111 comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48915244
“Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning” (worldcrunch.com)
The 3-degree limit could be exceeded as early as 2050
11–20 of 30 posts
Re: The 3-degree limit could be exceeded as early as 2050
#12Jesus Christ I was just recalling 1.5 being a “everything is fucked” Paris agreement number Then it was “some people will survive” 2.5 It’s like 100% of climate scientists were ignored by industry and society
It’s what happens as long as buying a larger SUV and burning more gas is somehow considered good for the ‘economy’ …
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Re: The 3-degree limit could be exceeded as early as 2050
#13The tragedy: by the time a big enough % of the public finds their own lives in turmoil, panic breaks out, politics shift, Big Oil & co get shoved aside, chances are tipping points have passed & we're in for the ride no matter what. These processes have a decades-delayed fuse.
So it may just be too little, too late, with our species' extinction on the table (never mind all the 1000s of species we've already wiped out).
Don't get me wrong: every little bit helps (especially now), and sooner = better. So please keep deploying solutions, and stop contributing to the problem!
But I can't say I'm optimistic. Public at large does not understand how quickly the state of a system can change once underlying factors cross critical thresholds.
Re: The 3-degree limit could be exceeded as early as 2050
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
In what way does +4C kill all animals exactly?
Desertification, wet bulb temperatures, heat stress, loss of food in the environment, ecosystem collapse due to climate change happening too fast for ecosystems to migrate, and the massively increased range required to find food causing them to not find mates.
To add: ratio of surface area (skin, sweating/cooling), versus volume/weight (muscle activity, biochemical processes etc).
The bigger the animal, the harder it is to keep cool.
Re: The 3-degree limit could be exceeded as early as 2050
#15Point of contention: > It can no longer be denied: Climate change is progressing unabated and accelerating. In 2023 and 2024, global average temperatures were 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time. It is even possible that the 1.5-degree limit for global warming agreed upon in Paris may already have been permanently exceeded. The value they are talking about is the political definition ,…
> Many scientists consider +1.5℃ to have been reliably and consistently breached at some point in the very early 2010s.
Do you have a source for that? The 20 year average (not minimum) is considered reasonable to provide an estimate the GWL 10 years ago and is simple to calculate but obviously we'd only have the data going up to 2015 if using those.
I don't think there are any, even current-year GWL indicators that have us at close to +2℃ above the standard 1850-1900 reference. LOESS is probably the simplest one (the others are usually 10 years of observations + 10 years of projections) and that was ~1.31 [1.16 — 1.42] in 2023 according to https://climate.metoffice.cloud/current_warming.html and 1.44 ± 0.09 °C for 2025 according to https://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperature-report-for-2025...
Re: The 3-degree limit could be exceeded as early as 2050
#16Jesus Christ I was just recalling 1.5 being a “everything is fucked” Paris agreement number Then it was “some people will survive” 2.5 It’s like 100% of climate scientists were ignored by industry and society
They were, mostly because they were actively undermined by Republican administrations and "special interest groups" going back decades.
I believe the anti-nuclear people have done more damage.
Re: The 3-degree limit could be exceeded as early as 2050
#17The tragedy: by the time a big enough % of the public finds their own lives in turmoil, panic breaks out, politics shift, Big Oil & co get shoved aside, chances are tipping points have passed & we're in for the ride no matter what. These processes have a decades-delayed fuse. So it may just be too little, too late, with our species' extinction on the table (never mind all the 1000s of species we've already wiped out)…
People were probably saying the same about the declining population of the dodo. "We'll all starve".
Yet the world goes on, and usually future people tend to not care so much about mistakes of the past.
Re: The 3-degree limit could be exceeded as early as 2050
#18Point of contention: > It can no longer be denied: Climate change is progressing unabated and accelerating. In 2023 and 2024, global average temperatures were 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time. It is even possible that the 1.5-degree limit for global warming agreed upon in Paris may already have been permanently exceeded. The value they are talking about is the political definition ,…
> Many scientists consider +1.5℃ to have been reliably and consistently breached at some point in the very early 2010s. Do you have a source for that? The 20 year average (not minimum ) is considered reasonable to provide an estimate the GWL 10 years ago and is simple to calculate but obviously we'd only have the data going up to 2015 if using those. I don't think there are any, even current-year GWL indicators that…
While I do not know directly about what happens in distant places on Earth, where I live in Europe there are about 15 years since the last time when I used my winter clothes and my winter boots.
When I was young, where I live there was permanent snow cover from early December until late March.
All the historical sources from hundreds of years ago mention similarly heavy winters.
Now there is more than a decade since there was any snow that lasted more than a day before melting.
So I find it strange when there are people who are still skeptical about the reality of climate warming.
Re: The 3-degree limit could be exceeded as early as 2050
#19If environmentalists and governments really wanted to solve this problem, they would be all in on nuclear energy. It is by far the safest, cleanest, most carbon-neutral form of energy we have that we can produce reliably at volume (base load). We went decades without building any new nuclear power plants in the US.
Instead, what you actually see happening is environmental groups actively working to _shut down_ nuclear reactors before alternate power sources are ready and available, like in Germany and New York. This of course then results in higher prices, brown outs, and burning more coal and natural gas until more alternate power sources can be built to meet demand, also making the pollution issue much worse in the short term. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
Re: The 3-degree limit could be exceeded as early as 2050
#20The tragedy: by the time a big enough % of the public finds their own lives in turmoil, panic breaks out, politics shift, Big Oil & co get shoved aside, chances are tipping points have passed & we're in for the ride no matter what. These processes have a decades-delayed fuse. So it may just be too little, too late, with our species' extinction on the table (never mind all the 1000s of species we've already wiped out)…
Some argue that another form of climate denial is the denial that we're headed for certain doom.
Of course it's an easy cop-out, to say "well the planet's doomed anyway, let's book those flights to the Maldives! (Before the sea swallows them)". Or to deny responsibility by saying "Why should I change, look at those private jets!".
I agree when Kurzgesagt argues, the fix is to push for political change https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc . I like meat, petrol cars and flying vacations, but if they get heavily taxed to help save the planet, I'll sign up for that!
I'll grumble that meat is such a luxury, but that's how it's supposed to be...