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Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning

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Re: Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning

#81

Post by darth_avocado »

gpt5 wrote: post #27
Arubis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We _are_ doing something about this. We’re locating concentrated millions of years of trapped fossil energy and moving it into our atmosphere as fast as we possibly can. To a first approximation, that is the world economy. Or did you mean to do something differently?

Both Europe and US's emissions are significantly (18%-30%) below their peak (which was 20 years ago. The rest of the world is also moving towards renewables.

While yes the emissions are down from 2007 and majority of it has been driven by the shift away from coal in power generation.

However, every other sector has been rather flat in terms of emissions since the 90s. When you account for the fact that a large amount of industries have moved to China and other developing countries, the fact that emissions from industries have been flat, means that the overall consumption has gone up.

If you account for the emissions that we’ve offshored, we’d not be looking so good.

Re: Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning

#82

Post by dunWithIt »

cherrycherry98 wrote: post #72
dunWithIt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have to do less There has been a lot of debate over AC use. Everyone chiming in only discusses runtime energy use. The biggest issue is mining and manufacturing, and the moving of all the materials, parts, and such. Every AC has sheathed wires and circuit boards. Every airplane, car, phone, network router, refrigerator... same expansive mess creation. Gamers complaining about disc less games despite that problem p…

If you want less of something, tax it. Support consumption based taxes like the FairTax in the US which would tax new goods at a high rate while used goods would be tax free. This encourages keeping items for longer, repairing rather than replacing, and purchasing used goods over new ones.

Oh well ok I will get right on raising taxes. So simple I should have done it sooner.

FairTax is regressive and does nothing to stop a trillionaire from launching dick rockets to nowhere. Each rocket and launch using more resources than a poor person will their entire life.

Re: Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning

#84

Post by defrost »

AuthAuth wrote: post #36
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China is also likely rapidly de-carbonizing right now Huh. "China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 1% in the final quarter of 2025, likely securing a decline of 0.3% for the full year as a whole" [1]. So "rapidly de-carbonising" is wrong. But decarbonising per se is correct. [1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...

Its only falling per Chinese gov data. The trend since 2019 is for them to downplay emission data and when the next international review comes around we'll have seen that it was actually increasing for the past 3 years and everything will be revised and they will say oh its decreasing starting from now and everyone will forget that the gov stats were lying and take their word that its decreasing.

  NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory, 2 (OCO-2) provides the most complete dataset tracking the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂), the main driver of climate change. Every day, OCO-2 measures sunlight reflected from Earth’s surface to infer the dry-air column-averaged CO₂ mixing ratio and provides around 100,000 cloud-free observations.

Re: Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning

#85

Post by chorizo »

teravor wrote: post #79

I wouldn't be too worried about it this century at least. if things look like they are going to get bad we will resort to geoengineering, and once we get a taste for it we will further optimize global temperatures to our liking. perversely, global warming earlier than expected is a good thing [for us] as it will wipe away all meaningful opposition to geoengineering. note how according to them having 50C days is a lik…

What we already have is uncontrolled geoengineering. Having said that, geoengineering might lead to geopolitical conflict. The current situation is making the tropical/equatorial area less habitable while creating overall benefits for the high latitudes.

Re: Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning

#86

Post by xyzelement »

This article sprinkles the word "risk" which people interpret as "bad things are coming" but actually means "there's some probability of the bad thing happening."

The probability is not quantified so it's impossible to react to. Over-protecting from a risk is as bad and under-protecting.

For example - something bad can happen to you any time you leave your house. However if you "protect" against that the risk by never leaving the house you are almost certainly worse off.

In case of climate the "thing to do" to protect from the risk is to minimize the economic activity that has improved life for everyone. Stopping that has an immediate "cost" which looks large compared to the unquantified risk it allegedly mitigates.

Re: Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning

#87

Post by aaronchall »

exabrial wrote: post #83

Germany just shut down several perfectly fine nuclear reactors and has some of the dirtiest electricity generation in the entire world They need to look inward before pointing outward.

I'm sure the day after Russia withdraws from Ukraine they're going to demand the pipeline from Russia be restored and everyone they suspect involved involved in the Nord Stream blasts extradited too.

Re: Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning

#88

Post by teravor »

chorizo wrote: post #85
teravor wrote: post #79

I wouldn't be too worried about it this century at least. if things look like they are going to get bad we will resort to geoengineering, and once we get a taste for it we will further optimize global temperatures to our liking. perversely, global warming earlier than expected is a good thing [for us] as it will wipe away all meaningful opposition to geoengineering. note how according to them having 50C days is a lik…

What we already have is uncontrolled geoengineering. Having said that, geoengineering might lead to geopolitical conflict. The current situation is making the tropical/equatorial area less habitable while creating overall benefits for the high latitudes.

    > geoengineering might lead to geopolitical conflict
I have heard of this but haven't heard a credible scenario describing it. if Europe or the US or China wanted to do it they could just be flying in circles in their own territory to deploy it safely (at the cost of some efficiency probably). only a nuclear power would likely dare to unilaterally do geoengineering.

it remains to be seen who will start the geoengineering effort, arguably Russia would benefit from global warming and so will Canada, so the US food supply should also remain secure.

Re: Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning

#89

Post by peterashford »

alephnerd wrote: post #17
cute_boi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite all the pollution, 24% of Indians live below the lower-middle-income poverty line of $4.20 per day...

Yes, and? That's why nothing will happen. Developing countries like India, Indonesia, and Vietnam are continuing to expand their emissions as they industrialize. All are expected to have an GDP growth rate in the 6-8% range over the next decade, as will their peers across Asia, so the carbon footprint globally will only increase . Even China's emissions rate aren't decreasing - they're stagnant, which is a good shift…

Yeah, but they're not going to expand by taking on coal and fossil fuels. The third world is taking on green energy alternatives at a great rate. Not least because it's cheaper and more convenient. These countries can grow without the damage that marked the Western world through the industrial revolution onwards

Re: Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning

#90

Post by peterashford »

hcurtiss wrote: post #46
defrost wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One major issue is the extreme difficulty of being precise about tipping points. Eg: Have you seen a train derail? A couple of degrees of tilt - nothing .. and then .. whoops. The global climate has been 'stable' about mean values for the bulk of human written history and development of urban civilisations. The planet now hosts 7 billion+ people, largely urban, and feed by a century of stable agriculture patterns wri…

But there have been way higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels historically, and those have largely coincided with plant and animal life climaxing. See the Jurassic.

"History" is generally used to mean when humans were around writing stuff down. And no, CO2 levels have never been this high during the entire history of human civilization, and likely the entire existence of Homo sapiens
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