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A graph that should be front-page news

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Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#311

Post by benj111 »

mtmickush wrote: post #300
tancop wrote: post #245

the problem with this kind of article is half of them push a doom angle and the other half talk about carbon footprint. both of them have the same effect making people give up or do useless lifestyle changes that do nothing for the environment. we should be pushing for backend changes that are invisible but actually make things better. that means massive subsidies to build out clean power and electrify everything. po…

> give away solar panels and two way heat pumps to low-income families There's no need to caveat benefits like this by income - the most popular social programs are almost always universal. Also the added bureaucracy of validating that someone lands in a category isn't worth the overhead. Why wouldn't we want everyone to install more solar panels and two way heat pumps?

First off. Richer people tend to have larger houses, so use more energy. In the UK the grants are such that for me in a smaller house. A heat pump is the same price as a replacement boiler. You could up the grant amount but unless you're going to have a regressive policy of giving more to the rich you aren't going to give the rich all the heat pump and solar they need/can install.

Personally rather than giving someone benefits to pay for electricity I'd rather install solar on their roof.

So for a government, this needs not cost more than what they are doing now.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#312

Post by throwaway2037 »

tancop wrote: post #245

the problem with this kind of article is half of them push a doom angle and the other half talk about carbon footprint. both of them have the same effect making people give up or do useless lifestyle changes that do nothing for the environment. we should be pushing for backend changes that are invisible but actually make things better. that means massive subsidies to build out clean power and electrify everything. po…

    > scrap unpopular things like ulez
"ulez"? I assume that you mean Ultra Low Emissions Zone, such as the ones in London or Milan? As I understand, for the people who live inside the zone, there has been a dramatic improvement in air quality. For the people who live outside and need to pay to drive in the ULEZ, I suggest they switch to a lower emission or electric vehicle to avoid or reduce their driving fees. In the case of London, the gov't should offer huge incentives to small businesses replace old dirty diesel trucks.

    > remove tariffs on chinese car makers if they create jobs in europe
I recommend that EU follow the path that the US followed. It maintains modest tarrifs on auto imports, but strongly encourages (cheap lending, tax rebates, etc.) foreign manufs to build and operate plants and R&D centers in the US. Since the late 1980s, this has been widely practiced by Japan, Germany, and Korea. As the US auto industry became less and less competitive, they were effectively replaced by autos built in the US by foreign companies.

    > fund train networks to get tickets cheaper than flying
I did a quick Google search. More than 70% of air passengers are travelling for leisure; some sources say as high as 88%. We should use a "green tax" on all air passengers to help fund anything and everything to reduce carbon footprint. How about 10-20 USD per ticket? In my mind, air travel in rich countries is way too cheap in this era.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#313

Post by midnight_eclair »

gruez wrote: post #307
midnight_eclair wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>right, because clearly hn comments is exactly the place where one would present in legalese their case against possibly a global cartel or at least a conspiracy between politicians and corporations to shift the blame for their externalities onto consumers, reaping the immense profits and directly and indirectly causing millions if not tens of millions of deaths. So let me get this straight, you don't know what exact…

> you don't know what exact crime has been committed

we can start with:

Conspiracy to defraud is an agreement between two or more people to act dishonestly to deprive someone of property, cause them financial loss, or expose them to economic risk. It is a criminal offense, and the conspirators can be prosecuted even if the actual fraud is never executed or no loss occurs.

but i'm also ok with creating a separate crime against the environment and applying it retroactively to top management and politicians whose work and decisions have inflicted most damage.

> evidence for such conspiracy existing

that is exactly what should be investigated.

> should be "investigated" and "executed"

obviously executed when found guilty (i could be convinced that other forms of punishment are sufficient). why are you inventing things to get outraged about?

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#314

Post by azan_ »

uv-depression wrote: post #297
azan_ wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t reach steady state in ANY economic system because you can’t have 100% efficiency, that’s basic thermodynamics. Resources will keep decreasing no matter what you do. Hence argument about infinite growth is absurd - infinite existence without growth (or with degrowth) is also impossible.

You're right; sunlight will eventually run out. (Well, long before that the expanding Sun will boil the oceans). No, you couldn't have an economy in a closed system, but the Earth isn't a closed system (due to the aforementioned sunlight). That's an absurd argument, though. The problem we have right here, right now, is capitalism destroying the habitability of our planet because its hunger for resources must always g…

> That's an absurd argument, though.

Yes, exactly! Talking about infinite growth or infinite existence is really stupid and that’s my point!

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#315

Post by adrianN »

dylan604 wrote: post #262
adrianN wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimistic of you to assume it’ll only be fifty years. Do you expect humans to adapt that quickly? The climate will be messed up for centuries at least

Where do you get the "centuries at least" bit? The hole in the ozone layer "repaired itself" much faster after humans made changes. There's no more acid rain in Los Angeles after humans made changes. These all happened within my lifetime. We also saw during covid lock downs how quickly things changed from the sudden slow down in human activity.

You can look up the carbon cycle on Wikipedia, it is fairly well understood where atmospheric carbon can go. Most processes that sequester carbon long term take geological time spans. So unless you think we engineer sequestration at a rate comparable to what we emit today, atmospheric carbon is here to stay for a really long time. Personally I think we won’t be able to scale sequestration technology sufficiently in the next decades to make a dent in the carbon levels.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#316

Post by mempko »

deadeye wrote: post #82

The mean is created using 29 years of data. Why those particular 29 years? IDK. But I tend to dismiss findings like this that don't explain why they chose a very specific dates as the baseline.

Question to you, if they looked further back, do you think the variability would increase or decrease. Do you also believe the mean temperature would be lower or higher? Just want to understand your mental model of the climate.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#317

Post by mrkeen »

isoprophlex wrote: post #32
cynicalsecurity wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese and Indian CO2 emissions dwarf anything you mentioned. You can stop eating meat altogether and move to a small doghouse, it won’t make any global impact at all.

This line of "hurrr but they are doing it too so why should I stop!" reasoning constitutes a logical fallacy that a motivated 9 year old is probably already able to reason themselves out of

Another name for that 'logical fallacy' is prisoners' dilemma and "never play a dominated strategy".

Even if you don't take it as prescriptive, it would be dumb not to take it as descriptive (i.e. what the other player will do in a situation)

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#318

Post by uecker »

alwa wrote: post #293
childintime wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word is solar. Instant reduction in CO2 emissions, won't be a decade late, and won't be obsolete by the time it's finally ready. Nuclear is a politician's vanity project. And politicians do have a knack for choosing the wrong thing at the wrong time, by ignoring the market. Just let the engineers make the call.

I think the engineers tend to say nuclear makes much more sense than solar for baseload right? That, and “most of the cost and delay is in these obscenely overcautious regulations?”

Not really, there a lot of factors making nuclear expensive apart from regulations. And is also clear that you need some regulations.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#319

Post by mrkeen »

ecshafer wrote: post #308

The same graph also shows a corresponding -3.5 STDEV below the mean temperature as well. It actually seems rather balanced. This year is hot, but we see similar abnormal jumps in other directions.

Graphs centred around the mean do tend to look pretty balanced.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#320

Post by dudefeliciano »

darthwalsh wrote: post #268
voidUpdate wrote: post #14

If it should be front-page news, shouldn't it also be at the top of the article, rather than right at the bottom?

There's probably an economic incentive to get visitors to read past the show more button?

There is no show more button and scroling to the graph takes less than half a second.
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