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

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

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I think what GP presented is too mild . What I personally fear is this: increasing migration pressure from the most affected areas and contention for resources starts triggering wars, at which point the global economy collapses, at which point at least half of the…

> contention for resources starts triggering wars There is no economic or historical basis for this. When resources become more scare people begin looking into alternatives or alternate extraction methods. This is how the iron age came to be. Iron was common to many local areas, but the tin to make bronze had to be imported from far away. It took innovation to develop the necessary techniques for iron smelting which…

"There is no economic or historical basis for this. When resources become more scare people begin looking into alternatives or alternate extraction methods."

It seems obvious they're talking about food.

I am not sure you're closely looked at hydraulic fracturing. One doesn't simply talk about petroleum production, they talk about the IRR of energy projects. That is a fair proxy for whether it takes more energy to get a hydrocarbon out of the ground than it contains. Yes, they are making more, but early entrants into fracking (Whiting, EQT, Pioneer, et al) have all done very poorly and destroyed a lot of equity value. I think a really good case can be made that fracking is intrinsically a financial phenomenon. Huge upfront capex with assumptions of years of production. The track record of that longer tail production is doing poorly (edit: even with different spacing and refracking) in most geologies. Plus, poor infra outside of the permian means more capex.

Lumber has issues too, which will very much be made worse by even a 2 deg C shift.

There is a reason that the US and most countries have huge farming subsidies. A country that cannot feed itself is collapses in very short order. You see this all over the middle east and northern Africa where almost every riot in the "Arab Spring" was about agricultural and food concerns. As you can see in adjacent countries, people migrate from conflict zones and put further stress on neighbors.

When your life and your childrens' live are on the line, you will respect no human or moral laws to get food. That is what terrifies everyone that sees the climate crisis accelerating and is familiar with the next steps of how it's likely to unfold.

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

#103
post #99
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-turk…

I think the assertion isn't that the world is going to end 10 years from now. It's more that unless we pull off a miracle in the next 10 years, it's essentially going to end this century.

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

#104
post #102

USA and Canada have more than the double of emissions per capita than China. While these countries doesn't take the responsibility for climate change, nothing will change.

The US and Canada should definitely take more responsibility for climate change, but I trust emissions numbers coming out of China about as much as I trusted economic numbers coming out of the Soviet Union.

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

#105

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, 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 tra…

> There's just no basis for that belief in the actual evidence.

You Sir have clearly not been paying attention. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/586541/the-uninhabi...

> 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.

This is an absolutely stunning claim to make. It assume growth can just continue in perpetuity forever as if no external factors (food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation, air pollution, global pandemics, extreme weather events, ocean rise etc) could possibly have any impact on that continued growth.

https://i.cbc.ca/1.5192931.1562703009!/fileImage/httpImage/i...

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

#106
post #17

How is this not the #1 story? Why do we even bother with all the other trivia?

In general or on HN? In general - damned if I know. On HN? We've been having a climate story on a front page pretty much every day for a while now.

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

#107
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-turk…

I think the assertion isn't that the world is going to end 10 years from now. It's more that unless we pull off a miracle in the next 10 years, it's essentially going to end this century.

Still not going to happen.

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

#108
post #102

USA and Canada have more than the double of emissions per capita than China. While these countries doesn't take the responsibility for climate change, nothing will change.

There should also be a factor for land mass when considering "fairness", but reality is that the tar sands are the cause of our growing ghg emmissions. Even the industry's propaganda site claims it is single handedly responsible for 10% of Canada's emmisions: https://www.canadasoilsands.ca/en/explore-topics/ghg-emissio...

I can only imagine how much money they spend trying to rebrand tarsands as oilsands...

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

#109
post #16
post #6

Earlier 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…

> Once our climate reaches a new equilibrium, humanity will adjust and everything will probably be OK.

Whatever remains of humanity will adjust and live the medieval or pre-medieval lives for the next many thousands of years.

The most fragile component of the climate change issue is human technological civilization. Once it breaks, it's game over. Most of us and most of our families won't make it. Current level of technology is maintained through a complex global supply chain involving millions of people. When that breaks, humanity will regress. Devices will die, there won't be a way to repair them. Survivors will regress maybe to early industrial era for a while, but since all easily accessible dense energy sources have already been used up, this won't last and the remnants of humanity will regress further, and stay there for God knows how long.

It's not a fate I'd wish on worst enemies.

As for how this collapse would happen? All the climate change-related "small" issues increasingly clogging our economy. More expensive food, more expensive water, less arable land, less habitable land, unprecedented migration. Eventually, there will be war. Or the global economy halts, and then there will be war.

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

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I think what GP presented is too mild . What I personally fear is this: increasing migration pressure from the most affected areas and contention for resources starts triggering wars, at which point the global economy collapses, at which point at least half of the…

> contention for resources starts triggering wars There is no economic or historical basis for this. When resources become more scare people begin looking into alternatives or alternate extraction methods. This is how the iron age came to be. Iron was common to many local areas, but the tin to make bronze had to be imported from far away. It took innovation to develop the necessary techniques for iron smelting which…

There is this theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Maya_collapse#Systemic... as well as this theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse#Envir...

Societies have collapsed before, and it's likely to happen again. Climate change looks like an extremely good trigger for such an event. It's unclear whether we would be able to recover, or how long it would take.

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