* My 80-90 per cent isn’t meant as deception: it’s the range required for developed countries
* The calculation allows for an increase in very poor countries, or for them to sell emissions rights in a tradeable system
* There’s no reason to think costs of mitigation are higher for China. That’s not to say they will reduce emissions fast, just that, like the EU and US they could do so at modest cost if they chose.

To restate, it’s entirely possible to stabilize the global climate, with or without radical changes to the existing social order. Whether we will do so is another matter.

. Pretty silly summary of Greenwald, rootless. He writes about American human rights violations, much as Chomsky did, and he gets attacked by mainstream Democrats for the same reasons Chomsky was bashed.

Pretty much the same except Chomsky was a scrupulous researcher with a viewpoint informed by a sophisticated left wing political understanding and Greenwald is a sloppy confabulator who knows nothing about history and thinks Gary Johnson is admirable.

I don’t think Obama is a progressive hero.

I’m following your argument in the Corey Robin thread. I don’t trust Obama in the economic area either, but am not really sure what he believes. He seems to be a centrist, for the most part, with some Keynesianism thrown in, but I’ll be happy if he turns out to be the progressive hero you think he is. I was hoping for more of that back in 2009–a tough attitude towards Wall Street would have been nice. But instead he was more of a Clintonian–the harsh primary battles of 2008 seem rather pointless in retrospect.

John David Galt @ 138 must be a parody, witting or unwitting, since thanks to government safety regulations and public education, motor vehicle deaths have steadily been declining for the last twenty years.

From 1979 to 2005, the number of deaths per year decreased 14.97% while the number of deaths per capita decreased by 35.46%. Traffic fatalities in 2010 were the lowest in 62 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_01.pdf

“The birth rate for U.S. teenagers 15-19 fell 10 percent in 2010, to 34.2 per 1,000, reaching the lowest level reported in the U.S. in seven decades.”

John, the report also shows that shiftless teenage girls, married and unmarried, were responsible for 9% of total births.

“As a contributor to the insanity, Tim, you might want to think about why your side of politics has gone this way.” It’s gone this way because the Left’s policies of subsidizing out-of-wedlock breeding by shiftless teenage girls (to the extent that they’re now 40% of all births in the US) has made an old horror movie come true: The Marching Morons.

(1) That the emission-reduction possibilities available to the richest nations in the world are representative of the world as a whole.

If anything, emissions reductions in the G8 should be taken as an upper limit of global emissions reductions. There is absolutely no reason to assume, for example, that the possibility of 80% reduction in the G8 implies that (say) African emissions will not increase in the next three decades rather than be decreased at all (let alone by 80%). In reality, we know that African emissions will increase. And Chinese emissions, too, will increase for some time. When Chinese CO2 emissions eventually begin to decrease, will not decrease at the rate of the G8.

(2) That 80% emissions reductions are “close” to 90% emissions reductions.

The trick here is to talk about this in percentages, which makes 80% to 90% sound like the equivalent of 70% to 80%. But a simple rephrasing shows how deceptive this is.

To go from current emissions to 12.5% of current emissions (without reducing production) requires doubling efficiency three times. As you have acknowledged, even a 90% reduction in global CO2 emissions is insufficient to stabilize atmospheric CO2. A 90% global reduction, without a change in production, implies more than 3 doublings of energy efficiency, globally.

Realistically, we can expect global production to increase for some time. Approximately four to five doublings of global energy efficiency are necessary to reach atmospheric CO2 stability. Each of these doublings will probably require as much time as the last. That is, to go from 80% to 90% emissions reductions requires as much time as going from 60% to 80% reduction. And 90% is not enough.

So, the “80% by 2050 in the G8″ assertion that you make — which I won’t contest, although you certainly haven’t proved it — is very, very far from implying over 90% globally by even 2100.

Please, I implore you to consider carefully these two numbered points, which I will reiterate: (1) the G8 is far from representative of the whole of Earth; (2) repeatedly reducing emissions by half will not become easier as emissions are reduced, but harder.

To restate, unless China and the US take action, we’re screwed. And by far the best hope is that the US takes action unilaterally and China sees the need to get in line with the rest of the world on this.

Definitely. And one fervently hopes that China will join too if the US gets on board. A good guess is that China will surpass CO2 emissions of the US and EU combined either this year or the next. India can wait somewhat longer, since it already has an emissions-curbing system of coal shortages, load shedding, and failure to meet planned electricity targets.

Again, simply not true. The EU and G8 have had an 80 per cent reduction as their target since 2008, and there is plenty of economic analysis to show that this can be done at minimal economic cost.

http://www.raponline.org/featured-work/roadmap-2050-designing-a-decarbonised-power-future

Of course, the EU isn’t enough. To restate the point of the OP, that’s why it’s important that the US should join the effort