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Levels of banned CFCs rising

nature.com

161–170 of 181 posts

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#161
post #142
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The combined emissions of CFC-13, CFC-112a, CFC-113a, CFC-114a and CFC-115 increased from 1.6 ± 0.2 to 4.2 ± 0.4 ODP-Gg yr-1 (CFC-11-equivalent ozone-depleting potential) between 2010 and 2020. The anticipated impact of these emissions on stratospheric ozone recovery is small. However, ongoing emissions of the five CFCs of focus may negate some of the benefits gained under the Montreal Protocol if they continue to ri…

Gg, Tg? Is that Giga-gram and Tera-gram? Why not kg, the SI standard unit for mass?

Adding an SI prefix to an SI unit is standard practice rather than adding a bunch of trailing zeros.

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#162
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…

No fan of straw bans, but aren't they motivated by a different ecological issue, namely reducing plastic waste

If it was really about that, you'd think they'd force starbucks to sell you a cold drink in a paper cup instead of what is basically a giant straw you can't locally recycle anyhow.

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#163
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty clear that the only two outcomes of this scenario are societal destruction via climate catastrophe or we find a way to cleanly 1000x our energy production.

> find a way to cleanly 1000x our energy production. Have you heard of our lord and savior Nuclear Fission? We should build a shitload of restores all over the place.

Nixon wanted to have 1000 operating nuclear reactors in the U.S. by 2000. Today we have 92 of them, which power 8% of our electricity demand. Making the assumption that those other 918 reactors we would have had generate the same output as these, we could have been almost entirely powered through nuclear energy today had nuclear energy not seen pushback over the last 50 years. Instead, c'est la vie

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#164
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, an import tariff that is waived against imports from countries with sufficiently high taxes on production, provided those taxes are characterized the right way? Seems like a monumentally bad idea > It’s an incredibly easy way to close a whole bunch of tax loopholes at once. I don’t think it closes any tax loopholes.

Tax compatibility is a pretty solved problem - countries frequently coordinate to make sure income and other taxes don't end up being double counted so it's not like this would happen accidentally[1]. And the point isn't so much that the US should collect all this revenue - it's just to make tax havens moot and unnecessary. Why spend money shipping laptops to Bermuda so you can put a sticker on them there if you aren…

> Tax compatibility is a pretty solved problem

Tax compatibility with VAT only is a sensible concept where the destination country has a VAT itself, which the US does not. Otherwise, a minimum VAT on imports is just a global punitive import tariff, and has nothing to do with compatibility.

Even where its sensible, it still has potential problems that can be introduced through other parts of the tax system, but…we don’t really need to consider that in this case.

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are a very good writer and I’m intrigued by this thread. Can you elaborate on what you see as actual solutions and how they would look (no matter how far fetched)?

Thank you for the complement. I'm under no delusion that I have the solutions to the whole world's problems figured out. These ideas are like unrefined chunks of coal, rife with imperfections and riddled with flaws and only under the great pressure and heat of vigorous, critical debate may they ever hope to become diamonds. I think R&D on the scale of what the US spent relative to GDP during WW2 might be a place to s…

The usual response is that this would be economically suicidal for the US, and that other ambitious competitors would attempt to create a new world order more suited to their preferences. This would probably anoint China as the next century's global hegemon, although it's at least equally likely that the world would devolve into warring fiefdoms as the world economy imploded.

Tens or hundreds of millions of people would die as a direct consequence of this economic malpractice, including a decent portion of the US citizens who voted for the persons responsible. Reelection would be tricky, although it would not be difficult to imagine the US democratic process being suspended as a reaction to the catastrophe (legal precedent is not relevant, see history).

Don't get me wrong: climate change is a problem! But this would create a much bigger and more acute problem.

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of ignores the global nature of our supply chains though. Someone can be very green in life here in the EU because all the products they buy are manufactured in China and their environmental impact is externalised and put onto the stats of another country that's trying to meet our demands. By regulating what's available on markets here we can pressure maufacturers elsewhere. What is the alternative you woul…

I understand that pointing out problems in complex systems without proposing a solution is ultimately indifferent from eloquent bitching, which I can certainly be fairly accused of. That said, what the west is currently doing to address climate change - analogous to cheering for the people trying to push a derailed 130-ton freight car back onto the rail tracks with unassisted manpower alone - is not a solution either…

What would really help is across the board carbon taxes. Tax imports by carbon equivalents. But that seems politically impossible.

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#167
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US hasn’t invaded Syria in a colonial war. They also didn’t commit genocide in Syria.

Someone might want to tell the people of Syria. >"The Syrian Arab Republic affirms that the practices of the United States of America and the illegal presence of its forces on parts of the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic is an actual embodiment of the crime of aggression," the Syrian Mission to the United Nations told Newsweek. >"Syria stresses that the lies promoted by the U.S. administration are nothing but a…

> Someone might want to tell the people of Syria.

The phrase “…the people of Syria…” is doing a lot of work in this sentence.

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#168
post #142
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The combined emissions of CFC-13, CFC-112a, CFC-113a, CFC-114a and CFC-115 increased from 1.6 ± 0.2 to 4.2 ± 0.4 ODP-Gg yr-1 (CFC-11-equivalent ozone-depleting potential) between 2010 and 2020. The anticipated impact of these emissions on stratospheric ozone recovery is small. However, ongoing emissions of the five CFCs of focus may negate some of the benefits gained under the Montreal Protocol if they continue to ri…

Gg, Tg? Is that Giga-gram and Tera-gram? Why not kg, the SI standard unit for mass?

> Is that Giga-gram and Tera-gram?

Should be "gigagram" and "teragram," with no capitalization and no hyphen. See section 5.3 ("Unit Names") of the official SI Brochure.[0]

[0] https://www.bipm.org/documents/20126/41483022/SI-Brochure-9-...

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#169
post #11
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it is old appliances, air conditioners, etc being scrapped, but without processing the refrigerants? Some appliances could be 30 years old?

The article explains this.

No, no it doesn't. Nary a peep about appliances.

Re: Levels of banned CFCs rising

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 pol…

The alternative is that we do nothing until it's too late, and then the consequences will be much worse. Don't worry though, society is terrible at preventive action, so I'm pretty confident we're going for the reactive action once it's too late.

The thing we have to do is innovation. We need cleaner, cheaper tech. There are some regulations we can implement to incentivize that, but we're not going to conserve our way out of climate change with our current technology, not unless you're willing to sacrifice democracy and Western society itself to do it. And even if you are, good luck getting the rest of us to go along with it.

I'd much rather endure the effects of climate change than literally create a dystopian New World Order out of science fiction.

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