Incentives are a factor too though. The us needs to hold a mostly voluntary empire together, that requires a lot more intrigue than the average country.
I mean relative to other empires in history. Maybe the Persian one comes close, maybe. I don’t like living in a client state but I’m under no illusions things would be better under the British or Spanish
On a less facetious note, Solar needs time to renew the energy it made the day before as well. Time scale is very important to questions of renewables, and people have been sustainably burning wood for a long time. Unsustainably too, but I would bet that’s not the case here if it’s being included in a census of sustainable sources.
The effects of climate change are not instantly reversible. Imagine shifting weather patterns dry up a wetlands. Removing carbon from the atmosphere does not recreate that biome
CO2 doesn’t disappear from the atmosphere the moment you plant trees. In fact, burning wood is worse than burning coal here, because, for the same amount of energy provided, burning wood is going to emit more CO2 than burning coal.
> Energy output is directly related to carbon content. More energy density from coal mean more co2.
No. It means you need to burn a larger volume of wood to get the same amount of energy. And when you increase the volume, you increase the emissions. The first sentence of this quote may be true, if we are talking about absolute amounts, but then in the second sentence density is a ratio (energy to volume), which is why it’s not true.
I don’t know all that much about relative PM2.5 emissions, but a brief search shows a paper, which argues that PM2.5 emissions depend more on combustion conditions than fuel type[1].
> A ton of coal will create much more co2 than ton of wood, isn't it?
Yes. But that hardly matters.
> For the same amount of energy the result should be similar amount of co2.
No. Apparently, wood is estimated to emit 30% more CO2 than coal for the same amount of energy[1].
> Coal is worse for people because burning it creates many unhealthy chemical components. Sulfur, heavy metals, etc
Is it more than when you burn wood though? I’m not knowleadgable enough to answer this question. I found one link about it[2], but currently I don’t have time to read it. In any case, the fact that it produces more CO2 than coal is a good argument against wood in my eyes. My argument is against wood, not in favour of coal. Coal is just a benchmark to measure against.
Not from a carbon perspective. Forestry isn't cutting down ancient forests and then randomly thinking it would be nice to plant some new ones. Trees are a crop. They are planted, left to grow, and then harvested, in a cycle.
It’s going to take time for a new tree to consume the CO2 produced by burning a tree. If instead you leave a tree standing and burn coal, you will produce less CO2, so it’s going to take less time to consume it (and the older tree is going to do it faster than a young one).
Moreover, it’s not only a question of net emissions. It’s also a question of location. People burn wood and coal in their homes and that affects the air most near them the most. It is the worst near cities, where you can’t plant a new forest. Instead just think about how the local air is going to be affected if people burn there 1MWh of wood vs coal. Because trees are not going to help here, if they're planted far away.
And, when trees die naturally, they don’t emit CO2 at the speed that they do when they’re burnt. It happens much slower, so it’s not that much of a problem.
Mind you I’m not advocating for burning coal. I’m advocating against burning wood.
Ok, there are many rural properties in the world populated with trees. These trees naturally fall and contribute brush. Firefighters and forest management will tell you to clean up the brush by burning, otherwise it will decompose (still co2) and eventually lead to a natural wildfire (same effect). Better to burn it for heat than outside for nothing. What would you do instead?
In this instance I’ll say burn it if you want. Although it leading to a natural wildfire is highly dependent on local climate. Where I live, for most of the year it’s too cold and humid for anything like this to happen, except during maybe 2 months a year. But I appreciate that in places like California or Australia it may be different.
Yes, but I think the ops point is that the correct phrasing is report-specific, and trying to get phrasing down without considering whom one will be speaking to is a sure sign of failure
OP clearly said "If you're looking for the right turn of phrase, you already lost", which I quoted.
OP is correct that rapport is important - although that's a different thing from what the article is discussing. An exercise for you and OP: Consider being the boss of a team where you haven't had time to build rapport with the team.
Even then, I probably know enough about the culture to make some adjustments. I’m going to speak very differently to a group of blue collar workers whose first language is English than a technical team who have varying degrees of facility with the language. The industry we’re in would further inform the tone I adopt.
I actually spent years doing something very similar to the exercise you’re suggesting, which is what led me to the conclusion that subtle variations of meaning are too easy to overthink to be worth it for anything but prose. Add to that the fact that the differences in meaning are going to be, well, different depending on the background of the person I’m speaking to led me to the conclusion that if I find myself thinking about phrasing for a particular person for more than a few seconds I should focus on getting to know that person better. My social interactions have improved a lot as a result.
Back when 15$/hour minimum wage was being widely argued for, I always thought 7.50 min wage and 7.50 UBI would be a much better proposal. Much more minimum wage jobs worth creating at that point, and no disincentive to do them.
Why should my tax dollars subsidize businesses who don't want to provide enough incentive for people to come work for them?
I'm all for a UBI, but it should be enough to live on, and not (effectively) just the government paying wages on behalf of companies who don't want to pay for labor.
> not (effectively) just the government paying wages on behalf of companies who don't want to pay for labor
Well the arguments is that there are jobs that aren't worth doing at the current minimum wage. Imagine someone working in a garage who might be willing to hire someone for a $2/hr to fetch tools for them, but at $15/hr they would just rather get up and walk across the shop themselves. $2/hr is enough to cover transportation to work, so the UBI is used to bridge that gap. There are existing programs like this now for the developmentally handicapped.
One of the main divisions of UBI is whether we require people to work no matter how demeaning (informed by the protestant work ethic) or whether it should guarantee people a certain level of dignity (informed by social welfare mindset).
Not taking sides, but this is a schism that everyone in these conversations should be aware of.
Yeah, I'm from a poor rural community and the difference remote work would make to a place like Walton, Nova Scotia if future generations grow up feeling secure in it would be hard to express. Really breaking a cycle of poverty for a lot of regions that are absolutely breathtaking in natural beauty.
