Earth may temporarily pass dangerous 1.5 C warming limit by 2024 | Hacker News Reader

Earth may temporarily pass dangerous 1.5 C warming limit by 2024

phys.org

61 pointsBrajeshwar41 comments

I think we as humanity will just keep on denying this is happening or that something can be done about it, until in a few (?) decades we'll agree that we're f*cked and that it is all to late and we must blame the people of the past for getting us there. That way we are never personally responsible, but can always look at someone else/some other time.

And oil companies will double down on their lobbying to increase oil production and consumption since we're screwed anyways.

I feel that on a personal level. You can stop flying, reduce your consumption, sort your trash like your life depends on it etc, only for your next door neighbour to undo all of your work.

That's just in Central Europe, where people can afford to care. Go a little further out and you'll see really discouraging scenes. There are many countries where people drive the cars that failed the emissions test in Germany, with the German decals still on them. Recycling does not exist there. You can find towns by the plumes of smoke coming from their burning trash.

With more and more people gaining access to a certain living standard, I feel like it's a lost battle. There will be more cars, more consumption. Combine that with the other economical ills of this world, and I really doubt any vanguard efforts will see a reward.

Still, your own carbon emissions are reduced significantly if you never fly or drive or eat meat.

Individually we can only be examples for people to copy.

We can also organize as individuals, become single issue voters, send demands to our politicians at the local, state, and federal level.

Maybe it takes too long, but at least it's something besides just individually doing the right thing.

> only for your next door neighbour to undo all of your work.

It's not like they're flying and consuming more because of you. They're consuming as they would regardless of you. It's still a net reduction overall, and your contribution is still there.

Imagine if the entire developed world suddenly magically disappeared so that no further emissions happened from that population. Would the existing co2 in the atmostphere still be enough to cause 2 degrees of warming?

The half life of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 30 years (2.5%/yr). We're currently at ~400ppm, whereas before industrialization we were at ~250 (there are other sources). So yes, if we stopped anthropogenic CO2 we would very likely avoid a 1.5C increase.

There are other second-order effects that continue, eg. reduced albedo as the polar ice melts, methane emissions as the permafrost thaws, increased weathering of carbonates.

"half life of CO2 in the atmosphere" is a bit misleading, (most|some) people will think it means the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere halves every 30 years. That is false.

This NASA link says CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-getting-a-...

And this site: https://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-residence-time.htm

explains that while the individual molecule CO2 hangs around the atmosphere for 3-4 years, it's then merely exchanged with one in the oceans (or maybe one in a rotting tree).

On this study: https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https:/...

on page 4 (shown 25 on the page), you can see the box model of the global carbon cycle. Halflife refers on how long the a CO2 molecule spends in a given box.

Most likely yes - there are a bunch of feedback loops in climate that continue even if the initial source of warming is removed.

The most likely scenario that would result in the "entire developed world suddenly magically disappeared" is a nuclear winter, though. Such an event would drop global temperatures by a lot more than 2 C, nullifying the problem.

> The most likely scenario that would result in the "entire developed world suddenly magically disappeared" is a nuclear winter

Please don't give politicians ideas.

Everyone thought that "The Wall" was a joke, and yet...

But for how long, and does that remove the carbon or just mask the problem while the carbon remains?

that's why i said "magically disappeared" instead of "blew itself up with nuclear weapons" :)

Yes, even if we completely eliminate carbon emissions, our current carbon debt is around 1 trillion tons [1]. We'll need to remove that much carbon from the atmosphere within 50 years or so, given we stop all of our emissions today.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyQvfaW54NU

It's quite interesting because if we stoped all emissions right now the temperature would increase due to lack of aerosol emissions. It's speculated that air quality regulations in Europe led to warming of arctic by 0.5°C (https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2673).

I just saw a Michael Moore-affiliated documentary (directed and hosted by some guy I've never seen before - Jeff Gibbs) . It might only be a bunch of hype. But, it drew attention to a huge source of renewable energy that I've never heard of before: biomass plants. One of the theses of this documentary is that biomass plants mainly run off of forested timber, so the use of these power plants (as a primary renewable energy resource in Germany and seemingly Michigan) is far from green/renewable.

Is this a "haters gonna hate" kind of situation or are biomass plants legitimately an evil in disguise?

A large chunk of the Danish “green/renewable” energy comes from biomass plants when the wind isn’t blowing. So this is a debate we’re currently having, and it’s basically looking more and more like a legislative hack.

Biomass plants burn biomass instead of fossil fuels. We’re currently burning a lot of wood by-products from the Estonian lumber (timber?) industry.

I’m not big on the science, and I hope someone can put it better, but the arguing, as I understand it, goes something like: “the trees have absorbed CO2, so burning them is CO2 neutral”, but it’s not like burning wood stuff doesn’t release CO2.

Right, you’d need to be positive that biomass is replacing what’s burned in order to call it neutral. On some drawn out time scales this is practically guaranteed, but in the short term it’s very easy to burn far too much without ensuring replacement occurs at a scale and speed that is sustainable.

I suppose you could use byproducts of selective logging where replanting is occurring and actively managed and maintained. Where I’m living there are forests that are quite well managed for lumber such that what’s removed will likely be replaced by the time logging occurs again. Using a similar practice for biomass plants could conceivably be called carbon neutral.

I have a feeling it wouldn’t generate nearly enough biomass conveniently or efficiently enough. I don’t know though. It must take incredible amounts of mass to generate useful amounts of energy.

I guess the main difference would be:

1. burning fossil fuel. Pulling carbon from within the earth and putting the CO2 in the air. 2. biomass burning. Burning Carbon that is above ground and putting in the air.

I think 1+2=bad, 2 by itself I don’t think is bad basically what the Native Americans used to do to maintain forests before Europeans. However, we don’t live in a world where we are just doing #2.

That’s not really how it goes though. We’re using it to make our numbers pretty so we meet the EU and Paris agreements, but it doesn’t actually make us a renewable country, and once the goals are met, political focus will go elsewhere.

It could be worse, sure, but that’s not an excuse for not doing better.

“the trees have absorbed CO2, so burning them is CO2 neutral” is correct as far as it goes, but it completely ignores externalities and second-order effects.

If you burn biofuels you encourage people to clear-fell forests to grow biofuels, as happens in Indonesia and Brazil.

If you promote burning biofuels, you divert attention from cleaner alternatives (Solar PV, wind).

If you make a big deal about biofuels, you create the impression that nothing really has to change.

Biomass is obviously CO2 neutral as long as it is replaced. The ratio between burned and used is of course important. Is 1:1 CO2 neutral? Probably not, due to losses and transport. Is 1:2, 1:3?

One of the claims in the video is that: If all of the trees in the United States (I think) were burned in these plants that it would power the United States (I think) for one year (I'm sure). Given that it takes more than 1 year to regrow all of the trees it seems like a foolish decision.

Apparently some of the plants also choose/have to incinerate vulcanized rubber (tires) to burn green/wet lumber.

Frankly, just using the documentary as my reference, this seems like an awful scheme and I can't fathom how subsidies and policy supported this technology.

Sure, but they aren't burning the lumber exclusively. If the timber is supplementing other power, then it wouldn't be depleting forests. Eg if you used 1/40th of all your timber every year, and replanted it all, you'd never run out assuming a 40 year timber cycle.

If solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, and grid storage cover most of the need, then biomass can certainly pick up some slack. And I'm sure there are plenty of industries that generate biomass as waste -- lumber, farming, etc. That waste would decompose into CO2, we might as well get some energy from it, right?

Seems like we're burning like half the trees in the us right now and powering nothing, tho.

The US has never been more forested in the last 150 years.

Wherever plants grow, there is biomass created. With agriculture, it is all the parts of the plants which aren't eaten, be it by humans or lifestock. But the same applies for all natural plants growing. Left on its own, it would decay and emit most of the carbon content as CO2 anyway. Burning any available biomass for energy generation is basically CO2 neutral. Using available biomass as an energy source, is a good way of reducing the carbon footprint. However, there is only so much available, the ability to artificially increase the supply is extremely limited.

how limited? The growing season produces a pretty significant dip in global CO2, what if instead of burning it wholly, we pyrolysed it? That seems much better than carbon neutral.

There is only so much biomass we can extract from the biosphere without endangering it. It is limited to the amount what grows naturally. Actually, it is less, as the decaying biomass also plays an important role.

But yes, if we could extract the carbon from the cycle, it would be even better and truly CO2-negative. We should bury wood underground where it is not decaying for example.

Biomass works when there already is a source of biomass around which otherwise needs to be taken care of, e.g. in areas with intense forestry, next to sawmills etc. As soon as you need to import biomass you're lost since a) this entails transports over longer distances and b) you loose the oversight on how that biomass is produced. This leads to insane situations like Stockholm importing biomass from the Americas.

"Biomass" plants aka wood furnaces with a bit more marketing serve a political purpose. Renewables have an intermitence problem which will require a huge storage and peak load infrastructure solution to address it.

Until that problem is solved the "Biomass" wood furnaces and "Natural" Gas power plants serve the political purpose of allowing politicians to claim that they are ditching 'dirty' coal and 'dangerous' nuclear, those solutions will probably still create less CO2 emissions but they are by no means "green" or "eco" anything.

The problem with renewables is not power production but Power intermitence. Offshore wind farms can help but the scale of power that we consume will need a much deeper ground-breaking technical solution or a vastly greater power consumption reduction from consumers and industry, or both.

The timing of the Fukushima nuclear disaster was so unfortunate.

The reaction to it was even more unfortunate

As per UAH we're just about on par with the 1998/1999 peak. Back then it was supposed to keep going up too, but took an almost 20 year break for whatever reason.

https://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_...

First off, the trend line on that graph is clearly upwards. You can’t cherry pick one outlier data point as the starting point and then say that anything below that point doesn’t matter. This is clearly trolling behavior at best. Secondly, I’m not sure where you found this graph but it’s clearly been chosen specifically because of the height of the 1998 outlier. A graph including the whole earth and all data available does not show the same strong peak. So this is again, prevarication at best.

> First off, the trend line on that graph is clearly upwards. You can’t cherry pick one outlier data point as the starting point and then say that anything below that point doesn’t matter.

And where did I claim that?

Both RSS and UAH show this same peak. This is a well known fact to anybody who's following satellite temperature measurements.

The graph starts in 79 because UAH didn't exist before that time.

> A graph including the whole earth and all data available does not show the same strong peak.

You may mean giss which is a different measurement method based on ground measurement stations, not the "whole earth". It shows a less pronounced peak, yes.

At what point do we just accept the world is coming to an end and do nothing?

The world will go on.

The question is, what kind of life do you want your children/nieces and nephews to live in fifty years' time?

We're heading for a world in which rich countries will be severely tested by hundreds of millions of wannabe climate migrants, while coping with the aftermath of repeated storms* and recurrent shortages of food and other ncecessities.

(On the up side, global population is going to peak soon.)

Any action helps make things that much less bad in fifty years.

* firestorms, windstorms, rainstorms, seastorms, ...

when you are dead.

Disappointing that the piece finished with "urgent action can change trends".

No, it can't. Urgent inaction can change trends, though. Stop mining coal. Stop making cement. Stop refining oil and gas. Stop eating meat.

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