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Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months
- Havoc 7y agoIt's always ~12 months away. It was 5 years ago and will be in 5 more years. I've got a strong suspicion that it's game over already. Perhaps various grades of game over still exist.
- reallydude 7y agoIt's 18 months because of upcoming UN meetings. Which means nothing, so it's making an alarmist headline to tie to a story, which has no bearing on the reality. The UN can't keep humans from slaughtering each other, so what chance at "Saving the planet", for whatever that means?
- WalterSear 7y agoThe UN was created to do one job: prevent World War III. Everything else it has done is a bonus.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y agoBut the climate/energy crisis might very well lead us to World War III, still.
- SiempreViernes 7y agoWell, we’ve know of the increasing need of stopping emissions for something like 30 years and basically ignored trying to solve the problem for all of that time. So yeah, there have been plenty of deadlines for easier solutions we’ve blown past. But it is true, there are still some time left before we’re reduced to the Elysium solution.
- stirlo 7y agoThese sensationalist “Climate Emergency” articles and protests actually undermine the core arguments for climate change action. It’s obvious no matter how much political will we will be unable to make a 45% cut in 18 months. In the end these deadlines will come to nothing as technology advances and we develop novel solutions like a space based sun shield (launched by SpaceX starhopper?), seeding oceans to grow carbon absorbing algae, nuclear fusion, and new energy storage solutions. Just like “peak oil” and “global food shortages” predicted decades ago. Also never mind we have an excellent solution to carbon emissions in nuclear power but the same green left protesters oppose it too.
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- mavhc 7y agoSolar power will come online faster than nuclear anyway, just need to make 100x more solar panels per year to have solar for all energy usage in a few years. Seems to take 10 years to build nuclear power plants. Store excess power in batteries or convert to chemicals. There's enough gas in the gas pipes of the world for days of energy.
- Kaiyou 7y agoTo make solar panels certain materials are needed, which we do not have an abundance of. There's also limited space as to where to put them. On the other hand, if there weren't as many people consuming energy, we wouldn't need as much. But killing off 95% of humanity is unethical, after all.
- taylorlapeyre 7y agoWhat can the average person do to help? The scale of the problem sometimes seems so large that it's impossible to imagine how one person riding a bike or purchasing "green" energy from PG&E can really have an impact. How can one person have a bigger impact on such a global-scale issue?
- stirlo 7y agoLooking around me it seems to be stand in the street, hold a sign, block traffic and mess up everyone’s day... Or we could continue to be agile and innovate like humanity and technology has always done.
- abootstrapper 7y agoThis is not an “innovation” problem. We know how to solve climate change. It is a policy and funding problem. It is a political problem. We need more protests!
- mavhc 7y agoWell, you know 150 people, convince them to do the same. Get local politicians to be more proactive.
- SiempreViernes 7y agoTry to block free trade agreements that aren’t in line with the paris goals.
- Kaiyou 7y agoThe radical answer is to go out and kill as many other people as possible. Can't kill the planet if they ain't alive. The good news is that it's all media scare anyway. If you live long enough you too, will learn to not trust the media. Just think about the stuff you know a lot about and how the media depicts it. Media is clueless about everything.
- kjar 7y agoDrive less, and use public transit more, a relatively modest proposal. Vote out the blatantly vote pandering politicians pushing fossil fuels. Endorse those pushing solar and wind, plant billions of trees. These are a few of my favorite things. We are already F’d from pre-existing emissions - don’t go YOLO!
- mistrial9 7y agoIn case you want a pointer to thorough, well-written material on real things, you can look for the State of California 2017 Climate Plans.. e.g. http://resources.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DRAFT-Safeguarding-California-Plan-2017-Update.pdf http://resources.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/DRAFT-Saf...
- malvosenior 7y agoHyperbole like this is not helpful. The planet will be fine in 19 months and everyone will just crank the "boy who cried wolf" factor up a couple of notches. Also, this is a statement by Prince Charles of all people, might as well have Taylor Swift chime in while we're at it. This who discussion needs to be reframed. "The planet" is not ending. Humanity is not ending. We will survive. The ability to do so will rely on innovation as it always has. The media stoking the fires of fear with pure clickbait isn't helping the situation at all.
- mavhc 7y agoIt's ok, only millions will die, not billions? Then mass migration as crops and water supplies fail, leading to xenophobia, racism, riots. Already started.
- quibbler 7y agoAs opposed to the normal stable state of the planet?
- SiempreViernes 7y agoDo you mean you honestly don’t understand the message about decrease in survavability that the headline is trying to convey?
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoWay to totally misframe the piece. Hardly an off the cuff cry of wolf. He was commenting on the events and summits coming over the next 18 months. To quote the article: "But today, observers recognise that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year." There are two significant summits - New York in September, and London toward the end of 2020. If substantive and binding global agreement isn't achieved, then we're on for another half decade of pissing about. It's not like 1.5, 2 or 3 degrees is an end point, just which line of the graph we follow through the rest of the century and beyond.
- hirundo 7y ago
- mavhc 7y agoHottest days ever recorded in half of Europe, but no reason to panic, right? I assume everyone realises that we're going to die, and we're too stupid to spend 5% of GDP on fixing it, which is why the world's gone a bit crazy.
- stirlo 7y agoThe problem is the world won’t end, it simply changes, for every piece of land in a Bangladeshi river delta that gets flooded there’s a piece of Siberia where the permafrost will melt and become fertile farming ground.
- mavhc 7y agoProbably why Russia is funding internet conspiracies about global heating being fake.
- kennywinker 7y agoAssuming we don’t have runaway warming. There’s a lot of co2 locked up in that permafrost. When siberia gets too hot, where do we go after that?
- mavhc 7y agoSeems like everything about the Earth is a positive feedback loop for global warming. More ice melting, less reflection More ice melting, more methane released Co2 released from soil Less rain, less amazon rainforest More forest fires More deserts Clouds changing More water vapour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedback
- SiempreViernes 7y agoRight, and you will move the 120 million people and requsite infrastructure to this promised land in the north yourself? And what will you do about the parts of the middle east that will have unsurvivabled heat waves, move abu dabi and dubai to Alaska?
- 7y ago
- brogrammer5 7y agoIt's just the Earth's immune system finally kicking in. We need to stop fighting against nature and start working along with it. We cannot sustain ourselves without this planet and we're not going to find a replacement anytime soon. The intelligence that makes a seed grow into a flower is the same intelligence that will protect the Earth from these insane beings who live on its surface.
- Kaiyou 7y agoThis planet won't explode because of climate change. Don't be a drama queen. We may not be able to sustain 7 billion people, but why do there need to be billions of humans anyway? There's no good argument other then they are alive and killing humans is bad.
- brogrammer5 7y agoThe planet is only responding to a stimulus and experiencing a sort of fever which will cause major shifts in human consciousness by inducing increased suffering and eventually mass-ego destruction. It is at this stage that we will be able to work with the underlying intelligence of the Universe and reach our next stage of evolution. The 'end of the world' only means the end of the mind-identified state of consciousness and a return to pure consciousness and the end of all suffering.
- nathanaldensr 7y agoAnthropomorphizing Earth does not do anyone any good. It's not a living creature, nor does it contain a single "immune system."
- brogrammer5 7y agoIf an organism were 'alive', self-sustaining and fully conscious in space what would that look like?
- tunesmith 7y agoPretending that the US could solve it single-handedly, and it were dispersed among every US citizen, what would that look like? Is that just about buying carbon offsets from non-profits that plant trees? I'm tired of "we gotta do something", I want to know what to do and what the math implies in terms of personal responsibility. Carbon neutral or carbon positive behavior.
- mavhc 7y agoSwitch to electric everything (heating/cooling/transport) and buy renewable electricity. Stop eating meat. Stop buying stuff you don't really need.
- tunesmith 7y agoI don't doubt that that is necessary, but I'm not sure that would be sufficient. Like, if everyone in the US switched to electric heat/cooling and went vegetarian, does that make up for China, India, and Africa? I feel like I want a Drake equation for climate. Number of petawatt hours / year, number generated by fossil fuels, how much it needs to decrease (or have its growth slowed) to reach 1.5 degrees by whenever... but something simple that larger amounts of people can understand.
- mavhc 7y agoWhy do you think only people in USA would switch? Although they create 10x more CO2 than average iirc.
- Glench 7y agoSome numbers from Saul Griffith at Otherlab: Decarbonizing with massive electrification will bring about a new American abundance. https://medium.com/otherlab-news/decarbonization-and-gnd-b8ddd569de16 https://medium.com/otherlab-news/decarbonization-and-gnd-b8d... How do we decarbonize? We don’t need a miracle. Everything we need to solve climate change is already here. https://medium.com/otherlab-news/how-do-we-decarbonize-7fc2fa84e887 https://medium.com/otherlab-news/how-do-we-decarbonize-7fc2f... Green New Deal: How much does fixing climate change cost the US? A real-world argument with numbers you can check for yourself. https://medium.com/otherlab-news/green-new-deal-how-much-does-fixing-climate-change-cost-the-us-d542bb9e67c8 https://medium.com/otherlab-news/green-new-deal-how-much-doe...
- Brakenshire 7y agoIt’s 12 years to zero carbon if we want to keep below 1.5C, without assuming massive removal of carbon from the atmosphere from the mid century. Obviously this doesn’t stand much chance of happening, but it gives you an idea of the scale of the challenge. The Paris cuts are very much within our ability to do, and likely without damaging the economy, although of course some special interests with holdings in fossil fuels will lose their money. That’s a good start, even if it ends up being 2-3C that’s infinitely better than the alternative.