Global Warming/Climate Change Discussion Thread

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  • 3,647 comments
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Which of the following statements best reflects your views on Global Warming?

  • Global warming is occurring and human activity is the main cause

    Votes: 159 32.0%

  • Global warming is occurring, but human activity is only playing a minor role

    Votes: 88 17.7%

  • Global warming is occurring, but it is entirely natural

    Votes: 57 11.5%

  • Global warming is occurring, but anthropogenic global warming theory is a fraud

    Votes: 23 4.6%

  • Global warming is occurring, but the causes are not known

    Votes: 32 6.4%

  • Global warming is not occurring at all

    Votes: 17 3.4%

  • Global warming is not occurring at all and anthropogenic global warming theory is a fraud

    Votes: 50 10.1%

  • Global warming is occurring, and human activity plays a significant role (this option was added afte

    Votes: 71 14.3%
  • Total voters
    497
I was specifically talking about CO2 emissions only i.e. in terms of CO2 in the atmosphere, the only metric that really matters to the climate system is how much is there and not who puts it there...
 
Imari
Measuring emissions by GDP seems like a fairly certain way to make sure that rich countries can do whatever they like and poor countries look bad for the emissions of a campfire. I'd be wary of using that particular measure.
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I raised that because a claim was made that China was actually not bad and America was "insanely" reliant on fossil fuels. Turns out that China isn't doing all that well compared directly to the United States.

Your assertion doesn't really hold true either. Low GDP African and other countries tend to dominate the "good" end of the list and everyone else seems spread about here and there. IMO GDP should be the go to measure. Total emissions is too dependent on population and also does not take into account how much of the world's good and services you produce. The U.S. is the second worst in total terms but also produces more goods than dozens of other countries combined, even including western countries. How much emissions you generate per unit of output is the go to measure of carbon efficiency.
 
Dotini
@Imari
Isn't Australia China's principal source of coal? Given the grave reality and lethality of global warming, wouldn't the right thing to do be to shut in your coal production and cheer on China to go more nuclear and renewable? We have already well-established that China has no need to use coal.
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Probably. Good luck convincing the Australian government to do that. Our politicians are already deep in the pockets of the mining industry. If the coal industry decided that what it really needed was all first-born children to be killed, they'd have Austwitz approved and set up by the end of the week.

Is my lack of faith in the incorruptibility of Australian politicians showing?

Johnnypenso
I raised that because a claim was made that China was actually not bad and America was "insanely" reliant on fossil fuels. Turns out that China isn't doing all that well compared directly to the United States.
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I don't know about insanely reliant on fossil fuels, but yes, China is doing relatively well at having limited emissions compared to the US for the relative size of the countries.
 
Imari
Austwitz
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I'm ashamed of how funny I found that, as well as of this:

austwitzohyou.jpg
 
Imari
I don't know about insanely reliant on fossil fuels, but yes, China is doing relatively well at having limited emissions compared to the US for the relative size of the countries.
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By what measure?
 
Imari
I don't know about insanely reliant on fossil fuels, but yes, China is doing relatively well at having limited emissions compared to the US for the relative size of the countries.
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I would argue that the US is doing much better at limiting emissions relative to China - since 2000, total annual CO2 emissions from the US have fallen by 7%, while China's have increased by over 200%.
 
Touring Mars
I would argue that the US is doing much better at limiting emissions relative to China - since 2000, total annual CO2 emissions from the US have fallen by 7%, while China's have increased by over 200%.
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In the 1950's the US was still completing its rural electrification program, and just starting up its continental system of freeways. Today China still has millions of people living without electricity.
 
China and the US are polluting like crazy, I don't think anyone is questioning that. China and the US also has a massive demand. China is polluting worse than the US in absolute terms, and there's no questioning that either.

China is ratcheting up their nuclear program while the US is not. And while China may not have as large a nuclear program as the US, it's not exactly a small fraction. The US has more nuclear reactors than any country in the world, but based on our demand we should build many many more. China has (according to wikipedia) the 4th largest nuclear power generation capability in the world currently. A few years ago they were 10th. In short order they'll be 3rd, behind France.

They're moving in the right direction, we're not. They're farther behind, but I don't like that we're making no progress on this front. It's not that I care if China has more reactors than the US. It's that nuclear power is the answer, and we're not continuing to embrace it as a nation.
 
Touring Mars
I would argue that the US is doing much better at limiting emissions relative to China - since 2000, total annual CO2 emissions from the US have fallen by 7%, while China's have increased by over 200%.
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The US is doing better at limiting emissions. China is doing better at having limited emissions. One is doing well at reducing. One is doing well at being low.

I can appreciate that a subtlety of word choice like that can be hard to distinguish sometimes.

Percentages get weird when comparing things that are not of equivalent size. 200% sounds like a lot, but 200% of a small number can be not very much at all. Not that I particularly like the rate at which China's emissions are increasing, but they'd have to double again to get to the same sort of level as the US.
 
Imari
The US is doing better at limiting emissions. China is doing better at having limited emissions. One is doing well at reducing. One is doing well at being low.

I can appreciate that a subtlety of word choice like that can be hard to distinguish sometimes.

Percentages get weird when comparing things that are not of equivalent size. 200% sounds like a lot, but 200% of a small number can be not very much at all. Not that I particularly like the rate at which China's emissions are increasing, but they'd have to double again to get to the same sort of level as the US.
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Are you doing like a per capita normalization or something? China has double the US emissions.
 
Danoff
Are you doing like a per capita normalization or something? China has double the US emissions.
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Grossly, but it has over four times the population.

A lot of our emissions are offloaded to China, considering they are, at this point, the de facto manufacturing hub of the world. The United States is nearly as productive, but a lot more of that goes to domestic consumption than in China. The average Chinese has a much lower carbon footprint than the average American.
 
niky
Grossly, but it has over four times the population.

A lot of our emissions are offloaded to China, considering they are, at this point, the de facto manufacturing hub of the world. The United States is nearly as productive, but a lot more of that goes to domestic consumption than in China. The average Chinese has a much lower carbon footprint than the average American.
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Gross is what's important here. Normalizing by population, or normalizing by GDP isn't really important. The average US citizen has a much lower carbon footprint per per capita GDP. In other words, the average Chinese person doesn't have a lower carbon footprint because they're conservation-minded, they have a lower carbon footprint because they're poor.

If all you can afford is a moped, you're not going to pollute as much... until you can afford a car. By some standards, we could actually consider the lower carbon footprint per capita to be a problem because it means that China's pollution will be increasing (grossly and per capita) as the nation develops.
 
Danoff
Gross is what's important here. Normalizing by population, or normalizing by GDP isn't really important. The average US citizen has a much lower carbon footprint per per capita GDP. In other words, the average Chinese person doesn't have a lower carbon footprint because they're conservation-minded, they have a lower carbon footprint because they're poor.

If all you can afford is a moped, you're not going to pollute as much... until you can afford a car. By some standards, we could actually consider the lower carbon footprint per capita to be a problem because it means that China's pollution will be increasing (grossly and per capita) as the nation develops.
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The GDP issue is: How do you rate economic output? What's counted? Manufactured items? Mined materials? Agricultural? Intellectual output? I've been pondering this since looking it up before and seeing the US still possessing a better GDP to emissions ratio even as China has overtaken it for industrial production... again, measured in dollars, not necessarily actual output... if a two ton US SUV takes "x" amount of fossil fuel to produce, while a two ton Chinese SUV takes the same, but the US SUV sells for 50% more, is that really reflective of output versus emissions?

But yes, it IS a problem, because China is working hard to bootstrap all those people into middle class territory. As other markets falter, internal consumer demand will be necessary to fuel Chinese expansion. That said, the rise in per capita and per GDP emissions has slowed, which means China is addressing the issue now. How effective they will be, though, remains to be seen.
 
niky
... As other markets falter, internal consumer demand will be necessary to fuel Chinese expansion. That said, the rise in per capita and per GDP emissions has slowed, which means China is addressing the issue now. How effective they will be, though, remains to be seen.
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I've heard it said that millions of Chinese have no electricity. My question - how many millions?
 
Rallywagon
Seems Honda... and surprisingly GM are not fans of Trump's idea to roll back plans on lowering emissions and zero emissions policies that are currently in place
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...BqK9lhDcWn1z3naTzXfuzDaxN83ItR2g_W3IWLIz7ubgU
I have to say, I'm am surprised to hear that GM is backing gov regulations like this on their industry. A sign of the times?
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If you are to spend billions in development over the next decade... would you rather that development money be split by serving several regions with completely different regulatory requirements, or regions with uniform or at least complementary requirements?

Having the US roughly parallel Europe and China in terms of strictness of emissions and fuel economy regulations saves the OEMs a lot of money. At least those who are building globally.
 
Rallywagon
If that is true, then maybe global warming is in fact saving our skin?
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The experts remain unconvinced that we're entering an ice age. But they're also certainly not ruling it out. I think the problem is that very little is understood in this area. Certainly the last small ice age corresponded to a period of reduced solar activity. Still, humanity hasn't been tracking sunspots since the dawn of time, so we just don't have much to go on. Researchers don't want to risk their careers forecasting an ice age when they have so little to stand on (and I wouldn't either). If the next sun cycle really is small as predicted, we may see more grumbling about this possibility.

Certainly it's possible that we're headed for an ice age.

It would be a tremendous stroke of luck to enter a period of colder temperatures due to solar activity right when we're grappling with CO2-based warming.
 
Danoff
It would be a tremendous stroke of luck to enter a period of colder temperatures due to solar activity right when we're grappling with CO2-based warming.
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Yes, if it is only a "small ice age". The real thing would be a real problem, to say the least, far worse than any realistically envisaged global warming.
 
Dotini
Yes, if it is only a "small ice age". The real thing would be a real problem, to say the least, far worse than any realistically envisaged global warming.
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It looks like that's not really possible though.

https://skepticalscience.com/heading-into-new-little-ice-age-intermediate.htm

The "real thing" is a runaway effect from changes to Earth's albedo. Much like warming trends can get worse the more they progress, so too can cooling trends get worse the more they progress. The real deal ice age requires an accumulation of glaciers to increase Earth's reflectivity, further increasing the spread of glaciers, further increasing reflectivity. Climate science has apparently concluded the global warming has rendered a real ice age impossible for at least 100,000 years, probably more. It seems that the best we can hope for is a little ice age caused by a temporary reduction is solar activity.
 
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I'm definitely not worrying about another Ice Age in my lifetime. But not for another 100,000 years? No, I wouldn't make that bet - even if I could live long enough to collect. :lol:

I've trained myself to discount the prognostications of skeptics and alarmists alike. I think the record shows there have been 10 Ice Ages in the last million years. And science as I understand it cannot explain the precise mechanism by which they occur. So I would place a bet there will be another Ice Age within 10,000 years at most.
 
Dotini
I'm definitely not worrying about another Ice Age in my lifetime. But not for another 100,000 years? No, I wouldn't make that bet - even if I could live long enough to collect. :lol:

I've trained myself to discount the prognostications of skeptics and alarmists alike. I think the record shows there have been 10 Ice Ages in the last million years. And science as I understand it cannot explain the precise mechanism by which they occur. So I would place a bet there will be another Ice Age within 10,000 years at most.
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I'm sure that the orbital conditions that cause the start of one will be coming along shortly, if it hasn't happened already. I wonder if someone isn't tracking that actually. But the actual ice age relies on more than the tipping point of orbital conditions to result, it requires a compounding effect from glaciers reducing the amount of heat that the earth absorbs. Glaciers make the Earth reflect more of the sun's energy back into space. So even if the orbital conditions are right, if the glaciers can't get going, they can't get the runaway effect started. The current thinking is that humanity has broken the glacial/inter-glacial cycle.

When they say not another one for 100,000 years (the estimates I saw were as much as 500,000 years), they're trying to estimate how long it will take for humanity get global warming under control. And if we can get that under control, I think we'd prevent an ice age anyway. So it is quite possible that Earth has seen its last ice age, forever, unless something wipes out humanity.
 
IMO humanity overestimates its importance in the cosmic sense. There may be factors operating at the galactic scale which are involved in Ice Age cycles. On the other hand, Earth may be the center of the universe and Earth is God's little tabletop sandbox for growing worshippers, with industrial global warming being His latest gift. :rolleyes: Population 10 billion here we come.
 
Dotini
IMO humanity overestimates its importance in the cosmic sense. There may be factors operating at the galactic scale which are involved in Ice Age cycles.
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I don't know what you mean by importance here. But it doesn't really matter. The question is whether we understand the major factors in the ice age cycles or not. And the albedo (and atmospheric chemistry) effect that glaciers have on the Earth is a known phenomenon. If the temperature of the Earth is raised enough to prevent the glaciers from starting that cycle, that's it... done... case closed...

It's not a question of "importance", it's a question of math. Ice ages are runaway effects. Change the starting point, and you can stop it from happening altogether. It's outlined in great detail in the paper below. Don't just wave your hands and say "scale" or "religion".

https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2005.trigger.pdf

It's one thing to say that you take these types of papers with a grain of salt. I do too, often the error bars on these types of studies are wildly inaccurate. But the fact remains that ice ages, the real ones, require a feedback loop. The magnitude of it is not forced upon the Earth externally, but is caused by a nonlinear feedback internally to a smaller external force. The internal numbers have changed, that much is clear.

Edit:

...and another thing (apparently I'm not done yet).

Scale is really important here. We're talking about avoiding the next glacial period entirely. That's a 100k year cycle if we miss one. What does 100k years of human technological development look like? Less than 200 years ago we had no cars, no airplanes, no real understanding of medicine. What does 500 times that look like? Do you think there's any chance that if humanity is around with 100,000 years of technological evolution from this point that they're going to worry about climate? 2000 years ago it was year zero. Human development it taking off like an absolute exponential rocket.... if we can survive 50 times as long as the distance from here to year zero, we'll be unrecognizable.

Yea... scale.
 
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I'm probably bumping but I think that glabal warming is real but humans haven't affected it as much as we think and it's nowhere near as serious as what we make it out to be. If I'm right in remembering global heat levels are actually getting colder, but that might be false or outdated, so don't quote me on that.
 

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