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Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

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Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#561

Post by paulmd »

kaba0 wrote: post #532
paulmd wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eating less beef will reduce the market price and make it cheaper for everyone else, increasing their consumption accordingly. The whole point of a capitalist economy is to “route around inefficiency”, in the same way the internet is designed to “route around damage”. Any single player or even a large contingent of players, who act inefficiently, are only increasing the alpha available for another player to exploit.…

If people eat less meat because they have a larger tax, then no, capitalism won’t adapt that way. I didn’t mention how those changes should be adopted. As per Adam Smith: capitalism only works in small, well-defined markets. It was never meant as an end-all control system. Governments can alter the rules of the game we play and they are (indirectly) controlled by us, as least in democractic countries.

taxing meat is what I'm referring to as "changing the rules of the game", it affects everyone. But a personal decision to just eat less meat yourself is not going to affect anything, because all you're doing is making beef cheaper for everyone else, and they'll eat more of it as a result.

however, you have to really change the rules of the game for everyone, such that consumption is actually substantially curtailed. even with a country-level tax, you're only making it cheaper for other countries who don't care. We saw this play out with Russian oil last year - banning it from the West didn't make it go away, it just made it cheaper for certain other states to import it. The commodity market is global.

(We can certainly enforce these kinds of rules globally when there is political will to do so - Iran sanctions are one example. If you do business with Iran, you won't do business with anyone who uses SWIFT, or anyone who does business with anyone who uses SWIFT. A line is drawn between the "sanctions-compliant" world and the "sanctions-non-compliant" world and it's generally extremely effective such that smuggling incidents are international news.)

The fundamental point I'm trying to make here is the "capitalism routes around inefficiency/morality". That's what it's designed to do, in the same way the internet routes around infrastructure damage (or censorship etc, which is fundamentally infrastructure damage). By taking a moral stand, you only increase the alpha available for other players to exploit.

These "individual moralistic stand" approaches like personal-scale recycling are inherently less effective than taxing producers, or outright bans. The reason they are pushed is because they are ineffective, and because they stall out the political will to adopt real solutions that would be effective.

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#562

Post by nobody9999 »

shawnz wrote: post #558
nobody9999 wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would you hold opinions that you don't think would benefit from your strongest advocacy? Why believe things yourself that you don't think other people should believe? I am an atheist. As such, I strongly believe that there is no "omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent 'creator'." However, regardless of how strongly I hold that opinion (especially as it, in almost every respect, reflects our understanding of the uni…

No, I'm not saying you don't hold your views strongly. What I am saying is that I disagree that it's not your responsibility to convince others of your point of view. It is your responsibility and you owe it to your peers to do your best job of making sure that your reasoning and the perspective which led to that reasoning is fully understood by them. Consider for example how your own opinion was formed based on reas…

>It is your responsibility and you owe it to your peers to do your best job of making sure that your reasoning and the perspective which led to that reasoning is fully understood by them.

I understand that perspective, but strongly disagree. While it certainly is appropriate (and often beneficial) to discuss one's perspectives and compare them with that of others. Especially, but not limited to, those who disagree with those perspectives.

This is important (as you point out) to make sure that your own ideas are rooted in fact, and are amenable to rhetorical defense by subjecting them to questioning and reasonable inquiry.

I am most certainly not responsible, to you or anyone else, in arguing for or against anything. Should I choose to do so (and I do, from time to time), I am responsible only to myself for such activities.

To put a fine point on that, while there certainly are circumstances which might argue in favor of addressing a particular issue as part of the social discourse, those circumstances do not imbue some sort of societal responsibility to do so.

Assuming you disagree, what would be your counterargument?

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#563

Post by akira2501 »

imtringued wrote: post #540
akira2501 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same climate models that predict a "missing" volcanic eruption? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1808_mystery_eruption

Ah, yes global cooling. The thing that has been predicted for at least thirty years by now. The most common argument is that solar activity is declining. Tough luck. CO2 is rising faster than the sun can become colder. We are in a solar minimum and yet we somehow break temperature records? https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/2953/there...

> Ah, yes global cooling.

No.. just bad climate science all around.

> CO2 is rising faster than the sun can become colder.

You are, at this point, just shadowboxing.

> We are in a solar minimum and yet we somehow break temperature records?

We broke records everywhere on earth simultaneously? We did nothing to change our measurement strategy or equipment in the past 150 years? What annoys me is everyone finds their favorite justification for austerity and then just runs with it. It's not serious and it's not particularly good science.

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#564

Post by kaba0 »

paulmd wrote: post #561
kaba0 wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people eat less meat because they have a larger tax, then no, capitalism won’t adapt that way. I didn’t mention how those changes should be adopted. As per Adam Smith: capitalism only works in small, well-defined markets. It was never meant as an end-all control system. Governments can alter the rules of the game we play and they are (indirectly) controlled by us, as least in democractic countries.

taxing meat is what I'm referring to as "changing the rules of the game", it affects everyone. But a personal decision to just eat less meat yourself is not going to affect anything, because all you're doing is making beef cheaper for everyone else, and they'll eat more of it as a result. however, you have to really change the rules of the game for everyone , such that consumption is actually substantially curtailed.…

No, capitalism is not about routing around inefficiencies. Me not eating meat might make it cheaper, but people don’t buy based on price alone. Similarly, if the EU won’t buy Russian oil, it does incentivizes more reliance on green energy on the long run and that will be a net decrease in oil consumption for the world. Especially that the EU is a big financial power, and in combination with carbon taxes it could indirectly greenify other countries decisions.

(E.g. india did buy up russia’s oil cheaper, but if there would have been a carbon tax in the eu with serious tariffs on products made in a not eco-friendly way, their usage might not have increased as much)

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#565

Post by paulmd »

kaba0 wrote: post #564
paulmd wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

taxing meat is what I'm referring to as "changing the rules of the game", it affects everyone. But a personal decision to just eat less meat yourself is not going to affect anything, because all you're doing is making beef cheaper for everyone else, and they'll eat more of it as a result. however, you have to really change the rules of the game for everyone , such that consumption is actually substantially curtailed.…

No, capitalism is not about routing around inefficiencies. Me not eating meat might make it cheaper, but people don’t buy based on price alone. Similarly, if the EU won’t buy Russian oil, it does incentivizes more reliance on green energy on the long run and that will be a net decrease in oil consumption for the world. Especially that the EU is a big financial power, and in combination with carbon taxes it could indi…

> No, capitalism is not about routing around inefficiencies

that is the observable impact though. perhaps the bitcoin example is more straightforward - if only one person on the entire planet is willing to mine, they get the entire block rewards of the entire network.

this is an extreme example, but if you have a small number of corporations who don't give a shit about environmentalism and pursue maximum profit within whatever the law allows, you get to pretty much the same result. People doing good in one area only increases the alpha available for another player to exploit.

capitalism literally is the removal of morality from economic planning - by making it about personal interests and profit, you ensure that if one player has those uncomfortable morals, that other players will take care of the problem and ensure maximum profit is pursued regardless. It's an Autonomous System designed to eliminate morality from the field of economic activity.

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#566

Post by tmnvix »

atoav wrote: post #226
nologic01 wrote: post #156

The enthusiasm with geoengineering among the HN community is worrisome. Not sure which computing analogy would drive home the complete recklessness of this mentality but the Earth is not something you can reboot to the last working state once you harebrained patch implodes. It is true that we have been slowly geoengineering for ages (initially unwittingly, recently with eyes wide open) and it is also true that our mo…

It is very uncomplicated in fact: Most people here on HN are rationally capable of understanding the challenges humanity faces right now. What many aren't capable of is accepting the conclusion that we all have to change the way we live and quite possibly even the way we organize society in order to mitigate the irreperable problems our way of living has already caused. Deep down they might suspect this is necessary,…

Spot on.

The amount of cognitive dissonance with regard to environmental concern continues to amaze me.

Many people seem to have strong concerns about their environmental impact but few acknowledge just how damaging (relative to others) certain activities are.

The obvious example is driving. People know it is bad but few seem to be aware of just how much co2 is produced per litre of petrol used (about 234g - so about 1kg every 5km traveled). Let that sink in. At an average of 20,000km per year that is about 4,000kg. Per capita co2 emissions in the US is 14,000kg.

Sorting your recycling is so much easier than acknowledging that.

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#567

Post by tmnvix »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #329
fasterik wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't seem right. Most of the world's new carbon emissions are coming from developing countries. On the other hand, the HN crowd is much more likely to live in dense cities (which are more climate friendly), have access to public transportation, drive electric cars, and can afford to pay for carbon offsets. The only thing unsustainable about the first world lifestyle is the fact that we don't have the politica…

CO2 emissions per capita (tons/person/year): Canada 18.72 United States 15.32 China 7.44 Brazil 2.24 Indonesia 2.02 India 1.89

Average vehicle driven average distance per year (for US - 20,000km): 4 tonnes.

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#568

Post by defrost »

tekknik wrote: post #550
defrost wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's technically true that total area burned globally has been on a downward trend. That's a real piece of misdirect by Murdoch press though and typical of their editorial stance. To quote Multi-decadal trends and variability in burned area from the 5th version of the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED5) [1] (one of many similar studies) * Burned area declined by 1.21±0.66% yr-1 20 , a cumulative decrease of 24.2±1…

So the article is true, but you don’t like it because it’s from WSJ? Let me guess, I should be reading CNN, TheHill or WaPo? If people keep demanding sensationalist news that drives people to action then you’ll end up with people that mistrust the media.

If you're seriously asking for my recommendation, as if that wasn't already apparent to the meanest intellect, then I would strongly suggest you look to the raw data and read informed papers on the aquisition and interpretation.

All 'news' papers, especially those that are heavily political and editorially biased (Murdoch's media empire, for example), will shape for eyeballs and reduce to the lowest common denominator.

You can see that I chose to go directly to an overview on the Global Fire Emissions Database and chose to quote directly from there.

The trite bite "Fires are actually decreasing." is meaningless sans context.

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#569

Post by adrianN »

bell-cot wrote: post #177
adrianN wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reflectors act as solar sails and hence need a fuel supply to stay put.

They need active guidance systems. Being solar sails - with a competent design, they can be trimmed (small portions of the sails moved with electric motors to adjust the forces from the sun) for station-keeping.

I'm not sure how you'd trim solar sails so that the sun doesn't push them to a more distant orbit. I don't think sailing against the solar wind is possible.

Re: Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea temperatures

#570

Post by Turskarama »

akira2501 wrote: post #465
zith wrote: post #214

Climate models take this into account [0], contrary to what some people here seem to imply. It is also very likely that this is part of, but not the major factor of recent warming. [1] I would like to point out that this is not something we're just figuring out "this week" as Hank Green seems to want to frame it. There's no need to sensationalize. There is no conspiracy here. This is well known. It's good to educate…

The same climate models that predict a "missing" volcanic eruption? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1808_mystery_eruption

Did you actually read the article you linked? It literally explains that there's been recorded evidence found of multiple eruptions at the time.
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