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Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

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Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#201

Post by croes »

epistasis wrote: post #86
mistrial9 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who wants a "strict vegan diet" ? I see detractors who want to derail the topic using distasteful, demanding examples..

The person I'm responding to is the one who brought it up. I live in a very leftist place, and there were always those at climate events demanding "strict vegan diets" however I didn't see these people out in the general world outside of my little leftist bubble, trying to actually get their idea out there. I agree with Michael Mann that what most of the public only encounters this idea of "strict vegan diets is a re…

I‘m pretty sure they mention a strict vegan diet as only a part of the solution. And it’s a fact that meat needs more resources and produces more CO2 and methane then plant based food.

It would already help to consume less meat.

It seems to me you focus on vegan diet to use the annoying vegan stereotype for your purposes.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#202

Post by tito »

HN's community moderation tools seem to fail at times, so I'm responding to ssearyus's comment that is marked [dead]:

ssearyus: At the risk of being immediately downvoted, let me point out that a 250ppm CO2 level is borderline disastrous for plant life -- at 180ppm, plants would starve globally. The increased CO2 levels in recent years (slightly added to by human activities) is immensely helpful for drought-resistance, as stomata do not then need to open as much to get sufficient CO2 with the result that they transpire less water. The above, and the fact the by far the most important GHG in the atmosphere is water vapor (CO2 is comparatively a rounding error) should give reasonable people pause for thought.

My response: I think there's something you're trying to say, but it doesn't come through clearly in these many points.

- 250ppm is not disastrous for plant life. That's around preindustrial levels of CO2 (280ppm) and plants did just fine

- What do you mean by "starve" here regarding 180ppm?

- And why are you talking about 250ppm and 180ppm specifically? No one is talking about 250ppm or 180ppm as targets (or maybe you are?)

- Water vapor is indeed a greenhouse gas, and contributes to warming. But it's best thought as an accelerant. Warmer temperatures bring more water vapor bring higher temperatures, bring more water vapor etc etc. The rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is so important because it trigger in many ways a feedback loop, one of which is rise in water vapor as a greenhouse gas. The feedback loop caused by temperature/water vapor is one of the reasons we need to be very careful with our human-made emissions.

- "CO2 is comparatively a rounding error": Whether by mass or volume, CO2 is not a rounding error by comparison to water vapor. There's roughly 4 to 6 times the amount of water vapor as CO2. I wouldn't call 25% a rounding error. Maybe there's something I missed here.

- And when you say water vapor is "by far the most important GHG in the atmosphere", does that mean you're working on lowering water vapor levels in the atmosphere? Or what are you working on regarding solving for this? Maybe something with airplane cloud formation trapping heat?

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#204

Post by rapind »

ThrowawayIP wrote: post #16
multiplegeorges wrote: post #2

Not much of a surprise. Government action has been anemic at best. Industry action (overall) has been net negative. The only hope now is exponential growth of (solar and wind)+batteries making other sources uneconomic. This seems to be slowly happening, so I hope we hit the exponential curve soon and we're there quicker than we expect. This only stops it. Then, to fix it, we'll need a massive Direct Air Capture indus…

The technology-will-save-us mentality is part of the reason we are here. We live in a society that doesn't do anything unless it makes money for some set of decrepit old men. We had the means to avoid this (strict vegan diets, ground based mass transit, dense development & re-wilding, energy transition) but people made money doing the opposite. And more people made money sabotaging solar+battery pricing in the US. So…

At least we've discovered that trying to get people to behave differently at scale without the presence of an *immediate* emergency is a failed endeavour... So maybe now we can stop that nonsense and focus all of our energy on technological solutions?

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#205

Post by lukeify »

ThrowawayIP wrote: post #16
multiplegeorges wrote: post #2

Not much of a surprise. Government action has been anemic at best. Industry action (overall) has been net negative. The only hope now is exponential growth of (solar and wind)+batteries making other sources uneconomic. This seems to be slowly happening, so I hope we hit the exponential curve soon and we're there quicker than we expect. This only stops it. Then, to fix it, we'll need a massive Direct Air Capture indus…

The technology-will-save-us mentality is part of the reason we are here. We live in a society that doesn't do anything unless it makes money for some set of decrepit old men. We had the means to avoid this (strict vegan diets, ground based mass transit, dense development & re-wilding, energy transition) but people made money doing the opposite. And more people made money sabotaging solar+battery pricing in the US. So…

I didn’t ask for the world to have 8 billion people in it, and I sure as hell won’t be stopping enjoying fairly basic luxuries like consuming protein just because others tell me to do so.

If we need to make such drastic changes to human consumption, have people considered if we have a overpopulation problem?

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#207

Post by saxenaabhi »

sajithdilshan wrote: post #50
Der_Einzige wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Significant amounts of the third world are already eating de-facto vegetarian or vegan diets. Many for religious reasons (i.e. in India where the vast majority of people either eat no meat or only chicken/fish), and many others for financial reasons. Strict vegan diets would objectively massively help reduce climate change.

That is not true, most people in India don’t eat meat because they are too poor to afford it and hence malnourishment.

Punjab and Rajasthan have the highest proportion of vegetarians and also rank on the top of male/female height charts.

Admittedly it's not fully vegan but still.

Indians have long recognized the virtues of a vegetarian diet: both the moral imperative & it's health benefits. That's something everyone should be able to admire.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#208

Post by lukeify »

xnx wrote: post #64
multiplegeorges wrote: post #2

Not much of a surprise. Government action has been anemic at best. Industry action (overall) has been net negative. The only hope now is exponential growth of (solar and wind)+batteries making other sources uneconomic. This seems to be slowly happening, so I hope we hit the exponential curve soon and we're there quicker than we expect. This only stops it. Then, to fix it, we'll need a massive Direct Air Capture indus…

Population decrease will have the biggest impact.

The unpopular answers are usually the correct ones.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#209

Post by ncruces »

locknitpicker wrote: post #89
epistasis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't, the idea that strict vegan diets would have stoped climate change is just nonsense. Run the numbers. "Strict vegan diets" is the attitude of US activists telling the developing world that they need to change their behavior before the US activist is willing to accept driving less or adopting dense urban infill housing. "Making money" is the incentive system of society. Technology has now aligned society's…

> "Making money" is the incentive system of society. Technology has now aligned society's incentive systems to promote climate action. This personal belief is grounded on an assumption that all mankind follows a neoliberal or even libertarian economic model. Back to reality, west Europe is firmly a social democracy where states impose behavior through law, regulation, and policy, which is topped by a federal system t…

> Back to reality, west Europe is firmly a social democracy where states impose behavior through law, regulation, and policy, which is topped by a federal system that coordinates policies.

And yet, air travel continues to grow (after a small hiatus due to COVID) and state and EU money will be dumped into a new airport near me, to support more than doubling current capacity, much further away from the city (adding tens of millions of car trips to and from the airport).

I'm simply the looney for not taking the kids on low cost European city escapes.

It starts from the “bottom”: people will talk about it, but will pretty much continue to do whatever the fuck they can afford to do. And Europeans, like Americans, can simply afford to much, while harping about what will happen to the world once the BRICS can afford the same.

Re: Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

#210

Post by irishcoffee »

nozzlegear wrote: post #42
ThrowawayIP wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technology-will-save-us mentality is part of the reason we are here. We live in a society that doesn't do anything unless it makes money for some set of decrepit old men. We had the means to avoid this (strict vegan diets, ground based mass transit, dense development & re-wilding, energy transition) but people made money doing the opposite. And more people made money sabotaging solar+battery pricing in the US. So…

I've been vegetarian for 7-8 years and think it'd be great if everyone stopped eating meat, but expecting even a single person to stop who hasn't already expressed interest in it is pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking. We should not base our strategies for fighting climate change on hoping all of humanity will take a sudden 180° turn on their natural instincts to eat meat.

I watched a woman break down crying in a grocery store, the guy behind her put 40 lbs of ground beef on the conveyor. She started off as angry “how can you bear the thought of eating all that dead animal?” “Oh it’s not even for me, it’s for my dogs.”

I admire anyone and everyone who wants to be a vegetarian/vegan. Expecting the rest of the world to follow suit is a fools errand.

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