Apple Reiterates Commitment to Obama Era Climate Pledge

[Starflyer]

In 2016 we passed the 400ppm CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, essentially the highest level in the last 800.000 years.

How does CO2 compare to Water Vapor in our atmosphere, another greenhouse gas?

 

[tuxon86]

By moving all polution generating activity outside of the US, Apple makes the pledge to follow Obama environmental guideline 110%

 

[Glideslope]

I can't wait for the oil companies to be useless. Elon Musk is coming for you...

If he does not run out of cash first. He needs to spend More time at Tesla, and less at Space X.

 

[Starflyer]

No. and No.
Any source that claims fracking is the best green-energy source, is a joke.

Hydraulic fracturing, a process more commonly referred to as fracking, is actually good for the environment, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said at a field hearing in Seattle last week,

“The increased production of oil and natural gas in the United States has, obviously, been a major story in terms of our economy, and also our environment,” said Moniz, who previously served as the head of the Physics department at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, earned a doctorate degree in physics from Stanford University.

“The natural gas boom, in particular, has led to the displacement of high-carbon coal with low-carbon natural gas producing fewer emissions,” Moniz reportedly said during the Seattle field hearing.

 

[CrashX]

Ouch...

The cool thing about science is that it's pretty much never settled. Isn't that what makes it interesting?

So, either we're all dead in a hundred years, or we're already dead, or scientists then will have thoroughly discredited pretty much everything I'd have wasted my time "educating" myself about.

As for my dog, he LOVES my Jeep. And it only gets 15 mpg. So neither of us are very smart...

And I'm joking - just made a goofy post. So back to work, developing a new strain of grass here in Scotland to prevent those damn farting cows from killing me and my dog It has just gotten COMPLETELY out of hand!

Stupid cows...

Your dog may be able to grasp the difference between local weather and global climate, which apparently can't be said for you....

You and your dog are talking about the weather. Not the climate. Two completely different things. If your dog can forecast the weather, he should be a meteorologist. Again, something completely different than a climate scientist.

Educate yourself before forming an opinion. And listen to your dog when he's barking: he's saying "Don't **** where you live. We only have one planet."

 

[merkinmuffley]

Yet another "Let's look like we're doing the right thing, so people keep buying our stuff" moves. This stuff is getting old.

 

[sers]

I'm not denying that the climate isn't changing, but I don't believe human activity is the ultimate cause of it all. My concerns around the whole global warming thing is 2 fold. First, the dire predictions by people like Gore and Suzuki that claim hurricanes will become more frequent and intense (they're not), that the polar ice caps would be melted by now (they haven't), that the sea is rising and coastal communities would be under water (they aren't), that global temperatures are rising (they haven't according to the UN's climate report) all make it sound suspect and exactly like the mini ice age, ozone layer and acid rains scares of the past. Also, people like Gore and Suzuki are the ultimate hypocrites when it comes to this stuff - live (or at least make some attempt at living) like you believe climate change is happening or don't talk about it at all and stop making your millions off it. There are other factors that can cause climate fluctuations like solar and volcanic activity that seem to get ignored.

Secondly, this green religion is having actual and serious impacts on people's lives where I live. I live in Ontario, Canada, and the provincial government has, for the last decade, been hell bent on closing all our coal fired plants which produced cheap electricity, to signing lucrative 20 (now 30) year contracts with wind and solar companies to produce so called "green" energy. Since building wind and solar farms in uneconomical, wind and solar producers get above market rates for electricity that are heavily, and I mean heavily, subsidized by the electricity customers of this province. Instead of the market rate of 8 cents per kwh, they are guaranteed rates as high as 20 cents per kwh, just to make their investments viable. Furthermore, because the province closed all coal plants, and since wind and solar is unreliable, they had to build natural gas plants to supplement the wind and solar when they aren't working (because surprise the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine!). To add insult to injury, the contracts state that we have to buy power from wind and solar producers first, even if we don't need it. We then end up selling excess power to the US, sometimes paying them to take our power because our system can't store it. The results have been catastrophic for our economy, people's lives and the environment. Job losses have been staggering, manufacturing has all but left (over 300,000 jobs gone), our provincial debt is over $300 billion, Ontario is the most indebted sub-sovereign government in the world (on a per capita basis, Ontarians owe more per person than California, with 1/3 the population), windmills are installed on farm land whether farmers like it or not and they dot the landscape and kill thousands of birds and bats a year. Also, people's electricity bills have become so expensive, they are having to choose between heating their homes or feeding their families. This is the real impact of the climate change agenda and is a dire warning for every other government going down this path. To add even more insult to injury, wind and solar only make up about 5% of the entire power supply - the other comes from hydro, nuclear and gas. Regarding the 30 year contracts I mentioned above, the government realized that bills were getting too high, so they renegotiated the contracts from 20 to 30 years to spread the pain over a longer period of time. They gave us a 25% discount on our bills, at a cost of $2billion. So the taxpayer is subsidizing their own discount. It's just insane here.

One could argue that this is the result of government mismanagement, and it is, but it clearly shows that this green technology is not yet viable or economical on a large scale. And this isn't only happening in Ontario - look to Europe for other examples.

I draw the line when people start to suffer. This is the 21st century for God's sake, not the middle ages.

Oh, and I forgot to add that even if all economic and human activity were to stop in Ontario, it wouldn't make one bit of difference to global climate temperatures!! It's beyond insane. Done my rant....

 

[RogerWilco]

They publish their findings in scientific journals for goodness sake. Math and data doesn't lie.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear?
About two hundred pounds a year.
And that which was proved true before,
Prove false again? Two hundred more.
--Samuel Johnson, 1860

 

[spacemnspiff]

too many politics not enough hardware

Time for you to start you company and compete, you seem to be fountain of great ideas and pinnacle of execution?

No. I don't need a climate scientist to tell me that winters and summers have gradually changed, I can see that myself.

First sentence of your post made it not credible for me. If you do not believe the scientific consensus, develop math models that predict otherwise and earn back the credibility, which I know won't happen. If not, the comments are delusional or in alternate universe, or it's ignorance about ignorance and/or confirmation bias.

It's the same reasoning that keep nuclear power plants safe, we rely on an expert to keep it safe, not on a popularity vote. Mistakes do happen, but the only choice we have is to rely on an expert.
It's same reason why were drive on bridges without them collapsing, a structural engineer signed off the design and the state of structural integrity.
It's the same reason we continue to use our phones without them exploding our ears off, some expert deemed it safe.
There are countless examples where you stand on the shoulders of experts to conduct our daily lives, learn to accept that we are not the experts and try to get rid of that confirmation bias.

 

[StevieD100]

The demands are fair. EPA should publish the data they process to regulate on. Why hiding scientific references? Is the research unclear or secret and classified with reference to national security?

How about some more openness?

According to some reports the EPA are fobidden to use the words 'climate change' and that scientific data related to GW is being removed from their Website. With that is it any wonder that their rules are hidden? It would not surprise me that very soon the EPA website will just be a blank page saying 'Back in 2020'.

 

[Ds6778]

Cook for President.

 

[citysnaps]

Yet another "Let's look like we're doing the right thing, so people keep buying our stuff" moves. This stuff is getting old.

You mean like Apple spending billions of dollars constructing 4 GW of solar electricity generation, including 2 GW in China alone for its supply chain operations?

And Apple being the largest corporate user of solar in the US? Their 280 MW plant in California covering 1,300 acres is (until recently, I believe) the largest in the US.

All for show to "look like we're doing the right thing," right?

Yeah, getting old...

 

[Precision Gem]

Maybe all companies should follow Apples example.

1. Move all production to China
2. Build fancy office building with solar panels in US, with materials from China.
3. Pat your self on the back.
4. Have your CEO spend most of his time being politically correct and concerned with social issues.

 

[Starflyer]

And Apple being the largest corporate user of solar in the US? Their 280 MW plant in California covering 1,300 acres is (until recently, I believe) the largest in the US.

And they did it all without the government telling them they had to.

 

[StevieD100]

Excuse me but that happened in places.
We, in the south of the Netherlands had acid rain here, trees were losing their leaves, air quality was bad, main cause was burning coal. And most was from "Ruhrgebied" in Germany.

Just go to Sweden and see the damage there. Sadly, most of it was due to coal burning here in the UK.
There are whole swathes of forest east of the Urals that are dead due to Acid Rain.
It happened but possibly not where you live or travel to which is a big problem. Out of sight, out of mind.

 

[GoodWheaties]

You're asking the wrong question. It should be: would the Earth's global mean temperature rise less if we lower CO2 emissions. The answer is yes. In 2016 we passed the 400ppm CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, essentially the highest level in the last 800.000 years. Thanks to the industrial revolution (before it was around 280ppm). It's the expectation the CO2 concentration will continue to rise due to fossil burning.

I'm neither for nor against (human caused) climate change, I think it's fine if people want to be green, but the temperature thing is interesting. According to the data, in the last 100 or more years the global temperature has risen 1C. Really that's it? That's what we are concerned about? That's what we are throwing billions of dollars towards?

 

[MistrSynistr]

I'm a climate scientist. If you don't believe what me and my colleagues have been warning about for 20+ years, that's fine. But if policy makers or the president don't want to believe it because it doesn't fit their agenda, we do have a problem. Science is not political. It's just science. Facts.

The biggest argument for climate change deniers is that climate has been changing since the dawn of time. Guess how they know that? Yes, us climate scientists. But if those same scientists notice there's something wrong, suddenly they don't believe it. Hypocritical no?

How ignorant can you be to think we don't have an impact on our planet. We destroy complete ecosystems, wipe animal and plant species of the face of the earth, cut down forests at an alarming rate, pollute rivers and the air, ... we know that land use changes such as urbanisation and agriculture have a big impact on weather and rain patterns, even thousands kilometres away, ... But the climate? That's where you draw the line? That's the one magical thing on our fragile Earth we can't impact?

Well, the impact is there, and it's huge. The last decades we had a dampening effect of climate change because there are all these buffers, like trapping heath in the oceans, but these buffers are getting full. That combined with many powerful feedback loops, i.e. melting of ice, thawing of permafrost, to name a few, will re-enforce what we have been seeing this last years. And that is a rise in global temperature and more unstable, extreme weather.

Now, even if you still don't "believe" that (and I hate to use that word in the context of science), I assume you do realise that climate change (natural or man made) will have huge impacts on the planet and our lives? So even if the current White House administration doesn't want to address the causes, why is it also ignoring the consequences? Ignoring scientific facts and thus jeopardizing the future of our planet, is criminal. There's no other word for it.

It's been coming out that scientists have been fudging records and pushing narratives to fit their agendas as well.

 

[s2mikey]

If he does not run out of cash first. He needs to spend More time at Tesla, and less at Space X.

He'll never run out of cash - he's been stealing from taxpayers via subsides for a while now. That wont end. Just like most of the "alternative" energy companies. Great.

 

[StevieD100]

How does CO2 compare to Water Vapor in our atmosphere, another greenhouse gas?

Water Vapour is not a greenhouse gas. It is water in one of its states, Liquid, Solid, Vapour.

 

[cmwade77]

These pledges prove that government interference isn't necessary to get companies to do the right thing. Trump is changing the rules to reduce the burden on smaller companies that at present could be put out of business if they had to comply. These larger companies have the money and say they will comply anyway, which in the long term will reduce the costs of cleaner energy for everyone to a point where the smaller companies will comply because it will become financially beneficial for them to do so.

I don't agree with all that he does, but in this case changing these rules will actually make for a cleaner environment and promote business growth in the long run.

 

[sers]

Water Vapour is not a greenhouse gas. It is water in one of its states, Liquid, Solid, Vapour.

Water vapour is most definitely a greenhouse gas.

 

[stanman64]

Oil isn't going anywhere anytime soon. The hypocrisy of these companies is amazing. Without oil and petrochemicals, their business lines would cease to exist in no time. Oil is used in everything from the mining of raw materials, to manufacturing and processing of their products to shipping. And this whole thing about using renewables is just virtue signalling. Their efforts will have zero impact on global warming, or climate change, or whatever they call it these days. The climate has been changing since the dawn of time and it's ludicrous to think humans have any impact on it. CO2 is plant food, not pollution. I'm all for clean air, water and land, but this green religion called climate change is nothing but a sham.

Your main argument is that CO2 is "plant food?" While that is partly true (only partly), too much of it can be a bad thing. Ever heard of the Great Oxygenation Event? Probably not if you're not a biologist. Oxygen-producing cyanobacteria oversaturated Earth's atmosphere, making it toxic just from too much oxygen (which could be considered "human food" according to you.)

My point? At one time, oxygen-producing organisms created too much oxygen that killed off nearly all of the oxygen-consuming organisms. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be around with the CO2 producing organisms (read: us) create too much CO2 that it kills off all the CO2-consuming organisms (read: plants). We kind of need plants.

I agree with some of what you said, but unfortunately it is not so black and white. Everything is connected. Just my humble 2 cents.

 

[now i see it]

Every last drop of crude oil & every last chunk of coal will eventually get extracted from the earth & burned. Thats an inevitability.

The only question is: When will that be? We can slow down the rate we extract & burn the stuff, but eventually it's all going to go up in smoke.

Human generated carbon dioxide created by burning fossil fuels in the big picture is self limiting. Theres a finite supply of it & when its gone, it's gone forever.

Burn it now, or burn it later. It's all going to be burned up sooner or later.

 

[cmwade77]

Water Vapour is not a greenhouse gas. It is water in one of its states, Liquid, Solid, Vapour.

I hate to tell you CO2 is also perfectly natural, it is what we breathe out every day. I think we get too hung up on what exactly is causing the issues, there is a lot more to polution than just CO2 and in fact I think we are too hung up on saying global warming is a problem, as there is a lot of evidence that it may very well just be part of a natural cycle. And people understand that and when people start screaming about global warming a lot of people tune out when in all reality those that take issue with global warming and think we might be causing it want us to treat our environment better and honestly that we do need to do, I just wonder if they are hurting their own cause.
[doublepost=1490968488][/doublepost]

Every last drop of crude oil & every last chunk of coal will eventually get extracted from the earth & burned. Thats an inevitability.

The only question is: When will that be? We can slow down the rate we extract & burn the stuff, but eventually it's all going to go up in smoke.

Human generated carbon dioxide created by burning fossil fuels in the big picture is self limiting. Theres a finite supply of it & when its gone, it's gone forever.

Burn it now, or burn it later. It's all going to be burned up sooner or later.

Not if we eliminate our dependence on it, bottom line is we are getting closer and closer to getting away from depending on it, we still have a ways to go, but in the long run it should be possible.

 

[Rigby]

That’s not what people are saying. Everyone knows climate change is happening, even Trump. What is in dispute is the extent to which is a negative effect, how much humans are to blame and what would have happened anyway.

None of this is in dispute.

I'm really amazed how some people think. We hear conspiracy theories that climate science is promoted by scientists only because they are after grants, or furthered by a global cabal that wants more taxes (although government subsidies for the oil and gas industry are far greater than tax-funded expenditures for renewable energies). All the while ignoring that there is a party that actually has a huge financial interest in burying the science (guess who).