We can hide behind per-capita stats but the global CO2 level and climate does not care about per capita.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/30/china-car...
Every single Republican candidate for president was openly mocking Obama when he was in Paris a few months ago for the climate talks. They're an absolute embarrassment:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/republicans-obama-clim...
Is it more than 150,000 people [1]? Because that's how many people the WHO estimates currently die right now as a result of climate change. And the number is expected to go up to 250,000 by 2030-2050 [2].
Other estimates have been even higher, e.g. [3] which came up with 400,000 extra deaths due to climate change per year already.
[1] http://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/
[2] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/
[3] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/27/climate-cha...
Why is the global world living longer despite its ever increasing usage of fossil fuels? Just to take one example, China's life expectancy has grown increasingly despite having record levels of pollution. You would think that more and more people would die as fossil fuels increase. Something doesn't connect here. Care to explain the conundrum for me?
ISIS having their hands on a nuke would be catastrophic.
However climate change is definitely already happening and is potentially also devastating for the survival of the species. It could itself ignite a number of conflicts, we have no idea what will happen, but we know it could be very bad.
Can you cite an instance in any reputable broadsheet where Israel has officially threatened to use nuclear weapons?
Misstatements not challenged quickly, too often become the "truth".
The places most affected by climate change already have terrible health: http://gamapserver.who.int/gho/interactive_charts/ncd/mortal...
Saying stuff like that feeds right into the deniers.
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/426608/how-likely-is-a-ru...
It does not show that the Chinese government is actually going to change anything substantive.
Here's something from late 2015:
China is totally crushing the U.S. on renewable energy http://grist.org/climate-energy/china-is-totally-crushing-th...
Here's one that is just a month old:
China set to surpass its climate targets as renewables soar https://www.newscientist.com/article/2079179-china-set-to-su...
The graph BNEF prepared shows carbon emissions ~tripling from 2012 to 2040, due to substantial growth in non-OECD coal & gas consumption, which swamps the drop in these categories for OECD countries.
Meanwhile, its consumption of coal – the dirtiest of the fossil fuels – dropped by 3.7 per cent, with imports down by a substantial 30 per cent.
The country’s solar and wind energy capacity soared last year by 74 and 34 per cent respectively compared with 2014, according to figures issued by China’s National Bureau of Statistics yesterday.
The latest figures state that “clean energy” – a combination of hydro, wind, solar, nuclear and natural gas – now accounts for 18 per cent of all its energy, up from 13 per cent in 2011.
Such rapid changes in how energy generation in China is changing suggests to me, that graph projecting non-OECD CO2 emission is most likely be wrong and overly pessimistic.
Meanwhile, the US is far too entrenched with ideology and vested interests that have captured the political machinery.
Kind of sad that we're in this state, but people keep voting Republican...
But really technology is going to drive this change, as long as the entrenched interests don't prevent the use of renewables that are cheaper than fossil fuels.
Already ideally sited solar and wind are cheaper than coal, and learning curves are pushing that down all the time.
Storage is also getting incredibly cheap, with lithium ion batteries it's around $0.08/kWh right now at the wholesale level.
What we're really going to need is efficient carbon capture schemes though, because the feet-draggers have cost us an extremely valuable 15 years. If we can do capture at something less than $500/ton then I'm starting to feel a bit optimistic that we can head off the worst of it.
But every. Single. Ton. That we emit right now is going to cost out children several times that amount. Improving efficiency of use and increasing the scale and efficiency of the renewable energy manufacturing is a massively important economic development for the US and the world.
Your pricing information on renewables is out of date, and quickly becoming more out of date.
The renewable industry is changing fast, traditional energy industry changes slow. Those dinosaurs won't know what's hit them until it's too late.
The reality is that we must put an human mandated limit on the amount of carbon fuels to burn.
Think of it another way: If burning carbon fuels causes major instability in the climate, then the fate of the human race should not be determined by the amount of carbon in the ground. It should be determined by humans being determined.
Of course if we were to price in the negative externalities, I think that renewables would already be cheaper. But this is one case where ideology has prevented us from setting up an efficient market for energy.
https://www3.epa.gov/captrade/documents/ctresults.pdf
"A 2003 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) study found that the Acid Rain Program accounted for the largest quantified human health benefits of any major federal regulatory program implemented in the last 10 years, with benefits exceeding costs by more than 40:1."
[0] IMF, How Large Are Global Energy Subsidies, 2015, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42940.0
So just to be clear: The $5.3 trillion is arrived at by counting untaxed environmental harm as a subsidy. Which I think it is interesting to consider the damage, but I don't think that is what people are going to think when they think energy subsidy.
But I do think post-tax subsidies is a fair metric, for example, in places where there's state health care, my tax is being spent to care for people whose health has been affected by fossil fuels. So it seems like state subsidised to me.
I suppose if the scientists were in charge, we'd finally stop burning fossil fuels? That we'd force massive changes to resource distribution and reshape society in order to save the world?
And if you don't agree, you're too dangerous, right? Off ot the gulags?
Do you understand that millions and millions of people would die of starvation?
It's amazing how eagerly people advocate for the right kind of totalitarianism.
Plenty of multi-party democracies have parties that somehow manage to agree on whether anthropogenic climate change exists and whether dinosaurs were real. America just isn't one of them.
We don't need a single party state, we need parties that aren't embarrassingly out of touch with how the world works. When your presidential candidates take pride in not believing things despite overwhelming evidence, you have a problem.
the way that parties change is that people stop voting for them. Any vote for such a stridently anti-science and anti-future party encourages them.
That said, this is my most important issue. Others will rank other issues higher, and vote on that basis. But it will be at least a decade after the Republican Party apologizes and corrects their science mistakes that I will trust them to vote for them.
Our society questions nothing. If we find it on the internet - it's true. Very few want to be a contrarian or go against what's popular at any given time for fear of others shaming them in mob-groups for having a different viewpoint.
We've entrusted too much credibility in people with science degrees and their models. I've done some interesting things with machine learning. It's extremely easy to develop predictive models that confirm what you want to confirm. That was probably the first thing I learned and if you aren't humble - you'll use a model as a crutch and be proved a fool.
Some of the greatest minds in history have been proven wrong. Science is not a democracy.
Our country isn't either but people forget that. They think 50+1 should dictate everything. Me-first.
If only they understood the other side - they could unite. But they haven't advanced beyond their tribalism and self-righteousness.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/a-fresh-look-at...
Now, India, there I'm a bit worried....
This could be primarily because of the economic slowdown, but I've read other articles that report the change is more systemic and permanent as China seeks to lead in clean energy tech.
But China seems now to be really willing to reduce its impact on the planet. There are the huge investments on solar panels for instance.
Animal agriculture has around 51% CO2 footprint. Bunch of it done on the rich soils of Amazon, and vast plains of USA.
Meat, dairy and eggs is what is killing us. Not traffic, not heating.
The first claim seems to be incorrect at least based on simple googling to obtain the following link: https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/global.html
According to that link agriculture/land-use appears to have about 1/6 the impact of industrial processes/fossil fuel.
The second claim appears to be incorrect for "human produced" CO2 at least, using standard numbers. Perhaps there is another source?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
Summing up the numbers there, I get the following results:
Annual CO2 Emissions:
(China): 10,540,000 kt
(USA + Canada + Mexico + Brazil + Argentina + Venezuala): 7,245,000 kt
Here's an 18% estimate while transportation is 13%.
Here's a 51% estimate, trumping everything else.
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294
I couldn't find the links for the second claim (its somewhere out there) but the ones provided don't account for animals, land use and rainforest elimination. All three are major factors of the animal agriculture.