How Scientists Got Climate Change So Wrong

[Roy]

Yes, by all means, let's define "polluter" in such a way as to point the finger to the US, even though China is clearly the biggest polluter.

Yes, it is. The US is the second biggest polluter. But since China has four times the population of the US, yet only produces twice as much CO₂, the US has a much higher per capita pollution rate than China does. The US produces more CO₂ per person than any other major nation, and almost all the minor ones, with the few exceptions being oil-rich Arab states and tiny islands.

You wanted Climate Alarmists to focus their attention on the biggest polluters. How would you define "polluter" so that the US not one of the biggest polluters?

[Teallaura]

Sounds like you forgot your adult diaper.

[Teallaura]

Yes, let's focus our attention on the biggest polluter.

...

Okay, I gotta know - how does CO2 or the atmosphere or the global climate know or care about per capita emissions? Shouldn't overall volume matter more than the per capita?

[Teallaura]

You should no better with a background in science to trumpet Teallaura's childish foolishness.

Translation: still can't think up a good answer and I got caught with my pants down - again.

Also, 'know', not 'no'.

Science, ethics and grammar - all things Shuny doesn't know.

[TheLurch]

You and others want radical changes to society, but in public there's no good justification for that change beyond 'there is 90%+ consensus that AGW is significant'.

You got the wrong guy. I advocate for doing something about climate change because i don't want to see radical change to society. And the evidence is compelling that we will see radical change if we continue to do nothing - which is why i said doing nothing is a choice.

Consensus on what precisely? What range? A range of sea levels rise from 0.1cm to 100cm within the next 50 years will have consensus, because that's such a broad prediction.

It depends on your time period. End of the century, the consensus is that it's going to be one to four feet, with a long tail of low probability/high risk situations that include a couple of meters. Having been in NYC during Sandy, I have a very strong sense of the difference that only a foot of water can make, and find four feet difficult to contemplate. We also know that the last time there was this much CO2 in the atmosphere, sea levels ultimately stabilized at 4-6 meters above the present levels, though ice melts slowly and that's likely to take several hundred years.

My strong factual basis is that accurate prediction of complex and chaotic systems is extremely difficult.

I think we can both agree that the weather is a chaotic system. We can't predict precisely what's going to happen in a given location more than a week out. But we do know that it's going to be cooler at night, warmer in the summer, etc. That's because it's chaotic but constrained - it varies within fixed limits. While we can't predict a particular bit of weather, we can very easily place limits on the range that >95% of the weather will fall within. And those limits are not too large to be useful for planning.

That's what planning for climate change is all about.


I want to say something more general about the tone of discussion. Although they can be utter bastards far too often, i fundamentally like people. I want people who farmed some land for generations to be able to continue to do so. I want our great cities - New York, London, Shanghai - not to be trapped within walls to keep out a steadily rising moat. I want humanity's cultural heritage, from places like Venice to the staggeringly remote islands that the Polynesian's settled, to be available to the generations that follow us for centuries.

If i were just looking to score cheap points at your expense, i'd point out that the course you're advocating means throwing most, if not all of that away. I feel fairly confident, however, that you don't want to do that, so i'm not going to accuse you of wanting to force radical change on society. I'd appreciate the same courtesy in return. I really do not want radical change, and the fact that wind and solar are now the cheapest forms of energy means that almost all of the measures i'd advocate don't require it.

[Cow Poke]

Yes, it is. The US is the second biggest polluter. But since China has four times the population of the US, yet only produces twice as much CO₂, the US has a much higher per capita pollution rate than China does. The US produces more CO₂ per person than any other major nation, and almost all the minor ones, with the few exceptions being oil-rich Arab states and tiny islands.

You wanted Climate Alarmists to focus their attention on the biggest polluters. How would you define "polluter" so that the US not one of the biggest polluters?

At least you've adjusted your rhetoric...

Yes, let's focus our attention on the biggest polluter.

Yes, it is. The US is the second biggest polluter.

[shunyadragon]

At least you've adjusted your rhetoric...

The USA is the biggest polluter per capita.I believe China is ahead of the USA in the conversion to non-carbon energy sources. It is best to have world focus and consensus, or there will be no effect on the increased CO2 content of the atmosphere.

As far as investment in alternative energy sources China is ahead of the USA. China is also has the greatest amount of hydroelectric power:

https://ourworldindata.org/renewable-energy

[Cow Poke]

The USA is the biggest polluter per capita.I believe China is ahead of the USA in the conversion to non-carbon energy sources. It is best to have world focus and consensus, or there will be no effect on the increased CO2 content of the atmosphere.

As far as investment in alternative energy sources China is ahead of the USA. China is also has the greatest amount of hydroelectric power:

https://ourworldindata.org/renewable-energy

I'm against pollution - I grew up believing we are to be good stewards of the earth, including land, water, animals...

[Roy]

Okay, I gotta know - how does CO2 or the atmosphere or the global climate know or care about per capita emissions? Shouldn't overall volume matter more than the per capita?

No. While the overall volume is important, the volume for each country isn't.

For one thing, CO₂, the atmosphere and the global climate don't recognise national boundaries.

But more relevantly, stating that the US produces more CO₂ than Andorra doesn't really tell us anything. We'd expect that to be the case, because the US is so much bigger than Andorra. Just like we'd expect there to be more dentists in Canada than in Lichtenstein, and more hamburgers sold in Texas than in Rhode Island. If you want to make sensible comparisons between the performance of nations (or states/provinces/counties/etc) you need to compensate for size and population, and compare per capita values, or maybe per km² values, or some combination of these. That way you might find that on average Texans eat 160 hamburgers per year while Rhode Islanders only eat 75, or that there is one dentist in Lichtenstein for every 1200 people, but Chinese dentists each serve 26200 people.*

Egypt has about four times as many people as Australia. If the Egyptians and the Australians are producing similar amounts of pollution, Egypt would produce four times as much CO₂ as Australia. If Egypt is producing more than four times as much as Australia, then the Egyptians are bigger polluters than Australians. If Egypt is producing less than four times as much as Australia, then it's the Australians that are the bigger polluters.




*I made these numbers up, obviously

[Roy]

At least you've adjusted your rhetoric...

Not really - just adjusting to your implicit definition of "polluter".

Have you decided on an explicit definition of "polluter" yet, or have you given up because you can't find one which doesn't result in the US being one of the biggest?

[Roy]

The USA is the biggest polluter per capita.

Actually, it isn't. It's 9th biggest. 10th biggest if Gibraltar is considered a separate state. Many middle-eastern oil-rich states (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, etc) are heavier polluters.

[Cow Poke]

Not really - just adjusting to your implicit definition of "polluter".

Nope - I googled it, and purposely looked at both pro and con pollution sources. Hands down, China is consistently #1.

[Roy]

P.S. Even per capita values can be misleading, especially for really small countries which rely on their neighbours' facilities, or where isolated incidents that would be just noise elsewhere skew the statistics.

For example:

The Vatican has the world's poorest ratio of schools to children[1]
Pitcairn island has the world's worst record for vehicle crime.[2]



































[1] They have no schools within the state boundary, but own several within the surrounding city of Rome.
[2] There is only one vehicle on the island - a bus - and it was once used without permission.

[Roy]

Nope - I googled it, and purposely looked at both pro and con pollution sources. Hands down, China is consistently #1.

Who are #2-#5?

You wanted climate activists to focus on the biggest polluters - who else should they focus on?

[Cow Poke]

Who are #2-#5?

You wanted climate activists to focus on the biggest polluters - who else should they focus on?

With all due respect, my friend, you are the one who changed it to singular...

Yes, let's focus our attention on the biggest polluter.

That would be China.