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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

#351

Post by roughly »

senordevnyc wrote: post #196
roughly wrote: post #169

I think the conversation here is making me more depressed than the news. The number of people who don’t believe collective action is possible, who somehow believe the current techno-capitalist model is determined by god or history or whatever, who don’t have any particular knowledge about history, economic development, etc but are very happy to very loudly yell that the only thing we can do is more of the same but ma…

Can you point to any examples where democratic populations have engaged in the kinds of sacrifice at scale needed to avert this problem? Do you have any specific, actionable proposals to solve this problem that don’t rely on us magically solving the collective action problem? A vague sense that “we can do it if we just try!” is no better than what you’re decrying.

You know, as a follow-up to “democratic populations making sacrifices at scale” - have you _looked_ at the US lately? Our lifestyle is atrocious - we work shitty jobs too many hours, drive everywhere, live in isolating suburbs in crappily-built and ugly houses surrounded by bland box stores hawking shitty wares that break by design, restaurants hawking garbage food by the truckload, and grocery stores that are a bare minimum box-checking exercise with crappy produce and shitty meat, and that’s before you get to the meat factory we call a healthcare system. One trip to a proper first world country ought to be enough to disabuse us of the notion that our choices are value-neutral. It seems like we’ve already collectively sacrificed a ton for the sake of enriching the same people telling us collective sacrifice is impossible.

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

#352

Post by caminante »

tzs wrote: post #343
caminante wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a lot of their emissions are from making things for the rest of the world. That doesn't make it righteous and is a common critique of their coal powered PV manufacturing base. They're playing games with carbon commitments with arbitrary reduction goals from undefined peaks. We can't trust them. Meanwhile, they're currently building >200GW of new coal plants.

> Meanwhile, they're currently building >200GW of new coal plants Many are being built as backups and peakers rather than baseload, designed (or retrofitted in the case of existing plants being upgraded) to be able to cycle up and down to balance wind and solar. They are running at low capacity factors, not actually burning much coal. Many of these are idle so much that their owners have financial difficulty keeping…

Yeah, we've heard these:

* "More efficient, next gen coal plants"

* "Receiving capacity payments subsidies to stabilize grid"

* "We won't run these plants at full capacity"

When their carbon intensity still can't touch natural gas alternatives at scale, state owned enterprises are operating in a command economy, and they have no teeth to their carbon commitments.

They don't have to build new coal at 10:1 versus retirements to "replace aging coal" or stabilize the grid.

Coal is just too cheap and adds diversity,while nobody forces CN to enter climate agreements and looks the other way.

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

#353

Post by beloch »

bakies wrote: post #347
beloch wrote: post #47

We already know we need to pump the breaks on AI for a host of safety issues. However, perhaps the biggest concern is the sheer scale of electricity generation they require. One hyperscale data centre can require electricity equivalent to a fair sized city. Many data centre builders are keen to claim they'll use renewable energy sources... eventually. They'll just suck power off the grid "temporarily" or rely on "cle…

Data centers seem tangential to any real problem. The grid should be converting to green energy and regulation that says datacenters must also be power stations is backwards.

A gigawatt is a gigawatt. If you need a gigawatt, you pay for the generation and infrastructure to provide it, whether you're a million people or a single data-centre. The jursidictions that require data-centres to provide their own generation and electrical infrastructure are completely within their rights.

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

#354

Post by Supermancho »

lukeify wrote: post #244
Supermancho wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The demographic collapse was a forgine conclusion in the 80s. There is no global overpopulation problem over the next century. There will be food shortages due to a lack of labor and dessicated farmland. It will be rough for the average human.

> There is no global overpopulation problem over the next century Sure there is. If the mere act of eating a staple food item causes so many carbon emissions it contributes to planetary-scale climate change, you have an overpopulation problem.

> If the mere act of eating a staple food item causes so many carbon emissions it contributes to planetary-scale climate change, you have an overpopulation problem.

That is incorrect. If there is one person who produces the same amount of carbon emissions, it's the same problem which is independent of population count. All resources to sustain life are going to dwindle and secondary effects will continue to amplify, regardless of humans exist at all, over a long enough period of time.

"Overpopulation" is used to define the set of problems (logistics of practical food/water production) that make climate change a secondary concern. Ofc, you can define it how you like to talk past other people.

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

#355

Post by lukeify »

Supermancho wrote: post #354
lukeify wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no global overpopulation problem over the next century Sure there is. If the mere act of eating a staple food item causes so many carbon emissions it contributes to planetary-scale climate change, you have an overpopulation problem.

> If the mere act of eating a staple food item causes so many carbon emissions it contributes to planetary-scale climate change, you have an overpopulation problem. That is incorrect. If there is one person who produces the same amount of carbon emissions, it's the same problem which is independent of population count. All resources to sustain life are going to dwindle and secondary effects will continue to amplify,…

Overpopulation is the condition through which a population exceeds the sustainable resource carrying capacity of an environment.

If that population consumes a resource at a rate which is not sustainable—which as people upthread are arguing re: emissions and agriculture—then it is an example of overpopulation.

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

#356

Post by epistasis »

tcfhgj wrote: post #337
epistasis wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.irena.org/News/pressreleases/2025/Jul/91-Percent... https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/why-clean-energy-... https://www.lazard.com/news-announcements/lazard-releases-20...

1) renewable energy is only a part of climate action, it's not sufficient - renewable energy being cheap alone doesn't help a bit if you don't keep fossil fuel in the ground 2) not technology aligned societies incentive systems, but politics which a) incentivized producing electricity by renewable methods and punishing electricity produced by fossil fuels, which again encouraged research which in return made renewabl…

Renewable energy and replacing carbon emitting industrial chemistry with carbon neutral processes are the sum entirely of climate action.

There might be a tiny bit of nuclear built, but we don't have the capability to build enough to make a dent in the time scale we need to, and nuclear is far more expensive than solar plus batteries, so the profit motive means solar wind and batteries will win.

The people that built the technology aligned industrial policy and government incentives to allow them to create the technology, true. But it was technology action that is solving climate change.

There are two groups of people opposed to clean energy, one right wing and one left wing, and they were both extremely wrong about the technology, and the path of technology has been crystal clear for decades.

It was obvious in the 2000s, based on learning rates, that batteries solar and wind were improving at rates that would solve our climate crisis. The only question I had was if nuclear could play a part, and Vogtle, Summer, Olkiluoto, Flamanville, and Hinkley proved decisively that nuclear would not be a big player.

We don't need carbon taxes, those turned out to misalign incentives in weird ways (not all industries are equally sensitive to carbon prices, so applying equal taxes is far less than economically ideal for motivationchanges). Tax credits and guaranteed small purchases turned out to be extremely effective and efficient.

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

#357

Post by consumer451 »

OgsyedIE wrote: post #14

Supposing all anthropogenic emissions went to zero today, we'd still keep warming almost as far as three degrees with all of the disasters and famines that entails, because there's a lag time between existing emissions and their effects. We need massive bounty programs that pay out irrespective of nationality for every possible kind of improvement and gain to carbon capture technology if we want to prevent 90% of all…

I think the way to frame this is: what would happen if we burned all known fossil fuel reserves? That is the trajectory we are on.

The answer there is >6C global increase, and that would cause beyond disaster movie-level scenarios.

Anything and everything we can do to stop that is important.

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

#358

Post by p-e-w »

infinitezest wrote: post #151
p-e-w wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top 10% of the planet aren’t “the rich”, what a gross and incendiary misuse of the term.

What would _you_ call the top 10% richest people in the world? Middle upper, upper, upper, upper class?

95% of the top 10% are middle class, because the vast majority of the world’s population are middle or lower class.

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

#359

Post by wookmaster »

adrianN wrote: post #299
exe34 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they can't, then they get very angry: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Di55DEnNkUs It's tied to their identity for a lot of people. The same kinds that will drive a huge SUV to compensate for the hole in their lives where meaning and connection is supposed to be.

I don’t think that is a majority behavior. Few people consume to own the libs. At least far fewer people than those who just like meat more than they care about their marginal contributions to climate change.

A lot of people go into denial/defensive mechanisms if you try and point out what they're doing is bad.

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

#360

Post by LastTrain »

epistasis wrote: post #194
LastTrain wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) I’m not a millennial. B) I have kids. C) I used that as one of several sacrifices that can be made to reduce carbon footprint. I would say it is more valid than “being vegan” since that alone may or may not help. Everyone is very ready to wag their finger about the sacrifices they are willing to make but excuse or ignore the ones they are not.

A) I didn't say you're a millenial. B) Having kids is not an excuse for saying "don't have kids for the sake of the environment!" it's an awful, anti-environmental thing to say no matter what. C) Not having kids is not climate action, it doesn't stop climate change, it's at best a half-measure. Most of all, when people say "don't have kids for the environment" it actually really hurts environmental action. Pretending…

If you look back at this thread, I’m not suggesting anyone should do anything, I’m pointing out the piousness of people suggesting we aren’t doing enough when they themselves have more they could do. Also, having fewer children absolutely would have a positive impact on climate if you subscribe to the ideas that climate change is human caused. I have two kids, I personally, for myself, think it would be irresponsible to have more but I wouldn’t push that on anyone.
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