What does it mean when they say "Zero Emissions"?

[Guest]

In chatting about EV vehicles and impact the "loss of fuel levies" will have, their impact on the environment, this article below came across my desk.

It is quite an eye opener when we talk "Green energy" "Environmental friendly" "Zero Emissions" ...

“Make no mistake, this report will change your life,” says Prof David Reay at the University of Edinburgh. “If the meticulous and robust expert advice here is heeded it will deliver a revolution in every facet of our lives, from how we power our homes and travel to work to the food we buy.”

See here: ‘This report will change your life’: What zero emissions means for UK

 

[Bobster.]

THey mean NETT zero. They say that some activities will still generate CO2, so you counter that by doing more to remove CO2 from the air.

Already companies are able to offset their carbon footprint by buying "carbon credits". These are actually contributions towards planting new trees in sustainable forests.

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CO2 is a much easier gas to deal with than the various Nitrous oxides and carbon monoxide. You can feed CO2 to plants and do something with it.

So one way to be carbon neutral is to ensure that you only make CO2, and then buy up some green credits from someone managing a patch of rainforest And that is what many organisations do.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, plonkster said:

... someone managing a patch of rain forest ...

Carbon tax and off-setting it ... I'm of the thought that it is a money making racket. Yes, some things require carbon generation but then that Co / person needs to offset that with their own carbon mitigating actions, as part of their business plan / action taken, cost of "doing business" but YOU take DIRECT responsibility.

Re. the "lungs" of the world that is part of the international Co2 problem 'Football pitch' of Amazon forest lost every minute

and ‘Death by a thousand cuts’: vast expanse of rainforest lost in 2018

With this gathering speed, Governments and firms in 28 countries sued over climate crisis – report, I wonder if Jair Bolsonaro and / or  Brazil will be sued? The USA, SA Government, China?

I'm saying we need to get real, it will mean getting uncomfortable if we want to really effect change locally and internationally for it makes no damn difference if me and you and you there do it whilst the likes of the Amazon gets chopped down, USA ignores the problem, China keeps on doing what they do etc.

For with real change jobs will be lost, and new ones created, but it is going to be really really bad and tough for a while before it can get better ... IF we want to change it all.

The poor countries are suffering first and the most with this global problem.

 

Edited July 10, 2019 by Guest

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12 hours ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

I'm of the thought that it is a money making racket

So you don't like the idea of someone getting money for capturing carbon?

(Edit: I don't actually think that is what you're saying, I'm sort of straw-manning the extreme end of what you might be saying... ).

I rather like the idea. I can sort of see an argument that maybe this makes it too easy for the really really bad polluters (they can solve their problem through very little effort, just throw money at it), but I'd think the larger problem in this is that the accounting might be wrong or there might be corruption in the process... not that the idea is unsound.

Edited July 11, 2019 by plonkster

[Bobster.]

11 hours ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

The poor countries are suffering first and the most with this global problem.

Yesterday Bill Gates tweeted that the average Ethiopian will need to live to an age of 240 to match the carbon footprint of the average American, but also that sub-Sarahan African will face the worst consequences of climate change

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56 minutes ago, Bobster said:

Yesterday Bill Gates tweeted that the average Ethiopian will need to live to an age of 240 to match the carbon footprint of the average American, but also that sub-Sarahan African will face the worst consequences of climate change

Right. That's the first thing I hate about population control arguments: Nobody (at least not those with the biggest mouths) considers that the carrying capacity is inversely proportional to the rate of consumption. If everyone on earth wants to live on the standard of the average American, we're already twice over the sustainable population of the planet. If everyone is willing to live on the level of a rural Chinese farmer, we're not even halfway there.

Furthermore, overpopulation is much more of a local problem. Calcutta might be overpopulated, but Nova Scotia is not.

And further to that, it's always those who already have wealth, children, and so forth, who want to engage in arguments about such things.

Similarly, now that we're sticking it to the Americans, the country who has become insanely rich off the back of carbon emissions now say they can't let their economy suffer and withdraw from all sorts of climate agreements, while pointing the finger at others.

So at least the hypocrisy is not isolated... there is that!

[PJJ]

1 hour ago, plonkster said:

So you don't like the idea of someone getting money for capturing carbon?

I rather like the idea. I can sort of see an argument that maybe this makes it too easy for the really really bad polluters (they can solve their problem through very little effort, just throw money at it), but I'd think the larger problem in this is that the accounting might be wrong or there might be corruption in the process... not that the idea is unsound.

I see carbon "Cap and trade" if you will, as a very good business model, and it also helps reduce atmospheric CO2, I think there will be some countries that already have large swaths of open land, that can't really do anything significant with it (E.g ) that will start to capture and store CO2 and trade those credits to first world countries at the current 80-150USD per ton of CO2, and with the help of some desalination plants and solar power you could (in theory) do it.

Poorer countries might actually find this rush to cut carbon as a form of income generation.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, plonkster said:

That's the first thing I hate about population control arguments:

What population control argument?

Sub-Sahara Africa will / is facing more weather related heat and / or floods and / or droughts resulting in more strive and wars which is forcing more people to start moving around to try and survive ... see all the immigrants trying to enter Europe from Africa.

Europe is having a ball of a time with immigrants and the heatwave is doing them no favours at all.

We have South America that is also having some weather related troubles ito failed crops and / or droughts (and conflicts and strive) causing more and more people to put serious pressure on my bud's infamous yet-to-be-built-wall. 

India having record temps and a severe drought with some cities having no water, other places being flooded.

We also have Cape Town's now infamous #DayZero, with a lot of SA towns having some serious water issues due to weather patterns changing as is happening all over the world. Mozambique having some serious troubles with weather recently.

USA having a wee bit of a issue with their next harvests due to that freak snow storm they had that melted causing some floods followed by even more rain leaving millions of acres so wet they can hardly plant this season.

Australia starting to import grain for the first time in a long while - drought.

And we don't hear in the main media about some island nations being affected by the higher sea levels coupled with bigger storm surges.

North pole melting way faster than they thought, the South Pole, they realised not too long ago, is ALSO having similar issues, they need to investigate it a lot more but it is a wee bit far and very costly.

So no population control needed, people need to move around or they are going to die of hunger / thirst ... or drown.

But don't you worry!!! We have Shoprite / PnP / OK / Checkers!  

 

4 hours ago, plonkster said:

So you don't like the idea of someone getting money for capturing carbon?

Carbon TAX + Carbon CREDITS + Politicians + governments in charge of the management of it all = yeah right! 
Governments, generally speaking, is not producing "the goods" as promised by the politicians before they got elected.
So no, as good as the idea is, the problem lies in the execution of it, to be fair AND make a REAL difference or else it is a farce, fake news.
I.e. Brazil could have coined it ito carbon credits, but no, they opt to rip that jungle out at a hell of a pace.

 

Co2 is but one aspect of this entire mess, the easier one to deal with THEY SAY. But this is not just about Co2, There are a whole lot of other factors that most scientists are frantically trying to figure out and tie in to understand how this whole things fits together, why the models do and sometime don't tie up. Co2 credits / texes ... but one tiny part of a very big and complex system called mother nature.

O, lest we not forget. Space weather. The sun being in a extended extremely "quiet" period which is also having a major impact on earth right now.

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52 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

What population control argument?

Yeah, that was a bit OT. But still, I think it is applicable to some extent. If there were a hundred people on the planet, climate change would not be a problem. The two are deeply interlinked. And there are other parallels too, what I consider a kind of hypocrisy, where those who are making the arguments tend to be in a position where they themselves will not suffer the brunt of it.

For crying out loud, in our society you will have someone calling you about a new mobile tower, asking if they can count on you to lodge an objection, offering as proof multiple reports of health problems associated with such radio emisions... and then when you glance at your phone you will see that this person calling you is calling from a mobile phone. That kind of thing...

True story by the way.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, plonkster said:

The two are deeply interlinked.

Industrialized nations are the driving force behind the Co2 production. Their populace also tend to be large for various reasons, generating more greenhouse gasses.

People living in the Amazon forests, the Sahara, Siberia, did not cause the problem. 

Here are some of the culprits: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/04/health/most-polluted-cities-india-china-intl/index.html

And for their comfy populace to "give up" their comforts, the ease of everything, is not going to fly at all no, same as the cell tower story.  

Ps. Cell towers do have a bad rep by the way.  

 

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4 minutes ago, The Terrible Triplett said:

Ps. Cell towers do have a bad rep by the way.  

5G is the latest boogeyman. I have been warned that this is the last iteration of data connectivity before the great tribulation, and will apparently directly lead to it.

(I'm a post-millenial partial preterist molinistic theistic evolutionist, possibly with a dash of inclusivism. Man... these labels....).

[Bobster.]

19 hours ago, plonkster said:

For crying out loud, in our society you will have someone calling you about a new mobile tower, asking if they can count on you to lodge an objection, offering as proof multiple reports of health problems associated with such radio emisions... and then when you glance at your phone you will see that this person calling you is calling from a mobile phone. That kind of thing...

True story by the way.

The problem with the current system is that politicians first have to get elected. And the great "we" tend to elect politicians who tell us what we want to hear. And the great we doesn't know half as much as they think.

A garden nursery near me was threatened with a boycott unless he stopped selling roundup. He caved in under the pressure. Or did he? The people who said they'd cause the boycott are happy and pleased with themselves because he's not selling roundup but
A: The Builder's Express just down the road sells loads of it (but is too big a target for the vocal few)
B: What he's done is get all the roundup of his shelves and sell another product with the same active ingredient that costs slightly more, and which the boycotters are happy to buy because the label doesn't say "roundup".

Everybody's happy. Nothing has changed and nothing was achieved. 

Similarly with GM foods, with vaccinations, with immigration... Politicians don't tell us what we ought to hear, they tell us what we WANT to hear so that they or their party can get re-elected

And we don't know half as much as we think we do, so you get governments and thus legislation built on nonsense.

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5 minutes ago, Bobster said:

Similarly with GM foods, with vaccinations, with immigration... Politicians don't tell us what we ought to hear, they tell us what we WANT to hear so that they or their party can get re-elected

It is also said that we get the politicians we deserve, because politicians rise to power on the back of some or other issue. We actually produce the politicians we get.

12 minutes ago, Bobster said:

Everybody's happy. Nothing has changed and nothing was achieved. 

When Trump got elected, that's when I realised we're beginning to see the culmination of decades of doing-it-wrong, and by it I mean how we relate to each other in our disagreements.

Nobody saw it coming. All the polls said the democrats had it in the bag. If you interviewed anyone, it seemed inevitable. And then, as if out of nowhere, they lost. Rumour has it that Hillary was so upset she would not come out of her hotel room for several hours. Why? Well, Jonathan Pie explains it rather well (warning, lots of swearing). Simply, if you're always going all SJW on people, what they do is they stop talking to you (which is why the polls become useless), and then when push comes to shove, they do whatever they intended to anyway!

[Bobster.]

1 hour ago, plonkster said:

It is also said that we get the politicians we deserve, because politicians rise to power on the back of some or other issue. We actually produce the politicians we get.

When Trump got elected, that's when I realised we're beginning to see the culmination of decades of doing-it-wrong, and by it I mean how we relate to each other in our disagreements.

Nobody saw it coming. All the polls said the democrats had it in the bag. If you interviewed anyone, it seemed inevitable. And then, as if out of nowhere, they lost. Rumour has it that Hillary was so upset she would not come out of her hotel room for several hours. Why? Well, Jonathan Pie explains it rather well (warning, lots of swearing). Simply, if you're always going all SJW on people, what they do is they stop talking to you (which is why the polls become useless), and then when push comes to shove, they do whatever they intended to anyway!

Well, SJW is just a term the right use to describe the left. Ditto "virtue signalling". The reality is that Trump, Farage, Banon et al are virtue signalling too, just to a very different audience.