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Levels of banned CFCs rising

nature.com

121–130 of 181 posts

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also had much lower life expectancies. I don't think it's useful to say that because the people in antiquity didn't have sun protection they were stronger or somehow immune to sunburns ... maybe they just died before living long enough for it to matter. Or maybe they all died from cancers of all kinds, just not categorized as such, or died by murder / wars before cancer became an issue.

The vast majority of historically lower life expectancies is due to changes in death rates in the first few years. People who made it to adulthood weren't all keeling over at 35.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-at-age-15...

Life expectancy at age 15 has gone up from 60 to 90

That’s still a massive increase

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Romans were believed to have a 'pale white' skin. They lived in Rome, and while there are records of sunshades (Velarium), it doesn't seem they were common. For example, the colosseum, a place people might stay many hours, had only 30% coverage. I don't think someone with similar skin would last long in Rome in the sun today...

Modern people barely spend time outside compared to the Romans. No wonder we're getting sunburnt when we finally go out in peak summer. If you spend most of your time outside year round, you'll develop a natural deep tan which offers considerable protection from the sun.

Why risk melanoma for a little bit of "natural protection" when sun screen exists?

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>as a kid I heard it more than once, but now few admit the scare existed. People very rarely admit to backing the wrong horse that. Nobody will tell you they sold AAPL and MSFT stock in the 90s. Nobody will tell you they believed the racist propaganda back in the 60s. Nobody will tell you they believed Iraq had WMDs in the 00s. Nobody will tell you that they believed the people who were saying Long Island would soon…

There was like one story in a popular science magazine once that got a lot of play, and many people heard about it because it's a vivid story. That's about the extent of it. Climate change deniers also keep it alive because enlarging it validates their distrust of scientists.

It was more than one story. PBS programs and other sources ran with it.

Notice that i'm careful to say it was the media, and not sound science.

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>as a kid I heard it more than once, but now few admit the scare existed. People very rarely admit to backing the wrong horse that. Nobody will tell you they sold AAPL and MSFT stock in the 90s. Nobody will tell you they believed the racist propaganda back in the 60s. Nobody will tell you they believed Iraq had WMDs in the 00s. Nobody will tell you that they believed the people who were saying Long Island would soon…

Would love to hear what you think about the Ars Technica article linked in another reply to GP, and how it relates to what you and GP said.

They didn't address the popular media of the day, only what science was really saying.

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is mentioned as having been a likely culprit in the past. I don't understand why Westerners are so keen to make major sacrifices to quality of life in the name of fighting climate change when nothing we do will make a statistically significant impact in the long run with major population centers like China, India, and Nigeria continuing to grow more wealthy with rapidly increasing demand for reliable, 24/7 ener…

Last I checked China, India, etc. still have a much lower per capita carbon footprint than the US.

Google says per capita is for each person. And there are a lot more persons in both India and China. Much lower isn't going to help for long.

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#126
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is mentioned as having been a likely culprit in the past. I don't understand why Westerners are so keen to make major sacrifices to quality of life in the name of fighting climate change when nothing we do will make a statistically significant impact in the long run with major population centers like China, India, and Nigeria continuing to grow more wealthy with rapidly increasing demand for reliable, 24/7 ener…

>China has been infamous for decades for not even having reliable currency data, what on earth makes us think they're even collecting (let alone honestly sharing) reliable data on CO2, let alone HFCs and CFCs, beyond willful naïvety, irrational optimism, and quasi-religious climate dogma demanding ideological conformance? IR spectroscopy from satellite data. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S03014797…

Was going to say... I would guess/hope that combining chemistry and meteorology would allow researchers to measure samples of air outside China's jurisdiction and come up with reasonable estimations of any emissions they are omitting.

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would love to hear what you think about the Ars Technica article linked in another reply to GP, and how it relates to what you and GP said.

They didn't address the popular media of the day, only what science was really saying.

Scroll down to "This journalist wrote a story, and you won’t believe what happened next"

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have to trust their numbers, we have satellites that can monitor the emission levels. The US pollutes at roughly twice the amount on a per person basis as China. In addition we "outsource" some of our pollution to them by them doing our manufacturing. It's tough to both raise the standard of living (reduce poverty) while also reducing pollution but China has a lot of initiatives to be more green; for example…

We do have a worse starting point, but as another commenter has pointed out, we're trending in the right direction and China is trending in the wrong direction. Part of the solution is necessarily going to be temporary reductions in American energy consumption, writ large, until we can produce technology to sustainably remove carbon emissions from the environment at scale. I'm all-in, for instance, on banning SUVs an…

"to be reduced to a level sufficient only for the sustainment of life past a certain threshold," Wow, do you hear yourself? Who decides what "threshold" is acceptable, you? You think you should be able to determine whether my infant daughter freezes in the winter or swelters in the summer? Oh I'm sure your theory involves some utopian government that never gets anything wrong.

What you're proposing is a dystopian police state where the government decides how warm or cold your house should be on any given day. Of course the rich will be able to just pay any fines to keep the power/gas on, so they can blast their AC all summer while the poor swelter or go into debt to pay fines, because their house unfortunately isn't built in the shade and gets hotter than the ones around it, so the government weather stations think their house is cooler than it actually is. Or the government will have to put thermostats in literally every house to accurately monitor internal temperature, and decide what's good enough for you.

Why not grocery rations while we're at it? The government will assign you the number and type of foods you're limited to, namely the ones that produce the least carbon emissions to produce and with the caloric and nutritional profiles determined by the government to be ideal. Would cure obesity as a side effect!

Also housing will be limited to a certain number of sq ft per person, any existing property with a footprint exceeding that number will be seized and turned into multi-family housing, with government-determined "fair" compensation to the existing property owner of course.

Both of those ideas follow the same priorities and rationale as your energy quotas.

Shit like that is the real reason why the second amendment exists. You're probably just wealthy enough that you assume you'd be among the ruling elite that maintains its personal freedom, or you really haven't thought these ideas through. I'm far less worried about climate change, something we can at least potentially adapt to at cost, than I am about rhetoric like this. It's akin to the Chinese Nationalists opening the Yellow River dam in 1938 in an attempt to slow the Japanese advance. The resulting flood killed between 400,000-900,000 civilians directly depending on who's counting, made millions more homeless, and ultimately did little to slow the Japanese advance. But I guess it was a "tiny step in the right direction" from a war-fighting perspective, right?

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#129
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is mentioned as having been a likely culprit in the past. I don't understand why Westerners are so keen to make major sacrifices to quality of life in the name of fighting climate change when nothing we do will make a statistically significant impact in the long run with major population centers like China, India, and Nigeria continuing to grow more wealthy with rapidly increasing demand for reliable, 24/7 ener…

I mean what do you propose western nations do? Nothing? Yeah stupid measures like removing straws from restaurants make 0 difference, but pushing for more fuel efficient vehicles and cleaner sources of electricity seems like a worthwhile effort without much QoL sacrifice. Green infrastructure (i.e. reducing car dependence) also seems to improve quality of life in many places, so I would argue we should be trying to d…

Accept that nothing of significance will be done until it is far too late and most of the world is drowning, burning or starving.

Enjoy your life, for goodness sake don't have children and prepare for the collapse of civilisation in around 50 years or so.

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#130
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean what do you propose western nations do? Nothing? Yeah stupid measures like removing straws from restaurants make 0 difference, but pushing for more fuel efficient vehicles and cleaner sources of electricity seems like a worthwhile effort without much QoL sacrifice. Green infrastructure (i.e. reducing car dependence) also seems to improve quality of life in many places, so I would argue we should be trying to d…

> what do you propose western nations do? Ban imports of goods made in ways that would have been illegal to do here.

Which ones should we start with? We can't go from 0 to 100 overnight, that would halt everything.
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