Climate Change, Carbon Emissions

[Bayleaf]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58897805

"Climate change: Carbon emissions from rich countries rose rapidly in 2021"

How do we really stand a chance, us "little people", when the main culprits are not bothered? Opening the shutters the other morning, and saw eight or nine vapour trails in close succession to each other. The whole world needs re-educating that things cannot stay the same if we're to make any difference to the destruction of our planet. I see even Prince William is saying "the great brains and minds should be "trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live". Totally with him on that. How much money has just been spent on sending an old Star Trekkie to the edge of space for, basically, a publicity stunt? So much money could have been much better spent .....

......getting off my soap box now.

[Spardo]

[mention]Bayleaf[/mention] Including the aforementioned P. William and his awful family whose extravagance of housing is obscene when so many struggle for a decent place to live.

[niemeyjt]

Well, digging into the report an interesting chart:

2021-10-14_10-10.png

So - Russia and Saudi Arabia are worst, followed by Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Korea.

Is this really a case of "Climate change: Carbon emissions from rich countries rose rapidly in 2021"? Most of the western countries are on the lower end of the graph - although I guess Saudi Arabia counts as "rich".

What can a "little person" do? Stop buying products manufactured in polluting countries wherever possible for a start!

[exile]

An interesting analysis J but of course it can show a somewhat distorted picture because it fails (AFAICS) to take account of actual CO2 generation.

So explain this, suppose that San Marino, Lichtenstein and the Gabon had been worst in class, would any of us have worried? I hope not because being 100% off target there is going to be much less than being 10% off if you are the USA, China or UK.

[Bayleaf]

What can a "little person" do? Stop buying products manufactured in polluting countries wherever possible for a start!

As has been said elsewhere (can't remember where now!), that's not always as easy as it sounds. Someone buying something that says made in such-and-such country in Europe. Look closer, and the main components most likely started their life in China or suchlike.

In general, we're trying to follow the policy of "stop buying products", full stop! Par example. Had to take the pressure washer hose to be repaired yesterday. They tried to sell us a new hose, as "putain, merde", this one is old and wearing thin. 160€+TVA for a new 30m pipe. No thanks, just repair this one please, we don't use it enough to justify a new one. Repair, on site, wages for one rather grumpy guy for 1/4 hr, job done. 15€. Let's just hope he's done a good enough job to get our water pipes clear ...... Make do and mend, wherever possible - as each time we replace, what we discard becomes someone else's problem!

[Biloute]

I think it's good to take a step back on this topic and analyze clearly what happens about the climate change and the ecological fashions:
- without denying human influence, we cannot consider ourselves solely responsible: the earth has naturally experienced climatic cycles at times when our influence was negligible.
- you have to know how to spot the part of business in the discourse of ecology fanatics. As just one example, Germany pushes us to install wind turbines because it manufactures them ...
- we must not give in to biased ideology. For example, for 60 years France has had perfectly secure nuclear energy, which does not generate CO2, is very economical and guarantees our independence. In addition, new technologies (EPR), currently on stand-by, make it possible to re-use waste from old power plants as fuel for new generators.
- everything must be considered when promoting new technologies. It's not just the operational advantages: you also have to take into account what happens before, next and after. For example: how much electricity does it take to build a wind turbine ? How many trucks of concrete and iron to build the base ? How will we go about taking them apart ? What can we recycle ? When there is not enough or too much wind, are coal-fired power stations used to generate electricity, as in Germany ? Similar analyzes for solar panels and electric vehicles show that we are mainly told about the advantages but never the disadvantages (including health issues) which are far from negligible.
- it's easy to blame the poor citizen who uses his diesel car to go to work, ignoring that a container ship pollutes as much as 50,000 cars. What pollution have generated the tourist stays of Mr Amazon and Captain Kirk in space ?

[niemeyjt]

An interesting analysis J but of course it can show a somewhat distorted picture because it fails (AFAICS) to take account of actual CO2 generation.

So explain this, suppose that San Marino, Lichtenstein and the Gabon had been worst in class, would any of us have worried? I hope not because being 100% off target there is going to be much less than being 10% off if you are the USA, China or UK.

The report is "COMPARING G20 CLIMATE ACTION TOWARDS NET ZERO"

So it analyses the actions of the countries to reducing CO2 rather than actual amounts of CO2. In fact, I cannot even see such a table in the report - which makes a mockery of the BBC Headline.

However, the data appears elsewhere - https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emiss ... y-country/

2021-10-14_13-00.png

And there again, not all the top CO2 producers are rich and not all rich countries are top CO2 producers.

[exile]

[mention]Biloute[/mention] while I largely agree with much of what you say I will pick on two points that perhaps demonstrate (as [mention]Bayleaf[/mention] wrote) things may not always be simple.

On the question of who or what has caused global warming, you are quite correct that the Earth has indeed cycled through periods of warming and cooling and I once needed to be convinced that what we were seeing was not part of that natural cycle. The demonstrable increase in CO2 is incontrovertible and while this can occur naturally I don't think we can say that humankind is not responsible for the majority of the increase. We are therefore part of the problem if not the whole of the problem. As such we should look to find some of the solutions at a personal level.

On the subject of nuclear power - which I agree is currently our number one fall back - to say it is CO2 free rather ignores the fact that enormous amounts of concrete are used in the construction of a nuclear station and cement manufacture is one of the major sources of CO2 generation. I have seen the suggestion that it contributes 11% of the world emissions.

[Biloute]

On the subject of nuclear power - which I agree is currently our number one fall back - to say it is CO2 free rather ignores the fact that enormous amounts of concrete are used in the construction of a nuclear station and cement manufacture is one of the major sources of CO2 generation. I have seen the suggestion that it contributes 11% of the world emissions.

Indeed, you need concrete for building a nuclear plant. But it would be interesting to know the true ratio volume of concrete / energy effectively produced by the plant during its lifetime a wind mill produces little power but needs 1000 to 1500 tons of concrete for the base, not mentioning the enormous quantity of soil you need to move for mining rare chemicals which are used in the generator (same for the batteries of electric cars or solar panels).
On top of that, don't forget that windmills produce electricity only 20% of the time as nuclear plants produce 80 to 90 %...
But, I know, it's a never ending debate in which there's a never ending fight between true scientific aspects and ideology.

[niemeyjt]

I think CO2 is also output during the production of the Uranium for said power stations.