what's public opinion on climate change/kyoto protocol?

Eco city will rock, I'd be very interested in seeing how that turns out.

I just went back to China a few months ago and I can say that it doesn't seem they're demolishing 10 year old cars, are business cars/taxis/buses exempt from it? I could be wrong and that some cars just looks old .

As far as policy vs. enforcement, that was my point. There are just way too much unenforced policies on the books these days, and this seem like another one of those things that will have trouble being enforced.

Also, the problem with Piracy, bribery, prostitution, etc. are not that they exist and there are definitely a channel/need for that. The problem is that it's so much more overt in China, it's expected and accepted. It's kind of like weed in the U.S., something that's illegal we're so desensitized that we're not shocked when seeing it, and accept it as a way of life.

As far as per capita emissions, I would be interested in seeing it broken down by regions. I think the data could be biased with a large percent of population/area (farmers) living one life style and the ones in industrial or more developed areas living another kind of life style.

This is where Shanghai does things soooooo much better than Beijing. Having license plates that are 1/4 the price of some new cars will keep people from buying them. The next thing China will have to do have annual registrations that are expensive enough that people will think twice about owning a car, especially one which will make the idea of owning a 10+ year old card not financially sound as the value of the 10+ year car < the cost of the annual upkeep (5 thousand Yuan/year should do it, $700 dollars). Ofcourse, having a world class public transport system in Shanghai helps things also .

I also think something like that should be in the U.S. also, ofcourse it'll probably be another century and some major technological advances before places like Texas (where everybody drives their own cars even when they live within a mile of eachother and are going to the same place........) have any reasonable means of public transportation.

 

Chinese trucks use a grade of diesel fuel that puts 130 times more sulfur into the atmosphere than in western countries.

 

This is a really hard problem to solve. Everyone knows it would be good to have a cleaner earth, but no one is willing to give up lifestyle or economical gains. I would support reduced CO2 emission, but I wouldn't feel happy if I could not drive my cars. People in China and India are just starting to experience the type of life style people in the US have enjoyed for decades. Can you blame China want more electricity so more people can use the computer to get to cluthfans bbs or watch Yao Ming on HDTV?

The best solution in my opion is really control the population of people on earth by asking everyone to have only one or zero child.

 

That would indeed be great, especially in poor countries where they can't feed their kids (if you can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em). Realistically it would have some horrible side effects (like the massive abortions of females in China).

 

Even if you break down by region, the per capita consumption of the most industrial cities are far behind that of the US, EU and Japan. It's not the scale of 1/7th, but it's still somewhere between 1/3rd to 1/4th. Heading in the wrong direction I agree, but I find it hypocritical to say the Chinese shouldn't own cars, should cut emissions etc when Americans, Europeans, Japanese and what have you refuse to do the same. Not really a fair game is it? One can start pointing fingers that China should cut emissions when one does the same.

As far as putting cars out of service, this is of course anecdotal evidence, but I did notice that cars are getting "newer," at least in the cities. Of course, the exception is the piece of crap VW Santana. I swear to god that car hasn't changed its styling in the least for the last 15 years. Buses are definitely newer and more fuel efficient.

I do agree with you that enforcement is an issue in China. I think for such a large and diverse country, it really is difficult to enforce, especially in terms of new policies. That is one bleak aspect. But at least the leaders are actually doing something now instead of just talking about doing something. I'd take any improvements.

 

As an end in itself, I am going to treat your question as if you haven't already permanently decided the answer for yourself (i.e. as if you're asking a sincere question).

For background and context: I absolutely believe the data and the scientific understanding of CO2's role show with little to no doubt that CO2 additions do indeed contribute to warming the earth's atmosphere, melting glaciers, altering weather patterns and raising sea level. I see little reputable dispute now. (The owner of the weather channel making climate statements is like the owner of Safeway discussing recent advances in organic chemistry. *shudder*)

But it is very fair to ask if rising global temperatures are actually bad for humans. Here are the four parts of my answer: technology, money, health, & philosophy.

Technology. Developing non-CO2-belching energy production will be a very healthy stimulation in science and engineering, similar in my mind to the space race. It is always difficult to predict the spinoffs from such endeavors.

Money. It seems to me that the effects of a warming globe will in most cases be more harmful than helpful to economies. I do not pretend this is my area.

Sea surfaces temperatures are already rising overall. Hurricanes and typhoons of course get their energy from water temperatures, and the vast majority of models predict increasing storm strength. Therefore, it seems logical to predict an increasing level of damaged property and infrastructure in coastal areas.

Sea level rise, even modest increases, will require some coastal cities to either simply close down or build elaborate and expensive levees, etc. Needing a new infrastructure that does nothing to enhance a city, but literally just keep it treading water, seems like an economic negative to me.

The retreat of ice, particularly in the north, is hailed by some as an economic positive. Many believe that Russia is trying to play Kyoto and other discussions such that enough CO2 will get emmitted to free and increasing number of norther sea port options.

You might want to argue that for every submerged coastal city, another area will have new advantages, but the cost of these shifts, of significant migrations, cannot be ignored.

The predominance of models predict that arid regions will get more arid. For instance, in California (the US's top single regional economy), snowpack levels are predicted to decrease fairly radically in the Sierra Nevada. That accounts for most of the water used in the financial centers and in the state's agriculture. Sever water shortages are hard to view in a positive economic light. Wet regions are predicted to get more wet, with an increasing number of floods. Floods also seem, IMHO, to be economic negatives. Aside from possible loss of life, floods cost money and infrastructure, to no gain.

Health. Coupled with CO2 release, in the vast majority of cases, are other pollutants. Particularly look at traditional coal burning and diesel engines. Several of you have already mentioned air quality in China. In Shanghai, the data show that a child born there smokes the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes per day, just living in the city. In California central valley (heavy trucking industry in the central corridor), 1 in 5 children now owns as asthma inhaler, due primarily to declining air quality. Avoiding or drastically modifying traditional energy production will be needed to directly address these problems.

You can dance around this one saying "but what exactly does CO2 do to human health?" I don't know, but I don't think it's a heck of a lot. It is usually linked directly to the other pollutants though.

Philosophy. Here's where I bet T_J and I totally agree on one level. I in no way have a feeling of "we must preserve nature," "revere mother earth," etc, etc. We are absolutely a part of nature and in no way distinct from it. Ants build ant hills. Beavers build dams. Birds build nests. We build cities and smoke-belching industries. The atmosphere was already transformed once, as I understand it, by the first generations of single-celled life on earth, millions of years ago.

So I see no intrinsic good in "protecting" the earth, as we are simply a part of earth, like any rock or tree or snake or cloud.

However, there is a coldly practical side of this. If our actions lead to, say, a mass extinction (and that is well underway), we have less total genetic diversity on the planet. That makes all of our crops and food animals much more fragile against disease, etc. Our entire food chain becomes more fragile, which is disturbing from a selfish human perspective.

I also believe there is an ethical side of the issue. All of the changes on the way will hit disadvantaged harder than the priveleged. Those with money can build a levee, filter their air, migrate to a new region, with a much better chance of success than those without money. A drought in California will simply not kill as many people as a new drought in northern africa. So those of us who can make more significant CO2 decisions have an ethical responsibility to do so.

In sum, aside from the technology push, the benefits accrued are primarily a mitigation of otherwise negative factors. I believe it is both ethically and also selfishly better for humans to cut CO2 output as much as possible. If the models showed a more encouraging distribution of water, for instance, or less sea level rise, I might be more bullish on climate chnge.

Some climate change is underway, but having this accelerate as slowly as possible helps mitigate all the concerns above as much as possible. Cutting CO2 gives us much better probabilities for a less severe change. I don't think it can legitimately be put any stronger or weaker than that. It might not do much in our lifetimes, but for our kids and our kids' kids, it stands to make a significant difference.

These are just draft thoughts... I am actually very open to a detailed discussion of how climate change might be a net positive, even if it is a disturbing, selfish view.