Comment by rayiner
5 hours ago
I don't see the point of trying to redefine "pollution" to include CO2. We have been discussing climate change for decades, but it was only recently that people tried to shoehorn CO2 into category of "pollution." It just takes a category where society has some consensus and then shoehorns some new disputed idea into existing category. It's an end-run around the process of building consensus around the new thing.
It is not weird at all.
A completely useful (and consistent with the modern usage of the word) definition of "pollution" can be worded as:
"anthropogenic alteration of the open environment with negative consequences on ecosystems or society".
Have you heard about noise pollution? Match it with the definition above.
CO2 emitted by combustion from human activities is orders of magnitude more than what any natural biological process emits.
Now you can see why CO2 emitted by fossil fuels combustion is, by any logic, pollution.
So should the EPA be able to regulate noise pollution?
The problem with your definition is that it encompasses basically all of society. Everything humans do alters the environment, mostly for the worse. By embracing such an expansive definition of “pollution,” you’d turn the EPA into a super-regulator of vast swaths of the economy.
Software people should be able to understand the importance of separation of modules. You don’t put logic for process scheduling inside a file system module. It’s the same problem with treating CO2 as an air pollutant. Power generation is 1/6 of the economy. The mix of power generation sources the country should have isn’t just an environmental question. It cuts across society—it implicates the economy, national security, industrial policy, etc. Consider, for example, how Germany’s over-reliance on Russian gas turned into a national security problem for them after Russia invaded Ukraine. An environmental regulator isn’t at the right level to be making that decision.
The first ever version of the "Greenhouse gas" wikipedia page lists CO₂ as the first such gas (besides water vapor, obviously disregarded).
That page is from 2002.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greenhouse_gas&ol...
besides water vapor, obviously disregarded
Don't be so sure about "obviously" when they start talking about "water vapor emissions"...
I'm talking about redefining the term "pollution," not the term "greenhouse gas."
Carbon dioxide atmospheric pollution has been acknowledged since literally the 1800s. What era are you from? Are you 200 years old?
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IPCC first report was 1990, and the basic arithmetic of the atmosphere goes even further back.
Right, but the 1990 IPCC report doesn’t use the term “pollution” to refer to CO2: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_a...
It uses the term “greenhouse gas” to refer to CO2 and uses the term “air pollution” to refer to what people traditionally think of as air pollution. For example, in one place of says: “Consequences of CO2 enrichment and climate change for natural terrestrial ecosystems could be modified by other environmental factors, both natural and man induced (e.g., by air pollution).” So that’s treating “CO2 enrichment” (emissions) as distinct from “air pollution.”
I was battling global warming in Civ endgames in 1991...
I think you miss rayiner's point. He's not disputing whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas. He's saying that doesn't make it a "pollutant" as the term was understood at the time, say, the EPA was created. There was no congressional legislation that said that it was something the EPA was empowered to regulate. Then the EPA decided to regulate it anyway (and, yes, won the court case about whether it could). But it was still shoehorned in, as it was not considered a pollutant in the way that NO2 or particulates or chlorine were.
This is ridiculous. There is no redefinition, it was always part of definition. Seriously. The only end run around consensus are lies like "CO2 as polution is a novel thing".
> There is no redefinition, it was always part of definition.
Source?
You need a source showing you that greenhouses gasses aren't pollution?
The thing that is also known as "air pollution"?
I want to tell you to stop being a moron, but its against this site's TOS.
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