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U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#281

Post by tootie »

einpoklum wrote: post #142
tootie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was barely debated. We can't even get half the country to care about a disaster that's unfolding in their faces.

It's not "half the country". In a recent Fox news (yes, those Fox news...) poll, they found that 72% of people were either "very concerned" or "somewhat concerned" about climate change. What is true that none of the presidential candidates is taking the crisis seriously: Trump denies it, Biden pays a bit of lip service to it but has done very little about it with Obama, and will probably not do much about it if elect…

Saying they take it seriously and then putting parochial concerns ahead of it at the polls every single time. And there's a vast gulf between Obama/Biden not doing enough while Trump and the GOP are running us backwards as fast as they can. Just look at the last two administrations positions on vehicle mileage standards. Obama pushed for a huge increase and got car manufactured onboard pretty enthusiastically. Trump just undid it completely and the auto companies are actually upset. That's just unconscionable.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#282

Post by Qwertious »

est31 wrote: post #199
sampo wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CO2 per KWh is lower for natural gas than it is for coal. Unfortunately there are methane leaks in the systems, and it is quite possible that when accounting for the methane releases, natural gas has equally bad climate effect (emissions of CO2 and CH4 combined) as coal.

Good point. CO2 equivalents are a better measure than CO2. I think fixing leaks is an easier task than reducing the coal CO2 footprint. We'll have to figure this out somehow anyways, because a lot of methane will be going into the atmosphere from thawing permafrost, both on land and in the seas.

It's not easier - as I understand it, the leaks are tiny amounts along the entire length of the pipelines. Getting an absolutely perfect seal is something that's expensive to do, whereas in theory the CO2 footprint of coal is concentrated and therefore much easier to capture.

In practice, doing either of those will spike the price of the energy, and the only reason to use them over renewables is their being cheap, so it won't happen.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#283

Post by chuckSu »

apexalpha wrote: post #205
sampo wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China [...] world's fastest growing CO2 emitter This is not true. From 2001 to 2011 China almost tripled their emissions, but after 2011 they haven't grown almost at all. It's stable. Maybe you haven't looked at the data in the past 10 years? https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=~CHN

Plus, to be fair, they make all our stuff. Or at least a lot of it. So a big part of their CO2 is YOUR stuff being made.

Yup

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#284

Post by TeMPOraL »

hokkos wrote: post #202
panpanna wrote: post #4

Question: should countries be able to tax imports from countries with more lax environmental laws? Because that would address the argument about cost and staying competitive.

The EU is stating public consultations on energy taxation and a carbon border adjustment mechanism : https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/news/commission-launch...

According to the timelines linked there, the public consultations on this just closed few weeks ago.

Which is unfortunate for me, because I wasn't aware that there are such consultations until your comment :(.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#285

Post by ballenf »

trasz wrote: post #177
koheripbal wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue with the Paris Accords is that China did not commit to begin any restrictions until 2030. ...and since they are both the world's largest CO2 emitter and world's fastest growing CO2 emitter, the Accords became a corporate strategy to just move more manufacturing to China (and other non-limited countries). Frankly, I think the Paris Accords does more harm than good by giving anyone the notion that we…

China is building nuclear power plants like crazy: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/china-build-4... . So, in a few years things should look much better there.

Maybe that will inspire a similar approach elsewhere. Hopefully they don't have any safety lapses that threaten nuclear elsewhere. Not saying there's any reason to expect meltdowns, just that it wouldn't take much to undermine the public's faith in the technology.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#286

Post by freeflight »

goatinaboat wrote: post #220
koheripbal wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue with the Paris Accords is that China did not commit to begin any restrictions until 2030. ...and since they are both the world's largest CO2 emitter and world's fastest growing CO2 emitter, the Accords became a corporate strategy to just move more manufacturing to China (and other non-limited countries). Frankly, I think the Paris Accords does more harm than good by giving anyone the notion that we…

The optimal strategy to combat Global Warming is to bring manufacturing back to the EU and US and regulate emissions strongly. Agreed. It is possible to simultaneously believe "we need to cut emissions" and "the Paris accord is a bad way to do it". But it seems many people think Paris is the only way to do it.

> But it seems many people think Paris is the only way to do it.

The issue is rather that nobody really brings up any valid alternatives when they disagree with Paris.

Saying "bring manufacturing back" is not an valid alternative, it's wishful thinking that ignores how this current situation came about, while offering zero actual actionable advise how to reverse that development and fix the problem itself.

Manufacturing went to China because of laxer regulations there making it more cost-effective, how are you gonna convince it to come back to the US and EU with even harsher regulations?

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#287

Post by TeMPOraL »

randomchars wrote: post #243
fbelzile wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how is it not worth it? You said it yourself. It was non-biding, no enforcement, goals where self imposed and the US government still didn't want to take part. What kind of message is that sending?

That you don't want to take part in a bullshit agreement that has no effect on anything. Why would it be better to pretend?

How about just take part, and not pretend?

The message being sent here is, "in the global coordination problem of climate change, I'm the defector and the freeloader, and I need to be coerced to take part".

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#288

Post by cryoshon »

__jf__ wrote: post #29

Meanwhile, awareness/disclosure of climate risk is rising sharply in large publicly traded companies, measured by counting the percentage of companies reporting "climate risk" in their 2019 annual reports: - 26% of companies in EU - 9% of companies in APAC - 7% of companies in US Still a long way to go obviously, but these numbers have doubled compared to fiscal 2017.

can you cite a source for this? I'm interested in learning more in detail

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#289

Post by hourislate »

originalvichy wrote: post #3

As a European this is the main fear I have during this election. 4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world will really bite us in the ass. Not that I’m super proud of how we are doing in my country, but it can’t get worse.

4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world

Were you referring to China? They are still building coal plants at a record pace.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#290

Post by robomartin »

originalvichy wrote: post #3

As a European this is the main fear I have during this election. 4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world will really bite us in the ass. Not that I’m super proud of how we are doing in my country, but it can’t get worse.

This is part of the fallacy in this mess that climate change has become.

If the US evaporated from the planet, nothing would change. In fact, atmospheric CO2 levels would continue to rise.

Humanity cannot solve this problem by subtraction.

If ALL of humanity left the planet, it would take 100,000 years for a 100 ppm drop in CO2.

That means we can’t solve it by eliminating fossil fuels, cars, trucks, planes, etc. We can’t solve it with solar panels. And we sure as heck know the Paris accord can’t solve it either.

It is astounding to me to see see how we continue to talk about this problem from the perspective of a premise that is completely false.

Source: 800,000 years of ice core atmospheric data.

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