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I’m not sure what’s the point of focusing on 1.5C anymore. I think the writing on the wall is pretty clear that we’re going to double that at least. Barring an

• piuantiderp 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • slashdev 3y ago
    ?
  • tonmoy 3y ago
    Yes it did, and sea levels have risen too: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... Note that since we are not about to stop carbon emission in the near future, the ice melt and sea level rise would increase well into the future
    • scythe 3y ago
      IIRC projected sea level rise over the next three decades is the same as observed sea level rise over the last century, i.e., it's accelerating. But keep in mind that it is partially driven by thermal expansion of water, not just ice melting.
  • recursive 3y ago
    Some did.
  • tsuujin 3y ago
    I’m not sure if you’re serious or not, but… https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/devastating-melt-greenland-antarctic-ice-sheets-found-rcna80616 https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/devastating-melt...
  • courgette 3y ago
    I really hope you have property near a cost, any cost.
    • piuantiderp 3y ago
      It has been, perfectly fine. I've seen it all, starting with global cooling in the 70s, then warming, then cooling, then change. It's a convenient lie to get many people to have less kids which arguably is a good thing. If you look at the ice, the trend is not quite evident. It comes and goes https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-06/this-winter-s-arctic-ice-cap-was-the-fifth-smallest-on-record https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-06/this-wint... Worry more about the solar minimum in 2030, take your precautions.
      • courgette 3y ago
        I don’t see the part about coming and going in your linked article. It states that the ice coverage is at the lowest since 79 since we started to survey it from space. But it’s probably fine yeah. That ice probably just go somewhere else, not in the giant body of water supporting it. Thought and prayers!
• candiddevmike 3y ago
  Our kids, who will shoulder far more of the effects of this than us, didn't get to choose this. This is their inheritance, generations of neglect for the environment and rampant profiteering culminating in a climate catastrophe.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • misiti3780 3y ago
    We have a solution to this problem, it's build more nuclear plants and electrify everything with nuclear and renewables. Unfortunately, we are shutting these plants down instead of building more of them.
    • CuteDinosaur 3y ago
      It is not the only solution though. There are several choices we can make, but only we choose not to. Simplifying everything to just nuclear power is nonsense.
      • hinkley 3y ago
        Some of those choices are on the consumption side and many of us are awful.
      • politician 3y ago
        Not making any decisions because we need to thoroughly review every option, even bad ones, so that everyone can feel good about themselves and all sacred cows coddled is precisely the way that we've been sitting on our asses for the past 40 years. The tech exists to solve the problem. We have 4th generation designs that cannot melt down. We fail to deploy them to the shame of all of the so-called environmentalists.
      • mensetmanusman 3y ago
        It would have a hugeeee impact, but definitely not everything. Especially useful would be having excess energy for renewal which thermodynamics says is a must.
• andyjsong 3y ago
  Carbon sequestration is promising, but still years away. We need to start looking at stop gap solutions that buy us more time.
  • hkt 3y ago
    Carbon sequestration is trivial: we rewild destroyed ecosystems. We don't need to die waiting for Elon. I await my downvotes.
    • BossingAround 3y ago
      If we planted trees on every square meter outside of current cities (and let them grow without disturbing them), would that make a dent in carbon sequestration? Serious question. Planting trees and re-growing ecosystems seems like a simple, straightforward solution, but I feel like it's a red herring.
      • tunesmith 3y ago
        My understanding is it would help quite a lot, and would also not be sufficient by itself to solve the problem. Too many people jump from "it's not sufficient" to "therefore, we shouldn't do it".
      • jaggederest 3y ago
        Afforestation pretty much linearly absorbs carbon based on the size of the area you cover with trees, as a percentage of current forest area. So if we doubled the size and carbon trapping of all the forests on earth, yes, it would make a big dent (solve the problem entirely, maybe). But that's unrealistic, because forests currently cover 30% of the land area of the planet, so we're practically never going to get to 60% forest coverage. It would involve giving up important things like farming. It's not entirely a red herring, it will undoubtedly be a big part of climate change mitigation, but the first and most important step is to stop pumping oil out of the ground and burning it, like the article.
        • 3y ago
• r3trohack3r 3y ago
  This is where I’m at too. At least as far as I understand it today (leaving this comment in the hope that folks can help me expand my understanding) Life on earth is not stable. We are in the final death throes of this planet. Roughly 75% of life on earth is behind us. Life has been here for 4Bn years and we have about 500m left[1] until our carbon cycles grind to a halt due to the earth moving outside of the habitable zone and all life on earth starts it’s final, and ultimate, extinction event. This pending extinction event is not human made. It was coming regardless of whether humans evolved on this planet. From everything I can tell, there is no making it through, let alone coming back from, this impending extinction event without “technology” that decouples life from the carbon cycles on this planet. In 4.2bn years life on this planet has printed exactly one golden ticket for escaping that fate: humans. We’ve done some bad things along the way to industrialization processes that can produce the technology necessary to get life off this rock - and to artificially sustain life on this rock as it becomes unsuitable for life. But I’m not confident that the bad stuff we have done is sufficient to condemn our species and disqualify us as a suitable steward for this planet. Primarily because there is no alternative, there is no species in “second place” that I’d trust to evolve a civilization capable of getting life off this planet in the time we have left. The eco-movements (outside of whole earth) have lost me. The calls for an immediate suspension of industrial processes, or the sentiment that life on earth would be better off if humans didn’t evolve to be what we are today, seems misplaced. Without humans, and without our recent attempts to escape this planet, all life on earth is doomed to complete extinction. It seems like we are in a critical several hundred year window where humans need to appreciate both that we are accelerating the end of the Holocene, a climate that was critical for the development of our civilizations, and do our best to slow that process already under way. At the same time, we need to maintain the civilization that’s setting life on earth on an escape trajectory. If we toss the baby with the bathwater we doom all life on earth to guaranteed extinction. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future
  • mech987987 3y ago
    Where did you read that the carbon cycle is coming to an end?
• runarberg 3y ago
  We are already at 1.2° C. This is despite the fact that the El Niño index is negative. There is over 50% chance that we will experience a year in the next five years where the average temperature is > 1.5° C above the pre-industrial average. This is dire. I think we need to admit defeat, and declare a climate failure. Our goal going forward should be to do everything that keeps the temperature as possible. So far the goal of 1.5° C seems like it is taking us to 3-4° C by the end of the century, 3-4° C is basically an end of the world scenario.
  • deleted 3y ago
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• hannob 3y ago
  If we can't reach 1.5°C then we should try to reach 1.6°C. If we can't reach that then 1.7°C. Ultimately: It doesn't matter whether we can reach 1.5°C, because everything we try helps making things better. And any carbon sequestation technology will only help significantly after drastic emission cuts, not as a replacement for it.: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00953-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00953-x
  • slashdev 3y ago
    How about we aim for an achievable goal instead. What’s the point of setting ourselves up for failure? That’s part of effective goal setting. Anything else is fantasy and counterproductive.
    • phpnode 3y ago
      we did aim for an achievable goal, and steamed straight past it with our fingers in our ears.
      • blooalien 3y ago
        Yep. And those of us who listened to the experts and took steps to understand the issue and act upon our findings were largely ridiculed and harassed endlessly as "tree hugging hippies" or "paranoid tin-foil hatted doomers" and shunned by pretty much everyone else around us until many of us (like myself) have simply given up. Why the hell should I care about literally anything if that caring only utterly destroys any chance at a remotely enjoyable life? I don't want to live the rest of my life learning to hate every single human I meet simply because they're human (monster). I'd rather just accept we're all doomed because most of us are ignorant, greedy, hateful, and stupid, and depressing though that may be, it's less depressing than speaking about things I know to be true and instantly being shunned for it by almost everyone. The alternative (one I've seriously considered) is for me to sneak off to the woods somewhere and build a cabin and defend it to the death.
    • circuit10 3y ago
      If you only just fail on a more ambitious goal that’s better than succeeding on a less ambitious one
• intrasight 3y ago
  A recent piece in The Economist argued that China is doing more to combat global warming than is any other nation, and if America is going to do better then we'll have to become more like China. I agree on both points. And I think that will be the outcome eventually.
  • NikolaNovak 3y ago
    That's fascinating, especially considering the source - do you have a link by any chance?
    • intrasight 3y ago
      I just looked but I can't find it. Is possible it was in another publication.
  • matthewdgreen 3y ago
    China is building a huge amount of renewable power and shipping tech to the world. But they're also burning a phenomenal amount of coal: so much so that they alone may determine whether we survive this next few decades.
  • jmclnx 3y ago
    > China is doing more to combat global warming than is any other nation If this is happening, and no reason to doubt that, it is easier for a Nation like China to do this than say the US. Why, Xi can say "Build more windmills now in ..." and it will happen. In the US, the 'in' is important, people will fight any development with in 10 miles of where they live. So it takes over 10 years for just the plan to be finalized. For a good example see: https://www.wcvb.com/article/nantucket-residents-lawsuit-to-stop-vineyard-wind/42645135 https://www.wcvb.com/article/nantucket-residents-lawsuit-to-... That is just the latest suit, IIRC this has been on-going for like 10 years.
    • MSFT_Edging 3y ago
      If we can force people out of their homes for overpasses and football stadiums, we can sure as hell force renewable projects through. China has one thing right, the idea of actions for a greater good. I forget the actual wording/idiom but we severely lack that in the west. It's all "what about me" and it drags any kind of progress to a halt unless it can be put in someone elses back yard or they can make a profit off of it.
• Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  There won't be a miracle. The best and most scalable carbon sequestration is still growing trees without them rotting, but that takes generations to have an effect, assuming overproduction of CO2 stops right away. But at this point we've passed the point of no return; probably years ago, with permafrost, ice caps and glaciers melting and all the effects that has. I don't think any CO2 measures now will help anymore.
• scythe 3y ago
  This is going to sound kind of cynical, but the primary mechanism of democratic — popular — feedback, in most countries around the world, is embarrassment. In the West, embarrassment means you lose elections; in less democratic countries, it may mean you get forced from power by other means. So the optimal climate target should maximize the utility of this embarrassment. It should not be too achievable, or countries will slack off, but it should not be obviously impossible, or that will be an excuse to give up. The carrot must always dangle just far enough in front of the horse. The point of 1.5 C as a target isn't that we meet it, but that we try to. If we could meet the target, we'd do even worse, and say "close enough", but that's no good.
  • digging 3y ago
    I'm not sure if you're familiar with American politics, but embarrassment is not a factor for roughly half our politicians. They can literally be child predators, why would their base care if they're destroying the environment future generations, even if they believed it?
    • scythe 3y ago
      >They can literally be child predators Whatever particular incident you're referring to, the evidence was not released in a straightforward fashion, but tricked out through document drops and the partisan media, so that the pols could avoid a clear public announcement that so-and-so was a pedophile. That's exactly consistent with "avoiding embarrassment"; it just happens that a small fraction — usually, people who were already opposed to that official — believe they should be embarrassed. When there are clear allegations of CSA, as with Mark Foley, the individual is quickly cast out. When a politician embarrasses their own party, as with Madison Cawthorn, the same thing happens. When the message can be sufficiently contained and redirected, the embarrassment has been avoided.
• _ph_ 3y ago
  It is like an imminent impact with your car. Whether you can still make it or not - you want to break as hard as possible to make the impact, if it cannot be avoided, the least violent you still can manage.
• atlantic 3y ago
  The priority should be on protecting the biosphere, not on reaching arbitrary quantitative goals. The planet has adapted to much bigger temperature changes in the past, and will do so again, as long as humans stay out of the way. Staying out of the way means occupying less space, and particularly freeing up migratory corridors.
• deleted 3y ago
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• CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  The "miracle" would be admitting that technology can't get us out of every predicament we throw ourselves into, and disabusing ourselves of the notion that anything - the economy, civilization, human population - can grow infinitely on a finite planet without complete catastrophe. Admitting any one of those three things is anathema, though, so we comfort ourselves with pipe dreams of carbon sequestration, dyson spheres, and sending out probes to mine all our resources from the asteroid belt.