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There's nothing unachievable about 1.5C It would require sacrifices and global cooperation, but any real solution to climate change will require that

orwin 4y ago
It is though. The Co2 we emit today will only have a greenhouse effect in 20 years. The average climate we have today is the result of the Co2 we put in the atmosphere in 2003.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Indeed, this inertia has been missing in the media coverage recently where it was mentioned very often a few years ago. I wonder why.
runarberg 4y ago
There is 50% chance that in the next five years we will experience a year where the global average temperature is greater than 1.5° C. We are already in 1.2° C and the El Niño index is negative. There is high probability that 2024 will be the hottest year on record (probably getting really close to 1.5° C). Global carbon emissions are still rising. Climate policies are not being rolled out, new fossil fuel projects are still being approved and built. I think that even if we stop emitting all CO2 right now (which is not going to happen), we are still looking at 1.5° C. I think it is time to admit that we have failed. And climate doom is upon us all. We are all going to die.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  I agree we will hit the 1.5 degrees for sure. There's a lot of inertia in climate change anyway. Even if we stop tomorrow it will still continue to rise for years. But I don't agree we're all going to die. It's not a human extinction type problem. There will still be habitable places and some places will become more habitable (the Russians even had a crazy plan in the 60s to dam the Bering strait and melt the Arctic with nukes to make Siberia more habitable.... :X ) The problem is mostly that a ton of people now live in the areas that will become much less habitable and the resulting mass-migrations will lead to extreme societal disruption and possibly wars. And the areas that will become more habitable have no infrastructure. This is why it's going to be more expensive to deal with the problem later than to prevent it. I'm not saying it's not an unprecedented disaster. It certainly is. The country I'm from (the Netherlands) might mostly disappear. But it's not an apocalypse. There will still be places where people can live. In fact climate change is normal in the scope of earth. The situation we are in now has become this way also due to change from the ice age that was before. The bigger problem is that we made this a phenomenon on the scale of decades where it was previously millennia. So society and nature can't adapt quickly enough.
  - blooalien 4y ago
    > But I don't agree we're all going to die. It's not a human extinction type problem. There will still be habitable places and some places will become more habitable (the Russians even had a crazy plan in the 60s to dam the Bering strait and melt the Arctic with nukes to make Siberia more habitable.... :X ) It is a "human extinction type problem" (and likely most if not all life on Earth) … not necessarily directly killed by the climate itself, but by the way that stressed out stupid "people in power" react to the stresses brought on by that changing climate. We have entirely too many literally insane people in positions of power commanding weaponry that could conceivably wipe out all of humanity (and much if not all of the other life on this planet), and we're doing very little to rein them in or control them. Feels like a very real danger to me.
    - flangola7 4y ago
      I agree that climate change will bring about human suffering far beyond anything most people envision. But I am mostly confident that extinction is not in the cards. Nukes could only erase a few thousand square miles, not enough to kill a majority of humans much less all of them. Starvation and collapse would kill many more, but still far from extinction. If you mean novel bioweapons then I can see that being a problem.
      - runarberg 4y ago
        For the record, when I stated: “We are all going to die!” I meant it as a hyperbole. I actually don’t believe a literal total extinction of the human species is a likely scenario (even in a +4° horror scenario; even with a nuclear holocaust on top of it). “We are all going to die” is more of a you and me are personally very likely to die because of climate inaction, or at the very least, our lives will suffer, and there is nothing we can do about it.
        wkat4242 4y ago
        I understand, I just objected to it because I see in my environment that there are seriously people thinking now that climate change can be a human extinction event (though it will be for many other species of course) There seems to be a 'project fear' movement that thinks it's ok to overblow scientific conclusions in order to sway people to act. I personally think this is a very bad idea as deliberate lies will only lead to deep disillusionment with government and the scientific community. It can also lead to fatalism where people won't act because they believe the worst outcome is already locked in. And really, the truth about climate change is scary enough as it is. But we do still have the opportunity to mitigate some of the worst of it.
midoridensha 4y ago
>There's nothing unachievable about 1.5C >It would require sacrifices and global cooperation Is IS unachievable. You just said right here exactly why it's unachievable: "global cooperation" is pure fantasy.

orwin 4y ago

It is though. The Co2 we emit today will only have a greenhouse effect in 20 years. The average climate we have today is the result of the Co2 we put in the atmosphere in 2003.

wkat4242 4y ago
Indeed, this inertia has been missing in the media coverage recently where it was mentioned very often a few years ago. I wonder why.

runarberg 4y ago

There is 50% chance that in the next five years we will experience a year where the global average temperature is greater than 1.5° C. We are already in 1.2° C and the El Niño index is negative. There is high probability that 2024 will be the hottest year on record (probably getting really close to 1.5° C). Global carbon emissions are still rising. Climate policies are not being rolled out, new fossil fuel projects are still being approved and built. I think that even if we stop emitting all CO2 right now (which is not going to happen), we are still looking at 1.5° C. I think it is time to admit that we have failed. And climate doom is upon us all. We are all going to die.

wkat4242 4y ago
I agree we will hit the 1.5 degrees for sure. There's a lot of inertia in climate change anyway. Even if we stop tomorrow it will still continue to rise for years. But I don't agree we're all going to die. It's not a human extinction type problem. There will still be habitable places and some places will become more habitable (the Russians even had a crazy plan in the 60s to dam the Bering strait and melt the Arctic with nukes to make Siberia more habitable.... :X ) The problem is mostly that a ton of people now live in the areas that will become much less habitable and the resulting mass-migrations will lead to extreme societal disruption and possibly wars. And the areas that will become more habitable have no infrastructure. This is why it's going to be more expensive to deal with the problem later than to prevent it. I'm not saying it's not an unprecedented disaster. It certainly is. The country I'm from (the Netherlands) might mostly disappear. But it's not an apocalypse. There will still be places where people can live. In fact climate change is normal in the scope of earth. The situation we are in now has become this way also due to change from the ice age that was before. The bigger problem is that we made this a phenomenon on the scale of decades where it was previously millennia. So society and nature can't adapt quickly enough.
- blooalien 4y ago
  > But I don't agree we're all going to die. It's not a human extinction type problem. There will still be habitable places and some places will become more habitable (the Russians even had a crazy plan in the 60s to dam the Bering strait and melt the Arctic with nukes to make Siberia more habitable.... :X ) It is a "human extinction type problem" (and likely most if not all life on Earth) … not necessarily directly killed by the climate itself, but by the way that stressed out stupid "people in power" react to the stresses brought on by that changing climate. We have entirely too many literally insane people in positions of power commanding weaponry that could conceivably wipe out all of humanity (and much if not all of the other life on this planet), and we're doing very little to rein them in or control them. Feels like a very real danger to me.
  - flangola7 4y ago
    I agree that climate change will bring about human suffering far beyond anything most people envision. But I am mostly confident that extinction is not in the cards. Nukes could only erase a few thousand square miles, not enough to kill a majority of humans much less all of them. Starvation and collapse would kill many more, but still far from extinction. If you mean novel bioweapons then I can see that being a problem.
    - runarberg 4y ago
      For the record, when I stated: “We are all going to die!” I meant it as a hyperbole. I actually don’t believe a literal total extinction of the human species is a likely scenario (even in a +4° horror scenario; even with a nuclear holocaust on top of it). “We are all going to die” is more of a you and me are personally very likely to die because of climate inaction, or at the very least, our lives will suffer, and there is nothing we can do about it.
      - wkat4242 4y ago
        I understand, I just objected to it because I see in my environment that there are seriously people thinking now that climate change can be a human extinction event (though it will be for many other species of course) There seems to be a 'project fear' movement that thinks it's ok to overblow scientific conclusions in order to sway people to act. I personally think this is a very bad idea as deliberate lies will only lead to deep disillusionment with government and the scientific community. It can also lead to fatalism where people won't act because they believe the worst outcome is already locked in. And really, the truth about climate change is scary enough as it is. But we do still have the opportunity to mitigate some of the worst of it.

midoridensha 4y ago

>There's nothing unachievable about 1.5C >It would require sacrifices and global cooperation Is IS unachievable. You just said right here exactly why it's unachievable: "global cooperation" is pure fantasy.