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UN sounds alarm on missing climate pledges

reuters.com

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Re: UN sounds alarm on missing climate pledges

#11

Post by rsj_hn »

crubier wrote: post #9
rsj_hn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sometimes to travel just a few hundred miles (i.e. SFO to LAX)? Nothing wrong with flying from LA to SF. Driving 400 miles gets old pretty quick. Depending on how heavy your foot is, that's ~6 hours of driving, and along one of the most boring stretches of road (I-5) imaginable. You will also need to stop and take breaks. And if you take PCH, it's 8 hours of winding road. Do that once for fun, but not twice. In ter…

Some figures to keep in mind, since CO2 is absent from your calculations: Flying from SFO to LAX and back costs 0.2 Tons of CO2. That’s more than a month of your CO2 quota if we want to limit climate change to +1.5C. CO2 budget should be 2 Tons per year to reach that goal. Currently, emissions are 15 Tons per year per capita in the US.

> That’s more than a month of your CO2 quota if we want to limit climate change to +1.5C.

Fortunately, I don't have a CO2 quota, nor are we going to meet any of these targets, nor is there popular support for imposing quotas.

But if you prefer to drive to LA, that's perfectly fine with me.

Re: UN sounds alarm on missing climate pledges

#12

Post by crubier »

rsj_hn wrote: post #11
crubier wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some figures to keep in mind, since CO2 is absent from your calculations: Flying from SFO to LAX and back costs 0.2 Tons of CO2. That’s more than a month of your CO2 quota if we want to limit climate change to +1.5C. CO2 budget should be 2 Tons per year to reach that goal. Currently, emissions are 15 Tons per year per capita in the US.

> That’s more than a month of your CO2 quota if we want to limit climate change to +1.5C. Fortunately, I don't have a CO2 quota, nor are we going to meet any of these targets, nor is there popular support for imposing quotas. But if you prefer to drive to LA, that's perfectly fine with me.

You won’t have a CO2 quota don’t worry, your little comfort will be fine.

But easy oil will run out eventually anyway. Your children (if you have any) will live on an overheating planet, with mass climate migrations, and very high priced oil, even for things as basic as fertilizers.

Re: UN sounds alarm on missing climate pledges

#13

Post by rsj_hn »

crubier wrote: post #12
rsj_hn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s more than a month of your CO2 quota if we want to limit climate change to +1.5C. Fortunately, I don't have a CO2 quota, nor are we going to meet any of these targets, nor is there popular support for imposing quotas. But if you prefer to drive to LA, that's perfectly fine with me.

You won’t have a CO2 quota don’t worry, your little comfort will be fine. But easy oil will run out eventually anyway. Your children (if you have any) will live on an overheating planet, with mass climate migrations, and very high priced oil, even for things as basic as fertilizers.

I am not really worried about peak oil, and if I was, I'm not sure how driving to LA would really improve that situation.

People have been worrying about Peak Oil since the 70s, and none of these dire predictions have come to pass. You would think at some point they would give up on the collapse narratives, but for a minority of people these doomsday predictions have a strong appeal. Here I include both "climate collapse" as well as oil collapse, population collapse, and any other collapse narrative in the bucket. I think we lost something when we no longer have monastaries in which people whip themselves, because it clearly meets a deep psychological need.

New technologies come online to replace old tech in terms of fossil fuel extraction, more efficient uses of fossil fuels, and replacement forms of energy as we run out. Big progress is being made in all three areas at the same time, and oil remains remarkably cheap in inflation-adjusted terms. That's not to say that 100 years from now we will keep digging fuels up from the ground and burning them. Who knows what will power the future? But something will power it.

The planes will keep flying, and they will be cheaper and more frequent than today, just as some unhappy people will keep insisting that the sky is falling. The future is one of energy abundance, and constantly improving transportation technology.

Re: UN sounds alarm on missing climate pledges

#14

Post by crubier »

rsj_hn wrote: post #13
crubier wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won’t have a CO2 quota don’t worry, your little comfort will be fine. But easy oil will run out eventually anyway. Your children (if you have any) will live on an overheating planet, with mass climate migrations, and very high priced oil, even for things as basic as fertilizers.

I am not really worried about peak oil, and if I was, I'm not sure how driving to LA would really improve that situation. People have been worrying about Peak Oil since the 70s, and none of these dire predictions have come to pass. You would think at some point they would give up on the collapse narratives, but for a minority of people these doomsday predictions have a strong appeal. Here I include both "climate coll…

I don’t disagree with you on future energy abundance. I too am an optimist. Renewables and Nuclear are a thing.

All I’m saying is that if we continue at this rate of carbon emissions, even only 10years, nevermind 30years (the time to develop and scale zero emissions planes, which has barely started) the planet will definitely see changes that won’t be nice. We are talking “Areas hosting 1B people today will see unsurvivable wet-bulb temperatures more than 100 days each year”. Mass migrations won’t be pretty.

The choice we are facing for the next 20 years is: Prepare your low carbon energy transition HARD, or prepare some damn solid walls around your country.

Re: UN sounds alarm on missing climate pledges

#15

Post by pvaldes »

mikestew wrote: post #2

The WMO report confirmed that last year's temporary dip in emissions "did not have any discernible impact on the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases and their growth rates." Concentrations of other gases methane and nitrous oxide also rose in 2020 and beat the last decade's average, it showed. Am I reading that right? A major pandemic shuts everything down for a period, a lot of us are still working from home, and…

Massive wildfires didn't helped.

Re: UN sounds alarm on missing climate pledges

#16

Post by dTal »

crubier wrote: post #12
rsj_hn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s more than a month of your CO2 quota if we want to limit climate change to +1.5C. Fortunately, I don't have a CO2 quota, nor are we going to meet any of these targets, nor is there popular support for imposing quotas. But if you prefer to drive to LA, that's perfectly fine with me.

You won’t have a CO2 quota don’t worry, your little comfort will be fine. But easy oil will run out eventually anyway. Your children (if you have any) will live on an overheating planet, with mass climate migrations, and very high priced oil, even for things as basic as fertilizers.

I fear that waiting until oil is too expensive to use, is effectively waiting until all the oil has been dug up and put in the atmosphere. It's the non-answer. That way lies climate disaster.

I am disturbed by the shoulder-shrugging attitude to mass environmental devastation.

Re: UN sounds alarm on missing climate pledges

#19

Post by LurkingPenguin »

tuatoru wrote: post #10
LurkingPenguin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500 people going round-trip to any destination they want one time is a drop in the bucket. Pre-pandemic, do you have any idea how many business travelers would hop on planes every single day, sometimes to travel just a few hundred miles (i.e. SFO to LAX)?

Read it again: the idea that a present that emits carbon is a good thing is what needs to change. And yes, I do know how many plane trips there were. That doesn't make it right, just like that fact that a lot of people smoke doesn't make that right.

> the idea that a present that emits carbon is a good thing is what needs to change.

There are very few human activities that don't directly or indirectly "emit carbon".

Like it or not, civilization is not going back to the horse and buggy. At least willingly.

Re: UN sounds alarm on missing climate pledges

#20

Post by mFixman »

crubier wrote: post #9
rsj_hn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sometimes to travel just a few hundred miles (i.e. SFO to LAX)? Nothing wrong with flying from LA to SF. Driving 400 miles gets old pretty quick. Depending on how heavy your foot is, that's ~6 hours of driving, and along one of the most boring stretches of road (I-5) imaginable. You will also need to stop and take breaks. And if you take PCH, it's 8 hours of winding road. Do that once for fun, but not twice. In ter…

Some figures to keep in mind, since CO2 is absent from your calculations: Flying from SFO to LAX and back costs 0.2 Tons of CO2. That’s more than a month of your CO2 quota if we want to limit climate change to +1.5C. CO2 budget should be 2 Tons per year to reach that goal. Currently, emissions are 15 Tons per year per capita in the US.

A one-way flight from SFO to LAX releases 153kg of CO2 to the athmosphere [1].

A one-way road trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a car with 30 MPG efficiency releases 135kg of CO2 to the athmosphere [2].

The only way out of this is to tax petrol high enough to convince people to take the bus.

[1] https://curb6.com/footprint/flights/los-angeles-lax/san-fran...

[2] https://www.distance-cities.com/distance-los-angeles-ca-to-s...

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