this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
432 points (98.2% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
5184 readers
566 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Because the solution is not something we can throw money at and expect a fast cure. Even cancer has the hope of a treatment that works in months to years. Climate change requires changing nearly everything about how we generate energy and requires us to find novel ways to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. This latter bit can have money thrown at it, but without the former it's pointless. It'd be a cancer treatment while the patient huffs burning asbestos.
The difficulty in treating coupled with the fact that climate change is a slow process that wreaks havoc over years to decades means the short-term-focused economies and markets largely try to adapt to long-term changes instead of solving the issues. When you're only concerned with a few fiscal quarters at a time, why would you think on the scale of decades?
About 70% of new electric generation is non-emitting already. It's actually not that big a change to go to 100%
So yes, we can do it on a scale of decades
Should have started it on the scale of decades 40 years ago when scientists were saying we had 40 years to fix it. Too late now, we're in the beginning of the apocalypse.
We're at a point where it's too late to avoid all impact, but we've got a very real choice about exactly how much impact we do see. There's a big difference between 1.5°C and 2°C and more.
1.5c by 2030s? lol, we'll have 1.6c in the next couple of years. it's bonkers. literally.
Yes, didn't I just read that we hit 1.5C already this year?
Only for parts of the year.
We will officially hit 1.5c once the average temperature of that year is 1.5 degrees hotter than pre industrial baseline
The current year is at +1.4°C overall, so far. It's absolutely bonkers, it's 0.5°C warmer than last year, an absolutely unprecedented jump.
Thanks. Please propagatw this fact more.
I hear and read it too often that people are falling into devastation mode and say, back up, we lost, its over.
However its a difference in being "over" which is 2.5 - 4.5 degrees or above.
As @vivadanang@lemm.ee pointed out, it's extremely likely we're going to be at 1.5°C in just a few years. Even if we went carbon negative literally right at this instant, we'd likely still fly past 2.5°C in the relatively near future (well, depending on which research you believe re. how fast carbon neutralaity / negativity would affect temperature change.)
This isn't to say that we shouldn't do anything, but I think we really need to start putting more resources and thought into survival instead of just blindly hoping that mitigation will save us (and it's not exactly looking great on the mitigation front).
I'll be surprised if mass-scale industrial society is still around in 100 years and we're more or less fucked, but we'll be even more fucked if we don't start thinking more about how we're going to deal with the inevitable.
well put.
I think industrial society will be good since the technology, science, know-how etc. Are available.
Its more like a question of will power and money. And pressure for that is going to come for sure.
But I disagree on putting resources collectively/mass scale into plan b.
(I would not put resources into defense and military, but who am I to tell)
We need a united world again the challenges we are facing. I think splitting into two paths will only create more discussion about whether or not.
Survival is not our first priority, its basically obligatory for a discussion about our future.
Setting goals low is "convenient" however not good.
How's that related to me saying we should plan for how to survive the changes that inevitably worsening change will cause?
And how on earth is saying "we should be putting more thought into how we plan to survive?" setting goals low? If anything, simply blindly believing that mitigation will save us all seems to be setting goals low. The idea that it'd be detrimental to our efforts if we put resources into anything except mitigation and would just be "splitting into two paths" is, frankly, absurd.
Fuck, even NASA says that we need to both look at mitigation and adaptation; they're just using a different term but mean exactly the same thing.
I wasn't pulling this survival stuff out of my ass you know: multiple organizations, climate researchers etc. have been saying this, which is where I got the idea from in the first place.
edit: wiki link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_adaptation#Co-benefits_with_mitigation
Easy bro, this was a general statement about the ridiculous world we live in and in no way targeted towards you or your statements.
Nasa is talking about adaption. No mention of the word survival. Survival for me is the ongoing existence of humanity. Building seed storages, build underground sanctuaries.
Survival is like worst case scenario, when we play running from sunbeams riddick style.
Maybe it was just a misinterpretation of the terms by us.
I am not denying that elevated temps are a inevatible thing. However I am saying that we would save as a ton of adaption if we mitigate, therefore I put mitigation on the top. And if we mitigate successfully, then we can talk about adaption.
But starting with adaption measures without enforcing mitigation measures is an uphill battle which we will loose for sure. Because adaption has no end. Well maybe becoming intergalactic and leaving earth behind for a new planet.
From you wiki link I would not say that having public transport is adaption.
And again it is in my head nowhere near the term survival. But as I said probably a misunderstanding from my side as I am not native in english.
There was this moment after 9/11 when Tom Daschle proposed a 'Manhattan Project for Green Energy' to get us off foreign energy and help avoid climate change. Imagine if Al Gore had been president at the time, what might have happened. This was 20 years ago! But instead we (extremely questionably) got W. Bush and endless wars and 'drill baby drill'. Such a knife's edge for history and we came off the wrong side of it...
and electricity only makes up 28% of ghg emissions globally.
We're also seeing a big shift to heat pumps for space heating, electrification of transport, and even the beginnings of steel reduced by using hydrogen made with electrolysis instead of using coal. So a lot of things are happening, but not yet on the scale and pace we need.
The elephant in the room still exists, all the added CO2. I applaud change, and fast moving even more, but it needs to be faster
Not only CO2 but also Methan. It is 84 times more harmful in the first 20 years. But it is degrading on its own with a half-live of 7-12 years in the atmosphere. Methan makes up 20 to 30% of the human made GHG. Change to a plant based diet can reduce the emissions by 40%.
It is one of the few things we can change on our own very fast and does not need additional technological solutions to have a big impact.
and the warmer it gets, the more we'll see methane hydrates bubbling up to the surface and adding gigatons more to the problem. vicious cycle.
I can't see anything going wrong with this