Atmosfair is a German public interest group that recommends limiting your air travel to about 3,100 miles per year — if you live in Los Angeles, that’s one round-trip flight to Mexico City... Last fall, having accepted an invitation to speak in Morocco, I used this online calculator to determine the carbon cost of my trip. My seats alone on the round-trip flights from Los Angeles to Casablanca (with a layover in Paris) helped emit about 8,400 pounds of carbon dioxide, prorated, into the atmosphere. Double that because my wife accompanied me. In sum, our seats alone on the planes to and from Morocco helped unload about 16,800 pounds of carbon dioxide. And this, of course, was just a small fraction of the emissions cost of the flight as a whole.It's easy for people like me — who love home and have to force ourselves to do a little travel because of a sense that you're supposed to travel — to forgo travel. The news that you're not supposed to travel — that you get virtue points for staying home — is happily received. It's like getting a compliment — how pretty you look today! — when you haven't done a thing to try to look good.
To put this into perspective, my wife’s and my annual carbon footprint in Orange County, California — counting gas, electricity, transportation and waste disposal — is about 33,000 pounds, according to the carbon footprint calculator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.... By taking one optional international trip that helped emit about 16,800 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, my wife and I increased our 2016 carbon footprint by more than a third. The harm we did with one international trip surely neutralized any good that we did all year as recyclers, eco-consumers and financial contributors to environmental organizations....
Take a deep, slow breath, and throw away that bucket list for good. You are needed at home, my friend, urgently needed. For the love of the Earth and of those who will inherit it when you are gone, stay right where you are.
But for those who love to travel — who've built their conception of happiness around frequent travel — it's hard to hear this news. What do you tell yourself? These numbers must be wrong. 16,800... 33,000.... Denial. Bargaining: Can't I just turn down the thermostat and recycle more? Buy less? No, there's nothing you can do at home that will compensate for the extravagant carbon-spewing that is you on a plane.
IN THE COMMENTS: CStanley said:
People like Althouse who hate to travel should set up their own carbon credit exchange. Every week Althouse announces a trip she's not taking, and calculates the carbon emissions saved, and someone can purchase those credits for a trip they want to take.
Posts
186 comments:
"To put this into perspective, my wife’s and my annual carbon footprint in Orange County, California — counting gas, electricity, transportation and waste disposal — is about 33,000 pounds, according to the carbon footprint calculator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.... By taking one optional international trip that helped emit about 16,800 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, my wife and I increased our 2016 carbon footprint by more than a third."
Oh for the love of christ! Just kill yourselves already.
Al Gore sez: "Hold my beer."
Speaking as someone who has flown a lot this year for work, it is something I think about. My carbon footprint is caused by two things: I've sired two kids, and I fly for work. I walk everywhere I go -- well, except to the Farmer's Market today in the rain to buy from my favorite local farmer, who is disadvantaged economically. Does that make me more virtuous than the author?
Travel is not the problem, because travel results from and causes economic activity. Do you want people to be lifted up out of poverty? Yes or no. That's the question I ask people who would piously write articles like this.
And I note the guy worried about that trip to Morocco...but went anyway.
I do agree it's silly to fly somewhere just for a vacation. I think there are plenty of places in Dane County/Sauk County that are worth exploring. Everytime I see the Travel Section in the Wisconsin State Journal, I wonder if the author at some other time worries about the effects of rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Of course, one of the worst carbon emitters and pollution producers is war - like the never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now Syria and Yemen.
He flew to Morocco to give a speech, when he could have given the speech live with a laptop in his living room.
He is insufficiently woke.
"The harm we did with one international trip surely neutralized any good that we did all year as recyclers, eco-consumers and financial contributors to environmental organizations...."
All that other crap did nothing either, except let him virtue signal like a banshee. Yes, a banshee.
Carbon footprint is the only virtue metric.
My carbon footprint is 10 1/2. Adidas.
These preachy people are too much.
Search the Climategate emails for "umbrella drinks" and "Tahiti."
CO2 is good for vegetation growth which feeds animal life, including us.
I agree with the sentiment though. It's just utterly unrealistic.
"Blogger MadisonMan said...
Speaking as someone who has flown a lot this year for work, it is something I think about. My carbon footprint is caused by two things: I've sired two kids, and I fly for work. I walk everywhere I go -- well, except to the Farmer's Market today in the rain to buy from my favorite local farmer, who is disadvantaged economically. Does that make me more virtuous than the author?
Travel is not the problem, because travel results from and causes economic activity. Do you want people to be lifted up out of poverty? Yes or no. That's the question I ask people who would piously write articles like this.
And I note the guy worried about that trip to Morocco...but went anyway.
I do agree it's silly to fly somewhere just for a vacation. I think there are plenty of places in Dane County/Sauk County that are worth exploring. Everytime I see the Travel Section in the Wisconsin State Journal, I wonder if the author at some other time worries about the effects of rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere."
What a steaming pile. Vacation travel causes economic activity too. ALL energy use causes economic activity. But keep walking to the farmers market to help some local farmer to feel good while you are raping the planet.
Watching one Hollywood produced movie or TV show increases the sexual assault footprint by .007 victims. And that doesn’t even include the necessitated consequential impact to increased carbon caused by the Hollywood mogul having to fly to Europe for “treatment”.
For the love of women and children, stop watching movies and TV.
Kevin Spacey probably flew a lot of miles back and forth from the US to England to engage in man-on-boy action.
It is time to publicly shame his carbon footprint.
I am Laslo.
Stop believing the AGW nonsense. The Earth's temperatures have been trending down for 10,000 years. It was warmer than now during the Middle Ages, even warmer during the Roman expansion, and warmer yet during the Minoan age. Temperature is controlled by the Earth's orbital mechanics and variable solar output.
Warm weather is better than cold weather. Excess deaths during winter extreme cold events is at least 10 times summer excess deaths during extreme heat events. Warm weather enhances overall biodiversity.
And carbon dioxide is a necessary nutrient for plant life. During the extreme low carbon dioxide levels of the recent Ice Age, and even during the Maunder minimum, carbon dioxide levels were close to the minimum that permits photosynthesis by the Rubisco complex. Crop yields are up in part because of increased CO2.
We see a lot of recommendations to do this or do not do that, but without actual numbers these things are meaningless. That's why this kind of calculation is so valuable.
The old proverb is "penny-wise, pound-foolish". It's not just applicable to money, I see a lot of that going on; for example five-gallon buckets are more dangerous to small children than firearms are, and both pale in comparison to putting your children in a car and driving somewhere with them, which we do without a second thought.
But we use familiarity and perceived necessity to offset our estimates of risk and cost. This leads to a lot of waste of lives and money.
MadisonMan said...
"Travel is not the problem, because travel results from and causes economic activity."
and
"I do agree it's silly to fly somewhere just for a vacation."
Why silly? You do realize that people going on vacation somewhere also causes economic activity... A LOT of economic activity. Shouldn't the people who work in jobs that depend on tourism also have the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty? Or do you only approve of certain types of economic activity (e.g., YOUR work...)?
The case could be made, given our current understanding, that had the plant kingdom been left to it's own devices, and so the planet had continued on its downward glide path of CO2, from when it was ten times the level when the industrial revolution started, Earth was headed for a snowball state.
The United States has met and exceeding goals for reducing carbon emissions. Not a single environmental mandate was implemented. The driving force was capitalism. The decisions made that caused the reduction, were driven by the goal of increased profits.
I once flew to London for a three hour meeting, well I gave a talk. It kept my co-workers and I in work for two years. DBQ is right.
When I see these Climate preachers put an end to air travel, get rid of their internal combustion engines, and rip the AC out of their homes, I will start to think there is a problem. Until then, STFU.
I should point out that being penny-foolish entails being pound-foolish--there are so many people whose finances are ruined by too many small expenditures, even though they don't buy a new car every other year, or develop a gambling addiction. But being penny-wise does not entail being pound-wise either.
And it's the same with risk. Many tiny risks are like one big risk.
This is all so simple! Ann forgot to figure in that the whole point of all this global warming activism is to get other people to reduce their carbon footprint. The actual activist gets dispensation for conniving to get others to live simply. Then he can take multiple trips to Asia shopping for a suitable bride, and when he finds her and brings her home to San Francisco, they can both jet off to Asia once a year to visit the family. He's all for raising gas taxes and pestering the public to take public transportation, so no problem.
Every religion has to have SIN to struggle against by various laws that must be kept. All they ever accomplish is an industry of absolution by works to enrich their priesthood who taught them the silly faith in rigged data sets. Meanwhile, global cooling rolls along and laughs at all of the fools.
https://newrepublic.com/article/144199/al-gores-carbon-footprint-doesnt-matter
@Hagar:CO2 is good for vegetation growth which feeds animal life, including us.
Water is good for plants, but that doesn't imply more water is always better. Some plants suffer from too much water, or too much warmth. Animal life as we know it now is adapted to plant growth as we know it now, and more is not necessarily better. There is no change that does not bring some harm, and no change that does not bring some good.
Resisting climate alarmism should not require expressing obviously false sentiments.
If these carbon footprint clowns truly believed the crap they were spewing, they would self-abort. And then have their survivors sell their body parts. A win-win!
Just like sexual harassment at TNR doesn't matter.
Has anyone actually determined the optimum temperature for the earth or the optimum amount of co2 in the atmosphere? Perhaps we’d all be better offf with a warmer earth and more co2. Maybe we could even “save the planet” from a catastrophic ice age with our meager human contribution to the earth’s climate.
That plane would be flying anyway. Should we quit space?
"That plane would be flying anyway. Should we quit space"
No. If fewer people flew, there would be fewer flights.
@Enlighten-NewJersey:Has anyone actually determined the optimum temperature for the earth or the optimum amount of co2 in the atmosphere?
Logically impossible, because you can only optimize for one variable. A warmer earth is better for hibiscus and worse for Sitka spruce, for example. Which of these plants should humans value more in coming to their decision?
Since it can't be done, that can't be the standard for action or lack of action.
I don't think the planes' engines emitted that much more CO₂ just because his wife was on board. Then again, I've never seen his wife.
The hypocrisy of the left is, as usual, breathtaking. If and when they can be held to their ridiculous standards, we might just get a reprieve in their constant attempts to control the rest of our lives.
My next thought was WTF is a "carbon budget"? Does this mean that leftists can't wear (or have their spouses wear) diamond rings? We are a carbon based life form. Not only do our bodies contain a lot of carbon, but life is powered by carbon compounds (carbohydrates), which, when broken down, result in the release of another carbon compound (CO2). On this planet, it is called the "Circle of Life", and at the center of it is carbon. No carbon means no life as we know it. Best way to stay on a carbon budget is, apparently, to kill yourself, and interestingly, one way to do this is to inhale another carbon compound (CO). And, yes, don't have kids (if you haven't killed yourself first). Ultimately, the evolutionary advantages of not believing in a "carbon budget" should kill off those who do, effectively killing this ridiculous theology.
The wife and I fly a lot, all for pleasure or to visit folks in the US (which may or may not be pleasurable.) Every plane we flew on this year was already going where we were going and leaving from where we were leaving, so I look at it as carbonless travel. Ditto every train and the one cruise we took this year. The only time I consider the act of relocating our bodies from one place on the globe to another to not be carbon neutral is when we get in our car(s) and drive there - whether it's to another town or just a round trip to the market. But, I make those trips guilt free as well, because until one of the carbon hucksters produces a model that can tie ambient temperature to atmospheric CO2 concentration, it's all bullshit and speculation. I don't care if anyone believes the bullshit and opts to restrict his/her own travel, but no one should expect anyone else to fall for the same con job.
@Paco Wove':I don't think the planes' engines emitted that much more CO₂ just because his wife was on board. Then again, I've never seen his wife.
Definitely not, there is a certain base amount that the plane needs to fly at all, and passengers and cargo add to that base. You can't say that two people means twice the carbon dioxide, it might be more like 5% more, something.
Again, the lack of quantitative reasoning.
"Hold my carbon dioxide deposits and watch this."
[climbs onto airplane and flies off to Morocco]
@Bruce Hayden:My next thought was WTF is a "carbon budget"? Does this mean that leftists can't wear (or have their spouses wear) diamond rings? We are a carbon based life form. Not only do our bodies contain a lot of carbon, but life is powered by carbon compounds (carbohydrates), which, when broken down, result in the release of another carbon compound (CO2). On this planet, it is called the "Circle of Life", and at the center of it is carbon. No carbon means no life as we know it.
Of course, no one is espousing the abolition of carbon, and every climate scientist knows carbon is required for life. You can resist climate hysteria, without making up a ridiculous argument and refuting it.
Emily Atkin, the New Republic writer in the above link who assures us Al Gore is not a hypocrite, does so by writing: "But climate change advocates who don’t live a carbon-neutral lifestyle aren’t hypocrites because, for the most part, they’re not asking you to live a carbon-neutral lifestyle."
I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance.
I laid this man for trying to live a virtuous life within his religious ethical framework. I mock him for being in such a ridiculous religion. And I oppose him for trying to impose his religion on me.
I don’t believe in your angry, made-up god, buddy. Get off my porch.
Paco Wové, I'm glad I read all the way to your comment, because that made me laugh out loud. Conan could use that type of writing.
I'm with you. I no longer have the need to travel. I've seen the world and now I live in the city of my birth my family is here and I'm good.
However, I don't think anyone should stop flying until all these sanctimonious jerks telling us to stop flying stop running around the world in private jets while telling us to limit our carbon footprint. The guy that wrote that article has fallen for their propaganda Hook Line & Sinker. It probably helps that he seems to have the temperament of a self-flagellating monk
"No. If fewer people flew, there would be fewer flights."
If there was an empty seat on the plane it doesn't matter that you flew, except possibly for the marginal fuel expenditure due to your own body weight.
"that doesn't imply more water is always better. Some plants suffer from too much water, or too much warmth. Animal life as we know it now is adapted to plant growth as we know it now, and more is not necessarily better. There is no change that does not bring some harm, and no change that does not bring some good."
Sure - but we are talking averages here across the entire planet, and more CO2 means more plant growth, worldwide, which translates into more food. It is silly, in my mind, to attack the claim that plants tend to do better with more CO2 based on some species doing better and some worse, since their relative concentrations will naturally change as a result of changing parameters/inputs. For me, the better metric is whether more or fewer people die of starvation. Sure, a human centric view, but that is fine with me, being of that species (at least most of the time according to my partner).
Vacation travel causes economic activity too.
I'd rather increase economic activity closer to home I guess, than in, say, Tibet or Kenya.
I travel enough for work that distance travel for leisure really doesn't appeal. That's why it's silly for me. Apologies if you were offended that you thought the it's silly referred to you.
People like Althouse who hate to travel should set up their own carbon credit exchange. Every week Althouse announces a trip she's not taking, and calculates the carbon emissions saved, and someone can purchase those credits for a trip they want to take.
" For the love of the Earth and of those who will inherit it when you are gone,.."
They worry about leaving the children a world a fraction of a degree warmer, but don't seem to care about leaving those children trillions of dollars in debt.
Priorities.
I am Laslo.
"Remember, like your dog, you are an animal. Don't try to make the dog into a person; emulate the animal's diet and exercise modes."
Are you saying I should eat out of the cat's litter box and chase cars, too? Because that ain't happening.
Amused, though not surprised, to see all the carbon-lamenting academics traipsing off to their university-paid conferences and speaking engagements. Gaia weeps, while they guzzle cheap chardonnay.
"Of course, no one is espousing the abolition of carbon, and every climate scientist knows carbon is required for life. You can resist climate hysteria, without making up a ridiculous argument and refuting it."
No more ridiculous than your argument about some species needing more water and others less. And, no I don't consider those whom you put up on a pedestal to be "scientists", but rather Climate Priests, cloaking their theology in pseudoscience jumbo jumbo. Science requires falsification, and CO2 driven Anthropogenic Global Warming has, essentially, been falsified, while its replacement, Climate Change, cannot be falsified, and, therefore, cannot be science.
The weight is mostly oxygen.
Sure - but we are talking averages here across the entire planet, and more CO2 means more plant growth, worldwide, which translates into more food.
There's really interesting research on how plant nutrients change in an environment of ever-increasing CO2. Link, Link, Link. I don't know if the results will stand with time, but they're interesting to read about and ponder. Certainly warrants more study.
CAGW is a complete scam. The believers need to be ridiculed.
tim in Vermont,
I understand what would happen if there was lower demand to fly... the supply of flights would decline. That said, this guy isn't changing that. People don't want to live in Medieval times where they never left their manor land. Not traveling is just another idyllic perspective on life. More power to Ann though. E pluribus Unum!
I will at this point get jumped on by all sorts of people and get accused of espousing all kinds of positions I don't hold, merely for saying what follows, but here goes.
Our lives, and all non-human lives are adapted to the climate as we have known it. Changing that climate too rapidly will result in extra costs in those lives while they adjust to the change. This is so self-evident, and there is no prominent skeptic of climate hysteria who would deny that.
As an example, all the USDA temperature zones have moved north in ten years. Your weeds are going to adapt to that rather quickly, but your Sitka spruces are not, and neither will the trees "moving" northward into what is no longer a range that can support a Sitka spruce forest, and it can be a long time before a forest gets reestablished there, because the weeds might not let it; conditions might favor them over the trees trying to establish themselves there while the Sitka spruces die. Maybe that ends up as a place humans like better, after enough time has passed, but if the rate of change continues to be rapid then nothing can adapt quickly enough if it lives much slower than weeds and vermin do. Weeds and vermin and smelly blue-green algae are very very good at adapting to rapid change. That doesn't make them bad, but humans are not fond of weeds and vermin, hence the names. We value them less than other things and so their proliferation we regard as a cost. We might change our minds about this, of course, we're humans and we adapt at the vermin-and-weed rate. We'll be all right in the end.
But that is the issue. Now I don't see that what climate hysterics propose is necessarily a solution, or that everything they predict comes to pass on schedule, but there isn't any real dispute that SOME rate of climate change is "too fast" to avoid extra costs of adaptation, no matter what skeptics you follow.
I see some people here though coming very close to saying that a change in temperature or carbon dioxide concentration is necessarily a change for the better. Perhaps, eventually, when a new relatively static level is established, it will be. But you can't just hand-wave over the transition cost, and a rate of change that does not slow down is going to be a world that looks very different from this one, which does not appear to have experienced as rapid a change. It will be a world that the slow lives find much harder to compete in. It won't be a dead world, or a world that humans can't live in. But it will look very different and things will be lost as well as gained.
CStanley said, "People like Althouse who hate to travel should set up their own carbon credit exchange."
That's clever. I need these exchanges to exchange with each other, though. For example, if I have three glasses of wine on Friday night, I'd like to be able to trade between the Alcohol and Carbon exchanges. There should be an app for this.
Sorry, last should have been (thank you Apple spellcheck):
"And, no I don't consider those whom you put up on a pedestal to be "scientists", but rather Climate Priests, cloaking their theology in pseudoscience mumbo jumbo. Science requires falsificability, and CO2 driven Anthropogenic Global Warming has, essentially, been falsified, while its replacement, Anthropogenic Global Climate Change, cannot be falsified, and, therefore, cannot be science."
@Bruce Hayden:No more ridiculous than your argument about some species needing more water and others less.
Huh. I guess I thought that was an observed fact, because you find different plants and animals depending on how much water is available.
And, no I don't consider those whom you put up on a pedestal to be "scientists",
Who are they and how did I do that? Simply because I disgreed with one thing you said, you attribute to me any number of things I did not say and views I do not hold. Someone is acting like a priest confronted with a heretic, but I do not think it is I.
I just booked an overnighter to Denver. Because I can. Fuck these guys.
For those saying his computation is wrong because the plane would have flown anyway: Yes, that plane would have flown anyway. But the airlines decide how many planes fly based on past usage. Somewhere there is a tipping point where one more plane ticket sold causes them to add more flights in the future, or one less ticket sold causes them to reduce the number of future flights.
It is extremely unlikely that their particular ticket purchase was right at the tipping point. But if it was, then their ticket purchase triggered many additional flights. Of course it would be absurd to add all of those flights to their carbon footprint in that case. It is equally absurd to ignore that case. The proper way to handle it is to apportion a share of those flights to each person who buys a ticket. Which is what their carbon footprint calculation does.
Just last month scientists were publicizing an analytical and theoretical paper in which they admit they don’t even know how or why the universe can even exists. The problem they were grappling with was how it was that matter could exist and the antimatter didn’t just wipe it all out - didn’t just negate it. They speculated that somehow the antimatter must behave or move in ways different than the matter, I.e. that there must be some asymmetry that prevents the antimatter from just canceling out the matter. One theory they proposed was that somehow the antimatter had a negative gravity meaning that the gravity made things go up in the antimatter space.
But my point all along has been that the climate alarmists have an insurmountable significant digit issue. The amount of energy in the universe is the amount of matter times the speed of light squared. And as we understand it heat is one of the lowest forms of energy. So how scientists get from telling us they have absolutely no idea how or why the universe can exists coupled with the fact that the universe as we see it apparently has an unfathomable amount of energy and potential heat stored up in it, - How exactly do they get from there to telling us that our own tiny portion of the system is so stable that 1.5° is somehow catastrophic.
But I of all people understand. Religionists are going to religion.
I just booked an overnighter to Denver. Because I can. Fuck these guys.
Just got to listen to Michael Lewis condescendingly explain/complain that Trump’s new people are rejecting the “scientists”’employed by the previous administration and their worship of “climate change science”.
"God bless you for choosing the recycled air, long periods of sitting, and airport demands because you want to travel extensively and see things out there."
Thank you for the encouragement, Mary, but I'm 73 years old and I've already seen much of the world. The traveling I'm doing now is for the children.
Denial. Bargaining: Can't I just turn down the thermostat and recycle more? Buy less? No, there's nothing you can do at home that will compensate for the extravagant carbon-spewing that is you on a plane.
Well, there's always the option of becoming a sanctimonious climate inquisitor.
And by the way what is the climate impact of third- to first-world migration? Never hear much about that.
"MadisonMan said...
I'd rather increase economic activity closer to home I guess, than in, say, Tibet or Kenya."
Except travel that economically benefits you. Then it's fuck the planet.
Keep serving up the drivel.
I think moving the EPA offices to Detroit would reduce travel by bureaucrats and shutting off air conditioning for those offices would set a good example.
That way, the bureaucrats would be centrally located and closer to customers.
Shutting down air conditioning would improve humility, which is good for children and other living things,
As recently as about thirty years ago, many airplanes flew with lots of empty seats. I remember having the entire center row (five seats) to sleep on when flying across the Atlantic. That really was pretty common.
Of course airlines are tighter now, but I don't think supply/demand is much of the reason why. Airlines somehow attract foolish management, and I suspect that things like available gate space and available airports with long runways play major roles.
Ignorance is Bliss said...
For those saying his computation is wrong because the plane would have flown anyway...
I think you need to fine tune your sarcasm detection meter.
I suppose technical suggestions that they don't know what they're talking about are out of place today.
rhhardin, your point about the mass of CO2 is an important one. We should really be measuring the amount of O2 in the atmosphere. Before the Industrial Revolution, it was about 21%, but now it's down to only about 21%.
They worry about leaving the children a world a fraction of a degree warmer, but don't seem to care about leaving those children trillions of dollars in debt.
Priorities.
I am Laslo.
No kidding.
Resisting climate alarmism should not require expressing obviously false sentiments.
The peak dinosaur age may have been the result of a much warmer global climate with constant cloud cover trapping both O2 and CO2 in the lower atmosphere, which promoted luxuriant vegetation and allowed enormous animals to flourish.
Not necessarily what we would like to see in our world, but then we are not likely to. That amount of change takes more time than our species is likely to have here on earth, and the next generation will presumably adjust.
Anyway, it showss global warming is no disaster; just change back to something different from our world.
@Hagar:The peak dinosaur age may have been the result of a much warmer global climate with constant cloud cover trapping both O2 and CO2 in the lower atmosphere, which promoted luxuriant vegetation and allowed enormous animals to flourish.
Yes it did. This happened over millions of years.
Anyway, it showss global warming is no disaster; just change back to something different from our world.
Yes, it might be very different. There will be losers as well as winners. But I think humans will be just fine.
In the words of the immortal W.C. Fields, “ Give ‘em an evasive answer. Tell ‘em to go f**k themselves”
And what about the ozone hole? That was the biggest thing a few decades ago. Bigger even than nuclear winter, which only lasted about a year as a news story.
I seem to remember someone-- maybe Carl Sagan-- suggesting that just one more atomic-bomb test would plunge the world into nuclear winter.
16,000! 16,000!!! Oh my gosh, how awful. I... hey, waitaminute - against what?
Oh. I see. You don't have a percentage. You, you just have "16,000". You, ah - you, you don't have another...um, number? You know, maybe a, well, slightly larger number, that's part of the..whole...huh.
Well, I mean, yes, of course - SIXTEEN THOUSAND!!!. Right? I'm with you.
What? No, no - I get it:that's a lot of, um, carbons. Carbons, right? Is that what they are? Yes. Yes, I see. Well. Well? The thing is...
What do you tell yourself?
I tell myself, "Have I put aside enough pin money this year to pop off to Europe for a few weeks?" If no, then I tell myself "No". If yes, then I rape the earth via plane, train, and automobile without remorse.
@Gabrial - my problem with what you are saying is not that it might not be true, but, rather, it is assumed to be true, and that massive economic penalties are assumed justified as a result. We are talking economic requirements that would beggar the First World, probably causing widespread famine, and for what? From my point of view, a religion in which the high priests get to live as if the doom that they are predicting for their flocks were fraudulent. Somewhat like Catholic priests living lavish lifestyles, or having mistresses (or being child molesters) after having taken vows of poverty and chastity. If the people preaching climate change disaster, pushing for carbon budgets, etc, would live like they believed their predictions, maybe the rest of us would too.
Don't come to me telling me that algae are moving north, but the pine trees aren't moving as quickly, and that is somehow bad. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. I don't really care myself. The climate is continually changing (very evident where we live in NW MT, which was at the bottom of Glacial Lake Missoula a number of times in the past). So what? Why is that bad, for the planet, and for the species? You are far from convincing me either that CO2 driven AGW/AGCC is either happening (being causation, instead of merely weak correlation), and if it is, that it is bad for us. Get your ducks in a line, and then come back - but by video, because flying or driving to do so tells me that you don't believe it any more than I do.
1. I wish some academic would write a serious research paper on how big the global warming industry is. Market cap of Tesla, global warming conferences, research papers, etc.
2. GOP House tax bill eliminates the $7500 tax credit per Tesla purchase. Stock tanked Friday. Tesla makes a tiny number of tax-advantaged cars compared to Ford but it has a higher market cap. The scam is ending.
I just ran one of those ridiculous carbon footprint calculators. Ours for the household (not including business stuff) is about 10 metric tons.. BFD! I'm not in the least worried about my "carbon footprint". Maybe we SHOULD take some plane trips to keep up with the Joneses?
Right now it is 31 degrees outside. Our house is toasty warm at 68% in the great room and office annex and the heater hasn't come on all night. That's because we built our house to be energy efficient, not for 'carbon' reasons but so we don't have to pay PGE as much.
We don't fly anywhere....don't want to. No where we want or need to go.
We don't generally buy many new goods that need to be manufactured, which create (so called) carbon footprints, because we 1. already own pretty much everything we need and 2. usually buy something that is used or antique aka already spewed carbon. (Although I did just buy a newer used car to replace my 15 year old vehicle that was crunched by a logging truck. Otherwise, I would still be driving the old trusty car)
What do they want people to do? Huddle in darkened grass huts wearing animal skins? Eat dirt? Yes. That is the answer. They want US, the little people who don't count, to stay in our places while THEY can jet off to Morrocco. WE should live in darkened hovels while THEY can live in Al Gore Mansions.
All this sanctimonious lecturing is not going over well. People are going to resent and rebel.
I think we shall go burn that giant pile of leaves and orchard trimmings, that have been accumulating since spring, this afternoon and beef up our 'carbon' footprint. Maybe drink some single malt imported Scotch while we are at it. That should up our carbon footprint.
I wonder what this kind of analysis would show for the carbon footprint of immigration. Take the carbon footprint of a typical African/Middle Eastern/ Mexican rural villager over his remaining life compared to the carbon footprint of the average Angeleno. The USA has and estimated 48 million foreign-born immigrants (legal and illegal), virtually all of whom come from lower carbon footprint cultures. Yet, strangely, Science is incapable of calculating immigration's contribution to AGW. The computer models literally just don't compute.
But for those who love to travel — who've built their conception of happiness around frequent travel — it's hard to hear this news. What do you tell yourself?
AGW is a hoax. Besides, warmth is good for humanity. Lastly, I'll start changing my lifestyle sometime after all the chicken littles do.
@Bruce Hayden:You are far from convincing me either that CO2 driven AGW/AGCC is either happening (being causation, instead of merely weak correlation), and if it is, that it is bad for us.
Since I said neither of those things, it is not surprising that you would not be convinced of them by anything I had said.
There's not much point in addressing a person who insists on reading something other than what I have written.
AA: It's easy for people like me — who love home...
People who travel don't love home?
I love home. As my mother used to say, "I love to travel and I love to come home."
The two emotions are not exclusive.
Some years ago, I met a married couple from Germany in New Jersey. They fretted over whether to buy a California wine or an Italian one, because they had computed that the carbon transport footprint of the Californian was higher, over land, than the Italian. Seriously, they discussed it, ruefully. After having flown on a big jet over the Atlantic Ocean.
I was buying dinner, so I bought the superior California wine.
@Bruce Hayden: The thing is, you have made so many assumptions about what I must believe, that we couldn't even begin to talk to one another until you had agreed to let those false assumptions go.
I am not responsible for the opinions and statements of others.
Who is paying for these carbon footprint calculator apps? How much does it cost to make one? Another example of the size of the global warming industry. And it is a big industry; make no mistake about it.
M Jordan said...
I don’t believe in your angry, made-up god, buddy.
I don't either. He's some sort of Jesuit.
The math is completely wrong, so his number is total bullshit.
A 747 carries about 100 tons of fuel, more or less, for a transatlantic trip. If there are 300 people on board, that's 100/300 or .33 tons per person.
.33 tons is about600 pounds.
600 pounds of fuel can't emit 16,800 pounds of carbon. So he's completely wrong in a blindingly obvious way.
So the guy who can't do 5th grade arithmetic is going to call me a "Science denier".
robother: I wonder what this kind of analysis would show for the carbon footprint of immigration. Take the carbon footprint of a typical African/Middle Eastern/ Mexican rural villager over his remaining life compared to the carbon footprint of the average Angeleno. The USA has and estimated 48 million foreign-born immigrants (legal and illegal), virtually all of whom come from lower carbon footprint cultures. Yet, strangely, Science is incapable of calculating immigration's contribution to AGW. The computer models literally just don't compute.
The overlap between "people who want humans to reduce carbon emissions" and "people who think everyone in poorer countries should be allowed to move to richer countries" is one of the main reasons for taking AGW people's doom-saying with a grain of salt.
I too am the virtuous homer. I dislike travel and I dislike waste. I bicycle and use public transportation.
Earlier someone stated that you can only optimize for one variable. This is not true. Many many things are optimized for an entire system with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of variables.
This is part of the major problem with Climate science. The system has billions of variables and we have no clue the weight of most of them, we also do not have very accurate or precise measurements. So we "massage" them in a way that we think will be close to the truth but the massager is just putting their thumb on the scale most of the time.
If you really look at the margin of error on the "average global temperature" there is no way it is not at least 1 degree Celsius either way. In other words the measurement do not mean much if you are comparing to older and more unreliable measurements. Until very recently the recorded temps would only be accurate to a degree or so and the precision of the tool doing the measurements was horrible to say the least. The only way to "massage" that to make assumptions and most of the assumptions ate geared to prove an already decided result... that humans cause all the change. Peopel are not denying the truth they are denying people who obviously have an agenda that seems odious to them.
I also have to say that until the climate/weather jibs with the models, which they do not by a large margin, you cannot trust them. A map is not the terrain and if you experiment does not comport support the hypothesis you throw it out or find out what is wrong in your hypothesis. I see to much in climate science that they just change the data...
Anyway, it showss global warming is no disaster; just change back to something different from our world.
Truly. The world changes always. Plants and animals adapt. Sometimes they fail in adapting if the change is sudden (aka SMOD) but as in Jurrasic Park, life finds a way.
Those who are freaking out about global warming (or cooling as the case may be) need to take some geology courses. It is fascinating to look at the geologic formations in the area where I live and see a 20ft bank of diatomactios earth and in come cases chalk. This forms in water, or oceanic conditions. Interspersed in the layers of the whitish grainy deposits are layers of about 1/2 inch of ash and soot from volcanic activity.
Over the top of the peaceful diatoms are layers of rounded rocks and rubble deposited from the flooding from the last (or maybe a previous) ice age. The valley where I live is the remains of a large and very deep lake formed by the melting glaciers.
In other areas there are twisted formations of formerly oceanic bedrock from the Pacific plate interspersed with areas of Serpentine.
Billions of years of climate change. Billions of years of earth twisting, sinking, rising, erupting. Land that was under the ocean is now on top of mountains. Oceans that are gone are now the fertile farmlands of the Central Valleys in California.
And....they think that WE should be concerned about breathing out too much Carbon Dioxide?
The earth changes and if WE don't adapt...well....tough luck I guess. Millions of years from now, some other creature will have taken our place.
600 pounds of fuel can't emit 16,800 pounds of carbon. So he's completely wrong in a blindingly obvious way.
Is that 600 pounds of fuel creating 16,800 pounds of CO2 = C + O2 ?
If these nitwits really want to reduce CO2 emissions, they should just stop breathing. And I wish they would.
I once had anal sex with a stewardess, but we weren't actually on a plane, so there were no carbon footprint issues.
I am Laslo.
From the US Energy Information Administration:
"About 19.6 pounds of CO2 are produced from burning a gallon of gasoline that does not contain fuel ethanol. "
A gallon of gasoline weighs approximately 6 pounds.
So a burning a pound of gasoline produces 3.26 pounds of CO2.
Let's assume gasoline and jet fuel are similar. 600 pounds of fuel would produce approximately 1,956 pounds of CO2. You can draw your on conclusions...
Bob Ellison: Some years ago, I met a married couple from Germany in New Jersey. They fretted over whether to buy a California wine or an Italian one, because they had computed that the carbon transport footprint of the Californian was higher, over land, than the Italian. Seriously, they discussed it, ruefully. After having flown on a big jet over the Atlantic Ocean.
Lol. We're great lovers of Italian wine chez Angel-Dyne. I'm sorry to hear that it would be Swampy's choice for swampy reasons, but the wine already goes down way too smoothly as is, so the extra frisson of knowing one is drinking earth-raping grapes would be overkill.
Of course, if these people were serious, they'd be drinking the local fermented-catawba juice, not expertly-made wines from thousands of miles away.
It might ease his conscience a little if he were to go to the NASA website and view photographs from space and see how much greener the earth has actually become during the last 30 or so years of increasing atmospheric CO2.
As I understand the argument, if his wife had not gone on the trip and her seat had remained empty, his family's carbon expenditure for the trip would have been cut in half.
Seems to be the carbon expenditure has to be pretty much the same if he plane is full or half full.
As to the amount of CO2 produced from burning a gallon of gas? I've always wondered how a given quantity of a substance can when broken down (and delivering both heat and power in the process) can have a greater mass at the end than at the beginning. Granted I wasn't the greatest physics student.
"It might ease his conscience a little if he were to go to the NASA website and view photographs from space and see how much greener the earth has actually become during the last 30 or so years of increasing atmospheric CO2."
That development has to present some terrible threat to the survival of the human race. Stay tuned.
(Of course the survival of the human race is the problem in the first place. Such a paradox. We may have to destroy the race in order to save the planet.)
"I once had anal sex with a stewardess, but we weren't actually on a plane, so there were no carbon footprint issues."
I wasn't figuring we were going to have anal sex.
I was at her hotel room, banging her from behind, when she said "I have to fly to Detroit tonight. Let's have anal sex."
I was not sure of the connection between the flight to Detroit and anal sex, but we had anal sex, anyway.
Sometimes memories pour over me like gelatin that never set.
I am Laslo.
"If these nitwits really want to reduce CO2 emissions, they should just stop breathing." Nah. They just want us deplorables to stop breathing.
Levi Starks, hydrocarbons like gasoline have much of their mass from carbon. When you burn them in air, like by driving a car or an airplane, they end up in molecules that are much denser from the oxygen with which they burn. (Oxygen atoms weigh a lot more than hydrogen ones.)
Nobody talks much about the H2O that also comes out of such burns. H2O is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
Not denser, but more massive.
My carbon footprint is fuck off, lunatic!
After we had anal sex, the stewardess and I drank vodka from little bottles in the mini-bar. Yes: expensive, but so convenient.
Buzzed, I asked her about the first time she had anal sex.
"It was a pilot," she said.
That explains things, I thought.
"I was fourteen at the time."
Fucking pilots.
I am Laslo.
Seems to be the carbon expenditure has to be pretty much the same if he plane is full or half full.
Bingo! Give David a prize!
There is also the issue of which planes -- modern jet engines are highly efficient when compared to older engines, and that is especially true of John Travolta's antique 707. That hasn't stopped Mr. Travolta from lecturing people about carbon emissions, nor has it stopped him from flying the 707 for his personal enjoyment.
The stewardess told me that the pilot having anal sex with her when she was fourteen didn't seem that big a deal at the time.
Then later she realized not all men's penises were so small.
I am Laslo.
Levi Starks said...As to the amount of CO2 produced from burning a gallon of gas? I've always wondered how a given quantity of a substance can when broken down (and delivering both heat and power in the process) can have a greater mass at the end than at the beginning. Granted I wasn't the greatest physics student.
It's the weight of combining oxygen during the combustion. Gasoline combines with oxygen to make water and CO2. The products don't seem "heavy" because they're volatile. Metals combine with oxygen to make oxides which is heavier than the metal. Englishman Robert Boyle first showed that.
Nobody talks much about the H2O that also comes out of such burns. H2O is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
Nobody talks about it because it clouds the whole theory.
It seems to me that since Althouse and the majority of her commenters are incapable of and uninterested in evaluating the science of how we sustain the atmosphere and planet within the context of an industrial/post-industrial economy, they like to yammer on and on about personal virtue and hypocrisy instead.
It's sort of like yelling at anyone who believed the cholera epidemics of the past had to do with sewage water while screaming at them for not refusing to poop or pee or construct their own personal sewer system.
Right-wingers are incompetent at governing - or any public activity, for that matter. They just can't handle it and aren't up for the job. The only thing they're good at is fomenting foreseeable, human tragedy and mass casualty and then telling the people that it's a problem of individual morality that failed them. Privatizing gains and publicizing losses is all that the right can ever do.
"how a given quantity of a substance can when broken down (and delivering both heat and power in the process) can have a greater mass at the end than at the beginning."
Because I just have to get my oar in here... when hydrocarbons are burned, they combine with oxygen already present in the atmosphere to produce CO₂. Because oxygen is heavier than carbon and hydrogen, the resulting amount of CO₂ produced is of considerably greater mass than the original hydrocarbon, but equal to the hydrocarbon + oxygen (minus the H₂O also produced).
Nobody talks much about the H2O that also comes out of such burns. H2O is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
Because it can easily phase-change into liquid water (or even ice) at terrestrial temperatures and sufficient concentration and therefore does not build up in our atmosphere to a degree to affect climate as CO2 does.
Right-wingers are morons. Do they not realize that saying something as stupid as the above quote just demonstrates that they'd rather spout the talking points of a "think tank" than make some basic observations that any 7th-grader can see about how the world works?
A coalition of the stupid and the evil. What a team the right wing make.
If these nitwits really want to reduce CO2 emissions, they should just stop breathing. And I wish they would.
Because that's the way the right wing deals with human problems. They are real experts at getting mad at not being able to figure out and work within the framework of an actual civilization.
It's time for them to throw in the towel. They are not up to the job.
The progressive ideology, which now is thorough pathological, has long pushed for a return to a 19th century way of life, with people never traveling more than a few miles from their "walkable" "urban villages."
It must be sad for progressives to realize no one listens to them or cares about what they say. The spell has been broken, their power to intimidate is gone. No wonder they're yelling at the sky today.
"For the love of Earth . . ."
Substituting earth for God. How typical. The word "earth" is even capitalized.
It is crazy to love something that cannot love you back.
But what about Davos? and Aspen? And a million UN conferences on this and that? How can we stop traveling to save the world when we're so busy traveling to save the world?
It must be sad for progressives to realize no one listens to them or cares about what they say.
Behold, the spell that gerrymandering casts on RWNJ Greg Hlatky, who actually comes to believe that the partisan attitude inside his gated ideological community typify common and well-supported sentiments in America.
"Say yes to corrupt oligarchy and no to science," he imagines them clamoring!
"if it was, then their ticket purchase triggered many additional flights. Of course it would be absurd to add all of those flights to their carbon footprint in that case. It is equally absurd to ignore that case."
"Many additional flights"? That seems a stretch, as does the conditional ("if only they hadn't flown, the airline wouldn't have scheduled a future flight! For God's sake, stop them before they schedule again!"). It's true that if there were no demand, then there would be no flights. But that is a different metric – what should be getting measured and reported to potential passengers (assuming they care about such things at all) is *the probability that their ticket will cause the flight to take place at all*, as in, "if fewer than X tickets are booked by Y date, the plane doesn't leave the ground".
But what about Davos? and Aspen? And a million UN conferences on this and that? How can we stop traveling to save the world when we're so busy traveling to save the world?
Here goes the right-wing once again, confusing and making an issue of public infrastructure into one of "personal virtue." Everyone knows that the answer to the cholera epidemics of the past was to put an end to defecation and urination. A big government public sewage works project was really the wrong way to go. Why did we not realize our folly? If only Michael the crony capitalist had been around to advise Jon Snow back then.
Having purged every institution they control of any dissenting voices, progressives prate about gated communities.
Projection: it's not just for movie theaters.
My husband and I took a trip to Greece early this summer. It will be our only plane trip this year. Loved it - the people there were so warm and kind. Fascinating country for two history buffs like us. The people there were also very worried about the economic crisis there. The young lady there who waited on us at breakfast had gone through an online English program through UM (I told her she was a Wolverine). My tour guide at the Acropolis had a masters degree in archeology. There were a few touristy type stores were I bought something just because I could tell the people there were struggling. The tourist industry there is keeping a LOT of people afloat. Also, the country is struggling with dealing with all the refugees (a crisis largely caused by our former administration). But, by all means, stay home and let people who depend on tourism starve.
Having purged every institution they control of any dissenting voices -
You like the voices, because you like seeing the vast majority of the country who agree with the left in distress. What you don't like is defending the franchise. It's voting, and especially competitive elections, that you're against:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/06/republicans-and-democrats-both-try-to-gerrymander-but-only-one-of-them-is-any-good-at-it/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-power-that-gerrymandering-has-brought-to-republicans/2016/06/17/045264ae-2903-11e6-ae4a-3cdd5fe74204_story.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/partisan-gerrymandering-has-benefited-gop-analysis-shows-n776436
http://www.businessinsider.com/partisan-gerrymandering-has-benefited-republicans-more-than-democrats-2017-6
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/upshot/its-time-to-end-the-old-debate-over-gerrymandering.html?_r=0
https://thinkprogress.org/gop-gerrymandering-e2f0312dd211/
https://www.salon.com/2017/06/26/gerrymandering-has-really-helped-republicans-studies-fine/
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-republicans-rig-the-game-20131111
Gabriel seems to understand the nuance and uncertainty of anthropomorphic climate warmerung. Pretty much veryone else is just regurgitating right and to a lesser extent left talking points fed into their skulls via self-selection of opinion blogs to feed confirmation bias required for a mental masturbation climax.
On the political side of AGW, the left and the "rock-star" climate scientists have way over-played their hand. This exaggeration of the positive feedbacks (the over-simplified under-discretized modlz runz a bit hot) and the wild speculation and Armageddonization of the consequences feed into and somewhat justifies the right-wing conspiracy ideation of a watermelon Trojan Horse. Then you get VR self-flagellating commie pinko pussies combustion shaming normal people for living a modern western lifestyle.
Gabriel seems to understand the nuance and uncertainty of anthropomorphic climate warmerung.
It's kind of like the nuance and uncertainty of a near-LD of arsenic or any other poison. Sometimes it will kill, sometimes not. Is the victim ingesting other materials to absorb the poison? Are they more sensitive or less as individuals to the effects? It's important to go through all these considerations before we proceed to poison the host, because at the end of the day poisoning isn't always 100% effective at killing. We need to keep that in mind as we wreak havoc of uncertain magnitude on the damn biosphere keeping us and agriculture and everything else in our civilization alive. Keep up the poisoning, but just pay endlessly more attention to the uncertainties of the dose-response effect. Makes sense.
I've long thought of setting up a website where I can collect indulgences to prevent me from eating cabbage. After all, methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2.
@Charles:Earlier someone stated that you can only optimize for one variable.
To find the global optimum, yes, if you want to optimize for multiple variables there will necessarily be trade-offs, unless all variables happen to produce the same optimum which is only true in special cases.
@Ritmo:It's kind of like the nuance and uncertainty of a near-LD of arsenic or any other poison.
Carbon dioxide is not a poison any more than nitrogen or argon is, and there's no LD-50 for the planet. So no, it's not a good analogy.
@Levi Starks: I've always wondered how a given quantity of a substance can when broken down (and delivering both heat and power in the process) can have a greater mass at the end than at the beginning.
The number of carbon atoms is not changing. It's what the carbon gets combined with that increases the mass of the end product. Pounds is not the right metric to use to describe chemical processes, but with journalists what are you going to do, they'll just be confused by moles and so will readers of journalism.
Delivering heat and power is not going change mass appreciably, if you insist on trying to bring general relativity into it.
Toofless Reactionary: we are decarbonizing at a nice stately pace allowing for the technology to advance at it's own pace and not so much being force-fed by your command and control comrades.
...and another thing... AGW is not the most pressing environmental problem, but has sucked out the oxygen in the room. NPR had a nice story yesterday on how the lefty leftist environmentalists have completely ignored environmental justice, even in the face of Flint lead.
...and another thing... in human health and ecological risk assessment, attribution is the most important factor. The simplistic climate view is that CO2 is a control knob. However, we know from ice-age records that all minor (e.g. DO-events) and major melting events are preceded by concentrated dust layers in the ice. Human particulates are concentrated in the North while CO2 (as you alluded to) is a well mixed greenhouse gas globally. Yet, yet, yet, most of the melting and warming occurs in the North. The nice thing about particulate pollution is that there is off the shelf scrubbing technology ready to be deployed with minor economic hurdles and no learning curves. Another benefit is that by treating air pollution, we slaughter two Goliath with one rock: short-term GHGs and toxic/mutagenic air pollution. This would be a huge win for environmental justice because the poor and minorities would benefit the most.
However, your bicoastal leftist environmental weanie party friends are more concerned about Malibu sea levels and snail darters in Death Valley.
Well, he can go fuck himself. In the last ten days I have been in England and Spain. Tomorrow to Vancouver BC. Friday to NY. I might just go back to the U.K. The week after. I hope my carbon footprint is on this asshole's forehead.
"And I note the guy worried about that trip to Morocco...but went anyway." Our lefty betters in a nutshell. Hand Wringing and virtue signalling but going ahead anyway like a dieter at thanksgiving loudly saying "Oh, I really shouldn't eat that 12th piece of pecan pie...will anyone help me?..."
I fly back and forth to Boston once a month. That's the equivalent consumption of 24kWh/per day. My 6 family household uses 60kWh/day. So, there you go. Being green means you must give up airline travel.
Oh, did you know an 8 day cruise ship is the equivalent energy consumed as what was let loose on Hirohsima? I just found that out. Crazy...
Carbon dioxide is not a poison any more than nitrogen or argon is, and there's no LD-50 for the planet. So no, it's not a good analogy.
First of all, that's bs. CO2 may be toxic to people even at levels as low as 1000 ppm. Not likely that we'll get there within a hundred years but the fact that you reflexively spewed the above right-wing talking point is instructive. People respire out CO2 because they need those spots on the hemoglobin molecule to transport O2. Science is important to know, if you're going to appeal to it.
Second of all, thermal expansion of oceans, rising sea levels and impacts on agriculture and our ecosystem directly impact the survival of many millions more than just a single life - so let's forego the jargon about how poisoning one person is worse than displacing and endangering food security for the majority of the population.
If cities / states / governments really want to cut down on carbon emissions in a voluntary, economic positive way, start giving businesses and workers major tax incentives to work from home instead of commuting.. Unless your job requires you to be physically present, there is no need to drive 1-2 hours to/from an office very single day. If a large enough percentage of people started working from home every day, think of all the benefits this simple change could have:
* reduced CO2 emissions
* reduced wear and tear on roads and highways (reducing costs for upkeep / repair)
* less traffic accidents (reducing insurance costs)
* less gas consumption (reducing gas costs and also reducing transportation required to deliver gas to stations)
* lowered costs for office space rental, maintenance and cleaning (resulting in lower costs for real estate in general)
* less money spent eating out, potentially resulting in healthier lifestyle choices, leading to lower long-term medical costs
* smaller queues and wait times for those who continue to work outside the home
Of course, this would negatively impact some businesses which depend on the massive influx of bodies to their local vicinity, resulting in reduced tax revenue.. but I think the positives outweigh the negatives..
The only thing that limits my carbon footprint is money and convenience. I been to Scotland twelve times since 1997 and I'm planning on being back there next year. I may fly over once or I may fly twice. I
I am so tired of these scolds. I find it remarkable that the class of people that are antagonistic to religion and decried countries such as Spain and Ireland as having been priest ridden have so quickly given over their lives to the denizens of the bureaucracies that are more rapacious and proscriptive than most religions, at least in the west.
I see no significant difference between this editorial and the poor soul on the street in Huntington WV a few weeks ago who was sitting on a busy street corner with a microphone preaching the gospel of Christ.
As Chesterton said, "When people cease to believe in God they won't believe in nothing, they will believe in everything."
Toothless/gumless/gormless wrote:
"Right-wingers are incompetent at governing - or any public activity, for that matter. They just can't handle it and aren't up for the job."
*********************
Yeah, that's obvious. I mean, look at the superb job the Left has done running America's major cities: Detroit, Chicago, LA, Denver, NYC, Philly, Hartford....... and bankrupt states like Cali, CT and Illinois.... and look at the ten trillion in new debt Obama and the Dems ran up in only 8 years....look at the no-go areas in Paris, in Brussels, in Malmo and Stockhom and many German cities.... yeah, the Left has a lock on good governance!
Snort!
toothless persisted:
"First of all, that's bs. CO2 may be toxic to people even at levels as low as 1000 ppm."
*****************************
Snort! people in submarines regularly breathe in CO2 in concs of 5000 to 7000 ppm with no ill effects.
People breathe out CO2 in concs of 40,000 ppm.
But, yeah: it "may be" toxic at levels as low as 1000 ppm.
Snort!
Actually we do have an exchange for that. It's called money.
My husband and I took a trip to Greece early this summer. It will be our only plane trip this year. Loved it - the people there were so warm and kind.
My wife and I were scheduled to go there two years ago but the Greek currency crisis, plus the "migrants," caused us to cancel.
I had it all set up but the restaurants had stopped accepting credit cards and the bank ATMs were not functional.
I did not want to be walking around with a money belt and thousands of Euros in cash,
So we visited some friends in England and went to Waterloo, instead. We were in Brussels two weeks before the terror attack there.
We might try the Greek trip again next year.
Yeah, that's obvious. I mean, look at the superb job the Left has done running America's major cities: Detroit, Chicago, LA, Denver, NYC, Philly, Hartford....... and bankrupt states like Cali, CT and Illinois.... and look at the ten trillion in new debt Obama and the Dems ran up in only 8 years....look at the no-go areas in Paris, in Brussels, in Malmo and Stockhom and many German cities.... yeah, the Left has a lock on good governance!
Alas. If only you could gerrymander city council districts and get the people to vote against their interests and economic productivity as easily as you do in bleeding, debt-ridden Kansas or the other economically fallow red states that we're subsidizing then your ignorance might have enough traction to persuade anyone who doesn't already live in the middle-of-nowhere.
I'm all for doing things to the moronically nasty Jay Elink that lead to decline in his basic activity level and information usage, because firstly, no one would notice and secondly, it would be good for humanity:
https://inspectapedia.com/hazmat/Carbon%20_Dioxide_Exposure_Limits.php
https://web.archive.org/web/20110627061502/http://ston.jsc.nasa.gov/collections/TRS/_techrep/TP-2010-216126.pdf
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1104789/
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/15-10037/
Let's all do it. The more CO2 that can make it into Jay Elink's brain the better off all of humanity will be. Those oxygen-binding sites are clearly not doing him any good.
Jay - another thing you could try doing is holding your breath for about a half hour or so. Just count to 1,800 and if you start to feel woozy and black out, just remember that you're almost there!
Like whippets but with a great side effect for everyone not-Jay.
I believe that trying to restrict CO2 emissions directly is an effort that is doomed to failure. There are a couple of reasons that I think that. The biggest is the coupling between CO2 emissions and the standard of living. As long as we get most of our energy from burning fossil fuels, we cannot reduce CO2 emissions without radically reducing our standard of living. And people can say that they are willing to reduce their standard of living, but as soon as they start discovering what that actually means, their opinions change.
Second, we do not control the world. The United States is just of part it. If we get some repressive, undemocratic government here, then yes that government can radically reduce standards of living and repress carbon dioxide emissions, but guess what, the rest of world, not all of it anyway, is not going along with this.
Third, when you figure out the realistic impact of the sort of carbon dioxide emission reductions that the Paris Agreement will or would have produced, even in an optimistic but somewhat realistic scenario, it just doesn't make that much difference.
Now that's not to say that there aren't things that can't be rationally done. Any CO2 emission reduction effort that is low cost might be worth doing. For example why not just cut down mature trees in Wisconsin and sink them in to Lake Superior. As new trees grow to replace those trees that have been sunk into the anaerobic water that's in the deeper parts of Lake Superior a lot of CO2 will be removed from atmosphere. Or maybe better, why not cut down trees turn them into biochar (a kind of charcoal) and plow that biochar into farm soil. Then not only do we have the new trees sucking CO2 from the atmosphere but we've enriched and reinvigorated our farm soil. These things have to be low-cost to work, but if they are then it's simple.
Ok, next idea. Alternative energy technologies. Have we fully explored this? Of course not. Can we do this more intelligently than we are now? Probably.
I've skipped through that very briefly but the point I'm trying to make is that alternative energy technologies are potentially real solutions. You do it right, then you actually solve the problem.
We should be pursuing real solutions and not absurd and repressive fantasies that unfortunately appeal to a lot of people but are meaningless if the real issue is preventing the scenario of an excessively warm climate. (And that's another thing that makes this so complicated. How real is that scenario actually?)
Toothless:
Alas. If only you could gerrymander city council districts and get the people to vote against their interests and economic productivity....
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Wanna 'splain how the Right gerrymandered all those Democrat-machine-run "city council districts" in their favor, yet don't wind up running those cities?
Wanna 'splain how the Right gets city dwellers in Dem-machine-run American cities to vote against their own interests?
Wanna 'splain how the Right makes sure all those European states run by "social democrats" do the Right's bidding?
Wanna 'splain how the Right gerrymandered all those Democrat-machine-run "city council districts" in their favor, yet don't wind up running those cities?
They can't. Cities are "closer to the people" than any government of all. It's much easier for you evil wankers to give in to bribes by wealthy industry lobbies to state and federal government employees than to municipal leaders. And if you don't like debt than go ahead and develop functional economies and industries in your own backward red states and stop taking our subsidization of your red states.
Wanna 'splain how the Right gets city dwellers in Dem-machine-run American cities to vote against their own interests?
I don't see how they do. They still have greater real estate value than your middle-of-nowhere-villes. Much more demand to live there than in your subsidized backwards-villes.
Wanna 'splain how the Right makes sure all those European states run by "social democrats" do the Right's bidding?
Lol. European? I didn't know the right-wing Americans were allowed to bribe their governments as they're allowed to do in Citizens United America. Apparently Jay Elink's understanding of campaign finance is as empty as his understanding of everything else.
PLUS, he's changing the subject:
For everyone else, try to be responsive to the post...
I understand that's hard for you to do, Jay. But you're making an even bigger mockery of yourself than usual.
robother said...
I wonder what this kind of analysis would show for the carbon footprint of immigration. Take the carbon footprint of a typical African/Middle Eastern/ Mexican rural villager over his remaining life compared to the carbon footprint of the average Angeleno. The USA has and estimated 48 million foreign-born immigrants (legal and illegal), virtually all of whom come from lower carbon footprint cultures. Yet, strangely, Science is incapable of calculating immigration's contribution to AGW. The computer models literally just don't compute.
I looked into that once. The short version is that every time someone comes to the US they are adding carbon footprints to the world by the difference between their standard of living at home and the standard here. So it's useless to lower your carbon footprint till they build the wall.
Go further. If you go to another country and stay in a little beach hut by the Caribbean you have lowered your carbon footprint so that offsets the jet travel. Vacation can be good. Whereas if you go to a climate-change meeting at the Hilton-Acapulco the carbon footprint is the same so that is planet-destroying.
My carbon footprint is extremely low because I share in some property that is forested. But isn't that true of everyone in Wisconsin? We don't have to stay here all winter because the state is heavily forested. Californians, however, should never leave their state which has a lot of desert without trees.
Well that explains the reason why the people I meet that yammer about carbon footprints and how we are all gonna fry - are always the people jumping on a plane and flying every chance they get. They are deeply guilty and are trying to distract from the contradictions in their lifestyle.
On the issue of supporting economies through tourism - don't you know a lefty will just respond "those jobs don't pay a living wage anyway and thus don't deserve to exist"?
What do you tell yourself?
I follow Kurt Schlichter's recent advice, paraphrased: How about I do what I want, and you fuck off?
My older daughter and her husband go to Tuscany every year and have developed warm, lasting friendships with people there, some of whom are in the tourism business. While I don't travel abroad any more, I am glad that many people still do. It doesn't benefit only the economy of the locals but rewards the tourist with rich history and culture as well as a new perspective. I would like to see all young people spend a year or two abroad between high school and college. Or even instead of college.
"Flying with my wife to Morocco is bad, and you serfs shouldn't do it." Gah.
CO2 emissions will be solved eventually. When we have burned every extractable hydrocarbon, I expect CO2 levels will drop. Until then, the root question is really "how long can we make fossil fuels last?"
Quayle- You read some words, but did not comprehend them. Your misunderstanding does not make science into religion.
Bob Ellison- Your misunderstanding of airline economics makes me think you graduated from public school in this decade.
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
I'm all for doing things to the moronically nasty Jay Elink that lead to decline in his basic activity level and information usage, because firstly, no one would notice and secondly, it would be good for humanity.
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OK, let's look at your "studies", which you obviously neither read nor understood.
https://inspectapedia.com/hazmat/Carbon%20_Dioxide_Exposure_Limits.php
>>> "At 1% concentration of carbon dioxide CO2 (10,000 parts per million or ppm) and under continuous exposure at that level, such as in an auditorium filled with occupants and poor fresh air ventilation, some occupants are likely to feel drowsy."
>>>"The concentration of carbon dioxide must be over about 2% (20,000 ppm) before most people are aware of its presence unless the odor of an associated material (auto exhaust or fermenting yeast, for instance) is present at lower concentrations."
https://web.archive.org/web/20110627061502/http://ston.jsc.nasa.gov/collections/TRS/_techrep/TP-2010-216126.pdf
>>>studies CO2 exposure of astronauts on the ISS:
"The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) sets the following permissible exposure limits (PEL) (OSHA 1990):
• Final Rule Limit: 10,000 ppm (1% or 7.5 mm Hg) Time Weighted Average (TWA) over a work
shift up to 8 hours per day, 40 hours per week.
• Transitional Limit: 5,000 ppm (0.5% or 3.8 mm Hg).
7
• Short-Term Exposure Limit: 30,000 ppm (3% or 23 mm Hg) TWA over a 15-minute period.
"The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which conducts research and advises OSHA, recommends an additional “immediately dangerous to life or health” exposure limit of 40,000 ppm (4% or 30 mm Hg)."
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1104789/
>>>>>the study consisted of six groups of four people each. Statistically worthless. It further concludes:
"Results: Relative to 600 ppm, at 1,000 ppm CO2, moderate and statistically significant decrements occurred in six of nine scales of decision-making performance. At 2,500 ppm, large and statistically significant reductions occurred in seven scale."
Results contradicted by your first "study".
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/15-10037/
>>>"Methods: Twenty-four participants spent 6 full work days (0900–1700 hours) in an environmentally controlled office space, blinded to test conditions."
IOW more statistical doo-doo. 1400 ppm CO2 at max. NOT a controlled study for CO2, but rather a comparision of Green and non-Green buildings.
You gotta ask yourself: if decision-making is impaired at 1,000 ppm, why does the government allow ballistic submariners and astronauts to be exposed to five to thirty times as much CO2?
Face it: you've got squat. And worse, you obviously don't have a STEM background.
Mandrewa
The thing is that carbon dioxide is not a problem. There is nothing to fix. You accepted the premise. Big mistake.
I think the most important cause of global warming is the sun.
TTR: "Everyone knows that the answer to the cholera epidemics of the past was to put an end to defecation and urination."
Fortunately or unfortunately, that effort failed....
"Face it: you've got squat. And worse, you obviously don't have a STEM background"
He does seem to evidence an unreasonable dislike for engineers, project managers and climate model evaluators.
“I love home. As my mother used to say, "I love to travel and I love to come home."”
Well, there’s love and there’s love.
I’ll bet your mother didn’t say I love to commit adultery and I love to sleep with my husband.
Well, there’s love and there’s love.
I’ll bet your mother didn’t say I love to commit adultery and I love to sleep with my husband.
Ann, really? Good grief! Travel, adultery---all the same to Ann.
Well, there’s love and there’s love.
I’ll bet your mother didn’t say I love to commit adultery and I love to sleep with my husband.
That's both weirdly antagonistic and a terrible analogy.
I’ll bet your mother didn’t say I love to commit adultery and I love to sleep with my husband.
First time I've ever seen the structure A:B::Y:Z used like this as a format for a round of Mad-Libs, Althouse.
OK, I've been traveling today (by car) so I'm coming in late to the discussion. Lots of interesting things said by the commenters, but I want to go back to the original article that Althouse posted.
We Americans are among the most fortunate people ever to have lived on the face of the earth. If we want to go to Morocco, we can get there in a day or two and back in the same time (less than $900/pp RT). In earlier eras, our ancestors would have had to spend months making such a trip and could only have done so if they had great wealth. Instead of being grateful for the gifts we were granted by the efforts of our forebearers, Miles bitches and moans about his "carbon footprint". You want to reduce your carbon footprint? Live in a cave and go out a try to kill a mastodon with a flint-tipped spear. And if you do manage to kill one, eat it raw; those cook fires really emit a lot of carbon.
Idiot.
You gotta ask yourself: if decision-making is impaired at 1,000 ppm, why does the government allow ballistic submariners and astronauts to be exposed to five to thirty times as much CO2?
Ahhh... yes. The government. They never advise wrongly. That's what all my right-wing friends tell me.
They never put any American into harm's way unnecessarily. It's the government! Trust them, saith the right-winger!
Face it: you've got squat. And worse, you obviously don't have a STEM background.
I've never seen an engineer figure out the right way to diagnose an illness or save a life. But then again, most engineers are socially inept and have suspiciously low affection/regard for human beings and even humanity. But that Ted Kaczynski... man, he was a hell of a mathematician!
He does seem to evidence an unreasonable dislike for engineers, project managers and climate model evaluators.
Are engineers reverse engineering the tundra so that it stops melting and keeps the telephone poles straight in Alaska?
No?
Then mother nature is still smarter than them. They can fuck off and I'll read the real-life data of what's happening to the planet as a planet, not as a "model." At the moment, the planet is kind of a reality, not just an experiment.
Also, let me know when the project managers and model evaluators reverse engineer the Ohio River so that it doesn't catch on fire when that many tons of petroleum distillates and oil byproducts are poured all over it.
The Nazis were great engineers. They had a lot of neat systems, too. Not much regard for human life, but hey. That could be engineered and re-engineered too, according to them.
As an example, all the USDA temperature zones have moved north in ten years.
Cool....but how do we know that that isn't exactly what is supposed to happen, that it is not entirely natural?
Have those "temperature zones" moved and/or changed historically? I bet they have. I bet they've been changing for billions of years. Guess what? They're going to continue to change for billions more years.
“I love home. As my mother used to say, "I love to travel and I love to come home."”
Well, there’s love and there’s love.
I’ll bet your mother didn’t say I love to commit adultery and I love to sleep with my husband.
This was a mistake...it was supposed to be published under the TTR account.
Cool....but how do we know that that isn't exactly what is supposed to happen, that it is not entirely natural?
Because to do so is to reject Occam's razor. You could just as easily deny the evidence for gravity and come up with the theory of invisible magnets in everything drawn to earth. It wouldn't make any fucking sense, and would reject all the evidence that we have and DO know. But so does climate denialism. Too bad there isn't an industry staking its bets on the magnetic theory of gravitation, because then you would obviously shill for it.
There is no way any celestial object has of possessing - let alone regulating - a climate, absent an atmosphere. And the heat-retention properties of the most heat-retaining of its constituents is how it happens.
Just stop being a douchebag. You sound like someone who would deny that the burner is what caused you to damage your hand on the stove. Or the flame as the cause of your burning your hand on a lighter.
@Gahrie:but how do we know that that isn't exactly what is supposed to happen, that it is not entirely natural?
Doesn't matter if it is or isn't. The outcome is the same: the quicker the change, the fewer the organisms that can cope.
Whooping cough is natural, and so was smallpox. Yet we spend time and money trying to mitigate their effects because we don't like their effects, regardless of how "natural" they are. Floods and wildfires are "natural", and we try to mitigate them too. Whether it is right to do so, or if the money could be spent better, depends on what you value.
I bet they've been changing for billions of years. Guess what? They're going to continue to change for billions more years.
No one is disputing this. The rate of the change is the issue.
Cool....but how do we know that that isn't exactly what is supposed to happen, that it is not entirely natural?
Because to do so is to reject Occam's razor.
Why? Occam's razor:the principle that in explaining a thing, no more assumptions should be made than are necessary.
I'm assuming the change in climate is natural. You're assuming the change in climate is unnatural. That's exactly the same number of assumptions.
It wouldn't make any fucking sense, and would reject all the evidence that we have and DO know. But so does climate denialism.
Strawman. No one is denying the climate is changing...the climate is always changing. Some of us are skeptical of the causes of such change, as you should be if you believe in science.
I propose that instead of "carbon offsets", we should refer to them as "carbon indulgences.
Whooping cough is natural, and so was smallpox. Yet we spend time and money trying to mitigate their effects because we don't like their effects, regardless of how "natural" they are.
But what if a company found a way to market whooping cough and smallpox due to their other lucrative side effects? Surely then we would allow them to release as much of it into the environmen - excuse me, into the "market" - as they could, right?
@Gahrie:I'm assuming the change in climate is natural. You're assuming the change in climate is unnatural. That's exactly the same number of assumptions.
If it's natural, you can say what's causing it. For example, the tide rises twice a day, most places, and you can point to what's causing it, though it took a lot of work to establish it. If you say "natural" without pointing to the cause that is found in nature, then you might as well say "magic" or "God did it".
But what if a company found a way to market whooping cough and smallpox due to their other lucrative side effects? Surely then we would allow them to release as much of it into the environmen - excuse me, into the "market" - as they could, right?
If they produced a world with the highest population in history with the lowest levels of poverty and hunger in history, with hugely improving standards of living worldwide...then sure.
If it's natural, you can say what's causing it
I nominate the big ball of burning gas in the sky.
If you say "natural" without pointing to the cause that is found in nature, then you might as well say "magic" or "God did it".
But relying on "adjusted" data and refusing to release the original observed data is science ....right? Especially when the data does not conform with observable reality.
@Gahrie:I nominate the big ball of burning gas in the sky.
You are right, that is an essential element.
But relying on "adjusted" data and refusing to release the original observed data is science ....right? Especially when the data does not conform with observable reality.
There have been independent reviews and data compiled, share and enjoy. And skeptics have said for years that effects such as urban heat islands should require adjustments to temperature records. Independent climate modeling is done and free for download.
Many groups provide their data and the actual journal articles go into great detail about what is known and what is not, and what the problems are. That's where climate skeptics get their information about them.
The activists and the journalists lose the nuance and the qualifications, of course. Michael Mann does sue his critics, which is a dick move. But there is great deal more done than you have ever heard of.
But there is great deal more done than you have ever heard of.
I'm not a scientist, I'm a historian. I know the history of man and the history of the Earth. There is nothing at all extraordinary about today's climate.
You know what my favorite part of this whole mess is? The sanctimonious ones saying that air travel is bad for the environment but simultaneously sneering at provincial Midwesterners because they haven't travelled to other countries.
If they produced a world with the highest population in history with the lowest levels of poverty and hunger in history, with hugely improving standards of living worldwide...then sure.
For a hundred years! Great reason to let them kill off that planet for the next hundred thousand! Reward them thusly!
The purpose of earth is a "highly... standards of living" for one species! Kill off all the others! We don't need them!
The purpose of earth is a "highly... standards of living" for one species! Kill off all the others! We don't need them!
Every single one of them would kill us off without a moment's hesitation.
I thought the Left believed in evolution? Evolution requires the extinction of entire species.
Regarding the shift in the USDA plant hardiness zones, it is an oversimplification to say that this proves or reflects global warming. The change was made in 2005, updating zones published in 1990. USDA explained the change as follows:
"Compared to the 1990 version, zone boundaries in this edition of the map have shifted in many areas. The new map is generally one 5-degree Fahrenheit half-zone warmer than the previous map throughout much of the United States. This is mostly a result of using temperature data from a longer and more recent time period; the new map uses data measured at weather stations during the 30-year period 1976-2005. In contrast, the 1990 map was based on temperature data from only a 13-year period of 1974-1986.
"Some of the changes in the zones, however, are a result of new, more sophisticated methods for mapping zones between weather stations. These include algorithms that considered for the first time such factors as changes in elevation, nearness to large bodies of water, and position on the terrain, such as valley bottoms and ridge tops. Also, the new map used temperature data from many more stations than did the 1990 map. These advances greatly improved the accuracy and detail of the map, especially in mountainous regions of the western United States. In some cases, advances resulted in changes to cooler, rather than warmer, zones."
usda.gov/media/press-releases/2012/01/25/usda-unveils-new-plant-hardiness-zone-map
Hi Gabriel. Berkeley Earth has been impressive for some time. So is the website Science of Doom. These are two outliers that are quite good.
But then you mentioned Michael Mann. And he is a huge issue in my eyes. I feel like I have pretty good understanding of how science works. And when I look at his papers, a number of them seem to be filled with lies, deceit, and fraud. He's not the only person in the climate field to have these issues, but he's the most prominent, and everybody in the field should be aware of the controversy.
And that's the problem, because why aren't they speaking out? By they I mean the other scientists working in this area.
I feel like we've lost peer review. Peer review, in my opinion, simply means that scientists take the time to read and comment and criticize publicly other scientist's work. That doesn't mean everybody has to do it on everybody. But if they aren't doing it all that's kind of significant right there. For instance, I'm not sure that people should be citing other papers unless they've checked the work.
And it's necessary. Very few people can function as an island. They need feedback and they need criticism and the criticism should be based on science and not politics.
Now we hear about "peer review" all the time, but as I assume you know all that really means is that some scientist is serving as a gatekeeper. It's not real peer review because it's not public -- people outside don't know why a paper is being rejected or accepted -- and because it's not open -- people are appointed to be gatekeepers where with real peer review anyone can do it.
Gatekeeper review is also a problem because it can so easily be subverted. It works okay if the people doing it are knowledgeable, work hard at it, and care about the science. It breaks down fast when politics starts to become important.
As best as I can tell, CO2 emissions are a real issue and they are driving up temperatures, but I worry and even strongly suspect that I'm not being told significant things and that contrary evidence or different interpretations are being suppressed. Or there are interesting lines of thinking that simply aren't being explored at all.
By abandoning peer review, I feel like we are abandoning science.
"Right-wingers are incompetent at governing - or any public activity, for that matter. They just can't handle it and aren't up for the job."
Yes.We have a difficult time establishing and managing corrupt political systems. You democrats seem like you do corruption very well.
Every couple that breeds increases its carbon footprint by 50% per kid. And Amerikan breeders pollute more than most. Shouldn't there be a tax penalty for breeding?
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