Earlier quoted context omitted.
And don't fly
My impression is that flying on a commercial plane produces less CO2 than driving? So if your only options are drive vs fly, I think flying is the correct choice -- is that right?
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Global warming has accelerated significantly
381–390 of 1001 posts
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a different take: Things will change once a big part of the electorate no longer feels like climate change policies will hurt their pocket. A lot of the opposition to the policies are from people who aren't in the richer percentiles and probably work in a field that's related to fossil fuels (like heating engineers, car mechanics, etc.). They fear job losses and that their commute and heating bills go up.
I have a different different take. It's not the electorate's pocketbook that matters, it's the political donors pocketbook that matters. "Drill baby drill" will be echoed so long as petroleum companies and petroleum rich nations dump billions into propaganda outlets, politician campaigns, and in the US, PAC groups to support "drill baby drill" friendly politicians. So long as that dynamic exists, it doesn't matter if…
Not sharing your take of the electorate's powerlessness at all. It's not an overwhelming majority (only 57% of voters in the US: https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54124-nearly-half-american...) which thinks they need to do more about climate change. I think most politicians are in tune with their voters - you need to change the people's minds if you want stricter policies. Refine the question a bit more and ask people if they still want to do more against climate change if some basic necessities in their life will get more expensive and you will likely even drop below 50%.
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#383Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt. And I don't think it's going to hurt enough in 10 or 20 years. The pain will come slowly, people won't see it. It's like going back to the middle age so slowly, that the population don't realize or feel it. And honestly, wars and trump are making climate concerns so difficult to think about.
Developed rich countries are hurting. See the wildfires across North America, massive amounts of flooding across Europe, etc. Nothing will change until many of the global electorate stop burying their heads in the sand. These people don't change their minds until things affect them specifically. Then they change their mind, and all their former fellows tell them they're brainwashed. This doesn't change until nearly e…
The problem is humans are really bad at perceiving externalities at this scale, cause / effect between small actions and large effects, and effects that play out over the span of their lifetime rather than the span of their day. The denialist rationale shifted over the years from doubting the very basis of the science, to claiming its just a short term blip, to its natural long term cycles, to … everything that involves not looking up.
I think the truth is we won’t really take this seriously globally until the changes are so severe that it’ll take generations to undo if ever.
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
2 years ago this was hard won knowledge, searching for papers and then putting it all together in survey form for analysis. Today I can tell you: feel free to ask Deep Research or another LLM you trust to do that work for you, generating citations along the way. You can convince yourself vs me having to convince you. It will take about 15 minutes.
For better or worse, I don't trust an LLM to give me a correct answer in this space. But you've kindof dodged the question by recommending LLM's -- do you have special experience / credentials in this area?
I answered elsewhere. I’ve been doing research on this topic for about 10 years, but I am not a climate modeler. I have spoken to people who are climate modelers and, at the time, these non-anthropogenic factors were not controlled for. They acknowledged that this was a blind spot that needed more research. At the time Arctic warming was only just beginning to be recognized as happening more quickly than the rest of the planet and the implications of that were concerning but unclear. There is still some acknowledged lack of understanding for just why the polar regions are warming so much faster (it’s not all melting / albedo feedback, because it’s happening in Antarctica too). What is less debated at this point is that permafrost comprises a truly mammoth proportion of CO2/CH4 reserves that are on an accelerated melting path (~1000Gt was the last estimate I saw, although it’s not all likely to go up at once of course).
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#385The main driver of this is human-produced CO2, and there are meaningful ways to reduce usage. -Switch to an electric vehicle -Migrate from gas appliances (range, furnace, water heater) to electric (induction, heat pumps) -If your power grid isn’t clean, add rooftop or balcony solar -Encourage friends and family to do the same
Prices are a great incentive.
In Germany, 1 kWh of electricity costs roughly 3x as much as 1 kWh of gas. That doesn't make heat pumps very attractive. Historically the differences were even worse.
Relying on people individually making choices that are better for the environment at a disadvantage for themselves is not going to work.
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#386Companies are setting up constantly running gas turbines for powering AI datacenters - insanity.
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#387I think it is already pretty clear to everyone, save a few scientistis who keep on preaching "we can prevent this!!!" that global warming will continue. I am all for being more energy efficient and what not, but the reality of the situation is that there are factors that are orthogonal to this - as well as a few states that sabotage everyone else. The USA in particular; the US government is by far the biggest troublemaker here. China and India are also troublemakers because they are so huge, although to be fair, China also invested a lot into green energy.
We need to adjust strategies here. The "zero emission" strategy failed; it is not practical. Politicians love them because they are in the media, but everyone sees that this strategy is not working. Same with carbon tax - it drove prices up but didn't really help much at all otherwise. We need to stop pursuing strategies that do not work here.
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#388FWIW my personal assessment is that this acceleration is both real and largely out of our control. Models in the past did not attempt to account for non-anthropogenic carbon emissions, but as we experience further warming, most especially in the Arctic, feedback loops and tipping points mean that this (carbon emissions caused by “natural” processes) are becoming more evident. This is especially sensitive because a la…
Albedo modification (stratospheric aerosols) seems much cheaper than direct air capture, as a stopgap.
That unfortunately doesn’t help with ocean acidification.
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#389For those (like me) who don't know the authors, apparently they are well-published authors in the field of climate science whose work is very highly cited: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=gra... Not a perfect measure of whether this is a reputable article but at least readers should know this isn't from some randos in a basement somewhere.
Ironically, those still unconvinced of the human influence on climate change seem to be the sort that would trust the basement randos more than they would reputable scientists
It's a culture thing, nobody on the right would ever be convinced by science, they will shop around until they find what they need to hear. My sister in law sent me a video and told me that she thought it was a really good explainer and had a lot of good facts and figures to support it. To humor her, I took a brief glance at it, and saw that it was produced by Dr. Shiva. I was thinking "no way, it can't be that Shiva, could it, email guy?" Yes, yes it was.
We are doomed.
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#390FWIW my personal assessment is that this acceleration is both real and largely out of our control. Models in the past did not attempt to account for non-anthropogenic carbon emissions, but as we experience further warming, most especially in the Arctic, feedback loops and tipping points mean that this (carbon emissions caused by “natural” processes) are becoming more evident. This is especially sensitive because a la…
> Oh and roughly 65M of sea level rise as the planet shifts to a snow/ice-free mode. Where is this new figure coming from? It seems about 60X what's being published elsewhere.
If all glaciers and ice sheets on Earth melted, sea levels would rise roughly 65–70 meters (about 210–230 feet). It’s worth noting that a full melt of Antarctica alone would take many thousands of years even under extreme warming scenarios, so this is more of a thought experiment than a near-term risk. Current projections for this century focus on partial contributions, with estimates ranging from roughly 0.3 to over 1 meter of rise by 2100 depending on emissions pathways.