India Ratifies The Paris Climate Change Agreement (npr.org) 130
"India just ratified the Paris climate deal -- bringing it extremely close to taking effect," reports the Washington Post, calling India the world's fourth-largest producer of greenhouse gas. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes NPR's update on the Paris agreement:
It will not become binding until it's ratified by 55 countries that contribute a total of at least 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The 55-country requirement has already been fulfilled -- India is No. 62 -- but...the current signatories account for about 52 percent of global greenhouse emissions, according to a statement released by the U.N. on Sunday.
India currently produces about 4.5 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions [and] has set a goal of producing 40 percent of its electricity with non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. India also promised to plant or preserve enough tree cover to act as a sink for at least 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide, and has called on the U.S. and other fully developed countries to share technologies that help decrease emissions.
India currently produces about 4.5 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions [and] has set a goal of producing 40 percent of its electricity with non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. India also promised to plant or preserve enough tree cover to act as a sink for at least 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide, and has called on the U.S. and other fully developed countries to share technologies that help decrease emissions.
Canada, eh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Canada (1.95% of the percent of global greenhouse emissions) is supposed to ratify the agreement later this week [metronews.ca]. With the liberals having the majority of seats, this should easily pass. Not enough to bring it to 55%, though.
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The EU has agreed to ratify it as well, so we'll get above 55% easily.
The EU isn't a country.
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Meh. I'm pretty sure Canada "ratified" the Kyoto protocol as well. Did we meet those targets? I'm thinking no. Of all the countries that did, how many actually met targets? Probably not many.
It's one thing to ratify an agreement, it's another to actually follow though with the contents. There being little consequence, it is subject to whatever political winds change in the future.
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True. Kyoto was ratified by the Liberal party then in power; they were defeated in 2006 by Conservatives (led by fossil fuel enthusiast Stephen Harper) who ruled over Canada until 2015. Liberals are back in the driver seat and odds are they will stay in control until at least 2023, as the two other significant parties (Conservatives, NDP) are now running internal leadership races without a single stron
India is number 4? (Score:3)
A little earlier we were told that the US is no. 4 on the list of polluters (sic) in the post[1] on reservoirs as a source of greenhouse gases.
So which is it?
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Re:India is number 4? (Score:4, Informative)
USA would be second [wikipedia.org], with 17.89% while India shows 4.10%, according to a UN climate change document referenced in the above Wikipedia link.
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These figures are even more interesting when you consider populations:
US: 4.35% of the population (324 million people), 17.89% of greenhouse gasses.
India 17.9% of the population (1330 million people), 4.10% of greenhouse gasses.
1 US citizen creates 17x the greenhouse gasses that an Indian citizen does.
Just imagine what will happen if India achieves the same prosperity level as the US.
That is why, even with radical changes in both the west and countries like India and China, it will be a major feat to just s
Re: India is number 4? (Score:1)
Except it isn't the citizens, it's the corporations.
Re: India is number 4? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's both. Prosperity means that time becomes more valuable than money, and money can buy machinery to do work for you. Imagine you cannot afford that SUV and have to go by bus. Yes, that takes way more hours and is horribly inconvenient, but it also means a lower emission footprint. Of course nobody would willingly accept that hardship for no good reason, so the only "good enough" reason would probably be that you can't afford your own car.
Same goes for a lot of other things. Air condition being one, clothes dryer another. We use a lot of machines that increase our quality of life that contribute to pollution, directly or indirectly.
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It's not quite such a stark choice though. You can buy an efficient car, even a more efficient SUV like a plug-in hybrid. You can run the AC all day, or you can improve your home / buy a well designed one that needs much less heating and cooling.
Those things improve quality of life with no down side or less. Less pollution, more disposable income since less is wasted on energy, and the same or better standard of living.
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Well, you first of all have to be able to afford a new home or new car.
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Well, someone has to. But then a few years later you can buy them second hand.
Or just upgrade your current home. Insulation and other easy mods are pretty cheap.
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Someone has to, but that someone in turn will not sell his car like he used to because it will have to last him another year or two since yes, he would want to buy the latest model but he, too, cannot afford it. The "trickle down" theory works both ways. Or rather, it doesn't work in either way...
And insulating your home still means that you have to be able to do it yourself or even, depending on where you live, be allowed to do it yourself. The latter especially if you plan to be able to sell your house at
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Is there much evidence that making cars more efficient makes them cost more? I mean, manufacturers are always improving their engines and other parts anyway to encourage upgrades and stay competitive, so mostly all that efficiency rules do is divert some of the funding that would have gone into making the car more powerful into make it more efficient.
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Cars also get heavier and heavier with all the "must have" gadgets, and of course with all the safety features. It's actually surprising that the average middle class car today weighs about a metric tonne.
And yes, efficiency is of course increasing. But at the same time people want cars with more comfort and more power. Sadly efficiency still isn't one of the main sellers, what people "feel" when they take a car for a test drive is its power and comfort, its design and the gimmicks. Who cares about mileage
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Now this is going to be good. Please elaborate!
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I am fairly sure you have any substantial support for this claim. I think I know where you're going with this one, so allow me to offer a hint: It's less the increased CO2 level, it's more the increased O2 level. But let's first see the support for the claim.
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It uses energy which has to be generated by burning fossil fuel. Since nuclear is the evil now and alternatives aren't really taking off, that's basically what's left.
Re:India is number 4? (Score:5, Insightful)
The lesson here is that it appears that we can actually reduce our emissions significantly without radical changes to our lifestyle, and that developing nations can have a level of prosperity similar to ours without necessarily breaking the planet. Not that we should sit back and relax, quite the contrary, but we shouldn't let ourselves be scared into "radical" solutions either.
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How much of the drop in emissions of the West can be attributed to shifts of heavy industry to China?
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How much of the drop in emissions of the West can be attributed to shifts of heavy industry to China?
Likely none.
You still by German cars, other European cars and Japanese Cars, no one buys cars from China, yet. What exactly do you have in mind China is producing and we are buying if it is not cheap toys or computer/phones?
Re: India is number 4? (Score:5, Informative)
Steel
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Germany is not importing steel from either India nor China in noteworthy amounts. And I doubt your country is.
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Germany imports around 25 billion dollars worth of iron and steel per year. In 2015 about 1.9 billion dollars of that came from China, i.e. about 8%. I leave it up to you to decide whether that is "noteworthy".
http://www.worldsrichestcountries.com/top-germany-imports.html [worldsrich...ntries.com]
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In 2015 about 1.9 billion dollars of that came from China, products not steel/iron. ... the 2 billion I mean. If we would import raw iron/steel I would however not know how much that is in tons, e.g. how it would relate to the amount of cars we produce.
Fixed that for you. And no, that is not noteworthy, don't be scared by big numbers. That is not even the price for one super tanker
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In 2015 about 1.9 billion dollars of that came from China, products not steel/iron.
Fixed that for you.
Nope, you broke it, not fixed it. That's iron & steel input to your industry. Just exactly what do you think cars are made from?
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The link you provided clearly states that Germany is importing products worth 1.9 billion from china, not raw steel.
The cars we make are mostly made from recycled steel, facepalm - recycled cars especially.
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no one buys cars from China, yet.
Not true. I've seen people driving Chinese cars. Outside of China even.
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1 US citizen creates 17x the greenhouse gasses that an Indian citizen does.
Just imagine what will happen if India achieves the same prosperity level as the US./I
Most countries that have a similar prosperity level use far less power than the US do, or produce more if its power "greener". There is no fear that India e.g. will increase its CO2 production dramatically. Unlike the thinking in the US not everyone there wants to live in a shiny western stile house that relies in AC and is otherwise uninhabitable w
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So which is it?
It's numbers, presented from a source.
Interpretation will vary depending on your agenda.
Show the total if you want to make China look bad, show the amount per capita if you want the US to look bad.
Heck, you can even switch to the delta if you want to make the worst offenders look great and those who reduced their emissions decades ago look bad.
You can even decide to only look at carbon emissions and ignore everything else if you want to or if you really want to stretch things you can assign carbon emissions
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Except it never says US is #4:
https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
If the world's reservoirs were a country, they'd be #8 on a list of polluters -- right behind Brazil, China, the EU and the U.S.
It's wrong in that it mention EU as a country but it's not listed in order in that #1 is Brazil, #2 is China, #3 is EU and #4 is the US. .. would put China and USA as #1 and #2 and Brazil at #6 if you don't view EU as a country.
Also it says "polluters" not green-house gas emissions, but maybe that's what one should assume it is?
Green-house gas emissions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The problem is that emission control costs money, and this in turn means that your products get more expensive. So if you care about your environment but some other country does not, your industry is no longer competitive and corporations will move to that other country where they can produce more cheaply.
It's yet another prisoner's dilemma.
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It's yet another prisoner's dilemma.
There's no warden here, just physics. And the prisoners have other options in this particular scenario, like killing other prisoners who are mucking up the numbers.
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Oh FFS, there is actually someone on /. who needs an explanation for Prisoner's Dilemma [wikipedia.org]? Really?
Acid rain (Score:5, Insightful)
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Remember when they passed that thing called the Constitution that said if it's not ratified by the Senate, it has no force of law?
The "Climate Deal" is a useless and powerless waste of ink.
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Oh, I don't know. Agenda 21 was just a "soft law" too that was rejected by the Senate, and yet more than half of the provisions have already been implemented administratively. All those bureaucrats with marching orders just write it up as rules in the Federal Register, and they're never tied to a specific treaty provision. Instead, they just thought the 23,000 pages of federal law and find a new definition for one of the words in there. That's why you can't put fill dirt in a low spot in that 1-acre lot
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Remember when "acid rain" was the #1 environmental problem? - No? - Neither does anyone else under 40 because Reagan and Thatcher pushed for (and won) a global cap + trade treaty on sulphur emissions. Besides, if climate treaties don't make a practical difference, why has the coal industry spent the last 30-40yrs doing everything it can to sabotage them?
Your making a false comparison with coal industry opposition. The coal industry doesn't need to be so evil as to wish for coal to continue to drive CO2 levels up. The coal industry just needs to see a hit to it's profits. A carbon tax and other cap/trade programs all work to directly apply a 'sin' tax on companies that produce CO2, like the coal industry. The coal industry could see zero reduction in the amount of coal they burn, but still lose a lot of money to taxation.
Politically you've got two things in
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You probably mean the Montreal Protocol?
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12... [nytimes.com]
Germany obviously was again nearly a decade ahead, emissions of sulfur dioxide etc. was severally cut in the beginning of the 1980s.
However, looking at the globe, this is not enough. Most sulfur emissions now come from ships. OTOH SO2 has a cooling effect, if we had not the current emission level the globe would probably already be significantly warmer.
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You absolutely nailed it. Spot on!
What about just having MORE countries ratifying?? BTW the EU hasn't ratified yet but is almost certain to do so.
So, don't worry. The treaty will become effective soon. And yes, it will reduce the greenhousegas emissions.
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What about just having MORE countries ratifying?? BTW the EU hasn't ratified yet but is almost certain to do so. ... can't remember.
The EU ratified last week. Or was it two weeks ago
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FTA: "The United States officially ratified the Paris climate agreement in September. Of the top 10 global emitters of greenhouse gases according to the 2015 Paris conference, only the U.S., China and India have submitted their ratification documents. Among the top global emitters of greenhouse gases, the 28 countries of the European Union — which is counted as one entity for the purposes of the treaty — and Russia have yet to officially agree to the plan."
So they have not officially ratified th
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As I said before: the EU officially ratified the treaty (meanwhile) 2 weeks ago.
If there is still paper work to do as in handing in documents, I don't know.
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And as I said before: officially? No.
Proof: the ratification was just announced [bloomberg.com]. And through this (again: as I said before) the treaty is now in effect.
Through the addition of the 28 EU countries the 55% limit has been surpassed.
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Ah you are right, :D
I missread the announcements on www.spiegel.de, they announced "they would ratify it soon" and I only read the headline and assumed they had ratified it.
There was a long discussion about the fact that the EU was so late, I only read that
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Ah you are right.
Indeed ;-) :-))
Allways. Please remember that
Meaningless (Score:2, Insightful)
It's years to late and even if it where ratified by the required number of countries there is no mechanism to force compliance and no targets from previous treaties have even come close to being met
Can we just admit we don't care about children and get on with the business of enslaving them and destroying the planet for our own limited comfort without pretense of ethics or morality
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Works for me.
I'm old enough that I won't be affected by the rising sea levels, I have no kids and no reason to keep this planet habitable 50 years from now. So pump that oil and gimme my greaseball hamburger!
"share" (Score:2)
Not a problem, it's on sale now.
>> Er...we really meant "give"
Thought so.
U.S. has not actually joined the agreement (Score:3)
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No way to enforce it (Score:1)
Wtf? How could this happen? (Score:1)
Clearly India hasn't been subjected to enough black-ops false-flag terror attacks to convince them of the foolishness of this course of action.
Or maybe they just, y'know - want the world to be a better place.
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When you stopped telling everyone that the earth is flat, because if it would be round you would fall over and the useable area would be small.
"Climatedepot" that is a nice name: If you use the deposed liquid and solid hydrocarbons and react them to CO2, do you really think that nothing will happen, as CO2 has a certain spectral property?
Yeah, that'll be why its 400C on Venus (Score:2)
Obviously its just going through a natural climate cycle however, that temperature obviously has nothing to do with its atmosphere being composed of CO2. [/sarcasm]
And before anyone says its simply because its closer to the sun, Mercury is even closer than Venus yet its colder.
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Hey I'm no scientist, but don't they say Venus' atmosphere has very high pressures and lacks water and Mars is 95% CO2 also? IOW, there's more to it.
They also say that right-wing Margaret Thatcher back in the days was one of the first leaders to talk about climate change, as it would help boost nuclear and so destroy the coal industry and so get rid of all those pesky striking left-wing miners (who just wanted to put bread on the table) and that by citing "science" then no politician would be able to counte
Re:Yeah, that'll be why its 400C on Venus (Score:5, Informative)
CO2 absords and re-remits IR - which would otherwise escaped from the atmosphere - in a random direction (ie scattering it) therefore heating the atmosphere up. The physics is not up for debate.
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CO2 absords and re-remits IR - which would otherwise escaped from the atmosphere - in a random direction (ie scattering it) therefore heating the atmosphere up. The physics is not up for debate.
As does water vapor, which is why it's a greenhouse gas, which in turn is another reason why rising temperatures are a problem — they lead to more evaporation. Last I heard the prevalent theory was that if you continue long enough down that road you get enough weather to flip you over into an ice age, but nobody is really sure since these exact conditions are somewhat unprecedented. There hasn't been this much CO2 since what, the last big extinction?
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As does water vapor, which is why it's a greenhouse gas
Lots of water vapour in the air also tends to condense and form clouds, which are white and reflect energy away from the Earth. The greenhouse effect happens when shorter wavelengths (which can penetrate carbon dioxide) hits the ground and are re-radiated as infra red. The IR is then unable to radiate into space because of the greenhouse gasses. If you have a lot of white clouds in the air, then the energy is simply reflected. This causes cooling, which causes the air to be unable to gold as much water
Clouds and glaciation and such (Score:2)
As does water vapor, which is why it's a greenhouse gas
Lots of water vapour in the air also tends to condense and form clouds, which are white and reflect energy away from the Earth. The greenhouse effect happens when shorter wavelengths (which can penetrate carbon dioxide) hits the ground and are re-radiated as infra red. The IR is then unable to radiate into space because of the greenhouse gasses. If you have a lot of white clouds in the air, then the energy is simply reflected. This causes cooling, which causes the air to be unable to gold as much water vapour, which causes rain, and the system largely balances with respect to water vapour.
Not quite so simple. Clouds also reflect thermal infrared, and so they have both warming and cooling effects. Whether the sum is warming or cooling depends, among other things, on the cloud altitude. The first-order effect is that clouds reduce the day/night temperature swings.
Last I heard the prevalent theory was that if you continue long enough down that road you get enough weather to flip you over into an ice age
That's one of the predictions.
A while back, there was a hypothesis that climate warming could affect thermohaline circulation [nasa.gov], cutting off one of the mechanisms circulating heat northward from the equator, and hence triggering a northern-hemisphere glaciation ("i
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As does water vapor, which is why it's a greenhouse gas, which in turn is another reason why rising temperatures are a problem â" they lead to more evaporation. Last I heard the prevalent theory was that if you continue long enough down that road you get enough weather to flip you over into an ice age, but nobody is really sure since these exact conditions are somewhat unprecedented.
Not even wrong. You can't get by ever increasing global temperatures to glacial period, which is a considerably lower global temperature than present.
There hasn't been this much CO2 since what, the last big extinction?
The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum did indeed have mass extinctions, but of seafloor organisms which we aren't. Land dwelling mammals thrived during the era and diversified.
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The future belongs to Africa, China, India, and hopefully they will press on with nuclear regardless of green protests about radiation and green desires of some sort of utopia of sustainable farms (poverty).
... and Russia. Don't forget Russia, who is eager to supply the nuclear power plants to Africa. Besides India and China, that want to own Africa's mines. Or shall we say, individuals and companies from these regions? http://www.rdm.co.za/politics/2016/02/02/zuma-the-guptas-and-the-russians--the-inside-story [rdm.co.za]
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Hey I'm no scientist, but don't they say Venus' atmosphere has very high pressures and lacks water and Mars is 95% CO2 also? IOW, there's more to it.
Correct. What's your point here, exactly? Indeed, Venus had a very high greenhouse effect: due to the large amount of carbon dioxide, its atmosphere is pretty much opaque in the thermal infrared. Mars has a greenhouse effect as well, although not a large one, primarily because its atmosphere is so thin, and lacks appreciable water vapor.
The problem with the rest of your post is that from "don't trust the media and politicians because 'the truth is very hard to obtain'," you slide to "don't trust scienti
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Expertise is a factor. Ever been misdiagnosed by four doctors in a row? I have. And I could have died. Now that's a life lesson in what and how to trust expertise. Yes one goes to the doctor. But one also knows their knowledge, whilst the product of many years of intelligent work, is also not infallible. And this is pretty common. So one asks, how did they arrive at the conclusion? When they were taking symptoms, they concluded one thing. When they finally saw the CT scan, they concluded something very diff
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Although this analysis depends on several logical fallacies, and basically amounts to an anti-intellectual attack on science and reason, I have to admit that it's more sound than most denier arguments.
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Please try to read what I said in the way I said it.
If you turn what I said into silly absurd extremes, that's just straw man. And then you accuse me of logical fallacies.
You're the one being anti-reason. Just relax and read what I said. I said nothing about experts being idiots. Take this phrase I wrote:
"whilst the product of many years of intelligent work, is also not infallible"
That's NOT calling people idiots, and you're being disingenuous trying to read it that way.
Somewhere along the line, the politic
Forecasting [Re:Yeah, that'll be why its 400C...] (Score:2)
Your argument consists of two parts:
(1) a statement that doctors misdiagnosed you, therefore experts are idiots. The previous poster has commented on this.
(2) a statement that many years ago the Institute of Forecasters criticized the global circulation models as not being verified as methods of forecasting.
Looking at what the Institute of Forecasters publishes articles about, it seem that they mostly have expertise at economic forecasts, with a few outliers such as forecasting television ratings and fore
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And before anyone says its simply because its closer to the sun, Mercury is even closer than Venus yet its colder.
Actually, it is* because Venus is closer to the sun!
*Closer than Earth and yes, it is not that simple. Climate science, astrophysics, astrobiology, planet science and several other fields predict that an increase in solar flux (Venus being closer to the sun than earth) will lead to a runaway greenhouse effect on a rocky planet in our solar system with an atmosphere, water and geologic activity. So if we moved earth into venus' orbit, it would look pretty much the same in a billion years or so. Neat!
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I look forward to you piping your tailpipe into your car to prove your point.
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I look forward to you piping your tailpipe into your car to prove your point.
It's not the CO2 that will kill you if you try that.
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Trust me, CO2 will kill you too. Just ask anybody who ever got trapped on a sunken submarine... oh wait, you can't - that's the point.
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It certainly will, at high enough concentrations for a long enough time. But breathing exhaust gas won't prove that, because the carbon monoxide will kill you long before the CO2 becomes a problem.
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Dude, I'm trying to help GP win his richly deserved Darwin Award. Show some charity.
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Modern, well tuned, car tailpipes won't kill you. Not enough CO.
Alternate Fact (Score:1)
Fact: cows create methane through flatulence ...
Fact: Indians don't eat cows
Fact: Therefore, India does not factory-farm cows
Fact: Therefore, India produces far fewer cows than places that mass-produce beef
Fact: therefore, Indians really are not particularly responsible for global warming
Re:Alternate Fact (Score:4, Interesting)
India has more cows than any country in the world.
http://beef2live.com/story-wor... [beef2live.com]
http://qz.com/643433/all-you-w... [qz.com]
India's cows produce more climate damage that all of its cars and trucks.
http://content.time.com/time/w... [time.com]
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So, I guess it's time to kill some sacred cows.
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We dont need to kill the cows, just fit them with something that captures all that methane and feeds it into tanks. Then we can burn that methane in gas turbines to generate electricity instead of using fossil fuels taken from the ground.
Plus if you burn the methane, the carbon dioxide that results from it is less harmful to the planet (releasing 1kg of methane into the atmosphere is 25 times worse for global warming than if you burnt that 1kg of methane and released the resulting carbon dioxide into the at
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Cow farts blow up a barn!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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