'Mind-boggling' Methane Emissions From Turkmenistan Revealed (theguardian.com) 134
AleRunner shares a report: Methane leaks alone from Turkmenistan's two main fossil fuel fields caused more global heating in 2022 than the entire carbon emissions of the UK, satellite data has revealed. Emissions of the potent greenhouse gas from the oil- and gas-rich country are "mind-boggling," and an "infuriating" problem that should be easy to fix, experts have told the Guardian. The data produced by Kayrros for the Guardian found that the western fossil fuel field in Turkmenistan, on the Caspian coast, leaked 2.6m tonnes of methane in 2022. The eastern field emitted 1.8m tonnes. Together, the two fields released emissions equivalent to 366m tonnes of CO2, more than the UK's annual emissions, which are the 17th-biggest in the world. Methane emissions have surged alarmingly since 2007 and this acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating, according to scientists. It also seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say.
Stop (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'm not so sure it will. Embargos and sanctions really only work if the powers that be:
And I don't know how much you know about Turkmenistan, but the "National Leader of the Turkmen People" is completely batshit insane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] Considering that and the fact that the little trade it does do is almost entirely with China, I don't think Berdimuhamedow will have an issue hunkering
Re:Stop - Perhaps them (Score:2)
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will need to be enacted by all nations concerned
And that's where we are going to fail. Humans are selfish. Even collective humans are selfish. If some nations embargo the resources it drives down their value which other nations see as a potential benefit to them.
Russian oil is currently embargoed. Yet they are trading at higher volumes than ever before 16 million tonnes / month vs 11 million back when the war started. The difference is rather than 50% of it going to the EU, only 5% goes to the EU now while the remainder goes to Non-EU/Non-G7 countries.
So
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Don't mandate using a dumb tube (Score:2)
Don't mandate use of straws.
We want to drink from a glass, not a dumb tube, whatever the material.
Turing test (Score:2)
Oh, my IA passed the newfangled Turing test? :)
Thanks
Burn it? (Score:2)
Who runs those fields? Some tinpot dictator's incompetent nephew? I'm not a fan of de-sequestering mind boggling amounts of fossil carbon but harvesting this gas would not only be profitable, it would also literally be the lesser of two evils since CO2 is 25 times less potent than methane as a greenhouse gas.
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and that is a good point.
The next thing is to plug it, and that is really difficult when it's burning.
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Re:Burn it? (Score:5, Insightful)
it is usually about money, oil is much more expensive than gas, so the oil field product is oil... gas is a sub-product that is annoying to work with and have higher cost to contain and later transport... so if there is no gas pipeline or demand around, many oil fields simply burn it (for security reasons mostly, only more recently people care about the environment)
Add to that the URSS time equipment, lack of proper maintenance, you get a money bag for the oil and a small issue with the gas, that no ones in charge cares
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Oil is not more "expensive" than Gas.
It costs the same for end customers, based on wHh.
It might be costly though, to build a new gas pipeline.
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each oil tanker returns LOT more money than a equivalent gas tanker
Oil have many uses, gas just a few, that alone makes their price much different
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But the price is not different.
The price of gas is bound to the price of oil.
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https://finance.yahoo.com/quot... [yahoo.com]
https://finance.yahoo.com/quot... [yahoo.com]
72 vs 2 in my opinion is a big price difference, needing 30x more tankers to get the some pay looks big to me... but you decide, maybe big for you is only 1000x
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I don't know anything about oil fields but I am guessing that the issue is more complex than you imagine.
Actually it's not. Flaring of oil is cheap and trivial. The only complexity is that it leaves a marker for a community to complain about (seeing fire and smoke vs seeing nothing and thinking incorrectly that there's nothing to be concerned about).
What isn't trivial is flare gas recovery and reuse but that's not what the OP is talking about. It's like the difference between an intelligent automatic breaking system in a car and a seatbelt, which is a pretty apt comparison given the few people who wear seatbel
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Those same experts apparently also said that emissions equal to the UK on a global scale are a catastrophe of mind-boggling proportions. In reality they aren't and if the UK fucked off and died this problem would also become solved so the guardian seems, you know, extremely hypocritical in all this.
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In reality they aren't
Aren't they? You should tell the world given the amount of money they are spending on addressing these scales of emissions, including the UK government.
and if the UK fucked off and died this problem would also become solved
Noodler's solution. Let Turkmenistan run a few emissions and not install very simple and standard flaring systems, we can just genocide the UK instead. A few months ago I saw a comment so mindboggling dumb that I thought 2023 reached peak internet stupid early, but you didn't disappoint. I'm saving your comment as the new dumbest thing put in text on the int
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Aren't they?
No, they aren't. Being 17th on the list of biggest excreters of CO2 doesn't constitute a major catastrophe.
we can just genocide the UK instead.
But look at the positive side. All the polluting that had been done in other countries in name of the UK will also get erased. At least double the profit to be had with one move.
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Methane dissipates faster than CO2 so its long term effects are less than CO2
Nope. It converts into CO2 and then has all the problems of CO2 in addition.
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Re: Burn it? (Score:2)
Methane has a higher GWP than CO2 in both short and long terms. Its conversion to CO2 is actually a small fraction of its warming impact. If methane must be wasted, it should be flared. It's easy and cheap.
All that lost money (Score:2)
Considering the third world status of Turkmenistan, one would think they would want to NOT lose all that methane and instead capture it for sale.
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It may be more cost effective for them to simply ignore the leaks and instead just pump more gas.
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Maybe the crypto bros should show up and offer to run generators and Bitcoin miners with the excess Methane that's currently being wasted. I keep hearing about how they want to save the planet (So governments stop threatening to regulate them), so it would be nice to see them take some action for a change.
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to capture you need to have proper equipment and installations, that need to be build/added ... oil is MUCH more expensive than gas, they get money with oil, for the gas, they may think it is not worth the investment... also there is the demand, they are far away for the main consumers and there is no real demand around them, so either a pipeline or good transport is needed, that both will require investment or higher final cost... the end result is that gas is a sub-product of oil and is many time just bur
Re: All that lost money (Score:2)
Their dictator doesn't give a shit about that. He has enough money to live in luxury and this is all what counts.
Nothing to see here (Score:1)
Nope. (Score:2)
no. it's not.
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I think he is pointing out the website is broken and the methane graph is only showing the years 1000-1100. The other graphs seem correct.
glwt (Score:2)
may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating, according to scientists
If models are correct, then there is no way we will do what it takes to keep global heating below 1.5C. That's not something we are collectively willing to do. So glwt.
Exactly (Score:2)
Re:Exactly (Score:4, Interesting)
we're not all screwed and that's the problem because that's why the powers that be won't do squat (except parroting and save face, and they have professionals for that).
what will happen is that over time many ecosystems will collapse, extreme weather will devastate some areas and make life unbearable in others, some real estate will loose all value while some other will bloom, and people that aren't equipped to react to these changes will suffer enormously and will even die. and global warning isn't even the only menace. we have pollution, collapsing water cycle, virus and resistance to antibiotics, etc, and last but not least the social and political unrest that will ensue as all this shit show slowly unfolds.
that's why it's all about money, because right now having enough money is the only thing that will allow you and your offspring to cope with all this.
i think deep down everybody understands this, even climate change deniers, so all they care about is making more money to be better off as the shit hits the fan, which actually worsens the situation because most ways of getting richer these days involve warming and pollution. this is why this "problem" has no solution, and when something has no solution then it isn't a problem at all. get ready. green propaganda won't save you.
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Obviously no
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You are a ghoul because you are spreading lies, like Amipro and the other trolls.
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what will happen is that over time many ecosystems will collapse, extreme weather will devastate some areas and make life unbearable in others, some real estate will loose all value while some other will bloom, and people that aren't equipped to react to these changes will suffer enormously and will even die.
The issue is you consider areas in isolation, likely out of ignorance of just how interconnected our ecosystems are. It normally takes a serious upset to identify how these ecosystems affect each other.
E.g. in February last year, what even is a Ukraine, has anyone heard of this nothing country before? What do you mean it's caused a continental food crisis and they were responsible for 15% of the global grain production suddenly causing poorer countries to starve literally due to something happening on the o
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E.g. in February last year, what even is a Ukraine, has anyone heard of this nothing country before?
If somebody has never heard of Ukraine before, then that person is very ignorant (Chernobyl anybody?Chicken Kyiv? Milla and Mila).
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The issue is you consider areas in isolation,
so the issue is me? :o)
nah, i don't. i think you just fail to understand my point. ofc everything is connected, but it is unlikely that climate change ends in a total catastrophe. there will be always spots where wealthy communities can keep thriving, and they will have plenty of time and resources to adapt. except the poor, ofc. if anything, removing overpopulation from the equation will alleviate matters, specially now that technology has made human labor unnecessary, and i expect the ruling classes to he
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Yep. Ship has sailed on prevention. Double down on mitigation. No sarcasm, no joke. "...for Nature cannot be fooled."
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Yep. Ship has sailed on prevention.
The ship has sailed on 1.5 C. That is no longer possible.
But 2.0 C is still possible, and 2.5 C is a realistic goal.
We are past the tipping point (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no ice age on the immediate horizon to interrupt the current warming cycle.
The one thing we can do that the dinosaurs couldn't is geoengineer our planet.
Re: We are past the tipping point (Score:3)
Re:We are past the tipping point (Score:4, Insightful)
2 out of the 4 times in the last millennia that the earth has been as warm as it is today (13.9C average temp), the earth wound up blowing past all of the milestones scientists currently mention to 32C or more
This is bad logic. The mechanisms behind warming are different than anything we've seen before.
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Yet we're told the only solution is... more consumption.
The system is so broken it doesn't know the brakes exist, let alone how to hit them.
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2 out of the 4 times in the last millennia that the earth has been as warm as it is today (13.9C average temp), the earth wound up blowing past all of the milestones scientists currently mention to 32C or more
That sounds like bullshit science, if science at all.
If the global average temperature was 32 Celcius then pretty much all complex life would have died. An average of 32 degrees Celcius would imply summer peaks that are pretty much deadly.
Since writing goes back more than a few millennia we would have known about such a catastrophic event. Or, more likely, we wouldn't be here to read about it.
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He's talking about when the dinosaurs were on earth. Temps can be figured out by other things than writing.
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Dinosaurs weren't around 'in the last millennia'. Writing was.
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You are right, the poster is talking nonsense. I thought he was talking about high temps from prehistoric times.
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You guys are misreading what he wrote. He is talking about those millenia -possibly millions of years ago -- in which the temp was 13.9 or 32 or whatever, not the most recent millenia. Whether his facts are correct, I dunno.
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Satellite monitoring REQUIRED (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Satellite monitoring REQUIRED (Score:5, Insightful)
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that was why it got launched, to track phantom leaks, that no one reported, but are detected weeks, months later. Can also help finding long pipeline problems and transfers problems
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China lying? Such a shock. Meanwhile, what exactly do you plan on doing about it?
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All I can do is continue to work to lower MY families emissions. We have been doing this all along. I have always insulated the daylights out of all homes that I have owned. WHen I was growing up and we built a home in 1970s, that was built for comfort/luxury, not size (though it was 7500 ft^2). In particular, 2x6s and 2x4 studs, but, above all, we insulated the crap out of that house. Fact is, when it was -30s for 1-2 weeks, we could put just 1 oak log in 1 of the 2 fireplaces an
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Most of America's insulation is made here. China was dumping Styrofoam on us, but then we caught them cheating with the florocarbons, and then the government had to stop with their approval. Sadly, I am sure that they are right back at it, just a bit more spread out so as to dilute it. Still, I used regular fiberglass insulation, manufactured in Denver Colorado.
I bought for both house's lennox Xp-20 [lennox.com], which has parts from both America and mexico with final assembly in Mexico.
So, no
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30c average is really really HOT. This is 86F, which doesnt sound bad unless you live near a coast (most people), where humidity comes into play. An 86F day with high humidity is dangerous to work in, and requires running air conditioning almost non stop. Now keep in mind, if you are talking about the yearly average temperature, that would mean summers get regularly above 43 (110F) and winters that are much nicer, or incredibly cold winters to offset the incredibly hot summers.
In the USA, North Caroli
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Yup that's what I thought.
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As I have said for a long time here, in the end, thi
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You're funny, your stuff was made in China.
Meanwhile, back in the war(s) (Score:2)
While we are fussing about Turkmenistan, it might be fun to look at all the shooting wars around the globe and be honest about the amount of greenhouse gases their explosions and fires are releasing. One suspects that the methane leaks from the many unmaintained or abandoned oil and gas wells pale next to what is being intentionally released by all the combatants. And poor Turkmenistan is far from the only country with leaky plumbing on the globe.
Re: Meanwhile, back in the war(s) (Score:3)
Fires and explosions are probably minor contributors to climate change, although likely impact local air quality a lot. However, being at war means more mobilization, leading to higher fossil fuel usage. I doubt Ukraine is worrying about its GHG footprint at the moment.
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Been blowing stuff up for a long time. Suspect you are right about the impact relative to all the other infernal combustions. And then there are the wild fires... Personally I don't think there is any real solution other than to move forward with less destructive technologies. Took a few centuries to get to this point, getting out of it won't be any faster. BTW, agree with your sig. Thanks.
2.6m tonnes and 1.8m tonnes? (Score:1)
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1 tonne = 1000 kg
so 2.6m tonnes = 2 600 000 000 kg
Give up on the industry (Score:3, Insightful)
You'll never chase them all down, and doing things badly saves money. The whole industry just has to go.
The technologies to replace it are about here, though some need testing at scale. Once the combination of wind, solar, and Form Energy's $20/kWh grid-scale batteries can produce load-following electricity for a penny cheaper than a gas peaking plant, it's all over but the construction project.
Replacing half a billion furnaces with heat pumps is the longer-term challenge, but there's no question that those who do it will save money, it's just a question of up-front spending versus long-term savings.
So, let's get past "peak gas", if we haven't already, then start shutting down (or stop buying from) gas sources in order of most-offensive, downward. These guys will be about at the top of the list.
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You'll never chase them all down, and doing things badly saves money. The whole industry just has to go.
The technologies to replace it are about here, though some need testing at scale. Once the combination of wind, solar, and Form Energy's $20/kWh grid-scale batteries can produce load-following electricity for a penny cheaper than a gas peaking plant, it's all over but the construction project.
Replacing half a billion furnaces with heat pumps is the longer-term challenge, but there's no question that those who do it will save money, it's just a question of up-front spending versus long-term savings.
So, let's get past "peak gas", if we haven't already, then start shutting down (or stop buying from) gas sources in order of most-offensive, downward. These guys will be about at the top of the list.
If only the real world were as simple as you are.
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The technologies to replace it are about here
You want to replace known and working technology with vaporware? Do you have any idea at all how many people will die if that vaporware doesn't solidify enough to carry the burden? Get the technology worked out and I will personally assist in forcing the change. Try to do this while it is vaporware and I will personally resist you. I do not know any of those millions or billions that will die (most everyone I know is already dead), but the idea of mass die-offs still bothers me.
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However, these are not new phones we’re taking about here. Countless people worldwide live in cold climates, myself included, and the fact this is slowly changing aside, the reality remains that cold exposure risks and causes much more death worldwide than h
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I'm puzzled by these three responses. They write as if the ability to do this were in question. One thing still in some question is whether the $20/kWh, 150-hour, iron-air batteries from Form Energy will work well, long-term, reliable, etc. That they will work, and cost at most that much ,has already been proven in pilot projects.
It's not in doubt that we (meaning: human race) can build thousands of gigawatts of wind and solar, and more power lines. If the Form Energy product doesn't work, and neith
Maybe it’s time to reconsider domestic NG? (Score:1)
Switching to relatively clean domestic natural gas has been responsible for the largest greenhouse gas reductions to date, but instead we ban the PennEast pipeline, fracking in NY, etc. The net result? Europe and the US now are burning more greenhouse-heavy oil, coal, Turkmenistan gas, etc than we were doing before.
So why not encourage using domestic NG to replace the more worrisome fossil fuels in the short run (while investing in even greener sources that, realistically, are taking longer to ramp up)?
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the increase usage of gas replaced the coal furnaces in energy generation... gas is MUCH cleaner than coal in term of emissions... still much worse than wind or solar, but that is still a huge improvement
Check the url below, switch in the left for electricity generation and carbon emissions to see a good example of reducing coal and increasing gas, but the emissions going down
https://app.electricitymaps.co... [electricitymaps.com]
https://app.electricitymaps.co... [electricitymaps.com]
or if you prefer a USA center view:
https://app.electricitymaps.co. [electricitymaps.com]
John Kerry (Score:1)
Maths (Score:2)
the western fossil fuel field in Turkmenistan, on the Caspian coast, leaked 2.6m tonnes of methane in 2022. The eastern field emitted 1.8m tonnes. Together, the two fields released emissions equivalent to 366m tonnes of CO2
Let us forget that m is the suffix for milli- and not mega-.... 2.7 + 1.8 = 366? Or perhaps it is 366M since the beginning (of what?) and not per year?
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The 2.6 and 1.8 are millions of tonnes of methane (CH4). The 366 is "equivalent" (in terms of extra solar energy absorbed/retained in millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
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Must be all that spicy food (Score:2)
The spicy food in Turkmenistan may be showing us that cows are not the only big source of flatulence in our atmosphere.
sensationalist bunk (Score:2)
The top five emitting countries put tens of billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. UK and and this field don't matter.
Find something worthy to whine about.
Not even close [Re:Sept 26th] (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe the Guardian should be figuring out where the British Navy was on September 26th, when a methane event "occurred" that was worse than a century of Turkmenistan's emissions.
You mean the sabotage of the Nord Stream-2 natural gas pipeline?
Not even close. Estimates of gas leaked from the Nord Stream pipeline is 100,000 to 350,000 tonnes of methane. That may indeed be the largest single-event leak in history, but the Turkmenistan leaks being discussed cumulatively are leaking 2.6 million tonnes of methane per year.
alternate source: https://grist.org/energy/turkm... [grist.org]
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Guess who had access to the inside? Gazprom, that's who.
Motive? Penalty clauses in the supply contracts.
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I like how this post gets zero down mods when it's based on unproven reports from one journalist (as opposed to the gp that got -1 Troll despite being based on a theory with no more or less credibility).
Sure, maybe Hersh is right. Or maybe his single-source report is complete bunk to provide cover for the Russians having done the deed. Fact is that nobody can speak with absolute authority on the subject.
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It is all just disinformation meant to "dizzy up" the news consumer so that they think the choice is between British Navy or American CIA, and never consider that Russia is perfectly capable of destroying their own toys and crying that "those bad guys did it" in order to use it to justify working outside of any international peace-time norms
It is what happens when you let a person with the emotional development of a child rob a country blind, um I mean run it into the ground, I mean be a great ruler
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> his single-source report
Who told you to believe that?
It shows you haven't watched a single video interview with him.
Be curious.
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your arguments aren't very convincing ... wait, you don't even have any arguments! please shut up and listen when adults discuss ...
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could you add a few more words so as to be barely intelligible at last?
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No, the bulk amounts are what is important, the per capita is just a way to show how bad a country is compared with other. if 2 countries both release the same amount of emissions, but one have 100 times more population, both should still reduce their emissions, but the one with lower population have to do a much lower effort to lower their emissions and if not do it, either it is lazy or idiot
By the way, this should be used to plug those emissions, not to postpone their own emissions reduction plans with t
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You do realize the ac is mocking you, yes?
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yes, but my post is to point that BOTH are important,
what he is trying to say, without saying, is that the USA can continue to release emissions, because others are doing worse. By that logic, no one will ever do anything because there is always someone worse... and the top emitter will also do not do anything because nobody else is doing it, why should they!
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No, the bulk amounts are what is important,
That's hypocritical bullshit.
The per-capita figures directly tell you how much you're contributing to the problem but you don't want to hear it. You want to shove the problem on the shoulders of others who have contributed much less to the problem (and if they do they're usually connected to your consumption anyway).
This way you're throwing up a hurdle for developing countries while at the same time protecting your own consumption pattern.
You (well, we) fucked up, and you're asking the ones with less resour
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notice that e totally agree with you, if you re-read my post :)
the per capita show how bad a country is performing ... but of course, any amount of emissions is important, earth do not care about the per capita value, it reacts over the absolute values. But again, higher emissions per capita countries can reduce their emissions with much less effort, so those countries must act quickly, but everyone should still act
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Nicely worded, i agree with that. :)
"America bad" (Score:1)
Bulk amounts are literally the single most important metric, also that's still some 20-30x more than the per capita methane emissions of the US (~65,000 vs. ~2,400 equiv. tonnes of CO2 per person, source: https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]) Go back to /r/GenZedong.
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Meant to say equiv. kg of CO2 per person*
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Haha, maybe that is what matters for the morality police on judgment day, but it's not what matters to global temps.