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> But no one is going to keep those commitments, few if any countries are even close, and many are not even on any real path Where are you seeing this? In the

by ikt 4y ago

> But no one is going to keep those commitments, few if any countries are even close, and many are not even on any real path Where are you seeing this? In the last few years alone there has been hundreds of billions if not trillions put into renewable energy.

boplicity 4y ago
The only number to really keep track of is the rate of fossil fuel extraction. It slumped during the peak of COVID, but is on a steady upward trajectory. Even though we're creating massive amounts of new solar energy, this number keeps going up. It's the only number that ultimately matters -- and it's hard to BS. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuel-production https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuel-production
- tunesmith 4y ago
  You gotta compare it to the counterfactual, don't you? Maybe it's not going up as steeply as it would've otherwise. Maybe it's not curving up as sharply. Maybe the models that project the degrees warming are more sophisticated than just whether the line is pointing up or down. In order to make a line start to go down, you gotta bend the curve first, and we have been doing that. There's a long way to go, but we haven't done nothing.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  This is a bit simplistic, the general plan is to slow growth and then reduce aiming for net zero around 2050. There's plenty of science looking at those trajectories and arguing about if we are on schedule and what needs to be done to stick to the schedule and if its enough. But its a bit more sophisticated than, if the line isn't going down today, we should just give up. Another weird thing is that, it's fairly easy to make fossil fuels less carbon intense to eke them out a bit longer e.g. don't flare or leak raw methane which is much worse than the carbon you'd get from burning it. That's a good change that actually increases fossil fuel production and that we currently subsidize doing the opposite in the US.
tsimionescu 4y ago
One thing I'm looking at is the number of BEVs sold each year versus ICEVs. Sure, we're moving in a direction, but it's not fast enough to imagine the entire world will be using exclusively BEVs in 13 years - which is one of the requirements for 2.5 degrees. And I'm not even mentioning the fact that the trucking industry has no plans whatsoever to move to electrical any time soon, while the shipping and airplane industry have no such plans period. Not to mention, we've recently seen things like Germany's Green government approving the construction of new coal-based power plants when they couldn't get enough gas from Russia, which really tells you how likely we are to move to renewables very quickly. Most of the money going into renewables has been in addition to existing fossil fuel plants, so at best covering growth in energy demands. But to stop global warming at 2.5 degrees, we need a sharp decline in fossil fuel consumption, and that just isn't happening, not globally and not in most places in the world locally either.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  > the trucking industry has no plans whatsoever to move to electrical any time soon, while the shipping and airplane industry have no such plans period. Shipping industries plan: https://www.globalmaritimeforum.org/getting-to-zero-coalition https://www.globalmaritimeforum.org/getting-to-zero-coalitio... Aviation's plan: https://www.iata.org/en/programs/environment/flynetzero/ https://www.iata.org/en/programs/environment/flynetzero/ Road freight's plan: https://www.weforum.org/projects/decarbonizing-road-freight-initiative https://www.weforum.org/projects/decarbonizing-road-freight-... https://clean-trucking.eu/ https://clean-trucking.eu/

by ikt 4y ago

boplicity 4y ago

The only number to really keep track of is the rate of fossil fuel extraction. It slumped during the peak of COVID, but is on a steady upward trajectory. Even though we're creating massive amounts of new solar energy, this number keeps going up. It's the only number that ultimately matters -- and it's hard to BS. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuel-production https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuel-production

tunesmith 4y ago
You gotta compare it to the counterfactual, don't you? Maybe it's not going up as steeply as it would've otherwise. Maybe it's not curving up as sharply. Maybe the models that project the degrees warming are more sophisticated than just whether the line is pointing up or down. In order to make a line start to go down, you gotta bend the curve first, and we have been doing that. There's a long way to go, but we haven't done nothing.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
This is a bit simplistic, the general plan is to slow growth and then reduce aiming for net zero around 2050. There's plenty of science looking at those trajectories and arguing about if we are on schedule and what needs to be done to stick to the schedule and if its enough. But its a bit more sophisticated than, if the line isn't going down today, we should just give up. Another weird thing is that, it's fairly easy to make fossil fuels less carbon intense to eke them out a bit longer e.g. don't flare or leak raw methane which is much worse than the carbon you'd get from burning it. That's a good change that actually increases fossil fuel production and that we currently subsidize doing the opposite in the US.

tsimionescu 4y ago

One thing I'm looking at is the number of BEVs sold each year versus ICEVs. Sure, we're moving in a direction, but it's not fast enough to imagine the entire world will be using exclusively BEVs in 13 years - which is one of the requirements for 2.5 degrees. And I'm not even mentioning the fact that the trucking industry has no plans whatsoever to move to electrical any time soon, while the shipping and airplane industry have no such plans period. Not to mention, we've recently seen things like Germany's Green government approving the construction of new coal-based power plants when they couldn't get enough gas from Russia, which really tells you how likely we are to move to renewables very quickly. Most of the money going into renewables has been in addition to existing fossil fuel plants, so at best covering growth in energy demands. But to stop global warming at 2.5 degrees, we need a sharp decline in fossil fuel consumption, and that just isn't happening, not globally and not in most places in the world locally either.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
> the trucking industry has no plans whatsoever to move to electrical any time soon, while the shipping and airplane industry have no such plans period. Shipping industries plan: https://www.globalmaritimeforum.org/getting-to-zero-coalition https://www.globalmaritimeforum.org/getting-to-zero-coalitio... Aviation's plan: https://www.iata.org/en/programs/environment/flynetzero/ https://www.iata.org/en/programs/environment/flynetzero/ Road freight's plan: https://www.weforum.org/projects/decarbonizing-road-freight-initiative https://www.weforum.org/projects/decarbonizing-road-freight-... https://clean-trucking.eu/ https://clean-trucking.eu/