33 ms·

IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

232 points by m1 4y ago

yk 4y ago
The problem is to a large part one of attack surface, if we don't have anything to talk about we talk about weather because weather effects everything and everyone. Thing is, all our systems are tuned to how the weather is right now, if climate and thus weather changes, problems can potentially pop up just about everywhere. Now we can talk about the systems we know are at a critical location, like coral reefs, but the actual problem is about unknown unknowns: Right now we are taking the bet that the worst problem connected to a changing climate that nobody has thought about is quite bearable, which to me doesn't look like a good bet.
julosflb 4y ago
"There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all (very high confidence)" Given how each word is carefully weighted in their report, this sounds a bit scary to me.
rationalist2948 4y ago
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- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  Are you boiling all of climate change research to a single graph from a decade ago presented without context?
- thicknavyrain 4y ago
  I'm not entirely sure what your graphs are presenting, but the IPCC climate models have done a pretty damn good job predicting global temperature rises since the 70s: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-m...
  - thicknavyrain 4y ago
    Which, I should have pointed out in the original comment, relied on, yes, anthropogenic carbon emissions.
- junon 4y ago
  Sorry, what are your credentials when it comes to ecology?
alfor 4y ago
My comment was removed because it doesn’t support the current orthodoxy. (and could make people feel bad about their new climate religion) I would be great if the censure applied here would put the comments censored on another page with a link to it. That way people interested could see what is removed and why. Instead of being it silent and hidden. More and more I feel that HN has become an echo chamber where only one direction is allowed. TLDR: make censure explicit and visible instead of hidden.
- junon 4y ago
  Enable "showdead" in your settings.
  - alfor 4y ago
    Thanks
lapama 4y ago
There is time, but no action.
akomtu 4y ago
What's the goal of these warnings? If the right people cared about global warming and pollution, they could implement a simple law, at least in the US and EU: every item sold must be imprinted with a manufacturer id that's responsible for properly disposing this item. Coca-Cola would go bankrupt, but the amount of plastic trash in the ocean will be halved. Most consumer goods will double in price, because disposing a broken washing machine is not a small feat. The unhinged consumerism will end, but with it will end the economy as we know it.
th3row 4y ago
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ChatGTP 4y ago
AI, Climate Change and war in Ukraine. It's really getting harder to stay sane and calm. If we all end up being replaced by AI, I can't see the devastating economic effects being good for the move to renewables.
dexterlagan 4y ago
For a counterpoint, I thought wattsupwiththat's analysis was alright. But I'm not qualified enough to make a definitive judgment. Can somebody better informed tell me if this article is complete bull? https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/15/climate-crisis-what-climate-crisis-part-one-the-evidence/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/15/climate-crisis-what-c...
pocketarc 4y ago
Is it just my memory playing tricks, or did we not use to talk about crossing the 1C threshold? I guess now that that’s not a possibility anymore, we’re moving to the next, hoping to get some sort of action out of politicians. I strongly suspect we’re going to cross the 2C threshold in our lifetimes. The willpower to change things isn’t there, and the effects are too far removed from our decisions. Even the floods and droughts are easy to ignore, telling yourself “it’s not happening here, just some random far away place”. But I also think that we’ll slowly start reducing our emissions anyway, as electric cars and green energy keep spreading. So we will eventually reach an equilibrium. I just don’t think that that’ll be before the 2C threshold.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  How about the hot-fresh super charged activist group called (edit) "Climate 350" .. stop those carbon density numbers from climbing before it is TOO LATE less than two years after it was formed the PPM went past 360, then not long after went past 400 PPM iir.. how can those people feel emotionally after that?
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Are you thinking of https://350.org/about/#history https://350.org/about/#history. As far as I can tell, it was already past their "safe" target when formed, they were just setting a target to aim for in the long term.
    - mistrial9 4y ago
      > it was already past their "safe" target when formed no, look how bad it is .. the target was close and ahead of them when it founded. Now from media sources and casual inspection, a person cannot even tell that the atmospheric concentration was less than 350 at that time. Awful.
- Symmetry 4y ago
  Well, .5 C degree increments in average temperature are big enough to be qualitatively different, so that's why we use them. Hitting 1.5 C includes some things things like "All the ice in the arctic melts in the summer which really sucks for local wildlife" but nothing with huge negative effects on humans. 2.0 C includes "Sea level rise wipes some small island nations off the map", though, which made it of particular concern to said island nations during negotiations. Probably, the climate is a complex system and we've never had a ringside view of CO2 levels rising this rapidly so there's really a large degree of both upside and downside uncertainty in all of this. Probably hitting 2C just means a few refugee crises and no disasters that'll effect most of humanity but we can't be sure.
zpeti 4y ago
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- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  I cannot comprehend how someone could look at the evidence and conclude that growth will continue uninterrupted as the natural world is destroyed around us. If you really don't believe climate change will have any impact, you should take a look at the actions of insurance companies. Their survival depends on them properly pricing in climate risk, and there's a reason why they've largely abandoned florida.
  - FrojoS 4y ago
    you: > [...] If you really don't believe climate change will have any impact [...] parent: > [...] they only predict that economic growth will be less because of climate change [...]
- Rygian 4y ago
  "Economic growth" is probably a bad indicator to follow. I would rather follow "number of excess death directly or indirectly linked to climate change." I don't know if that can be calculated somewhere.
  - polotics 4y ago
    Also note that most deaths actually do boost the GDP metric, in the short term...
  - logicalmonster 4y ago
    > "Economic growth" is probably a bad indicator to follow. Why? Isn't economic activity a very good proxy for normal human life, good living standards, and the capacity to adapt to any conceivable challenges? Limited economic impact from climate change is arguably the most important and positive climate related news you could ever hope to see. > I would rather follow "number of excess death directly or indirectly linked to climate change." I don't know if that can be calculated somewhere. Excess deaths due to climate change, or perhaps a ratio of excess deaths relative to the total population, might be a great metric to consider. But how could one even begin to calculate this in a way that wasn't agenda driven? One could spin pretty much anything as directly or indirectly linked to climate change. Maybe you won't, but others will. If there's bad political policies that screws over the global economy (possibly caused by the attempt to react to climate change itself) and masses starve to death the "experts" can spin it as "Economic pressures from climate change killed these people." If there's government incompetence that poisons some water supply and kills a bunch of people the "experts" can spin it as "Pressures from a changing climate contributed to a reduction in the fresh water supply that contributed to mass deaths." If there's some civil war that kills a bunch of people the "experts" can spin it as "Civil strife brought about partially from the social pressures caused by economic inequality due to a lack of climate justice caused this." If there's any natural disaster that kills a lot of people the "experts" can spin it as "Continued impacts from climate change contributed to the massive death toll." Voila, climate change directly or indirectly killed 2 billion people over some large time period, depending on how you count it. Whether you agree with it or not, using that metric is going to feel a lot like Covid where both sides see the "other side's" statistical interpretation of reality as completely untrustworthy.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
This whole "act now or it will be too late", I think actually damages our chances of dealing with this. The reason is that there is a good chance we will blow past 1.5, and this will be brought up as evidence that they are just "crying wolf". My guess is that the "final warning" phrasing is more news media and not actual scientists. If so, the news media is doing a great disservice to humanity.
wing-_-nuts 4y ago
It always makes me sad how scientists have to put on a brave face and try to tell us there's still time. Sadly, they know the most likely outcome puts us blowing past 3C by the end of the century, and 'carbon capture' isn't going to save us. If you guys are planning to see the natural world in retirement, don't wait. Better to see it as it is now than what it will become.
- deleted 4y ago
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- mikeholler 4y ago
  It's not a brave face. The science tells us that we're on a better and improving track. It's not without hope. A decade ago we thought we were on track for 6C by the end of the century. That said, it's still going to be worse than we all want it to be. Like many things, the truth lies in the middle and all we can do is push hard on the margins.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- buzzert 4y ago
  > If you guys are planning to see the natural world in retirement, don't wait. Better to see it as it is now than what it will become. What exactly are you saying here? That in 30 years, the entire planet will be an arid desert?
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    No, the entire planet will not become arid desert, don't be silly, but the world will be getting hotter and drier. Coral reefs will bleach. Rain forest will give way to savanna. glaciers will disappear. The world will be irrevocably changed.
slothtrop 4y ago
Final report, not final warning - that's the guardian's headline spin, the 'warning' comes from a "climate expert at Greenpeace International" in the article. "The Synthesis Report will be the last of the AR6 products and is scheduled to be released in March 2023 to inform the 2023 Global Stocktake under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change."
Rygian 4y ago
For anyone interested in what 1.5C represents, I can't recommend enough the Climate Fresk [1] exercise. It's not just the droughts and floods, the heatwaves, the changes in birds, insects, crop yields, … Include permafrost melting and releasing greenhouse gasses, civil unrest in populated areas that won't be livable anymore, unstable food production, and quite a few other causes and consequences. It's a feedback loop of many moving parts. Thinking that "we will reach an equilibrium eventually" is probably a naïve take. The next natural equilibrium probably includes a decimated world population. Positive action is necessary now. If you don't know what action to do, go to [1] and start there. [1] https://climatefresk.org/ https://climatefresk.org/
- Retric 4y ago
  Overstating impact is detrimental to the cause. > decimated 1.5C will be bad, but it won’t directly kill 800+ million people in a short timeframe. People simply don’t respond to harm spread across 100 years the way they react to harm concentrated into a few large events.
  - vkou 4y ago
    And underestimating what's actually going to happen, and how difficult it's going to be to reverse, or even put brakes on it is intellectually criminal, but the pro-AGW group hasn't ever cared about that. Why would they, the track record of 'Let industry self-regulate' has worked out great for them in the past. We're going to blow right past 1.5C, 2C, 2.5C...
    - Retric 4y ago
      Longer term projections on 2.5C look more hopeful. Globally electricity production has gotten significantly more green, though offset by increased demand. But, new coal power plants for example were down 66% globally in 2020 vs 2016 and existing infrastructure only lasts so long. Project things forward to 2040 and emissions should be noticeably below current levels even with increasing demand simple because of economic forces. In 2022 10% of all new cars globally were EV’s and that number keeps rising. Combined with an even cleaner grid and things could look quite different in 2040 again even with increasing demand for cars. Now I don’t want to project those trends over the following 60 years, but lower emissions give even more time to lower them further. 2.5C could easily hit in 2200 rather than 2100, or even be avoided entirely. Thus we might be able to shift 1.5C by a few years, 2C by decades, and 2.5C by literal centuries.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
To start, yes, I agree with all the rest of the comments. Of course if you look at the action needed to start within the 1.5 degree carbon budget, it's simply impossible. It's kind of like saying how much better humanity would be if there were no wars - a nice thought, but also not going to happen. I'm curious, though, and I admit I haven't read the report, but what is it about 1.5 degrees that the scientific community sees as so critical. Is that the temp after which positive feedback loops take over and it becomes a "runaway train", so to speak (e.g. less ice results in less albedo and more warming, which causes less ice). I just want to understand why that number was chosen to represent such a critical point. And since it's obvious we are not going to make that limit, what are the additional consequences of hitting 2 or 3 degrees of warming? Edit: To the downvoters, please take a look at https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions. Global CO2 emissions have simply skyrocketed since 1950. The only year they didn't go up was 2020 - remember that year we had a pandemic that shut down much of the world for months and months on end. And still, despite all the stoppage of activity, there was just a small blip down in CO2 emissions. I don't understand how any sane person can look at this graph and believe that 1.5 is attainable. Remember, we don't just have to flatten this graph, we need to bring it all the way back down to 0. I do think alternative energy technology will eventually get us there, but certainly not in 15 years, all across the world.
- lozenge 4y ago
  I suggest watching a Kevin Anderson lecture, basically, the 1.5C and 2C come from the political world, scientists then create research around that to get published, get their research into IPCC reports, etc. It is a farce and purely a political one. They are obsessed with "good news" and "hope". The assumptions for how 1.5C is "possible" amount to futurism. The goalposts keep moving too - once it was a 66% chance of staying under 2C, now it's common to talk about exceeding 2C and lowering the temperature later, which is about as plausible as running a car into reverse while the gas pedal is down.
- gmuslera 4y ago
  The point wasn't not only hitting that limit, but not hitting it before some date (end of century originally). The planet will continue warming up as long as we have an excess of greenhouse gases, even if we reach some kind of cooked up "net zero" of emissions. If we warm faster, feedback loops will have more effect earlier, tipping points may be reached in shorter time, biodiversity will drop a lot, and our ability to react and do something about it will be compromised because we will have more urgent things to do like i.e. figuring out new food sources in scale after agriculture becomes unreliable enough. It is not if we will hit a mark, but how fast we will leave it behind. There is no possible adaptation to fast enough change, for us and the world we depend on.
deleted 4y ago
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NhanH 4y ago
Let’s say if there is a magical wand that can will any policy the user wants to happen — so the magic can’t remove carbon, but it allows the bearer to pursue any mean within humanity technological abilities — what are the actual actions that could be taken to fight climate change? My impression is that even the big polluter like China (as an example) is already on full speed to build more nuclear plant or solar power, and they just can’t do it faster. Can someone realistically elaborate a high level plan on what could be done, or a pointer to such sources?
- CatWChainsaw 4y ago
  Well, completely deconstruct the globalized civilization we have today for a start. Everything that requires putting carbon into the atmosphere would need to be judged for whether or not it is truly necessary. And if you really want to exhibit wisdom rather than just intelligence, you'd want to start considering how things are going to work if renewables and nuclear simply just don't scale no matter what innovation you try.
- ixtli 4y ago
  There is no way except property seizure and capital reallocation at a large scale. This wont happen, so we're effectively doomed to suffer the slow violence of the inaction of our owners who themselves will never live to feel the harm they're aiding and abetting.
  - anonuser123456 4y ago
    >There is no way except property seizure and capital reallocation at a large scale. Just like collective farms made Russia and China agricultural power houses.
  - NhanH 4y ago
    Can you go into a bit more details? What are the next step after property seizure, and where is the capital deployed?
    - prottog 4y ago
Ligma123 4y ago
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- dudeDDRrulez 4y ago
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  - tgv 4y ago
    Don't the sheep get eaten in the end? Or was that your point?
adamwong246 4y ago
We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap. ~Kurt Vonnegut
swader999 4y ago
It was refreshing to see Greta delete her "were all doomed in five years tweet from 2018" last week. They also took down the signs in Glacier Park that predicted the glaciers would be gone by now near where I live.
- CatWChainsaw 4y ago
  Sweet, I didn't realize that that automatically means doom is never going to happen.
- jf22 4y ago
  Is your point that sometimes people get predictions wrong?
  - prottog 4y ago
    Not the GP, but sure, if the people making those wrong predictions are advocating for policy changes that will impoverish so many people.
    - DoctorOW 4y ago
      Climate change is already impoverishing people.
      - prottog 4y ago
        Not as many as cheap energy from fossil fuels are lifting the global poor out of poverty.
        DoctorOW 4y ago
        Fossil field are expensive relative to most renewable sources as well as nuclear. This was before the recent price manipulation by oil companies, which have grown price disparity.
        antisthenes 4y ago
ttiurani 4y ago
A major addition to this report compared to previous ones was the emphasis on "demand side" mitigations. That means scaling down excess energy use in a way that doesn't compromise people's quality of life. For example this paper suggests that in the UK a reduction of 52% by 2050 compared with 2020 levels is possible. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-022-01057-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-022-01057-y
kypro 4y ago
Assume we hit 1.5C and "nothing happens" does this help the cause? While I'm very concerned about how unchecked climate change could impact future crop yields I also worry that having a hard line like this probably won't help convince anyone, and could counter intuitively act as a "I told you so" for climate denialists when the world doesn't fall apart as soon as we hit 1.5C. A lot of the more convincing arguments I hear from climate denialists (I hate that phase btw) is that past climate models have been highly inaccurate and many claims and concerns have in time been proven overstated. This is somewhat true. But here we are once again looking down on the masses and effectively saying, "you plebs just don't get it, this is your final warning before you all die". I think I'd rather the data was presented with less emotion and I think that would be more convincing personally, but at the same time I suspect we're probably going to have to see some dire consequences of climate change before any serious action is taken.
- numbers_guy 4y ago
  What the fuck do you even mean with "nothing happens", when the climate has been changing noticeably for the past decade already?
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
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    - aaomidi 4y ago
      To be honest, majority of environmentalists don’t care to change our tone to make obvious concern trolls happy anymore. Nothing has worked and your condescending tone doesn’t help with anything either. Have you tried to reason with the average Q person? It’s not possible. Enjoy being depressed: https://old.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/hot https://old.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/hot
      - starkd 4y ago
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shrubble 4y ago
So, does this apply to China, which is burning more coal than ever? The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.”
- dathos 4y ago
  This is not one of those problems that goes away by pointing a finger.
  - shrubble 4y ago
    If one set of countries is lowering what they are doing, and another set of countries is increasing what they are doing, is that exactly equal in your eyes?
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      I think we can talk to the developing countries at the point when their per capita matches the now lower emissions of most developed countries.
hilbert42 4y ago
Tragically, they're wasting their time. Experience has shown that such IPCC preaching is like telling the world to stop using Facebook and Google because tech giants spy on users and sell their data. Everyone knows that and most don't like it but their addiction is too great to make the necessary lifestyle changes to quit.
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago
> at the Swiss resort of Interlaken I hope they all walked up there after taking their sail boats across the ocean.
amai 4y ago
So what? After my vacation in Dubai I'm going to buy my next SUV with BitCoins.
- greenie_beans 4y ago
  why are you gonna do that?
  - rad_gruchalski 4y ago
    Maybe they don’t have children. Thus a lot of “free credits”.
jfengel 4y ago
It's the "final warning" in the sense that the next report is going to be issued in 2030. By that time, 1.5C will be be inevitable. We may not have hit the temperature yet, but only because it takes a few years for the temperature to respond to the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Which is to say, if we don't change right now, then when the next report comes out, we will already have enough CO2 in the atmosphere to be at 1.5C -- even if we stopped burning fossil fuels absolutely and utterly. I'm really not sure how much such a warning can accomplish, after decades of having been ignored in the past. I've been treating 1.5C as a fait accompli already. The problem for me is less about the actual temperature, or even the disasters that will come of it, but what it does to American culture right now. The whole world has failed to solve the problem, but I think America was the lynchpin. We deny that the problem exists, making it much harder for the rest of the world to summon the will to spend money to do it. But in America, that has cost us our relationship to science. Any HN discussion is sure to be filled with criticisms of the scientists, many of them insisting now that this is all some kind of leftist power trip. That has utterly destroyed not just our ability to use science for any national ends, but an implacable, violent hostility between political groups. Climate change is only one part of that culture war, but it is a particularly strong example. The climate conspiracy theorists are simply wrong, just plain factually on the face of it. It's not a matter of values, or interpretation, or conflicting scientific models. There's a right and a wrong answer, and if even that turns to bitter hatred, how an we possibly resolve any genuine differences of opinion?
- somsak2 4y ago
  how is America denying the problem exists? even if they were, they're no longer the problem, US emissions have been flat to falling for over two and a half decades now.
- br4dN3w 4y ago
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  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    I can't believe the problem has anything at all to do with specific individuals in science when the clear elephant in the room is that an entire American political party decided decades ago that facts and reality were biased against them and the only "solution" was to treat reality and facts as the enemy, choose anti-intellectualism as a core party platform/tenet, and to keep votes that they needed to keep at least half of America consistently playing a conspiracy-theory-laced alternate reality game of utter brinksmanship and terrifying levels of distrust and paranoia versus actual reality.
pier25 4y ago
The currently measured temps are nowhere near reality. We're already way past 1.5ºC if we consider aerosols cooling, climate lag, and feedbacks. We've already eaten and really just waiting for the bill. Even if a miracle happened today and we reached zero emissions it wouldn't change that. But considering that our global emissions are huge and population keeps growing I'd be very surprised if we didn't reach 2ºC in a couple of decades. Even with the efforts of some countries in reducing emissions, our per capita global emissions have been hovering between 4-5t since the 70s and we're probably going the break past 5t in the next years. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&time=1916..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t... The only way out of this are very strong negative emissions. That is, reducing emissions and removing carbon from the atmosphere.
climatescam 4y ago
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sazz 4y ago
TL;DR - Sorry for this long post. "Scientists have issued a "final warning" on the climate crisis as rising greenhouse gas emissions bring the world to the brink of irreversible damage that can only be averted by swift and drastic action." OMG. I just stopped reading after the first paragraph. Welcome to the attention economy where only the biggest fairground screamer gets a hearing. Except that fairground screamers are definitely not part of the achievements of "age of enlightenment". I remember a few years ago - when it was about the populism of extreme right-wing parties - how the propaganda was described: First a problem is described as a catastrophe, and then the only way to solve it is presented. Any parallels? Nothing - but absolutely nothing - makes sense in this paragraph. Where is the critical thinking that "science" always prides itself? It starts with the fact that scientists have issued a final warning on the climate crisis. Sounds somehow like parents who are at their wits' end with their educational measures and don't know what to do next. And what does "final warning" actually mean? Will we be spared that from next year on? Or will there be the "really last warning", the "last last warning" or the "last last warning 2"? I am sure they will continue with their "warnings" next year. What else are they supposed to do? So then the world comes to the brink of irrevocable damage? What is that supposed to be? Irreversible damage like the last eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, the irreversible damage of the Hiroshima bombs, the irreversible damage of the last world war? The world is continuously changing. Things are destroyed and things are rebuilt. We dig up the earth everywhere we greed for mineral resources. For the next iPhone of the very scientists who warn against it. We changed the surface of the Earth a dozen times but now it's irreversible. Fun fact: If nature gets the chance in 1.000 years nothing will be there anymore because nature irreversible changed everything again. Is this a catastrophe as well? But it's not even "damage", it's just the "brink of possible damage". So we are heading for a situation that might produce damage - and that we can only prevent by taking drastic measures. But who tells us that precisely these drastic measures will not also lead to damage? Yes, the climate is changing. The glaciers are melting and suddenly old Roman roads appear that led over the mountains. Yes, it was warmer 2,000 years ago, too. But probably someone forgot to announce to the people back then that they were living on the brink of a catastrophe or something. Before anybody asks: Yes, lets clean the oceans. Lets plant trees. Lets adapt to the climate change. Lets invest in robust energy sources which are not dependent on wind or sun for which we have to cut down forests and destroy seas. But don't be that arrogant to think that using a master plan we can control a complex, non-deterministic, loopback-based system on the edge of chaos. This never happened. And this never will. And those systems are always "irreversible" because that's the nature of it.
makerofspoons 4y ago
The comparisons between the AR5 and AR6 are alarming. Now, under no emission scenarios other than low and very low which we are not tracking close to, we reach +2C at or just before 2050. Many reading this thread will see 3 degrees by the time they plan to retire. This comes with drought, undernourishment, and mass migration: https://sciencenorway.no/climate-climate-change/deadly-heat-and-extreme-rainfall-this-is-what-the-world-will-be-like-if-the-temperature-rises-by-3-degrees-according-to-researchers/1950125 https://sciencenorway.no/climate-climate-change/deadly-heat-...
- juujian 4y ago
  I would love to say this comes as a surprise, but it really does not. UN Secretary-General Guterres really foreshadowed that last year, and he did not mince his words. Really unusual for somebody that role, usually it is more of a diplomat-style position. > Using bogus ‘net-zero’ pledges to cover up massive fossil fuel expansion is reprehensible.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  > Many reading this thread will see 3 degrees by the time they plan to retire. This comes with drought, undernourishment, and mass migration I wonder what it'll feel like looking back at that point. There isn't anything that I alone can do right now to prevent this from happening, it has to be a collective action but still, we've been warned for decades, over and over, we knew what would happen. Will we regret not having mobilized more, joined every protest out there, not having written our representatives more than we did, not having made more sustainable choices than we did? I know the effect of personal choices and actions is marginal but still, I'm sure we'll feel lots and lots of regret.
  - splitstud 4y ago
    Well, you could for comparison's sake look back from now to when these same warnings were issued 5, 10 or 20 years ago
  - revelio 4y ago
    > I wonder what it'll feel like looking back at that point. It will feel like nothing, because everyone will have conveniently forgotten about these sorts of reports and predictions when the world stubbornly refuses to end. Just like everyone conveniently forgot that in the 50s and 60s scientists were writing to the US President to tell him that the consensus of scientists was that the world was entering a new ice age, and that he should prepare agriculture and industry for the transition. You wait and see.
af3d 4y ago
[flagged]
- chrismatic 4y ago
  Just to be sure: You are being sarcastic, right?
  - PheeThav1zae7fi 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - chrismatic 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - dang 4y ago
        "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- megabless123 4y ago
  Yes the planet's climate has always been in flux, but never has it warmed this quickly without disastrous results for it's inhabitants.
- myrmidon 4y ago
  I would like to understand your PoV: Are you not concerned because you think current mainstream-science overestimates the consequences [1]? Or do you just believe that climate change will have little effect on you, personally? [1]: Flooding, biodiversity loss, food production yield, increase in regions and days/year with human-lethal outside temperatures (see relevant graphs in "summary for policymakers" around pg 16)
  - af3d 4y ago
juujian 4y ago
Just looking at the press conference slides, some notable stuff in there. "The challeng ... Cut global GHG emissions by nearly half by 2030." I don't know why they bother putting that in there, it is obviously not going to happen. We will be lucky if by 2030 the emissions are below the current level...
jmclnx 4y ago
> as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert. Well like no one knew that :) But the official report I am sure details all the background to prove that statement. It is too bad the people that can do something will not only ignore the report but probably will double down.
p0pcult 4y ago
Geoengineering, lets gooooooooooo!
yamtaddle 4y ago
Looking at the CO2 concentration per year chart: how long until we've got Spaceballs' "Perri Air" to avoid cognitive impairment? Anyone already experimenting with getting their indoor air closer to the (extrapolating a bit) ~250-280PPM of the pre-industrial atmosphere? This'd be a step farther than people who vent in outdoor air to keep indoor air from creeping even higher due to respiration and such.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
  Ventilation (or lack of it, due better sealing that prevents continuous ventilation through cracks) will have much more impact than background concentration.
deleted 4y ago
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programwiz 4y ago
I see multiple people in this thread are talking about 3 degrees which is unrealistic. While 1.5 seems unlikely at this point 2 degrees is within reach and IMO the most likely outcome. I would even say anything above 2.5 is unrealistic. This chart[1] can be useful, compare it to last predictions and you'll see the reason of my optimism. Also note in the beginning of 2010s solar was very expensive, right now it's (almost) the cheapest source of energy[2] and the technological problem at this point is battery. That begin said our problem for switching to renewables isn't only technological, there are political reasons (e.g. China and coal [3]) and also despite solar being cheap for a certain period of time running old infrastructure (e.g. natural gas power plant) still makes economic sense, at least in the short term. but I expect that predictions like [1] become more optimistic in this decade. As a final note in the past economic growth = more pollution which is simply not the case any more for most of the countries. [1]: https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/ https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/ [2]: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth [3]: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/china-must-stop-its-coal-industry https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/china-must-stop-its-coal-i...
- wilg 4y ago
  I agree 2C peak is the most likely current situation.
- myaccountonhn 4y ago
  When I skimmed the summary report for policymakers (https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf), on page 23 it seems that we are heading towards a 3.2 degrees increase with current measures.
  - programwiz 4y ago
    As far as I understand implemented policies refers to policies that are currently taking effect (comparable to policies and actions in climateactointracker prediction, the difference between the numbers is probably due to difference in modeling). Lots of NDCs and targets are to be implemented later and there are economic and political intensives to implement them at least to some degree. That's where 2C comes from.
fwlr 4y ago
I do wish someone would just acknowledge we’ve been getting “final warnings” as well as predictions of catastrophe every few years for decades now. Just recognize that I have to force myself quite hard to take this seriously. I do trust the science! But I trusted the science in 2017 and in 2012 and in 2009 and in 2004 and in 2000 and so on. I am making myself trust the science this time, again, and selfishly I would just like that extra effort validated.
- ddgflorida 4y ago
  I lived through the 70s with dire warning of overpopulation and pollution killing us all. It's very difficult to predict the future and scientists has failed miserably in this area. An economist will out-predict a scientist any day.
- davesque 4y ago
  I'm with you on this. And I am absolutely the furthest possible thing from a climate skeptic. If anything, it's just a recognition that this kind of communication from official sources is clearly ineffective. The climate crisis is never ever going to be solved by spontaneous collective action or by appeals to collective action. People will continue to do whatever it is they have to do to get their daily or yearly basic needs met. What we need are people in positions of power that care.
  - lisasays 4y ago
    What we need are people in positions of power that care. Okay then - so how do we get those people to materialize? Absent "appeals to collective action" which you've already determined is never going to work.
  - myrmidon 4y ago
    In a democracy, this means that people in aggregate need to care more about climate change consequences in the future than wealth/disposable income right now. That is simply a hard sell, always has been, and most of us are to blame for the consequences...
Aaronstotle 4y ago
I'll up my cigarette intake from 1 a day to 2 to make up for this
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Just in case it saves one person the effort to research this themselves ... for some reason I find the measurement of climate change in units of temperature a bit problematic (though entirely rational). It tends to suggest the old bugbear of "global warming", which of course gets translated by deniers (& skeptics) into "well it's colder here so that's wrong". I spent a while digging in to try to get some numbers on a different sense of what's happening. Global average temperature is changing because extra energy is being retained within the boundary of the planet's atmosphere [0]. So how much extra energy is being retained? A best guess estimate from 2015 would appear to be that > the earth is getting about 300 terawatt hours of energy per hour due to anthropogenic climate change, and humans use about 16 terawatt hours of energy per hour. That is, the earth is gaining 18x more energy per hour than we use every hour, thanks to the changes in radiative forcing driven by climate change contributors. [0] anyone familiar with complex physical systems will understand that when you add energy to such a system, the effects are often hard to predict. It is very likely that the temperature of the system will rise, but you may also see, for example, more movement as well (which is in some sense a related concept to "temperature" but not identical, and it adds uncertainty because it of the extra degrees of freedom).
- kuhewa 4y ago
  90% absorbed by the ocean thanks to a high specific heat it's an even more modest number in degrees
- nayuki 4y ago
  "16 terawatt-hours of energy per hour" is simply "16 terawatts of power (continuously)". I want to see writers move away from the unit kWh and instead use joules, which is way less confusing and harder to misuse. Also we as a society need to respect the distinct concepts of energy (J) versus power (J/s = W).
  - evandijk70 4y ago
    Is that a problem of units or education? Children sometimes confuse the units of speed and distance, but not when they get older.
tunesmith 4y ago
Are there any resources that show the improvement we've already made in those terms? I think that would be helpful. Like, there's got to be an estimate of what our rate was when growth was before we started introducing what we've already been doing. I know there are cynics who want to make the argument that we've done absolutely nothing and that we're still in the base scenario, but I think that doesn't give credit to the advancements we've made due to environmentally-influenced policy changes across the world.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  This IPCC report is an annual report and you can directly compare year to year. So far it seems like the report gets worse every year. The pessimistic take is that every single advancement in environmental policy has been used to cover increased fossil fuel usage somewhere else. Almost every "carbon credit" trading program has been to pat people on the back for doing "their part" while actually doing very little and masking existing fossil fuel consumption with sleight of hand accounting tricks. Almost every bit of annual power savings by collective action switching to things such as LED light bulbs and EV cars has been (too easily) entirely offset by the vastly increased energy consumption of things like cryptocurrency mining operations and AI computation farms and still far too cheap oil prices. (The world was on track for net coal-fired power plant shutdown and Bitcoin alone is responsible single handedly for restarting up enough coal-fired power plants in the 2020s to offset that expected net gain.) This report card says we aren't doing anywhere near enough. We aren't meeting our collective promises (we are likely to miss the Paris Agreement best case target and are hoping we still have a path to stick to the Paris Agreement's worst case). Maybe we still aren't yet "doomed", but there's not really a lot of credit to go around for anyone collectively doing the right thing. (Individual action was always something of a red herring given how dwarfed individuals are by large corporations and industries. It's probably not worth handing out gold stars for individuals doing their part, either.)
  - tunesmith 4y ago
    This is why it's so hard to ask my question, because I feel like this mentality is so oppressive. You're not literally arguing that LED light bulbs and EV cars somehow enabled cryptocurrency mining operations, are you? What I'm asking is: for the set of actions we have taken due to environmental policy that have led to reduced emissions, what is the effect of those policies compared to if we hadn't enacted those policies? For instance, if LED light bulbs and EV cars are a result of those policies, then where would be if we hadn't done that, and still had cryptocurrency mining operations? In other words, how much have we bent the curve? Not compared to previous estimates, but compared to what reality would have been if-not-for? Because, unless the argument is that these policies have actually had more perverse outcomes than beneficial outcomes, it's literally impossible that we haven't bent the curve. I'd like to see more reporting on how much we have bent the curve, because I think it would supply positive motivation.
dham 4y ago
We could have solved energy in the 50's. We probably deserve to die. Good luck.
realworldperson 4y ago
[dead]
mbgerring 4y ago
Stop arguing on the internet and join the fight: https://climatebase.org https://climatebase.org
1970-01-01 4y ago
Average corp still don't care! 1.5C is just a number. Until we witness cities with populations over 1 million destroyed by climate change, warnings will continue to be (largely) ignored. Yes, it will take that much destruction before we collectively get our shit together and force ourselves to stop burning fossil fuels.
noiv 4y ago
Well, some weeks ago The Guardian wrote: Early forecasts suggest El Niño will return later in 2023, exacerbating extreme weather around the globe and making it “very likely” the world will exceed 1.5C of warming. The hottest year in recorded history, 2016, was driven by a major El Niño. 1.5°C is basically already locked in. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/16/return-of-el-nino-will-cause-off-the-chart-temperature-rise-climate-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/16/return-o...
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  I'm confused as to how a part of the system can cause a change in the whole system. I understand it's changes based upon ocean temperatures, but it's not as though during an El Nino yeah our global temperature goes up and during a La Nina year it goes down, right? I can follow that El Nino will get worse and cause more local extremes across the global, but I don't know how it will cause or exacerbate the 1.5C global heating.
  - noiv 4y ago
    Warming of 1.5C is an average over the entire planet and a warming Pacific Ocean can drive this average beyond the threshold. Also nowadays an El Nina more or less pauses the warming.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      Is an El Nino actually a warmer Pacific ocean, heating the global average? I assumed it was changes in currents that were already there and the heat was already in the water somewhere.
      - noiv 4y ago
        That's right, we're talking surface temperature.
        4y ago

232 points by m1 4y ago

yk 4y ago

The problem is to a large part one of attack surface, if we don't have anything to talk about we talk about weather because weather effects everything and everyone. Thing is, all our systems are tuned to how the weather is right now, if climate and thus weather changes, problems can potentially pop up just about everywhere. Now we can talk about the systems we know are at a critical location, like coral reefs, but the actual problem is about unknown unknowns: Right now we are taking the bet that the worst problem connected to a changing climate that nobody has thought about is quite bearable, which to me doesn't look like a good bet.

julosflb 4y ago

"There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all (very high confidence)" Given how each word is carefully weighted in their report, this sounds a bit scary to me.

rationalist2948 4y ago

[dead]

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
Are you boiling all of climate change research to a single graph from a decade ago presented without context?
thicknavyrain 4y ago
I'm not entirely sure what your graphs are presenting, but the IPCC climate models have done a pretty damn good job predicting global temperature rises since the 70s: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-m...
- thicknavyrain 4y ago
  Which, I should have pointed out in the original comment, relied on, yes, anthropogenic carbon emissions.
junon 4y ago
Sorry, what are your credentials when it comes to ecology?

alfor 4y ago

My comment was removed because it doesn’t support the current orthodoxy. (and could make people feel bad about their new climate religion) I would be great if the censure applied here would put the comments censored on another page with a link to it. That way people interested could see what is removed and why. Instead of being it silent and hidden. More and more I feel that HN has become an echo chamber where only one direction is allowed. TLDR: make censure explicit and visible instead of hidden.

junon 4y ago
Enable "showdead" in your settings.
- alfor 4y ago
  Thanks

lapama 4y ago

There is time, but no action.

akomtu 4y ago

What's the goal of these warnings? If the right people cared about global warming and pollution, they could implement a simple law, at least in the US and EU: every item sold must be imprinted with a manufacturer id that's responsible for properly disposing this item. Coca-Cola would go bankrupt, but the amount of plastic trash in the ocean will be halved. Most consumer goods will double in price, because disposing a broken washing machine is not a small feat. The unhinged consumerism will end, but with it will end the economy as we know it.

th3row 4y ago

[flagged]

ChatGTP 4y ago

AI, Climate Change and war in Ukraine. It's really getting harder to stay sane and calm. If we all end up being replaced by AI, I can't see the devastating economic effects being good for the move to renewables.

dexterlagan 4y ago

For a counterpoint, I thought wattsupwiththat's analysis was alright. But I'm not qualified enough to make a definitive judgment. Can somebody better informed tell me if this article is complete bull? https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/15/climate-crisis-what-climate-crisis-part-one-the-evidence/ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/15/climate-crisis-what-c...

pocketarc 4y ago

Is it just my memory playing tricks, or did we not use to talk about crossing the 1C threshold? I guess now that that’s not a possibility anymore, we’re moving to the next, hoping to get some sort of action out of politicians. I strongly suspect we’re going to cross the 2C threshold in our lifetimes. The willpower to change things isn’t there, and the effects are too far removed from our decisions. Even the floods and droughts are easy to ignore, telling yourself “it’s not happening here, just some random far away place”. But I also think that we’ll slowly start reducing our emissions anyway, as electric cars and green energy keep spreading. So we will eventually reach an equilibrium. I just don’t think that that’ll be before the 2C threshold.

mistrial9 4y ago
How about the hot-fresh super charged activist group called (edit) "Climate 350" .. stop those carbon density numbers from climbing before it is TOO LATE less than two years after it was formed the PPM went past 360, then not long after went past 400 PPM iir.. how can those people feel emotionally after that?
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Are you thinking of https://350.org/about/#history https://350.org/about/#history. As far as I can tell, it was already past their "safe" target when formed, they were just setting a target to aim for in the long term.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    > it was already past their "safe" target when formed no, look how bad it is .. the target was close and ahead of them when it founded. Now from media sources and casual inspection, a person cannot even tell that the atmospheric concentration was less than 350 at that time. Awful.
Symmetry 4y ago
Well, .5 C degree increments in average temperature are big enough to be qualitatively different, so that's why we use them. Hitting 1.5 C includes some things things like "All the ice in the arctic melts in the summer which really sucks for local wildlife" but nothing with huge negative effects on humans. 2.0 C includes "Sea level rise wipes some small island nations off the map", though, which made it of particular concern to said island nations during negotiations. Probably, the climate is a complex system and we've never had a ringside view of CO2 levels rising this rapidly so there's really a large degree of both upside and downside uncertainty in all of this. Probably hitting 2C just means a few refugee crises and no disasters that'll effect most of humanity but we can't be sure.

zpeti 4y ago

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wing-_-nuts 4y ago
I cannot comprehend how someone could look at the evidence and conclude that growth will continue uninterrupted as the natural world is destroyed around us. If you really don't believe climate change will have any impact, you should take a look at the actions of insurance companies. Their survival depends on them properly pricing in climate risk, and there's a reason why they've largely abandoned florida.
- FrojoS 4y ago
  you: > [...] If you really don't believe climate change will have any impact [...] parent: > [...] they only predict that economic growth will be less because of climate change [...]
Rygian 4y ago
"Economic growth" is probably a bad indicator to follow. I would rather follow "number of excess death directly or indirectly linked to climate change." I don't know if that can be calculated somewhere.
- polotics 4y ago
  Also note that most deaths actually do boost the GDP metric, in the short term...
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  > "Economic growth" is probably a bad indicator to follow. Why? Isn't economic activity a very good proxy for normal human life, good living standards, and the capacity to adapt to any conceivable challenges? Limited economic impact from climate change is arguably the most important and positive climate related news you could ever hope to see. > I would rather follow "number of excess death directly or indirectly linked to climate change." I don't know if that can be calculated somewhere. Excess deaths due to climate change, or perhaps a ratio of excess deaths relative to the total population, might be a great metric to consider. But how could one even begin to calculate this in a way that wasn't agenda driven? One could spin pretty much anything as directly or indirectly linked to climate change. Maybe you won't, but others will. If there's bad political policies that screws over the global economy (possibly caused by the attempt to react to climate change itself) and masses starve to death the "experts" can spin it as "Economic pressures from climate change killed these people." If there's government incompetence that poisons some water supply and kills a bunch of people the "experts" can spin it as "Pressures from a changing climate contributed to a reduction in the fresh water supply that contributed to mass deaths." If there's some civil war that kills a bunch of people the "experts" can spin it as "Civil strife brought about partially from the social pressures caused by economic inequality due to a lack of climate justice caused this." If there's any natural disaster that kills a lot of people the "experts" can spin it as "Continued impacts from climate change contributed to the massive death toll." Voila, climate change directly or indirectly killed 2 billion people over some large time period, depending on how you count it. Whether you agree with it or not, using that metric is going to feel a lot like Covid where both sides see the "other side's" statistical interpretation of reality as completely untrustworthy.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago

This whole "act now or it will be too late", I think actually damages our chances of dealing with this. The reason is that there is a good chance we will blow past 1.5, and this will be brought up as evidence that they are just "crying wolf". My guess is that the "final warning" phrasing is more news media and not actual scientists. If so, the news media is doing a great disservice to humanity.

wing-_-nuts 4y ago

It always makes me sad how scientists have to put on a brave face and try to tell us there's still time. Sadly, they know the most likely outcome puts us blowing past 3C by the end of the century, and 'carbon capture' isn't going to save us. If you guys are planning to see the natural world in retirement, don't wait. Better to see it as it is now than what it will become.

deleted 4y ago
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mikeholler 4y ago
It's not a brave face. The science tells us that we're on a better and improving track. It's not without hope. A decade ago we thought we were on track for 6C by the end of the century. That said, it's still going to be worse than we all want it to be. Like many things, the truth lies in the middle and all we can do is push hard on the margins.
- deleted 4y ago
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buzzert 4y ago
> If you guys are planning to see the natural world in retirement, don't wait. Better to see it as it is now than what it will become. What exactly are you saying here? That in 30 years, the entire planet will be an arid desert?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  No, the entire planet will not become arid desert, don't be silly, but the world will be getting hotter and drier. Coral reefs will bleach. Rain forest will give way to savanna. glaciers will disappear. The world will be irrevocably changed.

slothtrop 4y ago

Final report, not final warning - that's the guardian's headline spin, the 'warning' comes from a "climate expert at Greenpeace International" in the article. "The Synthesis Report will be the last of the AR6 products and is scheduled to be released in March 2023 to inform the 2023 Global Stocktake under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change."

Rygian 4y ago

For anyone interested in what 1.5C represents, I can't recommend enough the Climate Fresk [1] exercise. It's not just the droughts and floods, the heatwaves, the changes in birds, insects, crop yields, … Include permafrost melting and releasing greenhouse gasses, civil unrest in populated areas that won't be livable anymore, unstable food production, and quite a few other causes and consequences. It's a feedback loop of many moving parts. Thinking that "we will reach an equilibrium eventually" is probably a naïve take. The next natural equilibrium probably includes a decimated world population. Positive action is necessary now. If you don't know what action to do, go to [1] and start there. [1] https://climatefresk.org/ https://climatefresk.org/

Retric 4y ago
Overstating impact is detrimental to the cause. > decimated 1.5C will be bad, but it won’t directly kill 800+ million people in a short timeframe. People simply don’t respond to harm spread across 100 years the way they react to harm concentrated into a few large events.
- vkou 4y ago
  And underestimating what's actually going to happen, and how difficult it's going to be to reverse, or even put brakes on it is intellectually criminal, but the pro-AGW group hasn't ever cared about that. Why would they, the track record of 'Let industry self-regulate' has worked out great for them in the past. We're going to blow right past 1.5C, 2C, 2.5C...
  - Retric 4y ago
    Longer term projections on 2.5C look more hopeful. Globally electricity production has gotten significantly more green, though offset by increased demand. But, new coal power plants for example were down 66% globally in 2020 vs 2016 and existing infrastructure only lasts so long. Project things forward to 2040 and emissions should be noticeably below current levels even with increasing demand simple because of economic forces. In 2022 10% of all new cars globally were EV’s and that number keeps rising. Combined with an even cleaner grid and things could look quite different in 2040 again even with increasing demand for cars. Now I don’t want to project those trends over the following 60 years, but lower emissions give even more time to lower them further. 2.5C could easily hit in 2200 rather than 2100, or even be avoided entirely. Thus we might be able to shift 1.5C by a few years, 2C by decades, and 2.5C by literal centuries.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

To start, yes, I agree with all the rest of the comments. Of course if you look at the action needed to start within the 1.5 degree carbon budget, it's simply impossible. It's kind of like saying how much better humanity would be if there were no wars - a nice thought, but also not going to happen. I'm curious, though, and I admit I haven't read the report, but what is it about 1.5 degrees that the scientific community sees as so critical. Is that the temp after which positive feedback loops take over and it becomes a "runaway train", so to speak (e.g. less ice results in less albedo and more warming, which causes less ice). I just want to understand why that number was chosen to represent such a critical point. And since it's obvious we are not going to make that limit, what are the additional consequences of hitting 2 or 3 degrees of warming? Edit: To the downvoters, please take a look at https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions. Global CO2 emissions have simply skyrocketed since 1950. The only year they didn't go up was 2020 - remember that year we had a pandemic that shut down much of the world for months and months on end. And still, despite all the stoppage of activity, there was just a small blip down in CO2 emissions. I don't understand how any sane person can look at this graph and believe that 1.5 is attainable. Remember, we don't just have to flatten this graph, we need to bring it all the way back down to 0. I do think alternative energy technology will eventually get us there, but certainly not in 15 years, all across the world.

lozenge 4y ago
I suggest watching a Kevin Anderson lecture, basically, the 1.5C and 2C come from the political world, scientists then create research around that to get published, get their research into IPCC reports, etc. It is a farce and purely a political one. They are obsessed with "good news" and "hope". The assumptions for how 1.5C is "possible" amount to futurism. The goalposts keep moving too - once it was a 66% chance of staying under 2C, now it's common to talk about exceeding 2C and lowering the temperature later, which is about as plausible as running a car into reverse while the gas pedal is down.
gmuslera 4y ago
The point wasn't not only hitting that limit, but not hitting it before some date (end of century originally). The planet will continue warming up as long as we have an excess of greenhouse gases, even if we reach some kind of cooked up "net zero" of emissions. If we warm faster, feedback loops will have more effect earlier, tipping points may be reached in shorter time, biodiversity will drop a lot, and our ability to react and do something about it will be compromised because we will have more urgent things to do like i.e. figuring out new food sources in scale after agriculture becomes unreliable enough. It is not if we will hit a mark, but how fast we will leave it behind. There is no possible adaptation to fast enough change, for us and the world we depend on.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

NhanH 4y ago

Let’s say if there is a magical wand that can will any policy the user wants to happen — so the magic can’t remove carbon, but it allows the bearer to pursue any mean within humanity technological abilities — what are the actual actions that could be taken to fight climate change? My impression is that even the big polluter like China (as an example) is already on full speed to build more nuclear plant or solar power, and they just can’t do it faster. Can someone realistically elaborate a high level plan on what could be done, or a pointer to such sources?

CatWChainsaw 4y ago
Well, completely deconstruct the globalized civilization we have today for a start. Everything that requires putting carbon into the atmosphere would need to be judged for whether or not it is truly necessary. And if you really want to exhibit wisdom rather than just intelligence, you'd want to start considering how things are going to work if renewables and nuclear simply just don't scale no matter what innovation you try.
ixtli 4y ago
There is no way except property seizure and capital reallocation at a large scale. This wont happen, so we're effectively doomed to suffer the slow violence of the inaction of our owners who themselves will never live to feel the harm they're aiding and abetting.
- anonuser123456 4y ago
  >There is no way except property seizure and capital reallocation at a large scale. Just like collective farms made Russia and China agricultural power houses.
- NhanH 4y ago
  Can you go into a bit more details? What are the next step after property seizure, and where is the capital deployed?
  - prottog 4y ago

Ligma123 4y ago

[flagged]

dudeDDRrulez 4y ago
[flagged]
- tgv 4y ago
  Don't the sheep get eaten in the end? Or was that your point?

adamwong246 4y ago

We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap. ~Kurt Vonnegut

swader999 4y ago

It was refreshing to see Greta delete her "were all doomed in five years tweet from 2018" last week. They also took down the signs in Glacier Park that predicted the glaciers would be gone by now near where I live.

CatWChainsaw 4y ago
Sweet, I didn't realize that that automatically means doom is never going to happen.
jf22 4y ago
Is your point that sometimes people get predictions wrong?
- prottog 4y ago
  Not the GP, but sure, if the people making those wrong predictions are advocating for policy changes that will impoverish so many people.
  - DoctorOW 4y ago
    Climate change is already impoverishing people.
    - prottog 4y ago
      Not as many as cheap energy from fossil fuels are lifting the global poor out of poverty.
      - DoctorOW 4y ago
        Fossil field are expensive relative to most renewable sources as well as nuclear. This was before the recent price manipulation by oil companies, which have grown price disparity.
      - antisthenes 4y ago

ttiurani 4y ago

A major addition to this report compared to previous ones was the emphasis on "demand side" mitigations. That means scaling down excess energy use in a way that doesn't compromise people's quality of life. For example this paper suggests that in the UK a reduction of 52% by 2050 compared with 2020 levels is possible. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-022-01057-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-022-01057-y

kypro 4y ago

Assume we hit 1.5C and "nothing happens" does this help the cause? While I'm very concerned about how unchecked climate change could impact future crop yields I also worry that having a hard line like this probably won't help convince anyone, and could counter intuitively act as a "I told you so" for climate denialists when the world doesn't fall apart as soon as we hit 1.5C. A lot of the more convincing arguments I hear from climate denialists (I hate that phase btw) is that past climate models have been highly inaccurate and many claims and concerns have in time been proven overstated. This is somewhat true. But here we are once again looking down on the masses and effectively saying, "you plebs just don't get it, this is your final warning before you all die". I think I'd rather the data was presented with less emotion and I think that would be more convincing personally, but at the same time I suspect we're probably going to have to see some dire consequences of climate change before any serious action is taken.

numbers_guy 4y ago
What the fuck do you even mean with "nothing happens", when the climate has been changing noticeably for the past decade already?
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
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  - aaomidi 4y ago
    To be honest, majority of environmentalists don’t care to change our tone to make obvious concern trolls happy anymore. Nothing has worked and your condescending tone doesn’t help with anything either. Have you tried to reason with the average Q person? It’s not possible. Enjoy being depressed: https://old.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/hot https://old.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/hot
    - starkd 4y ago
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shrubble 4y ago

So, does this apply to China, which is burning more coal than ever? The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.”

dathos 4y ago
This is not one of those problems that goes away by pointing a finger.
- shrubble 4y ago
  If one set of countries is lowering what they are doing, and another set of countries is increasing what they are doing, is that exactly equal in your eyes?
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    I think we can talk to the developing countries at the point when their per capita matches the now lower emissions of most developed countries.

hilbert42 4y ago

Tragically, they're wasting their time. Experience has shown that such IPCC preaching is like telling the world to stop using Facebook and Google because tech giants spy on users and sell their data. Everyone knows that and most don't like it but their addiction is too great to make the necessary lifestyle changes to quit.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y ago

> at the Swiss resort of Interlaken I hope they all walked up there after taking their sail boats across the ocean.

amai 4y ago

So what? After my vacation in Dubai I'm going to buy my next SUV with BitCoins.

greenie_beans 4y ago
why are you gonna do that?
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  Maybe they don’t have children. Thus a lot of “free credits”.

jfengel 4y ago

It's the "final warning" in the sense that the next report is going to be issued in 2030. By that time, 1.5C will be be inevitable. We may not have hit the temperature yet, but only because it takes a few years for the temperature to respond to the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Which is to say, if we don't change right now, then when the next report comes out, we will already have enough CO2 in the atmosphere to be at 1.5C -- even if we stopped burning fossil fuels absolutely and utterly. I'm really not sure how much such a warning can accomplish, after decades of having been ignored in the past. I've been treating 1.5C as a fait accompli already. The problem for me is less about the actual temperature, or even the disasters that will come of it, but what it does to American culture right now. The whole world has failed to solve the problem, but I think America was the lynchpin. We deny that the problem exists, making it much harder for the rest of the world to summon the will to spend money to do it. But in America, that has cost us our relationship to science. Any HN discussion is sure to be filled with criticisms of the scientists, many of them insisting now that this is all some kind of leftist power trip. That has utterly destroyed not just our ability to use science for any national ends, but an implacable, violent hostility between political groups. Climate change is only one part of that culture war, but it is a particularly strong example. The climate conspiracy theorists are simply wrong, just plain factually on the face of it. It's not a matter of values, or interpretation, or conflicting scientific models. There's a right and a wrong answer, and if even that turns to bitter hatred, how an we possibly resolve any genuine differences of opinion?

somsak2 4y ago
how is America denying the problem exists? even if they were, they're no longer the problem, US emissions have been flat to falling for over two and a half decades now.
br4dN3w 4y ago
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- WorldMaker 4y ago
  I can't believe the problem has anything at all to do with specific individuals in science when the clear elephant in the room is that an entire American political party decided decades ago that facts and reality were biased against them and the only "solution" was to treat reality and facts as the enemy, choose anti-intellectualism as a core party platform/tenet, and to keep votes that they needed to keep at least half of America consistently playing a conspiracy-theory-laced alternate reality game of utter brinksmanship and terrifying levels of distrust and paranoia versus actual reality.

pier25 4y ago

The currently measured temps are nowhere near reality. We're already way past 1.5ºC if we consider aerosols cooling, climate lag, and feedbacks. We've already eaten and really just waiting for the bill. Even if a miracle happened today and we reached zero emissions it wouldn't change that. But considering that our global emissions are huge and population keeps growing I'd be very surprised if we didn't reach 2ºC in a couple of decades. Even with the efforts of some countries in reducing emissions, our per capita global emissions have been hovering between 4-5t since the 70s and we're probably going the break past 5t in the next years. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&time=1916..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t... The only way out of this are very strong negative emissions. That is, reducing emissions and removing carbon from the atmosphere.

climatescam 4y ago

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sazz 4y ago

TL;DR - Sorry for this long post. "Scientists have issued a "final warning" on the climate crisis as rising greenhouse gas emissions bring the world to the brink of irreversible damage that can only be averted by swift and drastic action." OMG. I just stopped reading after the first paragraph. Welcome to the attention economy where only the biggest fairground screamer gets a hearing. Except that fairground screamers are definitely not part of the achievements of "age of enlightenment". I remember a few years ago - when it was about the populism of extreme right-wing parties - how the propaganda was described: First a problem is described as a catastrophe, and then the only way to solve it is presented. Any parallels? Nothing - but absolutely nothing - makes sense in this paragraph. Where is the critical thinking that "science" always prides itself? It starts with the fact that scientists have issued a final warning on the climate crisis. Sounds somehow like parents who are at their wits' end with their educational measures and don't know what to do next. And what does "final warning" actually mean? Will we be spared that from next year on? Or will there be the "really last warning", the "last last warning" or the "last last warning 2"? I am sure they will continue with their "warnings" next year. What else are they supposed to do? So then the world comes to the brink of irrevocable damage? What is that supposed to be? Irreversible damage like the last eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, the irreversible damage of the Hiroshima bombs, the irreversible damage of the last world war? The world is continuously changing. Things are destroyed and things are rebuilt. We dig up the earth everywhere we greed for mineral resources. For the next iPhone of the very scientists who warn against it. We changed the surface of the Earth a dozen times but now it's irreversible. Fun fact: If nature gets the chance in 1.000 years nothing will be there anymore because nature irreversible changed everything again. Is this a catastrophe as well? But it's not even "damage", it's just the "brink of possible damage". So we are heading for a situation that might produce damage - and that we can only prevent by taking drastic measures. But who tells us that precisely these drastic measures will not also lead to damage? Yes, the climate is changing. The glaciers are melting and suddenly old Roman roads appear that led over the mountains. Yes, it was warmer 2,000 years ago, too. But probably someone forgot to announce to the people back then that they were living on the brink of a catastrophe or something. Before anybody asks: Yes, lets clean the oceans. Lets plant trees. Lets adapt to the climate change. Lets invest in robust energy sources which are not dependent on wind or sun for which we have to cut down forests and destroy seas. But don't be that arrogant to think that using a master plan we can control a complex, non-deterministic, loopback-based system on the edge of chaos. This never happened. And this never will. And those systems are always "irreversible" because that's the nature of it.

makerofspoons 4y ago

The comparisons between the AR5 and AR6 are alarming. Now, under no emission scenarios other than low and very low which we are not tracking close to, we reach +2C at or just before 2050. Many reading this thread will see 3 degrees by the time they plan to retire. This comes with drought, undernourishment, and mass migration: https://sciencenorway.no/climate-climate-change/deadly-heat-and-extreme-rainfall-this-is-what-the-world-will-be-like-if-the-temperature-rises-by-3-degrees-according-to-researchers/1950125 https://sciencenorway.no/climate-climate-change/deadly-heat-...

juujian 4y ago
I would love to say this comes as a surprise, but it really does not. UN Secretary-General Guterres really foreshadowed that last year, and he did not mince his words. Really unusual for somebody that role, usually it is more of a diplomat-style position. > Using bogus ‘net-zero’ pledges to cover up massive fossil fuel expansion is reprehensible.
barbazoo 4y ago
> Many reading this thread will see 3 degrees by the time they plan to retire. This comes with drought, undernourishment, and mass migration I wonder what it'll feel like looking back at that point. There isn't anything that I alone can do right now to prevent this from happening, it has to be a collective action but still, we've been warned for decades, over and over, we knew what would happen. Will we regret not having mobilized more, joined every protest out there, not having written our representatives more than we did, not having made more sustainable choices than we did? I know the effect of personal choices and actions is marginal but still, I'm sure we'll feel lots and lots of regret.
- splitstud 4y ago
  Well, you could for comparison's sake look back from now to when these same warnings were issued 5, 10 or 20 years ago
- revelio 4y ago
  > I wonder what it'll feel like looking back at that point. It will feel like nothing, because everyone will have conveniently forgotten about these sorts of reports and predictions when the world stubbornly refuses to end. Just like everyone conveniently forgot that in the 50s and 60s scientists were writing to the US President to tell him that the consensus of scientists was that the world was entering a new ice age, and that he should prepare agriculture and industry for the transition. You wait and see.

af3d 4y ago

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chrismatic 4y ago
Just to be sure: You are being sarcastic, right?
- PheeThav1zae7fi 4y ago
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  - chrismatic 4y ago
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    - dang 4y ago
      "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
megabless123 4y ago
Yes the planet's climate has always been in flux, but never has it warmed this quickly without disastrous results for it's inhabitants.
myrmidon 4y ago
I would like to understand your PoV: Are you not concerned because you think current mainstream-science overestimates the consequences [1]? Or do you just believe that climate change will have little effect on you, personally? [1]: Flooding, biodiversity loss, food production yield, increase in regions and days/year with human-lethal outside temperatures (see relevant graphs in "summary for policymakers" around pg 16)
- af3d 4y ago

juujian 4y ago

Just looking at the press conference slides, some notable stuff in there. "The challeng ... Cut global GHG emissions by nearly half by 2030." I don't know why they bother putting that in there, it is obviously not going to happen. We will be lucky if by 2030 the emissions are below the current level...

jmclnx 4y ago

> as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert. Well like no one knew that :) But the official report I am sure details all the background to prove that statement. It is too bad the people that can do something will not only ignore the report but probably will double down.

p0pcult 4y ago

Geoengineering, lets gooooooooooo!

yamtaddle 4y ago

Looking at the CO2 concentration per year chart: how long until we've got Spaceballs' "Perri Air" to avoid cognitive impairment? Anyone already experimenting with getting their indoor air closer to the (extrapolating a bit) ~250-280PPM of the pre-industrial atmosphere? This'd be a step farther than people who vent in outdoor air to keep indoor air from creeping even higher due to respiration and such.

tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
Ventilation (or lack of it, due better sealing that prevents continuous ventilation through cracks) will have much more impact than background concentration.

deleted 4y ago

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programwiz 4y ago

I see multiple people in this thread are talking about 3 degrees which is unrealistic. While 1.5 seems unlikely at this point 2 degrees is within reach and IMO the most likely outcome. I would even say anything above 2.5 is unrealistic. This chart[1] can be useful, compare it to last predictions and you'll see the reason of my optimism. Also note in the beginning of 2010s solar was very expensive, right now it's (almost) the cheapest source of energy[2] and the technological problem at this point is battery. That begin said our problem for switching to renewables isn't only technological, there are political reasons (e.g. China and coal [3]) and also despite solar being cheap for a certain period of time running old infrastructure (e.g. natural gas power plant) still makes economic sense, at least in the short term. but I expect that predictions like [1] become more optimistic in this decade. As a final note in the past economic growth = more pollution which is simply not the case any more for most of the countries. [1]: https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/ https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/ [2]: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth [3]: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/china-must-stop-its-coal-industry https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/china-must-stop-its-coal-i...

wilg 4y ago
I agree 2C peak is the most likely current situation.
myaccountonhn 4y ago
When I skimmed the summary report for policymakers (https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf), on page 23 it seems that we are heading towards a 3.2 degrees increase with current measures.
- programwiz 4y ago
  As far as I understand implemented policies refers to policies that are currently taking effect (comparable to policies and actions in climateactointracker prediction, the difference between the numbers is probably due to difference in modeling). Lots of NDCs and targets are to be implemented later and there are economic and political intensives to implement them at least to some degree. That's where 2C comes from.

fwlr 4y ago

I do wish someone would just acknowledge we’ve been getting “final warnings” as well as predictions of catastrophe every few years for decades now. Just recognize that I have to force myself quite hard to take this seriously. I do trust the science! But I trusted the science in 2017 and in 2012 and in 2009 and in 2004 and in 2000 and so on. I am making myself trust the science this time, again, and selfishly I would just like that extra effort validated.

ddgflorida 4y ago
I lived through the 70s with dire warning of overpopulation and pollution killing us all. It's very difficult to predict the future and scientists has failed miserably in this area. An economist will out-predict a scientist any day.
davesque 4y ago
I'm with you on this. And I am absolutely the furthest possible thing from a climate skeptic. If anything, it's just a recognition that this kind of communication from official sources is clearly ineffective. The climate crisis is never ever going to be solved by spontaneous collective action or by appeals to collective action. People will continue to do whatever it is they have to do to get their daily or yearly basic needs met. What we need are people in positions of power that care.
- lisasays 4y ago
  What we need are people in positions of power that care. Okay then - so how do we get those people to materialize? Absent "appeals to collective action" which you've already determined is never going to work.
- myrmidon 4y ago
  In a democracy, this means that people in aggregate need to care more about climate change consequences in the future than wealth/disposable income right now. That is simply a hard sell, always has been, and most of us are to blame for the consequences...

Aaronstotle 4y ago

I'll up my cigarette intake from 1 a day to 2 to make up for this

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

Just in case it saves one person the effort to research this themselves ... for some reason I find the measurement of climate change in units of temperature a bit problematic (though entirely rational). It tends to suggest the old bugbear of "global warming", which of course gets translated by deniers (& skeptics) into "well it's colder here so that's wrong". I spent a while digging in to try to get some numbers on a different sense of what's happening. Global average temperature is changing because extra energy is being retained within the boundary of the planet's atmosphere [0]. So how much extra energy is being retained? A best guess estimate from 2015 would appear to be that > the earth is getting about 300 terawatt hours of energy per hour due to anthropogenic climate change, and humans use about 16 terawatt hours of energy per hour. That is, the earth is gaining 18x more energy per hour than we use every hour, thanks to the changes in radiative forcing driven by climate change contributors. [0] anyone familiar with complex physical systems will understand that when you add energy to such a system, the effects are often hard to predict. It is very likely that the temperature of the system will rise, but you may also see, for example, more movement as well (which is in some sense a related concept to "temperature" but not identical, and it adds uncertainty because it of the extra degrees of freedom).

kuhewa 4y ago
90% absorbed by the ocean thanks to a high specific heat it's an even more modest number in degrees
nayuki 4y ago
"16 terawatt-hours of energy per hour" is simply "16 terawatts of power (continuously)". I want to see writers move away from the unit kWh and instead use joules, which is way less confusing and harder to misuse. Also we as a society need to respect the distinct concepts of energy (J) versus power (J/s = W).
- evandijk70 4y ago
  Is that a problem of units or education? Children sometimes confuse the units of speed and distance, but not when they get older.

tunesmith 4y ago

Are there any resources that show the improvement we've already made in those terms? I think that would be helpful. Like, there's got to be an estimate of what our rate was when growth was before we started introducing what we've already been doing. I know there are cynics who want to make the argument that we've done absolutely nothing and that we're still in the base scenario, but I think that doesn't give credit to the advancements we've made due to environmentally-influenced policy changes across the world.

WorldMaker 4y ago
This IPCC report is an annual report and you can directly compare year to year. So far it seems like the report gets worse every year. The pessimistic take is that every single advancement in environmental policy has been used to cover increased fossil fuel usage somewhere else. Almost every "carbon credit" trading program has been to pat people on the back for doing "their part" while actually doing very little and masking existing fossil fuel consumption with sleight of hand accounting tricks. Almost every bit of annual power savings by collective action switching to things such as LED light bulbs and EV cars has been (too easily) entirely offset by the vastly increased energy consumption of things like cryptocurrency mining operations and AI computation farms and still far too cheap oil prices. (The world was on track for net coal-fired power plant shutdown and Bitcoin alone is responsible single handedly for restarting up enough coal-fired power plants in the 2020s to offset that expected net gain.) This report card says we aren't doing anywhere near enough. We aren't meeting our collective promises (we are likely to miss the Paris Agreement best case target and are hoping we still have a path to stick to the Paris Agreement's worst case). Maybe we still aren't yet "doomed", but there's not really a lot of credit to go around for anyone collectively doing the right thing. (Individual action was always something of a red herring given how dwarfed individuals are by large corporations and industries. It's probably not worth handing out gold stars for individuals doing their part, either.)
- tunesmith 4y ago
  This is why it's so hard to ask my question, because I feel like this mentality is so oppressive. You're not literally arguing that LED light bulbs and EV cars somehow enabled cryptocurrency mining operations, are you? What I'm asking is: for the set of actions we have taken due to environmental policy that have led to reduced emissions, what is the effect of those policies compared to if we hadn't enacted those policies? For instance, if LED light bulbs and EV cars are a result of those policies, then where would be if we hadn't done that, and still had cryptocurrency mining operations? In other words, how much have we bent the curve? Not compared to previous estimates, but compared to what reality would have been if-not-for? Because, unless the argument is that these policies have actually had more perverse outcomes than beneficial outcomes, it's literally impossible that we haven't bent the curve. I'd like to see more reporting on how much we have bent the curve, because I think it would supply positive motivation.

dham 4y ago

We could have solved energy in the 50's. We probably deserve to die. Good luck.

realworldperson 4y ago

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mbgerring 4y ago

Stop arguing on the internet and join the fight: https://climatebase.org https://climatebase.org

1970-01-01 4y ago

Average corp still don't care! 1.5C is just a number. Until we witness cities with populations over 1 million destroyed by climate change, warnings will continue to be (largely) ignored. Yes, it will take that much destruction before we collectively get our shit together and force ourselves to stop burning fossil fuels.

noiv 4y ago

Well, some weeks ago The Guardian wrote: Early forecasts suggest El Niño will return later in 2023, exacerbating extreme weather around the globe and making it “very likely” the world will exceed 1.5C of warming. The hottest year in recorded history, 2016, was driven by a major El Niño. 1.5°C is basically already locked in. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/16/return-of-el-nino-will-cause-off-the-chart-temperature-rise-climate-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/16/return-o...

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
I'm confused as to how a part of the system can cause a change in the whole system. I understand it's changes based upon ocean temperatures, but it's not as though during an El Nino yeah our global temperature goes up and during a La Nina year it goes down, right? I can follow that El Nino will get worse and cause more local extremes across the global, but I don't know how it will cause or exacerbate the 1.5C global heating.
- noiv 4y ago
  Warming of 1.5C is an average over the entire planet and a warming Pacific Ocean can drive this average beyond the threshold. Also nowadays an El Nina more or less pauses the warming.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Is an El Nino actually a warmer Pacific ocean, heating the global average? I assumed it was changes in currents that were already there and the heat was already in the water somewhere.
    - noiv 4y ago
      That's right, we're talking surface temperature.
      - 4y ago