Why the U.S. Should Not Make Emissions Pledge in Copenhagen

[FreakinDJ]

The BIGGEST PROBLEM with reasoning and research behind Carbon Emissions Pledge Treaty being discussed is it Punishes countries that are actively mitigating carbon emissions and rewards the largest producers of carbon emissions.

This http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es803496a?cookieSet=1">Flawed Carbon Study seeks to punish consumers.

footprint is strongly correlated with per capita consumption expenditure

Consumption of Goods and Services has NOTHING to do with Carbon Emissions. The production of those goods through Coal Fired Electrical Generating Plants and Coal Fire Blast Furnaces used in the production of steel has every thing to do with Global Carbon Pollution.

This treaty is some thing that will never stop Carbon Emissions and reward the Biggest Polluters of the Environment. Some thing that will only lead to yet More Carbon Emissions. By punishing the United States for China and India's gross pollution you will only force China and India to expand into other market places while STILL EMITTING CARBON into the atmosphere

If you really want to stop Carbon Emissions you must go after the people that produce them, just as we did here in the United States.

smoke from dozens of fires (left side of image) in China swirls down along valleys and then out over Bo Hai Bay (upper right) on its way towards Korea and the Pacific Ocean.





William Lau, research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. and his team studied the aerosols using computer models. They found aerosols in the form of dust lofted from the desert surface and transported to the monsoon region can heat the air by absorbing the sun's radiation, altering the Asian monsoon water cycle. Black carbon particles from industrial emissions, bio-fuel burning and forest fires can add to this warming effect by absorbing the sun's radiation and heating the air currents transporting those aerosols. In some instances, black carbon coats the dust amplifying the heating effect because black carbon absorbs solar radiation more efficiently than dust. Rains from this annual weather cycle are a lifeline to over 60 percent of the world's population. Up to now, scientists have understood very little about how aerosols interact with the atmosphere to influence monsoons.





Increased dust aerosols blowing in from western China, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East coupled with black carbon emissions from northern India accumulate in the pre-monsoon late spring in the atmosphere over the northern and southern slopes of the Tibetan Plateau. When the dust absorbs the sun's radiation, it heats the surface air hovering above the mountainous slopes of the region. The heated air rises and draws warm, moist air in to northern India from the Indian Ocean, which helps create more rainfall. As the air warms and moves upward, new air is drawn in to take its place, which is also warmed - creating a process like a pump that pulls heated air upwards.

collecting dead fish out of Kankaria Lake in Ahmedabad, western India.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Do you just like pictures of dead fish?

What has that to do with carbon dioxide emissions? And aerosols are only tangentially linked to CO2 emissions as well - carbon dioxide is an invisible gas, and that is the main worry, not particulate carbon. You say "you must go after the people that produce them"; yes, that's the industrialised countries, and increasingly the countries that are indiustrialising to produce consumer goods, mainly for the already-industrialised countries.

I don't know what your link says - it claims my PC isn't accepting cookies, when it is.

[FreakinDJ]

2. Carbon Dioxide is not the only Green House gas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. True! But…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_effects_in_Earth.27s_atmosphere

…

The contribution to the greenhouse effect by a gas is affected by both the characteristics of the gas and its abundance. For example, on a molecule-for-molecule basis methane is about eight times stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but it is present in much smaller concentrations so that its total contribution is smaller. When these gases are ranked by their contribution to the greenhouse effect, the most important are

• water vapor, which contributes 36–72%
• carbon dioxide, which contributes 9–26%
• methane, which contributes 4–9%
• ozone, which contributes 3–7%

It is not possible to state that a certain gas causes an exact percentage of the greenhouse effect. This is because some of the gases absorb and emit radiation at the same frequencies as others, so that the total greenhouse effect is not simply the sum of the influence of each gas. The higher ends of the ranges quoted are for each gas alone; the lower ends account for overlaps with the other gases. The major non-gas contributor to the Earth's greenhouse effect, clouds, also absorb and emit infrared radiation and thus have an effect on radiative properties of the greenhouse gases.

…

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. And? Your pictures have nothing to do with any greenhouse gas

OKIsItJustMe has listed the major ones; so what greenhouse gas were your pictures about?

The US has not yet 'gone after the producers of carbon emissions'. You blame China and India's 'gross pollution'. Some figures for 2006:

Tonnes per capita
USA 5.18
China 1.27 (Hong Kong 1.55, Macau 1.21)
India 0.27

Thousands of tonnes total for whole country
USA 1568806
China 1664589 (+10647 Hong Kong, 610 Macau)
India 411914

So you see the per capita emissions in the USA are 4 times China, and about 19 times India. Despite its much larger population, China only emits a small amount more than the USA.

You say:
"Consumption of Goods and Services has NOTHING to do with Carbon Emissions. The production of those goods through Coal Fired Electrical Generating Plants and Coal Fire Blast Furnaces used in the production of steel has every thing to do with Global Carbon Pollution."

It's the consumption of goods that drives the production of them. So those goods produced in China and exported to the USA are causing some of the Chinese emissions because of American consumption.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Correction: India 0.37 tonnes per capita

and thus the USA's emissions are 14 times the Indian per capita ones. Sorry about the typo.

[FreakinDJ]

6. Goods produced in the USA under EPA regulations

produce less emissions

[CHIMO]

7. Looks Like

It will come down to a game of "chicken".

Well we won't be around to see the results. At least that is what everyone "believes".

So good luck. Also good luck to the human race.