Turbidity, which is how cloudy water is, is on a different axis from pollution, toxicity, and mineral content of water. There are heavily stained lakes in Florida with a lot of silt mixed up that you can't see further than a couple feet in that would be fairly safe to drink out of.
Mono Lake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_Lake, by contrast is very clear, but it's a soda lake and most normal aquatic life can't live there.
I agree, hence my "clean water" in quotes. However, a lot of people do think that opaque water is inherently dirty and clear water is inherently clean, even if the opaqueness is simply due to suspended organic particles that will settle over time.
Ty
Ref: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/03/coronavir...
If you feel frustrated and hopeless, give to a local food bank, buy music or books from your favorite creators, have a virtual happy hour with friends or family, drop that friend a note and catch up, or work on that idea you've had.
There are lots of bright spots out there and we can create our own too.
I didn't realize it could have such a powerful impact on you, sorry to hear that. I also saw something to that effect, accepted it, and moved on. I don't think there is really a way to consume information without trusting some things, but seeking deeper validation for things you may think are important. In light of other news, this didn't seem like something worth validating, so I assume many many people have internalized it as truth somewhat.
Such is the nature of disinformation.
Except nobody actually thinks that.
This is only about finding a way to measure if life in China is returning to normal, without having to trust the Chinese authorities.
This is a common critique of GDP as a measure of economic health. And it's a fair one. But in the bigger picture, GDP remains the best measure I know of.
Accidents and disasters will happen, but their rate is fairly constant, and the noise they add to the measurement is far from invalidating it.
In a nutshell ? Either you approach this with a class warfare mindset or the usual suspects are going to come out on top again.
Very similar to mitigating an asteroid impact. If you wait too long, no amount of force and course correction will save us.
https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/the-worlds-richest-people-also-e...
“On Wednesday, British charity Oxfam released a study that found the richest 10 percent of people produce half of the planet’s individual-consumption-based fossil fuel emissions, while the poorest 50 percent — about 3.5 billion people — contribute only 10 percent. Yet those same 3.5 billion people are “living overwhelmingly in the countries most vulnerable to climate change,” according to the report. According to the data used by the report, individual consumption — as opposed to consumption by governments and international transport — makes up 64 percent of worldwide climate emissions.
Oxfam estimates that the world’s richest 10 percent of people have carbon footprints that are 60 times higher as the poorest 10 percent. Any estimation that generalizes large populations is difficult to make, but researchers at Oxfam also estimate that the emissions of the world’s richest 1 percent create an even larger emissions gap: the 1 percent could emit 30 times more than the poorest 50 percent and 175 times more than the poorest 10 percent.”
And the active HN reader, whether they fall into that camp or not, are unlikely to be in the actual part of that global 10% who dictate industrial policy that have far-reaching effects on the rest of the world.
Just having our preferred foods year-round can completely change the lives of others. Just thinj about the effect that owning things like cars and houses has on the rest of the world.
Don't kid yourself. Like it or not you and I are part of the problem.
devils advocate, but if it ends up that democratic states don't handle the response as well as authoritarian ones out of differing views of individual rights, this isn't necessarily a 'win' for the democratic side of the fence
The individual states that are responding the best are all heavily liberal/democratic led states - CA, WA, NY, IL. Some of the less liberal states are doing good (OH), but most are doing really terribly (FL). The evidence seems to point in the direction of working democratic government being best suited for handling this crisis. Since the world largely does not have working democratic government in 2020, we have a pandemic.
I have so far seen zero reason to believe that if the outbreak originated in Kansas, or Poland, or Bangalore, it would not have spread across the world by now.
The difference in reaction between red/blue states has less to do with liberalism/authoritarianism, and more to do with the anti-science bent of the modern US right.
Reduced demand lowers both prices and cash flow. Many operators will no longer be able to service their debts. Resulting in bankruptcy.
Coal was already in a downward spiral.
Now that crude oil is down to $30, fracking is no longer viable.
IIRC, Shale was off the board at $60/barrel.
Etc.
Even more tangentially: I support keeping our current nuke power generation running as long as possible (to ease transition to renewables). Like coal's economics, nuke aren't doing well, and will need help just to keep running.
This is largely a result of long-term excessive supply during a period of (relatively) short-term demand reduction though. This makes the huge upfront costs in renewables very unappetizing, and their variable costs less competitive.
I think we would need a much longer demand disruption to "reset" the capital outlay decision back to one of net-new fossil vs. net-new renewable, when we would actually have a chance of switching energy streams. If demand picks up by Q3 we will just ramp up existing O&G supply.
FWIW I work in the asset planning field for energy where we are often concerned with NPV of the entire project. If you can start to get close with renewables lots of primarily fossil-based energy companies will move forward, but I don't see the numbers yet without massive subsidies or taxes.
Well so far it has only been 1 or 2 weeks, comparable to the annual X-mas break in duration. So I'm curious: are the effects really significantly different here so far?
Just because office workers get a holiday, doesn't mean the whole world is on pause. This is nothing like Christmas.
Fun fact: Truck traffic is waaaay up right now, as JIT inventories have depleted many grocery staples. Also, Amazon.
Of. course that's not everyday, but it's many days. When we're back home from college, it's nice to see the friends from back home, and often it will involve all of us driving separate cars. This is I believe archetypical of the Midwest.
The person you're replying to is describing about 30 miles of travel, at a rough estimate.
So, there's your answer.
For ALL of the service industries, Christmas and New Year are when they make a huge bulk of revenue.
Christmas is only a break for those who are privileged. Talk to you neighbourhood restaurant server. Ask them how restful Christmas season is and they will tell you that Christmas is their most stressful time in the entire year.
I wish people would not try to use one crisis as a justification for claiming another. Not everyone agrees that climate change is "the next looming crisis".
The reason we know COVID-19 is a crisis is that we can directly measure the impact. We don't have to rely on questionable computer models projecting things decades into the future. (And I don't just mean climate models--we also have to have economic and sociological models to estimate the impacts of what the climate models predict and calculate the net benefits vs. costs. Not all impacts of climate change are harmful. And if you really believe we have economic and sociological models that can make predictions decades into the future with enough accuracy to justify multi-trillion-dollar policy decisions, I have some oceanfront property in Tibet I'd like to sell you.)
Directly measuring the impact of COVID-19 means we can test the predictions of people who projected various possible scenarios for how such a crisis would play out, and what kinds of actions in response would have what kinds of consequences. It's too early at this point to run all those tests, but when things are back to approximately normal we should definitely run those tests and assess the results. That will help us to be better prepared next time. It will also help us to see what kinds of behaviors we should discourage on the part of major actors who have a stake in trying to spin the public's perceptions. And it will also show us where our infrastructure is fragile so we can take steps to make it more robust, which will put us in a better position to respond to any future crisis.
You probably mean adaptation?
I'm hoping this is just a temporary indicator giving analysts a hint as to where to focus their attention, and not a lone metric plugged into whatever model they're using.
For instance,
> the importance of global cooperation,
For me, and many others, this pandemic has highlighted the need to be less centralized and dependent on foreign nations, especially with respects to China. Relying on them for our global pharmaceutical supply chain, for instance, seems like a terrible decision to have had made now.
> democratic values
You would be excluding the majority of the world's population, who aren't under a system of primarily democratic values.
> the more expensive it is and the narrower our options become.
That is, until a new or emerging technology opens up a plethora of new options! Have some optimism! Because what is clear to me is, even with this current shutdown which has caused the lower pollution is, we cannot afford the cost it takes to do the kinds of drastic, immediate changes needed to lower the C02 emissions to what the majority of climatologists say it needs to be. Technology must be the answer here.
This doesn't require new technology. We know how to make electric cars, electric heat pumps, solar panels, nuclear reactors etc. This is all existing technology.
But take a look at oil prices right now. That's what happens if you start to reduce world demand for oil, and that's the real problem. All we need from governments is to put a sufficient tax on carbon that keeps carbon more expensive than alternatives even as the demand for oil and coal falls off a cliff.
Which doesn't even make oil dramatically more expensive -- it only keeps it at least as expensive as it was last year against declining demand, as economies of scale pick up for carbon alternatives and they become cheaper and thus more customers choose them.
A carbon tax doesn't destroy the economy, all it does is destroy the oil industry (faster).
Squint a bit and Canada's carbon dividend looks like UBI.
I'm fully on board.
As an Albertan I'm not super-happy about paying for the country's party over the past 20 years and now being kicked out of the house when we're out of beer.
FWIW I am (was) seriously considering moving to Wyoming or other net beneficiary of our own federal largess.
Noting your work in asset planning, I'd love to find a counterpoint to VOX's David Roberts coverage of the energy industry, with respect to climate crisis, renewables, governance, financials, etc.
That is to say, the reality is you have a zilch chance of passing a carbon tax in the US government sufficient enough to facilitate the change you are hoping to see. The only way oil and gas goes for a carbon tax is if it ends up being a net benefit to them, and as long as there is oil to burn, I don't see that happening any time soon.
I would think California, for as progressive and liberal as it claims to be on the outset would pass something like this, but it's tough for me to be too optimistic there considering the influence and power Chevron has over the state.
But you start off with a dividend that would end up paying out more to the majority of voters than it would cost them to fund (because a significant fraction of the money would come from corporations and foreign oil interests), and that gets you a lot of support. Then you get all the companies that profit from the transition because they get to sell solar panels and electric heat pumps and stuff. Then you get all the people who are paying attention and notice that even if their current carbon footprint is above average, they could buy an electric car and switch to electric heat right away and still end up with a net profit from the dividend (which is still coming in large part from corporations and foreign oil).
You add up all those people and it's basically the whole country lined up against the oil and coal industries. It's the kind of coalition that can get a bill passed -- but only if people care enough to demand it. Majorities get screwed over left and right when they can't be bothered to organize.
We have some of the problems solved. While batteries are energy dense enough to support passenger cars, there's still a lot of progress to be made before the tech can meet the demands of shipping/bulk-cargo/intercontinental transport. For example, batteries still need to be 20 times more dense before we can build a cargo/passenger aircraft with one.
Significantly more than 20 times I'd bet. The airframe will have to be significantly reinforced to support a design where the maximum takeoff weight is equal to the maximum landing weight. At that point, aerodynamics start to look a lot more like a rocket equation where you can't dump stages.
I think medium to long term, nuclear or renewable powered synthetic fuel is far more likely, especially since we already have a lot of generic infrastructure applicable to fossil fuels and carbon taxes could be the thing that pushes synthetic fuel into the market.
This doesn't require alien technology, it just requires carbon to be priced so that it isn't artificially cheaper than existing alternatives.
The state of biofuel today leaves a lot to be desired as far as the ability to scale without causing other environmental disasters, and many of them aren't even carbon neutral.
As for nuclear cargo ships -- I'd love to see them, but the liability and political hurdles are insane. You'd probably need a really big carbon tax before we'd see them.
Even without nuclear, container ships don't have major weight restrictions (they already weigh a hundred thousand tons), so you can fuel them with anything that will catch on fire. Make carbon expensive and they'll just buy whatever is the next cheapest -- sawmill residue, seaweed, whatever. A lot of the difficulty with "biofuels" is the process of making them into oils that can directly replace petroleum in road vehicles, but large ships don't need that. A large furnace like that can burn unprocessed solid biomass.
Although, burning biomass in ocean-going vessels is not necessarily a net positive. If, for example, they start burning sawmill scraps which were previously being pressed into Ikea furniture, you're just replacing one carbon emission with another. Biofuels are complicated; you have to be careful not to offset sequestration, as well as being cognizant to other emissions generated both in the process of generation and in burning them. Because of the tangential effects, some biofuels emit more carbon than oil!
If I've learned anything about the climate crisis from COVID-19, it's that we aren't going to solve the climate crisis unless it's more convenient to do so than not. COVID is a much more pressing problem than climate change and we didn't do anything about it until after it was already a catastrophe.
Like the virus, the longer we wait to take action, the more expensive it is and the narrower our options become. It seems more and more that there’s an illusion of public debate, while behind the scenes a decision has been made in favor of [adaptation]. I find that deeply sad.
The world has pressed the pause button for a moment. What it looks like on the other side of this crisis is in question. My (fools?) hope is that it makes us reflect on the fragility of the system we’ve created, the importance of global cooperation, democratic values, and what kind of future we want for ourselves and our kids.