Global CO2 Emissions in 2019
iea.org
iea.org
The other "good" news is that we lowered the increase caused by carbon and replaced it with new emissions from oil and gas that may have other side effects.
I'm a bit negative about this, even for an article that seem to have possitive news, maybe next year report will give us brigther news because there was less activity because the coronavirus.
You'll be cancelled and flagged (and so will I). COULD NOT AGREE MORE!
I also want to see what happens after in 2020 the whole world has stopped. Let's how many degrees the temperature lowers even with most factories and economical activity gone for months.
You might be thinking of Methane which does break down reasonably quickly.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2458/why-a-half-degree-tempera...
Taking steps towards solving an issue doesn't mean anyone is claiming we solved it or doesn't recognize that we still have hundreds of miles ahead in our journey. But rather you use the past success as motivation to build momentum. You should look at the past and say "hey, we've made measurable and meaningful change. Small, but it shows that what we're doing is working. Now is the time to fight harder." Revel in that success and use it to fuel your efforts. I believe putting these things in a negative light instead paints a picture that we haven't gotten far and that our efforts aren't working. Thus disheartening people and turns them apathetic. ("There's nothing I can do")
Perspective matters.
Except it IS good news. But good news doesn't mean we solved the problem. This is a small victory, but doesn't mean it isn't a victory nonetheless. We need to break away from this binary thinking. Good news and bad news are a continuous spectrum. My issue here is that people are saying "well we're not done, therefore the news isn't good." To me this is fundamentally wrong and distinctiveness the human psychology.
> if you're accelerating toward a wall it doesn't help your situation if you switch to merely maintaining current velocity.
Except it does. The force you hit the wall with is proportional to the velocity you strike it. It is better to hit the wall at 100mph than 200mph. For a more accurate analogy consider that the peddle has been stuck to the floor this entire time and we've dislodged it. This is the first major step to slowing down (there's been tons of minor steps along the way).
For a more logical view: to be effective moving forward we have to look at the past to see what has been successful so that we can better focus our resources.
A battle is not the war. Celebrating the victory of a battle is not celebrating a victory in a war. You celebrate your victories along the way because otherwise you lose hope. I think this psychology should be very apparent considering the existential crisis and hopelessness that people have. Maybe we shouldn't be encouraging that attitude.
The thing is that if we think about climate change as a war then this is an important battle we've won. We've STOPPED the invading army. We did not push them back, we did not defeat the entire army, but for the first time we've been able to stop the invading army from gaining ground. By all accounts, before it looked hopeless. But if that kind of battle doesn't instill hope, I don't know what does. We haven't won the war, but for the first time we haven't been slaughtered in a major battle.
We need to stop believing that anything that isn't complete victory is bad news. All that does is create a hopeless future, which turns people apathetic. Just because you haven't won the war doesn't mean you shouldn't celebrate your small victories and improve moral. That is the issue, moral.
> and only during a pandemic-induced economic slowdown.
The data is 2019.
That “brighter news” would be at the expense of millions of jobs and livelihoods destroyed. In the US over 40% of black owned businesses are not expected to survive. Thousands of restaurants have been closed forever, and the toll keeps climbing.
That isn’t “brighter news” by any stretch.
Those safely ensconced in their work from home jobs might not get it, but the millions of small businesses are struggling and many are dying. Claiming “brighter news” for this is macabre.
[0]: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/12/us/arctic-methane-gas-flare-t...
Looks like somewhere around 3 percent of gas is lost through the system - is this leaks or other issues the article asks: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-natural-...
That is only when gas has reached the supplier. Don't forget gas is also lost when drilling and also lost in huge amounts when drilling for oil. Gut feel, from the limited research I've done I would guess losses as far above the 1/28th sadly.
There's still a long way to go and a lot to do, but this itself has been a hard task and is one of the important milestones. It is a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
Here is a graph of a range of different models the IPCC used in their Special Report on 1.5C in 2018: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3...
So if you line up the graph in the OP on the left side of your screen/minds-eye and the graph from the IPCC on the right side, you get a feel for the dramatic swing in the second derivative that is necessary going forward.
Note that these models assume we develop massive negative emissions technology in the mid and late century. That is to say, those are already assumed, so you cant use "we'll just develop negative emissions technology" as a counterpoint to the necessary amount of change in the immediate term.
If you are at all skeptical of that technological development, then take a few hundred gigatons off the budget.
(ps. check out https://collective.energy for more dialogue around climate action)
If you're looking at CO₂ emissions and want to do something about your own footprint please consider removing your own emissions.
Reductions are great and all (definitely part of the necessary solution) however they do not address the existing excess of CO₂ in the atmosphere
I started "Carbon Removed"[0] for the exact purpose to bring carbon removal to everyone and make it easy for us all to compensate the damage we have done to the environment. We support carbon removal methods so you can turn your emissions into trees and stone.
If you're more interested in removal methods I suggest researching:
* tree planting - cheap and easy but slow to see results
* direct air capture and storage - new, innovative technology that can permanently remove CO₂ through mineralisation but is expensive at this stage. Search "climeworks"
* enhanced weathering - "olivine stones" and "project vesta" are good steps here that can slowly and naturally capture CO₂
* blue carbon - naturally removing carbon dioxide through ocean ecosystems
* biochar - "carbonise" organic material and use it as a soil supplement (as well as a carbon sink)
tl;dr: We can all reduce our footprints but we need to do more and remove the existing excess CO₂ in the atmosphere to get back to "normal".
1. https://stripe.com/blog/negative-emissions-commitment
2. https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-b...
The kind of person that is pro carbon credit would prefer it even if carbon had no effects on the weather.
We've changed the environment with buildings, cities, America used to have skies blackened by passenger pigeons so you could shoot a shotgun randomly at the sky and kill a bunch, turtles used to roam freely until the great depression caused everyone to eat them. Mao told everyone to kill the birds until their crops were devastated by insects and they had to import them back. This is not doomsday. The fossils we use for fuel used to live in a much more diverse and warm climate.
Even though you are correct that we put plants into greenhouses and it is good for them, most of the stuff we care about isn’t plants. As one example, enough CO2 will noticeably harm your intellect, and there is enough unburned carbon in the world to make us all dull-minded.
Changing the global average temperature by “1 degree” may not sound like much, but it’s enough to bleach corals and shift agriculture patterns. Even 4.5 degrees Celsius may not seem like much, but it is the difference between an ice age and a warm period, and we’re already in a warm period.
The ice age had ~200 ppm CO2, the preindustrial level was ~280, today is ~420 ppm.
>As one example, enough CO2 will noticeably harm your intellect, and there is enough unburned carbon in the world to make us all dull-minded.
Has IQ been going down due to that? Is that theoretical? Seems like improper breathing is a larger issue, and people in cities with worst local air have higher IQs than those in rural areas. Seems at best a non factor.
I’m glad we agree there is a problem. Although a mere “billion” trees is well short of the scale of the solution.
Solving CO2 with carbon offsetting is part of the general model of “carbon credits“ and “carbon trading”, which can only work with a government-and-trade-agreement-mandated minimum carbon price.
That’s fine by me. Anything is, so long as it works and works “soon-ish” rather than “eventually”.
I am optimistic about the technology, I am pessimistic about the politics.
> Has IQ been going down due to that? Is that theoretical?
It is directly measurable in situations where CO2 is higher than wilderness levels. The study I’ve seen had three specific tested CO2 concentrations, which were roughly comparable to various modern-life scenarios such as city center offices or wearing full-face motorcycle helmets.
> Seems like improper breathing is a larger issue, and people in cities with worst local air have higher IQs than those in rural areas. Seems at best a non factor.
The CO2 level inside cities are indeed higher. As are the CO2 level inside sealed offices inside a city. These higher levels have a demonstrable, repeatably testable, negative impact on reasoning skills.
I have seen no prior claim of correlation between location and IQ, however I have seen a claim that city dwellers walk faster which turned out to be because cities attract young, skilled, ambitious people. Therefore, you would need to show causation not just correlation — especially as there are repeated demonstrations that CO2 impairs cognitive function, and that’s hardly the only pollutant one should expect to be more common in a city.
Note that burning all the known carbon fuel reserves would raise CO2 levels in the wilderness to higher levels than currently found in city center offices whose windows have been closed all week.
Also note that resource consumption has historically been exponential, so this is a larger problem going forward than you might expect looking backwards.
The main relevant question is “why is a billion trees not enough?”, to which the answer is: as a rough guide, undoing emissions from 1850-2020 would require more than the total biomass of the entire planet.
It is also important to note that, even if it was physically possible to solve this problem in this way, you can tell it isn’t economical to do so, because if it was we’d already have fully (not partially) replaced fossil fuels with biofuels.
>undoing emissions from 1850-2020 would require more than the total biomass of the entire planet.
So we created more carbon than existed? Are you familiar with the fact that matter and energy is neither created nor destroyed? Carbon existed before as animals and other biomass, and you are saying now that the total biomass of the planet is not enough and we generated CO2 from thin air?
>It is also important to note that, even if it was physically possible to solve this problem in this way, you can tell it isn’t economical to do so, because if it was we’d already have fully (not partially) replaced fossil fuels with biofuels.
The dearman engine is zero emissions refrigeration truck, and runs on nitrogen. It is not being adopted into more developed countries despite being better, because of legacy vehicles. There are many reasons why biofuel hasn't taken off in the US but in many other countries it has.
So making more expensive technology for carbon capture is more economical? The problem they solved then was not fuel recycling, it was carbon capture. You can look it up (I'm on mobile) and state the issues with it. Even at the cost of $50 a tree, its 50 billion to stop worrying about carbon emissions.
To be blunt, you come across as having as shallow a grasp of this topic as I have of general relativity. I like learning about GR, but if I ask real physicists questions about it, the responses are, at best, “what are you even talking about?”
> The reason there are countries that developed and became first world countries is precisely because they used fossil fuels.
Better, cheaper, alternatives exist now. PV + battery is cheaper than new coal plants even in northern Europe, and almost everywhere has better solar than northern Europe.
> So we created more carbon than existed? Are you familiar with the fact that matter and energy is neither created nor destroyed? Carbon existed before as animals and other biomass, and you are saying now that the total biomass of the planet is not enough and we generated CO2 from thin air?
They are called “fossil fuels” for a reason. We dug up fossilised remains which were not part of the biosphere.
> The dearman engine is zero emissions refrigeration truck, and runs on nitrogen. It is not being adopted into more developed countries despite being better, because of legacy vehicles.
It’s a heat engine, and heat engine efficiency depends on the difference between the hot side and the cold side. You maximise efficiency by running as hot as possible, not as cold as possible. Hydrogen and batteries are both better.
> So making more expensive technology for carbon capture is more economical?
You’re the one suggesting carbon capture (that’s what planting trees is); I’m saying don’t emit carbon in the first place.
> Even at the cost of $50 a tree, its 50 billion to stop worrying about carbon emissions.
Except that as I already told you, a billion trees isn’t enough. A billion trees is about three months of emissions, even assuming you prevent the trees rotting or burning at the end of their lives. If you just turn them into wood, that only delays the problem by a few centuries at best.