That’s a stupid headline.
Every fraction of a degree matters. Binary thinking like that is fucking dumb. I haven’t read the report yet, but I guarantee it doesn’t back that head line.
The point of no return refers to the 1.5C threshold that the Paris climate conference agreed that exceeding would have catastrophic consequences. We are now guaranteed to reach that threshold.
It’s not a stupid headline. Yes, every tenth of a degree matters, but the headline is correct, we will now have unavoidably catastrophic consequences.
I’m a climate scientist. I understand the “threshold”. It’s not a threshold in a physical sense, it’s just a policy target. All of the dangers commonly associated with 1.5°C are probabilistic. Some might be triggered before, others will come later, many will partially happen below 1.5, and partially above, as the globe is not homogenous in it’s responses…
Note also that the headline does not say “catastrophic impacts”, I would agree with it more if it did. It says “worst impacts”, and trust me, the impacts likely a 3°C are much, much worse than what will happen at 1.5°C. 1.5 is a serious risk of civilisational collapse, at 3 it’s almost certain, IMO. 1.5 we loose lots of species and see a lot more natural disasters, above 3 you start thinking about humans being wiped out (noting also that this is more of a speed-of-change problem than a temperature difference problem).
The headline is stupid because it’s defeatist. Yes, we have fucked up, and we have unavoidable problems heading our way. But we still have the ability to avoid much worse problems. A defeatist attitude won’t help that to happen.
That is a good point about the “worst” choice.
With regards to defeatism, this is a defeat, and dressing it up otherwise serves no one but the people who failed to implement the changes needed to win. Personally, I think the populace at large needs a mindshift about climate change. Almost everyone is in denial and thinks we can solve it with technology. Maybe a defeat like this will help people to realize that we really need to revolutionize our society, because our current socioeconomic system makes any reasonable response to climate change impossible.
Fair enough. I get it, and agree with the underlying sentiment. I disagree that that language is likely to be effective in the direction we want though. I think it tends to be received as doomerist/alarmist and causes people to shut down and ignore the problem entirely. I think that sci-comms research is with me on this, but I don’t have good references for that at hand.
You could definitely be right, I’m just going off of feelings on this, and my feelings about the general public are generally anger and disappointment, so not much logic involved.
The way I see it, this is a disempowerment problem. Most people don’t feel like they don’t have agency to do anything about it. Given the power structures in our societies, I can understand that, but agency does exist, through political activism in particular (in many forms). But I think things like “past the point of no return” and “worst impacts now unavoidable” really play in to and reinforce that disempowerment. If people act as much as possible soon, then we might be able to reduce the severity of the problem. If they get more disempowered and don’t act at all, then it’ll be as bad as possible.
“We tried nothing and nothing worked, so i guess theres nothing to do now but wait.”
I mean, I guess that’s a message that’s really beneficial if you’re owned by someone who owns a lot of fossil fuel infrastructure…
So when do we start eating the rich flying private jets to protect the planet?
go do it today. be the change you wish to see in this world.
So that you fucks abandon me like Luigi? Bahahahaahahaaahhaha naw I’m just going to sit here and watch you fucks burn
CO2 emissions are still going up every year. I haven’t seen any significant effort to stop global warming. When I look around me, I’m not surprised.
People just don’t care enough.
They’re not immediately affected.
The whole thing about global warming that almost never gets said;
Whole parts of the world that are inhabited now will become uninhabitable.
Or in other words: we’re heading towards a giant economic crisis never seen before.
We’ll see starvation and overpopulation and disease and of course=> more war!
They’re also in denial and believing a lot of industry propaganda — because the alternative is to admit they were wrong and are partly to blame. It’s much easier to say “climate change isn’t real” as the coastline rises, and summers get hotter and glaciers melt, and cities and farms run out of fresh water. Just keep electing the deregulators who tell you “Everything is fine! We’re making money! It’s morning in America! Drill baby drill!”
They’re also in denial and believing a lot of industry propaganda
The deniers I know are just in denial in general. Every hot summer I hear them saying “Wow, it’s so hot again! What gives?!?!” Like it’s the first time.
And they say this as Norfolk, Virginia has to combat flooding when there’s a nasty storm during high tide, Tangier Island will have to be evacuated within 25 years, and Rodanthe, North Carolina has had to demolish about 10 houses to keep them from being swept out into the ocean in the last year.
Greed and self serving is our religion and law. We can only act atomized to advance or hinder our own accumulation of wealth and power.
So globally we’re not an intelligent, rational species. Anthropogenic or not, it never even mattered.
I disagree on one thing: It’s not that people don’t care. It’s that they care too much. They care in precisely packaged and calibrated dosages as is fed to them, for what the powerful want them to care about. This or that. Taiwanese independence? Not yet.
So do not blame the people. It’s just that we simply… lost the fight. They had way more money and thus power, utilizing the newest and best psychological manipulation technology to divert, manipulate, control. The big lie is that we are a sentient, rational people and that a good idea or speech could convince people to do the rational thing. But if you have money, swaying hearts and minds is just something you can buy and trade like everything else.
The part you missed is that increased CO2 levels also increase aggression, and you can already see it in densely populated areas. I get to see people run red lights and even running red lights making left turns… in front of PD while they pulled someone over. Or taking a hard right in front of someone running parallel from the left lane (think two lane road). I haven’t see that before.
China has done amazingly
While China is a leader in renewable energy and building rail. I think “China has done amazingly” is quite an overstatement. 60% of their electricity is still generated by coal, and they are still building more coal plants. They account for about 30% of yearly emissions whilst being only 17% of the world population.
They also produce a huge amount of the world’s goods. It effectively outsources the pollution to them at the same time.
They have also flooded the world with cheap solar panels. Some of the credit for those savings should go to them too.
They are also fighting for the lead on fusion research, while also bringing some of the first new generation nuclear power systems online, at scale.
While I dislike China’s government, what they are doing, is both impressive, and sustained. Unlike most of the rest of us.
I remember reading somewhere that what we’re experiencing now is a result of our actions from several years ago. (From the time pollution is released to the time it fully affects the weather system takes a few years and up to like a decade.) So even if we could stop everything 100% today, it would take several decades to stop progressing and start reversing the damage we’ve done.
So we’re probably gonna have a bumpy ride the next few decades best case scenario. It also makes it that more important that we do what we can asap to stop it, even if we don’t see any returns on our efforts right away.
The main problem at this point isn’t us anymore. What we did was a catalyst to set off the rest of the environment, so you’re right, stopping right now won’t flatline the effects. The feedback loops we’ve started in the weather system, in the Arctic and Antarctic, the permafrost melting, the acidification of the oceans… they won’t stop. The pushed boulder may be an overused metaphor, but it’s accurate. How do you stop the rolling?
The words to look for in any serious discussion now are mitigation and adaptation. Anyone talking about net zero or carbon capture or all the other money making terms isn’t trying to prepare.
We still must reach net zero, and that will probably involve carbon capture. We’ll also have to adapt in many ways, but that’s a different topic.
Look up the best we’ve done in CCS and DAC amounts. They like to brag on the websites how many millions of tons they’ve done (usually total, not per year). Then look up the annual increase of emissions each year. The units are completely different scales. The best DAC we have is a percent of a percent, and that’s taking energy to run. Then there’s the cost in energy and resources to sequester the carbon, because if you don’t do that, it’s for nothing (but $$$).
I’ve had my years of thinking maybe we can do this or do that and finally realizing physics doesn’t get fooled. Can’t run this in reverse. I’m over it. We aren’t slowing down the demand and the output. We won’t.
Current carbon capture systems are small because it takes energy to capture industrial quantities of carbon, so they are either using some trick that only works under specific conditions (e.g. adsorption by alkaline rocks) or financed through CSR / carbon credits. But if fusion power becomes commercialised, we will be able to absorb meaningful amounts of CO2.
This is not to say we’ll be fine, but the Chinese government seems to recognise climate change as a major threat, and when they decide that something needs to be done, it tends to get done. So I expect there to be at least as much climate action as is needed to protect China.
You used the F word. And you implied fusion working, and then becoming more available. That’s two huge hurdles to count on when we’re essentially out of time. I don’t disagree, lots of scifi uses the idea that fusion or other large energy source that doesn’t wreck the environment opens up a lot of things, but… yeah.
DAC or possibly pulling carbon from water in similar ways is the only mass way to do it, and you’re right, it takes enormous energy for just a small amount of effect. Which without fusion or other non-emissions source, is a bit counter productive. Long ago someone visualized what we’re trying to do with carbon capture as much like running the fossil fuel plant backwards. Anyone knowing entropy realizes the challenges and losses of that. Fossil fuel was so easy to utilize, lots of energy in those molecular bonds, and we could even use fossil fuel to pull up more fossil fuel. How do you reverse that?
In 2022, the National Ignition Facility in the USA was briefly able to generate more energy than required to run the reactor. This is an experimental reactor, and the yield is small, but it shows that fusion can work. Since then, reactors in China and France have been able to sustain fusion for a few minutes.
Anyone knowing entropy realizes the challenges and losses of that.
Yes, you need a massive amount of concentrated energy, and as far as I know only nuclear reactors can do that.
I was told that it can take a fast, fully loaded (and presumably pretty damn long) freight train about a mile to stop. So, even after the conductor decides to hit the brakes, the train will still be moving for a while.
I like to use this example for visualization of “stop now, but continue paying for a time” situations like this one.
At 50 mph, it takes a fully loaded 150 car freight train over a mile to stop.
To further build on this, the train doesn’t stop all at once either. The engine brakes and then every car starts braking from the front to the back of the train. That’s why the train has to be organized so the heaviest cars are at the front and lightest are at the back. Otherwise the momentum of the still moving cars at the back will send a shockwave through all the couplings of the cars ahead to the stopped engine and shove them all forward.
The problem here, beyond the fact that there is a 0% chance of doing what we can asap as opposed to the 100% chance of increasing emmissions, is the feedback loops involved. The largest being perhaps the permafrost melting, which holds 2x the co2 as is in the atmosphere just in siberia, and huge methane sinks, frozen swamps, that will flood the zone.
It was beyond recovery in truth in 2000 if not before. Not the least considering the social situation that left a 0% chance we would do what was needed to stop it.
From climate change to geopolitics to late stage capitalism and everything in between… We are so fucked.
Yeah, but nobody could have predicted that
