14 ms·

I'm always at a loss about people arguing about CO2. Like there is a single graph to rule them all - a so called Keeling Curve, is is freely available to all, i

by Yizahi 4y ago

I'm always at a loss about people arguing about CO2. Like there is a single graph to rule them all - a so called Keeling Curve, is is freely available to all, it is always monitoring and it is NOT POSSIBLE AT ALL to derive any conclusion from looking at it, other than we are heating the planet fast. Also it is painfully obvious that ALL so called "green" technologies are either fake or not impacting climate at all (especially those "carbon neutral" ones are def. scam, just shuffling emissions like a hot potato game, to other corporations or countries). The rate of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing every year and the rate of increase (acceleration) is also only increasing every year. It takes one minute to confirm this :)

bawolff 4y ago
The graph is not the sole reason we think the planet is heating. If it was just the graph, there would be other possible interpretations. (You know, causation vs correlation and all that). However we have more than just a graph to confirm climate change.
- suture 4y ago
  I agree with what you said but it seems this graph alone should be enough to convince people there is a problem. The heat trapping effects of CO2 are well known and beyond dispute, right? Forgetting all other evidence, isn’t the fact of the massive increase in CO2 alone enough to cause alarm? This was talked about in the late 1800s.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - akvadrako 4y ago
    No, it certainly isn't beyond dispute that more CO₂ is significant and bad. Some example arguments: (1) The Earth has been cooler with CO₂ levels 10 times higher. We currently have some of the lowest levels in the history of the planet. (2) CO₂ increases and decreases also usually seem to trail temperature changes. (3) Warmer temperatures are not necessarily negative. We've been in an ice age for 2 million years, but life thrived at higher temps. (4) You have to balance negative effects with positive effects, like increased greening.
    - suture 4y ago
      It is, I believe, beyond dispute that CO2 has heat trapping effects. All else remaining the same, increasing CO2 increases the heat. That at another time there was higher CO2 levels with lower heat merely means that not all else remained the same.
      - prometheus76 4y ago
        You just ignored all of the challenges to your current worldview. Cognitive dissonance is just as difficult for the people you are trying to convince as it appears to be for you.
        suture 4y ago
        I did no such thing. Increasing carbon dioxide, keeping all else equal, traps more heat. This isn’t disputable. Hence my refusal to say otherwise can’t possibly be cognitive dissonance. It might be a good thing to increase CO2. It might be bad. It might be the case that increasing carbon dioxide causes counter balancing effects and therefore increasing CO2 does not increase temperature (I remain skeptical of this but I’m not a climate scientist). But what is beyond dispute is that massively increasing CO2 will cause climatic disruptions while the weather system reaches a new equilibrium.
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > keeping all else equal The reasonable pushback against this is per se isn't a realistic assumption in a system as dynamic as our biosphere.
        suture 4y ago
        Oh definitely. But it seems to me that it is obvious that increases in CO2 on a massive, rapid scale will necessitate climatic changes (not necessarily bad) as the system finds a new equilibrium. This may in turn cause massive disruptions to human societies. Note that there are many seemingly obvious things that are false so I could be wrong.
  - graycat 4y ago
    CO2 is transparent to visible light: E.g., pop open a brewski and observe that can't see the CO2 and that it does not cast a shadow. CO2 absorbs photons in three narrow wavelength bands, one for each of bending, stretching, and twisting of the molecule, out in the infrared. The absorption spectrum is shown at the Web site of the US NIST. That absorption makes CO2 a greenhouse gas. The usual claim is that the infrared does not come from "sunlight" but from Planck black body radiation from the surface of the earth. The broad, intuitive idea that the CO2 acts like a thick insulating blanket over all the earth and trapping all heat is not very close to reality. Then there is the question of, how much warming does CO2 cause? Some dozens of studies, with computer models, etc. were done. Results varied. A summary of the results is in a graph at http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg Also it appears that the names of the studies are in small print in a box in the upper left of the image. Some results predicted significant warming, but the times of the predicted warming came and went years ago without the predicted warming. Al Gore's movie showed a graph of data from ice cores from Vostok station in Antarctica. The ice cores went back 800,000 years of so. Gore graphed both temperature and CO2 concentration and observed that the two went up and down together. As I read the graphs: (1) When temperature started to rise, CO2 concentration was low, not high. So, something made temperature rise, but it was not high CO2. (2) About 800 years after temperature rose, CO2 concentration rose, and the usual explanation is that the extra CO2 was from more biological activity from the higher temperature. (3) Some thousands of years later, temperature fell. Then CO2 concentration was high, not low. So, something made temperature fall, but it wasn't low CO2 concentration. (4) We had some CO2 from WWII and the post war economic boom, but from 1945 to 1970 we had some significant cooling. For one more, not from Gore's graph, recently I heard a claim that the three highest temperatures on record happened in just the last few years or some such. There is some issue about the relevance of extreme values: E.g., in any stochastic process, of course the highest values observed so far never go down, and in real processes, say, the fastest 100 yard dash, we can expect the highest values to go up.
    - suture 4y ago
      Thank you for the illumination. Is it correct to say that CO2 causes an increase in temperature provided all else remains the same? I realize that not else will remain the same but it was my understanding that increases in CO2 have a heating effect, in the sense of keeping everything else the same, and that this is indisputable. Am I wrong?
dotancohen 4y ago
Here's the graph: https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/ https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/ And yes, it is as dire as it sounds. My children are breathing 1/3 more CO2 than my parents were at the same age. But it's not the breathing that is a concern (not until we get above 1000 ppm at least), but rather the warming. There is significantly more sunlight energy being trapped in the biosphere today than there was two generations ago.
- pmontra 4y ago
  It will probably be the breathing that will prompt action because maybe we can shrug away drowned cities and infrastructure but really toxic air not so much (or do we?) Effects at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnia Anyway drowned infrastructure will directly or indirectly kill a lot of people and that could mitigate the growth of all greenhouse gases except maybe H2O, because there is more and more of that in the air as temperature increases. It's a reinforcing feedback loop.
  - prometheus76 4y ago
    The chart in the article you linked to shows that currently, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is 0.04% of the air we breathe, and that lifetime symptoms of hypercapnia do not appear until that number is 1.0%. That means that CO2 levels would have to increase 25 times their current level in order for your fear of hypercapnia to become a problem.
    - pmontra 4y ago
      From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Below_1% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Below_1% > A study of humans exposed in 2.5 hour sessions demonstrated significant negative effects on cognitive abilities at concentrations as low as 0.1% (1000 ppm) CO2 likely due to CO2 induced increases in cerebral blood flow. Another study observed a decline in basic activity level and information usage at 1000 ppm, when compared to 500 ppm. With some caveats about the quality of those studies.
  - 4y ago
cycrutchfield 4y ago
> Also it is painfully obvious that ALL so called "green" technologies are either fake or not impacting climate at all (especially those "carbon neutral" ones are def. scam, just shuffling emissions like a hot potato game, to other corporations or countries). You’re gonna have to provide some evidence for these assertions please
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  CO2 keeps going up
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    "Your technology didn't solve the problem immediately, therefore it's worthless!"
    - micromacrofoot 4y ago
      immediately in this case is 50 years
      - pfdietz 4y ago
        Well, PV costs have declined by nearly three orders of magnitude since they were invented. You now seem to be arguing that unless a technology is mature right out of the lab, it is worthless. You aren't arguing in good faith here.
        micromacrofoot 4y ago
        Not really arguing at all, policy and lifestyle changes could do it, but we’re obsessed with growth and technology. We won’t live with less so our solutions always rely on making more. We’ve missed several climate change milestones waiting for technology to save us.
        hkt 4y ago
suture 4y ago
In the U.S. (don’t know about other countries) the issue got tied to politics and religion. Some peoples’ identities and beliefs are zealously tied to denialism. A refutation of their beliefs in this area is an attack on them personally. So any objective evidence to the contrary is discounted. Often times using conspiratorial thinking. Such is the way for all extremists.
- abirch 4y ago
  One absurdity of this is that Fox News is carbon neutral. https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/the-parent-company-of-fox-news-cares-a-lot-about-global-warming/ https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/the-parent...
  - platz 4y ago
    Is it true that in 40 years at the current rate, we'll be at 600 PPM? What happens to humans at that level?
    - LBJsPNS 4y ago
      We're fucked.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        Crudely put but no less true for that.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      600PPM outdoors implies mild cognitive impairment. I’m not expecting 40 years at the current rate. Given the way PV deployments have been growing and how long they last, I expect electricity to be mostly green in the first few years of the 2030s, and most other sectors soon after.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        It's not the direct effect on us that causes problems, it is the runaway greenhouse effect that would wreck high efficiency agriculture. Think mid double digits drops in yield. If you are focusing on the direct effect on humans you are looking at the wrong thing, that is manageable, the other one probably is not.
aero-glide2 4y ago
Greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union (EU) decreased by almost 4 % in just one year (2019). Even accounting for imports, it's decreasing. Green tech clearly works.
- tetris11 4y ago
  Didn't they just outsource their emissions to other countries outside the EU?
  - fsflover 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31639239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31639239
    - tetris11 4y ago
      Good to hear, and thanks for the clarification
  - _fizz_buzz_ 4y ago
    > accounting for imports
hotpotamus 4y ago
The last decade or so for me have really confirmed the old fable of "The Emperor's New Clothes" or the Upton Sinclair quote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I never understood how people could believe such obviously foolish things. I think part of it for me is just getting older, but I also think the last decade has just been more blatant in a lot of ways.
- hindsightbias 4y ago
  I think the PG version would be: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his identity depends upon his not understanding it."
bryanlarsen 4y ago
> ALL so called "green" technologies are either fake WTF? Let's take one example, the F-150 Lightning. When it replaces a gasoline truck sale, it eliminates 150 tons of CO2 from burning gasoline, and about 80 tons of CO2 from drilling, refining and transporting that gasoline. Sure, producing the truck takes a little extra energy, and electricity isn't carbon free in most places, but that doesn't come anywhere close to 200 tons of CO2.
- lozenge 4y ago
  >either fake or not impacting climate at all There is no climate benefit to opening a wind farm. The climate benefit comes when a wind farm causes a fossil fuel power plant to be shut down. When you look at what politicians and corporations boast about, it's always about adding. New renewables, new solar panels on our roof. Not about taking away fossil fuels. As an example, "carriers reduced their fuel consumption per passenger-kilometer by approximately 39 percent between 2005 and 2019 (pre-COVID-19), a compound annual growth rate of about 3.4 percent per year". [globally] - you can be sure the industry touts its increased efficiency. But globally, the emissions of the airline industry have gone up, meaning it's damaging the climate more than every before. https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-the-growth-in-greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-commercial-aviation https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-the-growth-in-gr... Even with your example - is the new truck going to travel more miles than the previous one? The US is still building urban sprawl by default. Does the owner use the pickup truck or, like most pickup truck owners, they could be use a smaller more efficient vehicle? As in the famous talk "Hans Rosling: the magic washing machine", we haven't done anything to actually reduce emissions. Yet we are sold a narrative of constant progress towards our climate goals.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    The F150 Lightning has a carbon footprint comparable to a Prius. Not every Lightning sold is replacing a truck, but in general they're replacing something considerably larger than a Prius. And coal plants are being shut down at a very significant rate. The number of ICE vehicles being sold annually is also going down.
tejohnso 4y ago
> it is NOT POSSIBLE AT ALL to derive any conclusion from looking at it, other than we are heating the planet fast. No. You're coming to a conclusion based on some internalized facts that may not be internalized by the people you're referring to. Looking at the graph doesn't tell you anything at all about heat. It tells you about CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  I mean, the “internalized facts” are just high school level chemistry. The only way the graph doesn’t tell us anything about heat is if we intentionally separate it from any context or larger system of knowledge. It’s like saying your car’s gas gauge doesn’t tell you anything about how far you can drive, just how much gas you have in the tank.
  - native_samples 4y ago
    "The only way the graph doesn’t tell us anything about heat is if we intentionally separate it from any context or larger system of knowledge." That's nonsense. Temperature isn't a direct function of CO2 in the atmosphere. Even climatologists don't believe it's that simple. That's why there's so much debate about the true value of ECS, that's why they spent much of the 2010s trying to explain the pause in global warming by reference to heat absorption of the oceans, etc (they since changed the mind and now argue that they were simply failing to correctly measure temperatures for decades, which is even worse). The false belief that climate = CO2 levels is one of the things that creates skepticism about climatology, because anyone who bothers to check the actual facts instead of relying on "high school level chemistry" will immediately see that it's false. Moreover if it were actually that simple then there'd be no need to worry because if you simply map CO2 level increases to temperature increases then you don't get anything even close to a doomsday scenario. All the "we need to reach net zero yesterday" type claims are predicated on hypothetical and quite complicated feedback loops that involve far more than just a straight mapping of temperature=CO2 levels.
    - snowwrestler 4y ago
havblue 4y ago
I think a lot of the green technologies are intended more to make us feel better about warming the Earth, not so much actually turning the corner. Simply blaming Fox News viewers is a helpful distraction for the industry owners who are actually in charge.
danybittel 4y ago
Just stop arguing. Seriously, we don't have to wait until every last person is convinced climate change is real (or is dead). We can act now (any many do). If you live in a democracy, all it takes is a majority willing to act. Some people seem to think that a democracy means the world has to act my way. If you argue with them, try to convince them, you only fuel their belief that their opinion matters. Just move on and do something productive with your day.
- loeg 4y ago
  The difficulty is convincing even a plain majority that we should take any action. We lack that in the US.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    I think the majority believe that action should be undertaken. The trick is figuring out what action.
  - corrral 4y ago
    In the US, you've also got the problems of: not all votes count equally (Senate, electoral college) so some people's opinions (say, those in Wyoming) count a whole lot more than others; you need 60 Senate votes to do anything remotely controversial, and that's the same body subject to the first problem, so even 60% support for a position among the general population may not be enough to make something happen; our voting system forces people to compromise lots of things they care about, in favor of a few things they care about a whole lot, so you're never going to see someone who's, say, very pro-life but nonetheless cares about climate change, vote for action on climate change at the expense of their pro-life position.
ck2 4y ago
Wouldn't matter if there were major US cities underwater, hot areas freezing, cold areas overheating, even if there was not only 100% indisputable proof but 100% inconvenience and 100% cost increase. The past two years of dealing with a pandemic shows you exactly what will be done. Nothing. Millions will suffer from it and it will all be written off, spun politically and turned into another part of the rat race for people to literally walk over other people to get whatever they want at that moment. The well off will just move up higher in their apartment buildings and turn up the A/C higher, while looking down at the masses made to fight among themselves for less and less resources.

by Yizahi 4y ago

bawolff 4y ago

The graph is not the sole reason we think the planet is heating. If it was just the graph, there would be other possible interpretations. (You know, causation vs correlation and all that). However we have more than just a graph to confirm climate change.

suture 4y ago
I agree with what you said but it seems this graph alone should be enough to convince people there is a problem. The heat trapping effects of CO2 are well known and beyond dispute, right? Forgetting all other evidence, isn’t the fact of the massive increase in CO2 alone enough to cause alarm? This was talked about in the late 1800s.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- akvadrako 4y ago
  No, it certainly isn't beyond dispute that more CO₂ is significant and bad. Some example arguments: (1) The Earth has been cooler with CO₂ levels 10 times higher. We currently have some of the lowest levels in the history of the planet. (2) CO₂ increases and decreases also usually seem to trail temperature changes. (3) Warmer temperatures are not necessarily negative. We've been in an ice age for 2 million years, but life thrived at higher temps. (4) You have to balance negative effects with positive effects, like increased greening.
  - suture 4y ago
    It is, I believe, beyond dispute that CO2 has heat trapping effects. All else remaining the same, increasing CO2 increases the heat. That at another time there was higher CO2 levels with lower heat merely means that not all else remained the same.
    - prometheus76 4y ago
      You just ignored all of the challenges to your current worldview. Cognitive dissonance is just as difficult for the people you are trying to convince as it appears to be for you.
      - suture 4y ago
        I did no such thing. Increasing carbon dioxide, keeping all else equal, traps more heat. This isn’t disputable. Hence my refusal to say otherwise can’t possibly be cognitive dissonance. It might be a good thing to increase CO2. It might be bad. It might be the case that increasing carbon dioxide causes counter balancing effects and therefore increasing CO2 does not increase temperature (I remain skeptical of this but I’m not a climate scientist). But what is beyond dispute is that massively increasing CO2 will cause climatic disruptions while the weather system reaches a new equilibrium.
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > keeping all else equal The reasonable pushback against this is per se isn't a realistic assumption in a system as dynamic as our biosphere.
        suture 4y ago
        Oh definitely. But it seems to me that it is obvious that increases in CO2 on a massive, rapid scale will necessitate climatic changes (not necessarily bad) as the system finds a new equilibrium. This may in turn cause massive disruptions to human societies. Note that there are many seemingly obvious things that are false so I could be wrong.
- graycat 4y ago
  CO2 is transparent to visible light: E.g., pop open a brewski and observe that can't see the CO2 and that it does not cast a shadow. CO2 absorbs photons in three narrow wavelength bands, one for each of bending, stretching, and twisting of the molecule, out in the infrared. The absorption spectrum is shown at the Web site of the US NIST. That absorption makes CO2 a greenhouse gas. The usual claim is that the infrared does not come from "sunlight" but from Planck black body radiation from the surface of the earth. The broad, intuitive idea that the CO2 acts like a thick insulating blanket over all the earth and trapping all heat is not very close to reality. Then there is the question of, how much warming does CO2 cause? Some dozens of studies, with computer models, etc. were done. Results varied. A summary of the results is in a graph at http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg Also it appears that the names of the studies are in small print in a box in the upper left of the image. Some results predicted significant warming, but the times of the predicted warming came and went years ago without the predicted warming. Al Gore's movie showed a graph of data from ice cores from Vostok station in Antarctica. The ice cores went back 800,000 years of so. Gore graphed both temperature and CO2 concentration and observed that the two went up and down together. As I read the graphs: (1) When temperature started to rise, CO2 concentration was low, not high. So, something made temperature rise, but it was not high CO2. (2) About 800 years after temperature rose, CO2 concentration rose, and the usual explanation is that the extra CO2 was from more biological activity from the higher temperature. (3) Some thousands of years later, temperature fell. Then CO2 concentration was high, not low. So, something made temperature fall, but it wasn't low CO2 concentration. (4) We had some CO2 from WWII and the post war economic boom, but from 1945 to 1970 we had some significant cooling. For one more, not from Gore's graph, recently I heard a claim that the three highest temperatures on record happened in just the last few years or some such. There is some issue about the relevance of extreme values: E.g., in any stochastic process, of course the highest values observed so far never go down, and in real processes, say, the fastest 100 yard dash, we can expect the highest values to go up.
  - suture 4y ago
    Thank you for the illumination. Is it correct to say that CO2 causes an increase in temperature provided all else remains the same? I realize that not else will remain the same but it was my understanding that increases in CO2 have a heating effect, in the sense of keeping everything else the same, and that this is indisputable. Am I wrong?

dotancohen 4y ago

Here's the graph: https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/ https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/ And yes, it is as dire as it sounds. My children are breathing 1/3 more CO2 than my parents were at the same age. But it's not the breathing that is a concern (not until we get above 1000 ppm at least), but rather the warming. There is significantly more sunlight energy being trapped in the biosphere today than there was two generations ago.

pmontra 4y ago
It will probably be the breathing that will prompt action because maybe we can shrug away drowned cities and infrastructure but really toxic air not so much (or do we?) Effects at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnia Anyway drowned infrastructure will directly or indirectly kill a lot of people and that could mitigate the growth of all greenhouse gases except maybe H2O, because there is more and more of that in the air as temperature increases. It's a reinforcing feedback loop.
- prometheus76 4y ago
  The chart in the article you linked to shows that currently, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is 0.04% of the air we breathe, and that lifetime symptoms of hypercapnia do not appear until that number is 1.0%. That means that CO2 levels would have to increase 25 times their current level in order for your fear of hypercapnia to become a problem.
  - pmontra 4y ago
    From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Below_1% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Below_1% > A study of humans exposed in 2.5 hour sessions demonstrated significant negative effects on cognitive abilities at concentrations as low as 0.1% (1000 ppm) CO2 likely due to CO2 induced increases in cerebral blood flow. Another study observed a decline in basic activity level and information usage at 1000 ppm, when compared to 500 ppm. With some caveats about the quality of those studies.
- 4y ago

cycrutchfield 4y ago

> Also it is painfully obvious that ALL so called "green" technologies are either fake or not impacting climate at all (especially those "carbon neutral" ones are def. scam, just shuffling emissions like a hot potato game, to other corporations or countries). You’re gonna have to provide some evidence for these assertions please

micromacrofoot 4y ago
CO2 keeps going up
- pfdietz 4y ago
  "Your technology didn't solve the problem immediately, therefore it's worthless!"
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    immediately in this case is 50 years
    - pfdietz 4y ago
      Well, PV costs have declined by nearly three orders of magnitude since they were invented. You now seem to be arguing that unless a technology is mature right out of the lab, it is worthless. You aren't arguing in good faith here.
      - micromacrofoot 4y ago
        Not really arguing at all, policy and lifestyle changes could do it, but we’re obsessed with growth and technology. We won’t live with less so our solutions always rely on making more. We’ve missed several climate change milestones waiting for technology to save us.
        hkt 4y ago

suture 4y ago

In the U.S. (don’t know about other countries) the issue got tied to politics and religion. Some peoples’ identities and beliefs are zealously tied to denialism. A refutation of their beliefs in this area is an attack on them personally. So any objective evidence to the contrary is discounted. Often times using conspiratorial thinking. Such is the way for all extremists.

abirch 4y ago
One absurdity of this is that Fox News is carbon neutral. https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/the-parent-company-of-fox-news-cares-a-lot-about-global-warming/ https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/the-parent...
- platz 4y ago
  Is it true that in 40 years at the current rate, we'll be at 600 PPM? What happens to humans at that level?
  - LBJsPNS 4y ago
    We're fucked.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Crudely put but no less true for that.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    600PPM outdoors implies mild cognitive impairment. I’m not expecting 40 years at the current rate. Given the way PV deployments have been growing and how long they last, I expect electricity to be mostly green in the first few years of the 2030s, and most other sectors soon after.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      It's not the direct effect on us that causes problems, it is the runaway greenhouse effect that would wreck high efficiency agriculture. Think mid double digits drops in yield. If you are focusing on the direct effect on humans you are looking at the wrong thing, that is manageable, the other one probably is not.

aero-glide2 4y ago

Greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union (EU) decreased by almost 4 % in just one year (2019). Even accounting for imports, it's decreasing. Green tech clearly works.

tetris11 4y ago
Didn't they just outsource their emissions to other countries outside the EU?
- fsflover 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31639239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31639239
  - tetris11 4y ago
    Good to hear, and thanks for the clarification
- _fizz_buzz_ 4y ago
  > accounting for imports

hotpotamus 4y ago

The last decade or so for me have really confirmed the old fable of "The Emperor's New Clothes" or the Upton Sinclair quote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." I never understood how people could believe such obviously foolish things. I think part of it for me is just getting older, but I also think the last decade has just been more blatant in a lot of ways.

hindsightbias 4y ago
I think the PG version would be: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his identity depends upon his not understanding it."

bryanlarsen 4y ago

> ALL so called "green" technologies are either fake WTF? Let's take one example, the F-150 Lightning. When it replaces a gasoline truck sale, it eliminates 150 tons of CO2 from burning gasoline, and about 80 tons of CO2 from drilling, refining and transporting that gasoline. Sure, producing the truck takes a little extra energy, and electricity isn't carbon free in most places, but that doesn't come anywhere close to 200 tons of CO2.

lozenge 4y ago
>either fake or not impacting climate at all There is no climate benefit to opening a wind farm. The climate benefit comes when a wind farm causes a fossil fuel power plant to be shut down. When you look at what politicians and corporations boast about, it's always about adding. New renewables, new solar panels on our roof. Not about taking away fossil fuels. As an example, "carriers reduced their fuel consumption per passenger-kilometer by approximately 39 percent between 2005 and 2019 (pre-COVID-19), a compound annual growth rate of about 3.4 percent per year". [globally] - you can be sure the industry touts its increased efficiency. But globally, the emissions of the airline industry have gone up, meaning it's damaging the climate more than every before. https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-the-growth-in-greenhouse-gas-emissions-from-commercial-aviation https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-the-growth-in-gr... Even with your example - is the new truck going to travel more miles than the previous one? The US is still building urban sprawl by default. Does the owner use the pickup truck or, like most pickup truck owners, they could be use a smaller more efficient vehicle? As in the famous talk "Hans Rosling: the magic washing machine", we haven't done anything to actually reduce emissions. Yet we are sold a narrative of constant progress towards our climate goals.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  The F150 Lightning has a carbon footprint comparable to a Prius. Not every Lightning sold is replacing a truck, but in general they're replacing something considerably larger than a Prius. And coal plants are being shut down at a very significant rate. The number of ICE vehicles being sold annually is also going down.

tejohnso 4y ago

> it is NOT POSSIBLE AT ALL to derive any conclusion from looking at it, other than we are heating the planet fast. No. You're coming to a conclusion based on some internalized facts that may not be internalized by the people you're referring to. Looking at the graph doesn't tell you anything at all about heat. It tells you about CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

snowwrestler 4y ago
I mean, the “internalized facts” are just high school level chemistry. The only way the graph doesn’t tell us anything about heat is if we intentionally separate it from any context or larger system of knowledge. It’s like saying your car’s gas gauge doesn’t tell you anything about how far you can drive, just how much gas you have in the tank.
- native_samples 4y ago
  "The only way the graph doesn’t tell us anything about heat is if we intentionally separate it from any context or larger system of knowledge." That's nonsense. Temperature isn't a direct function of CO2 in the atmosphere. Even climatologists don't believe it's that simple. That's why there's so much debate about the true value of ECS, that's why they spent much of the 2010s trying to explain the pause in global warming by reference to heat absorption of the oceans, etc (they since changed the mind and now argue that they were simply failing to correctly measure temperatures for decades, which is even worse). The false belief that climate = CO2 levels is one of the things that creates skepticism about climatology, because anyone who bothers to check the actual facts instead of relying on "high school level chemistry" will immediately see that it's false. Moreover if it were actually that simple then there'd be no need to worry because if you simply map CO2 level increases to temperature increases then you don't get anything even close to a doomsday scenario. All the "we need to reach net zero yesterday" type claims are predicated on hypothetical and quite complicated feedback loops that involve far more than just a straight mapping of temperature=CO2 levels.
  - snowwrestler 4y ago

havblue 4y ago

I think a lot of the green technologies are intended more to make us feel better about warming the Earth, not so much actually turning the corner. Simply blaming Fox News viewers is a helpful distraction for the industry owners who are actually in charge.

danybittel 4y ago

Just stop arguing. Seriously, we don't have to wait until every last person is convinced climate change is real (or is dead). We can act now (any many do). If you live in a democracy, all it takes is a majority willing to act. Some people seem to think that a democracy means the world has to act my way. If you argue with them, try to convince them, you only fuel their belief that their opinion matters. Just move on and do something productive with your day.

loeg 4y ago
The difficulty is convincing even a plain majority that we should take any action. We lack that in the US.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  I think the majority believe that action should be undertaken. The trick is figuring out what action.
- corrral 4y ago
  In the US, you've also got the problems of: not all votes count equally (Senate, electoral college) so some people's opinions (say, those in Wyoming) count a whole lot more than others; you need 60 Senate votes to do anything remotely controversial, and that's the same body subject to the first problem, so even 60% support for a position among the general population may not be enough to make something happen; our voting system forces people to compromise lots of things they care about, in favor of a few things they care about a whole lot, so you're never going to see someone who's, say, very pro-life but nonetheless cares about climate change, vote for action on climate change at the expense of their pro-life position.

ck2 4y ago

Wouldn't matter if there were major US cities underwater, hot areas freezing, cold areas overheating, even if there was not only 100% indisputable proof but 100% inconvenience and 100% cost increase. The past two years of dealing with a pandemic shows you exactly what will be done. Nothing. Millions will suffer from it and it will all be written off, spun politically and turned into another part of the rat race for people to literally walk over other people to get whatever they want at that moment. The well off will just move up higher in their apartment buildings and turn up the A/C higher, while looking down at the masses made to fight among themselves for less and less resources.