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Comment by maybelsyrup | Hacker News Reader

Gotta start somewhere. I hope this contributes to some more momentum in the right direction, both legally and in the zeitgeist more broadly.

Was also surprised to read that Montana emits as much ghg’s as Ireland.

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> Was also surprised to read that Montana emits as much ghg’s as Ireland.

Does Ireland have much industry to speak of? I was under the impression that most of Ireland's "industrial" output was effectively tax services. Montana is heavily weighted towards agri-industrial production, so it's not surprising to me that net energy usage per person is ~5x higher.

While agriculture makes up a larger percentage of Montana‘a economy industry overall is significantly lower as is the GDP per capita.

In terms of total GDP for each, Agriculture really doesn’t explain the discrepancy. What does is mostly transportation and heavy use of coal (44% vs 7%). Montana for example see a lot of out of state trucks cross the state. America is often praised for its rail network but it’s underutilized when you consider our geography and transportation needs.

Ireland is not some PO box tax haven, despite what folks like to say on HN... ;-)

We have significant pharma and agri-business, plus we make microchips (see Intel, Pfizer etc...)

      Pop  Land Cows/Herd Sheep
  ie 5.1M  7Mha 7.4M 2.5M 5.9M
  MT 1.1M 38Mha 2.2M 1.3M 200k
          without calves^

The intuition most people have is that CO2 is a people scale problem and Ireland has 5x Montana’s population, even though Montana is 5x more spacious. The cows are significant — methane is awful.

[edit: my Irish cow number was out by a factor of 3x, and I’ve separated cows-inc-calves from the adult herd.]

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverv...

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-clsjp/cro...

They have a large amount of cattle. Just read an article in the FT (would link but on mobile) about Ireland looking to cull 200k cows to help balance their methane emissions.

“They have a large amount of cattle”

Montana has more cows than humans.

Montana has more than twice as many cows as humans.

1.1 million residents and 2.6 million head of cattle.

Ireland has 7.5m head of cattle[1] - I think that qualifies as a "large amount". And you can add 6m head of sheep and over 1.5m pigs. About 40% of Ireland's CO2 equivalent comes from agriculture/agri-business.

[1] https://ahdb.org.uk/news/irish-cattle-and-sheep-numbers-rise...

Montana doesn’t even make the top ten list for cattle per state. It’s more that there is nobody there except cattle, not that it is a cattle dense location. That’s only about 3% of the cows in the US.

That's nothing.

At New Zealand's peak we had a 22 sheep to person ratio, now it's still 5 to 1.

New Zealand also has >2 to 1 ratio of cows to humans as well.

Ireland has over four and a half times the population of Montana, so the intensity should be higher.

My very-ignorant assumption would have been peat, although IDK whether the emissions are counted at source or burning site (also, IDK whether peat is still an export...)

The last peat burning plant shut down two years ago[1]. Industrial peat harvesting has ceased. A limited amount of peat harvesting is allowed but just at traditional/family/domestic scales.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lough_Ree_Power_Station

Montana also has a lot of coal reserves, which I assume they use some in state for power production. It’s funny because Montana also has lots of hydro.

“Gotta start somewhere”

We’re about 40 years into “getting started”.

One of the main problems was identified in 1985.

https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI

In 1980, President Carter assembled top scientists in various domains to write a report of the problems we should expect to face in 2000. (If only politicians today were that forward-looking!) It was called the Global 2000 report and was a very thick volume. It does not mention global warming. The closest it comes is discussion of acid rain and of increased "desertification."

What I take from that is that in 1980, while there was some awareness of global warming, few scientists thought it would so quickly accelerate and become the central issue regarding the environment.

[0] Summary of the report: https://www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/pdf-archive/glob...

The consensus has indeed been forced into extreme caution when it came to dire predictions, there were so many voices accusing scientists of crying wolf. If someone in 1980 would have said that a heat wave would kill a tenth of the number of people it did in 2003, they would have been called dangerous extremists. In this respect nothing has changed, Termination Shock will be mistaken for a piece of history, like Dafoe's journal of the plague year...

1985? It's been known since the 1850s that atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor contribute to the greenhouse effect.

I didn’t say we discovered the greenhouse effect in 1985.

I said we started addressing the issue about 40 years ago.

Actually, the Carl Sagan video is still worthwhile. He did an excellent job.

>I said we started addressing the issue about 40 years ago.

You said "One of the main problems was identified in 1985".

Yes, the global usage of coal. The fact that if India and China start using a lot of it…. Watch the video

Coal usage is at all time highs: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/world/coal-burning-capacity...

> We’re about 40 years into “getting started”.

This describes America way too accurately.

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing: after they've tried everything else." — Winston Churchill

I wish I had his confidence.

Has enormous coal mines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_River_Basin

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