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We Need to Stop Pretending we can Limit Global Warming to 1.5°C
- rogerkirkness 4y agoDanial, panic, denial, panic.
- Daishiman 4y agoWay ahead of you; I already stopped pretending we'll have a habitable planet by century's end.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoThat's pretty out there. "Habitable" is a pretty low bar, but saying that climate change will cause a collapse of global civilization by 2100 isn't nearly as ridiculous.
- baggy_trough 4y agoCertainly it is ridiculous. That’s not to say there won’t be significant negative consequences.
- ncmncm 4y agoProve it is ridiculous. Collapse is the default fate of any civilization where not actively prevented. Show how it is being actively prevented, not accelerated.
- Daishiman 4y agoHave two summers in a row where the vast population of birds and mammals die due to heatstroke and we'll see how ridiculous that is.
- samatman 4y agoThat's a pretty unhealthy delusion, and I feel for you, the mental anguish must be considerable. But it's a falsehood, and it becomes a lie when you share it, so maybe keep your delusions to yourself next time.
- Mildlypolite 4y agoIt's not a falsehood, it's a scenario with a probability, a high probability for some places (the equator) and a lower one for others. We have to consider every scenario, if not we are the one deluding ourselves.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoNo, it’s not a scenario with any significant probability. No scientific organization I’m familiar with claims that this might happen.
- ben_w 4y agoSaying we won’t have a habitable planet by century's end specifically because of climate change is definitely a falsehood (except for the technical point that 100% and 0% are not real probabilities). Saying some regions won’t be habitable is correct, but it always has been even before the industrial revolution. I certainly expect things to get worse before they get better, but “by century’s end” is too far away for even better/worse to be predictable to high certainty: there are 78 years from now to 2100, and it was only about 73 years between the president of the Royal Society, Lord Kelvin, saying “I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of”[0] and Apollo 11 landing on the moon. What’s going to happen between now and then? A crop of GM phytoplankton with super-photosynthesis that stabilises atmospheric CO2 at 200 ppm? Von Neumann machines disassembling the moon and turning it into a ten billion O’Neill cylinders? A bioweapon that turns all humans stupid? Plain old global thermonuclear war? All of the above? No way to tell. [0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Thomson https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Thomson
- recuter 4y agoHow is it a lie, are you a time traveler? He didn't make any claims, he shared his frustration. If you think there's a 0% chance of humans going extinct perhaps you are the delusional one.
- christkv 4y agoClimate was way hotter in the Jurassic period and life survived and thrived. Climate change is much more about impact on our current society than the end of the world. https://sciencing.com/climate-jurassic-era-4932.html https://sciencing.com/climate-jurassic-era-4932.html
- guerrilla 4y agoThey meant habitable by humans.
- adrianN 4y agoIt's not the temperature that's the problem, it's the rate of change. (And the existence of nuclear weapons.)
- ben_w 4y agoThat’s not a very strong argument for human habitability (other arguments exist, just not this), because, for example, we’re not cold blooded lizards and the Jurassic is roughly when Pangaea started to break apart.
- tejohnso 4y agoI think that has been a reasonable possibility (on the order of large asteroid collision) since the invention of the atomic bomb. And it became much more likely after they were actually used in war. And even more likely with the insane proliferation. Now we can add climate denialism and global climate state tipping points into the mix. It's getting worse. An opinion shared by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. "The [doomsday clock]'s original setting in 1947 was seven minutes to midnight. It has since been set backward eight times and forward 16 times for a total of 24, the farthest from midnight being 17 minutes in 1991, and the nearest being 100 seconds, from 2020 to the present." [doomsday clock]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoIf someone tells you that we’re closer to nuclear doom now than during the Cuban Missile Crisis, I don’t think you should take their analysis particularly seriously.
- ben_w 4y agoI believe the claim is that all risks combined now are slightly greater than the average nuclear risk during the 1953-1960 period. Regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis in particular, the Wikipedia page says: > The closest nuclear war threat, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, reached crisis, climax, and resolution before the Clock could be set to reflect that possible doomsday.[citation needed] If someone could add a citation, please do.
- Daishiman 4y agoThermonuclear war is child's play next to global warming.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 2143 4y agoI just hope I live to see Halley's Comet in 2061.
- rr808 4y agoIts fascinating that Russia is the biggest country in the world and its mostly cold. Seems a like it could fit a billion climate refugees in there, I'm sure its just a matter of time.
- vegai_ 4y agoAlso interesting that they seem to be doing everything they can to exacerbate the problem.
- aabhay 4y agoThis is how I have always thought of the geopolitics of climate change, that Russia would have a massive advantage. Then I did some research on it, and it turns out that it’s not exactly true. The currently fertile land in Russia would desertify, creating lower crop yields. And the areas north that might enter the fertile zone do not necessarily have the ecology to support mass food cultivation. At the very least, it would still require mass artificial fertilization and a huge population migration that would essentially imply a global refugee crisis.
- rr808 4y agoSure - they may have to import food, but many countries in the world do this already. Moving food importers from Egypt to Russia doesn't need more food production in Russia.
- bwestergard 4y agoWhere would Russia import from? It's not as though an equivalent amount of equally productive soil receiving favorable rainfall would materialize immediately.
- rr808 4y agoUkraine, ha. I guess that is a reason they're invading.
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- cagenut 4y agowho even is? the article does not quote one of their supposed straw man politicians arguing '1.5 is still alive'. everybody knows 1.5 is dead. rather than treating that like the literal mass grave/funeral it is, people are inventing some kind of naive-false-prophet science/politician figure to 'dunk on' about it so they can feel more savvy and in-the-know. the framing is one of winning a debate, not losing millions of lives. its gross.
- lelandfe 4y ago> A 2021 survey by the science journal Nature found that a majority of world-leading climate scientists believe that we are heading towards a catastrophic 3°C of warming by the end of the century. Only 4% surveyed said they thought limiting warming to 1.5°C was likely But also 1.5c is still the talking point for politicians. The High Ambition Coalition still uses that: https://www.highambitioncoalition.org/statements/cochair-summary-april-2021-9n7c5-z7kxl-733k4-49h35 https://www.highambitioncoalition.org/statements/cochair-sum... See also the US’s climate envoy talking about “keeping 1.5C in reach” at Cop26: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/11/john-kerry-cop26-climate-summit-starting-line-rest-of-decade https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/11/john-ker... I don’t know of many (any?) American politicians who are being honest about this. Maybe there are more forthright folks abroad. I think it’s just too politically costly.
- defrost 4y ago> the article does not quote one of their supposed straw man politicians arguing '1.5 is still alive'. I'd point to the UKs Boris Johnson and his endless finger gang signing of one finger (on one hand) and five digits (on the other) at the last COP event. He is however a dead man walking today .. although still the UK's PM for now.
- tejohnso 4y ago> Rather than collapse into despair, getting real about 1.5°C should mean we are able to hold open a space of grounded, realistic optimism. So what does that realistic optimism look like? "We're never gonna make 1.5, we've already blown past it, hundreds of millions of people are going to suffer and die because of the choices of the wealthy. But, on the bright side..." I don't think many people, especially politicians, can honestly be realistic AND optimistic. You can't put optimism into this conversation until you've first had acceptance. And you can't have acceptance until you have at least understood the significance of the situation and probably gone through some kind of grieving process. We're way off from that. People are still booking international vacations and buying brand new full size SUVs to do groceries. And there's no need to collapse into despair either.
- BbzzbB 4y agoSo we should stop international travel to properly grieve, and that is not despair?
- revscat 4y agoWe should stop fossil-fuel driven emissions out of necessity.
- throwaway5959 4y agoI’ll stop flying international when the rich give up their private jets. See: Davos.
- mdorazio 4y agoI think you're mischaracterizing the nature of the problem. Take a look at [1] for example - US total CO2 emissions and CO2 emissions per capita have been dropping for a while now. The same is true for the EU as a whole [2]. So where is the increase in CO2 emissions each year coming from then? The developing world that wants a western world standard of living. Take a look at India for example [3]. It's not sufficient to tell people in western countries that they shouldn't drive SUVs or take long flights, you have to tell people in poorer (populous) countries that they can't have a better standard of living because doing so means more GHG. Would you like to tell people that? By all means, we should be doing better in the west, but it's a lie to tell ourselves that driving an electric car and putting solar panels on the roof is going to solve the problem. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carbon-co2-emissions https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carb... [2] https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/greenhouse-gas-emission-trends-6/assessment-3 https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/greenhous... [3] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/india https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/india
- edgefield 4y agoThe big problem is that due to feedback effects, there is no stopping at 1.5C unless we engage in highly risky mitigation techniques such as blocking sunlight with aerosols. Once permafrost begins to melt, fire season expands, and the planet's albedo shrinks, then warming begets more warming. We are already well along this path, and the feedback effects are now accelerating.
- 0xb0565e486 4y ago
- defrost 4y agoAerosols are risky, they can be adverse and hard to reverse once deployed. Less risky and reversible: Space Bubbles ! [1] https://senseable.mit.edu/space-bubbles/ https://senseable.mit.edu/space-bubbles/
- pieix 4y agoDiscourse around climate change is about problems, not solutions.
- edgefield 4y agoYes, magic is indeed the best solution.
- defrost 4y agoHardly magic, it's feasible albeit difficult engineering. For that matter large scale carbon sequestration that stores more carbon than it creates, blue hydrogen, etc may well be green wishful thinking.
- ncmncm 4y agoBlocking sunlight by whatever means would hasten collapse.
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- sebazzz 4y agoThe best we can do is lower our own CO2 emissions as much as possible (no flights, recycle/upcycle) and vote wisely. Don't get stuck in the issue of the day, but look forwards when choosing your representative.
- throwaway5959 4y agoNot having kids is way more effective than any of that.
- MrPatan 4y agoIt's a very bad strategy, but the silver lining is that it's self-correcting.
- mantas 4y ago
- adrianN 4y agoNot having kids has little influence on the emissions in the next ten to twenty years, which is what counts with regards to reaching tipping points.
- throwaway5959 4y agoKids consume more energy pound for pound than adults with regards to food. There’s also all the associated products that go along with raising children, many of which aren’t handed down, etc.
- adrianN 4y agoKids do have a lot fewer pounds though. Also humans live around seventy to eighty years. So stopping procreation right now would bring us to carbon neutrality in about that time. That means that in about twenty years stopping procreation would have reduced carbon emissions by about thirty percent or so. That's a lot, but far from what's needed to prevent catastrophic warming.
- vegai_ 4y agoOh man. So it goes like this: 1. Global Warming is not even happening 2. Ok, it's happening but it's not caused by humans 3. Ok, so it is caused by humans but there's nothing we can do about it 4. Ok, we can do something about it but oops too late I guess somewhere near step 7 we stop voting evil lizard people into power.
- AlexanderDhoore 4y agoGood old "Four Stage Strategy"! Works every time! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak
- makomk 4y agoByline Times is, uh, very much the "stop voting evil lizard people into power" kind of news outlet rather than thr "global warming is not even happening" kind.
- Proven 4y ago
- Mildlypolite 4y ago"Overshoot The world will not end when we warm beyond 1.5°C. What will happen is that more people will suffer and die along with countless other species we share the biosphere with. Some tipping elements in the climate system may be activated such as the disintegration of Greenland and Western Antarctic Ice Sheets." There are other feedback loops which can be activated like the permafrost one. https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/global-carbon-budget-permafrost-feedback-loops-arctic/ https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/global-carbon-budget-perm...
- adrianN 4y agoJust like we stopped pretending we can limit it to 0.5°? Or to 1°? When does this process stop? Should we just give up completely and party like it's 1999 until fossil fuels run out?
- GiorgioG 4y agoThis will likely be an unpopular opinion here, but the earth has been experiencing “climate change” since its inception and all the folks panicking over it is an overreaction. Humans will adapt to the earth’s conditions. Yes we’ve impacted the climate. I’m not saying we shouldn’t continue migrating to EVs, etc. But by and large, the earth’s climate is such a complex and massive beast that it’s naïve to think that we can really make a meaningful affect what’s coming. If places become uninhabitable, then humans will migrate elsewhere as we always have. The earth will be here long after humans go extinct (probably) and it will be fine with or without us. The sky is not falling :)
- nabla9 4y agoThis kind if talk is "managing your mental state" by taking absurdly long viewpoint and ignoring human suffering. "World will be fine eventually if we wait long enough. There is no reason to react to Pearl Harbor attack." – Franklin D. Roosevelt
- brokensegue 4y agoSo you say yes humans can affect the climate but we can't affect what's coming? That seems ascientific. If the models are right then we did cause the climate to change and we can bend its path into the future.
- GiorgioG 4y agoWe've spent what the last 50-100 years affecting the climate significantly...and we think we can stop/reverse it in how long? Just because we wish it, does not mean we can materially affect it in a relatively short horizon. Beyond the idea that we can somehow reduce our current impact, the human population will continue to increase to what, up to 11-13 billion by 2100. Those people will need food, water, goods and services. I won't be around to see year 2100, but I venture to say it's going to be warmer than it is today and there's not a damn thing we can realistically do about it.
- viraptor 4y agoI can't think of both "then humans will migrate elsewhere as we always have" and "The sky is not falling :)" as not a cruel joke. Yes, as a species we'll migrate, while a significant part of families die from hunger, riot violence, live in slum conditions, etc. I mean, we're taking millions of people living in extreme conditions or dying within a few generations. That's very much "the sky is falling".
- magicalhippo 4y agoWhen I first read about the 1.5C target in the papers I laughed out loud. For me, the 1.5C target is the same as budget targets for a new big construction project. Politicians say it'll take N million to get it to pass, but they all know it'll end up costing at least 2-3x as much. Nobody, and especially not politicians, want to do what's required to keep it below 1.5C.
- KronisLV 4y ago> Nobody, and especially not politicians, want to do what's required to keep it below 1.5C. This is essentially the crux of the issue, no matter what anyone says. If we all wanted to, we could easily stop the pollution, at a possibly great expense to our privileged standard of living, yet that's just not happening. Even if society wasn't all on the same page in regards to this decision, there are still plenty of actions that could result in such an outcome - think along the lines of protests at an unprecedented scale, both inside of the industries and outside of them, civil disobedience etc. Yet that clearly won't happen until the living conditions get really tough and people are pushed over the edge in one way or another (consider the protests around 2008 in many countries, or something like Euromaidan in a different context). Until then, it's easier for companies and politicians to ensure that they won't be held responsible through lobbying and misinformation (as an example, consider what the tobacco industry did in the last century) and for most people it's easier to share whatever pro-environmental posts they like on social media to feel good, without actually doing anything. The problem is that the legal things that you can do to oppose this trajectory are relatively limited (voting isn't entirely working) and many like myself would prefer not to do the illegal things (protests, depending on jurisdiction might be illegal) to not throw away their careers or not risk their livelihoods. On a more positive note, there are initiatives out there where you can at the very least donate some money towards improving the climate situation: https://www.wren.co/ https://www.wren.co/ (can't comment on their integrity in detail, though) Of course, this probably doesn't matter much when large corporations can just pollute more than private individuals will ever be able to make up for in any meaningful way. It's kind of sad to see this, here's hoping that better people are voted into the office, but sadly I'm too cynical to genuinely believe that.
- nickdothutton 4y agoThis is what surprises me. If we are indeed in for a prolonged period of man-made global warming, as politicians tell us (dramatic pause, earnest face, raised eyebrows) then where are the irrigation schemes, the river delta flood defences, the sea walls, the city relocations?
- xienze 4y agoSorry you got downvoted but it’s a legitimate question. If we’re really on the road to “Manhattan is gonna be underwater” levels of climate change that we can’t prevent, only keep from being worse, then as you said, why aren’t things like seawalls being built _right now_ as a safeguard in case we don’t hit our targets?
- ramphastidae 4y agoThe NYC mayor tried 10 years ago and was stopped by opposition politicians: https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/bloombergs-20b-plan-protect-nyc-cli-msna60348 https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/bloombergs-20b-plan-protec... > The mayor proposed a series of strategic flood walls, surge barriers, dunes, tidal barriers, and bulkheads built around the coasts strategically, to insulate the coastal areas, as well as building codes to protect homes and businesses against flooding and infrastructure improvements to prevent power, fuel, and telecommunication outages.
- nickdothutton 4y agoI wouldnt consider myself a climate sceptic, but I do think we’ve learned something about the utility of governments (poor) when we see that on the one hand they swear “we’ll be swimming to work” while on the other doing nothing about… say… sea defences. This should inform us of their expected usefulness in other types of crisis.
- Rhedox 4y agoBecause that would require admitting we're screwed and cost a lot of money without any short term benefit. Both of those things aren't great ideas if you want to get elected.
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- checkurprivlege 4y ago
- bowsamic 4y agoIn what way are covid or climate change imaginary?
- checkurprivlege 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bowsamic 4y agoHow do you know that climate change is a tiny issue?
- diego_moita 4y agoAre you implying that covid and climate change are "imaginary problems"? Doctors say my uncle died of covid. He didn't worry about wearing masks or avoiding crowds. If covid was an "imaginary problem" then why he died? Why would doctors lie?
- checkurprivlege 4y ago
- diego_moita 4y ago> Doesn't prevent us from living a relaxed life Well, In your own words 10 million people were actually prevented from living any life. The cognitive dissonance is just going crazy, here. Or maybe I just fell to a troll.
- papaver-somnamb 4y agoI'm going to make some predictions, bold, dystopian predictions yet ones I feel at least rather confident in coming to be. 1) Political action will stay under the threshold necessary for real change on human behaviors to realize limits on human-caused warming. We're gonna heat the planet and politicians will remain anti-aligned and selfishly focused on partisan/regional /short-term gains with the support of their votership. 2) As we heat and resources exhaust, some populations are going to wither, some will adapt, and some will attempt to migrate towards cooler regions (the poles). This will cause political strife. As one particular example, draw a line from China's western extent straight north to the pole, and see how what is present-day Russia defends against "the iron will of 1.4B people" who are struggling to live where they are (China already views itself as an Arctic power). Another: USA pushing north beyond the 49th parallel. 3) Population control is topically political suicide in democracies; no one in power will dare broach it in seriousness at a national or multilateral level. Few such people will even give voice to relating resource levels with population levels. Instead, the mitigation strategy will find its loci in migration control and containment (keeping-their-problems-in-their-own-Stans) like we do today with Bangladesh. I truly hope I'm wrong, but I have a hunch I'm not ..
- kiba 4y agoPopulation is not really a problem. The challenge is pollution per capita.
- papaver-somnamb 4y agoYes, the footprint per capita. My post was already becoming uncomfortably long.. Ex: A religious person goes to a developing country, promotes birth control, and comes back to be rewarded for preventing excess births to the degree of 100 children. They then proceed to have 2 children of their own. Given that the developing country has a footprint per capita two orders of magnitude less than that of the proselytizer (i.e. 5 versus 800, to use circa 2000 numbers), that person has in effect only slightly mitigated the cascading impact of their own actions. It's more about raising everyone alive not just to our collective higher standards of living but also in reducing footprint.
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- Brajeshwar 4y agoThis has been a known fact for quite a while ago. Unfortunately, big corporates are like the few stubborn kids with candies they got at the beginning of the party and now not agreeing to part with even when their friends have come to the party. Almost all solution we have so far has been to coax these kids that they will get better and more candies at the end of the party if they do spend them. Almost every company taking Climate Actions aims to be on the right side of history but with much quantifiable profit. Unfortunately, the current and future costs of correcting their past mistakes run into multi-trillion dollar propositions, and the ROI is unsure. Yes, there is customer and stakeholder pressure for companies to act, but that is too minuscule for now. If they spend a dollar on climate, a company will pay twice that to go and tell the world they did, to uplift their brand image. So, it will be tough to sustain and stay cool unless that is what makes more money.
- kornhole 4y agoThe exploitative globalist economic systems that move resources and wealth long distances to the few with accompanying pollution will not be undone willingly by those few. They are buying citizenship and bunkers in New Zealand and have captured our governing bodies. Many people are too pacified and confused to fight against this. You are correct that as long as profit is the motive, nothing will change.
- ncmncm 4y ago"We need to stop pretending we can prevent the imminent collapse of civilization." Maybe it will collapse when rising ocean acidification causes the base of the ocean ecosystem to collapse, eliminating a billion peoples' access to protein, leading to global war. Maybe it will collapse when, in multiple regions, agriculture fails, and just being outside on certain days is fatal, so 200M people who happen to live there are obliged to go where other people already live, crossing borders and triggering rise of fascist governments, thus shortly global thermonuclear war. Any other imminent inevitable global collapse scenarios as consequences of failure to contain global climate catastrophe? One suffices. So whichever is first matters. Events after will be much less predictable. Certainly some people will survive the collapse, most likely even millions, maybe even a billion or more. But anyway major releases of CO2 would cease along with international trade and concrete construction. Getting existing excess CO2 back out of the atmosphere would be beyond the capabilities of the remnant population, but waiting a couple of centuries would take care of that.
- Paul_S 4y agoMake average human lifespan 150 by solving aging and we'll solve the climate problem tomorrow. Otherwise there is no incentive for people to conserve anything.
- bambax 4y ago> Does this mean that we should fall back to 2°C? Or just give up? Have we not given up already? I see no hint of anyone changing their behavior in the least, esp. as regards to cars, heating, air conditioning, etc. Many comments blame "politicians", but politicians are voted in by people. Nobody on the planet is willing to give up an inch of comfort today in the hope of avoiding disaster in the distant future. In a way, this is the ultimate installment of the tragedy of the commons.
- aperson_hello 4y agoCars have become massively more efficient in recent years. Mid-size SUVs that got 15-20mpg a couple decades ago are pulling 30-40 now (with definite tradeoffs to get there!). And EVs are finally entering mainstream (and will moreso once automakers figure out how to actually get semiconductors). Household energy consumption has gone way down too - LED lighting, efficient appliances, and better insulation drove that move and heat pumps are promising to drive that even further downwards. Behavior change is hard - but it is happening. Just slower than is ideal. 2C is VERY doable imho. 1.5 not so much
- ncmncm 4y agoSUVs are not in fact pulling 30 mpg.
- KMnO4 4y agoMany aren’t, but many are. I get 40mpg in a Toyota Venza quite comfortably.
- bambax 4y agoEVs are not, in fact, "zero emissions" when running. It very much depends on how electricity is produced. In the US for instance, over 60% of electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels [0]. It's hard to see how they're even part of the solution, given the enormous amounts of energy needed to produce them. And the whole concept of "SUV" is absurd. Most trips involve just one person. It would be better to just use a small car -- preferably an old one, that already exists. [0] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
- oliwarner 4y agoThe problem there is we need hope or we won't do anything. Given a hopeless outlook, 90% of people give up destructively, and the future of our species requires us to be better than that; to try. Together we will make some difference and that might make enough of a difference.
- kornhole 4y agoA doomer is equivalent to a denier in that neither resist the current path.
- mrtri 4y ago
- gmuslera 4y agoThen it will be that we need to stop pretending that we can limit global warming to 1.8ºC, then 2.0ºC, 2.5ºC, 4ºC, that we can avoid billions to die and that we had since the start clear that the survivors will have to live in this bunkers. We still have to do everything in our hands to limit the damage, as aggressively as possible. It is an existential threat if left unchecked, or letting the biggest offenders keep with their business as usual. Yes, we can take also measures to adapt or mitigate to some of the incoming (or present) consequences. But that should not take out the urgency nor resources that must be giving to switching to alternative energy sources, lower emissions in general, and massive carbon capture proyects.
- pl-94 4y agoA little known fact is that we likely already crossed 1.5C. Latest IPCC reports a likely cool down due to aerosols of 0.4C. But aerosols are a serious health issue (responsable of several millions premature deaths). And most of aerosols come from incomplete fossil fuels (hopefully we'll get ride of them), whereas their lifespan is less than a few years. So their cool down effect is only temporary. Also, it's quite unknown that Europe has already at +2C. Far from Equatorial + being in a continent are factors for warming faster.
- kkfx 4y agoIMVHO we need to stop pretending give numbers, especially in very short range to nature. Talking about a certain amount of temperature is like saying that today here there are 7h of sunlight so my p.v. should have produced a certain amount of energy and self-consumption should be better than the 5h of yesterday. Such numbers even if real they are meaningless because for instance in the above example yesterday there was less Sunny hours but those was continuous and fully sunny so far better for self-consumption than yesterday. Similarly at another scale it's meaningless talking about how many millimeters of rain hit a certain area per year, if they hit all in few weeks this area is not that nice respect of a dryer one but with regular alternation of sun and rain. Long story short instead of play with meaningless math let's try a more realistic path. Today we have ONE energy production tech witch constant and not much pollutant in normal conditions, witch is nuclear fission. We can't improve it in less than 10 years IF and only IF is the public who do that at 100%, no private business involved (otherwise 20+ year if we ever arrive to something usable). In the meantime the less pollutant is methane. p.v. can do much in certain area and to use it for sure we need to erase the idea of tall buildings and apartments pushing people toward single-family modern homes (insulation, p.v. etc) with investments on energy saving (for instance big water heaters with classic resistance BUT also a heat-pump for non-sunny days, big enough to withstand a day or two without Sun and without energy need keeping water hot enough) and LOCAL smart MICRO-grid like wishing machines, dishwashers, ovens etc who can talk a simple modbus-alike protocol to talk to an inverter and decide how to run to maximize self-consumption for instance. Such kind of evolution is possible and far quicker than new nation-wide electricity grids and mega-projects. In ten years we can have remote workers and retirees in such setup, witch might be not so much, but it's a thing. In others ten years others people have migrated, nuclear is fully on-line, renewable have replaced methane enough. Society is changed sufficiently to reduce the need of methane-made fertilizers, and agrobusiness was annihilated for the sake of humanity so we start to have less pollutant and more sustainable agriculture, a new western society is seeded. Others will adapt in another ten years. In 50 years we have done enough to survive the change without a world war and a mass genocide.
- airbreather 4y agoYeah, well not saying that there are not problems, but there are problems down at the IPCC, seeing they seem to have yet to have made an accurate prediction. There is a little more possible hope if you go and look at the ReThinkX people and their predictions for energy generation and use transformation, they've been making accurate predictions for over a decade now and offer a little more realistic view into the possible range of outcomes in the future. If you want a quick start you can get a walk thru at "Just Have a Think" and then make your own mind up as to whether IPCC are the holder of all and every truth card, or not. Link:https://youtu.be/UUySXZ6y2fk https://youtu.be/UUySXZ6y2fk Thinking it's all too late already is a problem on its own, don't give up too easily, do something, anything - one thing is start solar cooking some days, it's easier and better than most people think.
- Maursault 4y agoWhat would if all new development was stopped, and every structure retrofit with reliable but SotA high-efficiency solar along with efficient-minded environmental upgrades and electrical audit to get the power consumption down, such that ultimately almost every structure generated most if not all of it's own power, many contributed to the improved grid, and all transportation, shipping and planes included, was replaced with green electrical equivalent or even if compromised, obviously dismantled all coal and oil use and speculation, and somehow we got the global population under control, and we stopped contributing to Climate Change altogether? How much hotter, globally in average, is it likely to get if we suddenly somehow stopped all the major anthropological contributors to Climate Change? Because I'm starting to suspect we'll start to see large "spots" temporarily appear on the surface of the Earth, perhaps drag across, and everything on the surface in that spot will have a high chance of immediate mortality. Someone chill me out.