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As deadly weather disasters sweep globe, is a 1.5°C warming target impossible?

aurizon 5y ago
I feel the slow progress to date will mean we will overshoot the 1.5 C by another 1.5 C and that will be a disaster. How does one country persuade a neighboring country to stop burning coal/oil? Cruise missiles?
- wcoenen 5y ago
  By applying carbon pricing to imports. https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/eu-proposes-worlds-first-carbon-border-tax-some-imports-2021-07-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/eu-pro...
  - aurizon 5y ago
    Yes, this is a needed and valuable levelling of the playing field. It removes the incentive to pollute more tolerant(bribed) jurisdictions
magneticnorth 5y ago
I would like to see more discussion about what we do in the scenario where we simply can't get it together - politically, individually, economically - to drastically slash emissions worldwide. Is carbon capture a reasonable hope? What we can do to increase our odds that we figure that out before we start suffering real population collapse? How much of an idea do we actually have of what a 3- or 4-degree warmer world will look like? How much do we think we can predict and how much falls under "this is a huge chaotic system and we can't know"?
- anonuser123456 5y ago
  In the developed world we probably have the technology to deal with it, but it’s going to require a lot of adaptation and it’s not clear out society has the capacity for the rate of adaptations.
- nairboon 5y ago
  Large scale carbon capture is actually the only way forward. It's already way too late for just reducing emissions. The required negative emissions are just getting more expensive with each day, but it's still possible.
  - arez 5y ago
    how is something that doesn't exist yet the only way forward compared to just use less energy, consume less etc. there's a way, it's just not comfortable
    - cududa 5y ago
      In this scenario energy would be stratified by wealth and geography and result in massive civil unrest. So it’s absolutely possible, just highly unlikely to happen until it’s absolutely necessary, and likely too late to actually “solve” the problem. So from a societal function perspective, carbon capture is the the only way
- angelzen 5y ago
  How many Gt of carbon are we capturing annually? According to Wikipedia, less than 50Mt. We need to scale up hundreds of times to make a sizable dent in global emissions. Hard to scale up a technology that is not working that well in practice. > The joint venture project between NRG Energy Inc and Japan’s JX Nippon had received a $190 million grant from the U.S. government. Before being mothballed, it was the only U.S. project capturing carbon from a coal-fired power plant. > Since Petra Nova started up in 2017, it suffered outages on 367 days, according to a technical report it sent to the DOE in March. Issues with the carbon-capture facility accounted for more than a quarter of the outage days, followed by problems with the plant’s dedicated natural gas power unit, according to the report. > The facility also missed its carbon capture targets by about 17%: It captured 3.8 million short tons of carbon dioxide during its first three years, shy of the 4.6 million short tons developers had expected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-energy-carbon-capture-idUSKCN2523K8 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-energy-carbon-capture...
imtringued 5y ago
Isn't it weird how we are willing to sacrifice earth for the sake of a number on a balance sheet? That number supposedly represents wealth but how does letting climate change happen maintain wealth?
than3 5y ago
Its doubtful that we'll make the 1.5 C mark. Many if not most of our climate models don't take into account what happens when previous carbon sinks turn into carbon producers. The data can be dated and at best its an extrapolation after the-fact. There's a high chance we'd end up in the situation of chasing a moving goalpost and never actually making it and many large funders have a vested interest in sowing disinformation stabilize corporate profits. Given the disparity between renewables and fossil fuels currently in use, Nuclear Energy is the most likely candidate to offset energy use but corporations can't be trusted to run these kind of facilities. Its already been noted that some carbon sinks appear to have become net carbon producers recently. Russian permafrost, and the Amazon. Basically it can happen when methane and other gases from the arctic/permafrost melt or natural disasters (large scale fires). Carbon capture also isn't the only factor in a solution, trapped heat will need to escape the atmosphere to space and that can only happen at certain narrow wavelengths. In most cases, very little attention is given to cascade failures in general, because in most cases its difficult to quantify the risk, and the worst disasters we see are often the result of these type of failures.
designcode 5y ago
We’re already too late, we just don’t realise it yet.

I feel the slow progress to date will mean we will overshoot the 1.5 C by another 1.5 C and that will be a disaster. How does one country persuade a neighboring country to stop burning coal/oil? Cruise missiles?

wcoenen 5y ago
By applying carbon pricing to imports. https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/eu-proposes-worlds-first-carbon-border-tax-some-imports-2021-07-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/eu-pro...
- aurizon 5y ago
  Yes, this is a needed and valuable levelling of the playing field. It removes the incentive to pollute more tolerant(bribed) jurisdictions

magneticnorth 5y ago

I would like to see more discussion about what we do in the scenario where we simply can't get it together - politically, individually, economically - to drastically slash emissions worldwide. Is carbon capture a reasonable hope? What we can do to increase our odds that we figure that out before we start suffering real population collapse? How much of an idea do we actually have of what a 3- or 4-degree warmer world will look like? How much do we think we can predict and how much falls under "this is a huge chaotic system and we can't know"?

anonuser123456 5y ago
In the developed world we probably have the technology to deal with it, but it’s going to require a lot of adaptation and it’s not clear out society has the capacity for the rate of adaptations.
nairboon 5y ago
Large scale carbon capture is actually the only way forward. It's already way too late for just reducing emissions. The required negative emissions are just getting more expensive with each day, but it's still possible.
- arez 5y ago
  how is something that doesn't exist yet the only way forward compared to just use less energy, consume less etc. there's a way, it's just not comfortable
  - cududa 5y ago
    In this scenario energy would be stratified by wealth and geography and result in massive civil unrest. So it’s absolutely possible, just highly unlikely to happen until it’s absolutely necessary, and likely too late to actually “solve” the problem. So from a societal function perspective, carbon capture is the the only way
angelzen 5y ago
How many Gt of carbon are we capturing annually? According to Wikipedia, less than 50Mt. We need to scale up hundreds of times to make a sizable dent in global emissions. Hard to scale up a technology that is not working that well in practice. > The joint venture project between NRG Energy Inc and Japan’s JX Nippon had received a $190 million grant from the U.S. government. Before being mothballed, it was the only U.S. project capturing carbon from a coal-fired power plant. > Since Petra Nova started up in 2017, it suffered outages on 367 days, according to a technical report it sent to the DOE in March. Issues with the carbon-capture facility accounted for more than a quarter of the outage days, followed by problems with the plant’s dedicated natural gas power unit, according to the report. > The facility also missed its carbon capture targets by about 17%: It captured 3.8 million short tons of carbon dioxide during its first three years, shy of the 4.6 million short tons developers had expected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-energy-carbon-capture-idUSKCN2523K8 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-energy-carbon-capture...

imtringued 5y ago

Isn't it weird how we are willing to sacrifice earth for the sake of a number on a balance sheet? That number supposedly represents wealth but how does letting climate change happen maintain wealth?

than3 5y ago

Its doubtful that we'll make the 1.5 C mark. Many if not most of our climate models don't take into account what happens when previous carbon sinks turn into carbon producers. The data can be dated and at best its an extrapolation after the-fact. There's a high chance we'd end up in the situation of chasing a moving goalpost and never actually making it and many large funders have a vested interest in sowing disinformation stabilize corporate profits. Given the disparity between renewables and fossil fuels currently in use, Nuclear Energy is the most likely candidate to offset energy use but corporations can't be trusted to run these kind of facilities. Its already been noted that some carbon sinks appear to have become net carbon producers recently. Russian permafrost, and the Amazon. Basically it can happen when methane and other gases from the arctic/permafrost melt or natural disasters (large scale fires). Carbon capture also isn't the only factor in a solution, trapped heat will need to escape the atmosphere to space and that can only happen at certain narrow wavelengths. In most cases, very little attention is given to cascade failures in general, because in most cases its difficult to quantify the risk, and the worst disasters we see are often the result of these type of failures.

designcode 5y ago

We’re already too late, we just don’t realise it yet.