[HN Gopher] Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall... ___________________________________________________________________ Climate change: US emissions in 2020 in biggest fall since WWII Author : LinuxBender Score : 118 points Date : 2021-01-22 18:26 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.bbc.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com) | AtlasBarfed wrote: | Recessions/Depressions have really been the only significant | reduction in GHG emissions in recent history, the paper treaties | have been pretty insignificant. | | I won't say that the massive progress in alternative energy | infrastructure buildout isn't blunting it as well, and the | promise of EVs for alleviating transportation emissions, but the | Mortgage Recession and the COVID recession have been the | historically largest reductions emissions in recent history. | | I have good faith that alt energy + EV will result in a massive | improvement, but I wonder if it will be enough. | | I guess what I'm saying is ... financial deck chair rearrangers, | let's cook us up a steady diet of structural financial | malfeasance. | justinzollars wrote: | I wonder if the California wildfires were factored into this? The | state was on fire for 3 months. | frongpik wrote: | Well, I'd welcome the idea of once a year total shutdown for a | couple weeks: no cars, no economic activity, except maybe | hospitals and other infra. That would be a sort of worldwide | retreat. I still remember how clean the air felt the first time | the us did a hard shutdown (empty roads, people were scared). I'm | sure the capitalists will hate the idea to halt the factory for 2 | out of 52 weeks. | olivermarks wrote: | The headline is annoying to me, I feel it should read '2020 | emissions in biggest fall since WWII due to pandemic'. | | The prefix 'climate change' is redundant, I wish the BBC could | get back to being more objective. | fred_is_fred wrote: | You find the prefix "Climate Change:" not objective? It is | setting the context for the article. Like "COVID-19: Scientists | work on a vaccine". | youeseh wrote: | Sounds like de-centralized power generation, maximizing remote | work, and delivery vehicles powered by electricity and hydrogen | is the way forward. | r00fus wrote: | Yeah, everything except the hydrogen part sounds like a good | move. | ip26 wrote: | Maybe not for delivery vehicles, but a combo of batteries | plus green hydrogen fuel cell might enable long haul | airplanes. Hybrids, if you will. | gecko wrote: | Hydrogen _as part_ is totally reasonable. It gives us | hydrocarbon density without us needing to _add_ to the CO2 in | the atmosphere. The important thing to remember when | discussing it is that it 's an energy _storage_ medium, not | an energy _generation_ medium. Most of the time I get | irritated is when people treat hydrogen as the latter. But if | our culture is just too damn wedded to cars for now, _and_ | battery tech just isn 't there yet, then using hydrogen as a | stopgap--provided the hydrogen is made from renewable energy | --seems fine to me. | ozborn wrote: | The problem is that hydrogen is more likely to be made with | steam-methane reforming, not electrolysis using clean | energy sources. | | It is also difficult to store, so I suspect the hydrogen | ship has sailed. | gecko wrote: | Yep, and that's a very legitimate concern and why I'm | certainly not bullish about hydrogen. I just don't want | to reflexively throw it out; sufficient energy production | from clean sources would make electrolysis quite | reasonable, even if it's not ideal, and there are | approaches to handling the storage, too, if that ends up | being the last bit. I _suspect_ , based on current trends | and sciences, that we'll see better batteries instead, | but I don't see harm in continuing to look at hydrogen | for now. | DennisP wrote: | A company in Norway thinks it can get electrolysis to | price parity with steam-methane reforming by 2025, and | maybe cheaper after that. | | https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/nel-to-slash- | cost-of... | ggreer wrote: | Hydrogen vehicles will never become popular. There are | several reasons for this: | | - To be carbon-neutral, the hydrogen must come from | splitting water.[1] Currently hydrogen comes from steam | reforming of methane (which releases lots of carbon).[2] | | - Hydrogen is a very pernicious molecule. It will slowly | leak through metal and weaken it.[3] | | - Hydrogen vehicles must be refueled at special fueling | stations. Electric vehicles can be charged anywhere there | is electricity (such as at home). | | - Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are more expensive than | battery electric vehicles. Toyota sells the Mirai for | $57,500 and loses money on each one. | | - Storage and transportation of hydrogen is very difficult. | It must either be stored in gaseous form at very high | pressure, or in liquid form at 20 degrees above absolute | zero. Current vehicles use high pressure tanks, which also | require high pressure pumps. Many hydrogen stations can | only provide 5,000psi pumps, which means you'll only get | half a tank (and half of your expected range).[4] | | - Hydrogen is more flammable than gasoline (it will ignite | in a much wider range of mixtures with oxygen).[5] Unlike | gasoline, the flame is invisible in daytime. Unlike | gasoline, hydrogen is invisible and has no smell, making | leaks undetectable without special equipment. If an odorant | is added to the hydrogen, it will likely damage the fuel | cell. | | - Hydrogen is more expensive than gasoline and far more | expensive than electricity. Even with subsidies, refilling | a Toyota Mirai costs over $80.[4] That gives you just over | 300 miles of range. My Tesla Model 3 has the same range and | a full charge costs me $6 at home. Supercharging is also | cheaper, at around $25. | | - Batteries got cheap faster than anyone predicted (except | Tesla). In 2015, a study looked at past estimates of | battery prices versus observed prices. They found that | analysts were consistently pessimistic about cost | reductions. Correcting for this, they noted that cost per | kWh, "...could reach $200 by 2020." Actual cost in 2020 was | $123.[6] | | Given all of these disadvantages, I don't see how hydrogen | vehicles could be considered reasonable. The economics, | physics, safety, and convenience simply don't work out. | | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_splitting | | 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming | | 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement | | 4. https://www.cars.com/articles/fill-er-up-refueling- | the-2016-... | | 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety | | 6. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/04/will-falling- | battery-... | letsgoyeti wrote: | I think most hydrogen proponents are pushing for it to | replace hydrocarbons for shipping, planes, and seasonal | energy storage, not cars. | | There's not a lot of other great options today if we want | to decarbonize those sectors because of the energy | density required. | tryptophan wrote: | IMO ammonia makes more sense than hydrogen. | | It doesn't cause metals to become brittle. Its relatively | stable. It doesn't require as low temperature or as high | pressure to liquidize. It also stores ~50% more hydrogen | per volume, as each ammonia has 3 hydrogen, unlike | elemental hydrogen with just 2. | throwawayboise wrote: | It's also highly toxic and a leak in the wrong place | could kill thousands of people. | r00fus wrote: | And hydrogen substrate isn't similar? | philipkglass wrote: | Hydrogen is not toxic by inhalation, but it's a much | worse explosion/fire risk. | | Hydrogen is flammable when mixed with air between 4% and | 75%, and it takes a minimum energy of 0.016 millijoules | to ignite. Ammonia is flammable between 15% and 28% and | takes 680 millijoules to ignite. It takes much more | energy to ignite ammonia and there's a much narrower | range of mixtures with air where it can support | combustion. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammability_limit#Examples | evgen wrote: | But we have handled ammonia on an industrial scale for | more than a century and are really good at it. Any safety | concerns about ammonia are ridiculous when compared with | some of the other substances we handle and live around on | a daily basis. | bluGill wrote: | A a John Deere employee I can tell you that several very | much wanted products have failed to be developed because | someone put their safety black-hat on and came up with a | to abuse that product the release ammonia into the air. | Once an evil person figures out how to control our system | it is trivial for them to figure out many terrorist | attacks involving ammonia releases. | | Yes the world deals with ammonia all the time. However we | have special training for anyone who handles it. Even the | most caution to the wind types wear full respirators and | thick gloves when handling it. | | When you buy ammonia at walmart what you get is 1% | ammonia, 99% water. Then you are instructed to dilute it | with more water 16:1, Even at that ratio it is nasty | enough that those who use it have windows open. | jessaustin wrote: | Please be specific. Liquid anhydrous ammonia is a common | fertilizer. John Deere still sells e.g. the 2430 and the | 2510. How did the hypothetical "very much wanted" | products differ from those applicators? Are we talking | about a handheld model? (That might have been a bad | idea!) One suspects the hypothetical "evil persons" whose | threat delayed product development were more interested | in cooking meth than in terrorist attacks... | jackdeansmith wrote: | Why de-centralized power generation? I was under the impression | that the electrical distribution system is very efficient in | the US and economies of scale make large scale renewables much | cheaper. | throwawaysea wrote: | For me, I just like the idea of self-reliance and being able | to function in the event of an issue with the grid. I've | unfortunately experienced weather events that have led to 2 | week outages of power, for example. Fossil fuels provide that | security and benefit to some degree, and also have the added | bonus of transportability. Yes it is not self-reliance in the | sense that you still depend on a supply chain to produce | those fuels. But it is easy to store a lot of those fuels for | an extended period of time. It's not really practical to do | so for electricity, however. A Tesla Powerwall is much much | more expensive than a tank, and only stores 13.5 kWh. | jackdeansmith wrote: | I dig the idea of self reliance and preparedness, but like | you pointed out, fossil fuels and small generators solve | the problem really well. In most places in the US, the grid | is pretty reliable so optimizing the system for those | handful of days/year doesn't seem prudent. Granted, some | places (looking at you California) have a lot of work to do | on reliability. | snoshy wrote: | Electrical distribution in the US is actually aging quite | badly and is in deep need of replacement of large parts of | it. Inefficiency isn't entirely the problem, although many | (including me) would argue that it isn't as efficient as it | could be. DC power transmission at high voltages is now | feasible due to new technologies, and it is more efficient as | well as easier to step up/down. At large scale, even such | seemingly small losses do start to add up and matter. | | Decentralization brings an obvious benefit - if power is | consumed near generation, you need less infrastructure to | distribute it, thereby lowering costs. Once we start adding | large numbers of EVs charging at home, our energy consumption | will tilt more and more towards the home, making generation | and consumption on the spot much more efficient and useful. | | Another benefit of decentralization is grid resilience. | Removing single points of failure by distributing them means | that large scale power outages (while already infrequent) | would become less frequent. | cobookman wrote: | Decentralization is also in the National Security interest. | Makes it much harder for an adversary to take down large | swaths of the US Grid. | snoshy wrote: | This I'm not so sure about. It will certainly be | different, but it's still an open question whether it | will be easier to secure from a national security | standpoint. | | There's the physical security aspect of this, which is as | you say, hard to take down when it's decentralized. | However, as power generation gets more distributed, we'll | naturally start seeing more (if not most) of these pieces | of equipment be controlled over networks (private or | public), and securing distributed infrastructure from a | software standpoint is still a hard problem. | | Just look at the state of IoT security today. It's quite | bad, and that's not even realistically including nation | state attackers in the threat model. I don't expect this | to go well with a decentralized grid, at least not for a | while initially. | cobookman wrote: | I'm not convinced that it needs to be internet | controlled. Hopefully it uses protocols like BLE or | Zigbee requiring proximity. That way such an attack would | require being physically near the device. | jackdeansmith wrote: | 100% agree about grid modernization and resilience being | high priorities, but as I pointed out in another comment, | the economies of scale for renewables are really really | massive (utility scale solar is about half the unit cost of | residential and commercial rooftop solar). Transmitting | power long distance also partially solves intermittence | problems with renewables by allowing overcapacity in one | region to power extra demand in another. A bunch of good | points for sure, but if I had to bet, I would guess that | the future of our energy system involves far more long | distance transmission and large installations. | snoshy wrote: | Fair point about the unit costs being drastically lower | due to economies of scale. As with any large scale | infrastructure, it will certainly be a mix of both local | generation and utility scale transmitted power. The real | question is where the balance of the two will end up. | Either way, distributed generation at scale will be a | unique phenomenon that hasn't been seen before, and will | certainly result in quite a bit of disruption throughout | the industry. | RobRivera wrote: | heat loss in power distribution is nontrivial | jackdeansmith wrote: | In the US at least, transmission loss seems to be on order | of 5% of total energy distributed. Source: https://www.eia. | gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3#:~:text=Th.... | | The economies of scale seem to be much larger. For example, | utility scale solar seems to be about half the unit cost | compared to residential and commercial solar: | https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/solar-installed-system- | cost.ht... | marstall wrote: | would this be expected to have a (temporary) detectable impact on | atmospheric carbon concentration (ie ppm)? | FooHentai wrote: | Yes, in a slight slowing of the rate at which it is increasing. | | Hard to attribute with confidence since it's a global figure | based on pooled local measurements, but so long as you agree | that human-caused release of co2 contributes to increasing | atmospheric co2 levels, the reduction is a safe assumption. | | The depressing part is the reduction needs to be 10x greater, | and permanent, and global, for atmospheric co2 to halt it's | increase and start dropping. | exporectomy wrote: | Certainly not an obvious impact, at least not yet, according to | this graph: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ | cblconfederate wrote: | Yeah but people already miss being stuck in traffic and their | daily commute so it's not going to last | kristopolous wrote: | I've heard people actually say this. The horror, the horror. | dd_roger wrote: | Granted my commute is a 20 minutes walk so I don't get the | The True American Commute Experience (TM) but working from | home is a miserable experience as far as I'm concerned. | Having the possibility to do it once in a while is nice | though to make time for appointments or being done earlier to | go out after work. | renewiltord wrote: | It's the "I like 4 seasons" of commuting. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | For a lot of people it was their only alone time. | davio wrote: | I only listen to podcasts while driving, so my "learning" | time has been drastically reduced | spelunker wrote: | I noticed this problem. I read during my commute (it was | by train don't worry), and since I've started working | from home my reading time has absolutely tanked. | Jtsummers wrote: | I converted my commute time to walking time and yardwork | time last spring through fall (too cold for walking now, | and yardwork is now 10 minutes of shoveling snow every | couple of weeks). I think I listened to more thanks to | the lack of a commute. I didn't feel bad about leaving | the house at 4:30pm (end of workday for me) and finding | my way back home at 5:30pm or 6pm, especially since I | knocked out a lot of household chores/tasks during the | workday in quick 1-5 minute bursts so I was more helpful | around the house than when I was in the office. | renewiltord wrote: | I used to commute on BART from El Cerrito for an hour. | Read so many books on that ride. When I had a 10 min | commute, book reading dropped through the floor till I | made time again. | jedberg wrote: | Same here, I'm way behind on podcasts. The only time I | listened to them was when I was driving. | retzkek wrote: | Why not set aside some time each day to listen? Take a | bath, lounge on the couch/hammock, and enjoy that time | not commuting. | jedberg wrote: | I have two young kids. There is no such thing as | "lounging". :) | ishjoh wrote: | I've been WFH for about 5 years now and also have two | young ones so I know the feeling :) | | I've found that any chore time is now also podcast time. | So things like cleaning, laundry, or mowing the lawn I've | always got one headphone in (the other ear is for | listening for the kids) | jedberg wrote: | Yeah when I'm doing yard work my headphones do double | duty for listening to podcasts and being earplugs. But | that was true even before I stopped driving anywhere. | r00fus wrote: | Are these the same people who didn't spend enough time with | their kids/family? | kristopolous wrote: | It really says something. Roads have long served as our | public space but we've managed to convert it into the | private. | | I don't mean materially private, I know we're fishbowls on | wheels, but culturally private, as in people often refer to | it as such. | | It's one of the only times most people are disconnected | from internet/work-tech because there is substantial risk | of life and limb if they engaged (I know people have made | this work regardless, I'm talking about cultures, not | outliers) | | Also this human need for privacy, if that's the reason to | commute, is coming at the cost of literally destroying the | planet. | | There has to be a healthier way to satisfy these baseline | psychological needs. Climate collapsing death machines may | be how humans have transported themselves for a while but | it shouldn't be the main go-to for how they are alone with | their thoughts | ndiscussion wrote: | What if we didn't crowd ourselves into cesspools of | humanity ie cities? | | I'm being a bit facetious, but ultimately, this lack of | privacy is all self-inflicted. | kieselguhr_kid wrote: | Then we'd probably destroy our ecosystem more quickly. | People in cities much more efficiently than rural or | suburban people. | supernova87a wrote: | But this is like taking off your boots and congratulating | yourself for losing 5 pounds. | smileysteve wrote: | The more apt analogy would be it's like catching a cold and | losing 5lbs on a soup only diet. | | You actually lost weight, but not in a healthy way, and as soon | as you feel better you're going to gain it, plus some. | alexfromapex wrote: | Don't forget about the cows eating seaweed development, that will | be huge for the climate too | hntrader wrote: | To what extent has this been rolled out already? | snakeboy wrote: | From what I remember from previous discussions, | | 1. It's more expensive than standard cattle feed so it would | need a subsidy to incentivize its use (probably a worthwhile | investment for the Biden administration if they're serious | about climate policy) and | | 2. there are some hurdles to massively scaling up the growth | of the algae to supply the massive US cattle population. | hntrader wrote: | (1) is interesting. I'm a big fan of a carbon tax over | subsidies and direct govt intervention but this seems like | an example of something that a tax would have a hard time | incenting. I wonder if there are other examples like that. | | Maybe a tax on cows but a rebate if they use this | technology. But that seems like an easy system to game so | maybe the direct subsidy is superior in this case. | epistasis wrote: | Beef is only 3% of US emissions, meat has very little to do | with the US's climate woes. | | The big problem is transportation. Ideally we'd have lots more | muxed-use walkable neighborhoods than we have. Roughly 50% of | people want to live in walkable neighborhoods, but centralized | planning has virtually banned this type of low-carbon living | over the past 75 years. | fred_is_fred wrote: | I wonder if this or fake/lab meat will have a larger impact in | 10 years. | savanaly wrote: | Is it possible that Sars-cov-2 epidemic will eventually save more | lives than it cost, through the long term and short term effects | of decreased pollution and climate change? If that's true, we | have to entertain the theory that the virus was purposefully | initiated by a time-traveler charged with averting climate | catastrophe through the only means possible. | blabus wrote: | I've had a similar thought regarding the 2020 presidential | election. Had Trump and his administration properly handled the | pandemic response (or never had to handle it in the first | place) it's quite likely he would've been re-elected. After | having seen the events that transpired over the past month (to | say nothing of the past four years) I can't help but wonder if | 400,000+ lives ended up being the cost to preserve democracy in | the US. | throwawayboise wrote: | I would think if you've got the technology to time-travel, | fixing the atmosphere in your present day would be trivial. | Same reason the plot lines of _The Terminator_ films never | really made sense (though they were very entertaining movies). | StreamBright wrote: | Not really, there are very few climate related deaths. | | https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-from-nat... | | I think more people die from diabetes and covid than climate. | JimiofEden wrote: | There are CURRENTLY very few climate related deaths. The | person you're responding to is wondering if more lives would | be saved in the long run, maybe the next 1000 years. | renewiltord wrote: | The relative value of future deaths is interesting, right? | To be honest you have to discount them a little because if | you kill a guy today before he has kids, you've killed his | kids too. | corty wrote: | If I refuse to mate with someone, I also killed a few | thousand people over the next millenium. That doesn't mean | I will loose any sleep over saying no to his proposition. | savanaly wrote: | When it comes to short term deaths (like could be measured | right now or in the coming years) I think the bigger | mechanism would be pollution which causes deaths from people | with respiratory illnesses and such in major cities. Not so | much in the US (although LA is a problem I think?) but | definitely in China and India. | elmomle wrote: | It isn't only climate change. Ambient air pollution causes >4 | million deaths per year, per the WHO: | https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1 | ggreer wrote: | Almost all of that (3.8 million) is indoor air pollution | caused by cooking: | https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/topics/topic- | detail... | elmomle wrote: | Actually, that 3.8 million is separate from the 4.2 | million caused by outdoor air pollution: | https://www.who.int/news-room/fact- | sheets/detail/ambient-(ou... | kube-system wrote: | For what it's worth, those cooking indoors with solid | fuel are might also be less likely to be cooking | anything... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_security_during_the_CO | VID... | remarkEon wrote: | I've had this thought, but it's a thought experiment that I | kinda don't want to go engage in. I've also been wondering if | the death toll in the US is so high because, well, Americans | are just really unhealthy and overweight and that increased | morbidity in a way that was unique in the world. Non-compliance | with stay-at-home and mask wearing obviously didn't help, but I | can't shake the feeling that the structural problems with | health in the US set us up for failure years (decades?) before | the pandemic even started. | whimsicalism wrote: | > if the death toll in the US is so high because, well, | Americans are just really unhealthy and overweight and that | increased morbidity | | But the US doesn't have a higher IFR than most European | countries. The difference in number of dead has to do with a. | the population differences, b. differences in proportion | infected. | | The gaps between France and the US in per capita deaths, for | instance, are not that huge. | fasteddie31003 wrote: | I actually love uncomfortable thought experiments. My recent | one I've been asking my friends is how many years of the | current lockdown would you trade with getting the virus and | all the issues that go along with that but then being over | the lockdown. My number is 1 more year of the current | lockdown. My girlfriend's is 3 years. | whimsicalism wrote: | To be clear, you're saying you would rather have one more | year of lockdown than get the virus? And your girlfriend | would rather have 3 years? | | For me, 0 - the reason I lockdown is out concern for | others, I am not personally worried of the impact Covid | would have on me. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | For my part, the reason I oppose the lockdowns is out of | concern for others: by the time the restrictions are over | in the EU, young people will have been prevented for | about two years from doing all kinds of traditional | coming of age rituals, courtship opportunities, etc. And | if European countries isolating themselves leads to a new | wave of nationalism and lessened cooperation with | neighbors, it is their generation which will have to deal | with the consequences. | | I am approaching middle age myself, but I don't think it | is fair to limit the lives of people in their teens and | twenties for a virus, the median age of death of which is | around 80. This policy of COVID restrictions is the | biggest betrayal of our youth since May '68. | dnautics wrote: | > I've also been wondering if the death toll in the US is so | high because, well, Americans are just really unhealthy and | overweight and that increased morbidity in a way that was | unique in the world.. | | Don't forget that the EU (at the moment) has a higher overall | per-capita mortality rate than the US, and it looks like wave | 3 is waning in both geographies. Interestingly enough, | morbidity figures are much higher in the US, but that could | be a self-reporting/self-testing issue, or even false | positive rate of the tests, etc. | citilife wrote: | > Is it possible that Sars-cov-2 epidemic will eventually save | more lives than it cost, through the long term and short term | effects of decreased pollution and climate change? | | Climate change wont directly lead to death, we'll have to | adapt, but there are models showing more food produced from | climate change. Simply put, we don't know what _potentially_ | will happen. We highly suspect there are 150 thousand increase | in death from disease due to climate change[2] | | In contrast... there _are_ 135 - 270 MILLION people on the | verge of starvation now; due to the policies around covid (or | >2% of the worlds population). | | > "marching towards starvation" spiking from 135 million to 270 | million as the pandemic unfolded. He stressed that 2021 will be | catastrophic [2] | | BTW these people are still getting covid too, lockdowns slowed | the spread, didn't stop it. Most American's have already gotten | the disease (estimates are that 10x the number of people have | gotten it over the tests[3]). Given 25 million have tested | positive, by the prior estimates, that means a likely 250 | million Americans have already gotten covid [4]. | | [1] https://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/ | | [2] https://www.un.org/press/en/2020/ga12294.doc.htm | | [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/us-coronavirus-cases- | deaths-... | | [4] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ | dragonwriter wrote: | > but there are models showing more food produced from | climate change. | | Total global food production hasn't been an issue in hunger | in the modern era, so boosting it is immaterial in this | context. | | _Moving_ it out of existing populated places that are | already marginal and have litle export industry to purchase | imports with, OTOH, will be disastrous, even if Russia and | Canada get a huge boost in arable land. | xur17 wrote: | > Given 25 million have tested positive, by the prior | estimates, that means a likely 250 million Americans have | already gotten covid [4] | | Considering there are 328 million Americans, that would mean | 76% of Americans have had the disease, which I believe would | be sufficient for herd immunity. Given what case counts look | like, I find that extremely unlikely. | citilife wrote: | They've been counting any flu related illness as COVID, | hospitals also get additional funds for COVID-19 | hospitalizations. Only a handful of influenza tests have | even been ran: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/ | | In all likelihood, yes we are nearing heard immunity and | we're done with the illness. | | Further, there's an issue with the PCR testing. Though | there have been reports since August - October 2020, | published in November 2020: | | https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346483715_External | _... | | Basically, they started over amplifying the DNA and weren't | controlling the PCR tests very well. Here's the original | WHO warning in December 2020 | | https://web.archive.org/web/20210102051357/https://www.who. | i... | | (Since... the page has been deleted, but followed later) | | With the official statement January 19, 2020: | | https://www.who.int/news/item/19-01-2021-who-information- | not... | throwaway2245 wrote: | > They've been counting any flu related illness as COVID | | _There are no flu related illnesses:_ the 2020-21 winter | flu season has not happened. | | Here are the results for the last 12 months of WHO's | influenza monitoring (you may have to pick a country). | They are conducting global testing at or above normal | levels: | | https://apps.who.int/flumart/Default?ReportNo=1 | | If you look closely enough at the x-axis, you might be | able to see how much flu there is. | selimthegrim wrote: | Herd immunity...against which variant? | selimthegrim wrote: | As far as Ct goes, 25-30 should do it. Even Fauci says | >30-35 or so is dead fragments. Do you think everyone is | doing 40? | adventured wrote: | > They've been counting any flu related illness as COVID | | What you're claiming doesn't pass any sniff test what-so- | ever. Low tens of thousands of people die in a typical | year from the flu (in the US). The US is seeing that many | deaths from Covid every ten days now. | | There's no evidence the US is close to herd immunity. | Deaths just hit a new daily record high two days ago. | Daily case numbers have been raging at present high | levels for over six weeks with zero sign of stopping | naturally. The vaccines are clearly the only thing that's | going to slow it during this season. | mywittyname wrote: | >that would mean 76% of Americans have had the disease, | which I believe would be sufficient for herd immunity. | | My understanding is that it is possible to get covid-19 | multiple times. But lack of widespread testing is making it | difficult to measure how prevalent this is. | | There are also two known strains of covid. | | There are a lot of unknowns at this point. We could be | dealing with cyclical covid outbreaks for the next decade, | the vaccine rollout this summer might eliminate it for | good, or we could land somewhere between the two. | jeofken wrote: | A very large amount of cases are simply false positives. We | have no idea how widespread the disease is, but it's | certainly less spread and deadly than feared. This has been | talked about in non-mainstream news for a while, but is | only recently recognised in the state and big media | organisations around the western world. | | Like terrorism was in the 00's, this is proving very useful | for those who want to expand their power via the state. | | https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/letters-health-care- | prov... | cableshaft wrote: | If it's 250 million people that have Covid-19, we'd nearly at | herd immunity levels already, at least for the population | that can be exposed to the virus. | | The numbers should be going way, way down already, as there | are a good number of people who aren't exposing themselves to | the virus hardly at all (My wife and I are two of them, but | it has to be in the millions of people that are limiting | their exposure). | | Plus the US has vaccinated >17.5 million people, so subtract | that from the population and that 250 million estimate, and | there would only be 60 million more people who _could_ catch | it (assuming no reinfections). | | The newest data I can find on this is from the CDC and | they've estimated that through December 2020 that 83 million | Americans have been infected[1] (and I saw something dated | November 27 where they estimated that 53 million[2] had it, | so 30 million new infections in December). To get to that 250 | million estimate we would have had to have 167 million new | infections in less than a month, or more than tripled all the | infections we had up until now. That seems very unlikely. | | Also their estimate is that 1 in 4.6 of Covid infections are | being reported, not 1 in 10 like that Business Insider | article (which is dated July 2020, looks like they revised | the ratio since). | | [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases- | updates/burd... | | [2] https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/covid-2020-11-27/card/vN | ksh... | bpodgursky wrote: | The Sars-cov-2 epidemic might easily kill more people in the | developing world through food and economic insecurity than it | kills from respiratory disease (esp given how young those | countries are). | | I don't think this is a particularly realistic take. | [deleted] | coding123 wrote: | The pandemic reminded me of my childhood days when not everything | is so damn crowded all the time. My personal wish is for travel | to keep staying low, but I don't think it's going to stay low | forever. | just_steve_h wrote: | The biggest takeaway here for me is that we collectively achieved | something previously considered impossible: by making different | behavioral choices, as a species, we achieved the largest cut in | CO2 emissions in 75 years. | | It's tragic that only the threat of a deadly disease could compel | such a change, but perhaps we may find other levers to help us | achieve such widespread beneficial changes in the future? | ppeetteerr wrote: | It's wishful to say that we achieved this, or that we were | compelled to do this. Emissions were reduced as a consequence | of social distancing, not as a desired goal. | | I suspect we'll look back at 2020 as the year we generated the | most waste from all that packaging that went into shipping | products to individual homes. | | I'll remind that there are airlines booking flights to | literally nowhere: | https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/travel/airlines-pandemic-... | [deleted] | sigzero wrote: | If there was no threat, it would not have happened. | rmk wrote: | We did not simply make "behavioral choices". Whole swathes of | humanity were ordered indoors! It was achieved at untold cost | (actually, much greater than the trillions of dollars that have | been given away already by governments) that will be paid by | generations to come. Only people who were lucky to hold a job | that wasn't affected made a conscious decision to cut down. | | I am willing to bet that come 2022 or so, emissions will | rebound and exceed peaks as people 'catch up' on travel, | including simply visiting near and dear ones, that they have | missed out on. | hcurtiss wrote: | And watching so many small businesses in my small town close, | that was not at all a thing I hope climate change policy | replicates. | rmk wrote: | One can wish, but I know that there is huge pressure on the | current administration to appease the left wing of the | party. Keystone XL is canceled, and the US has rejoined the | Paris agreement on the first day of Biden's Presidency. A | multi-trillion dollar Green New Deal that will further | saddle future generations with debt is looking likely at | this point. Whether it will provide the benefits it | purports to do is far from certain. | huragok wrote: | Trillions used for the GND is debt but trillions sunk | into tax cuts for the top 1% is just good economics. | bamboozled wrote: | > Whole swathes of humanity were ordered indoors! It was | achieved at untold cost | | Climate change has untold cost too, so what you're saying | doesn't have much weight. | bluGill wrote: | Most of the people I know have no interest in the current state | of affairs. They are just coping because death is seen as even | worse. However they are reaching the breaking point and getting | ready to just give up and hope they are not one of the dead (or | a long-hauler). | | IF this is what it takes, then we will never get there. We need | to do better. I don't know what better is, but it cannot mean | travel restrictions and no ability to see friends. | breakfastduck wrote: | All it does it prove how fruitless the prevention of climate | change is. | | A total shutdown of the entire world economy on an | unprecedented scale still doesn't track enough to prevent | climate change. | | If that isn't a clear indicator of how severe the situation is | then I don't know what else is. | anigbrowl wrote: | When you're driving, there are two kinds of accidents; the | ones that happen suddenly with no warning, and the ones where | you realize things are going wrong but you still have some | control over your vehicle. In the latter case, going off the | road or being involved in a collision is still very | unpleasant, but you can mitigate a lot of the damage as long | as you don't panic. In many cases you can even get back on | the road and resume your journey safely. | Ancalagon wrote: | Actually I think my view on climate change is more optimistic | now. The article mentioned the majority of the carbon | reduction wasnt actually due to reduced demand, but rather | from lowered emissions from using renewables (and more | specifically the closures of coal plants). This seems like | pretty good news to me. You can continue to grow and operate | the economy while reducing carbon emissions to levels they | need to be at by switching everything to renewables. | openasocket wrote: | Meh, the effect of COVID on the economy was pretty specific. | You've got a drop in commuters, and a lot of office space | going empty and not using a lot of energy. But now people are | staying home all day, so they're still using electricity, | just in their homes and not the office. According to the | article, the demand for electricity only dropped 2%, the 10% | drop in power plant emissions was largely due to the | continued transition to renewables. And while a lot of people | stopped commuting and traveling, there was plenty of shipping | (including a big bump in deliveries) which is a substantial | source of emissions. | | I'm still optimistic. Just replacing coal with renewable | power would put emission levels back to like the 1960s (maybe | 1970s, trying to find that damn statistic), and that's likely | to happen in the US in a few decades just by market forces. | [deleted] | nostrademons wrote: | Unpopular prediction: we're going to solve global warming by | the 22nd century, but we're going to "solve" it with nuclear | winter and the destruction of 80-90% of humanity. Once we're | down to a billion people or so and most of what passes for | advanced civilization has been destroyed, carbon emissions | and warming won't be a problem. | exporectomy wrote: | Doomsday predictions about climate change are very popular. | hammock wrote: | Bill Gates wants to test an artificial nuclear winter... ht | tps://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7350713/Bill. | .. | jessaustin wrote: | Albedo modification is the obvious response to the | situation. Of course testing should start small, but the | idea that 2 kg of material in one location could lead to | a runaway deep-freeze earth situation is not plausible. | Those global warming enthusiasts who oppose this research | seem more interested in political implications than in | actually reducing warming. | stretchcat wrote: | Nuclear winter seems unlikely to me, and from what I | understand I'm not alone. Cities are no longer prone to | huge firestorms like they once were. Furthermore most | nuclear strikes would probably be airbursts to maximize | blast effects, but that means less material being thrown | into the atmosphere. If the attack were calculated to cause | maximum fallout instead, airbursts of salted bombs might be | used, which would poison huge areas of land but would not | particularly contribute to a nuclear winter. | nostrademons wrote: | The primary targets for nukes aren't cities, they're | other nukes. Most of these warheads are set for | groundburst (or underground burst - I remember a bunch of | research in the 80s about burrowing/penetrating | warheads), because to blow up a 3-4 foot thick reinforced | concrete silo you basically need to land right on top of | it. That's the big fallout threat. | stretchcat wrote: | The nuclear winter theories I've read all involve the | injection of soot into the stratosphere by nuclear- | ignited firestorms. Buried nuclear blasts can dig pretty | big holes (Sedan crater and all the other craters in the | Nevada Test Site, which looks like the surface of the | moon) and are certainly a huge fallout threat, but the | claim of nuclear strikes against buried silos causing a | nuclear winter is a new one to me. | | Some napkin math: the Sedan test was optimized to dig a | big hole, was buried almost 200 meters deep, and moved | about 11 million tons of earth, leaving a crater of 0.005 | cubic kilometers. The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambura, | which caused a 'year without summer', ejected 160-213 | cubic kilometers of material into the stratosphere, | something like 32 thousand times as much as the Sedan | blast. I'm guessing each strike against a nuclear silo | would probably create craters a fraction the size of | Sedan. | missedthecue wrote: | Do you realize how cheap sea walls are? The Dutch were | building them 800 years ago with medieval technology and | resources. | pasquinelli wrote: | we haven't had a total shutdown of the entire world economy. | that would imply no one's making anything or buying anything. | as far as what we _need_ , we're still producing more than | enough. we could cut more than we have and still have ample. | no one would be getting rich though. so there it is, the | driver of climate change from the beginning remains the | driver of climate change now. | fbelzile wrote: | I don't think it's fruitless, but it shows how much we'll | need to rely on clean technology rather than a change in | human behaviour to curb climate change. | joseph_grobbles wrote: | "A total shutdown of the entire world economy" | | GDP has barely taken a hit the world over. Trade is virtually | unchanged. Hell, some indicators went positive though the | pandemic. | | I don't really think there was a "shutdown". Passenger car | miles might have gone down, but I suspect deliveries and | cargo went way up. | blake1 wrote: | I disagree with a lot of this, except the conclusion. | | The economy never came close to a "total shutdown." In most | places, the overwhelming majority of jobs were classified as | essential--maybe 2/3rds--even while certain sectors did shut | down. You can look at various stats, but a very simple one is | the output gap, estimated to be 6%, which is potential GDP | minus actual. This is a fair proxy for how shut down the | economy was. The severe shutdowns were relatively brief. | | Mostly, we massively changed the mix of activities we engage | in, substituting relatively cleaner ones for more polluting | ones. Maybe you purchased more manufactured goods and used | more electricity, while driving less. A different conclusion | from yours is that simple behavior changes--like more | telework--can have significant impacts on emissions. | | It proves that we can cut emissions without living a | prehistoric lifestyle. And given that renewable energy | sources are cheaper than polluting ones, this gives me reason | to be optimistic. | epistasis wrote: | > A total shutdown of the entire world economy on an | unprecedented scale | | Where did that happen? US GDP is down a few percent, yet | emissions plummeted far far further. | mrtweetyhack wrote: | all thanks to Covid-19. Do your thang Covid-2021 | jedberg wrote: | And personal savings are way up. But it's unlikely either of | these trends will hold after 2021. | badRNG wrote: | Source? Anecdotally most folks I know have had to burn through | their savings after living off of unemployment or going through | underemployment this past year. | flatline wrote: | https://www.statista.com/statistics/246268/personal- | savings-... | airza wrote: | when your disposable income is zero, doesn't that drive the | statistics way out of wack? | SuoDuanDao wrote: | The poorest X% not showing up in any statistics used for | policy making is probably a longstanding problem... and | it's probably hard to estimate by how much X has changed | over the past year. | flatline wrote: | I do not know whether it accounts for a negative savings | rate, but the graph does show that people with disposable | income were saving more this past year during the | pandemic, which means they were spending less on consumer | goods. There were probably two driving factors behind | this: fear of economic instability due to the pandemic, | and a lack of availability of paid activities due to the | same. Presumably, consumer spending will rise again, as | will travel and hence fossil fuel consumption per the | original post. | francisofascii wrote: | A recent episode of NPR: The Indicator covered this. "real | disposable income per capita in the U.S. has gone up by about | 6 percent year-to-date from last year. Right now, it's on | track to reach the fastest rate of growth since 1984." | Basically the super high savings rates by people who stayed | employed and didn't vacation, go to restaurants, drive, etc. | outweigh those getting hammered by unemployment. Also the | stimulus checks were given to everyone. | https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510325/the-indicator-from- | plane... | kube-system wrote: | For every 3 people that lost their jobs in the peak of | unemployment there's 17 people who still had their jobs and | most of them got a couple of stimulus checks. The pandemic | has increased inequality. | polka_haunts_us wrote: | Anecdotally as someone in a family all of whom are thriving | financially during the pandemic, here are possible reasons it | could be true. | | * My student loan payments are frozen, I believe the total | balance of student loans that are frozen is something like | 85% country wide. | | * People working remotely = low transit expenses. | | * No live events = low entertainment expenses. | | * Raging pandemic = low travel expenses. | | * Investment = stock market has been very profitable since | march. I made 100% last year just on random long term | investment. | | Basically, if you have a job that was exceeding the minimum | threshold of living expenses, any of the extraneous things | you were spending money on, other than eating out maybe, have | evaporated. | | Obviously there is a notable segment of the population that | is not doing well, can barely if at all cover day to day | expenses, and unemployment has gone up, but that segment | isn't necessarily a majority. | | That's all just speculation though, I'm not claiming parent | is correct. | ogre_codes wrote: | > stock market has been very profitable since march. I made | 100% last year just on random long term investment. | | Hmm. All this makes me wonder if the country opening back | up is going to cause the market to flatten out for a bit as | people have less money and incentive to invest. Food for | thought. | jedimastert wrote: | Intuition says that people who have to choose between | investing and other things aren't the maority of | investors. | | I'm think the economy will liven up a fair bit once | people are out and about spending again, possibly even | over-correcting. | ishjoh wrote: | I could also see it flattening due to people having more | options again. The majority of the companies that are | listed in the public markets are businesses that didn't | have to close. Nation wide retailers, tech companies, oil | and gas, all the things that were deemed essential or | could be done virtually. It's the mom and pop stores and | restaurants that took the brunt of the shutdown, when | things are more open again those businesses will be the | big winners and we might see them take some revenue from | the bigger stores. | ssully wrote: | You most likely nail it. The flip side obviously is people | who don't have remote jobs. More anecdote, but this has | been really hard on family members who have service | industry jobs, and while they haven't told me to directly, | I assume their savings isn't doing great based on a number | of different factors. | minkeymaniac wrote: | And don't forget clothing... no need to get new outfits if | you are home... no dry cleaning if you wore suits ... | jkinudsjknds wrote: | I'd wonder how evictions have affected this. What's your | disposable income if your rent is $1,000 per month but you | just don't pay it? | mrfredward wrote: | St Louis Federal Reserve: | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT | | Keep in mind this is savings economy wide divided by personal | income economy wide, so people with big numbers (high | earners) disproportionately affect it. | whimsicalism wrote: | This has to do with the stimulus checks. | snoshy wrote: | But also because households have lower expenses due to | not being able to engage with the service industry, | travel, shopping, and leisure expenditures. People are | simply spending less because they're stuck at home. | anewaccount2021 wrote: | "Source" is no poor people use HN. | | Edit: this was not meant to disparage the poor. Quite the | opposite. HN tends to have a blinkered worldview and part of | that results from the filtered audience. Sorry, we just don't | have people showing up here who got laid from serving bar, or | single mothers with four kids, etc. Poor single mothers don't | save money by skipping trips to Greece or not going out for | Wagyu A5 twice a month... | chrisseaton wrote: | If you haven't lost your job then your savings are both up | (markets) and not being spent (as there's nothing to spend | them on.) | [deleted] | nostromo wrote: | Not true... US carbon emissions have been going down for over a | decade, even as population increases. | | https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carb... | andromeduck wrote: | Mostly due to displaced manufacturing though no? | jedberg wrote: | Of course, by not by the amounts we saw in 2020. I suspect | we'll move back to the previous trend line by 2022. | ThomPete wrote: | That started before covid. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-22 23:01 UTC)