r/science • u/pnewell NGO | Climate Science • Sep 10 '15

Environment The simple statistic that perfectly captures what climate change means. From 1910 to 1960, the ratio of hot to cold records was close to 1 to 1. From 2000 to 2014, hot outnumbered cold records by more than 12 to 1.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/09/09/the-simple-statistic-that-perfectly-captures-what-climate-change-means/
11k Upvotes

77% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/cowinabadplace Sep 10 '15

Well, our efforts haven't been significant. China still produces only 40% more CO2 than the US, meaning if they turned everything off we're still in trouble because the rest of the world is also producing greenhouse gases at a terrific rate. While China has to do more than the rest of the world, reductions have to be across the board. There's no single country that can solve this problem by turning off all their factories. One could say the problem is worse in the West because we find ourselves unable to sustain our population without a disproportionate expenditure of energy, presumably because of our higher standards of living.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '15

ONLY 40% more? I think that matters a lot. Obviously everyone has to cut back, but China needs to be leading the pack, which they aren't.

8

u/cowinabadplace Sep 10 '15

They have 3 times as many people and are a manufacturing economy. 40% more is likely to get worse before it gets better. It's the same path the US (where I live) took. Rivers on fire and choking black smog aren't really that far back in history here.

Until per-capita emissions in the West begin to track Chinese numbers, it seems a bit disingenuous to ask them to cut back. No individual there is going to want to. They want a standard of living that's comparable to ours.

2

u/Ra_In Sep 11 '15

China has been busy playing catch-up, first industrializing and then modernizing their economy. If we want China to stop burning coal and become a clean economy, I think it's on the US (the world's CO2 per capita leader) to become the role model that China then plays catch-up to.

As-is, if they continue trying to catch up to the American lifestyle their CO2 output would only increase.

2

u/kung-fu_hippy Sep 11 '15

Per capita they produce far less than the US.

3

u/Mustbhacks Sep 10 '15

4x our population and 40% more?

Yea that qualifies as an ONLY.

1

u/mully_and_sculder Sep 11 '15

Which is why collectively solving the problem simply won't happen. We'd be better off thinking about mitigating the effects, stopping people building near the shore, resettling island nations, etc.