EU Sets Goal To Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions 40% By 2030 172
An anonymous reader writes: The 28 nations in the European Union agreed Friday to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40% (going by 1990 levels) by the year 2030. The deal received widespread criticism; industry bosses said the 2030 targets were too extreme, while many environmental groups said the goals weren't ambitious enough. The deal requires each nation to achieve the goal independently — earlier targets could use international offsets to avoid or reduce action. EU officials hope the agreement will encourage the U.S. and China to take a more aggressive stance on fighting climate change.
Cruel way (Score:2)
The cruel way to cut emissions is to offer suicide booths [youtube.com] to people. That way that person won't contribute anymore.
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Not that I am pro-suicide booths, but at least they are voluntary for individuals (well at least if they had a few safeguards against accidental usage sadly lacking from the Futurama version were it not for the comedic element). They are not as cruel as forcing millions a people to live in squalor with poor sanitation, non-potable water supplies, limited food resources, etc. because someone else decided CO2 is bad and you can't be allowed to have any fossil fuels.
Please, if you are going to insist on no fos
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There's no need to wait for the perfect solution and there are plenty of avenues to follow and that are being followed.
2030 is 15 years away and there are other very significants sources of CO2 apart from energy use. Given how long the warnings about global warming have been around, this should have been a problem that's nearly solved, not in desperate need of a magic solution within a decade.
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As I understand it, we could prevent global warming right now without reducing our use of fossil fuels, and even cause an ice age if we so choose. Of course there will be side-effects for those methods. And we will have to cease our use of fossil fuels in the not-too-distant future anyhow. And the use of fossil fuels also generally creates other pollutants as well. So we could kill three birds with one stone if we could wean ourselves off fossil fuels now rather than later.
I suspect the reason we're all dra
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It's not entirely clear to me what this "economic suicide" is. Is it all about buying useless crap that we didn't need 15 yrs ago?
An investment in better infrastructure would be a huge economic stimulus and would entail large numbers of jobs that pay well, develop skills and can't be entirely offshored.
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I was referring to job creation through new infrastructure, which, one hopes, will create new opportunities.
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If you want to demolish that academic cartel, perhaps the most effective way to do so would be for the tech community to embrace the very worst-case greenhouse gas scenario the Greens espouse. Let's see the look on their faces as we explain that the one way we can stop emitting carbon in one generation is to go nuclear. Be sure to wear a poncho to avoid spatter from those exploding heads.
Let's go nuclear. (Score:3)
Here is environmentalist George Monboit embracing the deployment of nuclear power: http://www.monbiot.com/2013/12... [monbiot.com]
Here is climate scientist James Hanson calling for the development and deployment of nuclear energy: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.... [nytimes.com]
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If it's a conspiracy of dunces & a pack of lies, why does Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon believe that the world is warming due to fossil fuel use?
Well-connected corporations frequently espouse whatever the political class wants them to say. That keeps government regulators from targeting them and makes it more likely that the corporation will be the recipient of special favors from the government. Example from outside the world of climate change: The Dallas Cowboys signed Michael Sam to their practice squad because American politicians are pushing the gay agenda and want to help gay activists queerify professional sports. Cowboys owner Jerry Jone
Theory vs reality? (Score:5, Insightful)
"EU officials hope the agreement will encourage the U.S. and China to take a more aggressive stance on fighting climate change."
The US?
Would that be the same United States that met the original Kyoto reduction targets without trying?
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Yes, but they cheated! They should have done it by government mandate or natural disaster rather than by fracking.
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Yes, and it's also the same Germany whose own Greens are causing it to increase its emissions of greenhouse gas:
http://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/... [www.zeit.de]
(In German, but the bar chart lists both CO2 and other greenhouse gases)
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That doesn't really say what it says.. Well, it does but it is wrong.
You see, it starts off in 1990. Germany was divided into 2 separate countries at that time. According to the EIA [eia.gov], ****IF the right selections do not appear, it is simple to make the selections on their tool and see the values by changing the dates and selecting the countries.
Anyways, in 1988, east and west Germany combined to a total of 1009.618 million metric tons of Co2 emissions from energy use, in 1989, that went to 988.247 million met
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Good catch, I hadn't thought of that. There likely was plenty of redundant industry that could have been shuttered when the wall came down.
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Germany is 1/3rd the way through it's transition to a non-nuclear powered grid. In the short term CO2 has risen, but renewable sources have also massively boomed. By the time they finish around 2024 they will have fewer coal and gas stations, and those that they do have will be producing less CO2 than the current older types. Plus, they will have vast amounts of renewable energy.
Judge them on the planned end result, or wait until 2024 before making a determination. Otherwise you are just trying to claim tha
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If Germany's CO2 has risen this much after closing of the older nuclear plants, you're not going to want to be anywhere around after the remaining newer nukes are closed, as they plan to, by 2020, as it transitions to Full Unicorn.
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Would that be the same United States that met the original Kyoto reduction targets without trying?
If electric cars become common, then the US may very well do that again.
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In my country dirty coal supplies most of the power, so electric cars might actually increase emissions.
Does USA electricity come from "clean" sources? I guess Monty Burns supplies much of the energy from low-emission nuke reactors...
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The United States did no such thing and the initial Kyoto targets were fucking weak to begin with.
Had America signed on, it would have been required to reduce emissions of 6 GHGs by 7% compared to the levels in 1990.
Several of those GHGs are MUCH more potent than CO2 for trapping heat.
From what I can tell, the USA reduced only the CO2 by about 5% from the 1997 levels which were 10% higher than those of 1990.
The CO2 may have gone down thanks to all that fracking and the drop in economic activity from the cri
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It's a typical US problem, originally sanctioned by the Cheney administration.
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Had we signed on and actually meet the goals in Kyoto, individual CO2 emissions would have to be at the level they were in 1850.
Re:Theory vs reality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Europe's population has grown since 1990 but not as much.
No, it's not a given that emissions would have increased because there was little effort made to rein them in. The advanced Western nations enjoy a similar standard of living as North America but use far less energy to do so. And all those countries are democracies.
You may have missed the memo but China ate your lunch money anyway, to the tune of a couple TRILLION, mostly because you were sold on the idea of cheap shit and outsourced manufacturing - and US emissions increased, even per capita.
If it wasn't the for overall efficiency and large population of California & New York holding down the per-capita numbers, America would the worst of the Western nations for CO2 emissions by any measure.
And stop bitching about China & India having no restrictions - they were using only a fraction of the energy and resources despite their huge populations.
But if America had the balls to dive wholeheartedly into finding solutions, then they could sell them to the developing nations.
Re:Theory vs reality? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The gasoline cost in the Europe is because of taxes, same for the VAT on cars. But in most places, public transport is so good that most don't really need to drive, let alone own more than 1 car. US building standards, while getting better, have been shite for a long time and leaky buildings cost a lot
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That's comparing the output from one year to another, in this case 2008 & 2009.
I couldn't read the zoomed graphic but this PDF shows the same info: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sy... [guardian.co.uk]
Recall that Kyoto required reductions of 6 GHGs, not just CO2 but measured in CO2-equivalents. The claims for the USA meeting those requirements are looking ONLY at CO2 when it's known that all that fracking has been releasing significant amounts of the much more powerful GHG, methane.
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Compared to burning coal, natgas does release less CO2 but leaky wells allow a lot of methane to escape which makes the warming issue worse in the short-to-medium term.
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When other countries reduce their carbon footprints, what's the increased incentive for the US and China to reduce theirs?
Saving money.
Shale gas is cheaper than coal.
LED bulbs pay for themselves in six months.
Electric cars will soon have a TCO lower than gas.
Technological improvements and market economics have reduced CO2 by far more than government decrees.
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That's a market thing not a country thing.
In a capitalist society, any corporation or person can decide to cater to those markets whether the countries demand it or not.
In fact, that is likely what will happen. US companies, or multinationals will enter those markets in Europe because they artificially exist and end up selling some products in the US because people- although in small numbers- want them. This will eventually end up creating a market in the US where more and more people want them through natu
Re:Theory vs reality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Doing things the green way is usually more expensive. Most companies would be happy to dump toxic shit in to rivers, and pollute the air if governments would let them. So if Europe says you have to do X to keep the environment clean, and X costs Y, some companies will pay Y amount and others will move so that they don't have to do X.
Nike could pay people a decent wage in the US to make their shoes. But sweat shops in the developing world are much cheaper. This is the same issue, but with the environment instead of wages.
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I don't know that United States. The US in this universe increased emissions 1990-2012.
They first round of the Kyoto Protocol did not require absolute reduction, just slower growth. The US, which did not sign the protocol, increased emissions by less than most of the countries that did. The main reason was a huge increase in shale gas production, displacing coal.
Re:Theory vs reality? (Score:4, Informative)
A few points of order though.
- Clinton signed Kyoto but never sent it to the senate. The reason being is it never had support from either party and would have died by about 90 votes.
- Second, W could have withdrawn from Kyoto with a stroke of a pen as the President can cancel treaties.
- And finally, treaties inherently do not have the force of law behind them. They do not supersede Federal, State or even individual rights (see the recent Bond v US ruling). Now the Obama admin doesn't agree with this as they argued that a treaty trumps everything....but as we know with Obama/Holder, just because he says its doesn't mean its true.
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- And finally, treaties inherently do not have the force of law behind them.
No. They can have the force of law and can override legislative law at both the federal and state levels.
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Why not? (Score:1)
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not a problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:not a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
PS, they don't shrink.
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"WIth the way that European country economies are shrinking, we'll get to 40% carbon reduction with no trouble at all."
Go to the link below, scroll down until you find the table "EU Member States GDP growth rates" and scrutinize it carefully.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]
Greece is in serious trouble, Italy & Portugal have a lot of work & belt-tightening still to do and some other countries need to get their act together better.
But that's about it.
Go to the Google Public Data Explorer link below t
Should be easier now. (Score:1, Insightful)
Should be easier now.
Recently Germany decided that their nuclear power plants weren't contaminating the environment enough so they decided to dump vastly more radioactive shit into the air around Europe.
This came with a bunch of CO2. When they actually decide that radioactive contamination is bad, they can simply shut down the coal plants and start using nuclear again.
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But hey, Germany is promising to make its new generation of giant strip mines into lakes by 2100, when the unicorn farmss are in full production and they don't need to belch any more lignite smoke.
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In the long term, however, Germany's power-plants will pollute a lot less.
How so? The power plants are spewing vast quantities of radioactive crap and heavy metals into the air. It's completly unconstrained. The nuclear waste can be properly disposed of, or recycled into new fuel. Germany has a very good record with nuclear safety.
Nucular (Score:2, Interesting)
And at the same time they dislike "nucular" 'cos it is ..., well, "nucular".
I live in Northern Europe - for us this will mean insane regulations. Just insane.
The people who we call "redgreen" (communistic-environmentalist-extremists) are the second biggest problem to earth. The biggest is exponential population growth. Global warming is somewhere aroung fifth to tenth - at least for us here in the north.
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I have never claimed it would be a picnic. I just said it is nowhere near top five problems we are going to encounter, though it will be a problem.
The claim "pests will conquer us" is a tad, well, one sided. We will get some "nice" immigration too - but the alarmists never mention those.
Same with the weather, in every alarmist article it "will suck" or as you point it "there is a possibility"[1]. If the last five summers is any indication, the weather will *improve* considerably (for us humans, sure some "p
That's not enough (Score:2)
Because there will be more than double that number of cars on the road by that time, and so it will still result in a net increase. It's better than no cuts at all, but IMO,. they should be focusing on reducing emissions by at least 10% every single year to really stay ahead of the rate at which more cars are being added to roads... by the same time, at that rate, emissions would have been cut by about 80% off of what they are today.
That would make a difference. Reducing by 40% over 16 years is just po
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/deadpan
Yes.
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Why?
I'm serious.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]
Deadpan is a form of comic delivery in which humor is presented without a change in emotion or body language. It is usually spoken in a casual, monotone, or cantankerous voice, and expresses a calm, sincere, or grave demeanor, often in spite of the ridiculousness of the subject matter.
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The year (Score:2)
How far do we have to get into the 21st century before you people stop putting "the year" in front of a year? What else could "by 2030" be referring to? It was arguably ok to write that in the first couple of years of the century, when people were still not used to years starting with "20", rather than "19", but it's not ok any more - it's redundant, clunky, and stupid.
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I guess you don't know any "old people", then.
My uncle, by marriage, was born in 1920. His creaky 94yo bones don't get around so well but he still remembers the 20s and 30s quite sharply.
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[......] he still remembers the 20s and 30s quite sharply.
But does he read Slashdot? And, more relevantly, has he got used to the fact that years start with 20 now? The "anonymous reader" obviously hasn't.
I remember the 1960s quite well, but even before the current century started, i was used to years starting with 20.
Ireland (Score:2)
Germany, Ireland, and the Czech Republic have entered into a mult-lateral agreement to fight the Leprechaun scourge and reduce the number of children replaced by fairy changelings by 2025.
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Luxembourg isn't involved? How queer.
So, good news and bad news (Score:5, Funny)
The good news is the European nations just signed an economic suicide pact.
The bad news is there's no way they'll actually keep to it.
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Actually it's by far the best option for us, economically speaking.
Saving energy is cheaper than adding new capacity. New capacity is insanely expensive - the UK has to guarantee more than 2x the going rate for electricity produced by new nuclear plants just to get them built. Since most of Europe has some kind of socialized healthcare it also adds huge costs to that when building more coal or increasing industrial pollution.
In addition to that, clean and low power technology is where the world is heading.
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Except HS2 isn't about environmental improvements or any such daftness but entirely about palm greasing and now that the economic benefits have been wholly debunked it's just a case of no MPs being willing to admit they were wrong about it and do the right thing in cancelling the whole £50bn waste of money.
The fact it runs right through various important nature reserves in fact causes massive damage to biodiversity because there are some species whose only habitats are going to be wiped out by i
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The majority of greenhouse gasses come from transportation and electricity production. If everyone stayed home and we quit using air conditioning and heat the problem will be solved.
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Even if what you propose was physically possible, a hibernating society is not really a solution.
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Not that hard. 25 dollar a gallon gas tax and triple the price of electricity and people would have no choice except of course for the rich.
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Except rebel, of course. Which I'd have to do, since without heating I'd freeze to death in the winter, even if I'd be willing to suffer being under effective house arrest.
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We know what an Anonymous Coward is.
But what is frof.
What is Ureacrats.
Two words - wind bag (Score:1)
And voluminously. He's a voluminous contributor. The voluminousocity coefficientness of his contributions is of an expontially enormous magnitude.
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Re:...and everybody gets to be right (Score:5, Insightful)
while many environmental groups said the goals weren't ambitious enough.
They could say they want to cut the number 100% by 2030, and there would be people out there saying its not fast enough. It seems for some reason everytime something like this comes up, the only people you hear are those who say we shouldnt do anything, and those who say we are already doomed and should live in mud huts. Why cant we come up with a rational response? something where we use what we have now, and work towards a better tomorrow together?
instead of saying "global warming is a hoax!" why not say "well, its always better to have a clean environment, so lets work towards the goals"
and instead of saying "we need to stop using oil now! we need to stop using X Y Z NOW!!!" , how about we say "well, i know we cant stop society by eliminating everything that is "bad for the environment" so lets work at it one step at a time"
in the end, we go broke, shady business people get rich, and nothing changes. its disgusting
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Why cant we come up with a rational response? something where we use what we have now, and work towards a better tomorrow together?
Because of bad journalism. The reality is that the mainstream environmental movement is very rational and practical. There are even some politicians that are too. They don't make good headlines or make the reader angry and fearful though, so they tend to be ignored by journalists.
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Better tomorrow for whom? If I burn a gallon of gasoline getting to work today, my tomorrow will be better, even if the day after that will be worse for everyone. Powers that be have spent several decades trying to get people to believe selfishness is a virtue rather than a character flaw. That same bullshit is now preventing them from doing anything about anything.
Everyone ar
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Given that a good proportion of the world was forested in the past and CO2 was a lot lower back then, I don't think you can use that argument. England used to be heavily forested until we started fighting the French, Spanish and Portuguese navies. Similar things happened all over the world as industry and war kicked off. More importantly plants don't solely depend on CO2 to survive, there are limiting factors like nutrient content in soils, water and so on which are more likely to dominate.
As for politic
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If you are wondering about the impact of carbon dioxide on say, forests, this type of question is easy to research with a quick Google search. In 30 seconds, I found this NSF study by Harvard researchers [nsf.gov], for example, not exactly normally a hotbed of pro-GHG folks.
It's actually quite well-established that increased carbon dioxide levels are very good for plant growth. As it turns out, it also enables them to grow while needing less water, for example.
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Vacation! (Score:2)
I think vacations in Europe will be cheap a few years from now after their economies crash and the Dollar once again becomes worth more that the local currencies.
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Cutting greenhouse gasses by 40% will also cut jobs by 40%.
Why should it? It's my understanding that a lot of areas of industry are actually reducing their energy expenses. Is Germany a country economically reliant of aluminum smelters (where the electrochemistry can't be cheated)? (And even here, let's forget for a moment conveniently that Dutch smelters are getting into market competition problems because of cheap German electricity anyway...)
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All signs are that an increase in the price of polluting energy sources does not just boosts the development of alternatives but is especially making people and companies work more efficient.
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Of course artificially inflating the costs of energy makes companies and employees more efficient. That is because they have to compete with outside sources who are not burdened with the artificial costs or risk going under.
If everyone in the word was subject to the exact same costs increases, it would only become inflation and the world would move on just the same. Instead when only part of the world has to deal with increased costs, they have options to consider, either becoming more efficient, paying les
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Sure some Chinese imports are cheaper due to their lacking environmental concerns but the vast majority had to do with people there working for peanuts, a situation that's rapidly changing.
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Cutting greenhouse gasses by 40% will also cut jobs by 40%.
This is fallacious reasoning. You could replace some of the current energy production with human power: pushing a flywheel for room, board, and $1.50/hour. Unemployment would drop to nil! Of course productivity would reduce because overall energy production would be much less, but jobs are how the government measures economic success right now.
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Nice try, but feeding people (or even draft animals) calories to perform manual labor produces more GHG than using more efficient methods like coal power plants. :)
Not that there's anything wrong with more GHG production, but broken window fallacy and all that as well...
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Or stay behind.
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Carbon footprint = measurable thing
Global warming = demonstrated beyond doubt (to most)
CO2 = some is good for your plants, too much will hurt them (and you)
For someone with a "univercity" degree in meteorology you sure as heck don't know what you're talking about. Also, meteorology != climate science. You should know that if you have the degree you state you do.
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"Global warming" = the warming of the globe
"Climate change" = the changes to the climate the warming causes
The pause doesn't exist, either. You stating that it does (and expecting to be taken seriously) shows you are woefully ignorant of the science, and desperate to not learn. Did you know you can ignore all the models and anthropogenic warming is still very much evident?
You're the one who's been had. You are arguing against trying to protect the world that you are leaving to future generations, and pay
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They changed the name from "Global warming" to "Climate change" for PR reasons, the underlying principles are still the same.
Global warming means the average temperature of the globe raises by a small amount. And people would assume that the only thing that would change is that temperatures will raise by a few degrees. Except that it may not match local observations (hey, this winter is colder than the previous one) and even if it was, it would be mostly viewed as something desirable (who likes freezing col