Governments 'Not on Track' To Cap Temperatures at Below 2 Degrees: UN (reuters.com) 420
Governments are not on track to meet a goal of the 2015 Paris agreement of capping temperatures well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) before the end of the century, a United Nations official said on Sunday ahead of climate-change talks in Bangkok this week. From a report: Patricia Espinosa, head of the Executive Secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which steers the climate talks, said both the public and private sector need to act with urgency to avoid "catastrophic effects". The Paris climate agreement, adopted by almost 200 nations in 2015, set a goal of limiting warming to "well below" a rise of 2 degrees C above pre-industrial times while "pursuing efforts" for the tougher goal of 1.5 degrees C. "1.5 is the goal that is needed for many islands and many countries that are particularly vulnerable to avoid catastrophic effects. In many cases it means the survival of those countries. With the pledges we have on the table now we are not on track to achieve those goals," Espinosa told Reuters in a telephone interview on Sunday in Bangkok.
We're hosed (Score:3, Insightful)
And we didn't even need the not-so-very-objective and not-so-very-honest(!) UNFCCC to figure that one out.
We did too little when we could back in the 70s and now we're too late and we're hosed. In fact, all the world is hosed.
This is one guaranteed to be lasting legacy. Hope you're proud of it.
Re: We're hosed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: We're hosed (Score:4, Insightful)
The right wont accept solar and wind and the left won't accept nuclear.
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As to wind, the right is actually FINE with them. For example, which states have the most wind? Nearly all red. They KNOW that it is much cheaper.
Oddly, the right wing is s
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Don't be like US, all out coal is grandfarthered in. You can't have any.
Americans per person still get more of their electricity from coal than Chinese people do. Even though you closed a bunch of plants, and China opened a bunch too.
You are so blinded by your fixation on coal that you don't even understand the scale of the problem. Even if China took as much coal as they use to make electricity. Put it in a big pile and set it on fire for no reason. China's percapita emissions would still be less than Ame
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Imagine your outrage if Canada and Australia pointed their fingers at you for polluting so much because you are bigger.
That IS what Australia does. They just sacked their Prime Minister over this issue.
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And what is America's / Windy's response?
Do they think it's at all serious that per country America should be the same as Australia? No they say fuck off, Australia is a tiny country.
Go fuck yourself caffeinated bacon/crimson tsunami (Score:3)
However, we are not dropping as fast as your nation is adding coal plants.
And Go fuck yourself, as you like to say.
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Re: We're hosed (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
Re: We're hosed (Score:2)
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If you look here [endcoal.org] at the global coal tracking site. you can see here [google.com] where they track how much coal powered electricity countries use.
America's 1,344 operating is more than 1/4 of Chinas 4,271 (China has over 4x as many people)
American's get more electric power per person from coal, because they use so much more electricity than Chinese people do.
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Hey, if you want to volunteer to live in the same world poverty conditions that a huge chunk of Chinese citizens do, knock yourself out dude.
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Except those sources are irrelevant to what was in the post he replied to, and even quoted.
The links don't mention anything about per person.
The links don't consider how much electricity people in different countries actually use.
It's almost as if it was a pointless troll from someone who didn't even bother to read the discussion.
Much like your own.
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Americans per person still get more of their electricity from coal than Chinese people do. Even though you closed a bunch of plants, and China opened a bunch too.
You could at least read what you reply to.
At least you didn't use Windy's lie of 80% - 90% coal.
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Sure there is.
1: Mass transit sounds nice. The problem is, they generally have a history of failing to make money or even break even. Americans are rather attached to the freedom their cars provide.
2: Cost and feasibility. Solar panels on EVERY building doesn't work in dense urban high rise as a majority of the panels in place are shaded by adjacent buildings most of the day, basically waste.
3: You still haven't come up with an economic or feasibility argument for grid providers. Solar, by itself, is ju
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The problem is, renewables still aren't a replacement for base load. As we are limited in the amount of storage capacity we can produce.
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Why are you still pushing crappy fuel economy cars when transport is your biggest emitter?
Why are your levels so much higher than Europeans?
Why try to lecture others when you are basically the worst offenders?
Re: We're hosed (Score:2)
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We'd have to put younger people into office, all right, but for another reason: They will still be alive in 30 years and live in the hellhole they'd create. Those in power today know fucking well that they'll be dead in 30 years.
Re:We're hosed (Score:5, Insightful)
We're already at stage 4? That developed quickly, just weeks ago we still had discussions in phase 2.
For those unfamiliar with them, the 4 stages of climate denial:
1. There is no climate change.
2. Ok, there is a climate change, but it's normal, not man made.
3. Ok, it is man made, but it's been warmer before, so no problem.
4. Ok, it is a problem, but it's too late anyway.
The beauty is that, no matter what stage we're on, we needn't do anything about it.
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Yes. I stopped caring.
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I think we were in phase 1 back then. Some maybe even in phase 2. But as I said, it doesn't matter, no matter what phase you're in, you needn't do anything.
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I don't think it's going to be that bad, there is still ample time for adaptation and technological improvements. Globally, by any objective indicators mankind as a whole has never been as well off as today, don't forget that.
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We may no longer have a choice about getting hosed, but we still have a choice about how *quickly* we get hosed.
Would you rather gethosed by a garden hose on mist or a firehose?
Re: We're hosed (Score:5, Insightful)
And if we had spent the R&D money back in the '70s to boost renewable, sources of energy that don't emit greenhouse gases, we'd be much further along the process.
If we'd actually tax companies for their emissions and the effects to mitigate those emissions, we'd be a lot further along.
In general, too many places have done too little because ti would cost those in power money, even though it was other individuals that ultimately shoulder the consequences.
Re: We're hosed (Score:5, Insightful)
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And if we had spent the R&D money back in the '70s to boost renewable, sources of energy that don't emit greenhouse gases, we'd be much further along the process.
What's really going to bake your noodle is that back in the '70s, PC PV solar panels could repay their energy investment in less than seven years, and they already had a median lifespan over twenty years. So if we had just started deploying them AFAP, we would have been doing very well. Many of those panels could still be in service today. Instead, the fossil fuel industry convinced us all that it was a big scam and that what we needed was to dig up what's left of trees sequestered millions of years ago and
Re: We're hosed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: We're hosed (Score:5, Insightful)
What benefited France most of all was a policy of simply not listening to yammerheads and just plowing ahead with construction. That's how we need to approach it: develop a legal principle that "I don't like it" does not give you standing to argue court cases over technology.
Re: We're hosed (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really. The reason French nuclear energy companies are struggling to stay in business and desperately looking overseas for business is that the French taxpayer got fed up of them living off nuclear welfare. It was supposed to be cheap and clean, but turned out to be neither and as usual all the costs were socialized (i.e. taxpayers pick up the bills).
Of course now they want the same level of subsidy from other governments, but are maintaining their standard level of incompetence with cost overruns and the most expensive form of energy on the planet. The new reactors being built in the UK by French company EDF (with Chinese investment money) are guaranteed to get 3x the price of current wind energy, and that ratio is getting worse every day.
They should have put the money into offshore wind + storage, but lacked vision and EDF is good at bribery.
Re: We're hosed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: We're hosed (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when is it the government's job
Do some research on the amount of money spent on the oil wars in the middle east. The government did the oil industry's bidding.
Re: We're hosed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: We're hosed (Score:4, Informative)
Main shale byproduct is methane. Methane when burned for energy produces about half CO2 compared to coal. The only other byproduct of the burn is water.
Parent is trying to spin a sarcastic narrative, possibly to mask the fact that main reason why US has been reducing its CO2 output more than for example Germany because of success of fracking and replacement of other burner plants with CCGTs burning methane.
Switch to methane to massively reduce CO2 emissions isn't an element unique to US, as most other Western countries with ready access to methane try to do it as well (example: UK). However methane is notoriously difficult to transport over the sea routes, and is best transported over pipelines as that doesn't require the energy expenditure to compress it into liquid form.
Such infrastructure is only really possible due to shale revolution in US, which made methane basically a free waste product, which states and federal government could mandate to build pipe networks to transport across the country (and now is starting to feed Mexico due to excess availability, likely resulting in solution to many of Mexico's energy and lowering its CO2 emissions). Second best infrastructure in the world after that is methane from Russia being piped to Europe, alongside similar pipes from Norway, Scotland and North Africa.
Methane is the short to medium term solution to getting CO2 emissions under control. Cutting burner emissions to two thirds to a half is a great stepping stone to the solution. Absolutist crazies will of course continue with their "but my solar and wind" mantra, never realizing that the main reason for their proliferation in US in Europe is the proliferation of CCGTs that can in fact function as spinning and cold reserve in economic fashion due to cheap fuel and fast spin-up and load-accepting times.
Re: We're hosed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: We're hosed (Score:4, Informative)
You're not the only one. I've seen the stone-faced "green" activists back when the company I was a temp in did a project in Narva, which transformed what was essentially the most polluting power plants in the world into far less wasteful. This is not an exaggeration, those plants burn shale rock, which is essentially 70% various deep underground elements and 30% oil-like mixture. Soviet era plants literally could not work for more than two weeks at a time because it would develop what locals called a "goat", the massive amount of sticky, toxic residue from burn process that would cling to the heat exchangers in the burner. And the stuff that actually burned just spread all that toxic stuff out of the pipe in the form of particulates in well over hundred kilometre radius. Not to even mention the NOx and SO2 related acid rain issues.
I've read analyses that something like 5-7% of trees within the range of exhaust raining down from those plants literally died standing due to the extreme toxicity of that exhaust. And airways-related illnesses in the region were very high. Said activists were invited to showcase that our tech basically pushed SO2 and NOx exhaust from horrifyingly high to zero, and the post-filter which ensured that the toxic ash would also go to zero in the exhaust.
They sat there stone-faced, and when I listened to them after the lecture was done, it was all about "how this will justify existence of this plant". Basically fuck the people who had to breathe the toxic stuff and were getting their power and livelihood from it. Just fuck them, in the name of the utopia. It disillusioned me with the entire movement.
Re: We're hosed (Score:4, Insightful)
Shale is literally the primary reason for natgas switch in US. In shale production, methane is the "undesirable consequence of extraction process" which used to do nothing but cause severe risk of catastrophic explosion. Which is why it's generally flared off in a safe fashion.
And now, it's increasingly captured instead, and then transported to CCGTs which are rapidly replacing other burner plants in US, because transport over short to medium distances via infrastructure that is rapidly being built up as we speak is very cheap. And in process, halving CO2 emissions for the same energy produced (look at the emissions per energy produced on methane vs coal for example).
The main reason why US is actually better than countries like Germany in reducing the emissions in spite of vocal declarations of the latter and lack of such declarations on the part of the former is the natgas switch. And this is a trend that is set to continue for quite a while. So if you're an environmentalist who's primary concern is global warming, shale is something you should be championing, not something to fight against.
But modern environmentalism has nothing to do with that. It's now a strange religion that mostly combines elements of primeval nature worship (wasn't it great when people weren't here to destroy the nature?) and plain anti-human tendencies (humans are a blight on this planet and it will be better when they're all gone). Those that are actually working towards goals to reduce emissions, i.e. nuclear power generation industry, are some of the most persecuted by the environmentalist movement because they make a great case against those two tenets.
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Nobody wants any meaningful methane leakage on your oil/gas extraction facility. See Deepwater Horizon for reasons why.
As for "carbon tax", it's already in as a punitive taxation regime on the more polluting production systems. Take it too far and you get to Denmark and its catastrophic state of affairs, where spinning reserve is taken offline because it's punished, yet more wind goes up. Resulting in a grid that is wholly dependent on Swedish and Norwegian interconnects and hydro supply and legislation to
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Nuclear is clean, fossil fools are not.
Solar and wind are clean, nuclear is not. Strip mining, and waste which is lying around in pools waiting for a problem to happen. When the waste is interred, you can call it a solved problem.
Give me a break (Score:4, Insightful)
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Get your levels down to EU levels and then someone may take you seriously.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/t... [forbes.com]
And Indonesia
https://www.sei.org/featured/d... [sei.org]
Australia is trying, although somewhat unsuccessfully
https://www.spglobal.com/platt... [spglobal.com]
So it appears to be more than just Trump. Low cost energy sources are a great way to expand the economy.
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Your Australian example is nothing to do with local generation. Ackland is an export coal mine that exports thermal coal via Abbot Point coal terminal.
There are no new coal fired power stations on the drawing board anywhere in australia currently. There are, however, a significant number of solar farms currently under construction.
The primary issue facing australian electrical generation is a total lack of bi-partisan policys. The NEG which was used as the excuse for the crazies in the liberal party to r
Re:Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
The Australian coal mining thing is not what it seems, actually more likely a scam. So borrow tons of money, especially from government to build new coal mine and power station, build it all up, sell it and then when it can't not compete because of pricing pressure from natural gas and watch it all go belly up because of course the profit comes from developing and selling it and then betting it will go bankrupt (privatise the profit and socialise the loss). No sure how far that model spreads into Indonesia or Poland but it likely is an element, just the normal psychopathic way of doing business.
Yeah, coal is screwed and Trump was playing pump and dump with his buddies (talking up coal so his buddies so sell out before it all collapses and the public ends up wearing the bankruptcies). It is pretty clear now, that most of the attacks on renewables had no basis in reality and were straight up PR=B$ attacks paid for by the fossil fuellers to keep the profits up and fuck everyone and everything else.
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The market for that coal is other countries. Since the start of 2016 over 1600 new coal plants have started construction or have funding and they need coal. In 2017 the USA increase exports of coal by 50% and is now producing around 15% of all coal.
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China still has a few coal plants in the works, although it did stop construction on some. India says it will stop building coal plants in 2022. While the US isn't adding new coal plants, the current administration is attempting to keep the existing ones in service longer.
Basically, we need to do what we can as individuals, and the cheapest (and maybe most important) thing there is voting to get people of sound mind into government.
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In Oct, 2018, it was known that CHina would build over 700 new power plants. And that is 700, out of 1600 world-wide. [mining.com]
In august of 2018 (i.e. less than a month ago from when this was posted), this was posted [eco-business.com]
Satellite imagery reveals that many coal-fired power projects that were halted by the Chinese government have quietly restarted.
Analysis by CoalSwarm estimates that 46.7 gigawatts of new and restarted coal-fired power construction is visible based on satellite imagery supplied by Planet Labs. The coal-fired power plants are either generating power or will soon be operational. If all the plants reach completion they would increase China’s coal-fired power capacity by 4 per cent.
So, what happened?
Well, their economy is coming back, and CHina was lying about having their AE producing too much power. They are adding coal-based energy to deal with economy improving as well as moving to electric
Re:Give me a break (Score:5, Informative)
China increased about 3.1 per cent in the first half of 2018 compared with the same period last year. The main driver of that was coal-fired power generation. Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics show a leap of 9.4 per cent in electricity use across the same period.
So electricity is up 9% but coal is only up 3%...
Coal's % of electricity is decreasing. Other sources are rising twice as fast as coal.
As we know from your previous comments, only America is entitled to use so much coal.
You remember , that country with twice the per capita CO2 emissions.
Re:Give me a break (Score:4, Insightful)
Those who think we can reduce total emissions are delusional.
1. The world population is growing
2. More people get access to electricity/cars
3. As they get richer, they use it more
That we're making cleaner power and cleaner cars is only reducing that impact a bit. There's a billion Indians wishing they were rich enough to run AC. It's more like do you want 2x or 3x today's emissions, not how big the reduction will be.
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Sadly, I agree. It is a thermodynamics problem linked to a consumerism problem.
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You are begging the question by making two faulty assumptions.
1. Technology never gets more efficient. Clearly modern cars are more efficient, electronics have got orders of magnitude more efficient (not least because we want to run on battery power). Modern homes require less heating and cooling and there are still big improvements that can be made there.
2. Renewable energy can't provide a significant proportion of the energy we need. Clearly it can, especially in areas of high growth like India and China
Re: Give me a break (Score:2)
Re: Give me a break (Score:2)
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Re: Give me a break (Score:2)
To keep things honest and fair, we would use multiple co2 measuring SATs that would show co2 floating in/out of area. This way, we would know total production of Co2, but not care about causes. By applying taxin
Re: Give me a break (Score:2)
Re: Give me a break (Score:2)
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Give me a break? NO (Score:2)
In Oct, 2018, it was known
Quick tell me the lottery numbers while you're here.
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China hit peak coal about five years ago. The new plants are actually reducing emissions by replacing older, less efficient ones.
People made the same mistake when looking at Germany building new coal plants, while either not noticing or wilfully ignoring the fact that they were closing even more old ones.
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It's mostly due to economics. Coal is still very cheap, even compared to renewables.
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However, loads of ppl are defending building new coal plants for 3rd world nations. Rather than have them put in far more AE (wind, solar, hydro, geo-thermal) or nukes, China and somewhat Japan, is pushing for other nations to add their coal plants. NEW ONES, not replacements. And CHina is getting them to buy their coa
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It's going down so slowly that it isn't making a dent in the fact America is twice as polluting as China and much of the EU.
America increased coal exports 60% under Trump.
Capacity isnt use Windy. How much extra coal is actually being burned? show some numbers. You keep claiming (lying) that it's 'increasing massively' show your source.
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So if my family of two each adds 1 liter of cyanide to the water supply, and my neighbor's family of 8 each adds 0.7 liters of cyanide to the water supply, I'm the bad guy?
You're both bad guys, he's just done more damage than you have.
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I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of people like you who use more coal powered electricity than a Chniese person, complaining that they are catching up to you.
Why are you entitled to twice the CO2 as a Chinese person, or European?
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Perry has it right that we need base-load poewr, but that does not need to include coal. Coal can be replace by hydro, geo-thermal, or nuclear. All of these are base-load capable.
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But no, paris was a joke. Why? Because all of the nations walked away from it claiming that it would work. Yet, it was obvious that it was just as bad as kyoto. Until we stop ALL NEW FOSSIL FUEL PLANTS, nothing will be accomplished.
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That boat sailed ... (Score:3, Insightful)
... 40 years ago.
We passed the deadline and there's no catching up.
So it is written, so let it be done.
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No. While we may be on the path to catastrophic events today, giving up is the best way to guarantee that outcome. Doing what we can today may delay those events enough that someone figures out cheap, large scale carbon capture.
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Agreed.
We could have.
We didn't.
We could.
We won't.
Tell that to the anti-nuclear body (Score:3, Insightful)
They'd rather have climate change than nuclear power. Apparently climate change isn't a major issue and it's much more important to prevent the development of nuclear power and to block the construction of more modern nuclear power plants.
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Fukushima and Chernobyl both exploded.
Those were nuclear power plants built in the 1960s and 1970s. You know what was also built at that time? A lot of things, I know that. What comes to mind are the De Haviland Comet and Ford Pinto. The Comet was known to fall from the sky without explanation, and the Ford Pinto of the time was known to burst into flames with minor accidents. Does this mean we should stop flying jets and driving cars?
We don't build nuclear reactors today like we used to in the 1970s, just like the planes and cars we build
Not surprised (Score:2)
Dr. Quinn Burchenal: Man's a party animal. If he is doing okay nothing else matters. That's not going to change.
read the IPCC report (Score:2)
Sorry, but that's not what the UN's own IPCC report says.
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At a news conference last week (2-2015) in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
That's an editorial, not an article, son. But we probably do have to destroy capitalism before it destroys us. Capitalism means that money controls the means of production. What kind of idiot thought it made sense for money to be in charge? Money doesn't have any morals.
Cap temperatures? (Score:2, Flamebait)
2 deg C (35.6 deg F) is kinda cold. I'd prefer not to have my temperature capped that low thank you very much.
(I know they probably mean temperature increase vs some arbitrarily chosen base, but the same mistake is made in several places in TFS, so it isn't just an isolated typo).
Let's do the Soviet solution (Score:2)
Back when Chernobyl blew up, they only hat dosimeters that could measure up to 3.6 R/h. Which was fine.
All we have to do is develop thermometers that can only measure up to 2 degrees in change and we're set.
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Any 5-year-old child can notice that temperature has as much to do with ability to absorb heat as with the strength of the sun.
That same 5-year-old can comprehend that our climate forcing has led to more of that heat being absorbed because the ice is melting, and the ice is more reflective than the ocean. Like you, however, they might find the idea that human activity has been causing the changes that are melting the ice to be challenging. That's why we are supposed to listen to the scientists that know the most about this stuff, and not just imagine how we would like things to be.
Go fuck yourself Windy (Score:2)
Far too many trolls here will not care about facts.
Thats so funny Windy. I nearly fell off my chair.
this post [slashdot.org] explains who doesn't care about facts.
You are still yet to show a single lie, yet you claim it all the time. You like to also claim any random AC is me, it's probably you. You are dishonest enough to pull that shit.
I often point out your lies [slashdot.org] and lies [slashdot.org] more lies [slashdot.org] more lies [slashdot.org] even more lies [slashdot.org] lies [slashdot.org] and lies [slashdot.org] When you aren't lying, you are just making shit up [slashdot.org] that is in no way believable, and lying.
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"They favour a room of 25C (77F) compared with 22C (72F) for men"
Jesus christ are they fucking cold-blooded reptiles?
I think I saw that porn...
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What I always wondered, is there also an orthodise? Because I'd rather go there, paradise sounds like it's kinda distant and removed.
I know, the discussion is getting kinda meta now.
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So making sure seatbelts and airbags work instead of hitting the brakes, gotcha.
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The problem with organic CO2 sinks is that they die at some point, decompose and return that CO2 into the air. We could of course somehow bury them really deep and hope that it never comes back up. That's already been done by nature some couple million years ago, also worked pretty well, at least until one species was stupid enough to dig it back out.
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The problem with organic CO2 sinks is that they die at some point, decompose and return that CO2 into the air.
They don't return all of that CO2 into the air. Rainforests return most of it because of the rapid rate of fall and decomposition; too much of it is anaerobic, which produces more CO2. Aerobic decomposition produces little CO2, and more of the carbon is interred in the soil. Even grasslands burning every year will sequester carbon; sure, most of it is released, but a portion of it is retained as biochar. Over time this cycle enriches the soil with carbon, which is important for plant health [futurefarmers.com.au].
I'm not against
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Jeesh, if you make the announcer at buzzword bingo the first person calls BINGO before you're halfway through your speech.
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It becomes your problem when the rabbits start landing on your beaches. Take a look at Europe, it already started over there.