[RD] Daily Graphs and Charts

[warpus]

Yeah, when I was in Japan I made a point to try Soba noodles. mmmm..

Now I'm hungry again

 

[metatron]

...

 

[Hrothbern]

northern china cuisine wheat

so I did punch that in Google and the 8th hit was this: https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime...rth-south-culinary-divide-shapes-personality/

back on topic

In China, as in many countries, the north-south divide runs deep. People from the north are seen as hale and hearty, while southerners are often portrayed as cunning, cultured traders. Northerners are taller than southerners. The north eats noodles, while the south eats rice—and according to new research, when it comes to personality, that difference has meant everything.

A study published Friday by a group of psychologists in the journal Science finds that China’s noodle-slurping northerners are more individualistic, show more “analytic thought” and divorce more frequently. By contrast, the authors write, rice-eating southerners show more hallmarks traditionally associated with East Asian culture, including more “holistic thought” and lower divorce rates.

 

[warpus]

They eat it. The normal way, kinda like you and me.

There is no normal way of eating wheat, aside from putting it in your mouth as opposed to other orifices. I was curious about the specific dishes at play, as I didn't think Chinese cuisine uses a lot of wheat. But turns out a lot of their noodles do

 

[Arakhor]

Corn traditionally means wheat in the UK (with the exception of sweetcorn and cornflakes, but those are of US origin), though other cereals are occasionally referenced, e.g. in corn dollies.

 

[wolfigor]

True. It's designed mostly to show how "they are not doing their share" is a false argument. It will be a long time (maybe even never) before the average Chinese person is as bad as the average Canadian. There are many different ways to frame the problem, I created that graph in order to help counter a spin in framing that allows people to do nothing "because the Chinese are the problem".

my post was more on the pragmatic side: where it's easier to get great gain at limited cost.
In my view, in countries like China, India, Vietnam, etc. the main producer of pollution are the production industries and not so much their people.
Where you have more industries, especially without any anti-pollution enforcement, pollution will be huge.
This is the case for China and India.

The developed countries (AKA the west) has to do their part, but the largest gains in pullution reduction will not come from the average small western country but from the main polluters.
3% in less CO2 emission of China is (roughly) equivalent of all the emissions of Italy or France!
The same 3% reduction in emissions in Italy would be a drop in the ocean.... and arguably it's easier to get a 3% improvement in China where pollution prevention is almost inexistent than in developed and post-industrial countries like Italy or France.

 

[Lexicus]

my post was more on the pragmatic side: where it's easier to get great gain at limited cost.
In my view, in countries like China, India, Vietnam, etc. the main producer of pollution are the production industries and not so much their people.
Where you have more industries, especially without any anti-pollution enforcement, pollution will be huge.
This is the case for China and India.

The developed countries (AKA the west) has to do their part, but the largest gains in pullution reduction will not come from the average small western country but from the main polluters.
3% in less CO2 emission of China is (roughly) equivalent of all the emissions of Italy or France!
The same 3% reduction in emissions in Italy would be a drop in the ocean.... and arguably it's easier to get a 3% improvement in China where pollution prevention is almost inexistent than in developed and post-industrial countries like Italy or France.

The problem with all this logic is that due to a variety of reasons, imperialism being the most salient, the inhabitants of Western countries are accounting for waaaaaaaaay more GHGs than people in China or India on a per capita basis.

Any serious solution to climate change is also going to have to address the global inequality that is leading the West to be burning way more than their share of what @El_Machinae calls the "buffer."

 

[El_Machinae]

3% in less CO2 emission of China is (roughly) equivalent of all the emissions of Italy or France!
The same 3% reduction in emissions in Italy would be a drop in the ocean.... and arguably it's easier to get a 3% improvement in China where pollution prevention is almost inexistent than in developed and post-industrial countries like Italy or France.

Granted, you're not wrong. Slowing the rise of 'per capita' emissions in China will buy us way more time than any specific thing that can be done in Italty (though any solutions implemented in Italy, successfully, should be scaleable to other developed nations).

But I also want us to keep an eye on historic consumption, since it's actually the planet that has a limit on the CO2 it should be absorbing. I look at it like we're in a family with an inheritance. If I came of-age 20 years before my sister, and ate into the inheritance at $100k per year whereas she just started at $20k per year (but growing), I don't know how much shrieking I should do about her (rising) consumption being unsustainable.

I know you understand all this, and I really get your point too. My graph is intended to be able to shift the flow of denier narrative, when necessary. A tool for you to use, more than anything.

 

[Samson]

The developed countries (AKA the west) has to do their part, but the largest gains in pullution reduction will not come from the average small western country but from the main polluters.
3% in less CO2 emission of China is (roughly) equivalent of all the emissions of Italy or France!
The same 3% reduction in emissions in Italy would be a drop in the ocean.... and arguably it's easier to get a 3% improvement in China where pollution prevention is almost inexistent than in developed and post-industrial countries like Italy or France.

The thing is, if say 100kg of CO2 is released by china to make an iphone, and you (I assume you live in the west) buy the iphone, I would say that this is your responsibility, and your countries responsibility. Just because the CO2 was not released by your country, they could tax it and so disincentive its release and so have some responsibility for it.

 

[Lexicus]

The thing is, if say 100kg of CO2 is released by china to make an iphone, and you (I assume you live in the west) buy the iphone, I would say that this is your responsibility, and your countries responsibility. Just because the CO2 was not released by your country, they could tax it and so disincentive its release and so have some responsibility for it.

This is a very good point, actually. Like I said above, people in the West have hugely disproportionate purchasing power relative to everyone else, and so it's people in the West who are doing more than their fair share of damage.

 

[stfoskey12]

But saying it's "worse than the dust bowl" is comparing apples to oranges. The dust bowl was a singular extreme "weather" event; this is a longer-term shift that makes extreme events like the dust bowl more likely.

I feel like a multi-year drought like that is somewhere on the border of weather and climate.

 

[wolfigor]

The thing is, if say 100kg of CO2 is released by china to make an iphone, and you (I assume you live in the west) buy the iphone, I would say that this is your responsibility, and your countries responsibility. Just because the CO2 was not released by your country, they could tax it and so disincentive its release and so have some responsibility for it.

That's true, but it may lead to unintended consequences.
Such tax in the west will not make dent on that sales of iPhone (due to the cost to consumer and profit margin).
It will make a dent on the sales of more mass market products, leading to higher costs for those who can least afford.
At the same time it will take out of business a lot of production in China, reducing the wealth that can used to improve pollution control.

Laws for pollution control come in play when there is enough middle class people who want to live better.
China is slowly moving there (not yet there unfortunately).

Maybe, more effective would be a regulation in the west (USA, EU) that a product cannot be sold if it's not produced in factories that respect specific anti pollution rules.
In this way the additional cost that western consumers will inevitably pay will be used directly to limit pollution at production.
Indirectly consumers will pay for the improvements in developing countries.

I know... It will be difficult to implement, but a simple tax will not work at all.
We should try to think out the box without ideology.

 

[El_Machinae]

Now, every transaction has a buyer and seller. So every transaction has a dual 'fault' that can be applied to the consequences of the transaction.

But I think blaming 'the West' for Oriental emissions is often incorrect, because it misses the underlying point. The people are creating emissions in exchange for something they want, and they're using the resulting economic growth in order to pull people out of poverty. They're burning coal in the most efficient way they can think of in order to improve their lives. That they're getting Western capital in exchange for the pollution instead of something else merely tells us that they perceive that capital to be the best use of their emissions. I mean, that's pretty eye-in-the-sky theory, but it's also mostly reasonable. "Buying less" from China isn't going to help, since the alternative is you're just going to buy from someone who pollutes more (instead).

Those emissions need to happen to help people improve their lives. After that, it's a question of efficiency. The fact that China is raising its emissions in order to sell to the West isn't the problem. It's not even a problem that the West is buying. The problem is that the West deliberately underinvested in pivoting away from a high-carbon lifestyle, despite their wealth. It's also not so much who we buy from, but what we buy and have bought.



During debate, people will pull a bait and switch on what they're arguing about. Don't fall for it.

 

[Cutlass]

I like how cooling now is a bigger share than heating. Thanks all the people who have moved to the south to beat the winter.

 

[El_Machinae]

Cooling is some really low-hanging fruit, climate change may be a slow boil, but heat islands are a real thing. Urban heat islands can be worked on at the city level, with white asphalt being laid or zoning new buildings to include white roofs. But there's also person choices, where when we re-shingle our roofs, we use white shingles. The next car we buy should be white. Etc.

 

[Cutlass]

Or, you know, not moving from the Northeast to Atlanta.

 

[dutchfire]

I like how cooling now is a bigger share than heating. Thanks all the people who have moved to the south to beat the winter.

Heating=22%
Cooling=11%
(Unless my eyes are lying to me)

 

[Cutlass]

Heating=22%
Cooling=11%
(Unless my eyes are lying to me)

Maybe I got the colors wrong. It's hard for me to read those close shadings.

 

[warpus]

I just got a smart thermostat system installed by government climate change prevention engineers.

It was all free, so I have purchased additional sensors as a *hi5* to the government and environment (plus I want to save money), and now my house is smarter than me. Here's the state of the house about 10 minutes ago:



The 21C Thermostat/sensor is in the livingroom on the main floor of the house. Right now the system is in sleep mode, meaning that only the bedrooms are being considered in calculations and the rest of the house is ignored, even though I'm here in the office still browsing the internet

 

[El_Machinae]

A new question occurred to me the other day.

Look at this, and consider "which of these products is heavily-sourced from people making much less than minimum wage?"

Economic growth is supposed to lead to a net reduction in effective prices, that's literally the underlying goal. But how much of this trendline is being pushed by just choosing to hire people who get vastly less than a living wage?

Obviously, capital inflow and employment can lead to improved growth rates in these regions, and that can be part of a longer-term trend. But there's the flipside, whether we're getting an effective price reduction in areas where the producer IS being paid what we consider a living wage.