$7500 US federal tax credit's future?

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Plus CO2 is not a poison, it makes earth green and a distant 2nd to #1 green house gas H2O.
It is the level of CO2 in the atmosphere that matters. There has to be a balance between atmospheric CO2 and land locked CO2. With too much in the atmosphere, a tipping point of global warming is reached that cannot be reversed which leads to mass extinction events. We already are seeing clear signs of this approaching. Remember that life exists in a delicate balance. Burning fossil fuels has greatly accelerated global warming. Scientists have been warning us of this for 60+ years.
 
It is the level of CO2 in the atmosphere that matters. There has to be a balance between atmospheric CO2 and land locked CO2. With too much in the atmosphere, a tipping point of global warming is reached that cannot be reversed which leads to mass extinction events. We already are seeing clear signs of this approaching. Remember that life exists in a delicate balance. Burning fossil fuels has greatly accelerated global warming. Scientists have been warning us of this for 60+ years.
60 years? I believe it was a 1913 edition of Popular Mechanics that warned we were already experiencing climate change from burning coal! The start of global warming coincided with the dawn of the industrial revolution. Just saying. With the other gentleman’s point it makes me wonder why we don’t dehumidify the air in Houston to create fresh water? Lot easier than capturing CO2.
 
If we want to be totally correct, in 1896 physical chemist Svante Arrhenius first calculated the extent to which changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide change the Earth's surface temperature, leading him to the conclusion that human-caused carbon dioxide emissions (fossil fuel burning, etc) can affect the global climate. Of course, Arrhenius' research was built upon experiments/hypotheses from even earlier scientists, which is how science works.

Incidentally, Arrhenius didn't consider this a bad thing:

"We often hear lamentations that the coal stored up in the earth is wasted by the present generation without any thought of the future, and we are terrified by the awful destruction of life and property which has followed the volcanic eruptions of our days. We may find a kind of consolation in the consideration that here, as in every other case, there is good mixed with the evil. By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind." (from pg 63 of his book World in the Making, 1908)

With an additional 120+ years of research and modelling, it is now clear that the benefits of being able to farm in the arctic are going to be outweighed by flooding coastal cities and making large parts of the globe from the Equator well into the middle latitudes inhospitable to human life (not to mention the major disruptions to non-human life on Earth).

But that's in the future, so no worries, right? Let's concentrate on the important stuff like renaming the Gulf of Mexico and blaming DEI policies for the fires in CA.
 
If we want to be totally correct, in 1896 physical chemist Svante Arrhenius first calculated the extent to which changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide change the Earth's surface temperature, leading him to the conclusion that human-caused carbon dioxide emissions (fossil fuel burning, etc) can affect the global climate. Of course, Arrhenius' research was built upon experiments/hypotheses from even earlier scientists, which is how science works.

Incidentally, Arrhenius didn't consider this a bad thing:

"We often hear lamentations that the coal stored up in the earth is wasted by the present generation without any thought of the future, and we are terrified by the awful destruction of life and property which has followed the volcanic eruptions of our days. We may find a kind of consolation in the consideration that here, as in every other case, there is good mixed with the evil. By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind." (from pg 63 of his book World in the Making, 1908)

With an additional 120+ years of research and modelling, it is now clear that the benefits of being able to farm in the arctic are going to be outweighed by flooding coastal cities and making large parts of the globe from the Equator well into the middle latitudes inhospitable to human life (not to mention the major disruptions to non-human life on Earth).

But that's in the future, so no worries, right? Let's concentrate on the important stuff like renaming the Gulf of Mexico and blaming DEI policies for the fires in CA.
Constructing the problem is easy. Constructing substantive solutions that will halt or reverse global warming warming is nearly impossible. Particularly if society’s premise is we still want the same lifestyle in terms of housing sprawl, comfort, food. conveniences, travel and third world development. EVs, renewables and CO2 sequestration are tiny and quaint solutions that will make some people rich but they aren’t going to turn the tide of methane released from permafrost. What’s your realistic projection of when we can reduce carbon emissions to a point it will save the environment? Or are you just pushing things out so that young people today will bear less burden at the end of their lives? Maybe that’s what drives most of us.
 
Constructing the problem is easy.
I'm not sure that it is when we have large segments of the economy, the media environment, and the government (speaking from a US perspective) built around continued denial of the problem. Partially that's because they seem to think that status-quo keeps making them money. I would argue that much like deferred maintenance on a car or house costs more in the long run, sticking our heads in the sand about global climate issues is going to cost us all much more in the long run.

From a political/economical perspective, I think a lot of the climate denialism comes from the desire to gain and stay in power (not electrons, but being in control). Climate change denial is another brick (along with "anti-woke," "anti-CRT," "anti-DEI," "anti-science," etc) in the argument made everyday to convince normal folks that liberal democracy is a bad thing, democratic governance can't work, and that autocracy or oligarchy is what you really want. I suspect we're going to find out starting next week.

What’s your realistic projection of when we can reduce carbon emissions to a point it will save the environment?

I am a scientist but not a climate scientist. I don't have kids but do have a nephew and two nieces between age 4 and 11, so my views on these issues are definitely influenced by fears about what they will face when they're older. Unfortunately, every day I'm more pessimistic that anything will be done to reduce emissions. To go back to my car metaphor above, the climate "check engine" light has been on for my entire life, and over the past decade or two there's been smoke billowing from under the hood, but we just keep the pedal to the floor.

I can't solve the problem, but I can help. I'm not going to hold myself up as some paragon of virtue, but will say that each of us can find opportunities to volunteer in our community, to educate young people (I've pretty much given up on people my age and older), and to reduce our impact on the world around us through the choices we make regarding capitalistic consumption, diet, travel, etc.
 
I'm not sure that it is when we have large segments of the economy, the media environment, and the government (speaking from a US perspective) built around continued denial of the problem. Partially that's because they seem to think that status-quo keeps making them money. I would argue that much like deferred maintenance on a car or house costs more in the long run, sticking our heads in the sand about global climate issues is going to cost us all much more in the long run.

From a political/economical perspective, I think a lot of the climate denialism comes from the desire to gain and stay in power (not electrons, but being in control). Climate change denial is another brick (along with "anti-woke," "anti-CRT," "anti-DEI," "anti-science," etc) in the argument made everyday to convince normal folks that liberal democracy is a bad thing, democratic governance can't work, and that autocracy or oligarchy is what you really want. I suspect we're going to find out starting next week.



I am a scientist but not a climate scientist. I don't have kids but do have a nephew and two nieces between age 4 and 11, so my views on these issues are definitely influenced by fears about what they will face when they're older. Unfortunately, every day I'm more pessimistic that anything will be done to reduce emissions. To go back to my car metaphor above, the climate "check engine" light has been on for my entire life, and over the past decade or two there's been smoke billowing from under the hood, but we just keep the pedal to the floor.

I can't solve the problem, but I can help. I'm not going to hold myself up as some paragon of virtue, but will say that each of us can find opportunities to volunteer in our community, to educate young people (I've pretty much given up on people my age and older), and to reduce our impact on the world around us through the choices we make regarding capitalistic consumption, diet, travel, etc.
Part one of your response is misdirected. I didn’t ask if it was easy to convince deniers about climate change, just that making a case was easy.

Both parts of your answers have an uncomfortably close parallel to religion. “I am not be able to change the world for the better but I can lead by setting an example”.

I guess as an engineer I look for substantive wholistic solutions to problems and not relatively minor cosmetic feel good solutions. I have a used leaf that I drive because it’s cheap transportation and I can inexpensively learn about EVs but I’m not promoting that if everyone did we’d make a dent in climate change.
 
Part one of your response is misdirected. I didn’t ask if it was easy to convince deniers about climate change, just that making a case was easy.

I guess as an engineer I look for substantive wholistic solutions to problems and not relatively minor cosmetic feel good solutions.
I think we're talking past each other a bit.

As an engineer, I have no doubt that you're used to solving problems in a substantive holistic way, but what I'm saying is that to do that both you and the people you're solving the problem for have to agree on what the problem is.

So, when it comes to climate change a scientist or engineer is going to start with observable or historic data, identify inputs and outputs from the system, and figure out what other factors (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions, volcanoes, sun cycles...) might be altering the energy balance. Then they might build models to hypothesize about future conditions. All stuff that has been and is being studied by thousands of researchers, but as you said above coming to a solution to a global-scale issue isn't easy.

A skilled scientist or engineer might then attempt to communicate their findings and proposed solutions to the general public. Again, that has been happening for decades. One of my earliest non-family-related memories is hearing about James Hanson's Congressional testimony regarding climate change on the nightly news in 1988.

Unfortunately, scientists and engineers work with and speak about data, facts, equations, hypothesis-testing, logic, and probabilities. The general public, for the most part, doesn't speak that language and can be easily distracted from the problem by the various economic and political forces constantly trying to confuse the issue: they're going to take your hamburgers, they're going to take your trucks, they're going to take your gas kitchen stoves, blah, blah, blah.

Again, I'm not saying that solving the problem isn't incredibly difficult, I'm just suggesting that communicating the problem to the general public is far different from constructing the problem for a scientist or engineer, and extending from that to suggest that there can't be a solution to a problem if all stakeholders can't agree on what the problem is.
 
Put succinctly, individual action can't (alone) solve the problem, but individual actions can make any problem worse.
Too often it is pointed out that small steps will not solve the issue on their own, rarely is the reverse pointed out, that the problem can be the sum of small actions that taken alone don't seam significant.
Put again in the simplest form, it is better to add to the solution than add to the problem.
 
Part one of your response is misdirected. I didn’t ask if it was easy to convince deniers about climate change, just that making a case was easy.

Both parts of your answers have an uncomfortably close parallel to religion. “I am not be able to change the world for the better but I can lead by setting an example”.

I guess as an engineer I look for substantive wholistic solutions to problems and not relatively minor cosmetic feel good solutions. I have a used leaf that I drive because it’s cheap transportation and I can inexpensively learn about EVs but I’m not promoting that if everyone did we’d make a dent in climate change.
In the end you're correct, the "feel good" projects sound good, but it seems that that's all too little, too late, by about 50 years. Maybe back in the 70's when the Green Movement was in the forefront, and actions were taken Globally, might have had a chance. Now however there are at least 50-60 positive feedback loops in operation and counting, that will not stop even if all emissions have stopped. We've looked at the geological record and it seems that Earth has two stable states, Hothouse Earth, and Snowball Earth. All show large amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere prior to a "Hothouse" condition. Last time I checked, global CO2 levels were at 427 PPM. They haven't been this high since the "Mid-Pliocene Warm Period", 3 million years ago. The ones who say that we don't have to worry since Climate Change takes many thousands of years, etc. need to study a bit more, the geological record shows evidence that a complete reversal from Snowball Earth to Hothouse Earth took place in as little as 12 years...
Part one of your response is misdirected. I didn’t ask if it was easy to convince deniers about climate change, just that making a case was easy.

Both parts of your answers have an uncomfortably close parallel to religion. “I am not be able to change the world for the better but I can lead by setting an example”.

I guess as an engineer I look for substantive wholistic solutions to problems and not relatively minor cosmetic feel good solutions. I have a used leaf that I drive because it’s cheap transportation and I can inexpensively learn about EVs but I’m not promoting that if everyone did we’d make a dent in climate change.
In the end you're correct, the "feel good" projects sound good, but it seems that that's all too little, too late, by about 50 years. Maybe back in the 70's when the Green Movement was in the forefront, and actions were taken Globally, might have had a chance. Now however there are at least 50-60 positive feedback loops in operation and counting, that will not stop even if all emissions have stopped. We've looked at the geological record and it seems that Earth has two stable states, Hothouse Earth, and Snowball Earth. All show large amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere prior to a "Hothouse" condition. Last time I checked, global CO2 levels were at 427 PPM. They haven't been this high since the "Mid-Pliocene Warm Period", 3 million years ago. The ones who say that we don't have to worry since Climate Change takes many thousands of years, etc. need to study a bit more, the geological record shows evidence that a complete reversal from Snowball Earth to Hothouse Earth took place in as little as 12 years...
 
Back
Top