There’s Still Time to Fix Climate–About 11 Years | Hacker News Reader

There’s Still Time to Fix Climate–About 11 Years

scientificamerican.com

5 pointsoblib9 comments

That's not enough time. My current assumption is that all the worst predicted effects of global warming are going to happen: mass migration, food and water shortages, general political unrest, increasing economic inequality and instability, dwindling energy resources, escalation of national and tribal conflicts, etc. All the signs are there and the question is now whether governments will manage to adapt fast enough to mitigate the worst effects.

It's just absurd to think we can reduce carbon emissions to zero in 11 years. Let's take a look at global carbon output:

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

    (billions of tons)
    
    1969: 13.69
    1979: 19.46
    1989: 22.19
    1999: 24.43
    2009: 31.46 (Great Recession)
    2019: 36.44

The great recession was notable because that was a global downturn with a significant contraction in economic activity, and CO2 was only reduced from 31.95 to 31.46.

So this number will not be zero in 11 years, or even the same it is now in 11 years. It will be about 5 billion tons higher.

The more we do, and the sooner, the better the outcome. There are no real cutoffs.

It doesn't make sense to stop trying if we don't read some magic level by some arbitrary date.

To make it really concrete, 3 meters of sea level rise is really bad, but 7 meters is much worse.

The current trajectory has locked us into 2C+ of warming. Even if some magical technology appears out of nowhere and allows us to start capturing and sequestering carbon at the gigaton volumes required to make a dent we're still locked into 2C+ of warming. [1][2] At this point it is no longer a matter of doing enough, it's a matter of actively adapting to the reality of a warmer planet because no matter what we do 2C+ warming is an immutable fact.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s254IPHXgVA

2: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/th...

Of course we must adapt too. But 4C is a lot worse outcome than 2.5 C.

My point is that people still think there is a way to salvage things when there isn't and because they think there is a technological solution they are refusing to change their consumption habits. That's what I mean by adaptation. By the way, at 4C there is no longer any human civilization as we now know it. Even at 3C we're basically screwed.

The Biden Administration isn’t going to get as much in the Infrastructure bill for renewable energy.

China is increasing greenhouse emissions until around 2030 and won’t be net zero until 2060.

It’s unlikely that nearly enough is going to happen in the next 11 years.

Almost 40% of global electricity is from coal, and we keep building.

That's basically how I felt when reading this.

> China is increasing greenhouse emissions until around 2030 and won’t be net zero until 2060.

No, China has not promised to be "net zero" in the sense of producing no new net carbon emissions, rather China has promised they will generate at most 20% of their power needs from fossils by 2060. They also promised to stop increasing the percentage of power from fossil fuels by 2030. This is covered in the recent guardian piece:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/25/china-to-cut-f....

But given that their economy is growing at 6-8% per annum, that's 20% of an economy much, much bigger than today's. In other words, by 2060, even if they meet the 20% goal, that's much more energy from fossil fuels than China is using today as their energy usage will be 10-20 times higher in 2060. This is what they are labelling as "carbon neutral" just as Germany lobbies for natural gas to be labelled as "clean energy". That should tell you how politicized all of this is.

OTOH, China has failed to meet their annual intermediate goals, which led the government to discourage coal mining this year, which in turn led to significant power outages across the nation, in response to which China stood down and encouraged more coal production again. So I'm not sure whether China will be able to meet that 20% goal.

OTOOH, they are working hard at nuclear and who knows, they may succeed in transitioning to a nuclear grid, I wouldn't bet against them doing it. They are certainly taking a leadership role in next gen nuclear power, and being a party dictatorship helps with not dealing with the pesky green crowd.

What China has discovered -- which is what unfortunately many in the West still need to discover -- is that it is not "pledges" that reduce emissions, but the actual deployment of cost effective and reliable alternate power sources. If you just make the pledge and leave it to individual power utilities or consumers, then you create a situation in which there are high energy prices and blackouts, and then you get kicked out of office and replaced with those who have no interest in pursuing the pledge. What you need to do is go on a mass building nuclear spree, like China. After all, a pledge is just a "pledge" by whichever political party is in charge. It's not even a treaty. It can be ignored or abandoned if the domestic population sees energy prices rising or reliability dropping.

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