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Earth likely briefly passed critical warming threshold on Friday and Saturday

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Re: Earth likely briefly passed critical warming threshold on Friday and Saturday

#91

Post by josefritz »

bluescrn wrote: post #56
KennyBlanken wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason cars are viable "outside large towns/cities" is because the large cities are subsidizing road construction in rural areas. Those rural area voters, in turn, elect politicians who scream blue bloody murder about how high taxes are, and refuse to vote for funding for public transportation...something that would benefit the cities generating the wealth the rural areas. Isn't it wild how the "fiscal conse…

Large cities couldn't exist without rural areas and their food production.

I live in a rural area. Most of what they grow here is soybeans, corn and tobacco. You cant' eat any of it. It's a common misconception that rural areas are food producing. The U.S. imports something like 40% of it's produce.

Re: Earth likely briefly passed critical warming threshold on Friday and Saturday

#92

Post by dbetteridge »

MrVandemar wrote: post #67
graycat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of trees on what land with what climate? Why was that land without trees? Logging? Too much wind? Too little water?

Okay, we have a small farm in the Great Southern Region of Western Australia. A large chunk of it was cleared for cattle and is kikyu/gass pasture, and we still run a small herd of 8 head. But we're very lucky to have about 3/4s of our land well preserved bushland. The first thing we did when we bought the place was to plant several broad wind-breaks and shelter-belts with native species in the pasture, forming "corr…

Good stuff, from one West Australian to another.

Anything we can do is better than nothing

Re: Earth likely briefly passed critical warming threshold on Friday and Saturday

#93

Post by _spduchamp »

You cannot hold governments accountable with first-past-the-post elections or any type of electoral system that give 100% power to one party. Fix this, and then maybe we have a chance of reining in unchecked power of corporate influence.

Re: Earth likely briefly passed critical warming threshold on Friday and Saturday

#94

Post by DoreenMichele »

oliwarner wrote: post #32
DoreenMichele wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, "God bless you" as they say in the Deep South where I grew up. Please consider making part of it a wetlands. Forests cover about 10 percent of the planet and store about 15 percent of stored carbon. Peatlands cover about 3 percent of the planet and store an estimated 25 or 30 percent of carbon. We've lost 85 of global wetlands since the 1700s. Restoring them could dramatically increase the amount of stored…

Peatland takes centuries to develop and store that carbon though. If we want to achieve this sort of thing, we'd need to manufacture peat and store that underwater. Possible but when we make more , we usually destroy the planet more too. I'm not sure we'd offset it.

"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best is today."

For the short-term, planting rice differently can reduce methane emissions substantially. In the short-term, methane is much worse. In the long run, methane breaks down to carbon which persists.

If we want to reverse climate change, we need to restore nature's ability to sink that carbon.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37140831

(My previous comment should say "85 percent". Oops.)

Re: Earth likely briefly passed critical warming threshold on Friday and Saturday

#95

Post by kergonath »

concordDance wrote: post #39
snehk wrote: post #15

Welp. Time for a conference we all fly to using private jets to tell the plebs how it's their doing that's destroying the planet. Maybe agree on a tax or something that screws over the little guy while having absolutely no effect on the global climate.

A flat per gram CO2 tax would be a great idea, but universal international cooperation is required and this would hurt less developed countries a LOT. At this point lots of warming is inevitable regardless of what (peaceful) things the US and EU do. Africa will get four billion people this century and they want things.

Sure, but it will still be significantly worse if the US and the EU do nothing.

Re: Earth likely briefly passed critical warming threshold on Friday and Saturday

#96

Post by bscphil »

bluescrn wrote: post #86
wishpishh wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very small percentage of people living in rural areas are actually in food production.

Would you want to remove all unnecessary humans from rural areas just to get rid of cars? Completely shut down tourism to areas of natural beauty and other recreational outdoors activities too far away from the prison-city? Except for the elite who of course get to keep their private jets and superyachts...

> Except for the elite who of course get to keep their private jets and superyachts...

Judging by your comments, you seem to be of the opinion that environmentalists mostly love rich people and want to exempt them from climate taxes while allowing them to continue enjoying luxuries that produce as much carbon as dozens of middle class lifestyles.

I have to say that in my experience with environmentalists, nothing could be further from the truth. They are, largely, middle class to poor (in U.S. terms) themselves, and overwhelmingly blame consumption by the rich and corporate practices encouraged by externalized costs under our present economic system.

That's not to say that there aren't some activists and scientists who fly to conferences. But they tend to be more aware of this conflict than you might think. Some scientists, for example, refuse to fly. And there is some credibility to the idea that the work they are doing is vital, whereas luxury vacations clearly are not.

Re: Earth likely briefly passed critical warming threshold on Friday and Saturday

#97

Post by ben_w »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #81
hutzlibu wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, the same way they skipped landline phones and started with smartphones right away.

They probably won't skip ICE car ownership and dirty industry revolving around mining and manufacturing cheap stuff for the 'green' west.

I've only visited one place in Africa (Nairobi) an only once (about a decade ago); the cars I saw were all in poor condition and about 20-30 years old when I saw them.

Also one of the people we visited had an income so low their annual rent was equivalent to about US$1k, so consider how old and decrepit a vehicle has to be on a western market to be in her price range.

There's a huge variation of culture and living standards across the continent, from people much richer than that who buy new cars that are expensive by western standards to people who walk miles to get water from a well because there isn't any plumbing.

PV and storage have the advantage of being scalable down to small cheap things that even the poorest can benefit from. Cars, not so much, so for low priced transportation, think instead about e-bicycles and e-motorbikes, and even manual bicycles. Or public transport (but even then, the crowded matatu I was in for one trip looked old).

Re: Earth likely briefly passed critical warming threshold on Friday and Saturday

#98

Post by sriram_malhar »

underseacables wrote: post #78
bergen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tax on CO2 producers that is redistributed as basic income, helping the smallest guy the most, would be a gradual force to shift to cleaner energy, since the seismic shift that is required cleary is not favored by anyone.

Any tax in America would be completely pointless if there's nothing that limits, China, and India, as the world's largest polluters. Anything the West does is just a drop in the bucket, unless those two countries follow.

US is a much worse polluter than India. All of us have to get our shit together before waiting for others.

Re: Earth likely briefly passed critical warming threshold on Friday and Saturday

#99

Post by from-nibly »

underseacables wrote: post #84
hatenberg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very large drop. 33% of global carbon emissions are from the west 18% from the united states A significant share of chinese emmissions is driven by western consumerism as well and could be reduced. Even a 10% reduction of the overall share driven purely by the west would amount to a lot more than a drop. Even more if coupled with a proper incentive system for other countries to follow "completely pointless"?

You missed the part about a tax in America. Just because America does something doesn't mean the rest of the world is going to follow. Introducing a tax on carbon emissions will only harm America, while other parts of the world continue to pollute. It's still results in no benefit. And that's very naïve to think that it's western consumerism, when there's plenty of consumerism in Asia and Europe. This American centri…

Europe is part of "western"

Re: Earth likely briefly passed critical warming threshold on Friday and Saturday

#100

Post by sonicanatidae »

bergen wrote: post #31
snehk wrote: post #15

Welp. Time for a conference we all fly to using private jets to tell the plebs how it's their doing that's destroying the planet. Maybe agree on a tax or something that screws over the little guy while having absolutely no effect on the global climate.

A tax on CO2 producers that is redistributed as basic income, helping the smallest guy the most, would be a gradual force to shift to cleaner energy, since the seismic shift that is required cleary is not favored by anyone.

This will never happen, because it could help too many of those who need it the most.
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