High CA gas prices

Let us get to the science. But first I must admit my own mistake. I meant to say orders of magnitude more than many developing countries. I wrote that in a hurry and see that I said any other country. That is of course wrong and the people who pointed it out above were correct in doing so.

People carefully avoided a major point I made to attack all sorts side issues. The most commonly cited greenhouse gas, CO2, hangs around the upper atmosphere for hundreds of years. The cumulative number matters. The roads, buildings, factories, that we use everyday as our base does not come for free. The atmosphere has a limited capacity and the industrialized west filled up most of it. Talking about China's current emission is actually an intellectually dishonest way to make Americans feel good about themselves. This article breaks them down

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/21/countries-responsible-climate-change

And this is only for CO2. There are many more greenhouse gases. Methane is a >80x times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 but remains in the upper atmosphere for "just" a few decades. The US is switching to natural gas because it burns cleaner, but study after study has found that methane leaks are vastly underreported. It isn't doing much to tackle climate change while claiming it is cleaner.

https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/natural-gas-industry-has-methane-problem

Of course per capita emission is a much more intellectually and morally honest way to account for emission. Otherwise one can just declare some random political boundary and justify anything. My personal view is that the total individual footprints matter, and not random demarcations of countries. People like to point to other countries to have someone to blame and not have to take personal responsibility.

To bring it back to the forum the Clarity definitely helps a bit climate change wise. No one is claiming it is the entire solution. Having two people in any car instantly almost doubles many environmental benefits. So does efficient public transport.

 

So much for a scientist being cautious when making a claim. It sounds more like one of those technical people being declarative.

Not everyone agrees that the Union of Concerned Scientists is an unbiased organization. It is a group of agenda driven political activists. I have no issue with anyone who agrees with all or part of their findings as long as it is understood that those scientists have predetermined concerns which could have an influence on their scientific results.

I have concerns about the environment. I also have concerns that it is all to easy to feed ourselves nothing other than information with which we already agree.

What is more disturbing than potential threats to the environment are attempts to marginalize and silence those who hold opposing views, with statements such as, “the debate is over” or “I can’t believe we’re having a serious discussion on this subject.”

To be clear, the above quotes are merely examples of some prevalent attitudes.