Climate Change, page-842

"1) You - "Yes, its been in the system, but it hasn't always been in the atmosphere."
FALSE - Rocks like limestone and fossil fuels like coal and oil are storage reservoirs that contain carbon from plants and animals that lived millions of years ago. When these organisms died, slow geologic processes trapped their carbon and transformed it into these natural resources. Plants ingest co2 from the atmosphere and convert the co2 into stored energy through Photosynthesis. So it was in the atmosphere."

Sorry, let me clarify - it was not all in the atmosphere at once. But you also ignored the point where I said when CO2 was much higher, it was also much warmer. A point that has been clarified many times throughout these posts, I'm sure you'd be able to find the sources and graphs and quotes etc should you wish to look for them, so I refer you back to those.

"2) You - "What a lovely anecdote, unfortunately, your observation of "unemployment through the roof" (google tells me its about 6%, Australia is 4.1% for comparison), People are very poor (You visited a third world country for god sake) yet, their GDP is rising "

FALSE - I find it amusing when someone automatically knows more through a 1 minute google search then by getting on ground and talking with the locals. It's from the playbook of ABC fact checkers. Yes the OFFICIAL unemployment rate is circa 6%, but real unemployment is vastly different. You see the number of 6% is based on an underlying assumption or definition of what being unemployed is. You are not unemployed in Bhutan if you maintain a connection with an employer or if you are on a rural subsistence farm. Our guide and driver worked 4 weeks in the past 52 weeks (the tourist season is short and competition is fierce), but are considered fully employed because they are on the books of a tour company. These companies try and spread the work around and compete with the other 10,000 tourist companies. Their brothers are fully employed but live on a subsistence farm. 48.5% of the population are subsistence farmers and they and their families are then considered not unemployed. So your 6% is a false statistic. Regarding GDP, it is not a proxy for average household income.
https://www.nsb.gov.bt/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2022/04/LFS-2021-web.pdf"

Again, your point seems to be that being net zero (or net negative in this instance) is what has led to Bhutan having "high unemployment" and being "poor", but the reason Bhutan has nothing to do with a high transition cost. It has vast forests, which sequester more carbon than it emits. What would you suggest Bhutan do exactly, because I am a little bit confused on this point. 3) You - Ill put it in another sense. My person income tax makes up less than 0.001% of the total taxes collected by the Government. Therefore, because its such a small amount, then they wont miss it if I dont pay it. But if everyone shared the same view, then no body would be paying the taxes.

This is an odd argument, to prove a point. Income tax is proportioned on all citizens, net zero is apportioned to only some countries. The fastest growing emitters are exempt. Australia as a 1% emitter is paying its taxes, but 80% of the world's emitters are exempt. So why should I pay the price of transitioning to net zero, when in a matter of months the growth in emissions from exempt developing countries will exceed or reductions? Surely you'd get the best bang for your protest buck in lobbying the fastest growing emitters to sign up to the cause.

Again, if everyone thought the same way - "Why should I pay the price of transitioning to net zero, when in a matter of months the growth in emissions from exempt developing countries will exceed or reductions" Then nothing would get done.
You'd get the argument that per capita, countries like Australia and America emit more. I am not suggesting this is an easy topic to approach, but merely insisting that there are bigger emitters and therefore our small contribution is overshadowed, isn't a particularly good argument do be doing nothing.
I'll answer your questions honestly because I believe you are engaging in this debate honestly as well. I'll pose a couple of questions of my own at the end.

a) if getting to net zero is so important, and you are so concerned about the growth rate in co2, should you be lobbying the Chinese and Indian embassies to stop their alarming growth in carbon emissions
I dont know that I claimed getting to net zero is so important, but yes, the growth in CO2 is a concern. Should I be lobbying the Chinese and Indian embassies? Me personally? Well, probably not. But as the old saying goes, it all starts at home. We make individual choices (eg, I have solar panels on the roof, I upgraded to a more fuel efficient car, and drive as least as I can, I consciously try to make the least amount of waste through consumption etc) Alone, these things aren't going to save the world, but its the small steps we take .

b) Given that you are so passionate on net zero, what have you personally done to eliminate your own emissions? Have you pulled the plug from the grid to stop your emissions? Or do you believe it's the governments roll to force everyone to comply without leading the way first?
Some of those answered above. I dont believe the Government should force anything, but they should certainly lead the way.
c) Is net zero more important then poverty, hunger, education, equality of sexes, clean water and curing curable diseases? Maybe for you it is, but it definitely isn't for those trapped in poverty, hunger and abusive cultures.
Again, I dont know that I've claimed it is more important than those things, nor do I think it is. I think the point could also be made in some instances that there are certainly countries with plenty of access to fossil fuels have high rates of poverty, hunger, lack of education, lack of equality of sexes, lack of clean water etc etc.
I think for the same cost of installing, for example, the infrastructure for a coal power station (including say the cost of importing thermal coal, railing it to the facility, disposing of waste, and all the other additional costs) you could equally install a solar powered power station. Not to mention the ongoing costs would be less - but not zero (you dont need to continually purchase fuel). But I digress, the point I am trying to make is that in my opinion, fossil fuels aren't the ONLY answer.


Okay, some questions of mine. These go back to the main point of the thread which was regarding the scientific points of climate change, but Ill as a social science questions at the end.

1: Which points (if any) do you not accept regarding the science of climate change, to make this less ambiguous, I'll highlight a few main agreements within the scientific community.
-CO2 is increasing in our atmosphere
-That increase is mainly due to the use of fossil fuels (among other industry) - I'll say that it has an anthropogenic cause.
-CO2 as a compound allows short wave radiation to pass through our atmosphere, yet traps the long wave radiation that bounces back into the atmosphere, and this is the crux of the warming affect.
-This warming is occurring at a much faster rate than at any point in the past, and much of our environment cannot adapt with a matching speed.

2: Should the Australian government subsidies any fossil fuel company at all? I cant seem to find and exact answer, but the figures I've seen show anywhere of upwards of $10b annually. If so, why should those companies receive subsidies? I can see green/renewables receive about a quarter of the subsidies of the fossil fuel industries.



If you have alternate figures, I'll happily look.

Anyway, thanks for engaging respectfully, looking forward to seeing your response.