Woo Hoo! It's carbon tax day.
04-04-2019, 01:11 PM
#31
Race Car
04-04-2019, 03:55 PM
#33
Race Car
Water vapour is responsible for most of the greenhouse effect. CO2 is only about 0.4% of air - 78% N and 28% O2 - and has so little effect it is not measurable. The ice layer and tree ring data "proofs" were shown by Russian statisticians to be frauds. Putin silenced them because Russia stood to gain financially if a UN deal was struck to have high emitters pay lower emitters. If one must try to forecast I'm thinkin' the sunspot guys are on a more logical track.
04-04-2019, 04:01 PM
#34
Captain Obvious
Super User
Super User
Water vapour is responsible for most of the greenhouse effect. CO2 is only about 0.4% of air - 78% N and 28% O2 - and has so little effect it is not measurable. The ice layer and tree ring data "proofs" were shown by Russian statisticians to be frauds. Putin silenced them because Russia stood to gain financially if a UN deal was struck to have high emitters pay lower emitters. If one must try to forecast I'm thinkin' the sunspot guys are on a more logical track.
04-04-2019, 06:56 PM
#35
Rennlist Member
Water vapour is responsible for most of the greenhouse effect. CO2 is only about 0.4% of air - 78% N and 28% O2 - and has so little effect it is not measurable. The ice layer and tree ring data "proofs" were shown by Russian statisticians to be frauds. Putin silenced them because Russia stood to gain financially if a UN deal was struck to have high emitters pay lower emitters. If one must try to forecast I'm thinkin' the sunspot guys are on a more logical track.
04-04-2019, 07:46 PM
#36
It is true that water vapour is responsible for the majority of the greenhouse effect. (Although the effect of CO2 is measurable.) However, prior to human addition of CO2, the system was in equilibrium. On an annual basis roughly the same amount of energy was added by the sun as was released by the Earth as heat. Think of it like a half-full sink with the tap on and the drain partially open, so the level of water in the sink stays the same. When we add CO2 to the atmosphere, we are closing the plug slightly more. Initially you don't see much effect, but since the flow coming out of the tap (energy from the sun) is the same, over time the sink will get more and more full. Most of the 'plugging effect' was from what was already there, but the small amount added makes a big difference.
04-04-2019, 09:46 PM
#37
Rennlist Member
Not true actually. There was and has been and will continue to be volcanic eruptions and fires and meteor crashes that will do far more damage with each occurrence when compared to humans - and all of which still pales in comparison to sunspots and what it can and will do. The data I see and have reviewed (to me anyhow) shows we are headed for a few decades of failed crops due to loss of energy from the sun - so start buying land in Florida people.
Re loss of energy from the sun, yeah, my sink analogy over-simplified in stating that the flow from the tap is constant. But regardless, we have put enough additional greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere at this point that there is currently more flowing in than out, and it's only getting worse. It's possible for that to be the case while still having problems with insufficient energy from the sun (although like I said, I'm not familiar with that research, so will take your word for it). Actually, that's one of the largest concerns with the last-resort mitigation strategies I mentioned up-thread too. If we spray aerosols into the atmosphere to block more of the sun's rays and get warming under control, it would be expected to have negative effects on crop yields, among other things.
04-05-2019, 09:52 AM
#38
Captain Obvious
Super User
Super User
This debate is not that much different that what people had 40 years about tobacco. Scientists claimed tobacco smoking was harmful and caused cancer and the pushback from the tobacco industry was so great that may people believed it was not true. It's pretty easy to understand why it was true. You put crap into your lungs for years and eventually you'll get sick. This is no different than what humans have been doing by pumping all kids of things, carbon dioxide is one, into the atmosphere for almost 150 years. At one point it will have negative effect that can be measured. Carbon dioxide is not the only thing, everything else that comes with it does eventually add up to a bigger problem and we are the point that these problems are starting to show.
04-05-2019, 10:18 AM
#39
Nordschleife Master
IMO the root cause is over population. If we didn't have so many people living on earth there would be no need for solving all the issues we are causing.
04-05-2019, 10:26 AM
#40
+1 And with that over population we get an increase in animal agriculture which causes more pollution, particularly from methane.
04-05-2019, 11:26 AM
#41
Rennlist Member
A study by an EU Commission & The Netherlands Environment Commission learned worldwide that from 1990-2017 co2 emissions increased by 163% for a total of 37 million tones (rounded) and of that China contributed 10,877,218 tones and 453% increase and India 2,454,774 tones and 405%. Those two are largely singularly responsible for the increase in emissions over the time period. The USA often vilified in this as the greedy capitalist consumer society emitted 5,107,393 tones and a 100% increase.
Canada contributed 617,301 tones a 146% increase.
So hardly anything to sneeze at but as a country it is a huge cold land mass and a developed society so there are built in legacy costs such as poorly insulated houses, etc and it makes sense to improve efficiency overall. That’s happened already as indicated by looking at the Ontario Building Code which requires new houses to be much more energy efficient than in the past. My problem with heavy handed government involvement by taxing carbon is that its a knee jerk reaction that’s disruptive and without any clear cut measurable goal. It is a politically motivated program done to placate fearful people who are being bombarded with gloom and doom reporting by radicals that have seized onto this issue for their own agenda which has little to do with solving co2 emissions.
One such person is Bill McKibben, author of many books on the subject. He doesn’t have a science background and makes questionable and unfounded claims. His personal convictions are that American hyper individualism and consumerism corrupts both the environment and humanity. He is also very good at organizing and has founded 350.org which is designed to further his radical ideas using climate change as a pretext.
Rant almost over, and to finish, if the environment is everywhere which it obviously is why should Canadians be economically penalized while China and India gain economically while being singularly responsible for the ongoing problem? Until that issue is solved I am tooth and nail opposed to the carbon tax.
Canada contributed 617,301 tones a 146% increase.
So hardly anything to sneeze at but as a country it is a huge cold land mass and a developed society so there are built in legacy costs such as poorly insulated houses, etc and it makes sense to improve efficiency overall. That’s happened already as indicated by looking at the Ontario Building Code which requires new houses to be much more energy efficient than in the past. My problem with heavy handed government involvement by taxing carbon is that its a knee jerk reaction that’s disruptive and without any clear cut measurable goal. It is a politically motivated program done to placate fearful people who are being bombarded with gloom and doom reporting by radicals that have seized onto this issue for their own agenda which has little to do with solving co2 emissions.
One such person is Bill McKibben, author of many books on the subject. He doesn’t have a science background and makes questionable and unfounded claims. His personal convictions are that American hyper individualism and consumerism corrupts both the environment and humanity. He is also very good at organizing and has founded 350.org which is designed to further his radical ideas using climate change as a pretext.
Rant almost over, and to finish, if the environment is everywhere which it obviously is why should Canadians be economically penalized while China and India gain economically while being singularly responsible for the ongoing problem? Until that issue is solved I am tooth and nail opposed to the carbon tax.
04-05-2019, 01:08 PM
#42
Race Car
Thread Starter
Remember millions of years ago when you could literally walk to Europe?
The earths tectonic plates are always moving, shifting adjusting, volcano's spewing, earthquakes, etc.
The earth is forever evolving and there's nothing we humans can do to stop it.
We humans are but fleas on a dog and every once in a while the dog must shake.
The planet will survive. We won't so get out and drive
The earths tectonic plates are always moving, shifting adjusting, volcano's spewing, earthquakes, etc.
The earth is forever evolving and there's nothing we humans can do to stop it.
We humans are but fleas on a dog and every once in a while the dog must shake.
The planet will survive. We won't so get out and drive
04-05-2019, 03:36 PM
#43
Race Car
Remember millions of years ago when you could literally walk to Europe?
The earths tectonic plates are always moving, shifting adjusting, volcano's spewing, earthquakes, etc.
The earth is forever evolving and there's nothing we humans can do to stop it.
We humans are but fleas on a dog and every once in a while the dog must shake.
The planet will survive. We won't so get out and drive
The earths tectonic plates are always moving, shifting adjusting, volcano's spewing, earthquakes, etc.
The earth is forever evolving and there's nothing we humans can do to stop it.
We humans are but fleas on a dog and every once in a while the dog must shake.
The planet will survive. We won't so get out and drive
04-05-2019, 05:18 PM
#44
Drifting
I appreciate your reasonableness too. Certainly industry of all sorts is a larger issue than personal vehicles, definitely including large ships. (Although from a bit of research, while large ships can obviously pollute much more than cars, the scale doesn't appear to be off by nearly that much.) But yes, that absolutely needs to be addressed as well. Ideally with countries like Canada taking the lead, we'll see more international cooperation.
To respond to a couple points made by others: while things like the ozone layer deteriorating were serious problems, they were also much easier problems to solve than climate change. We knew that ozone loss was caused by CFCs, and while they were useful, they were much less ubiquitous than sources of CO2 (everything), and they were relatively easily replaced. Climate change (or global warming if you prefer) is a much more difficult problem to solve. And we know it's happening—we're not just guessing based on annual temperature trends, although those are going up. We can measure the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and we know the effects of CO2 (and other greenhouse gasses) on the passage of energy: Basically they let through more of the types of energy radiated from the sun than they do the heat energy radiated from the Earth—so temperature needs to rise until it's high enough to put off enough heat to reach a new equilibrium. That's why even if we stopped adding any new CO2 to the atmosphere now, temperature would keep rising for a number of years, until that new equilibrium is reached.
Often this issue is framed as if we're just guessing what's going to happen and we could be wrong, but the actual "greenhouse effect" is well understood, and has been measured both in the lab and in the atmosphere. The only thing we don't know is exactly how bad things will be if we do get multiple degrees of warming. But the realistic possibilities range from really bad to worse. In order to avoid that, we need to drastically decrease greenhouse gas emissions—in fact, at this point to avoid 2+ degrees of warming we would need to go negative, so we would need to find cost-effective ways to actually remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than we put in.
There is one other possible last resort, which is some form of geo-engineering, such as spraying sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to block more of the sun's energy—so the greenhouse gasses would still cause the Earth to release less heat for a given temperature, but the sulfur dioxide would block more energy from entering in the first place. However, these options have both many logistical challenges and many negative side effects, both known and presumably unknown. Plus they're just stopgaps; we would still eventually need to get the CO2 under control, but they would buy time. Personally I expect something like that is what we'll end up with, since I can't see the world getting its act together soon enough in any other way, and eventually things will get bad enough that we won't have a choice. But at the very least, everything we do now to mitigate emissions will reduce the severity of the intervention required.
It's not reasonable to ask individual people to act against their own interests for the infinitesimal impact they can individually have on climate change, so we need governments to act. Anything they do is going to have costs, but from everything I've seen, a carbon tax is one of the most efficient ways to go—it's minimally interventionist, and when it's designed to be revenue neutral the net negative effect on the economy should be mitigated. (Although it certainly will have a significant impact on some industries; that's inevitable if you need to significantly change behaviour. And I recognize that's easier to say as someone who isn't being significantly affected. But from everything I can see, it's necessary.)
To respond to a couple points made by others: while things like the ozone layer deteriorating were serious problems, they were also much easier problems to solve than climate change. We knew that ozone loss was caused by CFCs, and while they were useful, they were much less ubiquitous than sources of CO2 (everything), and they were relatively easily replaced. Climate change (or global warming if you prefer) is a much more difficult problem to solve. And we know it's happening—we're not just guessing based on annual temperature trends, although those are going up. We can measure the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and we know the effects of CO2 (and other greenhouse gasses) on the passage of energy: Basically they let through more of the types of energy radiated from the sun than they do the heat energy radiated from the Earth—so temperature needs to rise until it's high enough to put off enough heat to reach a new equilibrium. That's why even if we stopped adding any new CO2 to the atmosphere now, temperature would keep rising for a number of years, until that new equilibrium is reached.
Often this issue is framed as if we're just guessing what's going to happen and we could be wrong, but the actual "greenhouse effect" is well understood, and has been measured both in the lab and in the atmosphere. The only thing we don't know is exactly how bad things will be if we do get multiple degrees of warming. But the realistic possibilities range from really bad to worse. In order to avoid that, we need to drastically decrease greenhouse gas emissions—in fact, at this point to avoid 2+ degrees of warming we would need to go negative, so we would need to find cost-effective ways to actually remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than we put in.
There is one other possible last resort, which is some form of geo-engineering, such as spraying sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to block more of the sun's energy—so the greenhouse gasses would still cause the Earth to release less heat for a given temperature, but the sulfur dioxide would block more energy from entering in the first place. However, these options have both many logistical challenges and many negative side effects, both known and presumably unknown. Plus they're just stopgaps; we would still eventually need to get the CO2 under control, but they would buy time. Personally I expect something like that is what we'll end up with, since I can't see the world getting its act together soon enough in any other way, and eventually things will get bad enough that we won't have a choice. But at the very least, everything we do now to mitigate emissions will reduce the severity of the intervention required.
It's not reasonable to ask individual people to act against their own interests for the infinitesimal impact they can individually have on climate change, so we need governments to act. Anything they do is going to have costs, but from everything I've seen, a carbon tax is one of the most efficient ways to go—it's minimally interventionist, and when it's designed to be revenue neutral the net negative effect on the economy should be mitigated. (Although it certainly will have a significant impact on some industries; that's inevitable if you need to significantly change behaviour. And I recognize that's easier to say as someone who isn't being significantly affected. But from everything I can see, it's necessary.)
04-05-2019, 09:27 PM
#45
Carbon in the atmosphere is simply trees that are now in the air. Carbon cannot be created. It’s just moved around. There’s never been any more carbon and there will never be any more carbon then there is now. If you want to reduce carbon in the atmosphere, plant trees. When we burn gasoline that’s burning carbon and putting it into the atmosphere. We all understand that. Electrification is a solution. But only if that electricity comes from solar or wind or Water.