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World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

cnbc.com

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Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#91

Post by defrost »

wsc981 wrote: post #79
boxed wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already do massive geoengineering. That's what all that CO2 is doing! We're just doing it incompetently.

For reference: all that CO2 is equal to about 0.04% of human atmosphere. Of which 3% is from human activity. So 0.0012% of CO2 in atmosphere caused by humans. Nature is responsible for the remaining 0.0388% in atmosphere.

Kind of silly to compare the amount that actually insulates and traps heat to nitrogen and oxygen that don't.

It's a 50% increase in insulating gases due to human activity that's the problem here .. not the thermally inert gases.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#92

Post by wongarsu »

ericmay wrote: post #82
shafyy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what would be less drastic? Fucking stop emitting as much carbon. Solutions are there: Less livestock farming, less cars, less flights, less production of unnecessary products. Now, can we convince enough people to change their behavior just by telling them to do it? No, of course not. But what works really well is controlling people's behavior via consumer prices. This means, make animal products more expen…

The car one is the most frustrating for me just because global warming is but one of the many problems associated with car-only infrastructure in countries such as the United States. Your point about bunkers is kind of interesting. If society collapses the bunkers are really pointless. I think deep down the “rich people” building them know that. It’s just the same kind of silly doomsday prepping that regular folks do…

To be fair to space exploration, Elon has by far the best bunker plan. He knows there are a couple decades left until shit really hits the fan. As you say bunkers on earth aren't all that promising, but what if you could make a self-sustaining colony on another planet, far away from societal collapse.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#93

Post by defrost »

paulsutter wrote: post #49

Like most media coverage, the article omits the primary cause of the recent acceleration in warming - desulphurization of ship fuel “ the IMO2020 fuel change cut cloud tracks in key shipping lanes by half...this has a substantial effect on warming, concentrated in areas with heavy shipping activity like the North Atlantic. The reduction in reflective cloud cover over this region, plus an unrelated reduction in reflec…

Partial cause but not primary.

The largest kick to recent activity has been the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) swing.

Expect high temps for a few years and then some slight relief before things rachet up again.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#94

Post by mcdonje »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #6

I'm a technological accelerationist simply because I'm certain, with the 30 years of warming baked in from this point + the impossibility of carbon emissions lowering on average anytime soon, the only way to save the world's species, our state and growth of civilization and such is through technological advances, AI, terraforming, etc. There's no hope simply through austerity, things are too screwed already.

We already have the solutions. We need to act. We can't pin our hopes on future options when the crisis is now and we're not using current options.

We need to stop using fossil fuels. Full stop. Nuclear and renewables. Trains and EVs.

We need to sequester carbon. Reforest the US east of the Mississippi. Make Ohio look like Vermont. Do the same in all other previously deforested areas. Dense cities and towns, great natural expanses, farms, and nothing else. Sprawl is killing us.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#95

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Fornax96 wrote: post #78
smeej wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want this to sound dismissive, but aren't we all "doomed" in the end anyway? How long does anything we do have an impact anyway? A generation? Two? Five? How many individual people have had an impact on the world five or more generations after they've died, as a percentage of the total population? Were all those other people's lives meaningless? I think you're grappling with a fundamental aspect of being mort…

The hardest part for me to accept is that there are so many people who just don't care. Not about the disasters, the climate refugees, the death toll, the extinction of thousands of species, respiratory diseases, etc. How can people just accept all that as a fact of life when it's all man-made horrors?

I'm not sure that you're being fair to (many) people.

There are many people to whom this is all doomerism. The world is ending because of ozone depletion. The world is ending because of the oil shortage. The world is ending because of nuclear war. The world is ending because of resource depletion. The world is ending because of topsoil depletion. The world is ending because of aquafer depletion. And now, the world is ending because of climate change. (Yes, climate change figures in several of the other issues...)

People hear all this. And they look around and they see not much actually changing. It's not that they don't care about millions of deaths; they don't believe that the millions of deaths are coming. They think that, yeah, the climate's going to change a bit, and it's going to disrupt things a bit, just like oil got kind of scarce for a while and gasoline got expensive, and that was painful, but we got through it.

It's not that they don't care. It's that they don't believe (and therefore don't care about an outcome that they don't believe in). For many people, slow motion decades-in-the-making doom is not something that feels real, even when it starts to happen.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#96

Post by argiopetech »

xyst wrote: post #84

We are the worst stewards of this planet.

We're the only stewards of this planet, learning in real time, with imperfect or completely absent communication among individuals.

I'd say things are going pretty well, considering the pace of change.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#97

Post by Pepe1vo »

wongarsu wrote: post #92
ericmay wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The car one is the most frustrating for me just because global warming is but one of the many problems associated with car-only infrastructure in countries such as the United States. Your point about bunkers is kind of interesting. If society collapses the bunkers are really pointless. I think deep down the “rich people” building them know that. It’s just the same kind of silly doomsday prepping that regular folks do…

To be fair to space exploration, Elon has by far the best bunker plan. He knows there are a couple decades left until shit really hits the fan. As you say bunkers on earth aren't all that promising, but what if you could make a self-sustaining colony on another planet, far away from societal collapse.

You know what's even less promising than a bunker on Earth? A bunker literally anywhere else in the observable universe. In fact, we could nuke the entire surface of the earth and it would probably still be easier to establish a self-sustaining colony on the resulting radioactive wasteland then on the Moon/Mars/Venus.

There is a very good reason why Earth is, and will continue to, sustain a great diversity of life and the rest of space is sterile.

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#98

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

defrost wrote: post #91
wsc981 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference: all that CO2 is equal to about 0.04% of human atmosphere. Of which 3% is from human activity. So 0.0012% of CO2 in atmosphere caused by humans. Nature is responsible for the remaining 0.0388% in atmosphere.

Kind of silly to compare the amount that actually insulates and traps heat to nitrogen and oxygen that don't. It's a 50% increase in insulating gases due to human activity that's the problem here .. not the thermally inert gases.

"I don't know what you're complaining about, I only increased the amount of cyanide in your body by 0.002% of your body weight."

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#99

Post by vixen99 »

gorjusborg wrote: post #35
timeon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New technologies have not helped yet. Just covered part of increased demand. So it doesn't seem like technology is going to save us. It is all just distraction. Only way is one that will never happen: de-growth.

I agree, except I am pretty sure de-growth will happen, it just will not be under voluntary or controlled conditions.

It's happening bit by bit: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/09/green-energies-shatte...

Re: World surpasses key warming threshold across an entire year

#100

Post by hotpotamus »

bglazer wrote: post #90
shafyy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what would be less drastic? Fucking stop emitting as much carbon. Solutions are there: Less livestock farming, less cars, less flights, less production of unnecessary products. Now, can we convince enough people to change their behavior just by telling them to do it? No, of course not. But what works really well is controlling people's behavior via consumer prices. This means, make animal products more expen…

Sure, let’s lower everyone’s standards of living - except for the richest people who won’t change their behavior at all. That’s so politically toxic that its effectively a fantasy. That’s the problem with these tax and prices based economic nudges. They’re effectively punishments, and everyone fucking hates unjust punishments. Think about the person who has to fly to visit a sick family member. Now they’re still flyi…

What's funny is that any time I've suggested increasing taxes on the rich, I hear how I'm jealous and really I should be thankful for the incredible standard of living that I have as a modern human (as I struggle to maintain employment, housing, and health insurance while nursing some health issues). And yet any time I see suggestions of collective sacrifice to literally save the world, I'm told it's impossible because people are too jealous of how rich people will bend the rules for themselves (as though they don't already live beyond any kind of rules in our current arrangement anyway).

It really seems like heads the planet is fucked, tails the planet is fucked. And for some reason it's a mystery why people have stopped having children.

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