CO2 emissions set to fall nearly 8% this year, the largest drop in history

I think we haven‘t seen global failure, we have seen how different governments have come up with different solutions to protect their people. It seems that those with recent experience of handling epidemics (like MERS) have fared much better than those who haven‘t. This is simply a learning curve effect - if a pandemic were to happen again in the next 10 years, responses would be much more swift and also more consistent; it is dependent on the resistence if the healthcare system - state-run systems have much scarcer resources than other systems, decentralized systems are more resistant than centralized ones; it seems dependent on how much policy is influenced by science; populist leaders seem to fare quite badly; and finally it‘s probably a good thing to have a female leader on top.

For myself as well,even though my commute was only 30-40 minutes each way, it was draining.

That's great to hear!

I agree, but I don't see a (sufficiently high) price of carbon coming either.

Unfortunately I think it's too late for a carbon tax. Regulations are the only thing that we know works and can possibly work on the time scale required. Market forces would have maybe had time to work ten years ago...

Edit: To quote unattributed from a friend that does this stuff for work, I don't think they'll mind as long as their name isn't attached:

"I think it’s a distraction from more effective policy. Emission standards like CAFE have worked better than carbon taxes have and also have caused zero national protests in France.

Decarbonizing is an infrastructure replacement problem, which is capital intensive. It needs solutions that encourage, subsidize, and mandate green capital investment. Carbon taxes affects capital decisions at the discount rates of corporations (10%) or consumers (20%ish), which gives them a short time horizon. They also don’t really kick the green tech adoption laggards in the butt enough to get to 99% decarbonization."

> Nobody considers the carbon impact of building a 400sqft / 350mp home today, the lawn, the asphalted driveway, etc. They'll build it, drive a Prius or a Model X, and sleep thinking they save the world one car at a time.

There may be a big difference thought: you build your home once or twice per lifetime (even less if we look at it on a macro POV), whereas you spit C02 in the atmosphere every single day by commuting to work. I won't do the math, but I'd bet the second scenario as a far more CO2 cost that the first one.

28% is huge. If there were a small handful of things we could change that would stop climate change, it wouldn't be such a big problem. Even if it were 100 1% things, it would still be relatively easy.

I love in a larger city in Sweden with Well-functioning public transport and where they have made it more difficult to travel by car in much of the inner city. But still, there are so many cars going around! Hundreds and hundreds of cars, travelling the same routes everyday.

I'm starting to become frustrated with people around my age that keep moving to the suburbs; essentially making it mandatory for them to own cars for decades to come. One friend even moved to a another city about 50km away: he commutes by car from there. It is just insanity. I don't think we have the luxury for everyone to have their own cars anymore. We should stop selling them (both EV and ICE).

There is also such a disconnect between what people say and do. They'll do some recycling and eat a bit less meat and feel satisfied that they are helping. But at the same time, they go to work by car, fly between major cities, think that New Zealand would be a great vacation spot, and buy new phones, TVs and clothes as often as they can.

The "corona lifestyle", where people work from home, consume less and stop all international travel is a start. But if course, with this solution there would be a lot of economic hardship as well (as we can see now).

It feels a bit hopeless sometimes. Like we already lost, but we just haven't realized it yet.

Yes - so maybe a noticeable part of the current 8% dip will "stick".

But if it does, do you suppose the next pandemic will cause an equivalent additional dip? No, because whatever lasting changes have already been made are changes that aren't available to make when the next virus sweeps through.

To make real progress, we need to do far more than stay home, because staying home wins us 8% but we need 75%.

An airline going bankrupt doesn’t mean that its planes will never fly again. It just means they’ll be flown by by the airline’s creditors once people start flying again.

>Some industries need to turn off. We are doing too much across the board

I've been thinking about this for a while, and with the pandemic, it's been on my mind regularly.

We really need to re-think, well, almost every aspect of how we live and consume. Far less car use, more sustainable living, including increasing densities, which does not mean everyone needs to live in Manhattan or Tokyo level densities, just better land use and more pedestrian/bike-friendly infrastructure. Make it easier to get fresh food locally. More green space.

One of the biggest changes in my life was moving to a city where I can walk anywhere and everywhere (most things are within a mile or two). It may take a little longer (and mass transit is there to pick up the slack) but the impact of regular, constant exercise cannnot be overstated by this kind of lifestyle change (and something most Americans desperately need, honestly. We are incredibly unhealthy, I was one of them).

Colds are caused by coronaviruses and rhinoviruses, and there is a bunch of them. So the reason you get them often is not the lack of immunity, but because you can get infected but yet another virus you have no immunity for.

That's both sad and funny that you think all of those things are possible in the same location in the US. I count 4 major infrastructure projects and 3 massive tax incentives that would need to be implemented in order to convince most people to do all of that. Not possible nation wide within a time frame of less than 30 years. Suggesting the majority of a large country's population move to regions where this is possible is also a non-starter without huge economic incentives and would have many unintended side effects due to depopulation of some areas and massive immigration to other areas.

The only approach I see working in the US is a decentralized one that takes into account the unique geography and population distribution. Move the efficiencies out to the edges, electric vehicles, rooftop solar, small scale nuclear, more fibre rollout for remote working, incentives for local farms and land management. Work with the existing infrastructure and culture rather than against it and you'll get a lot further.

As far as less cattle and more forest/peat, the US actually had a trend of decreasing agricultural usage and increase in forest cover for most of the last century. Forest cover began to diminish again with increased urbanization and timber cutting so encouraging migration to the regions with the highest population density, the coasts, would further increase deforestation since that's also where the majority of forests are. If you look at maps showing rangeland vs forest and peatland there isn't much overlap in the US, it turns out the best cattle producing areas in the US are those that were already grassland to begin with, go figure.

I think your rationale overemphasizes transportation, which is a minor part of our carbon footprint

China has a moral obligation to reduce emissions because of high absolute values. America has a moral obligation because of high per-capita values.

While I agree, large population densities happen due to poverty, the more poor people get, the more children they'll have.

Western countries have lower population densities than many Asian countries. On one hand these are richer countries that maybe could afford the bill.

On the other hand this is also a tax for having a lower birth rate that could have unintended consequences. Like raising poverty levels, or pro-imigration or pro-child policies. With enough economic incentive to grow the population, the population will be grown via government policies, exactly what happened in many countries post WW2.

The other issue I'm seeing is that developed countries export a lot of goods and services, being efficient at it. Just as an example, agriculture in Holland is extremely efficient. Raising prices in Holland due to CO₂ emissions will move some of that production locally elsewhere in the EU, possibly yielding greater CO₂ emissions overall. This may be good for local farmers, I'm all for eating produce grown locally, but not necessarily for the environment.

Basically some countries are exporting much of their pollution and by imposing limits per country some of that pollution might get worse when moved locally.

I agree that "per capita" is probably the best we have, it's unfair to impose harsher restrictions on developing countries, given that developed countries yielded much worse emissions in the 20th century. Since 1960 we've had great progress in eliminating extreme poverty across the world. If that progress continues, we can expect a flattening population level, which is already happening.

But in calculating allowed emissions per country, it isn't so clear cut and I hope all variables are taken into consideration.

The earth doesn't care how many people are emitting. It cares about the absolute emissions.

But obviously the earth is comprised of sovereign states, and in order to collaborate you often need to convince those sovereign states that treatment is fair. Given that, if you want to adjust emissions by some divisor, I'd adjust it by land area. Land area is finite on earth. That means that there is some value of CO2 output / m^2 that is sustainable for the planet. That number is consistent. That number applies globally. That number can be a target for everyone. It also can't be faked – some "unreliable" country can't say "hey, global body, you think our population is 1B but it's actually 1.2B, so we get to pollute more". You can't fudge land area like that (there might be some marginal ability to do so, but obviously it is less feasible than with per capita numbers). This has the additional benefit of aligning priorities against worsening conditions in order to incentivize action now. Global warming is causing rising sea levels, which in turn means that countries are losing land area. That means that every year that global warming worsens, your quota will actually decrease.

Meanwhile, population is not finite. If you say to a country as part of an agreement to "get your CO2 output down to this level per capita", then it is a very real possibility that this country's population grows to an extent where that number you used last year is no longer small enough to stave off serious global warming. And that is the purpose of all this, no?

Obviously carrots and sticks will be necessary for any agreement to be effective (until it gets really bad), but either way I think emissions/unit land area as the line in the sand makes more sense than emissions/per capita.

An even better metric would probably be "emissions/unit arable farmland", as it gives weight to both land area and population, but obviously that is much more difficult to establish / less likely to stay static.

If per capita in the US matters that much, I'd expect the drop to be much larger than 8%, given that the country has largely shut down. 75% seems like a pipe dream in that case.

I would be interested in what the energy consumption spread is like over a region. Not trying to start a class war, but suburban or rural folks energy consumption (total, including manufactured goods, food, everything) vs urban, what is the base rate and then the somewhat optional delta on top of that.

It feels like the leakage current of civilization is too high, at least for western economies in how much co2 they produce while not producing anything. Great if running at some rate, but they aren't clockless and can't scale down. Statically scheduled instead of dynamic.

Per capita does not work if you got economic inequality. The portion of the population that are rich should not have a blanket license to burn tires all day long just because the same country also have a large part of population that is so poor that they can't afford to buy tires.

Per capita also in theory create perverse incentives. A rich country with high pollution per capita could anex a poor country and magically reduce their per capita pollution. Having a bunch of people under the same rule, but separated and segregated, should not impact the responsibility of reducing carbon emission.

If can't use absolute numbers since those benefits developed countries, and we can't use per capita since those benefits countries with large economic inequality, we will just have to find a third way to measure it.

Number of people is what ultimately matters. The amount of CO2 per capita tends towards the same ballpark. Somewhere between 5-10 t/year/capita [0].

US, alas, is at 16t/year, though decreasing. Overall contribution: 330M * 16 = 5B t/year.

Now let's watch how the 6 billion people that did not exist circa 1900 catch up in emissions with the high energy regimen that characterizes 'western middle class' lifestyle. Let's lowball at 5t/year/capita. Overall contribution: 6000M * 5 = 30B t/year. Earth as we know it will not survive that.

And that's before we factor in that population is still booming, both globally and, through global migration, in US.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-by-world...

Since we need money to combat climate change, then what really matters is per-unit of GDP.

That also solves the unseen "import goods" CO2 emissions problem.

Point is more that we need to do something about China, no matter the "per capita" distraction: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/07/01/china-emits-...

North America had 60 million bison before they were replaced with cattle. The necessity of having vast herds of large ungulates in western North America to prevent ecosystem collapse is well understood. If we stopped raising cattle, we'd have to replace them with bison, which have a similar footprint.

It may be a smaller herd, but it will be a very large herd nonetheless. That aside, at no point in the foreseeable future will people stop eating meat and dairy, so total elimination is a bit of a moot point.

Climate models challenged by cloud modelling:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-clouds-hold-key-b...

Effect of contrails not modeled well, even though "contrail cirrus have contributed more to warming the atmosphere than all CO2 emitted by aircraft since the start of aviation.":

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190627113949.h...

New research shows the contrails are playing a significant role in global warming:

https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-airplane-contrails-are-he...

Little attention has been given to soot and snow albedo:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522...

High loss in greenland due to soot and dirt:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/6/140610-connec...

Cutting soot emissions fastest solution to arctic ice melt:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/21/cutting-...

Now, the arctic warming has not been caused by soot, but by the reduction in average snow cover, caused by dramatic warming since the 1980s:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6883849/

Which coincides nicely with the increase in high-level cloud formation and heat blanketing causee by the increase in "great circle" air traffic since that time:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.AIR.PSGR

Now, why hasn't this been modeled? Because they are complex to model; pre-industrial clouds don't match post-industrial, and the modelers don't know why:

https://phys.org/news/2016-03-narrow-clouds-hard.html

So, now we'll see -- there will be a dramatic change in cloud formation due to not dumping 1/2 a billion tons per year of water into the super-dry upper troposphere, over a several month period. Good fun!

From a previous thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22224141), I wrote:

> Those now attempting to figure out the mystery of the hot climate models think one factor might have caused the recent unusual results: clouds. It turns out simulated clouds often cause headaches for climate modelers.

The impact of cloud cover in these models has been incorrect, and has such a large impact. Doesn't this strike anyone as a major problem?

We're burning about 100 billion gallons of aviation fuel per year.

> This means each gallon of jet fuel (6.5lbs) will combine with 23lbs of Oxygen and turn into twenty pounds of CO2, and just over nine pounds of water! (see: https://paullaherty.com/2015/01/10/calculating-aircraft-co2-...).

So that's 100B gallons * 9lbs is about a half a billion metric tons of water vapor going into the dry upper troposphere annually from commercial aviation.

Which, evidence would seem to suggest, has not been modeled properly (at all?) by these climate models?

If I was producing these models, I would be embarrassed.

I don’t know enough, to be sure.

How large are global olivine reserves compares to historical and future CO2 emissions? What are the side effects at the required scale?

I’m glad they’re doing the experiments, and I’m sure they consider any question I can come up with (including the above) to be trite to the point of cliché.

From the cost and quantity requirements in their FAQ, this will cost $232.4 billion/year. While that ought to be considered affordable vs. the world economy… well, call me cynical, but I don’t think voters or politicians think like that.

As grid scale PV reportedly costs $0.7/watt (peak) in the USA, that money could also install 332 GW of additional solar every year. As the panels look like they should last 30 years, that gives a steady-state equivalent of 9.96 TW (peak), compared to total (not just electrical) global consumption of double that continually, and I’ll fudge-factor as another x2.5 on top to convert peak solar output to time-averaged solar output to make PV x5 the cost of olivine.

So, economically that looks good with current tech, but may look bad if grid-scale PV goes below $0.14/watt (peak).

But that analysis assumes that fossil fuels are free, and as current solar prices are already cheaper than fossil fuels (0), people will probably switch to PV regardless of olivine and save money while doing so. But olivine is probably still useful for the CO2 sources that are hard to substitute with eco-friendly alternatives.

(0) What’s that Skippy, current oil prices are negative?

I think we now of better ways in theory. It’s a political issue not a lack of knowledge.

A dividend from a global carbon tax could put a bit of money in the hands of those who live in poverty. And giving poor people money has been proven to be an efficient approach to increase wealth.

Sure, the intention of the lock down is not to prevent climate change. However, the knock on effects are clearly beneficial; a complete halting of nonessential travel, anyone who can work from home working from home, a lot of business and industry shut down. In effect it is at or beyond the upper bound on what personal choice could achieve.

All of that and it basically sets the rate of increase back a decade or so.

To stop burning fossil fuels requires huge advances in energy storage (grid scale batteries, hydrogen / ammonia, thermal storage), energy production (breakthrough in nuclear fusion, more efficient solar) or massive political changes (conventional nuclear, carbon taxes). Probably a combination of all 3.

Not completely, clearly people would have changed their behaviour without any lockdown.

Saying "chose to impose" sends the message that it was completely avoidable but we chose to shoot ourselves in the foot. The measures were the only accessible thing most countries could have done to avoid a heavy death toll. And it's not like people especially in the most affected brackets would have happily gone to work every day anyway. On top of the accelerated spread you probably would have seen mass layoffs of people who decide their life is more important than the job anyway. Coincidentally the same age brakey that would have the biggest challenges to get re-hired.

The rest seems like a nitpicky statement like "it's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden deceleration". Except we don't know what the true fallout of facing the virus with no restrictions. Just that the experts suggest it would have been worse.

Would you have been glad to die to keep the economy moving?

Not yet, and hopefully it will rain, but the East is extremely dry right now. Poland, parts of Germany, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Belarus, Romania etc.

At least the wild fires around Chernobyl are not a problem any more, but the fire danger in the forests is still high.

Here are some maps of Germany, for example.

https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=37937

The deeper layer (first map) is still depleted from 2018. February was very wet, but that has been overcompensated for by the no-rain April.

We haven't reached the 2018 level of dryness yet I think, but there has to be a lot of rain, soon. Yes, nobody will starve, and be it because we can buy from the world market, but if this keeps happening we will have to find better ways to deal with it. No export also means that there is potentially too little food somewhere else.

But I agree, we do have some leeway with the animal protein production.

Sure, it's just that until now growth has been coupled with more intensive energy use. There were some talks by Vaclav Smil on this that I found very informative.

There is a causal relation between more energy and more prosperity, not pollution. Pollution is a byproduct of how we have chosen to produce that energy. There is no fundamental reason it has to stay that way.

>I am not saying we won't need more energy ever again, but long-term we can find solutions for that, and short-term (as a stopgap solution) we already know that nuclear power can deliver that power without the global warming.

If you increase supply of energy via nuclear, it will decrease price of fossil fuel energy, and there’s a few billion people ready to go on vacations to Maldives/Tahiti/etc and experience what it’s like to live in detached single family homes with their own personal SUVs.

And there’s no way nuclear power can be developed in a quick enough timeframe, there’s not enough people with expertise or materials.

We need to curtail consumption of fossil fuels yesterday, which means heavily tax it, which means less traveling, less purchasing of plastics, fewer cars, and these are all the opposite for how prosperity is measured today.