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Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

bbc.com

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Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#731

Post by usaar333 »

throw0101a wrote: post #640
jdavis703 wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID-19 was a program of systemic action. The US had lockdowns, mask mandates and even soft vaccine mandates. None of this was enough to crush the virus. Why? Because systems are made of individuals who will decide whether or not they want to collaborate on solving a problem.

> None of this was enough to crush the virus. Why? Because systems are made of individuals who will decide whether or not they want to collaborate on solving a problem. Many of the individuals currently refusing vaccines in the US didn't just decide, there was an active effort made to convince them not to get one: > Had the US continued to vaccinate in the summer at the same rate as in the spring, the US would be nea…

> Had the US continued to vaccinate in the summer at the same rate as in the spring, the US would be near herd immunity by now.

This obsession in the media with herd immunity is strange. It's not even clear herd immunity with Delta and our current vaccines is attainable. Just look at Iceland where 65+% of cases are fully vaccinated (https://www.covid.is/data). UK has had high vaccination rates and is still surging (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/).

We can certainly make the pandemic manageable - I'm not worried about hospitals toppling over in the Bay Area with its 80+% 12+ fully vaccinated rate, but covid is still on the upswing.

> People think that either (a) COVID itself is a hoax or not that bad, or (b) that the vaccines are a hoax

Granted this is the Bay Area I'm in but the folks I know that refuse to take a vaccine don't see it as a hoax. They are some combination of unconvinced of a low risk of long-term vaccine side-effects (by virtue of us having no actual long-term observations) and concluding P(risk_of_getting_covid) * expected_cost(covid | infected) For some other analysis that this is more than just politics:

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/07/31/whos-agai...

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/07/27/americas-...

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#732

Post by 35fbe7d3d5b9 »

dleslie wrote: post #679
Joeri wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual action won’t solve this problem. We need to leave the fossil fuels in the ground, which means switching energy sources, which is not something individuals have much influence on. Reducing energy use at the individual level is good, but insufficient if the energy used comes from fossil fuels. I’m not sure we need to switch lifestyles that much, but we will need to radically change energy production. There h…

> Individual action won’t solve this problem. We need to leave the fossil fuels in the ground, which means switching energy sources, which is not something individuals have much influence on. The covid shutdown should have put this myth to bed forever. Hundreds of millions stuck at home and no longer commuting took a massive dent out of carbon emissions and sent shock waves through the oil industry. Individual action…

In what world is hundreds of millions of people drastically changing their lifestyle because they've been instructed to stay home by their governments "individual action"? That's a collective response to a crisis mandated by government.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#733

Post by josh_today »

awestroke wrote: post #460
josh_today wrote: post #445

If the Sahara and Grand Canyon once flowed with water before civilization What makes a paper straw the solution so our polar ice caps have less thaw? This is a serious question and not denying climate change. What’s our ultimate end goal after everything has gone green if we cannot change the planet’s cycles?

* Plastic pollution is orthogonal to climate change * It sounds like you are implying that there is no man-made climate change, only natural cycles. This is 100% false. We are facing extinction as a species, and it's due to greenhouse gases we emit.

I’m not denying man made climate change. I’m challenging the status quo and looking for a response with our solution when the climate will, evidentially, change.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#734

Post by gruez »

phkahler wrote: post #582
jsonne wrote: post #360

If there is anything covid has taught me its that collective action isn't something we can rely on and is a lot more wishful thinking about the state of humanity rather than a sober look at the reality. Governments need to tax CO2 emissions on the business side and pour the money into carbon capture technology in the private space through investment and perhaps some sort of bounty program (you get $x for each ton you…

>> Governments need to tax CO2 emissions on the business side... I'd say its easier to tax those who extract carbon from the ground (or import it). Far fewer companies. (for this post I'm assuming the goal to reduce CO2 emissions is correct)

You probably need a mix, because "extract carbon from the ground" wouldn't work for other sources (eg. methane or cement production).

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#735

Post by rescripting »

lordnacho wrote: post #203
matco11 wrote: post #16

> This pact aims to keep the rise in global temperatures well below 2C this century and to pursue efforts to keep it under 1.5C. It seems to me that continuing to communicate just the average temperature increase is a missed opportunity to engage with a greater portion of the population. 1.5 or 2 degrees do not seem like much, but once one understands that’s an average made out of much bigger positive and negative sw…

I wrote about this not long ago, the problem with the climate crisis is there's no crisis point. In a "proper" crisis or perhaps "ordinary" is a better term, there's a point where the leadership needs to drop all other agenda items and focus on the crisis. Whether that's bailing out the economy, starting a war, or calling a new election, there's a time when nothing else matters. The climate crisis is a thousand indiv…

You'll experience the climate crisis as an ever increasing digital stream of catastrophes captured on cellphone camera until, one day, you're the one doing the filming.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#736

Post by shreyshnaccount »

why is the main focus on CO2 and not sulphides and nitrogenous gasses that cause a helluvalot more greenhouse effect than CO2 and are released by industries all around? am I missing something or is this fact ignored?( not saying that nothing should be done about CO2 tho)

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#737

Post by gruez »

asd4232 wrote: post #637
jdavis703 wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID-19 was a program of systemic action. The US had lockdowns, mask mandates and even soft vaccine mandates. None of this was enough to crush the virus. Why? Because systems are made of individuals who will decide whether or not they want to collaborate on solving a problem.

That's why individuals should not have the freedom of choice. China's actions against the virus proved rather effective because the government actually has authority there. Western democracy is clearly weak when it comes to dealing with crisis of any kind.

>Western democracy is clearly weak when it comes to dealing with crisis of any kind.

Sounds like a feature to me. They're also "rather effective" at setting up reeducation camps in xijiang to deal with the "crisis" of "extremism and terrorism by Uygurs"[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#738

Post by kieranmaine »

signaturefish wrote: post #619

Possibly-relatedly, I'm in the process of getting some retrofit work done on my house to improve its insulation and reduce the carbon costs of heating it. I absolutely had not appreciated that a place like this, an 80s brick-built terraced house in southern England, could be responsible for 3.4 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year in heating costs alone. The necessary retrofit work is expensive, on the order of £50'000 o…

I think it will be more feasible to decarbonize the heating instead. If feasible heat storage technology can mature and lower the cost of electric heating then it becomes financially viable.

Out of interest, what work are you getting done?

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#739

Post by rglover »

ripdog wrote: post #653
rglover wrote: post #628

No, it's not. https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1424712163281694725 This is more media fearmongering. Edit: Threadreader link https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1424712163281694725.html

I don't understand any of that. Any chance of an acronym dictionary for us laymen?

The official report the original BBC article is based on is available here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6.... Definitions are inside, but the big ones he mentions are Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), AR6 (Annual Report 6), and WGI (Working Group I).

Essentially what he's saying is that the conclusions in the report are based heavily on the more-extreme, though less-likely outcomes (i.e., exaggerating the truth of the impact of climate change based on observational data by using extreme models/predictions). The report also ignores his (Roger's) own heavily-cited research in favor of a less-cited resource that confirms their biases.

Edit: this is problematic because it generates headlines like the one this article is using and sends people into a panic spiral (as opposed to focusing on long-term solutions and actual science).

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#740

Post by ptkd »

merpnderp wrote: post #720

If anyone actually believed it was "code red for humanity" they'd be pushing nuclear power. There is zero chance of moving off carbon energy sources without causing catastrophic mayhem, unless we use massive amounts of nuclear. For instance, the last 4 years my state has averaged 37% production of total possible installed wind generation capacity. This is a very windy state which is in the top 2 for installed wind ca…

I see this take a lot, and it’s kind of misinformed. The primary drawbacks of nuclear are: 1) incredible slow to build. A typical plant takes ~20 years from decision to productionized 2) extremely expensive, with a massively frontloaded cost. By contrast, solar and wind are fast to install and now cheaper.

> wind power can be zero at some parts of the day

There are a few solutions to this actually. First, having a more nationalized grid can amortize variant weather conditions (very unlikely it’s not windy everywhere, for example). Second, there actually are long-duration battery solutions coming out. Look up “energy tower” for a very weird one, and “form energy” for a more traditional model.

Finally — I will agree that nuclear is probably some piece of the pie in the future. But analysts think we can get to 80% renewables with currently existing tech: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2012/0...

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