When that conference ends, we have one decade to cut global emissions by 50%.
Are we going to make it? If so, how?
My 2000 sq ft home is currently using about 8kwh per day of electricity in summer, which I think is pretty good. I'd love to get solar panels to get that down to below zero.
I treat electricity reduction like a game, always trying to go further. Lately I've been using a solar cooker to cook food and it's awesome. It keeps the cooking heat and smell out of the house while using no electricity. I only recently just started but I've made curry, pizza, veggie burgers, potatoes, baked bread, and reheated leftovers. My next target is getting the summer usage down to 7kwh per day average. I think improving water heating is going to be the ticket there by reducing the heater temperature a little, wrapping it in a thermal blanket, and getting a more efficient shower head. Having a solar water heater would be huge but that's a possibility for down the road.
What are other people doing?
This is such an important realization which I think (hope) more and more people are coming to. No point in debating solar vs wind, batteries versus fuel cells. Do all the things.
Currently working on getting panels installed before the tax incentive expires. We get a stupid amount of sun here in Colorado, and Xcel has a good net metering program.
For the solar cooker I prefer to put the cooking pan inside some pyrex dishes. This acts like a greenhouse and limits the wind's ability to blow heat away. It gets very hot, but not as hot as a solar oven. Hot enough to bake bread!
You can cut that number by a factor of 3, just by building apartment blocks instead of individual houses. It cuts down the heat loss area, and lets you install larger pumps that benefit from efficiencies of scale.
AFAIK, an average flat around the latitude of St. Petersburg uses ~300-500 kWh per month, or 3600-6000 kWh per year. And that's considering that most housing stock there was built in the 70s and 80s.
If we're talking top of the line insulation and a geothermal heat pump, the numbers should be way lower than that even. Not to mention that generally speaking living inside the Arctic circle is a giant waste anyway. You can't do agriculture there and it costs a lot to heat things. It should be reserved for research stations and temporary work establishments.
My point is the insulation is the cheapest way of lowering heating (and chilling) costs.
Also, lots of mining, logging and manufacturing jobs up north.
No.
Global heating is pretty much inevitable. There's no taste for fixing it among the people who can actually do something. Politicians don't see farther than their next term in office, and the rich don't need to fix it. It's not really a case of "if" any more. It's going to happen.
Where I live major political parties are now scrambling to adopt greener policies after losing big to green parties in the recent EU wide elections.
Because people have shown that if they don't do it, they will vote for someone who will.
There's also the issue of thousands of students rallying for greener policies every friday instead of attending school. It's been going on for some time and politicians are further under pressure because of that.
This phrase might be applicable if each country had its own atmosphere.
Reading this gives me a headache. Guess what will WAY be worse than that?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B5-lDJWCUAAwfya.jpg
Also most of the developing countries, those people like you like to point their finger at and use as an excuse to keep dooming yourself, your planet and most of all your children's futures, will be hit first and the hardest by climate change. And they know it. China is already coming around.
Surely doing nothing (not actually doing nothing, but rather continuing to burn fossil fuels) leads to, well, ~ infinite warming until we run out of fuel?
Or is the assumption that at 6c we're dead so whatever?
Of course, we don’t know what the feedback loops are, they could kick in and take over. The IPCC is quite conservative about including feedback loops, and mainly deals with direct effects. But the same logic applies either way, within any reasonable range any reduction in CO2 emissions is worth pursuing.
I also personally think the economics for certain low carbon technologies will dominate over a middle/long time period, just that as it stands they won’t take over quick enough to dramatically bring down emissions.
I don’t think anyone in the world can answer the question about how likely these feedback effects are, unfortunately!
That's not being realistic. That is decidedly pessimistic and something that no one could say at this time.
Seriously: we are all going to fucking die from this if nobody does something, and soon. Except maybe a few billionaires in space or bunkers.
There is a long term upward trend in the ECS upper bound, there is model convergence towards that new upper bound figure, and it agrees with recent satellite observations from CERES. I think this constitutes a fair amount of support that warrants my concern.
No it doesn't. The link there is not a scientific article but points to a set of models benchmarked against data for the IPCC report.
Trying to check there's no artifact is just good science, no need to reproach them for that.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2093579-was-kyoto-clima...
The United States wouldn't even sign it because it "would cause serious harm to the U.S. economy."
https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/20...
The more we can eliminate the need for negative emissions, the better. But we shouldn’t assume no negative emissions, and the most stringent temperature pathway, otherwise people will just assume that action is impossible and use it as an excuse to do nothing.
Drastically curtailing airline flights and eating less meat is a considerable step for most Americans who aren't already doing so. Let 'em start with that, maybe they'll make the next step to riding the bicycle to work a few times a week, maybe they'll find they can just cut meat altogether. Next thing you know, they're washing their hemp clothes in their water-saving washer less often.
Because let me tell you what voting green has gotten me over the last thirty years...