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On June 03 2017 02:14 jcarlsoniv wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:04 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 02:00 jcarlsoniv wrote:On June 03 2017 01:51 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 01:45 Godwrath wrote:
Giving credence to an article that attempts to discredit the Paris accord because it's "merely symbolic" just to be able to missdirect the criticism about the self-denial running rampant amongst republican party, that's rich and deep. As if, the republicans actually gave a shit about the issue and left it because "it wasn't good enough".
Of course the Paris accord wasn't good enough. It is a first fucking step. This is part of the reason I linked a fairly reasoned article concluding that it's likely the last step and people that think otherwise are fooling themselves. What's rich and deep is your deflection and misdirection while claiming others do so. I wonder if it will ever sink it that inattention to counterarguments isn't sufficient to restate your primary argument. I conclude x, and any articles that conclude otherwise are obvious misdirection. But I'm not really following the conclusion that he believes it's the last step and not the first. I think that’s the case here. I think Paris was not just the first step, I think it was likely the last step, that those who hoped it would lead to “deepening future commitments” were fooling themselves and others. I think Paris was agreed to only because national leaders realized it was impossible to get a numerically meaningful set of binding national commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by specific large amounts. If I'm trying to address a problem, especially a big problem (and affecting long term positive change for the environment is big), I'd start by defining it. Put some framework around an issue, get consensus, start working towards solutions. I acknowledge that you don't believe the costs of action are being sufficiently considered, and that's an ok argument to have. But the US staking the position of "nah, we're just gonna go home instead" doesn't put us in a better position to solve the problem. Unless I'm missing something, I don't get the assumption that there would be not further steps taken beyond Paris. Getting the globe on the same page is where it starts, but it feels like the US was spacing out while reading, so we've had to flip back to the last chapter before we can move forward again. You quote a paragraph in the middle of the article that follows from the argumentation in the paragraphs preceding. Pay special attention to the political interest and comparison between changing direction in inches when different outcomes are miles apart. I did read it, and I don't necessarily disagree with your point that symbolic gestures are meaningless if there's no plan for follow through. But it seems that he (and you) are starting on the assumption that there will be no follow through, and as a result, this gesture is meaningless. If it were up to many of us, there would but a more expedited and stringent framework for follow through. But when we have to continually argue internally about whether or not we even have to do anything about the problem (or, in some cases, whether the problem even exists), that significantly slows down the capacity for follow through. So, I guess my question to you is - what should be done to make it (any plan, not necessarily Paris) less symbolic and actually effective?
The thing is that there is no reason not to believe that there will be follow through. Will some countries miss their goals? absolutely. but when Montreal and Kyoto protocols were agreed to, industry, governments, and everyone else involved, knew exactly what was going to happen and when, and that certainty helps people move forward with the innovation necessary to hit those targets.
What makes anyone believe that Trump will actually follow through on any renegotiation or any of his own goals, when he has repeatedly stated that climate change is a hoax and has appointed a EPA administrator who doesn't believe in it either.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On June 03 2017 02:21 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:15 LegalLord wrote:On June 03 2017 02:07 xDaunt wrote:On June 03 2017 01:56 LegalLord wrote:
The way I see it, the most important link in the Paris Accords and why I put so much stock into it is not as much the US as it is China. Sure, first worlders will get greedy and attempt to skirt the regulations to the extent that it is possible. But China is notorious for dragging their feet something fierce, almost unwilling to even acknowledge that climate change is a problem worth addressing. Yet China finally started to "get it" and have made efforts to (albeit slowly) reduce their carbon footprint.
The US will, as it always has, move slowly. The writing on the wall suggests that it's not economically feasible to skimp on climate forever. It still looks stupid though. Please. The Paris Accords were a boon to China. Built-in comparative advantages and subsidies afforded to the Chinese with no enforcement mechanism to ensure that the Chinese meet their own obligations? Yeah, that's a tough one for the Chinese to accept.... Then what do we need? A stronger deal? A symbolic withdrawal from the commitment as a means of protest? A show of "two can play at that game" and an unwillingness to reduce emissions? While I'm skeptical of a lot of aspects of the deal, even this is a big deal compared to the attitude China had towards this as recently as five years ago which could be effectively summarized as "fuck the environment that shit don't matter to us." China is going to get its own shit in order regardless of the Paris Accord because its people are tired of living in filth. But if you're going to bother with a treaty, then it needs an enforcement mechanism.
Ok, that much is fair. Would you support such a treaty?
If you want a specific treaty, say, Paris plus incorporated trade consequences for non-compliance?
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On June 03 2017 02:16 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:11 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 01:59 Nyxisto wrote:
International agreements aren't toothless or symbolic just because there is no sovereign to enforce them. They function by holding nations to their word, nobody wants to be a pariah within the international community because they constantly violate international agreements. The US should know the effectiveness of this because it has more or less justified every single one of their military adventures in recent years, and it is what enabled Trump to take action against Assad, because the international consensus on chemical weapons is another such agreement. No way of enforcing an agreement is the absolute gold standard of describing an agreement as toothless or symbolic. See how much "holding nations to their word" because "nobody wants to be a pariah" affected Trump in his decision today. See North Korea, or the former Soviet Union, or Israel, or Palestine. North Korea is isolated, the Soviet Union doesn't exist any more and Palestine is in a miserable state too, constantly having damaged their position on the world stage by ruining their reputation within the international community. Those are not great examples. Sure the US are a big and powerful country but they're losing their international position with this. No global leader has ever isolated themselves and come out better at the other end, it usually signifies a period of decline. No nation is special, the US isn't immune to bad decisions even if some subset of the voters apparently thinks that this is true.
So instead of arguing that they function by "holding nations to their word" and "nobody wants to be a pariah," you're now arguing that nobody violates international agreements without somehow experiencing bad results decades along the line? You're dipping into some deep waters of correlation versus causation. The nations that get some kind of international proclamation against them happen to be great targets of actually effective actions that have teeth, but internationalists want to pat themselves on the back. So you're hoping the US declines because of international disapprobation, but have no argument in favor of international agreements lacking enforcement mechanisms to be more than toothless and symbolic. Gotcha.
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On June 03 2017 02:16 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:11 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 01:59 Nyxisto wrote:
International agreements aren't toothless or symbolic just because there is no sovereign to enforce them. They function by holding nations to their word, nobody wants to be a pariah within the international community because they constantly violate international agreements. The US should know the effectiveness of this because it has more or less justified every single one of their military adventures in recent years, and it is what enabled Trump to take action against Assad, because the international consensus on chemical weapons is another such agreement. No way of enforcing an agreement is the absolute gold standard of describing an agreement as toothless or symbolic. See how much "holding nations to their word" because "nobody wants to be a pariah" affected Trump in his decision today. See North Korea, or the former Soviet Union, or Israel, or Palestine. North Korea is isolated, the Soviet Union doesn't exist any more and Palestine is in a miserable state too, constantly having damaged their position on the world stage by ruining their reputation within the international community. Those are not great examples. Sure the US are a big and powerful country but they're losing their international position with this. No global leader has ever isolated themselves and come out better at the other end, it usually signifies a period of decline. No nation is special, the US isn't immune to bad decisions even if some subset of the voters apparently thinks that this is true.
Actually North Korea and Palestine are great comparisons to the US. Putting aside the fact that those countries signed the Paris agreement, that is pretty much the way that the US is headed. It will take a while before they're there, but if the US continues on this path of ignoring international agreements, it seems kind of inevitable.
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On June 03 2017 01:47 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 01:33 Broetchenholer wrote:
Danglers, this is really not complicated. If Trumpo had said "we believe man made climae change is a threat to society and we will fight it through policy but we disagree on the first step, that is the paris agreement. therefore, we step out", this definition would have applied. But the Republicans and Trump disagree on the problem itself, so them not joining a symbolic treaty actually is a big deal. Read the prior argument. I'll try to restate the idea in the hopes that you realize how simple it is. "We believe man-made climate change is a threat to society. Therefore, we will enter an agreement that doesn't acknowledge the costs of making real changes to fix it. This will highlight our inability to address a real problem head-on, reinforce people who say it's more about international posturing than taking action, and provide a useful definition of the term 'virtue-signalling.' " You're shooting yourself in the foot here. It's about as complicated as spelling my name right lol.
I don't give a fuck about spelling your name right. You are trying to defend someone that does not believe in climate change and actively tries to deregulate the industry of his country by saying the treaty was symbolic anyway. Actions do matter, as do words. If it talks like a climate change denier and acts like a climate change denier, it is a climate change denier. If you want to defend his decision, do not try to shift blame to the treaty, just state that climate change is simply not important to you and the POTUS.
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On June 03 2017 02:14 jcarlsoniv wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:04 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 02:00 jcarlsoniv wrote:On June 03 2017 01:51 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 01:45 Godwrath wrote:
Giving credence to an article that attempts to discredit the Paris accord because it's "merely symbolic" just to be able to missdirect the criticism about the self-denial running rampant amongst republican party, that's rich and deep. As if, the republicans actually gave a shit about the issue and left it because "it wasn't good enough".
Of course the Paris accord wasn't good enough. It is a first fucking step. This is part of the reason I linked a fairly reasoned article concluding that it's likely the last step and people that think otherwise are fooling themselves. What's rich and deep is your deflection and misdirection while claiming others do so. I wonder if it will ever sink it that inattention to counterarguments isn't sufficient to restate your primary argument. I conclude x, and any articles that conclude otherwise are obvious misdirection. But I'm not really following the conclusion that he believes it's the last step and not the first. I think that’s the case here. I think Paris was not just the first step, I think it was likely the last step, that those who hoped it would lead to “deepening future commitments” were fooling themselves and others. I think Paris was agreed to only because national leaders realized it was impossible to get a numerically meaningful set of binding national commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by specific large amounts. If I'm trying to address a problem, especially a big problem (and affecting long term positive change for the environment is big), I'd start by defining it. Put some framework around an issue, get consensus, start working towards solutions. I acknowledge that you don't believe the costs of action are being sufficiently considered, and that's an ok argument to have. But the US staking the position of "nah, we're just gonna go home instead" doesn't put us in a better position to solve the problem. Unless I'm missing something, I don't get the assumption that there would be not further steps taken beyond Paris. Getting the globe on the same page is where it starts, but it feels like the US was spacing out while reading, so we've had to flip back to the last chapter before we can move forward again. You quote a paragraph in the middle of the article that follows from the argumentation in the paragraphs preceding. Pay special attention to the political interest and comparison between changing direction in inches when different outcomes are miles apart. I did read it, and I don't necessarily disagree with your point that symbolic gestures are meaningless if there's no plan for follow through. But it seems that he (and you) are starting on the assumption that there will be no follow through, and as a result, this gesture is meaningless. If it were up to many of us, there would but a more expedited and stringent framework for follow through. But when we have to continually argue internally about whether or not we even have to do anything about the problem (or, in some cases, whether the problem even exists), that significantly slows down the capacity for follow through. So, I guess my question to you is - what should be done to make it (any plan, not necessarily Paris) less symbolic and actually effective?
I'm kind of at a loss if you only want to draw from what "seems" to be a starting assumption, but not what arguments were ineffective and why, or how they were reliant on those assumptions and collapse without them. I could just as easily respond to "whether or not we even have to do anything about the problem/problem exists" with "whether or not anybody that acknowledges the problem actually wants to pay the associated costs with fixing it in this manner" which also slows follow through.
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On June 03 2017 02:24 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:16 Nyxisto wrote:On June 03 2017 02:11 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 01:59 Nyxisto wrote:
International agreements aren't toothless or symbolic just because there is no sovereign to enforce them. They function by holding nations to their word, nobody wants to be a pariah within the international community because they constantly violate international agreements. The US should know the effectiveness of this because it has more or less justified every single one of their military adventures in recent years, and it is what enabled Trump to take action against Assad, because the international consensus on chemical weapons is another such agreement. No way of enforcing an agreement is the absolute gold standard of describing an agreement as toothless or symbolic. See how much "holding nations to their word" because "nobody wants to be a pariah" affected Trump in his decision today. See North Korea, or the former Soviet Union, or Israel, or Palestine. North Korea is isolated, the Soviet Union doesn't exist any more and Palestine is in a miserable state too, constantly having damaged their position on the world stage by ruining their reputation within the international community. Those are not great examples. Sure the US are a big and powerful country but they're losing their international position with this. No global leader has ever isolated themselves and come out better at the other end, it usually signifies a period of decline. No nation is special, the US isn't immune to bad decisions even if some subset of the voters apparently thinks that this is true. So instead of arguing that they function by "holding nations to their word" and "nobody wants to be a pariah," you're now arguing that nobody violates international agreements without somehow experiencing bad results decades along the line? You're dipping into some deep waters of correlation versus causation. The nations that get some kind of international proclamation against them happen to be great targets of actually effective actions that have teeth, but internationalists want to pat themselves on the back. So you're hoping the US declines because of international disapprobation, but have no argument in favor of international agreements lacking enforcement mechanisms to be more than toothless and symbolic. Gotcha.
The last point isn't really worth arguing about of course there's no international sovereign with a big hammer who punishes you, that was already clear when the agreement was signed and nobody expects anything else. You were the one who brought a number of failed states up, apparently as an argument for.. what again?
This isn't a correlation versus causation issue, it's about the idea that a country that claims to lead the world needs to be reliable. And when everybody else notices that that country cannot be relied upon its importance will diminish. I'm not hoping for it by the way, the US is a more natural partner to the West than China or India, but nobody else will wait for the US to stop behaving like this.
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On June 03 2017 02:23 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:21 xDaunt wrote:On June 03 2017 02:15 LegalLord wrote:On June 03 2017 02:07 xDaunt wrote:On June 03 2017 01:56 LegalLord wrote:
The way I see it, the most important link in the Paris Accords and why I put so much stock into it is not as much the US as it is China. Sure, first worlders will get greedy and attempt to skirt the regulations to the extent that it is possible. But China is notorious for dragging their feet something fierce, almost unwilling to even acknowledge that climate change is a problem worth addressing. Yet China finally started to "get it" and have made efforts to (albeit slowly) reduce their carbon footprint.
The US will, as it always has, move slowly. The writing on the wall suggests that it's not economically feasible to skimp on climate forever. It still looks stupid though. Please. The Paris Accords were a boon to China. Built-in comparative advantages and subsidies afforded to the Chinese with no enforcement mechanism to ensure that the Chinese meet their own obligations? Yeah, that's a tough one for the Chinese to accept.... Then what do we need? A stronger deal? A symbolic withdrawal from the commitment as a means of protest? A show of "two can play at that game" and an unwillingness to reduce emissions? While I'm skeptical of a lot of aspects of the deal, even this is a big deal compared to the attitude China had towards this as recently as five years ago which could be effectively summarized as "fuck the environment that shit don't matter to us." China is going to get its own shit in order regardless of the Paris Accord because its people are tired of living in filth. But if you're going to bother with a treaty, then it needs an enforcement mechanism. Ok, that much is fair. Would you support such a treaty? If you want a specific treaty, say, Paris plus incorporated trade consequences for non-compliance?
No, because the cost-benefit analysis is still out of whack for the reasons discussed yesterday. I'd rather spend the money on mitigating the consequences of global warming instead of trying to stop global warming. We don't have an effective means of doing the latter.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On June 03 2017 02:16 Nyxisto wrote:
No nation is special, the US isn't immune to bad decisions even if some subset of the voters apparently thinks that this is true.
You underestimate how big a subset of all Americans that is. It may not always manifest itself in just "fuck the climate" decisions but the vast majority of Americans buy into the narrative of American exceptionalism.
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On June 03 2017 02:11 Trainrunnef wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 01:57 Buckyman wrote:On June 03 2017 00:45 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Those actual results include the fact that Republicans have historically denied that climate change had even occurred in the first place... Once again, you're putting optics ahead of results. You're also cherrypicking positive results, What about the Wyoming bill proposed by republicans that would have banned utilities from using large scale renewable energy sources. The bill died, but it is proof that there are republicans who still deny and actively attempt to obstruct the development of renewable resources.
A symbolic proposal that died a well deserved death. Actual result: nil
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On June 03 2017 02:31 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:23 LegalLord wrote:On June 03 2017 02:21 xDaunt wrote:On June 03 2017 02:15 LegalLord wrote:On June 03 2017 02:07 xDaunt wrote:On June 03 2017 01:56 LegalLord wrote:
The way I see it, the most important link in the Paris Accords and why I put so much stock into it is not as much the US as it is China. Sure, first worlders will get greedy and attempt to skirt the regulations to the extent that it is possible. But China is notorious for dragging their feet something fierce, almost unwilling to even acknowledge that climate change is a problem worth addressing. Yet China finally started to "get it" and have made efforts to (albeit slowly) reduce their carbon footprint.
The US will, as it always has, move slowly. The writing on the wall suggests that it's not economically feasible to skimp on climate forever. It still looks stupid though. Please. The Paris Accords were a boon to China. Built-in comparative advantages and subsidies afforded to the Chinese with no enforcement mechanism to ensure that the Chinese meet their own obligations? Yeah, that's a tough one for the Chinese to accept.... Then what do we need? A stronger deal? A symbolic withdrawal from the commitment as a means of protest? A show of "two can play at that game" and an unwillingness to reduce emissions? While I'm skeptical of a lot of aspects of the deal, even this is a big deal compared to the attitude China had towards this as recently as five years ago which could be effectively summarized as "fuck the environment that shit don't matter to us." China is going to get its own shit in order regardless of the Paris Accord because its people are tired of living in filth. But if you're going to bother with a treaty, then it needs an enforcement mechanism. Ok, that much is fair. Would you support such a treaty? If you want a specific treaty, say, Paris plus incorporated trade consequences for non-compliance? No, because the cost-benefit analysis is still out of whack for the reasons discussed yesterday. I'd rather spend the money on mitigating the consequences of global warming instead of trying to stop global warming. We don't have an effective means of doing the latter.
I already pointed out why this thinking doesn't make sense:
On June 02 2017 09:20 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 02 2017 09:05 xDaunt wrote:On June 02 2017 08:26 Mohdoo wrote:On June 02 2017 08:22 xDaunt wrote:On June 02 2017 07:57 Amui wrote:On June 02 2017 06:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 02 2017 06:53 KwarK wrote:
I for one am enjoying xDaunt's unstoppable descent into full alt-facts madness. Hey, I am the supposed science denier, right? I have been asking for the science of what American adherence to the Paris Accords actually gets us climate-wise for the past several pages, and I have yet to get anything beyond quasi-religious nonsense. What y'all's position boils down to is that we all must have faith that a .17 degree reduction in warming by 2100 is worth Americans paying thousands of dollars per year extra. There is nothing scientific about that. Well here's science to the science denier. To warm the atmosphere by 0.17C, just considering air is the math below. In reality you also have to warm up the oceans, and because water has ~1000x the heat capacity of air, you also have to take that into account when doing actual climate studies. But here's a simple one. There's 5.15x10^18 kg of air in the atmosphere. Specific heat capacity of air is roughly 1KJ/kg, so that gets us 5.15x10^18 KJ of energy. But, what is that in a unit the average person can imagine? Little Boy was about 15 kilotons of TNT, 63TJ of energy release. You'd need to detonate 817,460,317 of those bombs inside heatsinks (so that all the thermal energy gets transferred to the atmosphere of course) to get equivalent heating. Evenly distributed, that is one bomb every 0.624 square kilometers. (Sidenote, this kills all surface life, and probably most ocean life as well on earth). Now, adding energy to a system increases entropy(inherent randomness), and when you add that much energy to a system, you get significantly stronger extremes. You can safely assume that whatever weather based phenomena(droughts, heatwaves, storms, hurricanes, snow, hail etc.) will be stronger in their extremes than ever before. For simplicity, let's just assume all of that is true. Is it still worth it for Americans to pay thousands of dollars per year to slow the warming by .17 degrees when the the warming will still continue all of that will happen anyway -- just a few decades later? Delaying by decades is immeasurably beneficial because the biggest issue with global warming is the pending refugee crisis. Allowing for decades to prepare both socially and technologically would likely be the difference between catastrophic disaster and shitty. It's not like the climate refugees don't have plenty of warning already. If go are really concerned about them, then the money should be spent on dealing with the impending consequences of global warming instead engaging in the futility that is trying to stop it. I don't think I follow your reasoning. Since something is inevitable, it shouldn't be delayed for the sake of better preparation? When you handle something as an emergency, rather than an expected, prepared event, the costs skyrocket. Hell, just look at the Syria situation. If temperatures rise as they should, climate refugees will hugely outnumber what we are seeing in the middle east right now. It will be very, very expensive and infrastructure and other technological advances will make it much better. No matter how you slice it, the refugee crisis occurring 20 years later is much, much, much more efficient and will cost the US much, much less. Gotta keep in mind foreign countries aren't the only ones with land that will suffer. We will have some big problems on our hands that will be very expensive to deal with. There are a variety of ways that letting technology, infrastructure and everything else advance prior is enormously beneficial.
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On June 03 2017 02:30 Broetchenholer wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 01:47 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 01:33 Broetchenholer wrote:
Danglers, this is really not complicated. If Trumpo had said "we believe man made climae change is a threat to society and we will fight it through policy but we disagree on the first step, that is the paris agreement. therefore, we step out", this definition would have applied. But the Republicans and Trump disagree on the problem itself, so them not joining a symbolic treaty actually is a big deal. Read the prior argument. I'll try to restate the idea in the hopes that you realize how simple it is. "We believe man-made climate change is a threat to society. Therefore, we will enter an agreement that doesn't acknowledge the costs of making real changes to fix it. This will highlight our inability to address a real problem head-on, reinforce people who say it's more about international posturing than taking action, and provide a useful definition of the term 'virtue-signalling.' " You're shooting yourself in the foot here. It's about as complicated as spelling my name right lol. I don't give a fuck about spelling your name right. You are trying to defend someone that does not believe in climate change and actively tries to deregulate the industry of his country by saying the treaty was symbolic anyway. Actions do matter, as do words. If it talks like a climate change denier and acts like a climate change denier, it is a climate change denier. If you want to defend his decision, do not try to shift blame to the treaty, just state that climate change is simply not important to you and the POTUS.
Haha. You're a real class act. If you want to defend the treaty as more than a pile of shit dressed up in roses, don't try to deflect that Objecting to the Treaty = Climate Change Denial. It's a classic evasion. You write words on paper and bully others that not signing it, irrespective of what it does and what is costs, just reinforces your own stereotype that everybody's a denier. You are trying to give off all the signs that you're unserious and uncritical and flip the script on others that they won't agree to a nice agreement supported by your tactics of the mob.
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On June 03 2017 02:18 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:11 Doodsmack wrote:On June 03 2017 01:58 LegalLord wrote:On June 03 2017 01:51 Doodsmack wrote:On June 03 2017 01:12 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 00:57 LegalLord wrote:On June 03 2017 00:38 Artisreal wrote:On June 03 2017 00:16 LegalLord wrote:
On Ted Cruz' post, I have to say that he's not wrong. The billionaires who quit the "rent seeking committee" certainly aren't anything special by any stretch of the imagination. One of them is more upset about the federal subsidies he wanted to line his pockets, and the other is as he said a symbolic gesture. That comment, albeit not being wrong, is still just a distraction of the government's unwillingness to combat climate change in any form or shape. No matter the cost. Yup. But a momentary "fuck those hypocrites" is permissible as we look for a way to properly address the fact that Trump acted really stupidly here. It's important to acknowledge your bad apples to prove it's about science and results instead of narrative. Inconvenient facts that cause "distraction" isn't much of a step up from alternative facts. Question is, what is Musk's net effect on the environment? His work is obviously a massive net positive. He should not be considered a bad apple and told to fuck off. By moving around the emissions in such a way that the cars his company produces (on the back of billions of dollars subsidies) don't emit while driving? Or his solar company that is a scam? I'm surprised SpaceX isn't trying to peddle being green yet. Yes, electric cars and solar roofs are green. Yes, Musk is making progress that no one else is making. No one else is making an unviable variant of solar panels that goes on the roof? No one else is making electric cars? No one else manages to attract as much unwarranted hype to feed his massive ego? What progress is Musk making that no one else is?
Progress in terms of accelerating the adoption and implementation. Testing the concept and the business model. It's not a bad thing. Neither is recycling, btw. These things are a net positive, even if you can nitpick something at the margin.
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On June 03 2017 02:31 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:23 LegalLord wrote:On June 03 2017 02:21 xDaunt wrote:On June 03 2017 02:15 LegalLord wrote:On June 03 2017 02:07 xDaunt wrote:On June 03 2017 01:56 LegalLord wrote:
The way I see it, the most important link in the Paris Accords and why I put so much stock into it is not as much the US as it is China. Sure, first worlders will get greedy and attempt to skirt the regulations to the extent that it is possible. But China is notorious for dragging their feet something fierce, almost unwilling to even acknowledge that climate change is a problem worth addressing. Yet China finally started to "get it" and have made efforts to (albeit slowly) reduce their carbon footprint.
The US will, as it always has, move slowly. The writing on the wall suggests that it's not economically feasible to skimp on climate forever. It still looks stupid though. Please. The Paris Accords were a boon to China. Built-in comparative advantages and subsidies afforded to the Chinese with no enforcement mechanism to ensure that the Chinese meet their own obligations? Yeah, that's a tough one for the Chinese to accept.... Then what do we need? A stronger deal? A symbolic withdrawal from the commitment as a means of protest? A show of "two can play at that game" and an unwillingness to reduce emissions? While I'm skeptical of a lot of aspects of the deal, even this is a big deal compared to the attitude China had towards this as recently as five years ago which could be effectively summarized as "fuck the environment that shit don't matter to us." China is going to get its own shit in order regardless of the Paris Accord because its people are tired of living in filth. But if you're going to bother with a treaty, then it needs an enforcement mechanism. Ok, that much is fair. Would you support such a treaty? If you want a specific treaty, say, Paris plus incorporated trade consequences for non-compliance? No, because the cost-benefit analysis is still out of whack for the reasons discussed yesterday. I'd rather spend the money on mitigating the consequences of global warming instead of trying to stop global warming. We don't have an effective means of doing the latter.
So if you don't care about another treaty, and would just want no treaty at all, why the fuck do you not say that? Why are you constantly beating around the bush with tangential arguments about enforcement mechanism, if they are not even important to you? It feels like a distraction tactic, because even if you lose that argument, you can still say "Well, it didn't matter anyways", instead of having to admit that you were wrong.
It is infuriating how you just refuse to state an argument and stick to it. Instead you constantly sidestep into other things to make it impossible to finish any argument.
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On June 03 2017 02:34 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:31 xDaunt wrote:On June 03 2017 02:23 LegalLord wrote:On June 03 2017 02:21 xDaunt wrote:On June 03 2017 02:15 LegalLord wrote:On June 03 2017 02:07 xDaunt wrote:On June 03 2017 01:56 LegalLord wrote:
The way I see it, the most important link in the Paris Accords and why I put so much stock into it is not as much the US as it is China. Sure, first worlders will get greedy and attempt to skirt the regulations to the extent that it is possible. But China is notorious for dragging their feet something fierce, almost unwilling to even acknowledge that climate change is a problem worth addressing. Yet China finally started to "get it" and have made efforts to (albeit slowly) reduce their carbon footprint.
The US will, as it always has, move slowly. The writing on the wall suggests that it's not economically feasible to skimp on climate forever. It still looks stupid though. Please. The Paris Accords were a boon to China. Built-in comparative advantages and subsidies afforded to the Chinese with no enforcement mechanism to ensure that the Chinese meet their own obligations? Yeah, that's a tough one for the Chinese to accept.... Then what do we need? A stronger deal? A symbolic withdrawal from the commitment as a means of protest? A show of "two can play at that game" and an unwillingness to reduce emissions? While I'm skeptical of a lot of aspects of the deal, even this is a big deal compared to the attitude China had towards this as recently as five years ago which could be effectively summarized as "fuck the environment that shit don't matter to us." China is going to get its own shit in order regardless of the Paris Accord because its people are tired of living in filth. But if you're going to bother with a treaty, then it needs an enforcement mechanism. Ok, that much is fair. Would you support such a treaty? If you want a specific treaty, say, Paris plus incorporated trade consequences for non-compliance? No, because the cost-benefit analysis is still out of whack for the reasons discussed yesterday. I'd rather spend the money on mitigating the consequences of global warming instead of trying to stop global warming. We don't have an effective means of doing the latter. I already pointed out why this thinking doesn't make sense: Show nested quote +On June 02 2017 09:20 Mohdoo wrote:On June 02 2017 09:05 xDaunt wrote:On June 02 2017 08:26 Mohdoo wrote:On June 02 2017 08:22 xDaunt wrote:On June 02 2017 07:57 Amui wrote:On June 02 2017 06:59 xDaunt wrote:On June 02 2017 06:53 KwarK wrote:
I for one am enjoying xDaunt's unstoppable descent into full alt-facts madness. Hey, I am the supposed science denier, right? I have been asking for the science of what American adherence to the Paris Accords actually gets us climate-wise for the past several pages, and I have yet to get anything beyond quasi-religious nonsense. What y'all's position boils down to is that we all must have faith that a .17 degree reduction in warming by 2100 is worth Americans paying thousands of dollars per year extra. There is nothing scientific about that. Well here's science to the science denier. To warm the atmosphere by 0.17C, just considering air is the math below. In reality you also have to warm up the oceans, and because water has ~1000x the heat capacity of air, you also have to take that into account when doing actual climate studies. But here's a simple one. There's 5.15x10^18 kg of air in the atmosphere. Specific heat capacity of air is roughly 1KJ/kg, so that gets us 5.15x10^18 KJ of energy. But, what is that in a unit the average person can imagine? Little Boy was about 15 kilotons of TNT, 63TJ of energy release. You'd need to detonate 817,460,317 of those bombs inside heatsinks (so that all the thermal energy gets transferred to the atmosphere of course) to get equivalent heating. Evenly distributed, that is one bomb every 0.624 square kilometers. (Sidenote, this kills all surface life, and probably most ocean life as well on earth). Now, adding energy to a system increases entropy(inherent randomness), and when you add that much energy to a system, you get significantly stronger extremes. You can safely assume that whatever weather based phenomena(droughts, heatwaves, storms, hurricanes, snow, hail etc.) will be stronger in their extremes than ever before. For simplicity, let's just assume all of that is true. Is it still worth it for Americans to pay thousands of dollars per year to slow the warming by .17 degrees when the the warming will still continue all of that will happen anyway -- just a few decades later? Delaying by decades is immeasurably beneficial because the biggest issue with global warming is the pending refugee crisis. Allowing for decades to prepare both socially and technologically would likely be the difference between catastrophic disaster and shitty. It's not like the climate refugees don't have plenty of warning already. If go are really concerned about them, then the money should be spent on dealing with the impending consequences of global warming instead engaging in the futility that is trying to stop it. I don't think I follow your reasoning. Since something is inevitable, it shouldn't be delayed for the sake of better preparation? When you handle something as an emergency, rather than an expected, prepared event, the costs skyrocket. Hell, just look at the Syria situation. If temperatures rise as they should, climate refugees will hugely outnumber what we are seeing in the middle east right now. It will be very, very expensive and infrastructure and other technological advances will make it much better. No matter how you slice it, the refugee crisis occurring 20 years later is much, much, much more efficient and will cost the US much, much less. Gotta keep in mind foreign countries aren't the only ones with land that will suffer. We will have some big problems on our hands that will be very expensive to deal with. There are a variety of ways that letting technology, infrastructure and everything else advance prior is enormously beneficial.
I get your point, but what you're omitting from the analysis is that the value of lead-time has diminishing returns. While there is clearly a lot of extra value in having a 20-year window to plan for a catastrophe instead of a 5-year window, stretching that window to 100+ years likely is not much more valuable than having the 20 years (I'm just picking arbitrary numbers to illustrate the point).
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On June 03 2017 02:31 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:24 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 02:16 Nyxisto wrote:On June 03 2017 02:11 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 01:59 Nyxisto wrote:
International agreements aren't toothless or symbolic just because there is no sovereign to enforce them. They function by holding nations to their word, nobody wants to be a pariah within the international community because they constantly violate international agreements. The US should know the effectiveness of this because it has more or less justified every single one of their military adventures in recent years, and it is what enabled Trump to take action against Assad, because the international consensus on chemical weapons is another such agreement. No way of enforcing an agreement is the absolute gold standard of describing an agreement as toothless or symbolic. See how much "holding nations to their word" because "nobody wants to be a pariah" affected Trump in his decision today. See North Korea, or the former Soviet Union, or Israel, or Palestine. North Korea is isolated, the Soviet Union doesn't exist any more and Palestine is in a miserable state too, constantly having damaged their position on the world stage by ruining their reputation within the international community. Those are not great examples. Sure the US are a big and powerful country but they're losing their international position with this. No global leader has ever isolated themselves and come out better at the other end, it usually signifies a period of decline. No nation is special, the US isn't immune to bad decisions even if some subset of the voters apparently thinks that this is true. So instead of arguing that they function by "holding nations to their word" and "nobody wants to be a pariah," you're now arguing that nobody violates international agreements without somehow experiencing bad results decades along the line? You're dipping into some deep waters of correlation versus causation. The nations that get some kind of international proclamation against them happen to be great targets of actually effective actions that have teeth, but internationalists want to pat themselves on the back. So you're hoping the US declines because of international disapprobation, but have no argument in favor of international agreements lacking enforcement mechanisms to be more than toothless and symbolic. Gotcha. The last point isn't really worth arguing about of course there's no international sovereign with a big hammer who punishes you, that was already clear when the agreement was signed and nobody expects anything else. You were the one who brought a number of failed states up, apparently as an argument for.. what again? This isn't a correlation versus causation issue, it's about the idea that a country that claims to lead the world needs to be reliable. And when everybody else notices that that country cannot be relied upon its importance will diminish. I'm not hoping for it by the way, the US is a more natural partner to the West than China or India, but nobody else will wait for the US to stop behaving like this.
Now you're on about it not mattering if agreements don't have teeth, after previously stating that "international agreements aren't toothless or symbolic just because there is no sovereign to enforce them." I'm having some trouble keeping up with your shifting argument, so try not to defend your original by shifting it again. I never mentioned that the US has to support its claim to "lead the world," so I'm wondering why you feel the need to examine the ways this might stop. That's all not to mention that signing on to symbolic fluffy deals with lots of signatures is not a measure of reliability any more than a used car salesman's assurances matter.
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On June 03 2017 02:33 Buckyman wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:11 Trainrunnef wrote:On June 03 2017 01:57 Buckyman wrote:On June 03 2017 00:45 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Those actual results include the fact that Republicans have historically denied that climate change had even occurred in the first place... Once again, you're putting optics ahead of results. You're also cherrypicking positive results, What about the Wyoming bill proposed by republicans that would have banned utilities from using large scale renewable energy sources. The bill died, but it is proof that there are republicans who still deny and actively attempt to obstruct the development of renewable resources. A symbolic proposal that died a well deserved death. Actual result: nil
you've still yet to put up anything beyond cherrypicked cases to establish a thesis that is contrary to their long term platform and statements.
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On June 03 2017 02:37 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:31 xDaunt wrote:On June 03 2017 02:23 LegalLord wrote:On June 03 2017 02:21 xDaunt wrote:On June 03 2017 02:15 LegalLord wrote:On June 03 2017 02:07 xDaunt wrote:On June 03 2017 01:56 LegalLord wrote:
The way I see it, the most important link in the Paris Accords and why I put so much stock into it is not as much the US as it is China. Sure, first worlders will get greedy and attempt to skirt the regulations to the extent that it is possible. But China is notorious for dragging their feet something fierce, almost unwilling to even acknowledge that climate change is a problem worth addressing. Yet China finally started to "get it" and have made efforts to (albeit slowly) reduce their carbon footprint.
The US will, as it always has, move slowly. The writing on the wall suggests that it's not economically feasible to skimp on climate forever. It still looks stupid though. Please. The Paris Accords were a boon to China. Built-in comparative advantages and subsidies afforded to the Chinese with no enforcement mechanism to ensure that the Chinese meet their own obligations? Yeah, that's a tough one for the Chinese to accept.... Then what do we need? A stronger deal? A symbolic withdrawal from the commitment as a means of protest? A show of "two can play at that game" and an unwillingness to reduce emissions? While I'm skeptical of a lot of aspects of the deal, even this is a big deal compared to the attitude China had towards this as recently as five years ago which could be effectively summarized as "fuck the environment that shit don't matter to us." China is going to get its own shit in order regardless of the Paris Accord because its people are tired of living in filth. But if you're going to bother with a treaty, then it needs an enforcement mechanism. Ok, that much is fair. Would you support such a treaty? If you want a specific treaty, say, Paris plus incorporated trade consequences for non-compliance? No, because the cost-benefit analysis is still out of whack for the reasons discussed yesterday. I'd rather spend the money on mitigating the consequences of global warming instead of trying to stop global warming. We don't have an effective means of doing the latter. So if you don't care about another treaty, and would just want no treaty at all, why the fuck do you not say that? Why are you constantly beating around the bush with tangential arguments about enforcement mechanism, if they are not even important to you? It feels like a distraction tactic, because even if you lose that argument, you can still say "Well, it didn't matter anyways", instead of having to admit that you were wrong. It is infuriating how you just refuse to state an argument and stick to it. Instead you constantly sidestep into other things to make it impossible to finish any argument.
Why can't the Paris Accord be shitty in multiple ways?
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On June 03 2017 02:40 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:31 Nyxisto wrote:On June 03 2017 02:24 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 02:16 Nyxisto wrote:On June 03 2017 02:11 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 01:59 Nyxisto wrote:
International agreements aren't toothless or symbolic just because there is no sovereign to enforce them. They function by holding nations to their word, nobody wants to be a pariah within the international community because they constantly violate international agreements. The US should know the effectiveness of this because it has more or less justified every single one of their military adventures in recent years, and it is what enabled Trump to take action against Assad, because the international consensus on chemical weapons is another such agreement. No way of enforcing an agreement is the absolute gold standard of describing an agreement as toothless or symbolic. See how much "holding nations to their word" because "nobody wants to be a pariah" affected Trump in his decision today. See North Korea, or the former Soviet Union, or Israel, or Palestine. North Korea is isolated, the Soviet Union doesn't exist any more and Palestine is in a miserable state too, constantly having damaged their position on the world stage by ruining their reputation within the international community. Those are not great examples. Sure the US are a big and powerful country but they're losing their international position with this. No global leader has ever isolated themselves and come out better at the other end, it usually signifies a period of decline. No nation is special, the US isn't immune to bad decisions even if some subset of the voters apparently thinks that this is true. So instead of arguing that they function by "holding nations to their word" and "nobody wants to be a pariah," you're now arguing that nobody violates international agreements without somehow experiencing bad results decades along the line? You're dipping into some deep waters of correlation versus causation. The nations that get some kind of international proclamation against them happen to be great targets of actually effective actions that have teeth, but internationalists want to pat themselves on the back. So you're hoping the US declines because of international disapprobation, but have no argument in favor of international agreements lacking enforcement mechanisms to be more than toothless and symbolic. Gotcha. The last point isn't really worth arguing about of course there's no international sovereign with a big hammer who punishes you, that was already clear when the agreement was signed and nobody expects anything else. You were the one who brought a number of failed states up, apparently as an argument for.. what again? This isn't a correlation versus causation issue, it's about the idea that a country that claims to lead the world needs to be reliable. And when everybody else notices that that country cannot be relied upon its importance will diminish. I'm not hoping for it by the way, the US is a more natural partner to the West than China or India, but nobody else will wait for the US to stop behaving like this. Now you're on about it not mattering if agreements don't have teeth, after previously stating that "international agreements aren't toothless or symbolic just because there is no sovereign to enforce them." I'm having some trouble keeping up with your shifting argument, so try not to defend your original by shifting it again. I never mentioned that the US has to support its claim to "lead the world," so I'm wondering why you feel the need to examine the ways this might stop. That's all not to mention that signing on to symbolic fluffy deals with lots of signatures is not a measure of reliability any more than a used car salesman's assurances matter.
and as an avid supporter of a used car salesman, danglars would know!
/snark
User was warned for this post
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On June 03 2017 02:30 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2017 02:14 jcarlsoniv wrote:On June 03 2017 02:04 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 02:00 jcarlsoniv wrote:On June 03 2017 01:51 Danglars wrote:On June 03 2017 01:45 Godwrath wrote:
Giving credence to an article that attempts to discredit the Paris accord because it's "merely symbolic" just to be able to missdirect the criticism about the self-denial running rampant amongst republican party, that's rich and deep. As if, the republicans actually gave a shit about the issue and left it because "it wasn't good enough".
Of course the Paris accord wasn't good enough. It is a first fucking step. This is part of the reason I linked a fairly reasoned article concluding that it's likely the last step and people that think otherwise are fooling themselves. What's rich and deep is your deflection and misdirection while claiming others do so. I wonder if it will ever sink it that inattention to counterarguments isn't sufficient to restate your primary argument. I conclude x, and any articles that conclude otherwise are obvious misdirection. But I'm not really following the conclusion that he believes it's the last step and not the first. I think that’s the case here. I think Paris was not just the first step, I think it was likely the last step, that those who hoped it would lead to “deepening future commitments” were fooling themselves and others. I think Paris was agreed to only because national leaders realized it was impossible to get a numerically meaningful set of binding national commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by specific large amounts. If I'm trying to address a problem, especially a big problem (and affecting long term positive change for the environment is big), I'd start by defining it. Put some framework around an issue, get consensus, start working towards solutions. I acknowledge that you don't believe the costs of action are being sufficiently considered, and that's an ok argument to have. But the US staking the position of "nah, we're just gonna go home instead" doesn't put us in a better position to solve the problem. Unless I'm missing something, I don't get the assumption that there would be not further steps taken beyond Paris. Getting the globe on the same page is where it starts, but it feels like the US was spacing out while reading, so we've had to flip back to the last chapter before we can move forward again. You quote a paragraph in the middle of the article that follows from the argumentation in the paragraphs preceding. Pay special attention to the political interest and comparison between changing direction in inches when different outcomes are miles apart. I did read it, and I don't necessarily disagree with your point that symbolic gestures are meaningless if there's no plan for follow through. But it seems that he (and you) are starting on the assumption that there will be no follow through, and as a result, this gesture is meaningless. If it were up to many of us, there would but a more expedited and stringent framework for follow through. But when we have to continually argue internally about whether or not we even have to do anything about the problem (or, in some cases, whether the problem even exists), that significantly slows down the capacity for follow through. So, I guess my question to you is - what should be done to make it (any plan, not necessarily Paris) less symbolic and actually effective? I'm kind of at a loss if you only want to draw from what "seems" to be a starting assumption, but not what arguments were ineffective and why, or how they were reliant on those assumptions and collapse without them. I could just as easily respond to "whether or not we even have to do anything about the problem/problem exists" with "whether or not anybody that acknowledges the problem actually wants to pay the associated costs with fixing it in this manner" which also slows follow through.
I would raise my hand and say "here is someone who is interested in paying the associated costs with fixing the problem this way". With that said, though, I would agree with y'all that I'd like better understanding of what those costs are and more concrete plans of moving forward. But, again, I would think that gathering the consensus, even if symbolic at the beginning, is the start of formulating the plan forward.
Do you agree with xDaunt that it would be better to create more bandaids instead of looking for ways to treat the wound? Is there a good/better way to do both at the same time?
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EPT
