers in first-world countries, extradite those who persist. Sting operations on local-btc transactions. Apply RICO/war-on-drugs style roll-em-up tactics on those who persist - you're going to jail for 20 years unless you give up someone worth knowing or help us break some network worth breaking. The achilles' heel of the crypto world is that it's anonymous until you try and do something in the real world, and the financial system is an obvious point to attack from. If we can take down Silk Road, we can take down other things in the crypto-world as well. I'd much rather our law enforcement concentrate on fighting a War on Cryptocurrency than a War on Drugs. Would certainly take cooperation from most of the first world as well as China, but China already imposes some pretty draconian stuff on their internet users. They're not thrilled with people using it to move money offshore, they're not thrilled with all the crypto users stealing electricity, they'd probably be down for cracking down too. Oh yeah, legalize a bunch of drugs and decriminalize everything else, and you pretty much gut the crypto-economy. A massive amount of the crypto-economy centers around Silk Road-style operations and you can easily gut those with the stroke of a pen. Most users stop caring and the crypto-economy then largely collapses. The number of people who actually want murder markets or kiddie porn and are willing to do shady cash-for-bitcoin deals in a van in a Wal-Mart parking lot is not enough to actually sustain the market on their own. Crypto only works because there's a veneer of legality, drug markets that people want to access, and relatively easy interchange to and from FILTHY GOVERNMENT FIAT, and we can nuke all three of those. Then you just clean up anyone still stupid enough to participate.

cwperkins 8y ago

Part of me hopes there's some strange conspiracy theory like the US is sitting on some amazing new battery tech, but won't release it until the trade spat with China is over with. I know I sound like a loon, but a revolutionary new durable battery will be the holy grail of this century.

nategri 8y ago

How is it the string "corporat*" only shows up twice (in the same comment) in all these (as of writing) 103 comments.

WhompingWindows 8y ago
I checked it out 17 hours later, yours is the third mention. Compa* is not much better. What do we do nategri? Hard not to feel hopeless about it all.

libraryatnight 8y ago

Things are just fucked. It's already too late, the drastic changes are needed for mitigation at this point - not prevention - and we as a species can't even accomplish that. Things are going to get much, much worse. It kills me how many people think the debates that are going now are to "prevent" climate issues. The time to prevent passed, and now the time to dampen the blow is passing. I feel terrible for kids being born right now. They're inheriting an absolute disaster of a planet.

systematical 8y ago

The solution is to dump money into R&D and figure out how to "scoop" the C02 out of the air and then break it apart into carbon and oxygen. A series of solar powered drones could hopefully do this. This may sound far fetched, but I think global political action before its too late is even more far fetched. Send the money into DARPA and call it increased defense spending to appease the elephants.

dredmorbius 8y ago
We know these methods. They're not high-tech. Swamps, wetlands, tropical rainforests. The same landforms which are most under assault by human activity. http://www.esassoc.com/projects/wetlands-carbon-sequestration http://www.esassoc.com/projects/wetlands-carbon-sequestratio... https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=carbon%20sequestration%20wetlands&btnG=Search&as_sdt=800000000001&as_sdtp=on https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=carbon%20sequestration%... https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2002GB001917 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2002... https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=carbon+sequestration+swamps&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=car... https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/environment-and-development-economics/article/simulating-options-for-carbon-sequestration-through-improved-management-of-a-lowland-tropical-rainforest/E6F2DA439C2E0CAC5C5863E1B1FB3E7A https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/environment-and-deve... https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=carbon+sequestration+rainforest&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=car...
- systematical 8y ago
  The hurdle isn't clean renewable or CO2 sinks, its Republicans. They don't want to vote on latte lefty soy-boy stuff like this. Which leads me back to my previous comment. Call it defense spending and scoop it out of the air.
dredmorbius 8y ago
And for fuel synthesis, seawater is a vastly more viable source, and the research more than a half-century old: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28nqoz/electrical_fuel_synthesis_from_seawater_older/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28nqoz/electri...