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Carbon dioxide levels in atmosphere hit record high in May
- b_tterc_p 7y agoNormalized to seasonality and adjusting for uncommon events like volcanoes, shouldn’t this happen all the time?
- burke 7y agoI’m honestly curious how one could think this would happen “all the time” in any sort of measurement scheme without things having gone wrong as a prerequisite.
- mikeash 7y agoCO2 is at record highs and still increasing. Every month should be a record high.
- b_tterc_p 7y agoI don’t know why you assumed I thought nothing was wrong with this. It’s obviously a bad thing. I’m genuinely asking if total carbon dioxide levels are monotonically increasing normalized to the things I mentioned. Wouldn’t you be surprised if next May there is less CO2 in the atmosphere barring massive societal change?
- josho 7y ago“the rate of increase is accelerating”. I was under the impression that we were reducing emissions. It’s terrifying that the progress combating climate change is nothing more than lip service.
- Fishkins 7y agoI think people in developed countries are reducing their per capita emissions a bit. However, population is still increasing, and people in many countries are increasing their (material) standard of living in a way that increases emissions.
- newnewpdro 7y agoGlobally? No, not even close. China and now India coming online as industrialized nations with increasing quality of living can't possibly happen while reducing global emissions. We're talking about billions of additional people shifting towards the western quality of living.
- flukus 7y ago> I was under the impression that we were reducing emissions. Outsourced would be a better description.
- dragonsky 7y agoIt's amazing what you can show with a little creative book keeping.
- derp_dee_derp 7y agoSigh When will we learn? I think the answer is incentives. Ideas?
- keyle 7y agoI suspect at some stage it's going to become unliveable. So, some Musk-type crazy fella is going to solve it for everyone, become the town hero, get paid handsomely. And we will just go one with our lives like nothing's happened... Dumb and belligerent.
- waingake 7y agoI agree, setting the correct incentives seems like the obvious fix here. Environmental degradation is an externalized cost. It should be much more expensive to pollute than to not, until it is, things will not change. One of many examples; single use plastic packaging should be expensive, but it's long term costs are all externalized away. People do what makes economic sense, don't expect an individual let alone a corporate body to act in any other way. Which means that this is going to require regulation.
- mac01021 7y agoThere is a bill in the US House of representatives[1] that is _exactly_ the right idea, but it doesn't have nearly enough support at the moment. 1. The state charges a fee to emit greenhouse gases. 2. The proceeds of that fee are divided equally amongst all residents of the nation in the form of a monthly check. 3. The actual bill imposes the fee upstream where the fuel is produced rather than where it is burnt, and imposes border adjustments to prevent outsourcing of emissions to other nations, but I don't want to get into all of that in this post. 4. It's a reasonably short bill[2]. You could probably read and understand every word in an hour. You can look at this as a two-sided incentive - if you emit less than average, your dividend will be bigger than the fee that you pay and so you get extra spending money. If you emit more than average, then your fee is higher and you come out in the red. Some economic modeling dudes predict this incentive will cause the USA to emit 40% less within 12 years after the policy is implemented, but I honestly have no idea how reliable that prediction is. However, while that incentive is great and probably exactly what we need, this policy would be the right, just thing to do even if it were not going to move the needle on our emissions rates. The reason is that, every time [insert your favorite celebrity or business tycoon here] crosses the country in a private jet, they do a little damage to my future and my daughter's. They should reimburse us, and reimburse everyone else they're harming. When I decide to keep my 3000-square-foot house at 70F all through the New England winter, I'm harming your future and those of everyone you love. I should reimburse you. This policy doesn't place hard limits on any kind of activity or consumption. But any time you're externalizing the cost of your emissions onto society at large, you have to compensate society for the damage. [1]https://energyinnovationact.org/how-it-works/ https://energyinnovationact.org/how-it-works/ [2]https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/763/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/763/...
- tomglynch 7y agoI feel like a small fish incapable of making significant difference. I have reduced my emissions, ride a bike everywhere and am trying to eat mostly plant based foods. What else can I do? Is there anyone here on HN that can make a bigger difference - any lawmakers, anyone connected with lawmakers, any high ups in a large company, any influencers? It is your obligation to help us - we need you to be our voice.
- natch 7y agoThe masses of macho guys and Trump voters aren’t converting to bike riding and veggie eating any time soon. That’s why Tesla creating eco cars that out-muscle most muscle cars is so brilliant. It can show people who would never back down from big powerful cars that their fuel of choice is weak sauce. I think it will be more effective than appealing to them with carrot juice and sprouts. So... my advice is buy/lease a Tesla and show it around. At the very least you’ll have fun.
- tomglynch 7y agoThat's not a bad point - you gotta beat them before you change them.
- flukus 7y ago> So... my advice is buy/lease a Tesla and show it around. At the very least you’ll have fun. If your current cars 20+ years old and on it's last legs then yes, if it's not then you'll create more pollution from manufacturing the Tesla than you'll (potentially) save.
- natch 7y agoThat article has been debunked.
- waingake 7y agoNope. It should be prohibitively expensive to own any other car but an electric car. Because the externalized costs of carbon should be fully reconciled in the price of fuel. With the extra tax revenue here, a government could subsidize electric vehicles. If your fix is waiting on people ( that are wealthy enough ) to choose an electric car over a gasoline car so they feel good about themselves we aren't going to get where we need to be in time. The economically viable thing to do, needs to be the right thing to do. This is a place for regulation, not the free fucking market.
- rdm_blackhole 7y agoThe Earth's population keeps on increasing yet we are now facing the most prominent threat to us as a species. This cannot go on forever if we don't start putting a maximum cap on our population, then we are heading for a disaster and the Earth itself is going to start doing what we have refused to do so so far. Except that the reduction of our population will happen through heatwaves, pandemics, droughts... Then what?
- devoply 7y agoPopulation follows production which is a result of technology and progress which is intrinsically linked with capitalism. Take away the population and consumption will still not decrease (as those left over will simply consume more) and neither will the pollution it produces. It's just an easy out to say hey if we could just get those other people to stop producing more people we'd be set though we know that's not really true. They don't consume nor produce nearly as much pollution, money, or technology as your average developed world person. That being said yes we need to drastically reduce the population, but that really can't be done and will have to happen itself by appealing to the vanity and self-interest of people once they are integrated into the logic of the modern religion. Though as I said that still will not solve the problem. But hey at least there will be fewer people. And if you think that this is not true, that development leads to declining population then why are all the rich countries still growing through immigration? Their local population has stopped reproducing due to logic of the markets and self-interest and narcissism sure but they continue to grow and if they stop growing everyone talks of it as if it's a horrible thing.
- rexpop 7y ago> the reduction of our population What a dangerous idea. Besides, it's not the issue of absolute population: it's emissions per capita that we should care about. We could be doing a lot better per capita in these dimensions: - plastics & packaging, - energy use, - military pollution, - advertising & marketing bullshit, - bullshit products manufacturing There's a lot of inefficiency in current economy, which is supported by industrial consent manufacturing.
- 7y ago
- nonbel 7y agoOne thing that bugs me is they measure CO2 levels in ppm instead of moles/m^3 (or whatever would be appropriate). Why is the denominator assumed constant? Why can't nitrogen, oxygen, argon, water vapor, etc be changing too? In fact people have been extracting N2 from the atmosphere at scale for ~120 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process And apparently O2 has been depleting as well: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5138252/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5138252/ We are at the point where gradeschoolers are questioning why the tables of atmospheric constituents don't add up to 100%: >Two recent reliable sources cited here have total atmospheric compositions, including trace molecules, that exceed 100%. They are Allen's Astrophysical Quantities[5] (2000, 100.001241343%) and CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics[4] (2016–2017, 100.004667%), which cites Allen's Astrophysical Quantities. Both are used as references in this article. Both exceed 100% because their CO2 values were increased to 345 ppmv, without changing their other constituents to compensate. This is made worse by the April 2019 CO 2 value, which is 413.32 ppmv. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#cite_note-total%-8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#cite_note-...
- gregallan 7y agoIf you're saying that moles/m^3 of CO2 might be constant while pmm of CO2 is increasing, that implies that atmospheric pressure at sea level is dropping. And it isn't.
- surge 7y agoHow much of it is actually us though? I thought most of our emissions are going down overall its overseas developing countries with few if any regulations and little enforcement of the ones that do exist causing most of it? WTH can we do about it? All we can do is plant trees.
- adrianN 7y agoOur emissions aren't going down fast enough by any measure. Per capita "the west" is still outproducing China and India by a very large margin. We're doing basically nothing to meet the goals of the Paris agreement.
- rexpop 7y ago> most of our emissions are going down I don't think so. [1] Besides, we're still #14 in emissions per-capita. [2] > developing countries with few if any regulations and little enforcement Not sure where you're getting this idea. > All we can do is plant trees. On the contrary, we can do much more. The first step is to organize your workplace. The second step is an industry-wide commercial boycott of polluting firms. In solidarity with similar worker-led movements in the Global South, we can collectively bring the Climate Change Industry to its knees, allowing sustainable business to thrive. 1. https://i1.wp.com/fabiusmaximus.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-e1506915200758.png https://i1.wp.com/fabiusmaximus.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...
- labster 7y ago
- anigbrowl 7y agoI posted this the other day and nobody was interested but it seems relevant here: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_b2c0c79dc4344b279bcf2365336ff23b.pdf https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_b2c0c79dc4344b279bcf23...
- yahwhatev 7y agoLots of concern about CO2 but no one really knows how much of a difference it makes to global temperature.