5 ms·

>The image below, created with NASA data while using a 1903-1924 custom base, illustrates that the temperature anomaly through July 2024 has been above 1.5°C fo

by jmclnx 2y ago

>The image below, created with NASA data while using a 1903-1924 custom base, illustrates that the temperature anomaly through July 2024 has been above 1.5°C for the past 13 months. Surprise to no one. The way things are going I believe we will hit +2c by 2040. No one wants to sacrifice their standard of living, it is human nature. Because of that, many of the young will be forced into a bad condition. The only thing that could probably stop this, but will be just as bad, is a Yellowstone Event :(

voisin 2y ago
> No one wants to sacrifice their standard of living How about we just get out of the way of renewables? Many jurisdictions are downright hostile and obstructionist for any renewable investment.
- oezi 2y ago
  Absolutely right! It isn't really clear that fundamental and drastic changes to lifestyle is needed. It just needs some investment in climate friendly energy technologies. On the order of 100-200 trillion USD. Which is roughly 100-200% of global yearly GDP. Or 2-5% of yearly GDP until 2050. This could well be provided by printing money at all the federal reserve banks. This investment will likely bring in a positive return on investment because it reduces the negative climate impacts. Without such investments the downstream costs in climate change adaptation will be very expensive.
- mezyt 2y ago
  > Many jurisdictions are downright hostile and obstructionist for any renewable investment. Right, as long as energy prices are not guaranteed no one is going to invest massively. No one want to be the one having to eat up a 8000$/mwh price like in Texas in the Winter. The 3 month mean volatility of energy prices in Europe is 350% (with peak of more than 1500% in 2009 and 2021). For comparison Bitcoin volatility is 54% in the last 10 years.
  - voisin 2y ago
    Could you elaborate on your point I a bit? I think you are making a good point but I am not fully grokking it. Are you looking at the investment on the utility’s level or the individual level? Wouldn’t high variability provide an “insurance justification” for individuals to push solar / battery or similar? Who eats the $8000/mwh currently that wouldn’t be able to justify renewables on just that basis?
- ximus 2y ago
  at this point we should be pulling on every thread. Individual change is one of them, it should be promoted as well. The amount of frivolous waste I observe at the individual level, multiplied by the millions, is not insignificant.
  - ilikehurdles 2y ago
    Individual change has been promoted for 40 years if not more. Promoting it isn't fixing the underlying problem, though I'm sure it makes some people feel better about where they stand on the self-sacrifice ladder when they have others to look down on.
    - daemin 2y ago
      It has been suggested that the whole individual change movement was created to distract the populace from the actual big polluters. Like answering the question of "Why do we keep extracting coal and oil?" with "Why don't you look at your own consumption and reduce that first".
figmaballs 2y ago
[dead]
melling 2y ago
“No one wants to sacrifice their standard of living” Has no one explained that individual sacrifice is not the solution to the problem? In 2024 why are we worried about AI using too much electricity? Because we never decarbonized the grid. 25 years of saying “let’s use nuclear power “ was shot down. Not to worry, global peak fossil fuels by 2030.
- vlz 2y ago
  Please explain to me, why individual sacrifice is not a solution to the problem. I really am interested what people are thinking here. Naively it would seem that individual sacrifice is surely one possible (though certainly not the only) solution or at least an important contributor. Simply because less consumption directly translates into less greenhouse gas emissions. However, a lot of people dismiss this out of hand. I never fully get why.
  - p51-remorse 2y ago
    It’s highly disincentivized by basic game theory. Any individual sacrifice has highly negative effects on the individual player, and undetectable positive effects on the problem we’re supposed to be solving.
    - 0xdde 2y ago
      What principle of basic game theory would that be? You also need to justify the incredibly strong assumption that "any sacrifice" has "highly negative effects" on the individual player. An immediate counterexample would be beef consumption. For many people, reducing their intake would have positive effects on their health.
      - silverquiet 2y ago
        I'll raise my hand here. The anxiety of seeing the Earth on an inevitable path towards ruin became overwhelming for me a few years ago. In order to deal with it, I have made some sacrifices. I live with roommates in order to reduce my energy use. I eat in ways that are more sustainable. I do not fly on planes. I drive a very efficient car and would walk/bike more, but I have a bad hip and am already fairly limited by it. The car still causes me some guilt. I don't believe that my individual sacrifices make any difference at all, and perhaps are just my own way of engaging in denial.
_uhtu 2y ago
There is no real prospect of a "Yellowstone event": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypn3Fe_PLts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypn3Fe_PLts We could effectively geoengineer one by pumping things into the upper atmosphere ourselves, but there's a lot of questions about that and we have no idea if this would help more than it hurt.
brightball 2y ago
Is it possible this is temporary? https://eos.org/articles/tonga-eruption-may-temporarily-push-earth-closer-to-1-5c-of-warming https://eos.org/articles/tonga-eruption-may-temporarily-push...
vladms 2y ago
The standard of living is something very dynamic though. It's more about perception than anything. It's normal that people want "better" than what their parents had, question is what is "better". If lots of people would see "better" (for example) as "less polluted town, where you enjoy walking" and NOT "more place to be in your car", things would fix themselves given some time. My favorite example: why did Netherlands adopted bikes? Because there were killing too many children with cars (ref: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bicycle-capital-world-transport-cycling-kindermoord https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...) Nowadays there are many opportunities (high speed trains to replace some flights, e-bikes to allow bikes in non-flat cities, insulation to reduce heating, rather cheap renewable energy), so it's not all lost UNLESS people want specifically something very bad (exaggerating: "I love my coal plan!")
- xethos 2y ago
  Respectfully, your favourite example depresses me. Pre-2013 or so I would have agreed, but North America, when faced with "Too many parents are accidentally running over their children in driveways and parking lots", chose to mandate backup cameras instead.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    I'm not from the US and may be missing some context, but in what way mandating backup cameras makes a society less open for mass and light transit?
    - colpabar 2y ago
      The mandate didn't make the US less open to that, it's just that the US is so in love with cars that we don't seriously consider alternatives to driving as solutions to anything. If there was a meeting and the topic was "what to do about the gigantic number of car-related deaths every year", and someone said "maybe we stop driving so much and give people other options of getting around?" they would be laughed out of the room.
brightball 2y ago
It's entirely possible that this is temporary due to the Tonga eruption because what is being reported is exactly in line with what the study said was going to happen...temporarily. Here is the study from Nature Climate Change in 2022. "Tonga eruption increases chance of temporary surface temperature anomaly above 1.5 °C" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01568-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01568-2
gmuslera 2y ago
"Bad condition" is an understatement. We are already being badly hit by stronger, more frequent and more extended extreme weather. Massive heatwaves, flooded cities or cities running out of drinking water are seen as the new normal by now, and that was a process that took relatively few years. And that will be worse in ways that we might not imagine yet, even if we could label them as obvious in hindsight. A higher global average temperature is not just a few tenths of degrees higher temperature in your normal day, it is the global climate system with a lot of extra energy, the triggering and empowering a bunch of positive feedback loops that push the change pedal down, and the impact that all of that have in other systems, like agriculture or economy. It is a so complex system that the warming could even trigger an ice age, or quite the opposite of that, but in either case, it will be far worse than just bad for the people living through it. Disrupting a complex system we depend on is simply suicidal.

by jmclnx 2y ago

voisin 2y ago

> No one wants to sacrifice their standard of living How about we just get out of the way of renewables? Many jurisdictions are downright hostile and obstructionist for any renewable investment.

oezi 2y ago
Absolutely right! It isn't really clear that fundamental and drastic changes to lifestyle is needed. It just needs some investment in climate friendly energy technologies. On the order of 100-200 trillion USD. Which is roughly 100-200% of global yearly GDP. Or 2-5% of yearly GDP until 2050. This could well be provided by printing money at all the federal reserve banks. This investment will likely bring in a positive return on investment because it reduces the negative climate impacts. Without such investments the downstream costs in climate change adaptation will be very expensive.
mezyt 2y ago
> Many jurisdictions are downright hostile and obstructionist for any renewable investment. Right, as long as energy prices are not guaranteed no one is going to invest massively. No one want to be the one having to eat up a 8000$/mwh price like in Texas in the Winter. The 3 month mean volatility of energy prices in Europe is 350% (with peak of more than 1500% in 2009 and 2021). For comparison Bitcoin volatility is 54% in the last 10 years.
- voisin 2y ago
  Could you elaborate on your point I a bit? I think you are making a good point but I am not fully grokking it. Are you looking at the investment on the utility’s level or the individual level? Wouldn’t high variability provide an “insurance justification” for individuals to push solar / battery or similar? Who eats the $8000/mwh currently that wouldn’t be able to justify renewables on just that basis?
ximus 2y ago
at this point we should be pulling on every thread. Individual change is one of them, it should be promoted as well. The amount of frivolous waste I observe at the individual level, multiplied by the millions, is not insignificant.
- ilikehurdles 2y ago
  Individual change has been promoted for 40 years if not more. Promoting it isn't fixing the underlying problem, though I'm sure it makes some people feel better about where they stand on the self-sacrifice ladder when they have others to look down on.
  - daemin 2y ago
    It has been suggested that the whole individual change movement was created to distract the populace from the actual big polluters. Like answering the question of "Why do we keep extracting coal and oil?" with "Why don't you look at your own consumption and reduce that first".

figmaballs 2y ago

[dead]

melling 2y ago

“No one wants to sacrifice their standard of living” Has no one explained that individual sacrifice is not the solution to the problem? In 2024 why are we worried about AI using too much electricity? Because we never decarbonized the grid. 25 years of saying “let’s use nuclear power “ was shot down. Not to worry, global peak fossil fuels by 2030.

vlz 2y ago
Please explain to me, why individual sacrifice is not a solution to the problem. I really am interested what people are thinking here. Naively it would seem that individual sacrifice is surely one possible (though certainly not the only) solution or at least an important contributor. Simply because less consumption directly translates into less greenhouse gas emissions. However, a lot of people dismiss this out of hand. I never fully get why.
- p51-remorse 2y ago
  It’s highly disincentivized by basic game theory. Any individual sacrifice has highly negative effects on the individual player, and undetectable positive effects on the problem we’re supposed to be solving.
  - 0xdde 2y ago
    What principle of basic game theory would that be? You also need to justify the incredibly strong assumption that "any sacrifice" has "highly negative effects" on the individual player. An immediate counterexample would be beef consumption. For many people, reducing their intake would have positive effects on their health.
    - silverquiet 2y ago
      I'll raise my hand here. The anxiety of seeing the Earth on an inevitable path towards ruin became overwhelming for me a few years ago. In order to deal with it, I have made some sacrifices. I live with roommates in order to reduce my energy use. I eat in ways that are more sustainable. I do not fly on planes. I drive a very efficient car and would walk/bike more, but I have a bad hip and am already fairly limited by it. The car still causes me some guilt. I don't believe that my individual sacrifices make any difference at all, and perhaps are just my own way of engaging in denial.

_uhtu 2y ago

There is no real prospect of a "Yellowstone event": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypn3Fe_PLts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypn3Fe_PLts We could effectively geoengineer one by pumping things into the upper atmosphere ourselves, but there's a lot of questions about that and we have no idea if this would help more than it hurt.

brightball 2y ago

Is it possible this is temporary? https://eos.org/articles/tonga-eruption-may-temporarily-push-earth-closer-to-1-5c-of-warming https://eos.org/articles/tonga-eruption-may-temporarily-push...

vladms 2y ago

The standard of living is something very dynamic though. It's more about perception than anything. It's normal that people want "better" than what their parents had, question is what is "better". If lots of people would see "better" (for example) as "less polluted town, where you enjoy walking" and NOT "more place to be in your car", things would fix themselves given some time. My favorite example: why did Netherlands adopted bikes? Because there were killing too many children with cars (ref: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bicycle-capital-world-transport-cycling-kindermoord https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...) Nowadays there are many opportunities (high speed trains to replace some flights, e-bikes to allow bikes in non-flat cities, insulation to reduce heating, rather cheap renewable energy), so it's not all lost UNLESS people want specifically something very bad (exaggerating: "I love my coal plan!")

xethos 2y ago
Respectfully, your favourite example depresses me. Pre-2013 or so I would have agreed, but North America, when faced with "Too many parents are accidentally running over their children in driveways and parking lots", chose to mandate backup cameras instead.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  I'm not from the US and may be missing some context, but in what way mandating backup cameras makes a society less open for mass and light transit?
  - colpabar 2y ago
    The mandate didn't make the US less open to that, it's just that the US is so in love with cars that we don't seriously consider alternatives to driving as solutions to anything. If there was a meeting and the topic was "what to do about the gigantic number of car-related deaths every year", and someone said "maybe we stop driving so much and give people other options of getting around?" they would be laughed out of the room.

brightball 2y ago

It's entirely possible that this is temporary due to the Tonga eruption because what is being reported is exactly in line with what the study said was going to happen...temporarily. Here is the study from Nature Climate Change in 2022. "Tonga eruption increases chance of temporary surface temperature anomaly above 1.5 °C" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01568-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01568-2

gmuslera 2y ago

"Bad condition" is an understatement. We are already being badly hit by stronger, more frequent and more extended extreme weather. Massive heatwaves, flooded cities or cities running out of drinking water are seen as the new normal by now, and that was a process that took relatively few years. And that will be worse in ways that we might not imagine yet, even if we could label them as obvious in hindsight. A higher global average temperature is not just a few tenths of degrees higher temperature in your normal day, it is the global climate system with a lot of extra energy, the triggering and empowering a bunch of positive feedback loops that push the change pedal down, and the impact that all of that have in other systems, like agriculture or economy. It is a so complex system that the warming could even trigger an ice age, or quite the opposite of that, but in either case, it will be far worse than just bad for the people living through it. Disrupting a complex system we depend on is simply suicidal.