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Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

nytimes.com

71–80 of 185 posts

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protesters are not protesting just the taxes on fuel. They protest the fact that taxing fuel is not the solution if you don't provide an alternative mode of transport. Some people live far from the cities, Should they be the ones paying for everybody else and let the people living in the cities without a car not pay their fair share of the burden? The problem with taxing the diesel is that you are telling people that…

I understand your argument, but the people living in rural areas are bigger contributors to pollution since they tend to drive more and live in single family dwellings. Why shouldn’t the actual road users pay the cost of using the road? I agree any industry using fuel should pay an equal tax though.

The people in the cities benefit from the things the rural people produce (i.e.food). Why shouldn't they shoulder the cost of at least some of the the externalities also?

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#72
post #55
post #40

I know cryptocurrencies are popular here but IMHO crypto should be immediately banned before they start generating more and more emissions.

How do you propose we ban them?

Begin tracking and disrupting the node networks via which blocks are propagated. Run tainted nodes which track IPs submitting transactions or full-clients requesting blocks, use Tor traffic analysis to work back to any cloaked users. Disrupt the IRC channels that allow bootstrapping, poison P2P listings. ISP-level/backbone-level deep packet inspection to identify nodes (doesn't need to be unencrypted, you can fingerprint connections from deep-learned traffic analysis and connection characteristics, see: Great Firewall). Then traffic/network analysis working from known nodes to identify other likely nodes in the network. General attacks on any crypto services or infrastructure advertised in public fashion (eg light-client providers, exchanges, tumblers).

(the NSA has all these cool toys... it'd be a shame not to use them!)

You can also make it virtually impossible to interchange cryptos into real cash, which guts the utility of it for most users. Ban exchanges from operating or offering services to customers in first-world countries, extradite those who persist. Sting operations on local-btc transactions. Apply RICO/war-on-drugs style roll-em-up tactics on those who persist - you're going to jail for 20 years unless you give up someone worth knowing or help us break some network worth breaking. The achilles' heel of the crypto world is that it's anonymous until you try and do something in the real world, and the financial system is an obvious point to attack from.

If we can take down Silk Road, we can take down other things in the crypto-world as well. I'd much rather our law enforcement concentrate on fighting a War on Cryptocurrency than a War on Drugs. Would certainly take cooperation from most of the first world as well as China, but China already imposes some pretty draconian stuff on their internet users. They're not thrilled with people using it to move money offshore, they're not thrilled with all the crypto users stealing electricity, they'd probably be down for cracking down too.

Oh yeah, legalize a bunch of drugs and decriminalize everything else, and you pretty much gut the crypto-economy. A massive amount of the crypto-economy centers around Silk Road-style operations and you can easily gut those with the stroke of a pen. Most users stop caring and the crypto-economy then largely collapses. The number of people who actually want murder markets or kiddie porn and are willing to do shady cash-for-bitcoin deals in a van in a Wal-Mart parking lot is not enough to actually sustain the market on their own.

Crypto only works because there's a veneer of legality, drug markets that people want to access, and relatively easy interchange to and from FILTHY GOVERNMENT FIAT, and we can nuke all three of those. Then you just clean up anyone still stupid enough to participate.

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#73

It seems to me we are truly and globally fucked: 1. There were just massive protests and riots in France (a relatively ecologically-aware country) due to an increase in the diesel tax of about 8 cents a liter meant to help wean the country off carbon. As a result of the riots, the tax was cancelled. 2. Current US administration is going 180 degrees in the other direction, i.e. doing everything it can to support coal.…

For France it's better to delay judgement, it's a messy protest movement. I despised it at first because why "defend cars" but these people don't care about cars or fossil fuels. It's just that they have no other way to find and go to a job.

ps: no other way as in other modes of transportation worsen badly, they did use train but it's too unreliable and a lot more expensive than a few years ago. This is the kind of things that made them go crazy.

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU seems to be doing way better than the US on a per capita basis - 10% for 512 million people versus 15% for 325 million in US.

Population density (people/km2) - EU: 116 - US: 33 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

You didn't explain, but I assume your point is that it's easier to reduce emissions per capita when populations are more dense. E.g. less transportation required.

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU seems to be doing way better than the US on a per capita basis - 10% for 512 million people versus 15% for 325 million in US.

Population density (people/km2) - EU: 116 - US: 33 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

And Sweden has a density of 23 while having lower carbon emissions than the EU average.

The US's problems include relatively heavy coal (30% still) and a heavy automobile culture (due to low density of cities, not the country)

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#76
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because our evidence comes from geologic and fossil records that simply do not have good resolution past 1Ma or so. That's not true. For any point when oceanic life was common, their sediments give WAY better resolution than that.

Not even close. Fossil dating is based on whether or not certain marker species exist in a particular rock sample. The very same species that gradually evolve and become extinct on scales of millions of years. The resolution is piss poor, and so unreliable that most wells in petroleum forgo biostratigraphic dating altogether.

You seem to be conflating the duration of a geologic event (i.e. rate of change, which is the subject of discussion) with the absolute age.

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#77

I cannot take any of these reports seriously unless they are comparing emissions from each country on a per capita basis. This is an easy way to make US look like a responsible polluter compared to India and China. Its a different ball game, if you factor in the total emissions per capita over last 100 years, in which case, US emissions are probably a few multiples over China and India combined (that's my guess. I'm…

The planet will be just as warm if one person emits all the carbon as ten billion. Also, reducing your population growth rate is a great way to reduce carbon emissions. A world with 500 million people living in luxury is arguably better than one with 15 billion where the living envy the dead. Though you get to some key points. The most annoying issue is perhaps that China's emissions are largely a result of building…

It looks like exports from China are about 20% of GDP:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS

It's possible but does not seem particularly likely that exports are more than 2.5x as GHG-intensive as the rest of the Chinese economy; that's what would be required for Chinese exports to account for the majority of Chinese GHG emissions.

"They're just giving buyers what they demand" is not a good reason to shift blame from American corporate polluters to the consumers that buy their products. I don't see why export-oriented Chinese corporations should face less criticism for the same pollution. Both the benefits (increased market share) and the detriments (increased pollution) come from the same decisions these companies make about using dirty cheap energy.

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#78

It seems to me we are truly and globally fucked: 1. There were just massive protests and riots in France (a relatively ecologically-aware country) due to an increase in the diesel tax of about 8 cents a liter meant to help wean the country off carbon. As a result of the riots, the tax was cancelled. 2. Current US administration is going 180 degrees in the other direction, i.e. doing everything it can to support coal.…

Protesters are not protesting just the taxes on fuel. They protest the fact that taxing fuel is not the solution if you don't provide an alternative mode of transport. Some people live far from the cities, Should they be the ones paying for everybody else and let the people living in the cities without a car not pay their fair share of the burden? The problem with taxing the diesel is that you are telling people that…

"Should they be the ones paying for everybody else and let the people living in the cities without a car not pay their fair share of the burden?"

A carbon tax, which taxes carbon, taxes the people who use carbon less, does not sound like users aren't paying "their fair share". They ARE paying their fair share, because they use less.

The problem of use-based taxes affecting the poor disproportionately is well-known, but a use-based tax is the most effective at causing user behavior change. The point of the tax isn't the revenue, the point is to make stuff cost more.

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#79
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your argument, but the people living in rural areas are bigger contributors to pollution since they tend to drive more and live in single family dwellings. Why shouldn’t the actual road users pay the cost of using the road? I agree any industry using fuel should pay an equal tax though.

The people in the cities benefit from the things the rural people produce (i.e.food). Why shouldn't they shoulder the cost of at least some of the the externalities also?

They do when they pay for the food.

Re: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018

#80
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your argument, but the people living in rural areas are bigger contributors to pollution since they tend to drive more and live in single family dwellings. Why shouldn’t the actual road users pay the cost of using the road? I agree any industry using fuel should pay an equal tax though.

The people in the cities benefit from the things the rural people produce (i.e.food). Why shouldn't they shoulder the cost of at least some of the the externalities also?

Usually this would be accomplished by farmers passing on higher food prices on to the supermarkets and the consumer.
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