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

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101–110 of 209 posts

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

#101
post #95
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…

We will develop geo engineering with our quantum computers, fueled by cold fusion reactors. It's not like we just decide to solve something and then it just happens. There can also be serious outcomes of errors are made that are more serious than climate itself.

only if you want to do something really exotic/scifi. volcanoes have shown us how to do it relatively easily.

conservatively, "$18 billion per year per degree Celsius of warming avoided".

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

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greenpeace literature in the 1980s predicted hurricanes from Global Warming. And here we are.

Greenpeace is responsible for a lot of that warming.

May I ask how you came to that conclusion?

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

#104
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How much of that is just outsourcing much of our industry to Asia/etc.?

Not as much as people would have you believe.

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

#105
post #93
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a leaking bathtub. Half life of excess CO2 in the atmosphere is 30-100 years. So you need the water flowing in to continue to increase in rate (not just to continue flowing in), otherwise you reach a new equilibrium and the CO2 levels in the atmosphere stop increasing. They do increase in rate as you said (for now).

That's a rather misleading statistic. Some is absorbed by oceans, where it acidifies. For land based carbon sinks (trees, soil, etc) any new carbon being deposited is competing with existing carbon in the carbon cycle. If your stat had any sense then atmospheric carbon levels would rapidly plunge in a few centuries without humans burning carbon. They plainly don't do that.

Carbon levels are expected to plunge over a few centuries if carbon emissions drop.

You are right the the ocean is the largest carbon sink, and it has the negative side effect of acidifying.

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

#106
post #41

Unfortunately Germany phased out nuclear power, but continues to burn coal.

We'll know European Greens are serious about climate change when they stop decommissioning nuclear plants and replacing them with coal.

I recently wrote a reply to someone else with the same argument about the German greens, which I'll recycle here:

"It's bad enough that nuclear proponents ignore the massive cost of nuclear compared to renewables once you factor in building costs, insurance and storage imho. But then to pretend like the conservatives didn't have a choice but to bungle the nuclear exit really is too much.

The CDU never listened to the greens when it came to not killing the solar industry and serving it to China on a golden platter. Or not killing our rail infrastructure by continually delaying maintenance so that we would have to do much more costly repairs later.

But in this instance, they do, and do it in a way that is a gift to the energy companies, and instead of noticing the obvious corruption at play, people still blame the greens."

Sorry if the tone is a bit harsh, but I'm really annoyed at the amount of dishonesty surrounding nuclear energy.

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

#107

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 neve…

> over-protecting from a risk is as bad as under-protecting

How would protecting ourselves against 50 °C summer heat (122 °F) ever be as bad as keeping 40° heatwaves or better yet, a return to the 35° summers?

50° means a human mass extinction event. There are no corporate profits possible in that scenario anyway

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

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there will basically no place to hide from these direct or any knock-on effects This is nonsense. (And your own source doesn't support the claim that the consequences of global warming will be unmitigable for anyone.) Many parts of the world will become milder for human occupation as a result of climate change. And nothing realistically forecast is unavoidable with wealth–rich countries will A/C and seawall their w…

The effects would definitely be felt by everyone if the global population were on its way to be halved. Also knock-on effects like mass emigration putting additional pressure on an already difficult political landscape. Potential for many more wars; more unknown unknowns etc. Edit: the report’s "Extreme" severity band is indeed not a forecast but they’re basically saying "the chance of this happening is way too high"…

> effects would definitely be felt by everyone if the global population were on its way to be halved

Many effects would hurt most people. But some would also be profited from. It’s incredible–as in debilitating to one’s credibility-to claim that everyone would suffer in the extreme case.

The rich, and I say this broadly to include the rich countries, will probably be fine. Poorer, yes, but not uniformly. Plenty of plenty of places and people would see booms from the new weather patterns, coasts and social fault lines.

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