Carbon Emissions

S

Sophrosyne

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I not sure where to place this thread. I put under this heading since it progressively effects the economy.

These are some initial questions about the accuracy of carbon emission measurement.

How are carbon emissions measured generally?

How are they measured for a country?

How accurate are the measurements?

How much of those emissions are caused by human activity and how much are caused by nature’s carbon cycle?
 
This might be of interest.
 
Regs on the EU monitoring and measurement here. As you'd imagine that's a long read with lots of references to other regulations. What is very clear is they only deal with 'anthropogenic' or human caused emissions.
 
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Purple said:
This might be of interest.
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I only glanced at that... but could be wrong on this, would that only pickup what's output... so a country of all industry would have the same emissions as a country with the same level of industry but lots of trees \ grass areas which take co2 out of the atmosphere?
 
Well it is about Carbon Emissions.
 
It looks like all the emissions and carbon reduction targets at cop26 are not now going to be met.
Since the covid lockdowns ended there has been a surge in global energy consumption especially in the transport sector. Renewables have stalled but fossil fuels have increased because they have little penetration in the transport sector , ships , planes and trucks are powered by fossil fuels. All this contained in a recent report on global energy use.

Aswell as that the war in Ukraine has exasperated the situation as the price of oil, gas and even coal has risen substantially. Germany is reopening mothballed coal fired power stations in order to get off of Russian gas.
I think the impending ban on petrol cars by 2030 looks a tad optimistic at this stage and even if it does happen won't have much of an effect anyway as the giant container ships , bulk carriers, aeroplanes and trucks will still be powered by petroleum and we are nowhere near a technology transformation here.
 
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The war in Ukraine has given the Western World a stronger and more immediate impetus to move away from fossil fuels than they previously had, with much broader public support. So I agree the shorter-term goals are now very difficult to achieve, but the longer-term ambition of moving off fossil fuels (almost) entirely is looking much more likely to me.

As for the ban on sales of new fossil fuel cars, I was never too convinced that was likely to happen. Primarily because I don't think it will be necessary. The EU rules on emission limits from petrol/diesel cars are already laid out and will make it extremely difficult to sell a petrol/diesel car in years to come without significant R&D spends, and the likes of VW have already made it clear they will not be wasting the money on a dead-end (policy wise) technology so will stop selling petrol/diesels of their own accord before 2035. The watershed moment for electric vehicles has already passed now in my view.
 
Yes there is a strong will to move away from fossil fuels by governments etc but the technology is not where governments want it to be and not likely to be for years to come. It is simply the case that the predictions and aspirations about moving to a new Carbon free world were widely optimistic.
The public also are not prepared for the enormous costs involved in this transition and will not tolerate the inflation and price rises and living standard reductions that are required. If more realistic , slower and more attainable targets were set initially than they might have got the general public on board. Already in Ireland Eamon Ryan is public hate figure number 1.
 
Unfortunately the impact of Climate Change is happening whether we want it to be or not and it's disproportionately impacting the poorest people in the world. I do agree that the technology isn't there yet to move to green transport but it is there for power generation and we know what needs to be done in agriculture, the biggest net carbon emitter of all. We just need to embrace clean safe modern nuclear power and cut our mean consumption by 50% and use the millions of square kilometres freed up to grow trees. That would more or less solve the problem.

joe sod said:
Already in Ireland Eamon Ryan is public hate figure number 1.
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Hate figure, really? Only for the ill-informed mutton heads amongst us.
 
I'd be more of the view that if you set weaker targets we'd miss those too, so set ambitious ones that we really have to work to have a hope of maybe achieving, then even if we undershoot those we'll be ahead of where we'd be with the weaker targets. The EU diesel emissions standards are perhaps a good example of this: the auto industry kicked and screamed that they were unachievable but in the end they were achieved with such ease that the EU are now thinking they should make the targets tougher again.

Yes Eamon suffers an astonishing amount of vitriol online. It certainly wouldn't encourage anybody but the most polished and competent at dodging difficult question to enter politics! I think quite a bit of that is personal though, there was a survey only last week showing that most people want more aggressive climate change action.
 
T McGibney said:
Didn't Ryan defend the outlawing of nuclear power generation in this country?
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Yep, but he said recently that it should be considered as part of a green energy conversation.
I'm no fan of his but calling his the number one hate figure in the country is nonsense.
 
Purple said:
Yep, but he said recently that it should be considered as part of a green energy conversation.
I'm no fan of his but calling his the number one hate figure in the country is nonsense.
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The recent comments from Ryan on nuclear are all about issues of the size of reactor you’d need, backup for same, cost/skills required to develop and the fact we have such great wind resources usable in a couple of years if the planning nonsense could be streamlined. So he’s not ideologically opposed to nuclear, he is quite rightly pointing out the obvious that nuclear is not right for Ireland today. When some of the newer small reactors become widely available I’m sure he’ll reassess then.

As for the hate figure stuff, I don’t think it’s necessarily reflected in the general public broadly, but if you have the misfortune to spend time on the Ireland subreddit or various Irish Facebook groups he is blamed for basically all the countries woes and the attacks are often very personal. How much of it is part of the online activities of certain opposition political parties I’m not sure. Online I think it is fair to say he is public hate figure number one.
 
Yes, that's my understanding too.
Okay, so for those who choose to spend their time screaming into the void and engage with Shinner-bots he's a hate figure but for those who live in the real world have have productive and useful ways to spend their time he's not.
 
Purple said:
Okay, so for those who choose to spend their time screaming into the void and engage with Shinner-bots he's a hate figure but for those who live in the real world have have productive and useful ways to spend their time he's not.
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Ryan has an approval rating of ~20% and the views of those people shouting into the void mostly align with the 30%+ of people voting for SF. I don’t think these are nearly as minority views as we’d like to think.
 
Zenith63 said:
Ryan has an approval rating of ~20% and the views of those people shouting into the void mostly align with the 30%+ of people voting for SF. I don’t think these are nearly as minority views as we’d like to think.
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I'm not saying that the Shinners haven't mobilised the mutton heads, I'm questioning if Eamon is the number one hate figure in the country. People mightn't like or agree with Eamon Ryan but hate him? Why?
I don't even hate the Shinner politicians and they run a Party that used to rob banks, cover up child abuse, run protection rackets and blow up children and how they use the same online political tactics as Putin and want to wreck the country.
 
Purple said:
Yep, but he said recently that it should be considered as part of a green energy conversation.
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He didn't say that in 2008 when he made his position clear in the Dáil. https://www.kildarestreet.com/wrans/?id=2008-10-29.987.0 Had he displayed a more flexible approach at the time, perhaps we wouldn't be so stuck now. But back then Eamon was in his Peak Oil phase https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2008-04-23/section/16/ He has learned remarkably little in the meantime.
Purple said:
I'm no fan of his but calling his the number one hate figure in the country is nonsense.
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He's not even remotely near the number one hate figure in the country although that may change if the green nonsense triggers a 2008-style crash.
 
Yea, I remember hearing about peak oil way back when I was in school. Even back then in the pre-internet days it was easy to debunk.
T McGibney said:
He's not even remotely near the number one hate figure in the country although that may change if the green nonsense triggers a 2008-style crash.
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I don't think it'll be the "green nonsense" that triggers the next crash.
 
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