This is just the start of the result of climate change

Seriously, it IS just the beginning.

The amount of energy hitting the Arctic in summer = the amount hitting the Sahara desert in summer (look it up if you don't believe me).

Sea ice reflects 90% of that back to space, sea water reflects 7%.

This year, the sea ice melt just started to affect large areas during the period of strongest insolation (June-July).

That will increase massively in the next few years as the ice melts earlier.

Also, this heat is just melting the ice right now. When the ice is gone, it will start raising the temperature.

In 5 years, there will be lots fewer deniers

 

Why would you think that facts will affect deniers? That is what denial means!

 

Deniers are not enough of a issue to worry about. It's economic structures that matter. China is a bigger issue than the US.

 

Deniers will have to deny stuff that is happening to THEM, not just to the Arctic.

But I take you point - Baghdad Bob had nothing on AGW deniers.

As for China, they are at least trying to do something about it, since climate change is extremely obvious and threatening in the PRC. Being an oligarchy helps too.

 

China may have more potential growth, but the US has more potential shrinkage.

 

I'm not sure where you got that chart, but.... it would help if it was accurate or had pertinent facts.

US 17.2 metric tons CO2 in 2009, it has fallen and is lower than that today, and was never as high as your chart. China was at 5.3 metric tons in 2009 doubling its per capita production since 1999. If China and the US meet at 9.6, the german level, there will be a great deal more ghg in the atmosphere, since there are a great many more people. Add in India and you realize how distorted that graphic you put up looks.

Reductions in the US can not make up for increases in China and India.

China Greenhouse Gas Emissions Set to Rise Well Past U.S.: Scientific American

 

Any country can grow, it takes a country with a large usage to shrink. That was my point.

It is, of course, easier to blame China rather than ourselves even though we use 4 times as much as each person in China. And they want to be like us, so it behooves us twice to reduce our usage. Do the math and you will see that when they have our per capita oil usage, there will be NO oil production for us. Think we can outbid them?

 

Oh my,,, we are going to have to get to the meat of things here!

 

I don't blame the the tiger for being a carnivore, its the nature of the beast. We live in a land of scientific facts and many statistical distortions. China has much deeper pollution and energy problems than ghg, but if you think we can reduce ghg without looking at them you are deeply mistaken. US has shrunk per capita ghg by over 20% recently, much faster than our population growth. We could of course go for 50% unemployment and just manadate we use the same energy per capita as china, but that wouldn't really solve much. We produced about 3.2 times more ghg than china in 2009, that likely will fall to 2 by 2025. Its not unreasonable to think the US could cut 20% per decade, which would mean 59% less in 2052 than today, but that requires technology.

We can look at something like AB32, where legislation in california attempts to cut 80% of ghg by 2050. Now the US emitted about 18% of world ghg in 2008, and california has about 12% of the US population, they produce less ghg per capita now, but lets say they do it proportionally they put out 2.2% of the worlds ghg. Now if they drop it 80%, but the rest of the world doesn't they likely will just move ghg pollution to the places people are producing the products, but even considering all of it that is only a drop of 1.8%. Not very much, and most of it unreal. The US needs to reduce ghg, a single state can't do it. And even if the country reduces ghg by 80% by 2050, and china continues on its path, we will be producing more ghg on this planet than we are today. I fully expect to pay for the manufactured goods coming from china we would need to ship them our coal as well. This isn't a problem that the US can solve on its own, in fact that is exactly what the senate said before kyoto was negotiated. That is why there was never a vote put forth, it was negotiated in bad faith.

Now when we switch from ghg to oil, then it becomes a matter of economics not statistics. If the US is going to continue to grow its economy, it must reduce oil usage. That does not necessarily mean it needs to reduce energy usage, but it must at a minimum substitute fuels. These can be renewable like wind and solar electricity into phevs and bevs and biofuels, but they also might be fossil fuel created methane, methanol, electricity or even gasoline from natural or biogas.

 

The U.S. is a bigger issue than the U.S. ... that's why we're faced w/ the issues.

oh boy ... first we bring up shrinkage ... now it's meat. Seinfield is alive and well.

 

Where's the Beef?