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It kind of seems like this article is saying that if we (in 1989) slow global warming by the year 2000, the worst effects of sea level rise will not happen. It'
by notJim 5y ago
It kind of seems like this article is saying that if we (in 1989) slow global warming by the year 2000, the worst effects of sea level rise will not happen. It's not saying that those effects will happen in the year 2000.
My understanding in 2021 is that much of that stuff is already happening, since we obviously didn't halt warming. And that it's also too late to prevent more of it from happening, because there is a lag time between prevention measures happening, and having an effect.
We are past the point where just reducing emissions will be enough, and instead will need to also harden the world against inevitable effects of climate change. This is even harder and more expensive than it would have been if we had stopped emitting earlier.
- Retric 5y agoWe greatly slowed down CO2 emissions growth from worst case predictions. Both from alternative energy and vastly increased efficiency. Net emissions just keep stacking, but if you compare total emissions today with past predictions they simply don’t line up with 2021.
- bosie 5y agoWorldwide? What I found googling now indicates the US has been stable and worldwide we went up by a factor of 7 since 1950. Also, efficiency doesn't matter if it gets outweighed by consumption/usage.
- TchoBeer 5y agoIt does if we're talking about how we've managed to stay below predicted levels.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoSurely partially due to outsourcing manufacturing to outside the US/western world, and partially due to the rising living standards of the rest of the world. Yeah consumption needs to be slowed down. Even dumb things like those Bird scooters littering cities...
- unholythree 5y agoI saw a t-shirt down here in New Orleans the other day that read “music, culture, industry” with a strike out line through industry. It boggles the mind. After all how will our t-shirts and musical instruments be made?
- selimthegrim 5y agoI always preferred the "Open Your Eyes" on the side of the old naval base in the Bywater.
- adamcstephens 5y agoThis. So much this. We can't blame China for its emissions, while acting like we've solved ours, when all we did was shift our emissions from manufacturing to China.
- scotth 5y agoHad no idea. Any links? (I want to feel hopeful)
- Retric 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... The closest thing to flat you’re going to find is global CO2 produced per person is nearly flat. Global population has significantly increased, so that still represents growth in emissions but it clearly could have been much worse with massive increases in both population and CO2 per person as the 3rd world industrialized.
- scotth 5y agoSuper interesting. Thank you.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoThat's kind of like if I were morbidly obese, and my diet consisted of 6 big macs, 6 large Cokes and 6 large fries daily, plus a cheesecake at the end of the day for dessert, and I patted myself on the back because I went on a "diet" by cutting out the cheesecake. Growth in CO2 emissions has recently plateaued, but the world still pumps out about 40% more CO2, every year, than we did in 2000. Stopping the growth doesn't really matter that much, we need to drastically reduce overall emissions.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoIt’s even worse. Not only do we need to get emissions as close to zero as possible, we need to suck a whole bunch of CO2 out of the atmosphere. The amount of effort, resources, energy, and collective action needed is extraordinary. The challenge ahead cannot be overstated. @computerphage: Thank you for the typo correction! I am off for more coffee.
- halsom 5y agoIt simply cannot be done under capitalism.
- ben_w 5y agoSure it can, all you need to do is make it profitable.
- FooHentai 5y agoWhat's interesting is that we already know it's going to result in economic contraction, loss of profits, and general instability in the financial sphere. So we already know that tacking it will be profitable in the long run versus the alternative. Perhaps the conversation needs to center on how to factor the long view into capitalism. Because in my view it is pretty shit at that, with often short term profits favoured over long term and the effects of that being felt long term. Right now our intervention option looks like direct intervention to make things less profitable in the near term, and then we run into the problem of democracy also favouring short-term popularity over long-term stewardship and the immediate pains it bring to voters.
- tejohnso 5y agoWe're on track for a roughly 3C increase in global average temperature according to this chart from the IPCC[1] and this [2] from world data. And that IPCC projection doesn't take into account the dozens of reinforcing feedback loops contributing to further warming. For example, the Amazon rain forest is now a net green house gas producer due to human activity [3]. [1]: https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_1500x1500_fit_center-center_80/GlobalCarbonProject_s09_AR5_scenarios_trimmed2000.png https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_1500x1500_fit_center-cent... [2]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re... [3]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/amazon-rainforest-now-emits-more-greenhouse-gases-it-absorbs-180977347/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/amazon-rainforest-...
- helmholtz 5y agoAnd my parents keep asking when I'm giving them grandkids. Why would I make a child go through this? That these things don't keep people up at night is bewildering to me.
- chasd00 5y agomaybe you're too young, I've heard the doom and gloom sine the 80s and those older than me have heard it since the 70's. If you look out across a sea of people there will always be a group of people holding a sign reading "Repent sinners, for the end is near".
- throwawayboise 5y agoYep, back in the 1970s it was the coming ice age, and it was also the "population bomb." If neither of those happened, we were going to have a global thermonuclear war. Doom-and-gloomers will always find reasons to preach doom and gloom.
- webmaven 5y ago> Yep, back in the 1970s it was the coming ice age, No. That was an artifact of hype in the mainstream press. If you look at the research being published at the time, the consensus was fairly consistently for warming scenarios (by a factor of 2:1 during the most cooling-friendly years): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
- lancesells 5y agoI don't about the predictions but the annual CO2 emissions are climbing yearly. 1999 - 24.43 billions tons. 2019 - 36.44 billion tons. I think that's ~49% growth in 20 years. That is a bad forecast if you go 100 years into the future. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
- Retric 5y agoWe have also had 30+% global population growth in the last 20 years and massive reduction in property. Around 1980 people assumed rising standards of living would result in dramatic increases in CO2 per person which didn’t happen. Even as recently as 2000 models assumed as much as 10% increases over current levels where likely.
- Retric 5y ago*reduction in poverty.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]