These are the climate tipping points we simply can't cross

Beijing, China

WiredUK - continues

 

wow, that's some incredible polluting..

 

When I lived in Beijing:
If skyscraper block over is crisp: air is clean
If skyscraper is fuzzy: air is dirty
If skyscraper is gone: stay home

and that was fifteen years ago (student) ... we all thought that the government had plenty of muscle and things would improve from there ... but it didn’t.

 

Have you seen or heard of "human cars"? The article reads in part;

Carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere released by human cars and factories is trapping heat from the sun and slowly warming the planet.

Granted I'm not the one to go to when it's on the latest and greatest of these 20% efficient contraptions, but I'm having trouble on figuring out what human cars are.

 

I suspect the writer is creatively driving home the point that humans are contributing. Though, lol: as opposed to the cars opossums drive around in, opossum cars.

 

This is my instinct as well.

I'm trying to do my part. Down to filling up the gas tank in my Fit once every three weeks. Walk or take transit everywhere else. My girlfriend doesn't drive, so between us our footprint is whatever is produced by 350 miles in a 7 year old economy microvan

 

It's fitting that they use a photo from China to talk about pollution, the lack of caring about what we in the west (even people on the right like me) would consider common sense environmental concern and conservation is staggering. The amount of coal they burn is wiping out any CO2 reduction we can accomplish, and the amount of plastic they dump into the ocean make all our talk about drinking straws and shopping bags a trivial distraction.

The obvious counter point is that they have a billion people they're trying to lift out of abject poverty, but the government could take some time and effort to use less polluting methods.

 

We live in the richest country in the world and the government is actively rolling back environmental regulations while the public drives more than ever in more and more SUV/truck things.

We have no right to be critical.

 

Our emissions are going down, while pretty much everyone who stayed in the Paris deal is failing to meet their targets. We have more right to be critical than just about anyone else.

 

Our (US) emissions are going down MINIMALLY. It's not like it suppose to be. I think we're something like at 10-15% of what we're suppose to be. Not really something to brag about or point to as being "tops".

Pointing at China is somewhat dubious too. If go by per capita, China is pretty freaking low on the chart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ons_per_capita

Here's something I can add to this;United States greenhouse gas emissions are down —but it’s not because anyone’s driving any less.

Overall carbon emissions were down two percent in 2019, but pollution from the transportation sector — the leading contributor to climate change remained basically unchanged, though no longer increasing as it has every year since 2012.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2020/01/...oblem/#new_tab

 

Certainly it's no reason for a victory lap, but point to another major power that has any reduction at all.

And look at my first comment on this thread, they have a billion people they're trying to lift out of abject poverty. They're just not bothering at all with what we would consider rudimentary protection of their own environment.

The thing is, China has a billion people that want things which will cause their per capita emissions to go up. A lot. Same thing with India, a billion people who want to live if not like Americans, at least with a similar level of wealth and industry. Emissions are going to go up.

If we're looking at CO2 levels as a means to play politics, to seek power and point fingers while staking a claim to the moral high ground, then sure. Blame Americans. We absolutely have a high per capita level of emissions. If we're looking at it as a real global crisis, then we're bailing water out of a boat that's on the verge of sinking. The US is starting to make headway on the leaks next to our seat, while China and India are kicking holes in the side.

If CO2 is a real problem, then the sheer number of humans on this planet mean the only real ways to reduce overall emissions are to convert most of the world to nuclear power, or to remove at least a third of the humans. Between those two options, I'm a big fan of nuclear power. Thorium reactors until we manage to make a viable fusion plant.

 

Well I did and there's as actually quite a few that out did the US from 2015 to 2018. The US went down .2 in CO2 emissions in that period. Referencing the Wiki link above;
Qatar, Australia, Canada, Japan, Germany, Israel, Ireland, Hong Kong, Italy, the UK, just to name a few. But far far too many had increased their emissions. BTW India increased theirs too, but they're far down the chart when viewing emissions from countries per capita. About 1/8 of the US. Good luck arguing them to reduce their emissions!

Good luck arguing for people to live in poverty while we're living in "luxury" too. The one thing I see that China should do is work on solutions that deal with issues before implementing them, rather than implement them, then figure out solutions.

Really I'm looking at that list of countries and really it's the US that needs to make the biggest change. And no, I'm not talking about reductions of 10-20%, but like 40-50%.

I really wish our fossil fuels were doubled in prices. That would be a start.

 

I guess we need human-fueled fusion reactors, as I’m not sure what else to do here.

 

Emissions per capita is useful for some arguments, but not for "if the total emissions don't go down we're all going to die" type arguments I see in the news. Did you really expect anyone to go through a spreadsheet with hundreds of data points to figure out the numbers, though? I'm sorry, I might be able to do it but I just don't have that much love for math and statistics.

I'm not arguing for anyone to live in poverty. I might if I thought global warming was a serious problem, but since that's not my view, I don't have a problem with China industrializing. I do have a problem with their predatory trade and lending practices, and their rampant IP theft, but that's a separate issue. But just as I'm not arguing for China to have an arbitrarily low standard of living to keep you or me or anyone else happy, I don't want Americans to have an arbitrarily low standard of living for the same reasons.

What makes you think Americans will go for massive increases in the cost of living any more than Chinese or Indians will? As Mike pointed out, we can't stop buying SUVs. Every time I see a new housing development, I shake my head because they cram the largest houses possible onto each property- what's the point of buying a house if you can touch your neighbor's house from your window? How much power are we using now for everyone to constantly have their eyes glued to a phone? The phone itself might not take much electricity, but Google alone uses something like twice the power of the entire city of San Francisco.

We love our creature comforts, because just like the residents of every other nation on earth, we're human. You can either get people to stop acting like humans, or you can look for advances in technology to mitigate the problems. If we tried, we could shift the vast majority of our power generation to Thorium reactors in a few decades. Enough investment there, and it even puts the fracking people out of business. If it spreads worldwide, developing nations don't need to mine coal and we don't have to worry about them making plutonium for weapons cores (unfortunately that's the main reason nobody has used Thorium yet, right back to being human).

 

Keep in mind it's not just "emissions", as if somehow only accelerated breathing - CO2 - is the root of all our problems. Toxic chemicals stored and then released as the byproduct of making all the stuff we have .. that's just one other thing. I could go on.

 

We (US) are a loooooooooong way off from where we're suppose to be regarding curbing our environmental impact. I'm pretty sure the world is going to be stressed quite a bit in many people's life time. Kinda glad I'm not in my teen years.

Wish I could find an article I saw from some professor. He said basically there's 4 points slowly stressing things. One is population, another was the soil for growing. Another must have been air and forgot what was the 4th. Was good article that made lots of sense.

 

Probably access to clean water, there are places in the world approaching crisis point for that already. Another point in favor of nuclear power, desalination plants that produce no carbon from all the energy use would surely improve life in a lot of developing nations.

 

Sea level rise, and water pollution/diversion. The east coast US gets about 4x the global average sea level rise year over year (effects are visible in coastal cities like new york and miami). While the developing middle eastern countries are damning the rivers, causing water shortages in down stream nations. The effects that are most dangerous to the people not effected directly will be seen in the forms of mass migrations of people.

 

Hasdrubal, you don't think climate change is a major issue? My man....what.

 

I think your right. Water was one of the "legs", I remembered it as something like a leg, where if one collapsed, the whole thing collapses. Working nukes in the future I'm thinking it's probably going to have to happen somehow. Haven't really looked at it that hard to see where and how. Obviously there's been much improvement from the bad old days.

If I ever find that article, I'll review it post it if it still looks good.