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Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions

nature.com

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Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions

#91

Post by eloff »

GVIrish wrote: post #86
eloff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is going to drown. People will do some combination of building walls, raising land, and moving. It will play out over a period of a thousands years or more. There will be a non-zero cost associated with diverting resources for these things, but that's not the end of the world. I'm not saying it's an excuse for not acting though. We have a responsibility to take care of our own mess, rather than just dump it on…

> Nobody is going to drown. People will do some combination of building walls, raising land, and moving. What are you talking about, people are drowning now . When a big storm tears through a low lying area or there is flooding, people drown. > People will do some combination of building walls, raising land, and moving. It will play out over a period of a thousands years or more. If we don't get climate change under…

The earlier we get climate change under control the less it will cost us. Either way we have to adapt. As I pointed out there are some long term positives from a little global warming that may eventually make the cost of adapting worthwhile. We still need to act decisively and quickly to prevent things from running away on us. Nothing I said is an exhortation to do anything less.

Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions

#92

Post by GVIrish »

asdfman123 wrote: post #58
eloff wrote: post #42

I've thought a lot about climate change and it's consequences. If we trigger runaway warming through feedback loops involved permafrost and ocean (hydrates) methane - things are going to get really, really bad. This happened when ~5C degree warming from millions of years of the Siberian traps eruptions caused methane hydrates to be released into the atmosphere, triggering another ~5C warming and the greatest mass ext…

The real thing I fear involving climate change is civilization collapse, or at least famine and warfare. I fear a future where there are a lot of very, very angry, hungry people, lead by governments with nuclear weapons. This is just based on my casual reading of events and history. If anyone knows of any good articles talking about this sort of thing, link me.

People should be very worried about this. Some parts of the world are already unstable, imagine what happens when food supplies dramatically contract or areas are hit with multiple weather disasters. There is a lot of strain and turmoil over migrations as is (see Syria), imagine what that looks like when hundreds of millions of people are displaced.

What happens when millions of hungry and displaced people try to move across borders to countries that are their outright enemies? Or if an already oppressed ethnic group is hit with a water crisis? One doesn't need to look far into history to see that it could lead to mass murder

Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions

#93

Post by Mikeb85 »

So who wants to volunteer to have their living conditions drastically reduced?

The west likes to blame China and India, places we've outsourced manufacturing and work to and yet somehow they still produce far less CO2 per capita. We shame people into reducing their individual emissions while ignoring the fact that industry produces most of the emissions.

The fact is, no country is going to take drastic measures. We don't know exactly what's going to happen when the world warms 3 degrees (we have ideas, but the world has been both warmer and colder in the past, and somehow life survived). We do however know what would happen if we suddenly stunted economic progress tomorrow (nothing good).

Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions

#94

Post by jajag »

eloff wrote: post #90
jajag wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But things do move that quickly. Current projections [1] have global sea levels rising from anything between 0.3m and 2.4m by the end of the century. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise

That's pretty slow for a change smoothed out over eighty years.

Well, (a) it's a hell of a lot faster than it has been for most of my life, and (b) it means that in my lifetime, a lot of the places I know & love will be seriously affected by - if not completely lost to - sea level rise.

I get the sense you don't live anywhere near the coast.

Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions

#95

Post by throwaway5752 »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #93

So who wants to volunteer to have their living conditions drastically reduced? The west likes to blame China and India, places we've outsourced manufacturing and work to and yet somehow they still produce far less CO2 per capita. We shame people into reducing their individual emissions while ignoring the fact that industry produces most of the emissions. The fact is, no country is going to take drastic measures. We d…

I will. I think you are missing quite a bit of research on what a 3 deg C/6 deg F warmer world looks like. It will stunt economic growth a lot more than voluntary measures.

edit: "The west likes to blame China and India, places we've outsourced manufacturing and work to and yet somehow they still produce far less CO2 per capita. We shame people into reducing their individual emissions while ignoring the fact that industry produces most of the emissions." do you see how you are contradicting yourself here saying that placed we've outsource industry to have lower per capita CO2 emissions. Can you clarify that?

Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions

#96

Post by about_help »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #93

So who wants to volunteer to have their living conditions drastically reduced? The west likes to blame China and India, places we've outsourced manufacturing and work to and yet somehow they still produce far less CO2 per capita. We shame people into reducing their individual emissions while ignoring the fact that industry produces most of the emissions. The fact is, no country is going to take drastic measures. We d…

This argument is tired. We can maintain 1st world living conditions while drastically reducing emissions. Throw away consumerism is literally a toxic force on the planet, but the wealthy do not want to disrupt their income streams and "gamble" their fortunes on reinvestment or environmental rehabilitation. Your argument is akin to "why don't you donate all your money" when someone says the rich should be taxed more heavily.

Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions

#97

Post by r00fus »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #93

So who wants to volunteer to have their living conditions drastically reduced? The west likes to blame China and India, places we've outsourced manufacturing and work to and yet somehow they still produce far less CO2 per capita. We shame people into reducing their individual emissions while ignoring the fact that industry produces most of the emissions. The fact is, no country is going to take drastic measures. We d…

Sounds like you're always the first one to reply to anything climate related with some false dichotomy.

We can make changes without adjusting living conditions drastically - moving to EVs, removing fossil fuel subsidies, pushing solar over coal/gas.

In fact, we might improve our living conditions by reducing our addition to oil, as long as it's managed and not cold-turkey.

Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions

#98

Post by fallingfrog »

titzer wrote: post #76
look_lookatme wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A world depleted of its glaciers, lacking in drinkable water, lacking in animal diversity, lacking in arable land, lacking in coral reefs, coastal cities with all their rich history and culture buried underwater and on, and on, is EXACTLY a hellish nightmare. None of these will be true though?

We're getting close to the point of no return when it comes to losing all of the ice. That melting process may take 1000 years, but becomes inevitable once there is sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere. https://www.businessinsider.com/greenland-approaching-thresh... https://www.carbonbrief.org/scientists-identify-melting-thre... https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26102017/antarctica-sea-l... I couldn't find a source for…

Yes and not only that but the fact that the glaciers are going to melt over 1000 years is actually worse than if it happened in a single event- instead of a single trauma you have a 1 foot per decade rise, decade after decade, century after century.

Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions

#99

Post by Mikeb85 »

r00fus wrote: post #97
Mikeb85 wrote: post #93

So who wants to volunteer to have their living conditions drastically reduced? The west likes to blame China and India, places we've outsourced manufacturing and work to and yet somehow they still produce far less CO2 per capita. We shame people into reducing their individual emissions while ignoring the fact that industry produces most of the emissions. The fact is, no country is going to take drastic measures. We d…

Sounds like you're always the first one to reply to anything climate related with some false dichotomy. We can make changes without adjusting living conditions drastically - moving to EVs, removing fossil fuel subsidies, pushing solar over coal/gas. In fact, we might improve our living conditions by reducing our addition to oil, as long as it's managed and not cold-turkey.

> Sounds like you're always the first one to reply to anything climate related with some false dichotomy.

Nah, somehow I just got unlucky enough to log on when alarmist articles are somehow in the feed. I'm simply not huge on alarmism.

> moving to EVs

Which run on electricity generated by coal.

> In fact, we might improve our living conditions by reducing our addition to oil, as long as it's managed and not cold-turkey.

And we will. Just not huge on articles where every comment essentially says the world is going to end 10 years from now. It won't.

Re: Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions

#100

Post by fallingfrog »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #93

So who wants to volunteer to have their living conditions drastically reduced? The west likes to blame China and India, places we've outsourced manufacturing and work to and yet somehow they still produce far less CO2 per capita. We shame people into reducing their individual emissions while ignoring the fact that industry produces most of the emissions. The fact is, no country is going to take drastic measures. We d…

James Hansen coauthored a paper in 2013 calculating that the warming you get from burning every bit of fossil fuels is not 3 degrees, but more like 12. At those temperatures any human that doesn’t move to the polar regions will die of heatstroke, not to mention any economic effects.
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