Ocean Concerns

[rgleason]

Originally Posted by hpeer

Kevin Anderson,
For a good overview.
https://youtu.be/jIODRrnHQxg

Thank you.
Who would "Choose to fail"? Very Grim Report.

Carbon is what is important. We must reduce our use/GDP etc.
Paris accord depends on assumption of negative emissions techonolgy, starts carbon emssions at the wrong point and makes the wrong assumptions about carbon/temperature rise.

"If the top 10% of emitters were to reduce their global footprint to the level of the average EU would be approx 30% global cut in emissions." - Driven by wealthy people flying more often (even once or twice a year). That's just one example.

Systemic issues requiring massive changes.

[rgleason]

CSSR Climate Science Special Report 2017
https://science2017.globalchange.gov/

CSSR Executive Summary
https://science2017.globalchange.gov...utive-summary/

IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/

[john61ct]

Not we are *going to* miss out

We already *are missing out* on huge opportunities to be a world leader in tech innovation and implementation of green energy

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/scien...nment-41894354

[Exile]

Originally Posted by john61ct

Not we are *going to* miss out

We already *are missing out* on huge opportunities to be a world leader in tech innovation and implementation of green energy

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/scien...nment-41894354

According to Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown who apparently thinks he knows more than US auto cos., and never fails to get some Trump-bashing in of course. If electric cars are so good for us, then why is he talking so much about imposing higher taxes & subsidies to make it happen?

As for the Chinese, they sorely need some help getting their emissions under control, and having so many coal plants will make it easier for people to plug in all those new electric cars for overnight recharging. Not sure the net effect will be a significant reduction in CO2 emissions, but it should make a lot of people here in the US believe that the Chinese are actually doing something positive.

[john61ct]

My five-year-old knows more than Detroit's "leaders", OMG between them and the fossil fuel co's you want to talk about corporate welfare!

The key to tackling climate change: electrify everything
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/201...ify-everything

Electric cars emit 50% less greenhouse gas than diesel
https://amp.theguardian.com/environm...el-study-finds

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Snowpetrel
It would be fascinating to correlate stance on global warming with boat size, and/or cost...

Though I am not sure what conclusions could be made from any noisy correlation.

Originally Posted by hpeer

44’ cc steel cutter 1985ish. $100,000. Strong MMGW believer

Or using the Yale scale ALARMED
Global Warming's Six Americas - Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

You guys lost me. How does boat size/cost correlate with someone's stance on MMGW again? Is it an attempt to add "wealth" to the growing list of people that question or oppose the CC agenda and so require stereotyping? If not, then does your 44' cc steel cutter worth $100K leave a smaller carbon footprint than a similarly sized boat worth $1M?

[Exile]

Originally Posted by john61ct

My five-year-old knows more than Detroit's "leaders", OMG between them and the fossil fuel co's you want to talk about corporate welfare!

The key to tackling climate change: electrify everything
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/201...ify-everything

Electric cars emit 50% less greenhouse gas than diesel
https://amp.theguardian.com/environm...el-study-finds

Most 5 year-olds are good at picking up on whatever their parents want to teach them.

We generally agree on corporate welfare.

You understand that generating electricity still mostly relies on energy from burning fossil fuels, right? Except maybe in Germany. I'll read your articles, albeit with a grain of salt given their source. Do you ever read from sources that make you feel uncomfortable? Just curious.

[SailOar]

Originally Posted by Exile

....As for the Chinese, they sorely need some help getting their emissions under control, and having so many coal plants will make it easier for people to plug in all those new electric cars for overnight recharging. Not sure the net effect will be a significant reduction in CO2 emissions, but it should make a lot of people here in the US believe that the Chinese are actually doing something positive.

Energy World Rocked as China Cuts Coal Imports, Aims for Fossil Fuel Car Ban | Robert Scribbler

China is engaged in a major shift toward renewable energy production. Through July, China had added approximately 35 gigawatts of new solar electrical generation capacity — with 24 gigawatts of that capacity being added in June and July alone. Since July, China has closed approximately 150 smaller port facilities to coal imports. These ports, which China has designated as tier two, are less able to test coal for compliance with China’s new emissions standards. As a result, coal imports have re-routed to larger (tier 1) facilities. The closures have sent shivers through coal exporters like Australia as the line of ships waiting to off-load coal lengthened.

And in September China announced they would set a deadline for car makers to stop selling vehicles that run exclusively on diesel and gasoline.

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China halts more than 150 coal-fired power plants | ReNewEconomy

China is to stop or delay work on 151 planned and under-construction coal plants as Beijing struggles to respond to a flat-lining of demand for coal power.

The list affects coal power plants with capacity equal to the combined operating capacity of Germany and Japan (95,000 megawatts) costing around US$60 billion (389 billion rmb). The amount of capacity affected hence exceeds the target set for this year but is still well short of the total of 150,000 megawatts the government says is needed by 2020.

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China Experiences Sharp Drop in Coal-Related Emissions, Study Says | YaleEnvironment360

Emissions of sulfur dioxide, an air pollutant produced primarily by burning coal, have fallen by 75 percent in China since 2007, while SO2 emissions in India have jumped 50 percent, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Maryland.

China and India are the world’s two biggest coal-burning nations, but the University of Maryland study showed that a host of measures implemented by China over the past decade — including improved pollution control technologies and levying fines on polluters — have sharply cut sulfur dioxide emissions. These reductions were achieved even as coal usage increased 50 percent in China and electricity generation grew 100 percent.

India, by contrast, has seen sulfur dioxide emissions soar as the country has built new coal-fired power plants but has not imposed significant pollution controls. The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, says India may already have become the world’s largest emitter of sulfur dioxide.

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China leads the way to the global renewable energy revolution | Climate Action

According to a newly published report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), solar is boosting the growth of renewables in global capacity, with China leading the way as the dominant global player.

More specifically, “Renewables 2017” revealed that photovoltaics grew faster than any other fuel in 2016 due to increasing cost reductions and policy support.

Renewables accounted for an impressive 65 percent of new net electricity capacity additions, with approximately 165GW clean energy capacity coming online in 2016.



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E.P.A. Announces Repeal of Major Obama-Era Carbon Emissions Rule | New York Times

The Environmental Protection Agency announced on Tuesday that Scott Pruitt, the chief of the agency, had signed a measure to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, setting up a bitter fight over the future of America’s efforts to tackle global warming.

The repeal proposal, which will be filed in the Federal Register on Tuesday, fulfills a promise President Trump made to eradicate his predecessor’s environmental legacy. Eliminating the Clean Power Plan makes it less likely that the United States can fulfill its promise as part of the Paris climate agreement to ratchet down emissions that are warming the planet and contributing to heat waves and sea-level rise. Mr. Trump has vowed to abandon that international accord.

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A few years ago I remember some of the denialists on this forum arguing that the US shouldn't participate in any international AGW agreements, because, they said, China would NEVER agree to join those agreements. With the election of the Denier-In-Chief the tables have changed 180 degrees. What an embarrassment we've become...

[Heave2]

This post is already 26 pages long, so forgive me for not reading every page, but there is nothing we can do about rising sea levels or "global warming". The problem is, we live in an ice age. What? Nobody in the media talks about this? We are currently in the Quaternary glaciation, an ice age that has lasted for about the last 12,000 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation

You see, ice on our planets poles isn't normal for our planet, and for the vast majority of it's 4.6 billion year existence, we had no ice caps. Now we appear to be coming out of this ice age, whether it is man made or not is irrelevant and isn't worth fighting about. The planet goes through these cycles, and nothing we can do will stop it, short of possibly a nuclear winter of course.

I say we sit back, crack open a cold one, and go sailing whenever we can, rising sea levels means more water!

[LakeSuperior]

Interesting older essay by Freeman Dyson.

https://www.edge.org/documents/archi...19.html#dysonf

Excerpt below.

"To stop the carbon in the atmosphere from increasing, we only need to grow the biomass in the soil by a hundredth of an inch per year. Good topsoil contains about ten percent biomass, [Schlesinger, 1977], so a hundredth of an inch of biomass growth means about a tenth of an inch of topsoil. "

One of the points of his essay is how messy the models are. Models are not real life.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by john61ct

The key to tackling climate change: electrify everything
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/201...ify-everything

Electric cars emit 50% less greenhouse gas than diesel
https://amp.theguardian.com/environm...el-study-finds

Interesting articles. Thanks for posting.

The first article about centralizing as much energy consumption as possible into cleaner running electrical grids makes sense, at least theoretically. It sounds like the consensus on this is pretty new, and there are obviously large technical & economic hurdles to overcome. Good thing we have cleaner natural gas to burn during the transition.

The second article used Poland to do its study, a country still heavily reliant on coal to generate its electricity. So the conclusion that electric cars would emit 50% less greenhouse gas is probably a little skewed. But at least the article is a little more balanced than what we normally see on these threads. It quoted an EU commissioner, for example, pointing out that "when you take into account the emissions from battery manufacture and electricity supply, their GHG emissions are not so attractive." So it sounds like there is an actual cost-benefit analysis going on for a change.

Of course, all this new technology is very expensive, as German taxpayers found out -- mostly after-the-fact of course. Not a problem for China and to a lesser extent the EU since the taxes & subsidies required to pay for it can be mandated. In the US, however, the people actually footing the bill have more of a say, so you have to go through the trouble of actually persuading them that people like you actually know what's best for them.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by SailOar

Emissions of sulfur dioxide, an air pollutant produced primarily by burning coal, have fallen by 75 percent in China since 2007, while SO2 emissions in India have jumped 50 percent, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Maryland.

China and India are the world’s two biggest coal-burning nations, but the University of Maryland study showed that a host of measures implemented by China over the past decade — including improved pollution control technologies and levying fines on polluters — have sharply cut sulfur dioxide emissions. These reductions were achieved even as coal usage increased 50 percent in China and electricity generation grew 100 percent.

India, by contrast, has seen sulfur dioxide emissions soar as the country has built new coal-fired power plants but has not imposed significant pollution controls. The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, says India may already have become the world’s largest emitter of sulfur dioxide.

This is either true, or China has much better control over its propaganda ministry than (more democratic) India does.

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China leads the way to the global renewable energy revolution | Climate Action

According to a newly published report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), solar is boosting the growth of renewables in global capacity, with China leading the way as the dominant global player.

No question about this one, thanks to cheaply mfg. solar panels being dumped on the world market, forcing other mfgs. who are developing more efficient, better constructed panels out of business.

More specifically, “Renewables 2017” revealed that photovoltaics grew faster than any other fuel in 2016 due to increasing cost reductions and policy support.

"In other words, higher taxes and subsidies imposed on people who have no say in the matter.

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E.P.A. Announces Repeal of Major Obama-Era Carbon Emissions Rule | New York Times

The Environmental Protection Agency announced on Tuesday that Scott Pruitt, the chief of the agency, had signed a measure to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, setting up a bitter fight over the future of America’s efforts to tackle global warming.

If Obama had been able to persuade a majority of the people then this could have become binding law that a subsequent administration would not have been able to repeal by mere regulation. Instead, a number of US federal courts ruled that Obama's "signature policy" amounted to an unconstitutional usurpation of congressional power by the executive branch. Perhaps the same type of unilateral executive action you are so vehemently complaining about now?

The repeal proposal, which will be filed in the Federal Register on Tuesday, fulfills a promise President Trump made to eradicate his predecessor’s environmental legacy. Eliminating the Clean Power Plan makes it less likely that the United States can fulfill its promise as part of the Paris climate agreement to ratchet down emissions that are warming the planet and contributing to heat waves and sea-level rise. Mr. Trump has vowed to abandon that international accord.

But presumably is aware that the US has already exceeded what any other nation has achieved in reducing its emissions.

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A few years ago I remember some of the denialists on this forum arguing that the US shouldn't participate in any international AGW agreements, because, they said, China would NEVER agree to join those agreements. With the election of the Denier-In-Chief the tables have changed 180 degrees. What an embarrassment we've become...

Only to those who have an embarrassingly low amount of real world information that they read & watch. Or those who believe that when an autocratic govt. that is not accountable to its people issues an official statement that they have "joined" an int'l agreement they have any intention of doing so.

[john61ct]

China is going to take full advantage of our current laughingstock status, position itself as a world leader in green tech.

Huge manufacturing exports to very high demand around the world.

Even bigger PR gains in "soft power", positioning itself in the developing markets, access to critical raw material resources.

And we're handing it to them on a golden platter, earning our villainous bully rep for many decades. But at least we used to be seen as clever, now the stupidity side is becoming ever more visible.

[wolfgal]

Hi,

forgive me for not having read every comment before jumping in. perhaps someone already brought the below to the table...

i would like to share a sailor's story about the sea, the climate.

please note that he relates his experience, so there is no need to debate.

let's just listen and, perhaps, consider his perspective ...

TED talk: Sailing and Climate Change | Sailing Dog Dry Goods

[Alberg30Shill]

Originally Posted by Exile

As for producers, US is #2, Canada #5, Australia #7, Norway #13. China is #1 overall and that's predominantly coal. Although I hear they are putting up more solar panels.

As for consumers, China is #1 again overall by a pretty wide margin over #2 US.

Which Countries Produce The Most Fossil Fuels? - The Energy Collective

I'm sorry but the USA doesn't get to move it's manufacturing to China for cheap labor and import and sell those goods cheaply in the US, then claim that it's Chinese carbon because it was burnt in China. The US is unquestionably the world's largest carbon polluter.