Is so obvious where this is all going: The wealthy -the factories owners and their close allies- the very same ones ignoring the pledges to stop contributing to climate change will be the only ones protected enough from most damages of climate change, only the wealthy will afford to live in the cities with livable temperature, to buy potable water, only the most resilient of the poor and middle-class will survive, and their youngsters will be used as soldiers to fight for natural resources, some of their families will enjoy those resources but only enough to breed more soldiers to keep the wars going.
Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions
11–20 of 147 posts
Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions
#12So, is there any convincing reason to think that any emissions targets will be met? Does anyone buy the line in the article about India? Surely they will become an emitter at least as significant as China. Isn't our money better spent preparing for the inevitable effects of climate change?
There is an interesting bit here about exporting the problem: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/DmZ6C9zSsR/road_to_clean_en...
Regarding China: "It’s the world’s biggest burner of coal, but it’s also the biggest global investor in renewables."
Keep in mind that China is the world's factory and a lot of services (IT etc.) are performed in India, so they are not just national emissions but emissions that we have offshored.
Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's wrong with the line about India? It's absolutely correct - per capita emissions from India are very small. > Surely they will become an emitter at least as significant as China. Looking at a country's total emissions makes no sense because the population needs to be taken into account. India will eventually have the largest total emissions, which is fine because per capita is really low.
> India will eventually have the largest total emissions, which is fine because per capita is really low. Earth doesn't care about "emission per capita" though, it just cares about the total sum of emissions... So "India eventually [having] the largest total emissions" means a huge extra tonnage of emissions will be added to the already troubling amounts... So, the per capita number is mainly relevant in regards to f…
> Earth doesn't care about "emission per capita" though, it just cares about the total sum of emissions...
True. How about reducing the extremely high per-capita emissions of developed countries? That will result in a huge drop in the total sum of emissions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
People in such countries are taking up too many resources and that is not sustainable for the planet. There needs to be a carbon tax.
Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions
#14Climate crisis is getting scarier and scarier by the day. Don't know about you guys but I am done with sitting behind my computer and whining about what "they" should or shouldn't do. I am joining Extinction Rebellion.
Do it.
https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/09/10/software-developers-...
> In the end power is social. Power comes from people showing up to meetings, people showing up for rallies, people going door-to-door convincing other people to vote for the right person or support the right initiative, people blocking roads and making a fuss.
> And that takes time and money.
If you work in tech you probably have a surplus of both.
Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions
#15> A set of troubling charts shows how little progress nations have made toward limiting greenhouse-gas emissions. When countries have made real progress "toward limiting greenhouse-gas emission" one would not need charts to see it: it would be immediately evident in everyday lifestyles, consumer habits, and energy use...
This is the number that shows if we are making progress or not: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Spoiler, we're not. It's getting worse and it's accelerating.
Interactive graph: https://www.co2levels.org/
Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions
#16So, is there any convincing reason to think that any emissions targets will be met? Does anyone buy the line in the article about India? Surely they will become an emitter at least as significant as China. Isn't our money better spent preparing for the inevitable effects of climate change?
even if we miss a target, more emissions beyond that target still make things much worse. it's not like we can just declare bankruptcy or something. ultimately we have to reduce emissions as much as possible while preparing for their impact -- and I am not an expert, but I suspect reducing emissions is cheaper in the long run than dealing with the effects.
> I suspect reducing emissions is cheaper in the long run than dealing with the effects.
I'm not entirely sure. People seem to be convinced that climate change will destroy all civilization, but in the distant past the earth has flourished with significantly higher temperatures than what we have today. Once our climate reaches a new equilibrium, humanity will adjust and everything will probably be OK.
And we can be certain that there will be a new equilibrium, otherwise life wouldn't have lasted for hundreds of millions of years.
Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions
#17How is this not the #1 story? Why do we even bother with all the other trivia?
Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions
#18Is so obvious where this is all going: The wealthy -the factories owners and their close allies- the very same ones ignoring the pledges to stop contributing to climate change will be the only ones protected enough from most damages of climate change, only the wealthy will afford to live in the cities with livable temperature, to buy potable water, only the most resilient of the poor and middle-class will survive, an…
Frankly this kind of doomsaying view has no basis in reality. While it's true that unmitigated global warming will impose a very large economic cost, it's simply not the case that it's going to turn the world into some unlivable hell-scape. There's just no basis for that belief in the actual evidence.
The best estimates say that global warming will lower per capita GDP by somewhere between 5-20% by 2100. That's a tragedy, because in aggregate it represents a huge amount of unnecessarily lost wealth. But a 5-20% in GDP per capita does not mean that we'll be dying in the streets.
Let's be very conservative and assume global GDP per capita grows at 2% per year. In the baseline scenario, the median world citizen would still be 390% richer than the average person today. Applying the worst global warming impact (20% of GDP), the median person would still be 290% richer than the average person today.
Unmitigated global warming will make the people of the future substantially poorer. But not nearly by enough to cancel out the effect of continuous economic growth and technological development. It's almost certainly the case that the people of 2100 will enjoy higher living standards than the present.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/20/climate-change-to-slow-globa... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_ch...
Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
even if we miss a target, more emissions beyond that target still make things much worse. it's not like we can just declare bankruptcy or something. ultimately we have to reduce emissions as much as possible while preparing for their impact -- and I am not an expert, but I suspect reducing emissions is cheaper in the long run than dealing with the effects.
> I suspect reducing emissions is cheaper in the long run than dealing with the effects. I'm not entirely sure. People seem to be convinced that climate change will destroy all civilization, but in the distant past the earth has flourished with significantly higher temperatures than what we have today. Once our climate reaches a new equilibrium, humanity will adjust and everything will probably be OK. And we can be c…
All but one major extinction event in the past was because of global warming. What you are missing is that during those times , the temperature change was over a much longer period of time than now. What we are doing is unprecedented and there is little reason to believe anything will flourish.
Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions
#20> A set of troubling charts shows how little progress nations have made toward limiting greenhouse-gas emissions. When countries have made real progress "toward limiting greenhouse-gas emission" one would not need charts to see it: it would be immediately evident in everyday lifestyles, consumer habits, and energy use...
Not necessarily. For example just switching over coal-fired plants to gas-fired plants reduces carbon emissions by 50%. (This is a big reason why the US's emissions have decelerated since 2000.) Yet that would be almost entirely invisible at the consumer level.