Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

this isn't a conversation about carbon credits, it's about a carbon tax - putting a price on carbon.

otm

this was one of the rare non-terrifying things I've read on this issue lately:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/16/texas-town-georgetown-energy-green

i'm guessing that otm wasn't for me, haha, so just to clarify:

carbon credits are based on a marketplace of GHGs allowances. say we each have allowances to emit 10 tons of GHGs. i suck, so i determine that i need to emit 15 tons of GHGs. you, on the other hand, make some modifications to your factory and can get by with only emitting 5 tons. i need an extra 5 credits, you have an extra 5, so i pay you for your credits. the idea is that this will create a marketplace which will incentivize lower emissions since many entities would rather be under the cap so that they can generate additional revenue by trading away their credits to higher emitters. anyway, that's an originally a republican idea from the 1980s (to deal with sulfur dioxide emissions), and it has its fair share of problems, not least of which is international monitoring and enforcement.

a carbon tax is different. it places a price on carbon upfront which is levied on the industrial generators of GHG emissions. this increase in cost, of course, would inevitably be passed on to consumers, so there are a number of ways of how to address that. one popular idea is "fee-and-dividend": all of the fees collected from the carbon tax would be distributed evenly to all households in the form of a rebate check. this would create a progressive system in which lower-income households would end up coming out ahead (ie, the rebate check that they'd receive would be more than the increase in electricity costs that would arise as a result of the carbon tax), while driving overall emissions down as all industries would have an incentive to lower ghg emissions.

or actually, just google carbon credit vs carbon tax because i fucking hate the way i try to explain things and i confuse even myself

lol no actually it was for you :)

ty Karl :)

A carbon tax prices externalites, and encourage all the ways that emissions may be reduced, from household to utility scale, from conservation to low-carbon energy.

Carbon credits are fees paid by utilities to Wall St so they can conduct business as usual while some rainforest is cut down in a different order.

later

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809

yup, at least I'll die of cholera or something before I starve to death a decade from now

yeah that seems..

v bad

*gulp*

Clearly the decline is because they kept catching the flying insects in traps for 27 years!!!

Malaise Trapped: Stuck on a Planet with Humans

https://longreads.com/2017/10/19/we-should-be-talking-about-the-effect-of-climate-change-on-cities

maybe some of you animated shorts oscar geeks already knew about this but it belongs on this thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0YSFvPTm2A

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/28/alarm-as-study-reveals-worlds-tropical-forests-are-huge-carbon-emission-source

Heh

heh. oooof.

the good news is that at least in the united states, our new industrial scientist leaders in the government probably won't ever read that study, therefore it doesn't exist

http://blog.ucsusa.org/michael-halpern/the-epa-science-advisory-board-is-being-compromised-heres-why-that-matters

i need to go back to bed and just start the day over. the world is fucked imo

yr Fourth National Climate Assessment has arrived

https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/executive-summary

civilization has always been too much anyways

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/11/03/trump-administration-releases-report-finds-no-convincing-alternative-explanation-for-climate-change/?utm_term=.f6d0d60e8515

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/the-zombie-diseases-of-climate-change/544274

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/nov/05/donald-trump-accused-blocking-satellite-climate-change-research

re the Science Advisory Board:

One of Pruitt’s other appointees to this board, from which he has purged most of the scientists whose findings inconvenience his longtime benefactors, is this guy Robert Phalen, who runs a lab at Cal-Irvine that studies the health effects of air pollution. Phalen, it seems, believes that we are coddling our children with too damn much fresh, clean air. From The Independent:

Speaking to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012, Mr. Phalen told the audience: “Modern air is a little too clean for optimum health.” Mr. Phalen has also argued that the risks associated with modern particulate matter are “very small and confounded by many factors”. In a 2004 study, he wrote that, “neither toxicology studies nor human clinical investigations have identified the components and/or characteristics of [particulate matter] that might be causing the health-effect associations”.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a13381482/air-too-clean-epa-official-trump/

I bet that cunt really believes his own papers and snorts a bit of asbestos and w/ diesel fumes for breakfast, just to get his required impurity levels up. Clean water is killing us! Drink bin-juice mixed with surgical spirits!

There is an extensive literature on hormesis, and I think one can make a persuasive case for ambient radiation or some banned but persistent organic pollutants as harmless in human health. I've never seen it applied to atmospheric particulates. If there's any benefit to atmospheric particles, it occurs *well below* levels seen by industrialized societies.

it's almost like scott pruitt appointed someone to head the SAB who doesn't know what they're doing! but why would he do that?!

can the UN charge him with crimes against humanity or something

“neither toxicology studies nor human clinical investigations have identified the components and/or characteristics of [particulate matter] that might be causing the health-effect associations”.

This is effectively saying that we know that particulate matter in the air is associated with really nasty health effects, but until we can isolate the exact mechanisms by which particulate matter ruins people's health, he's perfectly happy to ruin lots of people's health.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/opinion/climate-capitalism-crisis.html

...the hope that we can empower intelligent people to positions where they can design the perfect set of regulations, or that we can rely on scientists to take the carbon out of the atmosphere and engineer sources of renewable energy, serves to cover over the simple fact that the work of saving the planet is political, not technical. We have a much better chance of making it past the 22nd century if environmental regulations are designed by a team of people with no formal education in a democratic socialist society than we do if they are made by a team of the most esteemed scientific luminaries in a capitalist society. The intelligence of the brightest people around is no match for the rampant stupidity of capitalism.

new trump budget guts climate science studies (graduate and pro) anyways. MAGA

this problem will outlive the trump era y'know

not necessarily, if civilization ends prior to trumpski's russkie trot

you know we're not that lucky

:(

https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21731397-stopping-flow-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-not-enough-it-has-be-sucked-out

ugh

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30112017/arctic-sea-ice-extent-record-chukchi-bering-sea-alaska-ocean

http://grist.org/article/let-it-go-the-arctic-will-never-be-frozen-again/

earth had a good run

Off that URL: "Never" is a long time. So we'll skip the next glaciation, scheduled by Milanković to start in about a thousand years. Another will come around in ~100,000 CE. By then, most of the emissions will be safely sequestered a diatoms and other organics in the ocean depths, but any humanity surviving won't be able to do this again, as all the accessible fossil fuel will be long gone.

100 million years after that there will be more fossil fuels! this time made from humans

we'll make great pet(roleum)s

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/why-did-two-thirds-of-this-weird-antelope-suddenly-drop-dead/550676/

ugh

https://www.buzzfeed.com/zahrahirji/mercers-gop-climate-change-denial?utm_term=.ibamVaWxpB#.byPYmN9P36

$4 million is pocket change :)

Not that further documentation was needed, but yes 45 was wrong in saying the polar ice caps are back and stronger

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jan/29/donald-trump/trump-gets-polar-ice-trend-backwards/

beautiful clean coal

wow finally some good news

A Trump nominee says carbon dioxide can't be pollution because "Our flesh, blood, and bones are built of carbon." https://t.co/PBmDfCNRnk

— Justin Miller (@justinjm1) January 31, 2018

hahaha fuck

fuckin science, how does it work

"the gas of life"