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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

#201

Post by defrost »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #112
defrost wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

…and what do those data say about China’s emissions?

There's a multi author decade retrospective report:

  *Observing CO2 from space*: A Decade of progress from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatories (OCO-2 and OCO-3)
~ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1002/(ISS...

The take away is that the orbiting readings are bedded in reality and don't contradict what's being released as official ground numbers for China (they have ground reading networks that overlap with internationally staffed / instrument supplied networks)

  (2025) A recent article published in the journal of Earth and Space Science provides a comprehensive evaluation of the latest version of the OCO-2 total column CO2 retrievals against data collected from a global ground-based network known as the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON).
Comparisons of the v11.1 Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) XCO2 Measurements With GGG2020 TCCON - https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024EA00...

~ https://www.tccon.caltech.edu/

  (2026) We provide the first global comparison between OCO-2/3 with COCCON observations to evaluate the mean differences between the ground- and space-based data sets and identify regions where these differences are most pronounced.
Comparing v11.2 OCO-2 and v11 OCO-3 CO Retrievals With Ground-Based COCCON Measurements - https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025EA00...

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

#202

Post by spwa4 »

graeme wrote: post #56
gpt5 wrote: 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.

Global co2 emissions are at an all time high. Co2 parts per million are a stock, like the level of water in a bathtub. Annual emissions are a flow, like how strongly the water is flowing in. The tub is fuller than ever before AND filling at the fastest rate ever. The problem is that carbon energy is useful. So unless something globally beats almost all use cases then somewhere marginally it will be worth burning vs n…

... which is evidence in favor of the idea that the only parties that can actually do anything about CO2 emissions are the countries digging up oil.

If we do what we do now, what the UN IPCC is focusing on, which is lowering CO2 in the west to bring CO2 usage up everywhere else. China, India, and Africa and South Africa (hopefully) in the future then we've not just achieved nothing, we've made things worse.

It seems to me if oil keeps being dug up what we do on the usage side just does not matter unless everyone agrees to lower the total, because someone will use it. By the way, CO2 will keep increasing if we burn more than about 18 mbd (0.03% of what we use now).

This means nothing will matter unless you get US, Norway, Russia, China, and the Middle East to comply. And by comply I don't mean lowering the oil pumping, but stopping 100% (yes, technically 99.97% or more). That includes the oil they pump for their own use.

And obviously I realize this argument doesn't work. We cannot proceed along this way, it's not reasonable towards so many people, who have the right to life, an economy and energy. So we'll have to find an entirely different way to deal with these changes.

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

#204

Post by olaf »

getnormality wrote: post #69
et-al wrote: 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.

not exactly https://x.com/energy_charts_d/status/2006283588363321836?s=2...

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

#205

Post by tonyedgecombe »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #169
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US imports represent approximately 14% of GDP, exports is about 11%. So net imports represents about 3% of GDP. Assuming emissions are roughly proportional to spending the US is exporting 3% of its emissions.

> Assuming emissions are roughly proportional to spending But without more info, that seems like a pretty awful assumption. A lot of the stuff we export are services and high value goods that I would think have a relatively low "emissions to value" ratio compared to the lower value manufactured goods we import.

>But without more info, that seems like a pretty awful assumption.

I don't know why you think that, pretty much everything we buy devolves to energy in some form or another.

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

#206

Post by tticvs »

Timon3 wrote: post #135
fnordian_slip wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, it's crazy how successful that particular piece of propaganda is. The conservative CDU is responsible for the decommissioning of nuclear plants, while the Greens extended the lifetime of the remaining plants . It's literally the other way around, but people don't question it - it feels too good to complain about the Greens, right?

> The conservative CDU is responsible for the decommissioning of nuclear plants

This is a lie.

The atomaustieg was decided by the SPD+Green coalition in 1998 as a condition for the Green joining Schroeders coalition.

The CDU actually reversed course just before Fukushima but unfortunately Merkel then undid that to try to win voters away from the greens by joining the fearmongering post-fukushima.

> the Greens extended the lifetime of the remaining plants

By 3 months, under enormous pressure from all sides during the worst energy crisis in postwar german history when they could have reversed course or extended them longer. You don't get much credit for this.

This was inarguably one of the greatest political mistakes of the 21st century so far and the blame is squarely on the Green party and their voters. The real propaganda is you trying to deflect it into the CDU.

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

#207

Post by olaf »

Timon3 wrote: post #190
scoofy wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s successful because it belies the unseriousness that some of even the strongest proponents of the crisis can have. I’m an environmentalist. This has been a crisis my entire life. I’m happy for nuclear to be a solution exactly because it’s a crisis . Do I think it’s the best choice long run? No. It has externalities that are concerning. However, it’s a serious crisis, so go ahead and build them if it can help. I’m…

It's fine if that's your takeaway as long as you're aware of the full context. I'm just tired of people misrepresenting the situation as "the German Greens made Germany demolish their nuclear plants"! Large enough parts of the population were scared of nuclear accidents, so the conservative CDU used the nuclear exit as a way of garnering votes in the then-upcoming election. You might argue that this fear is unfounded…

There are good reasons to phase out nuclear (which was supported by all major political parties, a decision of the vast majority not only the green party).

E.g. usually, the proponents ignore the risks. The day before Fukushima they would have said, Tchernobyl cannot happen here. The next castastrophe comes always from a direction nobody anticipated. In the 2010s CDU in Germany delayed modernizing the german power grid by a huge amount which the greens could not catch up entirely during their recent term in the government (as part of a difficult coalition). This power grid is now a bottleneck to install and use intelligently more solar, wind and batteries (new solar already compensated for the phase out of the last 3 nuclear power plants in the early 2020s). CDU is again in power and again doing counterproductive measures to slow down modernization of the energy system. There is no need for nuclear but for faster modernization of the grid and for more renewable energy production and storage capacities.

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

#208

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #205
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assuming emissions are roughly proportional to spending But without more info, that seems like a pretty awful assumption. A lot of the stuff we export are services and high value goods that I would think have a relatively low "emissions to value" ratio compared to the lower value manufactured goods we import.

>But without more info, that seems like a pretty awful assumption. I don't know why you think that, pretty much everything we buy devolves to energy in some form or another.

Because it's not an even split. Sure, I could buy that, on average, energy use grows in proportion to economic growth, but some activities (e.g. services) I'd expect to have much less energy use that others (e.g. manufacturing).

And, when you look at actual data, e.g. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=33812, that is exactly what you see.

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

#209

Post by graeme »

spwa4 wrote: post #202
graeme wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global co2 emissions are at an all time high. Co2 parts per million are a stock, like the level of water in a bathtub. Annual emissions are a flow, like how strongly the water is flowing in. The tub is fuller than ever before AND filling at the fastest rate ever. The problem is that carbon energy is useful. So unless something globally beats almost all use cases then somewhere marginally it will be worth burning vs n…

... which is evidence in favor of the idea that the only parties that can actually do anything about CO2 emissions are the countries digging up oil. If we do what we do now, what the UN IPCC is focusing on, which is lowering CO2 in the west to bring CO2 usage up everywhere else. China, India, and Africa and South Africa (hopefully) in the future then we've not just achieved nothing, we've made things worse. It seems…

Agree on all points. The trouble is if some countries stop the price goes up and there's an incentive to find more oil in countries which didn't stop.

Markets are powerful. No real solution other than making market competitive alternatives such that the desire to dig up oil is simply lost. This may or may not be feasible.

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