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Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

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Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#471

Post by acdha »

mikewarot wrote: post #469
acdha wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, we can't just stop using oil The single best move we could make would be progressively taxing it: tell everyone that today is the cheapest a gallon of gas will ever be, with guaranteed 20% annual price increases with the tax revenue devoted to assisting low-income households decarbonize. That would tell every business to start investing in alternatives or efficiency improvements, homeowners would shift tow…

Gasoline use is just a small fraction of the demand for oil, most of it has other uses, and those aren't as flexible on demand as fuel for cars. I'd be willing to bet that they'd start flaring it off if demand collapsed, just to keep the refineries going. Fertilizer is a major sink of petrochemicals, and there really aren't any substitutes available on a large enough scale.

Yes, I’m aware - you’ll note I also mentioned home heating, which is usually oil or gas. That doesn’t in any way change the fact that raising the price would both give people the right economic incentives to use less and provide funds to assist with capital outlays that might require.

That would among other things be great for letting us conserve usage for things which are hard to make from other sources. That’s a much better use of a limited resource than someone insecure driving a multi-ton vehicle to pick up a hamburger because it’s been subsidized to seem cheaper.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#472

Post by SpacePortKnight »

someonehere wrote: post #445

Nobody wants to talk about the elephant in the room? China and India causing the dramatic increase in CO2 levels? https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

Only emissions per capita counts. Just because those countries have more population than entire continents of Africa and Europe, does not mean it's their fault.

USA emits almost 8 times more emission per capita when compared to India. Rather India is so poor, that it must increase it's energy generation by any means possible.

So an Indian on average consumes just 1/8 of a USA citizen.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#473

Post by SpacePortKnight »

FrankyHollywood wrote: post #292

All these comments mentioning cutting down on energy. It will help a bit, but the real problem is there are just to many people on earth. A world wide one-child policy like it used to exist in China [1] would be a real solution in keeping earth a pleasant place to live. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy

A better solution would be if most people turn vegetarian [1]

https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/02/01/global-elimination-of-m...

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#474

Post by SpacePortKnight »

zpeti wrote: post #299
pentae wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to guess you've never spent much time outside the bubble of the first world. After living extensively overseas in Latin America & South-east Asia and seeing how its part of everyday life for most people in the rest of the world to openly burn trash, plastics, car tyres.. litter everywhere, cutting the cat converters off their trucks, dumping construction waste straight into rivers.. it's been eye opening. N…

Thank you. Climate change is a diplomacy issue, nothing the west is going to do in the next 50 years will make a difference with what’s going on in china and elsewhere. So either you are a realist about this problem, and you admit that either it’s war with many countries to solve this issue, or it won’t be solved (because they won’t stop economic growth for carbon emissions). Possible alternatives are technology. But…

USA emits almost 8 times more C02 when compared to India per capita. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita

In that sense India would need to be 10B+ people to poluate as much as US / west does.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#475

Post by tptacek »

thomasahle wrote: post #470
tptacek wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we're not having a moral argument but rather a practical one. The fact is that China emits much more CO2 than other countries, even after you account for exports (ie, CO2 emissions "offshored" from Europe and North America). Moreover: while emissions in the west are falling, the are rising in China and India and the developing world, as they must, because they track rising standards of living. I don't underst…

There's no reason to argue about this. Everyone agrees that 1) China needs to cut more emissions in total. 2) The US/West needs to cut more emissions per capita.

Only in the most abstract sense, because the real debate is over prioritization; if you suggest that equal effort be put into both of these projects, reasonable people will argue that you're misallocating effort.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#476

Post by crazygringo »

amrocha wrote: post #361
crazygringo wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government isn't inventing electric cars or improving heat pumps or improving batteries or making solar panels more efficient to produce. You absolutely still need private investment in a growing economy to produce and invent these technologies. What the government incentives then can do is speed up their rates of adoption and installation. But you need both sides -- public and private.

The government is literally doing that by funding research. The government can fund literally anything it wants to. Private investment is literally never necessary.

What you're describing is a command economy of the type the Soviet Union had -- no private investment.

The whole history the twentieth century is the evidence that such a system doesn't work. And it especially doesn't work as technology has become increasingly complex.

Markets are vastly better-informed investors than governments can ever be. Which is why it's generally vastly better for governments to skew incentives for private investment to favor a particular area, rather than make investments directly.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#477

Post by thomasahle »

tptacek wrote: post #475
thomasahle wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason to argue about this. Everyone agrees that 1) China needs to cut more emissions in total. 2) The US/West needs to cut more emissions per capita.

Only in the most abstract sense, because the real debate is over prioritization; if you suggest that equal effort be put into both of these projects, reasonable people will argue that you're misallocating effort.

Different people have to do (1) and (2), so it's not really a prioritization question.

But if both groups argue that the other group has to do their part first, or they won't act, then nothing will get done.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#478

Post by justnotworthit »

mort96 wrote: post #298
renegade-otter wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are supposed to stop eating meat while our governments cut taxes for corporations as their management buys that third infinity pool. Corporations are "people", my friend - while being absolved from any social responsibility.

Yes. We can do a good thing even if other people are doing a bad thing.

[flagged]

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#479

Post by notacoward »

SpacePortKnight wrote: post #472
someonehere wrote: post #445

Nobody wants to talk about the elephant in the room? China and India causing the dramatic increase in CO2 levels? https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

Only emissions per capita counts. Just because those countries have more population than entire continents of Africa and Europe, does not mean it's their fault. USA emits almost 8 times more emission per capita when compared to India. Rather India is so poor, that it must increase it's energy generation by any means possible. So an Indian on average consumes just 1/8 of a USA citizen. https://ourworldindata.org/graph…

This is, unfortunately, a case where fairness and feasibility don't align well. Is it fair to expect Indians to rein in their emissions when those are already lower (per capita) than the US? Hell no. Asked and answered. Is it feasible? That's a trickier question, and it won't be possible to answer it without addressing loss aversion.

"we feel the pain from losses about twice as much as we feel the joy of equivalent gains" https://insidebe.com/articles/loss-aversion/ (link to original "prospect theory" paper - the most cited in economics by some measures - where that text appears)

Loss aversion is usually discussed as part of behavioral economics, but it appears all over the place. For example, many casual games have a "start paying real money or you'll start losing" dark pattern that's based on loss aversion.

With respect to the current question, it's clearly very hard to make people give up a high-emissions lifestyle once they've experienced it. Getting people to maintain a lower-emissions lifestyle is much easier. Again, it's not fair. Absolutely not, and I'm not really suggesting it as The Solution. However, understanding loss aversion might help to understand why people keep bringing it up.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#480

Post by throwaway290 »

nroets wrote: post #430
throwaway290 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is much poverty in China outside of major cities and near nonexistent safety net in all regards. This is a country where a sizable chunk of population lives on less than 6 USD per day (not enough to bribe the doctor to get "universal" healthcare in case of something serious) and where the gov has recently made posting videos of poor people on social media punishable as "against national interest". You also shou…

In China, the life expectancy already exceeded that of the US. They don't need to spend more on healthcare!

First, why are you bringing up US? Many would agree that US healthcare is shit.

But I suspect it's still probably better than China where many people are simply not counted in stats (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2990197/ etc). These are also people with least or no access to healthcare and education btw, so we can only guess if life expectancy on paper is better than in reality...

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