https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/04/un-ipcc-...
https://www.iea.org/news/global-co2-emissions-rebounded-to-t...
This doesnt sound that impossible? It's already happenening.
> The use of coal for electricity generation in 2021 was intensified by record high natural gas prices
High natural gas prices sound like a good thing for renewables?
Not if it's a short term dip you can only practically fill with coal
Catching up to meet some goal no one understands isn't possible. The world will get warmer and warmer until some market/military/survival barrier is reached.
"We need to pass this law so that in 1000 years sea levels will be X" is complete farce.
I'm not saying the science is wrong. I've read the ipcc reports and im convinced of human caused warming. I'm saying being right about the science says almost nothing about what changes need to be made in the world.
Humans dont care about altering the environment to meet our needs. The Holocene Extinction carries on.
What? Maybe reducing CO2 emissions?
Maybe you meant that being right about the science says almost nothing about what human beings are willing to do to solve it.
And I guess “science” does not have an opinion about the system we live in, arguably.
No, I didn't mean to say what you said. I meant to say what I said.
And apologies for my wording.
Global warming is the (as usual incredibly well-chosen) name for the rate of increase in temperature going up way too fast. The purpose is to stretch the next 100 years of warming at the current rates to call it 2000 years of warming. To make it take longer. Not to stop it, and not to reverse it. The ideal global warming changes will keep warming the planet, just much slower than is currently happening.
The problem is I'm going to get downvoted for this, as there is an anti-global-warming "theory" that says we're at the start of the next ice age. And like all good lies, it's essentially true. In the next few thousand years an ice age should start. The name global warming, however, means that if possible it'd be nice if all the remaining progress to the next ice age didn't happen in ~200 years.
* the cheapest way to generate new energy is still renewables
* the biggest bang for buck change governments could make would be to stop subsidizing fossil fuels
* phasing out the fossil fuels would also increase our global health
So, even in this pessimistic scenario, we should still be phasing out coal as quickly as possible, it's a no-regret strategy.
Did we keep the temp change below 2C? No we just saved millions of lives, Trillions of dollars.
vs
Did we keep the temp change below 2C? Yes, and we saved millions of lives, Trillions of dollars on top of that.
Last I heard, we could still physically achive 1.5 degrees, but we would have to switch completely to command economy immediately and take a big reduction in economic activity (a couple times larger than during the peak of COVID). Which I believe is still better than the alternative.
Which is the main flaw that the current economic model has regarding climate change, paying people to do the thing we don't want them to do.
> Globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $5.9 trillion or 6.8 percent of GDP in 2020 and are expected to increase to 7.4 percent of GDP in 2025 as the share of ...
https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidie...
It would be with nuclear. But the nutters won round 1, which makes 2º virtually assured.
> we would have to switch completely to command economy
Command economies centralize political power. Broadly speaking, modern elites are insulated from everything but total societal collapse, which any country able to re-organise into a command economy is unlikely to face. One would expect a centralized political structure to give fewer shits about the environment, not more.
I agree political centralization would be a bad thing. For one, the peripheral will suffer the most from climate change. A society that calls itself utopian in my mind should be decentralized and allow political freedoms.
But anyway, it is just a thought experiment - can any ideal society beat climate change in our lifetimes?
We’re past the point of supply-side solutions. We literally don’t have the materials. That leaves demand reduction. Depending on your definition of “ideal,” the answer could be yes or no.
https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/305/graphic-when-...
In fact if you look at the source for that graph [1] you'll see it's a paper from 2009 and they used old 2007 IPCC data for their models.
The IPCC has not taken feedbacks into account until their sixth report of which the synthesis hasn't been published yet [2].
In 2009 feedbacks were still not well understood. In fact Natalia Shakhova didn't publish her seminal paper on methane in the Arctic until 2010. Here's an interview with her in 2013:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx1Jxk6kjbQ
Curious to hear your take on that.
Maybe I'm missing something but here's my pedestrian view on it.
The thing that bugs me the most is the article almost completely ignores the role of feedbacks. This has been the classic IPCC position (which AFAIK they've rectified for their sixth assessment).
The article only mentions this right at the end:
"If, however, zero emissions were to occur later in the century, there is the potential to lock in more carbon-cycle feedback processes – such as melting permafrost – than under current global temperature levels."
Quite a strange comment considering the permafrost has been melting for decades. See the Natalia Shakhova video I shared on my earlier comment. A quick google search will tell you more about the methane feedback.
And there are other feedbacks already triggered like the Arctic ice melting. Arctic ice deflects sunlight and has been decreasing yearly since we started measuring it in the 70s IIRC. See the latest data from the PIOMAS project:
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger...
The article also makes some bizarre claims such as "If emissions are cut to zero, on the other hand, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 would quickly fall, before eventually stabilising at a lower level.". But according to NASA, CO2 remains in the atmosphere between 300 and 1000 years.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-getting-a-...
https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-chan...
Then "as the oceans slowly warmed up to reach the same temperature as the atmosphere". The oceans absorb more heat than the atmosphere which is the released over the following decades in a phenomenon sometimes called climate lag.
http://climatecat.eu/ufaqs/5-why-does-co2-lag-temperature/
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/3/03...
I really can't understand this mentality. So what if we probably won't reach the goals? What is the proposed action here? Increase the limits on carbon emissions? Evacuate the places that will go under water?
For some reason, the arguments I see online revolve around the idea of "we can't make it, just don't bother" as if it is a investment opportunity that failed.
I think similar to your friend.
I'm anti-everything that pollutes even on a more instinctive level because my nose just can't handle gas odors / car exhaust etc I just hate it.
You will never fix climate change without first fixing wealth inequality.
Ain't no chance in hell John Doe will start biking to his workplace where he'll arrive drenched in sweat while he sees the CEO arriving in a private helicopter.
Another example: Bill Gates being a climate change activist, a noble cause of course but the guy owns the largest fleet of private jets no I do not care he offsets it with credits.
Forget about John Doe, think of Jose Gonzalez in some South American shithole, guy makes less than $50 a week as a taxi driver in his own car, his catalytic converter breaks down and it costs $500 you think he's going to replace it? No way.
I'm inviting everyone in this thread to step into the real world for a moment.
Buying carbon offsets is the same as beating your wife every week and then donating money to a battered women's shelter to atone for your sins.
I know the reality of unavoidable climate catastrophe is uncomfortable to talk about, but aggressive denial is really a problem in the HN community.
I can completely understand people who haven't studied this topic in depth not being aware of how dire the situation is, so asking questions or debating is healthy and expected. Downvoting a comment consisting of a statement of fact combined with a logical hypothesis derived from that fact, backed up by 3 well known citations is not a healthy direction for this community to develop in.
Denial is a part of dealing with this reality, but as a community we should work a bit harder to move towards better acceptance and understanding.
Very often I disagree with some comment and nevertheless upvote, because that comment is really thoughtful and is an important contribution to the discussion with important subjects or perspectives that need to be considered.
Yes, I totally agree. Often I upvote a comment I disagree with since it nevertheless is a thoughtful and important contribution to the discussion. I feel I learn most from people I disagree with.
OP did not write that at all! He only wrote a single sentence, why did you create new text to criticize and attribute it to OP?
I myself keep pointing to the NOAAA page for the CO2 growth rate (https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gr.html) - which is positive and increasing. OP is correct and the parent is too. Even the growth rate still increases, it still keeps getting worse faster! It's unpopular on reddit's /r/de too to say that, with similar justification. As if lying and keeping truth away won't hurt much more because no, people are stupid but not completely.
In addition here in Germany I got so watch from a front seat how the people in the country react when even just a single fossil fuel is cut - and only partially (even for Germany Russia only supplies a part of the gas, even if it's a substantial one). We actually needed to stop regardless of the Russian situation, for climate change alone. Which nobody ever even dares to mention, the public discussion and what politicians have to say is all about "crisis mode". I have not seen a single politician try to reframe it as "we need to do this anyway", it's either about supporting people financially to be able to afford more expensive gas, about who needs to save, or how and where to get other gas faster than 2024 (deal with Katar for LNG).
The head of the state of Saxony warned of "deindustrialization". But we need to cut fossil fuel anyway! Worldwide!
The current crisis should be a chance, but it is only seen, and only framed, as "crisis", to be remedied to get back to full gas storage and fully flowing supplies.
The situation IS this dire! Try significantly reducing usage of fossil fuels in any country. You get riots.
You can plant as many trees and ban plastic straws all you like, the only thing that would make a dent is a significant reduction in removing any more fossil fuels of any kind from below ground to feed it into the above ground carbon cycle. And it is truth that it looks really really bad. That would just limit the growth rate, it still would do nothing towards actually lowering atmospheric CO2.
From the comment I replied to:
>reality of unavoidable climate catastrophe
>how dire the situation is
I read this as "doomed". And if we are already doomed and nothing can be done about it, shouldn't we eat as much meat and take as many flights as we want? This is how a lot of people think when they read stuff like this, and honestly, they have a point. Either it's unavoidable and dire OR we can do something about it (by limiting emissions). So why ask people to make sacrifices and then also tell them we are doomed anyway?
As a suggestion of “fixable” they literally said it was unavoidable.
Someone that forgot about an upcoming test is doomed.
> There's no chance of limiting warming to 2 degrees anymore. It's just not a realistic goal.
They said nothing about 2° being the tipping point between hope and hopelessness. Only that we're more screwed than some people still hope we are.
Honestly I'm not sure if coal is worse than shipping gas from the gulf (which produces lots of CO2 from the compressing and shipping)
I hold "contrary" opinions on the climate debate, but I don't take these kinds of articles the way that you noted at all. I see it simply as an opportunity to change tactics.
Warming is unavoidable so major expenditure on whatever adaptations are possible is just as necessary as getting off fossil fuels, and ignoring that reality will set many areas up for long-term disasters in the near future.
Another uncomfortable reality is that politicians in all fossil-fuel producing nations may give lip service to climate concerns, but in reality none of them are going to try to shut down the most profitable economic activity in their countries. That's what the record shows in the USA as well.
- A thoughtful, non-flippant response and sometimes included citations
- In disagreement with the article/other comments
- Downvoted almost instantly
I personally enjoy reading many of this community's comments, thoughts, and ideas, especially when someone has taken the time to write out a thoughtful response, and even if I may not agree with the conclusion. I really hope others do, as well.