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WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

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Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#271

Post by mcphage »

AJRF wrote: post #63
abalashov wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but it's more than just % of GDP. Think about the outsized influence Texas has on school textbooks nationwide. Same idea with CA/NY/WA/TX in other areas.

Could you explain this for a non-American? Is there a committee that sets national curriculum that is heavily influcenced by Texans?

In some states, school districts choose their textbooks. In some states, the state as a whole decides on their textbook. So the states that do that (like Texas) have a much larger impact on the contents, because it's such a large order. Whereas a school district can't afford to have their own textbooks written and published, so they have to go with a version already out there.

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#272

Post by ajmurmann »

saosebastiao wrote: post #42
artpop wrote: post #20

This is starting to sound like the “Rim States” from the science fiction novel Black Man (Thirteen) by Richard K. Morgan. Basically the blue and red states separate in the future because they couldn’t resolve their differences. The blue states go on to prosper and the red states languish. It struck me how plausible it sounded when I read it. Now with the commander in shit-the-bed Donald Trump and the rising tide self…

I'm not sure why it hasn't happened before. We've built this patriotism about our specific borders as if that's the thing that holds us together...when in reality our borders are the result of a crazy delusional idea called Manifest Destiny from the 1800s. Californians have about as much in common with Alabamians as they do with Australians. From a purely pragmatic perspective we should probably break up the US anywa…

It's unfortunately more about rural vs urban as others have pointed out. Ian Buruma's "Occidentalism" which is my favorite nonfiction book does an amazing job analyzing that situation in very terse and well researched form.

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#273

Post by tshadley »

xienze wrote: post #107

One thing I never see addressed with all the talk about climate change: Let's say we managed to cease our CO2 production, even reverse the current man-made warming trend (save me the "impossible hypothetical scenario" talk, substitute in whatever values of "cease" we would have accomplished with the Paris Agreement, whatever). Eventually, the earth is going to warm significantly without the aid of mankind. What are w…

> Eventually, the earth is going to warm significantly without the aid of mankind. What are we supposed to do about that?

Are you talking about Milankovitch cycles? We're about 10,000 years past the warmest point of the last cycle so, absent anthropogenic warming, we should be cooling for a few more thousand years. Then an ice age would last for around 80-90 thousand years, followed by another 10-20 thousand year warm period.

http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/...

So you're basically asking about the next warming period expected roughly 100,000 years from now? What are we supposed to do about that?

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#274

Post by tmh79 »

Shivetya wrote: post #136
tmh79 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Background: I am a [former] republican, grew up in flyover country, from a family full of trump supporters, now I live in California. I believe that the red states are going to languish for the following reasons: 1) Brain drain as young ambitious people leave 2) Public services (education, roads, etc) decrease in quality, increase in expense 3) Older folks increasingly capture all of the economic gains allowed in sma…

there are enough example states to refute it. hell Illinois is poster child for failed Democratic policies and their debt is now junk status. Quite a few other blue states are in the same boat with exploding debt. blue states tend to be such only because of dense city populations in super cities; discounting California. Get outside those big metropolis with their outsides voting power and it shifts. I am a decidedly…

Yea, TBH, this is more of a view about "cities" vs "rural area" and less about "red state" vs "blue state". Id much rather live in the most densely populated county in Nebraska than the least densely populated county of NY/CA in terms of health/opportunity/economy/etc.

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#275

Post by flukus »

dkhenry wrote: post #225
azernik wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Poor countries are allowed to increase their carbon emissions because their current emissions are already low per person, and requiring then to lower emissions would basically be telling then they're not allowed to become developed countries. They will not sign on. 2. We're paying poor countries to mitigate these effects, by subsidizing their use of cleaner energy to industrialize. And to compensate them, since th…

1. I don't think global warming cares who emits the carbon. If climate change is really as big and life changing an issue as everyone knows it is they will sign on, there is no reason to sign away the livelihoods of Americans to benefit China, what happens when you do that is those people whose jobs you have just ended do in fact have opinions and votes. 2. We are subsidizing them with no benefit to us at all, and in…

> I don't think global warming cares who emits the carbon.

It doesn't. Most of the carbon in the atmosphere today was emitted by the western world though and it's up to them to show leadership and address the problem they created.

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#276

Post by acchow »

gumby wrote: post #67
Bud wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you just plain guess at TX being cleaner than CA, the clear leader among all US states on climate issues, without bothering to look it up? Careless and lazy.

Because Texas has a lot of wind power (so much that the price sometimes goes negative at night) and because, although California gets a lot of its power from renewable energy, most of that is imported (WA hydro) while in-state production remains dirtier. Don't get me wrong: I live in CA and would be happy never to set foot in Texas again, but this responds to your specific statement.

why is hydroelectric power not "renewable"?

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#277

Post by dkhenry »

lelandbatey wrote: post #253
dkhenry wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its bad because its not a level playing field. Its tips the global economy away from Americans because they are too "Developed". Turns out there are lots of Americans in fly over country who disagree.

It is true that they disagree. It is not true that they're lives are definitely harder. For every person in the US, there are four in China. Even imagining that China had the same wealth distribution as the US, which it does not, that still means there are vastly, vastly (at least 4x) more people with lives that are empirically more painful, with less medicine, less availability of electricity, and less food. This is…

You are correct that there are many more people in China and that being poor in China is worse then being poor in America, but the solution is not to export global competitiveness to other countries until their quality of living is on par with Americans. Once that ability goes away it will not come back, and as you can tell no one really cares about the plight of rural Americans who stand to be the biggest losers from the change

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#278

Post by usaar333 »

refurb wrote: post #235
alpha_squared wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few counter-points: - US, per capita, has the highest CO2 emissions of any developed country [0] - It's a little unfair (depending on your idea of fairness) for developed countries to have benefitted from industrialization and polluting the environment only to close the gate behind them and blame other countries for trying to do the same and catch up in development. - It's expensive to force nations barely entering…

- US, per capita, has the highest CO2 emissions of any developed country It also has one of the highest GDP (output) per capita. Output requires energy input.

For a developed country, the US has quite low GDP output per emissions. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_...

Only Australia (another country full of climate change denialism) and Israel fare worse. Canada is rather comparable.

On the other hand, some European countries (e.g. France, UK) are nearly double gdp per emissions. Even Germany with its relatively large industrial sector has far better GDP per CO2 ton.

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#279

Post by chc »

enknamel wrote: post #232
chc wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're talking about here is an artifact of your sampling method, not an actual problem. China emits roughly double the amount that the US does, but they have four times the population. That is actually a much better number than ours.

Yes but if you care about the environment it doesn't matter. Reducing the overall emissions is all that matters. And giving the biggest polluter a free pass to keep polluting is insanity.

That's the point, though — you're not actually identifying the biggest polluter. You're drawing a circle around a group of people who are not the biggest polluters by bulk or per capita and are on average way better then the country that just pulled out of the accord, and you're saying, "These people, they're the problem, and the best way to fight the problem of this group of moderate polluters is for the US to renege on its commitments to fight climate change."

This position is so seemingly unrelated to the facts that it really feels like you're looking for evidence to justify a pre-existing stance rather than examining the evidence dispassionately and arriving at a conclusion through reason. Are you sure there's not a little bit of that going on here?

Re: WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance

#280

Post by gumby »

acchow wrote: post #276
gumby wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Texas has a lot of wind power (so much that the price sometimes goes negative at night) and because, although California gets a lot of its power from renewable energy, most of that is imported (WA hydro) while in-state production remains dirtier. Don't get me wrong: I live in CA and would be happy never to set foot in Texas again, but this responds to your specific statement.

why is hydroelectric power not "renewable"?

I'm merely saying while California consumes a lot of energy from renewable sources, most of the energy generated in the state is dirty.

In the specific case of hydro, California has, for all intents and purposes, none. There is some pumped hydro storage (as far as anyone can tell, all the reasonable candidate sites are in use) but actual generation comes from WA which has plenty of water flow. This also means that WA deals with the environmental problems of these generator dams, and California does not.

California does have some wind and solar of course, in additional to its hydrocarbon plants. But lots of gas peakers.

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