WA, NY and CA Governors Announce Formation of United States Climate Alliance • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by michaelchisari » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 7:54 PM UTC

velodrome wrote: post #329

michaelchisari wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, California is third on a list where Texas is 1st. I don't think that disproves my point. Texas produces 35% of the country's crude oil. In March of 2017, California produced 14,907,000 barrels of crude oil. Texas produced 102,443,000. That's 7x more. Play that against the fact that Texas' GDP is 2/3rd of California's. Oil has a massive impact in Texas that it simply doesn't have in California.

Texas and California are diversified economies. Texas is more exposed to the oil & gas industry. However, it is still not a petrostate. Which state is the closest to being a petrostate? Alaska (25% exposure). It is very easy to validate this. Look at the price of oil. It has taken a massive beating over the last years. Oil Price History: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DCOILWTICO/ If the state is truly a petrostat…

I forgot that this is the wrong site to use hyperbole on.

No, it's not literally a petro-state. I stand by my point that it is not a reproducible model for other states.

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

#402

Post by blorsh » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 8:43 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #370

tropo wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you are on to something. Perhaps those goods shouldn't be made in China, an ocean or two away from where they are needed, under lax emissions laws. If we held China to the same standard as the US and EU, some of that problem would go away. It wouldn't just make fly-over country happy. Huge container ships do not run on solar power. They burn huge amounts of heavy fuel oil, which is nearly tar and not too far from…

So, you want everything to be ten times more expensive? China can be so cheap because everything is in the same place. IC production, PCB production, them being combined, device assembly, etc. It would be far more expensive to ship all the parts separately. Even more expensive to just ship the raw material from china to where it is needed. And with expensive I mean both in terms of climate and money.

You forget how it got that way. Parts were made in the USA, then shipped to China. Part production moved. Part production can move the other way, back to the USA. It tends to go where the devices are made. The same goes for raw material. The USA has resources to mine.

Moving any part of the supply chain tends to encourage the other parts to move. If part production moved, then both mining and device production would have an increased incentive to move. If mining moved, part production would have an incentive to move, and if that moved then device production would have an incentive to move. It all works both ways, with suppliers and customers tending to move toward each other.

So yes, we can put everything back in the USA, and it can be affordable, but we face an uphill battle. The battle is only lost if you give up trying.

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

#403

Post by muninn_ » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 9:44 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #400

muninn_ wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I responded to individual points that needed to be refuted. The rest was just filler.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Are you diagnosed with that? Otherwise I'm not sure why you posted that.

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

#404

Post by conception » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 10:31 PM UTC

babyrainbow wrote: post #270

hangonhn wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where they can't afford the more efficient methods of industrialization and must resort to the dirtier methods? Powering a country by coal is one such example. China has huge reserves of coal but little oil and natural gas. So what are they suppose to do? Renewables are expensive, although it is dropping in price, but they are also not useful at all hours and their production varies on conditions. Not all of China ha…

>China has huge reserves of coal but little oil and natural gas. So the real reason is not that china is a developing nation, but it has little oil and natural gas? That is not going to change, right? So you are saying that China can burn coal forever? And what happens when a country run out of oil and gas. Can it start burning coal if it is available? Doesn't this mean that the source of pollution will keep shifting…

Just to pop in on this "Other countries also had 100 years to develop. That they weren't able to do so is no fault of US or other developed countries"

That's a real real real strong blind spot on how Western nations have been interfering in developing nations for decades. Africa, the Middle East, Asia all have a long and storied history of the West actively interfering with their development. We 100% are now having to lay in the bed we made.

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

#405

Post by kuschku » Fri, Jun 02, 2017, 11:12 PM UTC

blorsh wrote: post #402

kuschku wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you want everything to be ten times more expensive? China can be so cheap because everything is in the same place. IC production, PCB production, them being combined, device assembly, etc. It would be far more expensive to ship all the parts separately. Even more expensive to just ship the raw material from china to where it is needed. And with expensive I mean both in terms of climate and money.

You forget how it got that way. Parts were made in the USA, then shipped to China. Part production moved. Part production can move the other way, back to the USA. It tends to go where the devices are made. The same goes for raw material. The USA has resources to mine. Moving any part of the supply chain tends to encourage the other parts to move. If part production moved, then both mining and device production would…

That’s a cute statement.

So, how are you going to mine stuff in the US that the US has no resource deposits of?

I want to see you move rare earth production into the US.

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

#406

Post by vivekd » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 12:20 AM UTC

alpha_squared wrote: post #372

vivekd wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See it's stuff like this that makes me suspect that the climate change debate is more about virtue signaling than any actual threat. Because really if we honestly believed that the earth was warming because of carbon and that this presented a serious threat to the planet, we wouldn't be like "oh well fairness dictates that we let some countries keep emitting high levels of carbon." That consideration wouldn't even co…

> The only reason that this is even coming up is because climate change proponents, deep inside, believe that there will be no serious adverse consequences from climate change. That's not the case at all. The world isn't really a black/white place. In an ideal world, we'd all stop right now and focus -- concertedly -- our efforts on reverting climate change. Unfortunately, life just doesn't work like that. You go ahe…

But you're just sidestepping my point.

In the case of an actual planetary threat the argument you describe about letting poor countries catch up would be incoherent and insane. Let's change the scenario here and make it more extreme, imagine instead of CO2 our industry released lead and we knew over time the whole world would get lead poisoning and all humans would get sick from lead poisoning and die out if we continue on our path. In such a scenario, would we

1) Have rich nations stop emissions out lead but still allow developing nations to have lead emissions cause, hey we may all die, but it's only fair, I mean they should enjoy the same standard of living as us

2) Have everyone stop putting out lead emissions because, as crappy as it is, everyone attaining a western standard of living is not as important as preventing human extinction.

I think we would all agree that option 2 was the only option. Option 1 would be incoherent and insane. The only case in which we would even consider option 1 is one in which there is no real coherent planetary threat.

Now climate change proponents may not be suggesting human extinction but you are suggesting widespread, possibly civilization ending catastrophe. This leaves scenario 1 as the only real choice and scenario 2 as incoherent and stupid. Yet climate changers still advocate and openly push for scenario 2 . . . which would lead any reasonable person to question the sincerity of their belief in planetary environmental catastrophe.

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

#407

Post by alpha_squared » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 5:14 AM UTC

vivekd wrote: post #406

alpha_squared wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only reason that this is even coming up is because climate change proponents, deep inside, believe that there will be no serious adverse consequences from climate change. That's not the case at all. The world isn't really a black/white place. In an ideal world, we'd all stop right now and focus -- concertedly -- our efforts on reverting climate change. Unfortunately, life just doesn't work like that. You go ahe…

But you're just sidestepping my point. In the case of an actual planetary threat the argument you describe about letting poor countries catch up would be incoherent and insane. Let's change the scenario here and make it more extreme, imagine instead of CO2 our industry released lead and we knew over time the whole world would get lead poisoning and all humans would get sick from lead poisoning and die out if we conti…

> But you're just sidestepping my point.

I think I'm not making myself clear enough. Politics often requires compromise. Until we have a global hegemony, there's no way to enforce one set of rules across all others. This is also the reason you can have such wildly different political views and oppositions of governance that can both, simultaneously, work for their respective regions while not working well for the whole.

By painting the issue as black/white, you're grossly neglecting others' needs. It's easy to say that when, by no stretch of the imagination, you're likely living in a well-off and developed country with a pretty decent quality of life. Please, recognize the advantages and luxuries you've been afforded and take a moment to understand that others don't even have a fraction of that. They're just trying to reach a fraction. Can we resolve this climate problem and simultaneously keep developing countries from stagnation and regression? Sure, it just won't be easy. And that's why there are compromises made.

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

#408

Post by vivekd » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 5:55 AM UTC

alpha_squared wrote: post #407

vivekd wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're just sidestepping my point. In the case of an actual planetary threat the argument you describe about letting poor countries catch up would be incoherent and insane. Let's change the scenario here and make it more extreme, imagine instead of CO2 our industry released lead and we knew over time the whole world would get lead poisoning and all humans would get sick from lead poisoning and die out if we conti…

> But you're just sidestepping my point. I think I'm not making myself clear enough. Politics often requires compromise. Until we have a global hegemony, there's no way to enforce one set of rules across all others. This is also the reason you can have such wildly different political views and oppositions of governance that can both, simultaneously, work for their respective regions while not working well for the who…

>Politics often requires compromise.

But potential planetary catastrophe is not a political issue and not an issue that allows for much compromise. Sure there is political hand wringing about whether it is really happening and what its consequences are . . . But once you accept that it is real and potentially destructive it becomes a question of preventing planetary catastrophe which is not political and seems very very black and white and not open to compromise.

>Can we resolve this climate problem and simultaneously keep developing countries from stagnation and regression? Sure, it just won't be easy

If climate change truly has the negative potential that you claim, how could you even risk it - if it really were as bad as you say wouldn't the consequence for both developing and developed countries be much worse by allowing for continued emissions?

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

#409

Post by babyrainbow » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 6:58 AM UTC

conception wrote: post #404

babyrainbow wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>China has huge reserves of coal but little oil and natural gas. So the real reason is not that china is a developing nation, but it has little oil and natural gas? That is not going to change, right? So you are saying that China can burn coal forever? And what happens when a country run out of oil and gas. Can it start burning coal if it is available? Doesn't this mean that the source of pollution will keep shifting…

Just to pop in on this "Other countries also had 100 years to develop. That they weren't able to do so is no fault of US or other developed countries" That's a real real real strong blind spot on how Western nations have been interfering in developing nations for decades. Africa, the Middle East, Asia all have a long and storied history of the West actively interfering with their development. We 100% are now having t…

>storied history of the West actively interfering with their development....

There is no blind spot. I am aware of this possibility. But that does not change a thing....That is like saying since you developing your business ate into your competitors business, you owe them something, and you have to lay low for a while while they grow their business (because of limited resources or something...)....

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

#410

Post by alpha_squared » Sat, Jun 03, 2017, 3:37 PM UTC

vivekd wrote: post #408

alpha_squared wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you're just sidestepping my point. I think I'm not making myself clear enough. Politics often requires compromise. Until we have a global hegemony, there's no way to enforce one set of rules across all others. This is also the reason you can have such wildly different political views and oppositions of governance that can both, simultaneously, work for their respective regions while not working well for the who…

>Politics often requires compromise. But potential planetary catastrophe is not a political issue and not an issue that allows for much compromise. Sure there is political hand wringing about whether it is really happening and what its consequences are . . . But once you accept that it is real and potentially destructive it becomes a question of preventing planetary catastrophe which is not political and seems very v…

> But potential planetary catastrophe is not a political issue...

Tell that to the American Republican party.

> If climate change truly has the negative potential that you claim, how could you even risk it

We've crossed the point of no return already, the question is now "how do we minimize the looming repercussions"? Part of that is to have the world transition, even if at different rates, to renewable energy. There's a lot of hang-up on this different rates part. There's no blank check for China/India on this, they just have a longer period to catch up in renewable energy.

The developed world has committed to a reasonable upcoming transitional period and the developing world will be carried along, financially, to keep up or given a larger transition window.

I'd love for the world to have just done this a decade ago, but that's not the case. I'd love for us to stop today, immediately, all over and just change to renewables, but that can't be the case. Again, the world's complicated and neither one of us armchair politicians really grasp just how complicated geopolitics are.