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UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

bbc.co.uk

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Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#271

Post by benj111 »

ericmay wrote: post #92
benj111 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is that we should tax carbon so that it correctly reflects the externalities and let the market sort it out from there? Because currently capitalism has no interest in emissions because they don't cost anything. But that is a failure of capitalism, or at least our current incarnation of it. And it needs fixing to be part of the solution. You could blame government for not fixing the flaw, but th…

> So what you're saying is that we should tax carbon so that it correctly reflects the externalities and let the market sort it out from there? I think carbon pricing is a great idea from what I've learned about it. Though, I disagree with you that the lack of carbon pricing is the fault of capitalism and I feel like you are kind of making that argument by saying that emissions don't cost anything so how would a mark…

1. I wouldn't say that capitalism, at its core is a government construct.

2.capitalism is about valuing things to allow / encourage efficient allocation.

There is a cost to pumping co2 into the atmosphere. Capitalism doesn't take that into account. And as that is what it should be doing, failing to do so is a failure of capitalism.

Now the government could (and should) step in to fix that failure. Their failure to step in is a different failure, the root failure is with capitalism, the governments failure is a failure to step in and fix it.

It's like if my house catches on fire and the fire service turns up without any hoses. That is a failure of the fire service. If this becomes a widespread problem and the fire service shows it isn't capable of fixing itself then the govt should step in to fix it. But any failure by the govt to step in is a failure of oversight not of failing to put my fire out.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#272

Post by benj111 »

wazoox wrote: post #73
benj111 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it a 'trick'? Building a wind turbine isn't shuffling emissions anywhere. Neither is solar. Or a more efficient boiler, or....

It's not replacing fossil fuels, merely freeing them for other uses. In fact it's even common now to build wind turbines around coal mines to produce power to extract coal... We must reduce our fossil fuel consumption in absolute numbers. So far we're merely adding more energy resources; that way political and corporate PR representative can make triumphal announces about how we're reducing the part of fossil in our…

If I go on a diet and lose weight, is that also a trick because the average weight of the population goes up?

Just because someone else does something else to negate the net effect of something doesn't mean you haven't done the thing.

If we hadn't done anything emissions would be even higher. It isn't as if we have to burn a certain quota of coal and gas.

This isn't an argument for doing less, it's an argument for doing more.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#273

Post by benj111 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #179
Sharlin wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point we have to stop talking about the 1.5° number as if it were anything but a ludicrous pipedream by now. Even ten years ago it was an entirely hypothetical "if the entire global economic system magically turned around overnight then it might be possible". Now it's "if we had a literal time machine and could go back and magically turn around the global economy overnight".

Indeed, it promotes inaction because the goal is so impossible you might as well not even try. Better to set a goal we can still actually achieve and take the consequences of that level for granted.

When the goal was set it was achievable and we didn't do anything, why would it be different the second time around?

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#274

Post by mjhay »

SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #260
mjhay wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think it would be significantly easier to filter out the carbolic acid from the ocean? The same difficulties apply, and water is much more viscous than air.

Didn’t carbon we’ve carelessly dumped in the atmosphere start as ocean life that sunk to the bottom, can’t we turbo charge that cycle?

Not practically. We are talking about huge scales, such that the industrial production, transport, etc., would be as much of an environmental disaster as what it's trying to solve.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#275

Post by sslayer »

macspoofing wrote: post #53
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not a surprise, since co2 is an oxide, and therefore very stable in the athmosphere. It would take a huge amount of energy to remove it, There is an exothermic reaction that removes CO2 from the atmosphere, the formation of carbonates from weathering of silicate rocks. As this is naturally very slow, there is currently ongoing research into multiple different ways to speed it up.

That doesn't change anything. You need a huge amount of energy to remove CO2 from the atmosphere because CO2 is a tiny constituent part of Air (~400ppm) - that means one has to move a million molecules of air across a collector (whatever that is) to remove 400 molecules of CO2. You can't do that without huge amounts of energy and a huge surface area for your collector ... on any human timescale.

And of course its not like we have giant windmill farms all over the world that we could integrate CO2 collectors into the blades

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#276

Post by lm28469 »

carpenecopinum wrote: post #212
timr wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be perfectly clear: the projection you are citing is on the extreme end of a spectrum. Other projections differ. Per the (non-headline) part of the article: > The estimate stands in sharp contrast to optimistic forecasts published last week that suggested heating could be held to 1.9C or 1.8C, thanks to commitments announced at the talks, now in their second week and scheduled to end this weekend. > Those estim…

> ...was based on countries’ short-term goals for the next decade What else though? There is no "long-term" for politicians that have to face another election in less than 4 years. "This will happen in 10+ years" is just a thinly-veiled "We aren't going to do it.". If we can't get any short term commitments and hold people accountable for it, nothing substantial will get done.

> What else though? There is no "long-term" for politicians that have to face another election in less than 4 years.

Politicians used to have long term vision though. See the American founding fathers, Churchill, de Gaulle, etc.

Something changed, it wasn't always like that

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#277

Post by clairity »

timr wrote: post #137
Yizahi wrote: post #45

1.5*C ? What kind of fictional reality are living in? We are way past 2.4*C projection and are actually on track for 2.9*C or so. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/09/cop26-se...

Let's be perfectly clear: the projection you are citing is on the extreme end of a spectrum. Other projections differ. Per the (non-headline) part of the article: > The estimate stands in sharp contrast to optimistic forecasts published last week that suggested heating could be held to 1.9C or 1.8C, thanks to commitments announced at the talks, now in their second week and scheduled to end this weekend. > Those estim…

> "It's sad, but we've gotten to the point where you simply cannot trust major news organizations to report on science without ridiculous levels of clickbait spin."

news may have waxed and waned on reputability but it's never really been highly reputable. we had a blip from the 70s-90s where it was contextually limited enough that our national narrative was fairly aligned and unchallenged. but that exposed the natural weakness of monoliths, which provided an opening to folks like murdoch to exploit, followed by the explosion of social media, which increased noise several-fold while increasing signal much less than that.

there is no shortcut to thinking for yourself. that's a civic responsibility as much as an individual one. folks need to dig past the veneer presented to examine the veracity and credibility of the narrative presented.

when it comes to climate change, mediopolitical narrative imposes too much bullshit and religious fervor for most of us to make real sense of it, and that's why we mostly shortcut to tribal affiliation as a proxy for what we should think/believe.

personally, i think we should focus on (air, water, land) pollution first and foremost, as that is concretely a problem yesterday, today, and tomorrow, starting with reducing coal worldwide. strategically, that has the advantage of narrowing our focus (less bullshit and influence potential), doing something that materially helps us now, and potentially does something to help the far off climate future.

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#278

Post by mjhay »

googlryas wrote: post #236
mjhay wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could just stop burning coal.

That would be very easy if we didn't benefit greatly from burning coal

Are you familiar with the term "negative externalities?"

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#279

Post by lm28469 »

skrebbel wrote: post #61
Yizahi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that the key problem - all current "green" or "zero" tech is simply a trick, with shuffling emissions to other countries, selling-buying quotas, maybe reducing emissions a little in the best case. Until we have a working industrial scale CO2 sequestration factories we are essentially doing nothing, or close to nothing.

How are solar panels or windmills a trick?

because we use them additionally to existing sources, not as a replacement:

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...

Less energy = less growth = recession = bad, we're stuck in that

Re: UN says “No credible pathway” and “woefully inadequate” to stop global 1.5C

#280

Post by lm28469 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #152
Ninjak8051 wrote: post #20

Such pathways require global cooperation and will fail unless all major nations are on board. In particular, Russia is making no effort, and has no incentive or motivation to make any effort due to their vast tundra landscape. Step 1 is to get Russia on board by some means, without Russia any of these goals are senseless.

Quoted post unavailable.

Don't forget that China's pollution is a proxy to western pollution because we delocalised a looot of things over there
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