this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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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.
CO2 is NOT the only metric being captured by global agencies, it's just what was said in the comment above and is usually the target to showcase how responsible the use is basically. I am not saying that the metric in itself is bad but it is easy to mislead. China is not trustworthy when it comes to capturing data like this because their companies are basically required to make greater China look good. This is a separate beast.
If you look into how a body like the EPA calculates their emissions they reference the greenhouse protocol. In an ideal world, all use and all waste goes through a method like this protocol and individuals calculate their emissions. Governing bodies and academics alike would be using software to track each ounce of output based on raw materials. If you purchased or created a good, you should be able to track and show end of life for each individual component. This is just not the case. People don't know what is in the stuff they buy. There is a flurry of life cycle analyses cradle to gate or gate to gate or cradle to grave being produced currently to bridge this gap but it currently is not the standard for identifying output.
How does a company like Walmart track all of the emissions produced (by their farmers, their logistics, the raw material manufacturing, etc.) if it's difficult? The answer is they give ballpark numbers based on how much was purchased. Companies now have decided to use a number that was calculated based on various spends and convert that to output.
How does a country like the US measure then? In the US there are regulatory bodies that check if what we say is true but it's a complete joke. There waaaaaayyy too much data for these bodies to go through so they usually report whatever the company reports.
Circling back to China and why I say not to trust the CO2 calculations is that these companies are not trustworthy. I'll be honest I don't know if there are similar regulatory bodies in China for emissions but I doubt it. It's what allows companies to do illegal dumping into rivers and let's many claim net zero. I'm assuming based on the time you responded to me that you are in China so maybe you can elucidate me on how I get this wrong.
I agree that CO2 is an imperfect measure and you don't seem to be making the claim that CO2 has an SNR of 0 (ie it carries no information at all). We seem to agree on the core of your central three paragraphs so I won't comment on them.
You've stated multiple times now that you don't know any better measures than CO2. So even if there are other measures they're just as bad or worse. Given this lack of any better metric, on what verifiable evidence are you basing any of your conclusions?
The same way you got your conclusions about China's pollution wrong, by misapplying evidence and jumping to conclusions.
It's interesting that you should phrase your question that way. The cheap answer would be to point out that you're not using "elucidate" correctly. You're missing a preposition. It's also odd to use "get" instead of "got" here. A corrected version of your sentence might be, "...maybe you can elucidate to me how I got this wrong." It's cheap in the sense that personal attacks are easy and do little to advance a conversation. It would be just as silly of me to use your grammar error as evidence that you're a foreign national as it is for you to use the timing of my posts as evidence of my location.
You might then suspect that I might still be a foreigner who's studied too much English grammar. That would be correct. It turns out that when I speak my native language, other native speakers can sometimes pinpoint the exact district in Vienna where I was born. These days, none of my neighbors speak German. They love the Sox and rock their "Dunkies".
Just as in the case of estimating China's pollution levels, cavalier use of evidence leads to erroneous conclusions.
English is not my first language either and I type the way I speak. So I might say things wrong but language was never my strong suit. I only commented because I have a friend from mainland China who only speaks around this time.
I hope we can both agree that using evaluations made by China is not always the best. I could have replaced CO2 with # of immigrants or %breast feeding and we would have the same issues. However, the use of CO2 as a metric for a developing country is specially odd given how difficult it is to track in places like the US for EU. Hence, I say don't trust it.
Can we agree there or is this all still baseless conjecture and erroneous conclusions?
I can certainly agree that there is no evidence to suggest that China is "one of the most polluting countries in the world". I haven't seen a shred of evidence to support that claim. It is entirely baseless.
On the other hand, the claim that China's per capita pollution is lower than that of most industrialized nations is supported by evidence. It is the best evidence we have too, unless you've discovered a better metric in the last few days.
A claim that imperfect evidence is equivalent to no evidence is baseless and will lead to erroneous conclusions.