Earth likely briefly passed critical warming threshold on Friday and Saturday
axios.com
axios.com
... or if that not helps maybe it is time to destroy some more Van Gogh paintings or something.
I wish that this kind of symbolic transgression could really be the most tragic consequences of the situation.
I could come with a digression of my own, but probably you’ll be better serve with a document like https://phys.org/news/2021-10-climate-contributes-global-vio...
The trend is probably too slow but it’s there: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/plastic-bans-around...
Not long ago I had a few scientist friends working for an "NGO", and it was so crazy to see mugs and other swag from oil companies over at their HQ...
Of course, climate catastrophists want everyone living in pods in dystopian mega-cities as the solution for this.
Ok, 'get in the pods' may be a silly meme, but living a tiny but ludicrously expensive city centre apartment and working from home on a screen (or in a future metaverse) all day, getting most things delivered and rarely needing to go outside, it's getting pretty close.
Those rural area voters, in turn, elect politicians who scream blue bloody murder about how high taxes are, and refuse to vote for funding for public transportation...something that would benefit the cities generating the wealth the rural areas.
Isn't it wild how the "fiscal conservatives" always come from states that consume far more federal spending than they contribute in federal tax revenue?
Further, we over-paved rural areas in the name of "progress" - dirt roads are much, much cheaper but people hate them because they think it's a sign of being poor.
Completely shut down tourism to areas of natural beauty and other recreational outdoors activities too far away from the prison-city?
Except for the elite who of course get to keep their private jets and superyachts...
As to the other strawman arguments, it's besides my original point, but no I don't think we should forcefully move anyone. But it's just a simple fact that rural living and suburbia are heavily subsidized by the economic engines that are cities. And, accounting for economic production, cities have a much smaller environmental impact per capita.
Judging by your comments, you seem to be of the opinion that environmentalists mostly love rich people and want to exempt them from climate taxes while allowing them to continue enjoying luxuries that produce as much carbon as dozens of middle class lifestyles.
I have to say that in my experience with environmentalists, nothing could be further from the truth. They are, largely, middle class to poor (in U.S. terms) themselves, and overwhelmingly blame consumption by the rich and corporate practices encouraged by externalized costs under our present economic system.
That's not to say that there aren't some activists and scientists who fly to conferences. But they tend to be more aware of this conflict than you might think. Some scientists, for example, refuse to fly. And there is some credibility to the idea that the work they are doing is vital, whereas luxury vacations clearly are not.
There are many things not directly measurable which have an impact. Example: when learning a new programming language reading one paragraph of a tutorial does not have a measurable effect on you knowing the language - for most paragraphs. But if you read zero paragraphs you might not know anything.
The ban should have economic effects somewhere in the supply chain. One hopes the economic data will help policymakers understand the effects of eliminating those kitchen garbage bags, and then craft the arguments that influence people to change their behavior—-in other words a move was made. Now we need the data.
33% of global carbon emissions are from the west 18% from the united states A significant share of chinese emmissions is driven by western consumerism as well and could be reduced.
Even a 10% reduction of the overall share driven purely by the west would amount to a lot more than a drop. Even more if coupled with a proper incentive system for other countries to follow
"completely pointless"?
There's a reason semiconductors are no longer manufactured in 'Silicon Valley' who's soil is still full of forever chemicals, but mostly all moved to Asia where there's a lot less concern for the local environment as long as billions are flowing in the country.
https://theconversation.com/how-silicon-valley-industry-poll...
At this point lots of warming is inevitable regardless of what (peaceful) things the US and EU do. Africa will get four billion people this century and they want things.
PV is cheap, and for places that don't yet have a reliable grid connection, batteries may be cheaper than building a grid (or stabilising it if they have one that's unstable).
But if the west would be serious about climate change and developement aid, there would be huge opportunities to do things different.
Also one of the people we visited had an income so low their annual rent was equivalent to about US$1k, so consider how old and decrepit a vehicle has to be on a western market to be in her price range.
There's a huge variation of culture and living standards across the continent, from people much richer than that who buy new cars that are expensive by western standards to people who walk miles to get water from a well because there isn't any plumbing.
PV and storage have the advantage of being scalable down to small cheap things that even the poorest can benefit from. Cars, not so much, so for low priced transportation, think instead about e-bicycles and e-motorbikes, and even manual bicycles. Or public transport (but even then, the crowded matatu I was in for one trip looked old).
> Africa will get four billion people this century and they want things.
That's simply a stronger and stronger argument to make sure they get help and incentives to do it with minimal GHG emissions.
I ask as a renter who doesn't own a car and would love to stop paying for other people's fancy electric SUV's and house retrofits that costs tens of thousands of Euro.
Hydrocarbon fuels will continue to lead the agenda and pace, read stiffle action, for climate emergency mitigation through lobbying and media narrative.
The end game is obvious but there is still a long runway of profit that can be extracted until it is no longer palitable for public opinion.
I see three possible tipping points:
- Climate change erodes US hegemony to a point that is no longer palitable to US national interests [1]
- People mass suing companies for climate damage in a magnitude that impacts the bottom line or charges C-levels criminally.
- Environmental groups start taking out Oil & Gas Board members and lobbyists, subsequent 'terror' precipitates an actual sunsetting.
At least the geometric shape building in America seems to be ahead of this in contingency plans for some tipping points.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64240206
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/intelligenc...
(Ah, hark, I hear crickets chirping.)
Looking at the graphs, however, we should go back to covid society, well, without all the dying. That basically put us on a better track than what we need for almost two years.
I’m optimistic though. This year alone has been a massive impact on the global economy in terms of climate costs. Which in term have our local politicians actually talking about solutions. Many of them are focused on being better prepared, but some of them are also waking up to the fact that large parts of our country will be basically inhabitable unless something is done. Not sure why it took them 50 years to get there, but it is what it is.
Bali Rice Experiment
Yes, covid society was better for the environment and humans.
With the dying you save the environment way faster. "We should go back to covid society" just means let's all be ascetic monks. There's too many people in the world. We don't need more wetlands or this or that, we just need to understand that a population that grows without limits always destroys itself, that's all.
What's the point of a planet with billions of people if their lives suck and they have to stay home using their CO2 quotas? Much better to have less people living normally.
I'd also say that more asceticism would produce a healthier society. Current western consumerist society isn't healthy for anybody. Neither the planet, nor humans.
Tangential point: You severely underestimate the impact of scale and specialization on our standard of living. There is no way we could the same variety of nice things at 500million people
Streaming TV and Education.
Educating women, in particular, is strongly correlated with population reduction across the globe.
Two generations of that and the world could be stabilising a billion and half below where we are today.
To your tangential point: I think technological development will allow less and less people needed on the supply chain to sustain the same quality of life for society. I think this is clear from history and it only goes in one direction.
I'm aware there's people that defend more extreme views like boosting abortions or other dystopian measures. I don't believe in any of those, I think everyone should have the right to reproduce if they feel like it, I'd just rather it be an informed decision, but I wouldn't add any control measures for fear of abusive mis-use by the government later on.
No govt subsidies or anything. Our own $ and our own work. Nobody will do it, nobody will pay to do it, so we do.
Please consider making part of it a wetlands.
Forests cover about 10 percent of the planet and store about 15 percent of stored carbon.
Peatlands cover about 3 percent of the planet and store an estimated 25 or 30 percent of carbon.
We've lost 85 of global wetlands since the 1700s. Restoring them could dramatically increase the amount of stored carbon.
If we want to achieve this sort of thing, we'd need to manufacture peat and store that underwater. Possible but when we make more, we usually destroy the planet more too. I'm not sure we'd offset it.
For the short-term, planting rice differently can reduce methane emissions substantially. In the short-term, methane is much worse. In the long run, methane breaks down to carbon which persists.
If we want to reverse climate change, we need to restore nature's ability to sink that carbon.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37140831
(My previous comment should say "85 percent". Oops.)
With 20-30% of atmospheric methane coming from wetlands, while they may ultimately sink more carbon into themselves, the process seems too inefficient, trading CO2 for some CH4.
Forestry produces a much healthier mix of gasses. On its own it's not a quick sink but when you manage it, and extract timber and end up sinking tonnes of carbon into your buildings. The trees consume CO2 to photosynthesis and aerobic bacteria in open forests consume CH4. Seems like a win-win.
It seems likely that a notable percentage of global warming is due to wetlands loss, not just industrialization.
So far, I haven't managed to do a deeper analysis with hard numbers. Feel free to do a write up if you think you know enough about the topic. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be interested.
You cannot multiply wetland. It takes a thousand years to get a 10m deep peat bog and every second of its wet, rotting existence creates CH4. Wetlands offer lots of benefits —nature, water management, etc— but greenhouse gasses really aren't one.
More importantly you're only comparing standing volumes of carbon. We extract billions of m³ of lumber out of forests each year. Even the process of growing it, is far better. Methane is being consumed, not created.
The overall picture is complex but if we're thinking about things in the short term, farming lumber (and using less concrete, brick) would do far more good than creating wetland.
The first thing we did when we bought the place was to plant several broad wind-breaks and shelter-belts with native species in the pasture, forming "corridors". Over the years we've added more -- revegetating the road-verge and encouraging the stuff already there to grow back. We've also planted hedgerows of some other trees that aren't native, but are stock fodder, and the birds and insects love them.
We plant a variety of eucalyptus species, acacias, sheoaks, and a number of melaleuca's and various bushes and shrubs.
This year we enlarged two of our large shelter-belts, extended several of our shade-clumps, and did an ambitious amount of planting along the road verge (which hopefully won't be shredded by the council next time they come along).
It's a drop in the ocean, but it's local, it's something concrete that we can do beyond the rather ridiculous appeasement of separating the recyclables.
Some of the trees we plant will outlive us, and I love that.
Anything we can do is better than nothing
Just a drop in the bucket, but hey.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/29/china-coal-pla...
Sorry, should have linked this in the original comment.
>Yes, but: Breaching the 2-degree threshold for two days does not mean that the Paris Agreement's target of holding global warming to "well below" such a mark has been exceeded.
Definitely cause for concern, but not panic.
We've been "concerned" for a long time. We've done very little about it.
The entire point is that they're trying to get people to take it seriously before it's time to panic. When there's cause to panic, it's much, much too late.
I'd say it's already too late, because we can't even get people to "concerned". There are too many people ideologically or financially insistent that it's all a hoax, and that there's nothing to be concerned about.
I'd say that the fact that so many people aren't even concerned is cause for panic. Panic of the form: "This is all so obvious that one of us must be incredibly stupid, and increasing levels of evidence points to you."
The moralizing and doom don’t really help anybody.
It's critical, so let's focus on practical responses to both limit future warming and handle the consequences of where we’re heading.
A lot of people over-dramatise the situation, but we should be afraid to use words like "critical" when they make sense.
The primary thing exaggeration does is convince a small number of people that they also need to loudly exaggerate adding more noise drowning out the folks who aren’t exaggerating and need to be heard.
That is one angle to influence politicians, though. In public they like to claim moral superiority.
Fear is a bad way to govern.
Also, a threat is a threat. Ignoring it does not make it less of a threat, usually.
I see benefits. Less burned wood and gas for warming indoors and less frozen people.