- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
China Installed More Solar Panels Last Year Than the U.S. Has in Total::China installed more new solar capacity last year than the total amount ever installed in any other country.
Do you have a better metric?
Big dog 2 months… If you knew how companies figure out their pollution metrics you would be very sad.
As for a better metric, I don’t know. Everything is tied to cost so it’s really dumb
Not sure why you’re so hung up on dogs or 2 months. The thread still shows up in searches and you’re clearly getting updates on it. Unless there’s some evidence to suggest the information in this thread is now obsolete, there’s no reason not to respond.
@esteeyou@lemmy.world made a claim and provided evidence. Unless there’s better evidence to the contrary it’s reasonable to accept the claim. My children sometimes still respond to arguments with, “Nuh uh.” I generally expect more from adults.
Yep you got me, I make shit up on the fly.
Apparently.
That’s too bad.
Too bad why? You had a counterargument or something?
Because an informed response would have been more interesting.
Oh okay, I feel like responding now so I reread.
So the evidence they provided was what I said is carefully curated. I work in sustainability and I see how people mess with numbers. I also know info from China is famous for fudging numbers as well. I don’t think CO2 is a good metric as it is difficult to track. The way companies track CO2 now is usually by spend so they convert $$$ to CO2 output through a calculator. It’s really not efficient.
You asked me what is an alternative and I said I don’t know. I really don’t, unless we have a way of tracking what comes in and out of a business and how it is used.
OK It sounds like there’s only one metric we can use to evaluate how much China pollutes.
The metric is widely used by various academics, government agencies and independent organizations. We have no better metric and that metric says that China doesn’t pollute that much.
That leaves 2 possibilities; the metric actually provides no information at all or it still provides some information.
If it provides no information AND we don’t have anything that does (ie a better metric) that means we literally have absolutely no information at all about how much China pollutes at all. That means we can’t make any intelligent claims about how much China pollutes or how much they’re fudging the number because there’s no comparison to make.
If it does provide some information we’re left with a situation where all of the imperfect information supports the claim that China doesn’t pollute much.
Either way, the evidence as you’ve classified it, doesn’t support the claim that China is, “one of the planet’s most polluting countries,” which was the original claim of this thread. It is, by definition, a baseless conjecture.