Global Warming of 1.5 ºC | Hacker News Reader

Global Warming of 1.5 ºC

7 pointsthangalin5 comments

Earth warming by 3 °C will lead to mass suffering and death. We must reduce global emissions to below 35 gigatonnes of annual CO₂. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report[0] clarifying that our goal must be 1.5 °C to avoid disaster, not 2 °C. Achieving that means global carbon emissions must decrease significantly before 2030. Today’s emissions are between 40–45 gigatonnes per year. Following the Paris Agreement’s stipulations, global greenhouse gas emissions would still increase, peaking around 52–58 gigatonnes per year by 2030. That would coincide with 3 °C warming by 2100.

As individuals, actions having the most impact include:

1. Vote for parties aiming to exceed the Paris Agreement.

2. Never travel by airplane again (until electric planes take off).

3. Eat less meat and dairy (ideally, a soy-free vegan diet).

Other actions include:

* Choose eco-friendly appliances.

* Plant a vegetable garden (eat locally).

* Convert your home to solar power.

* Invest responsibly by divesting of fossil fuel funds.

[0]: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/

Has anyone done any math on any of the different suggestions?

If every American did these, for example, how many days would that buy us?

Perhaps a more data driven approach to addressing the problem.

I came up with this 2 years ago to address all these little suggestions

https://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-...

“Much of global CO2 emissions comes from the generation of electricity and transportation. Coal, in particular, is one of the worst offenders in climate change. It is used to generate 40% of global electricity.

However, for some reason, people while away their days discussing ideas to reduce emissions by a few percentage points.“

> Coal, in particular, is one of the worst offenders in climate change. It is used to generate 40% of global electricity.

Hyper-polluting factories take up the lion's share.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac13f1

> For the world as a whole, its top 5% percent of polluters contributed 73% of all electricity-based CO2 discharges.

This is why voting is so important.

The best resource I know of is the book Drawdown, edited by Paul Hawken, available in print or online. It includes short essays on things we can do and includes impact rankings and cost savings for each.

One of the many things I like about it is that it points out that most things we can do to address climate change save money. Continuing down the path we're on is not only morally reprehensible but financially self-destructive as well.

https://drawdown.org

Another source confirming personal choices: http://www.kimnicholas.com/uploads/2/5/7/6/25766487/fig1full.... It also mentions that having less kids should help, too.

Probably why most of the richest Americans are working on spaceflight to colonize the moon instead of carbon emissions. Not going to get enough people to do these things and they don't want to foot the bill themselves.

They have those fancy carbon sequestration plants but who will be the first to build them, dump dry ice somewhere and keep up while the developing world is just trying to get enough food on everyone's tables.

We need nuclear powered carbon sequestration and/or CO2 catalysis back to ethanol or graphite (wouldn't that be nice). Then every year when you do your taxes, the government with your electric bill, vehicle registration and travel history ships tonnes of dry ice to your house/apartment and it's your job to deal with it, Look at what you've done!

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