Natural Gas is Now Getting in the Way; US Carbon Emissions Increase by 3.4% (arstechnica.com) 300
AmiMoJo shares a report: "The US was already off track in meeting its Paris Agreement targets. The gap is even wider headed into 2019." That's the dire news from Rhodium Group, a research firm that released preliminary estimates of US carbon emissions in 2018. Though the Trump administration said it would exit the Paris Agreement in 2017, the US is still bound by the agreement to submit progress reports until 2020. But the administration has justified regulatory rollbacks since then, claiming that regulation from the US government is unnecessary because emissions were trending downward anyway. But it appears that emissions have increased 3.4 percent in 2018 across the US economy, the second-largest annual increase in 20 years, according to Rhodium Group's preliminary data. (2010, when the US started recovering from the recession, was the largest annual increase in the last two decades.)
This reversal of course -- the first increase in emissions in three years -- came from a few sources. Carbon emissions from the US electricity sector increased by 1.9 percent, largely because the installation of new natural gas plants has outpaced coal retirements. Cheap natural gas has been credited with killing coal, which is a dirtier fossil fuel in terms of emissions. But natural gas is a fossil fuel, too, and burning more natural gas than is needed to simply replace coal will result in more carbon emissions. But electricity wasn't the main culprit. Transportation was.
This reversal of course -- the first increase in emissions in three years -- came from a few sources. Carbon emissions from the US electricity sector increased by 1.9 percent, largely because the installation of new natural gas plants has outpaced coal retirements. Cheap natural gas has been credited with killing coal, which is a dirtier fossil fuel in terms of emissions. But natural gas is a fossil fuel, too, and burning more natural gas than is needed to simply replace coal will result in more carbon emissions. But electricity wasn't the main culprit. Transportation was.
Paris agreement? Will be toast soon in USA (Score:5, Interesting)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_the_Paris_Agreement
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Not a good trend (Score:2)
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Even though emissions from passenger cars was down, emissions from planes and trucks are up. Hopefully the Tesla push to electrify trucking will come into reality on the market soon.
Did someone hijack your account? You are one of the biggest Elon-haters I've ever seen and now you are depending on him? Maybe I just had a stroke...
Anyway, the solution for bulk transportation isn't electrics. EVs are great for personal transport and trucking. But fuel is just too energy dense for batteries to make a dent in things like shipping and air transport. Diesel-Electric Trains are one of the most efficient ways to move things across land but they are still getting all their energy from fossi
China and India (Score:2)
Well as long as we are pointing fingers lets make sure that we have plenty to point at. In 2018 China was up 4.7% and India by 6.3%. An according to this report, the US is only up by 2.5%. Interesting, both are well below even the 3.5% mark of the article. But yet, we leave those out and just post a US bashing article. The EU is doing good.
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
Re:China and India (Score:5, Insightful)
Before pointing your finger in an accusatory manner, perhaps you should consider what their targets are first.
China and India are still on the up side of the curve, no one expects them to be decreasing yet. They expect them to be slowing the rate of increase, which they are.
Remember all that whining about how emissions targets would force the US back to pre-industrial levels of civilization? That's the reason why China and India aren't expected to immediately halt their increasing output.
And despite all that they are still at just a fraction of the per capita emissions of the US anyway, around half.
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No, lets just be honest. You posted this article because it bashed America. That is the real reason why you did it. You never even thought of China or India, or actually anyone else. You saw that it bashed American and you went with it. That is the reason, nothing more, and nothing less.
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I don't hate America. In fact, I want to see America do well because that is in everyone's interests.
Ironically, I am often accused of loving Obama, so if anything I'd expect to be accused of hating Trump, not America. For the record I'm not hugely fond of either of them.
If I seem to be defending your new arch enemy, China, it's only because in this case it's a gross misrepresentation of what is happening. Just as you wouldn't expect the US to stop on a dime and massively decrease emissions, you wouldn't ex
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Also, I note that you don't actually have a counter-argument to my points, just a concession.
Actually, I did post a link to a article showing that it was 2.5% and not 3.5% so I think I did a good job there. But then again my point was not to counter-argument you. My point is simply to call you on your anti-American bullshit. Which I think I did a excellent job of.
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Why exactly do you think I hate America?
Can you explain precisely what I say that makes you think I have some kind of irrational hatred of the entire country, and that I want to do it harm?
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Only if you are happy for India and China to look at the US and say "meh, they aren't making any effort, let's double/triple out per capita output and adopt their lifestyle too". Maybe you think that's okay, most scientists think it would be a global catastrophe.
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So your argument basically boils down to "fuck it, I'm doing it anyway". You know it's a bad idea, you know everyone else is trying to do the right thing (for whatever reason), but you... You just want to save a few bucks in the short term.
Is that right? Is there some other reason?
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Only if you are happy for India and China to look at the US and say "meh, they aren't making any effort, let's double/triple out per capita output and adopt their lifestyle too". Maybe you think that's okay, most scientists think it would be a global catastrophe.
This increase in CO2 is the result of what the electrical engineers who run the grid have been warning about for years. The intermittent nature of solar and wind mean that as more is deployed, you need larger and larger backup systems. Since we don't have grid scale backup from batteries or flywheels, we back it up with natural gas. And the constant spinning up and down of the gas fired plants is wasteful and inefficient but its done to prevent brown-outs and black-outs. That's why the CO2 is up even th
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Well as long as we are pointing fingers
Or you know, how about we just don't point fingers and do something? You know, I've got an uncle who's got stage three colon cancer, I could sit here all day and say, "Welp, you spent the last 35 years of your life 100 pounds overweight. What did you think was going to happen?!" Or ya know, I could help out with taking him to chemo. Why is everyone so knotted up with playing blame games? It's what five-year olds do. Adults just get to work fixing shit.
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This has been my position since day one. We are all in this together. But Amjo and the rest of the EU snobbery keep the "blame America" for all the worlds problems alive an running. Constantly the same thing over and over not looking at China, India or even Africa as a source of carbon emissions. Fact is America is doing damn good right now at reducing our emissions. I'm sorry that its not up to EU standards but we refuse to sacrifice our economy to make you happy. We refuse to transfer billions of do
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Not to detract from your point, but I'd just note that the blame coming from other countries seems to pale in comparison to our own self-loathing here in the U.S. Many of us feel guilty, at least subconsciously, about what we have and we want to give it away, or pay some penance. This is probably a natural behavior for people who have the luxury of being able to think more globally, and the idea seems to spread like fashion to others who themselves can barely afford it.
Position clarification: My personal p
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keep the "blame America" for all the worlds problems alive an running.
Well you're the world police, the greatest country ever, and the most powerful country which can do what you please with all your military might. So maybe it's time you actually took responsibility for the world since you constantly claim to.
What?? (Score:2)
Cheap natural gas has been credited with killing coal, which is a dirtier fossil fuel in terms of emissions. But natural gas is a fossil fuel, too, and burning more natural gas than is needed to simply replace coal will result in more carbon emissions.
What stupidity. Nobody is burning more natural gas than is needed and nobody is running coal plants just for fun. If those gas plants are coming online / being utilized to a larger part of capacity and the coal plants are not being idled or shuttered its because consumers want the power! Its not like we are generating electrical potential just ground it out because we think arc-flash is cool!
The issue is the economy grew so despite efficiency improvements emissions grew.
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These people can't even do multiplication and they're running the world's governments.
I usually recommend this physicist, who has popularized multiplication in the context of energy usage:
https://youtu.be/E0W1ZZYIV8o [youtu.be]
So far none of the econuts I talk to are willing to take cold showers - they'd be safe to ignore if they didn't control the AR-15's of federal agencies' SWAT teams.
Last paragraph admits this was a one-off year (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk about burying the lede:
While we don’t expect a repeat of 2018 this coming year , the data provides some important insights into the emission reduction challenges facing the US.
The reasons they don't expect a repeat are sprinkled through the article, e.g.:
1. The winter was extremely cold. People used more energy staying warm.
2. The economy was roaring. People traveled more. More goods were shipped. More buildings were built.
On top of this, and somewhat amazingly for what purports to be an independent research group, they chose to put a negative spin on the fact that, as they put it, "a record number of coal-fired power plants were retired last year" and replaced with natural gas (which our friend AmiMoJo then further spun into the sensationalist title of this article).
At bottom, this is just more of the unfortunate stream of SlashClickbait that is gradually swamping what used to be a useful tech blog.
Re:Last paragraph admits this was a one-off year (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, no need to make false accusations. Here is my original submission: https://slashdot.org/firehose.... [slashdot.org]
Note that the headline is different and doesn't mention gas.
It's literally one click on my username to see my submissions. Why didn't you check? Be honest, were you triggered by seeing my name and just assumed?
The headline the editor used is from the Ars Technica article. Although 2018 was somewhat exceptional, it wasn't so exceptional that if nothing changes 2019 will see a reduction. And also I'm kinda fed up certain people using a much, much smaller increase in the EU as an excuse or the basis of a bogus claim that no-one else is making any effort.
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Troll, eh? Come forward cowardly moderator, make your case.
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Nice try splitting hairs. Your submission included a link to a sensationalist article about the original report, which you yourself admit included the inflammatory headline. If you disagreed with it, you would have mentioned that in your submission, linked to a different article, or even just linked to the report itself.
But I'm sure you actually had something meaningful to say about the substance of my post and weren't just picking around the edges, right?
Although 2018 was somewhat exceptional, it wasn't so exceptional that if nothing changes 2019 will see a reduction.
Oh, I guess not.
And also I'm kinda fed up certain people using a much, much smaller increase in the EU as an excuse or the basis of a bogus claim that no-one else is making any effort.
Yes, your anti-American perspectiv
Some greens LOVE natural gas (Score:2)
I have not bothered with my local greens but where i came form (Some tiny country in Yurop) the greens were in love with natural gas. Funny. It probably has to do with combined cycle plants fast enough to be paired with intermittent energy sources that cannot be dispatched. Like the wind turbines they are fond of.
"Dire news" or "Fake News"? (Score:3)
The report itself is a good detailed estimate of emissions from various sectors along with analysis and projections. Last year's estimate was pretty accurate so this probably is as well. But nowhere do they use the words "Dire news". That's the spin from Ars Technica.
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Thankfully, India and Americas will be pretty low, but China's is going to be massive increase. With America's 3.4% increase on 15%, it will mean that America will add some
BTW, India's emissions are so low, that their ~10
That's a lot of natural gas! (Score:3)
Re:That's a lot of natural gas! (Score:4, Insightful)
We need to replace those old coal plants with nuclear power.
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That's not the way plants work. It's not like they're burning 0 MW or "max capacity" MW. You could put in a 500 MW plant and have it burn 120 MW of energy. If they put in a plant that size and it was run anywere near capacity on its usage,
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Natural gas produces 50-60% less CO2 than a coal plant for the same amount of energy. That means a lot of new capacity has been added to the grid.
The 50-60% only relates to combustion. You also need to factor in direct methane emissions from drilling, pipelines, etc. (a.k.a., fugitive emissions). Methane is a much stronger green house gas. Natural gas is probably slightly better, but not nearly as good as trumpeted: -https://www.nature.com/news/methane-leaks-erode-green-credentials-of-natural-gas-1.12123 -https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/coal-and-other-fossil-fuels/environmental-impacts-of-natural-gas
So yes, theoretically natural gas could be a lot better. However, to add insult to injury, regulations on minimizing direct methane emissions are part of what Trump has been working so hard to roll back.
There is also the fact that the Sierra Club was getting funding from natural gas [time.com]. Don't get in the way of the gravy train...
...and now, the relevant part of TFA (Score:5, Informative)
The post (suspiciously) left out the most important explanatory part of TFA:
"The transportation sector held its title as the largest source of US emissions for the third year running, as robust growth in demand for diesel and jet fuel offset a modest decline in gasoline consumption," Rhodium wrote. Industrial emissions from various types of manufacturing as well as emissions from buildings both saw significant increases in their carbon emissions in 2018.
...
In 2018, gasoline demand decreased by just 0.1 percent. But growth in the US trucking industry increased diesel demand by 3.1 percent, and demand for air travel increased jet fuel demand by 3 percent.
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But growth in the US trucking industry increased diesel demand by 3.1 percent, and demand for air travel increased jet fuel demand by 3 percent.
And that's not natural gas (aside from a tiny part of local trucking biz).
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Would be great if someone could figure out how to make long distance trains more economically effective, especially for freight.
For passengers any flight that is about 2 hours or less is probably faster by train, once you factor in getting to the airport, going through security, boarding, and then getting to your destination from the other airport. But you need a network of very high speed trains.
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The US has the largest rail network in the world BY FAR [wikipedia.org] (i.e. you'd need to add the rail networks of the next 17 countries together to get just half of what the US has), the vast majority of which is devoted to freight transportation. It's already incredibly economical, but people expect fast delivery (which generally isn't feasible via rail) and you still need a way to get from railway stops out to homes, so there's a need for a lot of trucks and planes.
We can not ADD fossil fuels (Score:4, Informative)
All nations have to stop this. Here in America, we need to push Nuclear SMRs into production SOON. NuScale is a perfect example. It will not be in production until 2025/6 timeframe. With some money (for both the company and NRC), it can be put into production by 2023. That would enable us to replace a number of these coal plants with cheaper/safer nuclear SMRS. Add in more solar/wind and geo-thermal, and we can shut this down.
The one good thing missing out of this report is that over the next couple of years, America will continue downwards due to EVs replacing old cars, along with the fact that our electricity is fairly clean.
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lolz, we're not going to go nuclear, get it out of your head. spouting idealistic nonsense that won't cut it in the real world is waste of time.
Replacing coal with natgas does reduce emissions.
Agressive pursuit of totally non-polluting alternatives will take decades to implement, that's reality.
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lolz, we're not going to go nuclear, get it out of your head. spouting idealistic nonsense that won't cut it in the real world is waste of time.
Replacing coal with natgas does reduce emissions.
Agressive pursuit of totally non-polluting alternatives will take decades to implement, that's reality.
Replacing anything with solar or wind increases natural gas and thus CO2. That's the point of this article. And the CO2 trends we are seeing around the world over the last several years show this same result over and over again. Madness is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. That's exactly what you are doing right now. People tend to do the right thing after trying everything else.
Title is BS (Score:2)
Story isn't about methane. It's about diesel (vehicles) and kerosene (jet fuel). Basically people fly more and there are more products that need to be driven to the stores for people to buy. Not to even mention the whole amazon deliveries aspect. Basically rapid growth of economy leads to more flying to vacations by the wealthy city folks and more driving to get consumer products.
The reason why there's an attempt to spin this as "it's the methane" is because of increasing desperation in the green lobby with
Bring back nuclear, promote plug-in electrics (Score:3, Insightful)
We need nuclear power. Safe nuclear power isn't 'theoretical', it's a reality; there are safer reactor designs on the drawing board right now, but since everyone seems to lose their bladder containment whenever the subject comes up, no money gets allocated into developing them.
Of course none of this can even begin to happen until 2020; we need to get the current bozo out of office, because his geriatric obsession with dragging us back to the 1940's, trying to resurrect the coal industry, prevents any progress in nuclear power from happening. Hell, I wouldn't put it past the guy to 'executive order' all information to-date on reactor design be destroyed, just to ensure that ass-backwards coal mining is brought back from the dead.
Once we get past that hurdle and back into a sane energy policy, new reactor designs can be developed and implemented. That'll take at least 10 years though.
Meanwhile continuing development and deployment of solar and wind power, in conjuction with large-scale energy storage strategies, should tide us over, and as capacity in these technologies increases, old-fashioned outdated filthy fossil-fuel-based power plants can be shuttered. Tear them down and build solar farms, so we can reuse the grid connections to them.
In order to facilitate faster adoption of plug-in electric vehicles, there should be new government programs to promote them. Rebates, credits for decomissioning ICE vehicles, grants to municipalities to fund change-over from diesel buses to electrics, ad campaigns promoting electrics. Get as many people as possible off ICE-based transportation and into electrics.
Meanwhile continue funding development of practical fusion technology, to eventually replace fission technology.
Also, for all we know, if we, as a species, manage to survive another hundred years or so, we might even have antimatter reactor technology (or something more exotic than that, even), and never have to worry about energy ever again.
The takeaway here is that we have to stop dwelling on the past and move forward, stop being scared little rabbits, use what we've got that's better than what we've been using, and stop sabotaging ourselves.
An easy solution to all this (Score:2)
Eliminate all depreciation, deductions, exclusions, and grandfathering of all fossil fuels, from extraction to use, and add all cleanup as a cost.
It's called a market - you have to capture both Goods and Bads to actually have a working Capitalist economy. Letting people pollute for free has costs, specifically in dead kids.
There. Fixed.
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So... lower taxes and having to deal with the shit instead yourself is better? Who are you that you can afford this?
Re:OH NOES!!! GLOBAL WARMING!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
You're going to cover the poor's medical bills when the air becomes worse than in China and "drinking" water is at best available in supermarkets anymore? Or is that part of the win-win situation where they die off early to take pressure off the job and housing market?
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Personal responsibility is a good thing if, and only if, the people actually have a chance to better their lot. This was true in the US for the longest time, but in the past 20 years or so, I don't really see that opportunity anymore.
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Wrong.
"Republicans" (actually a Democratic majority House & Senate along with the Republican president Nixon) created the EPA in response to the environmentalists, or "emotional hippies" as you call them.
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From www.epa.gov:
In early 1970, as a result of heightened public concerns about deteriorating city air, natural areas littered with debris, and urban water supplies contaminated with dangerous impurities, President Richard Nixon presented the House and Senate a groundbreaking 37-point message on the environment. These points included:
Re:Let's translate from supply side to demand side (Score:4, Funny)
But ... perpetual growth! It's mandatory for a healthy economy! Just look at all the Americans who try to participate, at least with their weight!
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Well right - and the political left in this country needs to internalize that just as most of the political right does but even more so because it driving absolutely the wrong policy choices on the left.
We can make some efficiency improvements certainly but there is exactly one[1] ultimate driver of environmental degradation and that is human population size per area. We have a birth rate near the replacement rate right now. There is little evidence we would need to get into people's reproductive choices.
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Well, technically we are. Post-natal, by mowing them down in case they have something we want and they don't give it to our conditions.
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Does ending immigration stop population growth? All those people will stop reproducing if they're not on US soil?
The vast majority of people in the US is an immigrant or a recent descendant of immigrants. So this sounds a lot like shutting the doors behind you.
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I drive an econo-box and rent my home. I've never flown to anywhere exotic, and I eat way more chicken than beef. I thought I was living the American dream, but now I feel so ashamed. Thank you for enlightening me.
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DO you realize that SUV/pickups are the FASTEST growing vehicles in the world? China is buying them up faster than America. Why do you think that China's emissions increase are between 4-7%.
McMansions? The ones that I see here, have solar panels, great insulation, and geo-thermal HVAC. Why? Because these ppl do not want to pay large utility bills.
Fly to extravagant locations? Please. How many of you assholes are on here al the time gripping that Americans never go anywhere?
Eat beef every day? Some
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I still need oil and coal to do my work. So you can go stuff it.
Um, what? You do know that you can make synthetic fuels with nuclear power right? What exactly do you need oil pulled from the ground for? Why can't it be man-made? Unless your work is pulling the oil from the ground, you should be fine.
Electrified Rail Transport (Score:4, Insightful)
As noted in TFS and TFA, much of the increase comes from the transportation sector, and increased demand for diesel (and jet fuel, but I repeat myself.) What's needed to make immediate improvements in transportation efficiency and emissions is electrified rail. The specifics of what that would look like vary from place to place, and situation to situation, but in general getting rid of rubber tires and adding electric motivation are things which we not only could be doing now, but could have been doing already.
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Uh, no.
First off, rail in America already carries the most cargo of any system in the world. The last thing that we will do is convert to expensive systems like France/China have.
Secondly, most cargo does NOT need to be sped along. Moving at 50-60 MPH average is plenty fast.
Third, China and France have SLOW systems for carrying ppl. 100-200 mph is fine for a small nation like France, but when you have to travel 5700 km, or in the future 15,000 km, then 100-200 mph systems are jokes.
Finally, wit
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I keep wondering if elon could make a railcar that contained a large amount of li-ion, or perhaps use a flow-battery, and then do recharging at stops and slow cities. Likewise, any braking/slowing down could be regened back.
Seriously, if they include multiple battery/tractor in a train, they might be able to use a single LNG-electric system to keep running at a set speed and charging the battery.
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Hybrid trains were tested some time ago, and interest has been significantly renewed of late as you might imagine. [wikipedia.org]Bombardier is building precisely the kind of thing you're talking about [cnet.com] for a test program in Germany.
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Perry has it correct that we need to have on-demand systems available, but these should also be clean. The would leave it as hydro, geo-thermal, and nuclear.
Re:Can every US citizen say... (Score:5, Insightful)
> And thank you for understanding that no amount of taxes and regulations on the United States will cause the biggest polluters in India and China to reduce their output
"Well those guys over there are pissing in the pool, so why should I stop?"
That's the logic here, in a nutshell.
=Smidge=
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Except there is demonstrable benefit to reducing the total amount of CO2 (piss) being released into the atmosphere (pool). Even if "they" don't stop, there is still a strong incentive for "us" to stop.
It also sets a good example and puts us in an ethically superior position to pressure them into stopping.
It should be noted that "they" (China) are hell for leather converting to renewable energy. If the US didn't have our heads up our collective asses, we could have been the one selling the world solar panels
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I don't see the benefit of being the only one not pissing in the pool. i.e. Being the only ones to massively reduce our CO2.
Why? Because we know that catastrophic issues start to happen at 2C of warming. That will happen globally, and not just in countries that continue with high CO2 output. It doesn't matter if we have 3.1C of warming or "only" 3.0C of warming - the catastrophic issues will still happen. So, why should we pay trillions of dollars when we (and the world) will still get 95% of the probl
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It matters because it impacts how quickly that tipping point is reached, and how quickly the changes happen. You are wrong in your thinking; It's not as if there will be no problems until we hit 2C and BAM! we're fucked... it's a process, and if we can slow down that process it buys us more time to mitigate the problems and lessens their severity.
In other words, to correct your car analogy we need not a cliff but another, oncoming car.
Even if the other guy doesn't slow down, slowing down yourself will lower
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Nope, sorry. By refusing to extend respect and civility towards others, you forfeit all expectations to receive any yourself.
Stop being a lying, violent, racist shithead and we'll stop treating you like one.
Until then, go fuck yourself. We're tired of your bullshit.
=Smidge=
Re:Can every US citizen say... (Score:4, Informative)
Except that coal is more expensive - even if you pay less per kWh at best you are just pushing the cost onto someone else's lungs.
Trying to use India and China as an excuse is ridiculous. They are doing massive amounts to reduce their output, and if 2.5 billion people all adopted your lifestyle you would be completely screwed. China's emissions per capita are half of yours.
Re:Can every US citizen say... (Score:4, Insightful)
The environment doesn't give two fucks about per-capita emissions.
Science can be used to explain why the developing world is polluting more in spite of doing more to reduce pollution. You're correct that the total is what matters, but it's not reasonable to expect those nations to change overnight — especially given that the rest of us aren't exactly doing all we can, either. And if we really want them to improve rapidly, maybe we should help them do it, because after all,
Total is all that matters.
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You have completely left reality. The USA is still many times lower in population but 2nd overall and the highest per capita in the world.
Country 2016 kton CO2
China 10432751.35
USA 5011686.62
India 2533638.05
Maybe you are fine with shitting in the pool but not all of us want to live like you do: surrounded by filth.
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it would only harm U.S. jobs and standards of living
You know this kind of mentality makes me think of the old adage of "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". It's funny to see how many people don't see how not being able to predict when to grow things will affect food supply in any one country. Oh well, sorry future people of the planet, hate that you will have to spend an endless amount of money solving basic everyday tasks that our rapacious greed and ephemeral way of life took for granted. If it makes any of you all feel better, we weren't
Re:Can every US citizen say... (Score:5, Informative)
China has already installed over 165 GW (equiv to about 200 or NG plants), 40 of which was installed this year. The original target was 105GW, which they blew past and now are considering a 210-270 GW target by 2020. Also, due to gov. incentives, China has the largest EV market in the world, with over 1 million sold to date and they're just maturing. Shenzhen, with 13 million people, runs 100% electric buses. https://www.pv-magazine.com/20... [pv-magazine.com]
The narrative that China and India are polluting to gain economic advantage is just RW radio garbage. They realize that fossil fuels are a dead end and the country with the most advancements in growing renewable energy market will prosper. We should be leading, but instead we're falling further behind and ceding the lead to China.
Trump has no agenda - any fool can see. He only cares about his "ratings" and "brand" (his words). He just regurgitates whatever Fox News, Hannity, and Limbaugh say, which reinforces what that audience saw on TV or heard on the radio. Just as Pruitt set out to destroy the EPA and hand it over to the regulated, this administration has sold the government to the highest bidder. Many of those companies that lobbied for tax cuts used those profits to buy back stocks, pay executives bonuses, then they continued to lay off and outsource workers. https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com] https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com]
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OMG, we're not allowed to ever harm US jobs or standards of living, so screw the planet! We should not get into the trap of saying "until everyone else follows the rules, we don't have to follow the rules", because that inevitably causes to no one following any rules.
There's nothing wrong with taking the lead instead of following behind and waiting to see what China does.
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China would be more than willing to sacrifice their environment to rule us, Russia would to. Do you really believe that the fall of the USA would be a good thing for the world? That death and wide spread destruction would not follow our demise? What's worse then?
Apparently you haven't been paying attention. There is a large and growing segment of society that believes the US is the source of all evil in the world, and that the downfall of the US is the best thing that could possibly happen. It would be funny in a dark, twisted way, if it wasn't so tragic.
There's a reason for that. (Score:3, Insightful)
"There is a large and growing segment of society that believes the US is the source of all evil in the world" Well, ya think there may be a reason for it, cherub???
If nothing else comes from trump's idiotic reign it will show that the constitution needs to be idiot proofed because they've just handed it over to a group of idiots.
It was supposed that the other two branches would stop the idiot in the executive from fucking things up, but republicans are idiots and proved that you cannot rely on it unless you
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Apparently not, since the Republican-controlled Senate did all they could to not even consider many of Obama's judicial appointments.
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There is no deep state. By bringing it up you nullify any vaid points that may have existed. Get out of conspiracy land and get with the real world.
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Please respond back explaining why you think the US having it's "downfall" would be the best thing to happen.
I would just say "Woooosh", but it's overused. I really thought the last sentence in my comment made it clear that I don't subscribe to the viewpoint of that 'large and growing segment of society. Maybe you didn't read that far?
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Suppressing the economy? Let's see, coal is on government welfare to keep going, you had to bail out all the old auto manufacturers but Tesla made you a nice return on your investment, and renewables are a massive and rapidly growing new source of jobs and GDP.
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Tesla made you a nice return on your investment.
Hmmm.. You mean the $7,500 tax credit for 200K vehicles or the $500 Million loan that they paid off? Or the sum total of 2 Billion in federal money Tesla has enjoyed?
Actually the ROI was JUST the interest on the half a billion, which was low and federally guaranteed and is more than washed out by the half a billion dollars in tax credits handed out so far (which we are still going to give out, though to a lesser degree for awhile yet).
I think Tesla's share holders have made more money than the Fed on thi
Re:Can every US citizen say... (Score:4, Insightful)
China's per capita carbon emisions are about one third of the USA. Russia's per capita emissions are about 4/5 of the USA. It's pretty disingeneous to demand that China, which still has a long way to go in terms of economic development, slashes or freezes its emissions while the USA continues having one of the highest emission rates in the world. We on par with Saidi Arabia.
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It's pretty disingeneous to demand that China, which still has a long way to go in terms of economic development, slashes or freezes its emissions while the USA continues having one of the highest emission rates in the world.
Why is that? Certainly its easier to not start doing something than it is to stop / give up doing it. Is that fair to folks in China, maybe not but the truth is we can't probably cut emissions enough to appreciable slow, let alone break out of the co2 driven climate change cycle. So we should harm ourselves trying? It would be better to just acknowledge we are going to have to adapt to a changing climate and solve those problems
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It's pretty disingeneous to demand that China, which still has a long way to go in terms of economic development, slashes or freezes its emissions
Economic development is a poor excuse. The environment doesn't care what your goals were, it only cares what you put into it. It doesn't matter how developed your nation is, you should be minimizing pollution.
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It's pretty disingeneous to demand that China, which still has a long way to go in terms of economic development, slashes or freezes its emissions
Economic development is a poor excuse.
Is it? Shall we just forget economic development and go back to pre-1900's non-industrialized ways of living that don't pollute enough to cause global warming? If we do that, are you going to volunteer to pick the 2/3rds of the worlds population that we will have to eliminate? Are you willing to die?
I may be pushing the logical limits of my argument a bit, but that's pretty much what you are saying, that we need to forego economic development and the standard of living that it allows. I'm not so sure t
Re:Can every US citizen say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you trolling or do you actually believe that protecting the environment for future generations requires harming the economy?
Hanlon's Razor says I should assume the latter, so this will probably go over your head, but people smarter than you and I agree that correcting market failures such as negative externalities makes the market work better, not worse.
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Are you trolling or do you actually believe that protecting the environment for future generations requires harming the economy?
It's not an either or situation here. We can be both careful about our environment and develop our economy, in fact we largely are. We've come a LONG way from the start of the industrialization age here in the USA where pollution wasn't a concern at all, nobody cared, to where we are today. We've cleaned up our air, water and land in many respects and undone much of the mindless damage we caused previously.
However, the PROBLEM is the suggested solutions being advanced for today's environmental problems
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Trump "has got the economy growing faster than inflation and our population for the first time in at least a decade"?
Really, so those eye-popping deficits over the last 8 years had nothing to do with it? Gee, add a bunch of extra money to the economy, and cut interest rates to near zero for years, and the economy takes off. Who'd have thunk it? Not you.
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No president has any control over short term economic outlooks, yet every president is quite ready to take credit when the economy looks good and pass blame when it looks bad.
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China is cleaning up their fossil fuel use at an astounding rate and this is a great stimulus to their economy. (They're world leader in electric cars, solar panels and nuclear power). The US, OTOH, is pushing for more coal, oil and NG which is a dead end (literally, as it is killing people) and at the same time turns the economy into a dead end. Investments in renewable energy, cleaner air and water and combating climate change are a boon to the economy. China realizes this but our government is corrupted
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How many ways can you be wrong? Shesh, China is burning more and more coal and destroying their environment at a frightening pace of late. Yes, they produce a lot of the "green" stuff they sell to us, but they are making a huge environmental impact while they do and polluting with reckless abandon as they industrialize their country.
Don't hold them up as a paragon of environmental virtue.. They are literally a mess... Worse than the US ever was.
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Well your correct about most of that, except the clean coal part. Coal will never be clean, that is why it is dying out. Give it some more time and it will be completely gone.
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Lets see. China is now stopping adding new nuke plants (they will finish the ones they have and then stop).
Germany and a lot of EUrope is stopping their nuke plants.
Japan stopped it, but realized that they had to have it.
S. Korea continues to add.
And hey, it turns out that America is now adding new nuclear SMRs. In particular,NuScale just got an order to build 12 reactors. There are others looking at it and considering using these to replace coal. And Perry/GOP are looking at other ways to get m
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And considering that we have a great deal more nuclear power than france, and worse yet, France is shutting down their reactors and replacing with AE, just like America has done in SOME places,well,
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I keep wondering if batteries combined with track charging in cities would be a better choice.
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I love this argument. Urrr mah gurd the cows are the cause, go vegan. Hah fucking retards. Human beings output orders of magnitude more emssisons than any other animal. The cow argument is made by almost exclusively by morons who believe anything anyone tells them.
Yes, humans (and human activity) do emit more greenhouse gasses than any other animal. But not orders-of-magnitude more. Agriculture, and in particular, livestock, is still a significant contribution. The US Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has reported that agricultural contribution to be about 18% of all greenhouse-gas emissions, with cattle-breeding as a major component.
Worse, methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, by a factor of about 23. On the flipside, it does break down more quickl
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The US Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Whoops, typo. Make that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.