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Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

bbc.com

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Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#151

Post by joseph_grobbles »

openasocket wrote: post #108
breakfastduck wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All it does it prove how fruitless the prevention of climate change is. A total shutdown of the entire world economy on an unprecedented scale still doesn't track enough to prevent climate change. If that isn't a clear indicator of how severe the situation is then I don't know what else is.

Meh, the effect of COVID on the economy was pretty specific. You've got a drop in commuters, and a lot of office space going empty and not using a lot of energy. But now people are staying home all day, so they're still using electricity, just in their homes and not the office. According to the article, the demand for electricity only dropped 2%, the 10% drop in power plant emissions was largely due to the continued…

I'm being pummeled far to the negatives below, but any notion that there was a "total shutdown" is farcical.

A small segment of the economy got hit -- small retail. Outside of that, everything else is BOOMING.

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#152

Post by roenxi »

rmk wrote: post #133
just_steve_h wrote: post #70

The biggest takeaway here for me is that we collectively achieved something previously considered impossible: by making different behavioral choices, as a species, we achieved the largest cut in CO2 emissions in 75 years. It's tragic that only the threat of a deadly disease could compel such a change, but perhaps we may find other levers to help us achieve such widespread beneficial changes in the future?

We did not simply make "behavioral choices". Whole swathes of humanity were ordered indoors! It was achieved at untold cost (actually, much greater than the trillions of dollars that have been given away already by governments) that will be paid by generations to come. Only people who were lucky to hold a job that wasn't affected made a conscious decision to cut down. I am willing to bet that come 2022 or so, emissio…

> ...that will be paid by generations to come...

I think the lockdowns could be revealed as a costly mistake and there is a great hubris among the well off in thinking that because they aren't struggling everything is fine.

But this is particular argument is unsustainable. A lockdown can have generations of consequences - what doesn't? - but it cannot be paid for by generations to come. It was paid for now, resources were reallocated and consumed.

The risk is more subtle. If a group of people develop who have nothing to lose, then they lose nothing by being very violent and destroying stuff. Physical destruction of assets is something that can cause long-term damage. The lockdowns take away options from people who don't have many.

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#153

Post by xur17 »

jeofken wrote: post #114
xur17 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given 25 million have tested positive, by the prior estimates, that means a likely 250 million Americans have already gotten covid [4] Considering there are 328 million Americans, that would mean 76% of Americans have had the disease, which I believe would be sufficient for herd immunity. Given what case counts look like, I find that extremely unlikely.

A very large amount of cases are simply false positives. We have no idea how widespread the disease is, but it’s certainly less spread and deadly than feared. This has been talked about in non-mainstream news for a while, but is only recently recognised in the state and big media organisations around the western world. Like terrorism was in the 00’s, this is proving very useful for those who want to expand their powe…

> We have no idea how widespread the disease is, but it’s certainly less spread and deadly than feared.

These 2 statements seem to contradict each other. If it's less spread than feared / reported, that would mean it's more deadly than reported.

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#154

Post by lcamach84 »

This proves that we need a system change. Covid made that, we change from a system with the objective of producing stuff to a system with the goal of saving lives. People of HN should take a look of the clube of rome book "limits of growth". GND will not save us beacause it will demand energy and resources to swap all the infraestructure. At most developed countries will shift their enviromental cost to the poor ones

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#155

Post by rmk »

roenxi wrote: post #152
rmk wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did not simply make "behavioral choices". Whole swathes of humanity were ordered indoors! It was achieved at untold cost (actually, much greater than the trillions of dollars that have been given away already by governments) that will be paid by generations to come. Only people who were lucky to hold a job that wasn't affected made a conscious decision to cut down. I am willing to bet that come 2022 or so, emissio…

> ...that will be paid by generations to come... I think the lockdowns could be revealed as a costly mistake and there is a great hubris among the well off in thinking that because they aren't struggling everything is fine. But this is particular argument is unsustainable. A lockdown can have generations of consequences - what doesn't? - but it cannot be paid for by generations to come. It was paid for now, resources…

I'm talking about the debt incurred by the Government in order to provide assistance to the unemployed and the businesses that were struggling. Trillions of dollars of debt (in addition to 20-30 trillion dollar debt already incurred) is not something that one generation can manage.

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#156

Post by sand_castles »

letsgoyeti wrote: post #87
ggreer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen vehicles will never become popular. There are several reasons for this: - To be carbon-neutral, the hydrogen must come from splitting water.[1] Currently hydrogen comes from steam reforming of methane (which releases lots of carbon).[2] - Hydrogen is a very pernicious molecule. It will slowly leak through metal and weaken it.[3] - Hydrogen vehicles must be refueled at special fueling stations. Electric vehic…

I think most hydrogen proponents are pushing for it to replace hydrocarbons for shipping, planes, and seasonal energy storage, not cars. There's not a lot of other great options today if we want to decarbonize those sectors because of the energy density required.

There are 20 other ways to reduce emission in the cases you mention.

Look up different plane designs from the 1970s.

The only reason those designs never took off was because people wanted to trade efficiency for convenience.

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#157

Post by rmk »

huragok wrote: post #141
rmk wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can wish, but I know that there is huge pressure on the current administration to appease the left wing of the party. Keystone XL is canceled, and the US has rejoined the Paris agreement on the first day of Biden's Presidency. A multi-trillion dollar Green New Deal that will further saddle future generations with debt is looking likely at this point. Whether it will provide the benefits it purports to do is far f…

Trillions used for the GND is debt but trillions sunk into tax cuts for the top 1% is just good economics.

Incurring debt != Foregoing revenue via income tax

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#158

Post by jounker »

snoshy wrote: post #68
cobookman wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralization is also in the National Security interest. Makes it much harder for an adversary to take down large swaths of the US Grid.

This I'm not so sure about. It will certainly be different, but it's still an open question whether it will be easier to secure from a national security standpoint. There's the physical security aspect of this, which is as you say, hard to take down when it's decentralized. However, as power generation gets more distributed, we'll naturally start seeing more (if not most) of these pieces of equipment be controlled ov…

Decentralization means rooftop solar, and decentralized control (aka smart meters) have been in place for quite a while in many places.

Re: Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII

#159

Post by olivermarks »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #142
olivermarks wrote: post #137

The headline is annoying to me, I feel it should read '2020 emissions in biggest fall since WWII due to pandemic'. The prefix 'climate change' is redundant, I wish the BBC could get back to being more objective.

You find the prefix "Climate Change:" not objective? It is setting the context for the article. Like "COVID-19: Scientists work on a vaccine".

The context is the global pandemic greatly reducing travel, manufacturing and therefore emissions.

Concepts around 'Climate Change' are very much secondary to that IMO, not the lead

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