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I don't see the point of trying to redefine "pollution" to include CO2. We have been discussing climate change for decades, but it was only recently that people

I don't see the point of trying to redefine "pollution" to include CO2. We have been discussing climate change for decades, but it was only recently that people tried to shoehorn CO2 into category of "pollution." It just takes a category where society has some consensus and then shoehorns some new disputed idea into existing category. It's an end-run around the process of building consensus around the new thing.

watwut 6d ago
This is ridiculous. There is no redefinition, it was always part of definition. Seriously. The only end run around consensus are lies like "CO2 as polution is a novel thing".
- rayiner 6d ago
  > There is no redefinition, it was always part of definition. Source?
  - wyre 6d ago
    You need a source showing you that greenhouses gasses aren't pollution? The thing that is also known as "air pollution"? I want to tell you to stop being a moron, but its against this site's TOS.
    - rayiner 6d ago
      In the 1990 IPCC report it talks about “greenhouse gasses” and also about “air pollution” but treats those as two distinct things: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_assessments_far_full_report.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_a.... For example, on page 97, it says “CO2 enrichment” may “enhance plant growth,” but that “enhanced levels of air pollution could also reduce this positive effect.” There’s it’s clearly talking about CO2 and air pollution as two different things that have opposite effects on plant growth. Is the IPCC also “morons?”
      - wyre 6d ago
        Do you have zero critical thinking skills? CO2 can be pollution while still allowing plants to grow, plants use CO2 in their growth cycle, if you didn't know, they don't use other greenhouse gases to grow. Page 9 lists CO2 as the first item in a list of greenhouse gases. I don't want to spend all day read this 37 year old report. In what world are greenhouse gases not air pollutants?
        xyzzyz 6d ago
        In a world as of a couple years ago, when nobody called CO2 “air pollutant”.
        watwut 6d ago
        But that is a lie. CO2 was air polutant 30 years ago 20 years ago and basically forever. It is only in the post-truth society of right wing anti-climate influencers that apparently someone tries to redefine the terms to exclude it.
        card_zero 6d ago
        I have also vaguely noticed that it started being called pollution sometime this century. "Huh, that's new", I thought. Not particularly surprising, though. Of course that timespan is almost 30 years, so my concept of recent change might be getting stretched. But yeah, more familiar pollutants are dirty or caustic or radioactive, and chew holes in things or give you lung diseases or poison the wildlife, things like that, so it was a little jarring. Though I suppose we had CFCs, they didn't do anything directly harmful either.
        rayiner 6d ago
        If it was always this way, explain why the IPCC's seminal report on climate change uses the phrases "CO2 enrichment" (rising CO2 levels) and "air pollution" as if they're two different categories? > 2.2.4 Consequences of CO2 enrichment and climate change for natural terrestrial ecosystems could be modified by other environmental factors, both natural and man induced (e.g. by air pollution). Help me parse this according to your understanding that "CO2 was an air pollutant 30 years ago." If CO2 is a subcategory of "air pollution," then it makes no sense to list "air pollution" as an example of "other environmental factors." It wouldn't be grammatical. The report uses this basic sentence structure, referring to "CO2 enrichment" as one thing in distinction to "other environmental factors" including "air pollution" several times. Explain to me how that's consistent with your position?
Rygian 6d ago
The first ever version of the "Greenhouse gas" wikipedia page lists CO₂ as the first such gas (besides water vapor, obviously disregarded). That page is from 2002. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greenhouse_gas&oldid=2889 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greenhouse_gas&ol...
- rayiner 6d ago
  I'm talking about redefining the term "pollution," not the term "greenhouse gas."
  - applfanboysbgon 6d ago
    Carbon dioxide atmospheric pollution has been acknowledged since literally the 1800s. What era are you from? Are you 200 years old?
    - rayiner 6d ago
      Did we call it “pollution” back then or something else? That is, did we lump CO2 conceptually into the same category as soot from coal plants and things like that? Society uses labels to group things together so that we can treat similar things similarly for various purposes. For example, when we talk about “education” we usually mean teaching kids in schools or colleges. Of course, there’s lots of other things you can call “education.” But if the Department of Education comes in and says it’s going to regulate technical presentations at software conferences because that’s also “education,” then you’d say: “that’s not what people mean by the word education in this context.” That is, we have a consensus about what “education” encompasses and what it doesn’t for purposes of government regulation, and seminars at conferences falls outside that understanding.
      - applfanboysbgon 5d ago
        Yes we have literally been calling it pollution for 100 years before you were born
      - 6d ago
henearkr 6d ago
It is not weird at all. A completely useful (and consistent with the modern usage of the word) definition of "pollution" can be worded as: "anthropogenic alteration of the open environment with negative consequences on ecosystems or society". Have you heard about noise pollution? Match it with the definition above. CO2 emitted by combustion from human activities is orders of magnitude more than what any natural biological process emits. Now you can see why CO2 emitted by fossil fuels combustion is, by any logic, pollution.
- rayiner 5d ago
  So should the EPA be able to regulate noise pollution? The problem with your definition is that it encompasses basically all of society. Everything humans do alters the environment, mostly for the worse. By embracing such an expansive definition of “pollution,” you’d turn the EPA into a super-regulator of vast swaths of the economy. Software people should be able to understand the importance of separation of modules. You don’t put logic for process scheduling inside a file system module. It’s the same problem with treating CO2 as an air pollutant. Power generation is 1/6 of the economy. The mix of power generation sources the country should have isn’t just an environmental question. It cuts across society—it implicates the economy, national security, industrial policy, etc. Consider, for example, how Germany’s over-reliance on Russian gas turned into a national security problem for them after Russia invaded Ukraine. An environmental regulator isn’t at the right level to be making that decision.
  - henearkr 5d ago
    Yes the EPA should be able to regulate noise pollution too, unless maybe if another agency is doing that job. No, there is no issue to have that definition encompassing all of what in society causes damage to the open environment[1]. Note that your wording, "encompasses [...] all of society", does not correspond to my stance. It only encompasses what causes negative externalities in the way I defined. It is crucial that there exist such an agency (EPA) that examines these environmental negative externalities (let's just call it pollution now, as it is so defined), and considers ways to limit it. Each agency has its own axis, and it is the combination of them that is effective: if you only leave the energy sector to e.g. the USEA (US Energy Association), they won't have the incentive, definition, or analysis axis in the direction of looking at human health or forests decline, purely because it is not in their definition or their statuses. Similarly, if you are left with just the EPA, they won't provide the expertise to evaluate if this or that type of electricity generation is feasible and with which kind of technology. It just the division of expertise, the division of labor, and that's why scientists and engineers work together across domains! [1]: damage should be defined relative to a severely detrimental impact to the biosphere or to human society. The environment is understood to be open as defined by not having clear boundaries that may, for example, keep the impact strictly contained within the limits of a volume property of the agent of this impact. Air is typically not contained in such a delimited volume, and is thus open environment. Water also flows freely and is connected to e.g. big bodies of water. And so on. --- About "modules": "Software people should be able to understand the importance of separation of modules." The "energy" module cares about the watt-hours produced but doesn't care about the cancer caused by the smoke!! (or, for CO2, about the planet-scale extinction event caused by raising temperatures, or the multiplying forest fires) Thus you need the "pollution assessment and mitigation" module! There. Proved to you that I am a SE :))

watwut 6d ago

This is ridiculous. There is no redefinition, it was always part of definition. Seriously. The only end run around consensus are lies like "CO2 as polution is a novel thing".

rayiner 6d ago
> There is no redefinition, it was always part of definition. Source?
- wyre 6d ago
  You need a source showing you that greenhouses gasses aren't pollution? The thing that is also known as "air pollution"? I want to tell you to stop being a moron, but its against this site's TOS.
  - rayiner 6d ago
    In the 1990 IPCC report it talks about “greenhouse gasses” and also about “air pollution” but treats those as two distinct things: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_assessments_far_full_report.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_a.... For example, on page 97, it says “CO2 enrichment” may “enhance plant growth,” but that “enhanced levels of air pollution could also reduce this positive effect.” There’s it’s clearly talking about CO2 and air pollution as two different things that have opposite effects on plant growth. Is the IPCC also “morons?”
    - wyre 6d ago
      Do you have zero critical thinking skills? CO2 can be pollution while still allowing plants to grow, plants use CO2 in their growth cycle, if you didn't know, they don't use other greenhouse gases to grow. Page 9 lists CO2 as the first item in a list of greenhouse gases. I don't want to spend all day read this 37 year old report. In what world are greenhouse gases not air pollutants?
      - xyzzyz 6d ago
        In a world as of a couple years ago, when nobody called CO2 “air pollutant”.
        watwut 6d ago
        But that is a lie. CO2 was air polutant 30 years ago 20 years ago and basically forever. It is only in the post-truth society of right wing anti-climate influencers that apparently someone tries to redefine the terms to exclude it.
        card_zero 6d ago
        I have also vaguely noticed that it started being called pollution sometime this century. "Huh, that's new", I thought. Not particularly surprising, though. Of course that timespan is almost 30 years, so my concept of recent change might be getting stretched. But yeah, more familiar pollutants are dirty or caustic or radioactive, and chew holes in things or give you lung diseases or poison the wildlife, things like that, so it was a little jarring. Though I suppose we had CFCs, they didn't do anything directly harmful either.
        rayiner 6d ago
        If it was always this way, explain why the IPCC's seminal report on climate change uses the phrases "CO2 enrichment" (rising CO2 levels) and "air pollution" as if they're two different categories? > 2.2.4 Consequences of CO2 enrichment and climate change for natural terrestrial ecosystems could be modified by other environmental factors, both natural and man induced (e.g. by air pollution). Help me parse this according to your understanding that "CO2 was an air pollutant 30 years ago." If CO2 is a subcategory of "air pollution," then it makes no sense to list "air pollution" as an example of "other environmental factors." It wouldn't be grammatical. The report uses this basic sentence structure, referring to "CO2 enrichment" as one thing in distinction to "other environmental factors" including "air pollution" several times. Explain to me how that's consistent with your position?

Rygian 6d ago

The first ever version of the "Greenhouse gas" wikipedia page lists CO₂ as the first such gas (besides water vapor, obviously disregarded). That page is from 2002. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greenhouse_gas&oldid=2889 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greenhouse_gas&ol...

rayiner 6d ago
I'm talking about redefining the term "pollution," not the term "greenhouse gas."
- applfanboysbgon 6d ago
  Carbon dioxide atmospheric pollution has been acknowledged since literally the 1800s. What era are you from? Are you 200 years old?
  - rayiner 6d ago
    Did we call it “pollution” back then or something else? That is, did we lump CO2 conceptually into the same category as soot from coal plants and things like that? Society uses labels to group things together so that we can treat similar things similarly for various purposes. For example, when we talk about “education” we usually mean teaching kids in schools or colleges. Of course, there’s lots of other things you can call “education.” But if the Department of Education comes in and says it’s going to regulate technical presentations at software conferences because that’s also “education,” then you’d say: “that’s not what people mean by the word education in this context.” That is, we have a consensus about what “education” encompasses and what it doesn’t for purposes of government regulation, and seminars at conferences falls outside that understanding.
    - applfanboysbgon 5d ago
      Yes we have literally been calling it pollution for 100 years before you were born
    - 6d ago

henearkr 6d ago

It is not weird at all. A completely useful (and consistent with the modern usage of the word) definition of "pollution" can be worded as: "anthropogenic alteration of the open environment with negative consequences on ecosystems or society". Have you heard about noise pollution? Match it with the definition above. CO2 emitted by combustion from human activities is orders of magnitude more than what any natural biological process emits. Now you can see why CO2 emitted by fossil fuels combustion is, by any logic, pollution.

rayiner 5d ago
So should the EPA be able to regulate noise pollution? The problem with your definition is that it encompasses basically all of society. Everything humans do alters the environment, mostly for the worse. By embracing such an expansive definition of “pollution,” you’d turn the EPA into a super-regulator of vast swaths of the economy. Software people should be able to understand the importance of separation of modules. You don’t put logic for process scheduling inside a file system module. It’s the same problem with treating CO2 as an air pollutant. Power generation is 1/6 of the economy. The mix of power generation sources the country should have isn’t just an environmental question. It cuts across society—it implicates the economy, national security, industrial policy, etc. Consider, for example, how Germany’s over-reliance on Russian gas turned into a national security problem for them after Russia invaded Ukraine. An environmental regulator isn’t at the right level to be making that decision.
- henearkr 5d ago
  Yes the EPA should be able to regulate noise pollution too, unless maybe if another agency is doing that job. No, there is no issue to have that definition encompassing all of what in society causes damage to the open environment[1]. Note that your wording, "encompasses [...] all of society", does not correspond to my stance. It only encompasses what causes negative externalities in the way I defined. It is crucial that there exist such an agency (EPA) that examines these environmental negative externalities (let's just call it pollution now, as it is so defined), and considers ways to limit it. Each agency has its own axis, and it is the combination of them that is effective: if you only leave the energy sector to e.g. the USEA (US Energy Association), they won't have the incentive, definition, or analysis axis in the direction of looking at human health or forests decline, purely because it is not in their definition or their statuses. Similarly, if you are left with just the EPA, they won't provide the expertise to evaluate if this or that type of electricity generation is feasible and with which kind of technology. It just the division of expertise, the division of labor, and that's why scientists and engineers work together across domains! [1]: damage should be defined relative to a severely detrimental impact to the biosphere or to human society. The environment is understood to be open as defined by not having clear boundaries that may, for example, keep the impact strictly contained within the limits of a volume property of the agent of this impact. Air is typically not contained in such a delimited volume, and is thus open environment. Water also flows freely and is connected to e.g. big bodies of water. And so on. --- About "modules": "Software people should be able to understand the importance of separation of modules." The "energy" module cares about the watt-hours produced but doesn't care about the cancer caused by the smoke!! (or, for CO2, about the planet-scale extinction event caused by raising temperatures, or the multiplying forest fires) Thus you need the "pollution assessment and mitigation" module! There. Proved to you that I am a SE :))