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IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

theguardian.com

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Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#351

Post by myaccountonhn »

programwiz wrote: post #180

I see multiple people in this thread are talking about 3 degrees which is unrealistic. While 1.5 seems unlikely at this point 2 degrees is within reach and IMO the most likely outcome. I would even say anything above 2.5 is unrealistic. This chart[1] can be useful, compare it to last predictions and you'll see the reason of my optimism. Also note in the beginning of 2010s solar was very expensive, right now it's (alm…

When I skimmed the summary report for policymakers (https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf), on page 23 it seems that we are heading towards a 3.2 degrees increase with current measures.

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#352

Post by lozenge »

tunesmith wrote: post #290
WorldMaker wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This IPCC report is an annual report and you can directly compare year to year. So far it seems like the report gets worse every year. The pessimistic take is that every single advancement in environmental policy has been used to cover increased fossil fuel usage somewhere else. Almost every "carbon credit" trading program has been to pat people on the back for doing "their part" while actually doing very little and…

This is why it's so hard to ask my question, because I feel like this mentality is so oppressive. You're not literally arguing that LED light bulbs and EV cars somehow enabled cryptocurrency mining operations, are you? What I'm asking is: for the set of actions we have taken due to environmental policy that have led to reduced emissions, what is the effect of those policies compared to if we hadn't enacted those poli…

It's the Jevons paradox. When halogen and florescent lights were invented, electricity was not saved, but our environments got a lot brighter. That brought a human benefit, but no climate benefit. When LEDs came in the world was already bright enough and at last energy consumption for lighting went down.

Now plane engines get more efficient every year. We pack seats closer together on planes to save fuel too. Does this mean we're using less aviation fuel? No, we're flying more people, more often and using much more fuel. And most of the world has never been on a plane so there's lot of room for the sector to grow further.

What about other high emissions sectors? Meat and concrete? Clearly lots of potential for the world to increase its consumption to European or American levels and create more emissions.

So what's the answer? Taxing emissions to the point that we continue to improve the efficiency of flying and meat, but making it so expensive that consumption doesn't increase- and for the heaviest users decreases. That isn't something that I see happening in a democracy. Especially not one run by the high emissions lifestyle elite. Who in Congress doesn't associate frequently flying with success and fulfilment.

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#353

Post by [deleted] »

buzzert wrote: post #222
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #6

It always makes me sad how scientists have to put on a brave face and try to tell us there's still time . Sadly, they know the most likely outcome puts us blowing past 3C by the end of the century, and 'carbon capture' isn't going to save us. If you guys are planning to see the natural world in retirement, don't wait. Better to see it as it is now than what it will become.

> If you guys are planning to see the natural world in retirement, don't wait. Better to see it as it is now than what it will become. What exactly are you saying here? That in 30 years, the entire planet will be an arid desert?

[deleted]

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#354

Post by carlmr »

tylerpachal wrote: post #203
klabb3 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, those are interesting numbers. Another one I’m curious about is: how much faster are we burning fossil fuels than they are replenished naturally? The only number I found was a low estimate of 750x, and I think that was for oil. I assume “natural” gas is faster?

Not specific to fossil fuels, but there is Earth Overshoot Day[0] > Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity has used all the biological resources that Earth regenerates during the entire year. [0]: https://www.overshootday.org/

Basically a few minutes into January 1st it's earth overshoot on oil and gas replenishment.

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#355

Post by klabb3 »

WorldMaker wrote: post #327
klabb3 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the time is interesting but it doesn’t directly imply anything about the flow. I’m curious about that. Ie how much new oil/gas etc is being produced by nature each year. Found this[1] now, which gives a ballpark of 20-80k barrels/y which can vary quite a bit depending on the guesstimates of undiscovered reserves. Since we produce 80-100M barrels/y, we’re drinking from the basin about 1000x the rate that it reple…

That answer makes a ton of assumptions, including if it is even an ongoing, continuous process with a useful enough replacement rate that can be used to compare on an annual basis. That's the more important reason to bring up timescales: if it takes millions of years to happen, estimates of "annual" production are a fun game, but just as likely to be statistical lies as actual useful on the ground facts. (Also, as a…

Oh yeah replenishment is beyond miniscule on any human timescales. Best case we use the amount of oil produced from ancient Egypt until now in ~3 days at current rate (see updated back-of-the-napkin estimate in sibling comment). This of course is based on averages and doesn’t factor in differences in “fertility”.

I was just curious about the numbers, mostly because media refuses to share anything more than the most simplistic data. For instance, if we can say that we drank 500k years or natural production in 1y, that is more meaningful (to me).

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#356

Post by buzzert »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #259
buzzert wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you guys are planning to see the natural world in retirement, don't wait. Better to see it as it is now than what it will become. What exactly are you saying here? That in 30 years, the entire planet will be an arid desert?

No, the entire planet will not become arid desert, don't be silly, but the world will be getting hotter and drier. Coral reefs will bleach. Rain forest will give way to savanna. glaciers will disappear. The world will be irrevocably changed.

Yes, silly me!

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#357

Post by ddgflorida »

fwlr wrote: post #182

I do wish someone would just acknowledge we’ve been getting “final warnings” as well as predictions of catastrophe every few years for decades now. Just recognize that I have to force myself quite hard to take this seriously. I do trust the science! But I trusted the science in 2017 and in 2012 and in 2009 and in 2004 and in 2000 and so on. I am making myself trust the science this time, again , and selfishly I would…

I lived through the 70s with dire warning of overpopulation and pollution killing us all. It's very difficult to predict the future and scientists has failed miserably in this area. An economist will out-predict a scientist any day.

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#358

Post by csomar »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #233
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #185

Just in case it saves one person the effort to research this themselves ... for some reason I find the measurement of climate change in units of temperature a bit problematic (though entirely rational). It tends to suggest the old bugbear of "global warming", which of course gets translated by deniers (& skeptics) into "well it's colder here so that's wrong". I spent a while digging in to try to get some numbers on a…

> anyone familiar with complex physical systems will understand that when you add energy to such a system, the effects are often hard to predict This is something that is very underappreciated. It's entirely possible that the climate becomes chaotic (in a mathematical sense) and there are sudden, drastic changes that cause economic and social devastation. It seems inevitable that people will be complacent until it's…

On the other hand, this energy can also get converted into complexity. It's not like this hasn't happened before (organisms, trees, animals, cities, etc...). So it's possible with this fast increase in energy, we get the SciFi city we have all been dreaming of.

Of course, it's easier for this energy to dissipate as heat and kill us all.

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#359

Post by logicalmonster »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #270
logicalmonster wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a bad proxy, but it surely is not as good as actual excess death as proxy for "normal human life, good living standards and the capacity to adapt". Excess deaths, in and of themselves, only tell you that more people than average died. Excess deaths, in and of themselves, don't tell you why they died. While a total number of human deaths is objective and can be counted with nearly perfect confidence, human…

That's the whole point: it doesn't matter why they died. If you're doing things well, excess deaths are low. If you're doing things badly, excess deaths are high. Could be a multiplicity of reasons that connect "bad" and "excess deaths", and the specifics won't matter if you're looking for a summary of "normal human life, good living standards, capacity to adapt".

Of course it matters why people die.

If I was an analyst in the early 1940s analyzing why there was an excess of human deaths and wrongly attributed it to an increase in bear attacks, wouldn't that be really dumb?

If you're trying to solve a specific problem, isn't getting the cause of death wrong a really big deal?

Re: IPCC climate crisis report delivers ‘final warning on 1.5C’

#360

Post by fwlr »

yamtaddle wrote: post #195
fwlr wrote: post #182

I do wish someone would just acknowledge we’ve been getting “final warnings” as well as predictions of catastrophe every few years for decades now. Just recognize that I have to force myself quite hard to take this seriously. I do trust the science! But I trusted the science in 2017 and in 2012 and in 2009 and in 2004 and in 2000 and so on. I am making myself trust the science this time, again , and selfishly I would…

We'll keep getting "final warnings" as we pass "realistic hope of keeping warming under X" and "a sliver of hope for keeping warming under X if a literal miracle occurs" thresholds for different warming levels. The next major report like this will probably have a best-case scenario of more like 2.0C. We're at "a sliver of hope if a literal miracle occurs" for 1.5C (realistic hope of keeping it that low was probably g…

All I can take from this comment is there are several likelihood thresholds and an array of future Celsius values which can be combined to generate arbitrarily many “final warnings”. Sigh.
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