62 ms·

World Now Likely to Hit Watershed 1.5 °C Rise in Next 5 Years

• NoblePublius 5y ago
  I bet my developers in Novosibirsk, Siberia are looking forward to this. It seems like this issue is cared about mostly by people privileged with Mediterranean climates.
  • shkkmo 5y ago
    Have you heard of this thing called "permafrost" and what it does to buildings and infrastructure on the surface when it melts?
  • vavooom 5y ago
    Is there a service that helps identify property in northern climates (Canada/Russia/Alaska/etc.) that will be significantly more 'livable' in say 10-30 years time as the climate continues to warm? Would be a lucrative opportunity/ help young people plan for a more realistic future.
    • dumbfoundded 5y ago
      There are lots of papers on it. One for example: https://grist.org/article/we-broke-down-what-climate-change-will-do-region-by-region/ https://grist.org/article/we-broke-down-what-climate-change-... Michigan looks pretty good but moving people and infrastructure will be unlikely. Cities will likely adapt and build it into their cost. Miami for example will be underwater but levies and sea walls can be constructed. I don't imagine Miami moving to upstate Michigan.
    • ehnto 5y ago
      You could look at coastal change maps and buy property that will be coastal in 20 years.
  • haggy 5y ago
    I don't know if I'm following. Are you saying you don't believe this change is a big deal for the climate?
  • gameswithgo 5y ago
    That is not always the case. If they have industries that depend on the cold, they may not wish it warmer. If their livelihood depends on glaciers that retreat they may not wish it warmer. If they depend on animal life that would migrate or go extinct, they may not like it. If they are on the coast that will end up flooded, they may not like it. It is probably the case that there will be some people who "win" a bit as the planet warms, but on the whole I'm not sure anyone will be entirely better off for it in the long run.
  • heydenberk 5y ago
    I know you're being snide, but a warming planet is a profound concern for billions of low-income people across south and southeast Asia, Africa, Central America and low-lying Pacific territories.
    • NoblePublius 5y ago
      I am not being snide. I am being wary of politically motivated Westerners demanding massive societal and economic changes in the name of protecting “billions of low income people.” This is exact same reasoning that the British used to justify colonizing and exploiting some of those places.
  • eloff 5y ago
    The temperature change is not the dangerous part of climate change for countries away from the equator. It's all the other changes that accompany that, which will affect Novosibirsk too directly or indirectly. Like loss of biodiversity, climate refugees, unstable political situation, etc. I do agree with you that Canada and Russia are likely to suffer the fewest negative effects. But I wouldn't say it would be a net positive for them either. It's not impossible, but there are a lot of unknowns at this point and a lot of potential feedback loops that could be devastating, like mass extinction level devastating.
  • PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    The IPCC has an executive summary of the possible impact of a 1.5C temperature rise: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ This goes far beyond how comfortable the weather is when you step outside.
  • david-gpu 5y ago
    The people who will be hit the hardest are, unsurprisingly, the world's poorest. Particularly people in rural areas of Africa and India who can't afford having a bad growing season.
  • rini17 5y ago
    Ask them about thawing permafrost. It is so unstable that it won't be possible to build any infrastructure on it till it completely settles.
    • NoblePublius 5y ago
      The prevailing sentiment in Russia about permafrost is that they can’t wait for it to thaw because it’s probably covering a lot of valuable resources. Breaking up arctic ice makes Russian shipping more valuable and Russia more strategically located globally. It’s hilarious to me how naively Western views on this issue are. Go talk to some Russians, maybe.
      • rini17 5y ago
        As I'm from Central/Eastern Europe, I do talk to them sometimes. Yes they are proud atomic superpower. And when westerners have doubts seeing the dwindling population, unimaginable corruption everywhere and lagging civilian technology - that's just naivete, right? I should have specified you to ask someone who actually knows something about building on permafrost, sorry for the omission.
  • lmilcin 5y ago
    I think you misunderstand. 1.5C does not mean temperature everywhere is just going to rise by 1.5C. This means altering of global and local weather patterns with unpredictable consequences. Some places will get much colder, some will get much hotter. Some places will dry out. Some places will see more tornadoes and flooding. And some will get both hotter and more humid causing them to be absolutely uninhabitable, because of combination of 100% humidity and over 35 degrees C is basically lethal. So if you think this is just a "thing", and "what's the fuss, you are going to have more sunshine", you obviously don't understand what the problem is.
    • NoblePublius 5y ago
      Your interpretation of these claims is politically fashionable but far from certain. Climates change by definition and how those changes will affect anything on a macro scale remains beyond us. The medieval warming period wasn’t anthropogenic and affected climate globally in myriad ways. This issue smacks of the privilege of Westerners. Check it.
  • cjblomqvist 5y ago
    It's not evenly distributed, neither geographically or throughout the year. Some places will even get colder. Places like Siberia might get colder winners but warmer summers. Generally one can expect more extreme weather.
• the-dude 5y ago
  Wasn't the watershed rise 2.0 °C ? Did I miss the memo?
  • natch 5y ago
    I think that was way farther off and 1.5 was also expected to be way farther off as well. Five years is a bit of a surprise.
  • Lendal 5y ago
    It's "watershed" because that was the number chosen at Paris. There's nothing scientifically significant about 1.5 or 2.0. They're just numbers that sit along the continuous path from here to whatever hellscape sits at the bottom of this human-created extinction event we've set into motion. I guess the people at Paris were all very optimistic and thought humanity could actually do something to avoid hitting 1.5. They were wrong.
    • the-dude 5y ago
      Have they tried dancing?
    • newsbinator 5y ago
      If they were clever, they would have chosen a number they're pretty sure we'll hit as a watershed number. That way the year we hit it, everybody panics and circles the wagons, to avoid hitting the real, higher number which is actually our doom.
      • mywittyname 5y ago
        More likely, we hit it, look around and see that nothing has change, and keep going. Second most likely, we hit it, look around and see the devastation that has been wrought, and the people living in relatively safe zones institute military-backed authoritarian governments who are charged with keeping migrates from effected regions from coming in, and seizing what little available resources remain from weaker, neighboring states.
  • 5y ago
• snow_mac 5y ago
  1.5 C sounds like no big deal to me, being the uneducated American I am in terms of the metric system. Once you plug that into a calculator, I get "34.7" F. HOLY CRAP That's a big change. Imagine Denver's average temp in December is currently 20 and with the change it would be 40-50. That's a MASSIVE change in Denver's ecosystem. Skiing might not be a thing in Colorado in 5 years. We might be able to grow oranges soon.... - edit - Apparently I am stupid. The Google Calculator uses the formula: `(1.5°C × 9/5) + 32 = 34.7°F` where as 0C is 32 F. Therefore it's a 2.7 F change...
  • pa7ch 5y ago
    I think you need a better calculator.
  • cosmic_shame 5y ago
    That's not how this works at all.
  • cjblomqvist 5y ago
    Yeah, that's because your calculation is off by 95% :) It's roughly 3 degrees F.
  • shkkmo 5y ago
    That's not how the math works...you seem to have done a temperature conversion and ignore that Celsius and Fahrenheit place their O's at different places +1.5 degrees C is about +3 degrees F but 0 degrees C is 32 degrees F.
    • snow_mac 5y ago
      Well, the google calculator says it's: (1.5°C × 9/5) + 32 = 34.7°F
      • gspr 5y ago
        Are you trolling? If not: We are not talking of the temperature 1.5°C. We are talking about a temperature difference of 1.5°C.
• ggoo 5y ago
  Well, it was a good run everybody...
• blondie9x 5y ago
  Can people please push for 100% renewable crypto mining and chips in the next 1/2 years? There isn’t a lot of time left. Beyond crypto need to stop all deforestation now and focus on ways to make cities more livable by decreasing or moving homeless and increasing transit and affordability of housing. Cities need to be more livable and comfortable. This will drive down deforestation of suburbs and the extensive fossil fuel use involved in transportation and movement of people outside of denser urban areas. There isn’t a lot of time left and action needs to be taken urgently.
  • newaccount2021 5y ago
    why do people think renewables are impact free?
    • parsecs 5y ago
      I think we can agree the impacts are less.
      • newaccount2021 5y ago
        do you think crypto mining at scale is acceptable if the power sources are solar and wind? if people were really concerned about the environmental impact, the miners would be turned OFF.
        • shiohime 5y ago
          I'm fairly certain that most mining operations are based in China and are heavily incentivized to use hydroelectric power, but could be wrong on that. Saw articles of it floating around everytime this gets brought up.
  • kahrl 5y ago
    There is no time left and no significant action is being, or will be, taken. Prepare accordingly.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• paganel 5y ago
  I guess now that the pandemic is almost over we’re back to the previous apocalypse.
  • throwaway5752 5y ago
    Maybe the media coverage and your perception of it are more short term, but this has been a known issue for a really long time, since the greenhouse effect is well known and can be studied in the field and the lab, and even observed on other planets. Oil companies internally knew this 40 years ago (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...) and some of us have been quite consistent on this for decades. Media scaremongering is a separate and distinct problem from global warming.
  • daenz 5y ago
    It does feel like this, doesn't it? There is always some impending doom that is going to kill us all. There is never a break and it is so fatiguing.
    • carlmr 5y ago
      The doom didn't stop being impending. As an individual all you can do is doing your part in recycling and saving energy, and gaining citizenship and/or permanent residency in a country that is able to produce enough food for its own population by multiples, and spans enough climate zones to be stable in any scenario (hotter, colder, more dry, or more wet). Because as with the current vaccine shortage, there's no international cooperation when the countries producing it don't have enough. Food shortages will be similar. Your choices are probably Brazil, USA, or Russia.
      • cmckn 5y ago
        To be clear, recycling is greenwashing. The problem is consumption. It truly does not matter if we put waste in the correct bin if we do not also dramatically decrease our use of single-use and otherwise disposable goods. Recycling is a marketing tactic crafted by the tin can industry in the 20th century to dethrone reusable glass bottles for products like beer.
• endisneigh 5y ago
  I must be the only one in the world who thinks that climate change, despite being a big issue, will be resolved if it ever harms (rich) humans in any meaningful way. I think once the rubber meets the road we'll resolve and completely reverse climate change. That being said I might be too confident in our species' engineering ability.
  • echlebek 5y ago
    No chance. Once the most cloistered people in our world are materially impacted, it will be far too late to mount any kind of response. It might already be too late.
  • throwaway20875 5y ago
    >will be resolved if it ever harms (rich) humans in any meaningful way. I think you're not thinking critically enough on who it will be solved for.
  • staticassertion 5y ago
    Seems like this relies on tons of big assumptions. Like that climate change will negatively impact rich people in power in a reasonable timeline. Rich people may even benefit from climate change in the short term, since during an economic downturn they can move their assets around, take risks, buy cheaper labor, etc, while everyone else is scrambling.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • simias 5y ago
    Rich humans will be the ones for whom it'll be most easy to avoid the consequences of climate change for a long time. By the time rich people really start suffering we'll probably be way past the point of no return.
    • xiphias2 5y ago
      Actually it's poor people who suffer both short and long term consequences the most. To tell you the truth I wouldn't even notice if my electricity bill went up by 20% because of switching to renewables, as I don't know how much it is usually.
• joduplessis 5y ago
  > Almost 200 countries I see we're rounding up now.
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  The IPCC has a summary of the possible impact of a 1.5C temperature rise: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ It's not a simple matter of the weather being warmer when you step outside every day. This is a relatively rapid change in global temperature on an archaeological scale, and the downstream consequences could be significant.
  • soperj 5y ago
    I keep hearing about the rapidness being unprecedented, but then also that there are methane seems in the arctic that will be released, which should result in an even more rapid change. If this natural process exists, then really the rapidness of change in global temperatures can't be unprecedented, since any major climate swing would result in methane releases.
    • TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
      It's absolutely unprecedented for human civilisation. If you want to compare it with catastrophic climate changes in pre-human times, go ahead. But that's far more likely to damage your argument than help it because they were far more catastrophic, up to and including mass extinction events.
    • unanswered 5y ago
      "Unprecedented" is a dog whistle which is supported on the basis that technically the rise will have been unprecedented within the anthropocene timeframe, i.e., an ending ice age.
    • Brakenshire 5y ago
      The Clathrate Gun idea you’re referring to is not considered mainstream, it’s not endorsed by the IPCC for instance.
      • soperj 5y ago
        That's interesting. Thank you!
• grackledozer 5y ago
  Buried in the last paragraph: “The chance of temporarily reaching 1.5°C has roughly doubled compared to last year’s predictions, said WMO. This is mainly due to using an improved temperature dataset to estimate the baseline rather than sudden changes in climate indicators.”
  • koheripbal 5y ago
    Also, 1.5°C increase was guaranteed in almost every model, in the near term. I don't think anyone had doubted that.
  • monktastic1 5y ago
    Knowing that a probability has doubled doesn't strike me as particularly useful here. If it doubled from 1e-6 to 2e-6, then it's still almost certain that it won't happen. If it went from 0.5 to 1.0, well, that's a different matter entirely....
• throwkeep 5y ago
  Climate change is real, we are warming up and should/can solve this, but I'm skeptical that apocalyptic narratives help the cause. "A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000." https://apnews.com/article/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 https://apnews.com/article/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0
  • adventured 5y ago
    > we are warming up and should/can solve this Let's begin from the premise that the climate scientists are largely correct in their models and that climate change as a dire threat is not fraudulent. No, it can't be solved. That's just math. There is absolutely nothing that can be done about it realistically, and it's exceptionally obvious at this point. It's time for the "we can save the world" people to stop leading everyone on, unless they can present facts and real scenarios that back up their claims (hint: they can't and never do). You'll notice that technologically we didn't come remotely close to doing anything in the past decade that will enable us to move as fast as we'd have to. Where are the great energy & resource breakthroughs? They don't exist and by the numbers we needed them yesterday. The world will add 2 billion people in the next ~30 years. Nearly all of those births will be in the developing world where emissions are going to continue to skyrocket. Solar, wind and electric vehicles aren't going to solve that problem. The emissions that the US + EU cut, India will add. China will add an entire US-worth of emissions in just the next 10-15 years. If you had a magic wand and could put the US to zero emissions tomorrow morning it wouldn't make a bit of lasting difference to the situation. This single fact of reality makes all the "we can save the world" arguments false. And that's merely two countries. Then you have parts of Latin America, Africa and developing Asia, where emissions and population are going to continue to rise substantially. It seems increasingly clear that the so called experts claiming this can be stopped know they're lying, and they keep lying anyway. What's their plan for immediately stopping all emissions increases across all of the developing world? There is no such plan, they have no intention of implementing or calling for such a plan. Thus, they're lying. There is no scenario where anybody can get the math to work out on what's happening. And you'll find that nobody even attempts to, they just issue empty statements about how we need to take urgent action and then we can save the world. They'll never present you the real scenarios for the actions necessary to immediately turn back all emissions increases. It's fraudulent intellectually, it takes a small amount of time to analyze the context and know that.
• 0xDEEPFAC 5y ago
  Sounds like a nice change - I wonder how farms will benefit from less cold weather?
  • Server6 5y ago
    I'm more concerned about predicable rain patterns than warmer weather. What happens if rainfall in America's breadbasket starts to decline? Even a small sustained change could have deep ramifications.
• plank_time 5y ago
  Which countries would benefit from global warming? Would Canada become the new California?
  • dmos62 5y ago
    Currently ice-covered sealanes will open up north of Siberia.
  • foobiekr 5y ago
    No. But we might see a revival of US northeast agriculture. Russia benefits, I think.
    • carlob 5y ago
      > Russia benefits, I think. Not clear, most of Siberia would be turned into mud (which currently only happens for a month or so), many roads there are just frozen rivers.
      • mikeg8 5y ago
        That an over generalization. The more temperate parts of southern Siberia would have a thawing that could potentially open up more agricultural space and increase Siberia's food production capacity.
        • jopsen 5y ago
          Even so... do you think agriculture is going to drive economic growth in the future? Don't get me wrong we need agriculture, but it's not going to save an economy :)
    • mikestew 5y ago
      What's the top soil look like in the US NE? It's been a while since I've been to, say, Maine. But I can tell you that the other new farmland folks propose is British Columbia, and it's obvious that they've never been to mid-to-northern BC and looked down toward their feet. You'd be better off trying to grow corn in sand that the stuff that passes for top soil in BC. This also ignores the fact that when one starts heading north, that Sun in the sky tends to get pretty weak-ass, even in the summer. As a Seattle resident, I about go blind getting off the plane in Miami until I can get those sunglasses on. And I can tell you how much corn enjoys the lack of good sun in comparison to my home state of Indiana: it doesn't.
• nonomaybeyes 5y ago
  Fun fact: During the Jurassic period CO2 levels were 4 to 5 times higher than now.
  • ep103 5y ago
    Fun Fact, Sea Levels were on average 330 feet higher (110 meters) than they are now by the end of the Jurassic period. But I guess that won't be a problem if your apartment is above the 30th floor.
  • jameshart 5y ago
    Okay, and what was the global GDP at the time?
  • PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    Related fun fact: The sun was also 4-5% dimmer during this period. It's not relevant to the sharp increase in CO2 concentrations we've seen in the past century.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
      Is the Sun only getting brighter, and if so, is it changing at a pace that would even have a noticeable impact in, say, 1000 years? I saw on Google that it gets 6% brighter every 1 Billion years. That's a really long time, and I'm not sure what that even means anyway.
      • PragmaticPulp 5y ago
        > I saw on Google that it gets 6% brighter every 1 Billion years. That's a really long time, and I'm not sure what that even means anyway. For our current situation, it means nothing. The grandparent comment was referring to a period 100s of millions of years ago. Given that the sun's intensity has changed significantly on that scale, it's not appropriate to compare our current situation to that of something that happened 100s of millions of years ago. For what it's worth, the atmospheric CO2 reduction that followed that period was associated with significant cooling and glaciation, which is further evidence that CO2 is a significant factor in determining global climate change. The grandparent comment was very disingenuous.
• api 5y ago
  In 50 years: "Miami never existed! It's a liberal conspiracy to convince you the sea level is rising!"
• nahuel0x 5y ago
  it seems as we need to create a cryptocurrency based on proof-of-forestation, with satellite imagery and trees placed as QR codes
• mrfusion 5y ago
  So my climate denying neighbor sent me this. I know it’s wrong and sinful but I wasn’t sure how to respond to the questions it raises. Anyone have some tips? https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/20/the-1-5c-hysteria/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/20/the-1-5c-hysteria/
  • aww_dang 5y ago
    A popular rebuttal to the medieval warm period observation is to claim that it wasn't actually warmer...
  • jnorthrop 5y ago
    Inform your neighbor on who the author is: http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/10/who-is-willis-eschenbach.html http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/10/who-is-willis-esche... He has no background in science. Why would you listen to him?
    • SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
      Greta Thunberg was a 16yo with no background in science, why was she given the world stage? Who paid for that anyhow? Bill Nye has no background in science, he was a mechanical engineer become actor. Why would you listen to him? AOC has no background in anything scientific or engineering or public policy... do you get the point yet? People listen to who they want to believe in. Don’t pretend that “both sides” don’t do this.
      • tgv 5y ago
        They did get the "sciency" bits right, though. They just refer to the IPCC. Your guy's arguments are "here's a bit of data they haven't bothered to fit." I can't even make out if the presented data has any basis in fact. And England was pretty fucking cold in the 17th century. And after a particularly grim winter in 1709, the thaw "brought widespread flooding. This was a major catastrophe for a largely agricultural economy. The crops were ruined, grain prices soared sixfold and many communities were faced with starvation. Per capita gross domestic product dropped by 23%, and did not fully recover for another 10 years, all from a single terrible winter." (quote from the Guardian).
• tibbydudeza 5y ago
  Agriculture will be impacted - lots more aid concerts.
• tpmx 5y ago
  Misleading clickbait headline. Headline should be: "World now likely to hit 1.5 °C rise above pre-industrial levels in the next five years".
  • jfengel 5y ago
    That's the baseline they've been using forever. Whenever the protocols are discussed about limiting the change to 2°C, that's what they mean. They've been warning about the dangers at 1.5°C for many years. It's not an attempt to mislead anybody. They're simply leaving out the "above pre-industrial levels" part that they've said so many times they assume it's not necessary. Especially on HN, where the headlines are sharply limited in length.
    • tpmx 5y ago
      "World now likely to hit 1.5 °C rise above pre-industrial levels in five years" fits. Well, it mislead me, initially.
• TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
  Am I the only one around here who is old enough to remember this exact prediction from 30 years ago? Florida should have become the next Atlantis 20 years ago. I understand it's a worrisome issue, but like religious predictions of the end of the world, failures work against credibility.
  • the-dude 5y ago
    Sea level rise at the Dutch coast has been stable for about the last 100 years. No significant acceleration.
    • titzer 5y ago
      Citation needed. Besides, sea-level rise is not uniformly distributed, same as temperature variation due to climate change. But overall, yes, the sea level is rising, and it is accelerating globally. All of that is explained here [1]. [1] https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
      • the-dude 5y ago
        https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/20.php https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/20.php https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/23.php https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/23.php https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/24.php https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/24.php
        • titzer 5y ago
          Are you gaslighting me or what, dude? Because your own very first link shows a clear sea-level rise of almost 20 centimeters from 1900. (this https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.annual.plots/20_high.png https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.annual.plots/20_hig..., if you are incapable of clicking on links in actual webpages). What are you trying to say? It hasn't accelerated? Because clearly it must have sped up since before records began, otherwise it would not agree with records and reconstructions from 1000 and 2000 years ago.
• lwb 5y ago
  I love that this prediction has a clear deadline. Now, what skin in the game does the UN have? Will they pay back any government spending that occurs as a result of this prediction if the 1.5C rise does not occur?
  • graeme 5y ago
    The point of spending is to avert climate change and avoid 1.5C rise. Your premise is faulty.
    • lwb 5y ago
      What good is a prediction without accountability?
  • ARandomerDude 5y ago
    No this is how they justify their existence now. Originally created to stop Hitler 2.0, they've basically given up on that mission and now focus on health and climate crises, whether real or greatly exaggerated.
    • aww_dang 5y ago
      We should be thankful for their selfless action and wisdom. Carbon credits as part of a new global currency may save us all. We just need digital IDs, a cashless society and digital currency to ensure responsible purchases.
• makerofspoons 5y ago
  Dr. Peter Carter, an IPCC expert reviewer, makes the point that not only is breaking the 2C threshold by 2100 likely, but also that the equilibrium temperature increase is much higher than 2C: https://twitter.com/PCarterClimate/status/1397076008591757312 https://twitter.com/PCarterClimate/status/139707600859175731...
• rglover 5y ago
  Worth reading: https://science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Christy%20Testimony_1.pdf?1 https://science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Christy%20Testimony_...
• pier25 5y ago
  We're definitely going to go beyond 2ºC in the coming decades. Even if a miracle happened and we stopped all human emissions today, current GHGs in the atmosphere will keep trapping more heat for some decades. This is known as climate inertia or climate lag. Another aspect I don't see frequently mentioned are feedbacks. Again, even if we stopped all emissions today, self sustaining climatic systems will keep adding more heat to the atmosphere (methane, etc) or the sea (Arctic ice melting). We're currently at aprox 36 billion tonnes of carbon emissions per year [1] only counting fuel burning. It would be a miracle if we could even reach 50% of that in our lifetime, which was aprox the emissions from the 70s. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
  • knuthsat 5y ago
    yeah, the n-th order effects like the siberian ice melting away into methane emissions equivalent to 100 years of 2020 CO2 output will just completely obliterate any efforts at mitigating new emissions.
    • spacemark 5y ago
      ...if it happens. So far there's no scientific consensus that such a thing is likely to happen.
      • carlmr 5y ago
        The problem with these events is that we should err on the side of caution, since the other side may well be catastrophic.
        • spacemark 5y ago
          That's not good risk analysis. Severity is one axis, likelihood of occurring is another.
          • carlmr 5y ago
• Tycho 5y ago
  So it turns out that the ideal temperature for global civilization is about 13 degrees celsius, and we had that for a long time, but now it might rise by one or two degrees and that would be a terrible temperature for global civilization? Pretty unlucky when you think about it.
  • lm28469 5y ago
    I don't think luck has much to do with it
  • amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    More like our current civilization was built for the current temperature, and higher temperatures would require changes to our civilisation to adapt to the new temperature.
    • missedthecue 5y ago
      Those adaptions seem a lot cheaper than trying to coordinate a global effort between hundreds of countries to engage in what is essentially long term geo-engineering.
  • adrianN 5y ago
    It's not the absolute temperature that is the problem, is the change in temperature. Humans can survive in a pretty large range of temperatures. But the places we currently settle and use for agriculture might become unsuitable. Similarly, the biosphere as a whole can adapt to essentially any temperature; Earth has been significantly hotter than today in the (distant) past. However during times of rapid climate change mass extinctions happen. To my knowledge, temperature hasn't changed as quickly as it is changing today, ever.
    • Tycho 5y ago
      Over what sort of time frame do these mass extinctions occur?
      • 5y ago
• egberts1 5y ago
  Climate Emergencies 1966 - Oil gone in 10 years 1967 - Dire famine forecast by 1975 1968 - Overpopulation will spread worldwide 1969 - Everyone will disappear in a Cloud of Blue Steam in 1989 1970 - World will use up its natural resources by 2000 1970 - Urban citizens will require gas mask by 1985 1970 - Nitrogen buildup will make all lands unusable 1970 - Decaying pollution will kill all the fish 1970s - Killer Bees!!! 1970 - Ice Age by 2000 1970 - Americans will be subjected to water rationing by 1975 and food rationing by 1980 1971 - New Ice Age coming by 2020 or 2030 1972 - New Ice Age by 2070 1972 - Oil depleted in 20 years 1974 - Space satellites show New Ice Age coming fast 1974 - Another Ice Age? 1974 - Ozone depletion a great peril to life 1976 - Scientific consensus planet cooling; famines imminent 1977 - Department of Energy says oil will peak in 90s. 1978 - No end in sight to 30-year global cooling 1980 - Acid rain kills life in lakes 1980 - Peak oil in 2000 1988 - Regional drought (that never happened) in 90s. 1988 - Temperatures in DC will hit record high (no records broken) 1988 - Maldive Islands will be underwater by 2018 (nope) 1989 - Rising sea level will obliterate nations if nothing done by 2000. 1989 - New York City Westside Highway underwater by 2018. 1990 - Cellphones caused cancer 1996 - Peak oil in 2020 2000 - Children won’t know what snow is 2001 - WiFi causes cancer 2002 - Famines if we don’t give up eating fishes, meat, and diary 2002 - Peak oil in 2010 2004 - Britain will be Siberia by 2024 2005 - Manhattan underwater by 2015 2006 - Super Hurricanes!!! 2008 - Arctic will be ice-free by 2018 2008 - Climate genius Al Gore predict ice-free Arctic by 2013 2009 - Climate genius Prince Charles says we have 96 months to save the world 2009 UK Prime Ministers says 50 days to “save planet from catastrophe” 2009 Al Gore moves ice-free Arctic prediction from 2013 to 2014 2010 - 4G cell tower causes cancers. 2013 Arctic ice-free by 2015 2014 Only 500 days before climate chaos 2019 - Hey Greta, we really need you to convince them this time. 2020 - Australian bush fires are caused by climate change. 2020 - 5G cellular towers causes cancers. 2020 - Polar bears could be lost by 2100 2021 - Volcano caldera ready to wipe out civilization I wonder if this is all about squeezing more taxpayers money to fund those unemployed climate change scientism.
  • TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    I'm curious how many of those have were peer-reviewed predictions from credible sources.
• Proven 5y ago
  Complete nonsense. 1) Climatists have a history of failed and deliberately misleading predictions 2) Presemt day humans cannot change or prevent changes in climate 3) It's cheaper to adjust than fight changes. Build your own wall or move inland.
• giantg2 5y ago
  It's pretty simple - there are too many people and they are increasingly living high consumption modern lives.
  • Brakenshire 5y ago
    There are huge differences in emissions per person in developed countries.
    • giantg2 5y ago
      But all still bigly positive.
    • rednerrus 5y ago
      What constitutes huge difference?
      • supertrope 5y ago
        https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/americans-have-texas-sized-carbon-footprints-heres-why/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/americans-have-texas...
  • dqpb 5y ago
    It's not that simple. It's this simple: https://youtu.be/MeKJK4uetL8 https://youtu.be/MeKJK4uetL8
    • giantg2 5y ago
      What do you mean?
      • dqpb 5y ago
        The video I posted is about using category theory and lattice-based concept hierarchies for understanding causality. Breaking down a problem into it's relevant components and understanding how they interact is the right way to come to a simple explanation. This is in contrast to "simple explanations" which are merely short, but not correct.
• legitster 5y ago
  I did the math, and my child has officially spent more of his summers inside than out because of the constant wildfires. I maintain that most of the worst predictions assume an inability for people to adapt. Still, it amazes me to no end how many people are willing to barrel head first into an avoidable fate without taking their foot off the throttle. I wonder to what extent people will deny the reality around them. Based on what people have already been accepting as normal, it does feel like we will get to the point of knife fighting over a cup of water before someone admits that we've had an awful lot of El Nino years in a row. Last year, the county forester came around and explained to my uncle that the reason so many of his 100+ year old trees were dying was a lack of water, and he needed to thin them out on his property to keep the rest alive. It feels like he finally turned a corner and accepted that something is wrong (he still doesn't believe it's man made, but you know, tiny victories).
  • throwaway5752 5y ago
    Still, it amazes me to no end how many people are willing to barrel head first into an avoidable fate without taking their foot off the throttle. I am not young and the last year has still been an eye opener for me. I haven't been cynical enough.
    • RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
      itt: The cynics all get together and comment 'wow we really underestimated how cynical we should have been'
  • ipaddr 5y ago
    Children around here have spent 0% at home because of wildfires around here. Where do you live? Would moving make sense for your kids sake?
    • legitster 5y ago
      Pacific Northwest
• elbasti 5y ago
  Question: How do you folks deal with the hopelessness of it all? It's pretty obvious that emissions are not going to drop to zero, that the positive feedback loops due to arctic methane emissions have kicked off, and that runaway warming has begun. Best-case equilibrium now looks like 3C by 2100. Basically, the situation is bleak and in all likelihood irreversible. There will me massive changes in my lifetime and the world we've left our children will be drastically different and obviously worse.
  • lisper 5y ago
    > How do you folks deal with the hopelessness of it all? Don't have kids. I know this is a very unpopular point of view on HN and this response will probably be downvoted into oblivion, but the fact of the matter is that if enough people adopt this strategy it will actually solve the problem eventually. Yes, the odds of this happening are vanishingly small, but population control is ultimately the only long-term solution.
    • tpmx 5y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA IDIOCRACY Opening Scene (2006) Mike Judge
    • rajin444 5y ago
      Western nations are financing 3rd world birth rates at the expense of our own citizens well being. I imagine we should address that first before we even consider asking our own to stop reproducing.
      • ben_w 5y ago
        Birth rates everywhere (3rd world included) have gone down very quickly in direct response to when, and to the extent that, women get empowered.
    • ansible 5y ago
      > Don't have kids. Of course... it is more complicated than that. This is a classic tragedy of the commons scenario (or Idiocracy for that matter). The people that don't care will continue on, and the people that do care won't be able to influence the next generation nearly as much.
• crypot 5y ago
  The earth's climate has never been static. I find it odd that people expect some sort of stasis at this point in time just because they happen to be here.
  • PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    The earth's climate has changed on a scale of 10-100 millions of years. The current sharp increase in a span of a century is completely unprecedented. Six orders of magnitude makes a huge difference.
    • G3rn0ti 5y ago
      > The earth's climate has changed on a scale of 10-100 millions of years. Wrong. The last ice age only ended about 11000 years ago -- our ancestors lived in a world where most of the British isle was covered by ice. > The current sharp increase in a span of a century is completely unprecedented. This might still be true, however. Mankind should do something about its carbon emissions. But please stop all this doom saying, please.
      • eropple 5y ago
        This is a disingenuous framing. Ice ages are part of a geologic-timescale cycle; there have been four significant glacial periods over the last half a million years. Human carbon barf is not.
        • G3rn0ti 5y ago
          Even during an ice age lasting about 100k years you had interglacial periods on a shorter time scale where the ice shields retreated significantly. The point is we‘re talking about immense natural geological climate changes happening on the order of 1000 years within the life time of all human kind. It’s disingenuous framing to imply mankind to go extinct because of the current temperature trends. Again, this doesn’t mean we should just watch and go on burning coal. But it’s a bit ridiculous seeing intelligent people on HN to get carried away by scaremongering.
• chrisBob 5y ago
  Is there a good place for me to figure out how I can help and reduce my environmental impact? If I have $50k I am willing to spend with this goal, what should I do? Should I replace my Subaru with an electric car, buy solar panels, buy another 5 acres and plant trees, replace home appliances, ...?
  • jopsen 5y ago
    Get a job working for a company that works with renewables.. Wind turbines, solar panel factories, grid operations, etc.. all need lots of software -- you could be the one to write it. Of course, it means giving up a comfortable career in tech.. :/
  • ipaddr 5y ago
    Work from home. Get rid of the car. Plant 100,000 trees.
    • chrisBob 5y ago
      These answers are why I want a tool that is good for my specific situation. I will probably go back to working in the office, but I commute with a professor/lab scientist who can't reasonably work from home, so me going into the office adds a total of 120mi of car trips per year.
  • jnwatson 5y ago
    There's nothing that any of us can do individually. The "turn off the faucet when brushing your teeth" and recycling initiatives are just to make people feel better. The problem is so large now, only centrally-organized action that reorganizes a substantial fraction of the world economy will make a dent. Donate it to a 501(c)(3) lobbying organization devoted to environment causes. Donate to political candidates that pledge to do impose a carbon tax.
    • CubsFan1060 5y ago
      I only partially agree with that. I would say that people are unwilling to sacrifice anything of real value in pursuit of the goal (OP not withstanding). "turn off the faucet when brushing your teeth" --> Sure, I'll do that, it's easy. "Use a paper straw" --> sure, why not. "Stop flying on planes at all, ever again" --> um, maybe not.. "Stop eating beef. You can eat crickets." --> Nope!
• JoshTko 5y ago
  I'm surprised by how much climate change ignorance there is in this thread.
  • junon 5y ago
    It's a form of coping. It has to be. I refuse to believe self-proclaimed smart people of HN refuse to acknowledge science that has been reviewed time and time again for decades now out of... what? ignorance? ideology? Instead I think it's a coping mechanism. "There's nothing I can do about it because the problem is so large so I'd rather act like it doesn't exist." Just a theory.
• eplanit 5y ago
  I live in a state (California) that prides itself for its environmentalism, and has been vocal for many years regarding climate change. But...that very same state is doing nothing to prepare for it aside from lecturing others and virtue-signalling: there are no new reservoirs being built, despite sustained droughts already happening, the forests are mis-managed and overgrown due to misguided "let's never cut down anything, ever" thinking, with massive fires every year, the electric grid is unable to keep up with demand... I don't doubt that climate change is happening, but with such ostensibly smart and aware people making such poor policy, and for so long -- I have little confidence in the government's willingness or ability to do any good.
  • realusername 5y ago
    > : there are no new reservoirs being built, despite sustained droughts already happening, the forests are mis-managed and overgrown due to misguided "let's never cut down anything, ever" thinking, with massive fires every year, the electric grid is unable to keep up with demand... And very unsustainable agriculture which is highly contributing to the droughts additionally to climate change itself. Using high demand water crops in a place like California just wasn't a great idea to start with.
    • geggam 5y ago
      Problem you have not growing in CA and AZ is the fact you have very long growing seasons in both states. You can pump water over the same thing you can oil. You cant pump sunshine that way
      • realusername 5y ago
        I do get it, using a lot of water in a very hot and sunny place leads to amazing crop results. The only issue with that is that the water they are pumping probably took decades to accumulate to that level, that strategy will just stop working abruptly very soon.
  • throwaway5752 5y ago
    forests are mis-managed and overgrown First, forests manage themselves. There are wildfires because of the drought that you mentioned and higher temperatures. Second, the first order problem is too many people. The warming/drought is a second order hysteresis effect. Creating more reservoirs exacerbates the first order problem.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• slowhand09 5y ago
  "No crisis, no funding" - Scientist/researcher on NASA "Earth Observing System circa 1996. Also "We will spare no tree to save the earth" as we delivered reams of program documentation for program reviews. My suggestion at the time "Can we give them CDs instead?".
• slowhand09 5y ago
  The distance between the Earth and Sun, which is 93 million miles on average, varies throughout the year. During the first week in January, the Earth is about 1.6 million miles closer to the sun. This is referred to as the perihelion. The aphelion, or the point at which the Earth is about 1.6 million miles farther away from the sun, occurs during the first week in July. Can we just gradually boost Earth a little farther (on average) from the sun? Or we could blow up the moon, reducing tidal fluctuation, and thus coastal flooding. Plus the debris would reduce sunlight imparting a cooling effect.
  • ngokevin 5y ago
    > Can we just gradually boost Earth a little farther (on average) from the sun? Fun sci-fi short story: The Wandering Earth But yeah, large geo-engineering efforts seem likely to me.
  • Arcuru 5y ago
    No. Both of those ideas are wildly impractical with current technology/available energy. In addition to being completely out of reach with our current available energy sources, blowing up the moon would also be a very bad idea. For a hard scifi look at that scenario, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seveneves
  • gspr 5y ago
    This is my problem with HN. People who are good in their respective fields propose insane stuff like this and don't even realize how disconnected from reality it is.
• rland 5y ago
  I'm not necessarily worried about climate change per se. It will result in hardship for many, for sure. Temperature changes will render some areas uninhabitable, it will cause mass migration, and probably destabilize the world politically. What am more worried about is the direct wholesale destruction of the biosphere. There are absolutely bonkers numbers about extinction, ocean acidification, runaway permafrost melt that actually could choke out a majority of people. Worse still, these effects aren't easily solvable by stopping emissions, or blocking out the sun with mylar sheets, or any of the "low hanging" technological fruit -- the stuff that could be solved with today's space technology or electric car tech. In order to actually solve these "deeper" problems, we will need an absolutely massive bio-engineering effort that is probably only possible with some kind of entropic breakthrough. Evolution is basically hyper-organization, a point of locally super low entropy that only happens by hundreds of millions of years of energy expenditure. When a species dies, it's not those individuals, it's every one of those individuals that ever lived that dies. All that concentration of local entropy, destroyed forever. It's like using every GPU on planet earth to train a hyper-smart GPT-4, for many human lifetimes -- and then hitting rm -rf on the weights.
  • koheripbal 5y ago
    We don't talk about birth control enough. Some parts of the world have exploding populations, and while they don't consume much CO2 at the moment, they will - either as a result of the migrations they do, or through development. We need to reduce the number of humans on Earth.
    • randomopining 5y ago
      Agreed. Yet the term should be foster a sustainable birth rate. A country like Japan is doing this right. Importing migrants from overcrowded countries will only increase the overall number of people reproducing. There's definitely a sweet spot the world should hit.
    • cool_dude85 5y ago
      So we need to "limit population growth" among "some parts of the world" - is it fair to guess that you mean here subsaharan Africa and south Asia? - because they don't consume much CO2 but will? No mention of the parts of the world that, uh, do consume much CO2, and will continue to do so?
• throwaway197742 5y ago
  We're doomed imho because humans (i.e. politicians and voters) have no intuition for logarithmic growth. "What's the doubling time?" seems to be a question that's absent from the public discourse, yet it's fundamental to appreciating the runaway urgency of our situation.
• swader999 5y ago
  I bet the models backing this claim don't pass the mustard. Can they predict past five year periods? Not likely, then why should we base any policy with these for the next five years?
• xticklabel 5y ago
  We have the capability to make the atmospheric concentration of CO2 whatever we want it to be with existing nuclear energy technology. The fact that this obvious solution is widely ignored suggests either a lack of seriousness about solving the claimed problem, or the existence of some other objective hiding under the cloak of a global climate crisis.
  • koheripbal 5y ago
    The fact that nuclear is thrown to the side is evidence that leading through popular consensus is a failing strategy. China is building literally dozens of nuclear plants for a fraction of the cost we can build them here, simply because the construction projects are not stopped every six months for a new lawsuit, protest, or redundant environmental study. We need to start building nuclear plants TODAY. Nuclear waste disposal is a SOLVED problem. https://omegataupodcast.net/368-nuclear-waste-disposal-and-storage/ https://omegataupodcast.net/368-nuclear-waste-disposal-and-s...
• julienb_sea 5y ago
  Recommended reading for those interested is "Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters" by Steven Koonin. Presents a great deal of context around climate science and reporting which is helpful when processing headlines like this one.
• c-smile 5y ago
  Vancouver, Canada will be hit hard: https://globalnews.ca/news/6102304/sea-level-rise-metro-vancouver/ https://globalnews.ca/news/6102304/sea-level-rise-metro-vanc...
• randomopining 5y ago
  Anti-science, anti-collective responsibility crowd wrong again. Most recently on the vaccines. How many times do these people get to be wrong? It should be illegal to be so foolish. Hurting the rest of society by your ineptitude.
• anonyfox 5y ago
  Climate Change? I deal with it without emotions. Things are what they are, and I want to optimize the outcome for my family. These are my predictions: - Humanity will probably lose the fight, not because technology isn‘t available, but but because of political/social reasons, eg: prisoners dilemma. - here in central/northern europe, i am in the privileged position that nothing serious will happen to me. - food/water might become more scarce until vertical farming can close the gaps. Energy from renewables will be scaled to cover all needs, including stuff like desalination. - there will be immigration waves from more and more uninhabitable regions. Leading to social unrests over time. Leading to some kind of national border building. - armed military will starting „preventive deescalation“ against climate refugees. Probably with autonomous weapons to ease the bad feelings about this. ... so I invest in stocks for „clean Energy“, „Robotics & Automatization“, currently evaluating options for tech-agriculture and will finally looking into weapons (border protection) and surveillance (immobilize society). Anyone else that follows a similar path?
  • mrtksn 5y ago
    >here in central/northern europe, i am in the privileged position that nothing serious will happen to me. EU almost went into flames with 1M refugees, EU might not be your favourite thing but at some point EU or not countries will face enormous numbers of refugees, way more than 1M and things will have to change for worse for you too because to have military shooting climate refugees with autonomous weapons you will need to have a fascist government. A lot of people will object that, could be religion could be ethics but you will need to shot down your own local and legal people too. You will need central European Putins and Erdogan's to sustain a suppression state. Some of course will profit from all these but being from a lucky geography is not narrow enough, think more about having connections to the strongman who is going to create and rule the refugee shooting government. Peaceful life when neighbours suffer is myth. Event at the most stable version of it with distant neighbours in trouble you have cavity search on public transport and 3 hours boarding times on flights.
    • anonyfox 5y ago
      These things will happen probably, i just tried to formulate the events more rationale. And, accepting that all of this happens, I try to be in a comfortable position. So my family will have options instead of dealing with dispair, despite the world becoming a darker place
• pedro2 5y ago
  Don’t worry, we can go to Mars to escape Earth’s fate :) Those who have the money, of course.
• phtrivier 5y ago
  This will be an attempt to lighten the mood, and it will fail, but still : isn't that a form of "good news" that we feel almost "done" enough with the pandemic that we can start to worry again about climate change?
• webmaven 5y ago
  If anyone is interested in a fictionalized (and somewhat optimistic) narrative of how this might play out, I can recommend Kim Stanley Robinson's recent novel The Ministry for the Future: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Ministry_for_the_Future.html?id=K_DNDwAAQBAJ https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Ministry_for_the_Fu...
• esarbe 5y ago
  Holy cow! It's kinda scary how many people fall for the "we have too many people and we need to reduce birth rates" fallacy. Folks, reducing the birth rate will do nothing for (or; against) the population. Almost all nations on earth are already below the population replacement rate. Birth control will do nothing. There are many things that we can consider. Like moving everyone to Mars or Pluto (not a planet), building aquatic cities and become mermaids (and mermen), using flatulent gasses as renewable energy! Many, many things! But birth control is not the answer. The people that already exist are the problem. Not the Babies Of The Future. Even though Future Babies can be scary and I understand that you are all afraid; not letting them be born is not the solution. Really, have a good look at [0] to understand how future babies are not the problem. [0] https://www.gapminder.org/ https://www.gapminder.org/
• cl1m4t4d3n13r 5y ago
  1967, Salt Lake Tribune: "Dire Famine Forecast by 1975" - https://cei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/1_2.png https://cei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/1_2.png 1970, Boston Globe: "Scientists predict ice age by 21st century" - https://cei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/3_2.png https://cei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/3_2.png 1974, The Guardian: "Ice Age Coming Fast" - https://cei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/8.png https://cei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/8.png 1989, San Jose Mercury News: "Nations could be wiped of the face of the earth by the year 2000" - https://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/screenhunter_160-nov-30-06-13.jpg?w=640&h=554 https://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/screenhunt... 2004, The Guardian: "Britian will be Siberian in less than 20 years" - https://cei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/29.png https://cei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/29.png 2007, The BBC: "Arctic Summers Ice Free by 2013" - https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/09/08/article-2415191-1BAED5FF000005DC-408_638x431.jpg https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/09/08/article-2415191-1... 2011, International Energy Agency: "World Headed for Irreversible Climate Change in 5 years" - https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/world-headed-for-irreversible-climate-change-iea https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/world-headed-for-irreversible-cl... 2012, New Economics Foundation: "By December 2016 the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will be high enough to trigger a new phase of global climate change from which the chances of recovery are slim" - https://www.carbonbrief.org/can-we-estimate-the-tipping-point-into-irreversible-climate-change-we-assess-the-one-hundred-months-campaign https://www.carbonbrief.org/can-we-estimate-the-tipping-poin... 2013, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: "Worlds best scientists agree that the point of no return for climate change might be by the year 2100" - https://qz.com/129122/the-worlds-best-scientists-agree-on-our-current-path-global-warming-is-irreversible-and-getting-worse/ https://qz.com/129122/the-worlds-best-scientists-agree-on-ou... 2013, US Navy: "Ice free Actic by 2016" - https://cei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/37.jpg https://cei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/37.jpg 2019, CNN: "Climate change could pose 'existential threat' by 2050" - https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/04/health/climate-change-existential-threat-report-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/04/health/climate-change-exi... 2019, Colubia ENgineering Report: "Glocal warming tipping point could be as close as 40 years away" - https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/climate-could-hit-tipping-point-sooner-you-think https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/climate-could-hit-tipping-... 2019, United Nations: "Only 11 Years Left to Prevent Irreversible Damage from Climate Change" - https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12131.doc.htm https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12131.doc.htm 2021, CNN: It's getting more likely the world will reach a climate tipping point in the next five years" - https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/27/world/climate-temperatures-increase-wmo-intl/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/27/world/climate-temperature... but who knows... maybe this is the year of climate change on the desktop?
• nokya 5y ago
  After reading most of the comments to this page, I only have one thought: I miss sharing a nice dinner with smart people so much.
• LatteLazy 5y ago
  Decades of doing nothing has resulting in nothing being done...
• elihu 5y ago
  Here are some (generally U.S. centric) suggestions to move away from fossil fuels as fast as possible for a reasonable cost with current technology and with the least economic disruption: Expand EV tax credits and allow EV conversions to qualify, not just new vehicles. Electrify the interstate highway system so that EVs can charge while they're moving. This reduces the necessity of hauling around massive and expensive battery packs. Provide the electricity for free for small passenger vehicles that meet a minimum efficiency standard. Build more battery factories. Especially for lithium iron phosphate cells (or any technology that replaces it), since LFP doesn't depend on cobalt or nickel and is much safer than most other lithium ion chemistries. Install more domestic wind and solar power generation. Invest in transcontinental power transmission lines and solar capacity in place like Africa, so we can power North America at night without relying on batteries. Shut down fossil fuel power plants, but keep some of them operational as emergency backup. Make an EV charge port required building code for new houses and apartments with parking.