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U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

scientificamerican.com

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Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#131

Post by einpoklum »

roenxi wrote: post #25
cher88 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the more pertinent graph? https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=USA~IND...

Pretty sure. Nature, being unconcerned with fairness, has little regard for per capita statistics. If we want 8 billion people living in comfort, we need more energy. As always, I think we should have been building more nuclear plants back in the 90s. And again in the 2000s. And the 2010s. Maybe now we can go wind and solar. But we need lots of something.

> If we want 8 billion people living in comfort, we need more energy

This is not true. It is possible for 8 Billion people to live in comfort (of course, for a reasonable definition of comfort, which isn't typical US lifestyle at the moment), with the amount of Energy produced right now. _If_ production and distribution, political and economic structures, transportation and habitation systems etc. were to change significantly.

(This is regardless of the Nuclear yes/no discussion.)

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#132

Post by toomuchtodo »

pfdietz wrote: post #118
toomuchtodo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need less people, fundamentally. The total fertility rate is declining across the world luckily (except a handful of countries and Africa) [1], but everyone around now is going to have a rough ride until equilibrium is reached (sometime after 2100). Can’t grow your way out of resource exhaustion (renewables excepted). [1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#country-by-country...

It's declining in Africa also. https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/demographics-of-a...

Thanks for pointing that out. Our World In Data’s data is out of date [1], I keep poking them to update their fertility rate data but get no response (maybe busy with COVID data sets, I have no context into why).

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#133

Post by JauntyHatAngle »

sampo wrote: post #115
originalvichy wrote: post #3

As a European this is the main fear I have during this election. 4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world will really bite us in the ass. Not that I’m super proud of how we are doing in my country, but it can’t get worse.

USA per capita CO2 emissions are large, but at least they have been coming down moderately fast. From 2007 to 2017, USA reduced emissions by 20%, whereas if we take Germany as an example of a country with strong "green" element in politics, Germany reduced by 8%. Apply linear extrapolation, and USA would go below Germany in 20 years. Extrapolating with exponential decay, in 40 years. https://ourworldindata.org/co2/co…

Isn't it bunk to apply extrapolation to two countries that start from a different per capita base?

Germany is significantly lower in per capita emissions so their reduction is (I'm assuming) a lot harder to achieve. It's like comparing fat loss between someone who starts overweight vs someone who is starting neutral bmi.

https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states?country... and add Germany.

Happy to hear why I'm wrong, I'm certainly not an expert in stats or emissions.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#134

Post by rtuulik »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #104
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US entrepreneurism kickstarted the electric vehicle transition (thx Elon1). Batteries prices are falling. PV is already incredibly cheap and getting cheaper. Coal is becoming increasingly uncompetitive. Nuclear is making a comeback, also thanks to US entrepreneurs. Science, Capitalism and entrepreneurship will be the unstoppable force that will solve our energy crisis, if western governments let them. Africa, India a…

Capitalism and enterpreneurship is how we got here in the first place. Elon and renewables are only becoming a thing because of economic incentives from governments - positive incentives in the form of subsidies on e.g. new EVs, solar panels, etc, and negative incentives in the form of carbon taxes. Take those away and the "green" companies would have NO incentive to push their work. They'd be working with people wan…

I don´t know why people overvalue Musk an Tesla that much for reducing emissions. When I ran the numbers last year, a single city in China(Guangzhou) was enough to reduce emissions more than entire Tesla sales, just by replacing all of their busses with electrical ones.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#135

Post by dannyw »

neya wrote: post #124
roenxi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some interesting graphs from arguably the most transformative economic miracle in human history [0]. The risk isn't the US doing nothing, it is India, Africa, etc, etc deciding that they seriously want a comfortable standard of living. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=~CHN

> The risk isn't the US doing nothing, it is India, Africa, etc, etc deciding that they seriously want a comfortable standard of living. I can't believe that a country wanting to have a "comfortable standard of living" is seen as a "risk". Almost suggesting as if those countries don't deserve them and a comfortable standard of living should be reserved only for a select few countries. I just can't fucking believe wha…

Don’t apply emotions to science. Ending COVID19 is a risk to global emissions, because the pandemic‘s lockdowns has reduced emissions.

Risk doesn’t mean emotional judgment or anything about who deserves what.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#136

Post by the-pigeon »

mola wrote: post #78
koheripbal wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue with the Paris Accords is that China did not commit to begin any restrictions until 2030. ...and since they are both the world's largest CO2 emitter and world's fastest growing CO2 emitter, the Accords became a corporate strategy to just move more manufacturing to China (and other non-limited countries). Frankly, I think the Paris Accords does more harm than good by giving anyone the notion that we…

You cannot hinder developing countries from the comfort of living in a develop country. The fact that China agreed to a year is amazing. If the US would have kept part of that deal then maybe we would've seen improvements. But now that the US basically proven to be untrustworthy, even towards allies, these kind of deals are just undoable anymore. This will end in tears

Why exactly?

China has shown time and time again that China will do what China feels like doing.

Meaning them committing to doing something 10 years doesn't mean they will do it at all.

We clearly don't really care about climate change or stuff like this would be about taxing pollution through tariffs and other means. Rules like this just move the manufacturing and thus pollution to different countries. Which is pointless when the goal is to reduce climate change.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#137

Post by tw04 »

sampo wrote: post #115
originalvichy wrote: post #3

As a European this is the main fear I have during this election. 4 more years of inaction from the government of one of the biggest polluters in the world will really bite us in the ass. Not that I’m super proud of how we are doing in my country, but it can’t get worse.

USA per capita CO2 emissions are large, but at least they have been coming down moderately fast. From 2007 to 2017, USA reduced emissions by 20%, whereas if we take Germany as an example of a country with strong "green" element in politics, Germany reduced by 8%. Apply linear extrapolation, and USA would go below Germany in 20 years. Extrapolating with exponential decay, in 40 years. https://ourworldindata.org/co2/co…

>USA per capita CO2 emissions are large, but at least they have been coming down moderately fast. From 2007 to 2017, USA reduced emissions by 20%, whereas if we take Germany as an example of a country with strong "green" element in politics, Germany reduced by 8%.

Which is primarily due to Obama era regulations that Trump has done everything he can to roll back. Had the price of gas not skyrocketed and the mortgage crisis not hit, we would've had almost no improvements from 2000-2008.

If you look at the data available from 2016-2018 we went BACKWARDS. You can't extrapolate the data from Obama's regulations that have rolled back and say: look it'll take care of itself.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#138

Post by blackoil »

belorn wrote: post #107
cher88 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the more pertinent graph? https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=USA~IND...

Which graph to look at depend on what question one has. If the question is "Who is polluting the world and need to stop" then country’s annual CO2 emissions is the single most relevant graph since that is where the pollution is right now coming from. If one is to ask "whom's individual citizen way of living is contributing most" we would look at per capita C02. If the question is "Who is at risk of increasing their p…

As my logical view, the one who is emitting and can afford to reduce, should work on it.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#139

Post by bluGill »

kortilla wrote: post #15
epistasis wrote: post #7

The market is doing its best to counter Trump's efforts here, as renewables and storage are dropping faster in price than anybody expected, even the biggest boosters of the tech. We will never build another coal plant in the US. And our energy is getting cheaper, and the grid will get more reliable as we distribute more storage through it. And fortunately for the environment, Trump's efforts at the DoE to help coal h…

> We will never build another coal plant in the US. Because of natural gas, not renewables. Renewables still need base load due to variable generation because storage technology isn’t economical. If the price of natural gas didn’t collapse due to fracking the fuck out of the whole country for the last 15 years, we would still be building coal plants hand over fist.

True, but misleading. Last year Iowa got more than 60% of their electric from renewable sources (almost entirely wind). The natural gas plants are not for base load, but for backup when the wind isn't blowing.

Re: U.S. Exits Paris Climate Accord

#140

Post by mathh »

wwright wrote: post #87
toomuchtodo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The definition of comfort is the issue. There are simply not enough resources for everyone on Earth to live like an American. Maybe Europeans if we stretch with renewables and quickly cut down overfishing and stripmining agricultural practices. My money (unfortunately) is on a whole lot of death and despair from crop failures, drought, and mass migrations due to climate change even if we’re able to rapidly decarboniz…

I’m really not sure this is the case. For example, we know that we have far more than enough capacity to produce food for the entire world, we just simply don’t do it. Of course, Americans are very wasteful, and we can’t scale that amount of wastefulness to the entire planet.

Is it so hard on HN to use specific and appropriate verbs other than “to scale” for any idea related to something expanding or getting bigger ?
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