I think we're well past the point of no return. In my part of the world, this year's weather has been ---- weird. Global warming doesn't mean warming per se - but it does mean unpredictability.
Global warming has accelerated significantly
571–580 of 1001 posts
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#572Nothing 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.
> Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt. Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007 and continue to do so. Not reduced as a percentage of GDP or adjusted for population growth, but reduced in absolute levels. It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries. There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented…
Don't do the AC thing, it is a stupid trope under blogfluencers. There are no restrictions (besides positioning the outer unit in such a way that you cause your neighbors to lose sleep). As the summers get more extreme in Europe, more residents decide getting one is starting to pay off, so you see more AC's, but many people think they are doing fine without.
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#573Nothing 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.
> Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt. Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007 and continue to do so. Not reduced as a percentage of GDP or adjusted for population growth, but reduced in absolute levels. It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries. There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented…
> It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries.
This is just a naive take. You'd obviously expect chinese emissions to be higher (than the US) assuming similar industrialization, because you are counting emissions for like triple the amount of people.
What you conveniently fail to mention: US citizens still emit over 50% more CO2 each, and China basically just caught up to emission levels of developed countries (EU, Japan), while still being significantly below US levels. High income countries combined still emit more than China, too (richest ~15% globally).
If your argument would make any sense, then the obvious solution would be to split China into 3 countries, making the emissions instantly negligible compared to the EU/US. Problem solved?!
There is no reality where we make good progress toward climate change without the "main culprits" (=> nations with highest historical and per-capita emissions) making the first steps.
Why would a country like India pay/sacrifice to reduce emissions while western citizens still pollute at much higher levels after reaping all the spoils from historical pollution?
You could argue that wind/solar is a huge success story in this regard already, with western nations driving lots of the research/development/commercialization efforts (over the previous decades) and now indirectly causing much bigger nations like China to transition onto those very quickly instead of basically fully relying on fossils for decades to come.
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#574There's literally nothing that can be done about it. The people with actual ability to make a change don't care. We're going to have to figure out how to adapt to it. Expect many of the things you love now (seafood, coffee, etc) to be gone within your lifetime.
There were voters who could do part of it. Long term, having a US President that doesn’t cancel wind projects, tear up EV subsidies, and promote coal would probably be a difference maker for US emissions. And if the voters were just a bit smarter and not bought into the “China bad” narrative, we might even get proper, nice, affordable EVs in the US.
Trump is still all bluster and words. He can't change the math. I've convinced 2 people to get EVs over ICE this year. They still make economic sense even without federal subsidies (dependent on your home/work situation). Though I don't deny that most OEMs are likely selling at a loss now.
It's foolish how foreign wars directly affect how much it costs you to get to work.
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#575Earlier quoted context omitted.
> direct air capture is the primary escape hatch We MUST MUST MUST stop burning things. Stop it. - We are still mining and burning coal. This is incomprehensible. US, AU, etc Eg: https://www.nacoal.com/our-operations - We are still subsidizing oil to around $1T/year, not counting oil wars. Yes it will take some grid and storage upgrades (US) and continue to embrace renewables. It would be cheaper than the oil subsidy…
This is why it's clear we will never do anything to slow the progression of climate change. By far the most effective an immediate solution to limiting the damage of climate change is to simply to keep fossil fuels in the ground . People talk about the economic pain of doing this, but that economic pain is nothing compared to the impact of unmitigated climate change. Even though this would be painful, it is also by f…
Genuinely not being snide, I really do not know.
Is it possible to produce steel on industrial scales without coal?
I know early ironmaking (I live fairly close to Coalbrookdale!) used charcoal, but is that possible at a large scale?
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that's fair to say; the USA's CO2 emissions per capita are roughly 150% of China's, and the average Canadian emits more than 7x as much as an Indian citizen. The entire EU produces only about half of the USA's total emissions, despite having a population of over 100 million more people.
Fair? Maybe not, but IMO it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is gross emissions. The effects of a warming planet will not be fair. We should be looking to reduce/eliminate emissions wherever they are happening.
I don't think it's fair to look only at gross emissions by country. How can we demand that India drastically cut its emissions when its per capita output is already so low?
Forcing reductions there effectively caps their living standards while developed nations continue to enjoy the benefits of much higher individual carbon footprints.
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt. Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007 and continue to do so. Not reduced as a percentage of GDP or adjusted for population growth, but reduced in absolute levels. It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries. There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented…
China is some years behind our industrial development then undevelopment, and is building an entire USA of solar panels every year or whatever - can we expect them to quickly reduce emissions soon?
A year ago, the IEA thought China's emissions had peaked:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-fuel-demand-m...
And this recent assessment puts emissions from China at "flat or falling" for the past 21 months:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#578The only extant “X-risk” is, and always has been, climate change. “AGI” is science fiction, and actually-existing AI is making climate change harder to deal with, by increasing electricity demand on our fossil-fuel-powered grid with no attendant increase in clean generation. Serious engineers need to stop whatever they’re doing and work on this problem. Also, if you’re hiring: I’m an expert on the U.S. regulated util…
Really AI is a drop in the bucket compared to other things. Beef and dairy take up an incredible amount of water, land, and energy but we don't complain about that. AI could lead to massive savings and improvements in terms of emissions and climate change. AI could possibly help us out of this. Beef and dairy have no chance of helping us. They'll kill us and the beef nuts will say how they saved 4% of emissions by mo…
I remember a couple years ago my family was worried about the Amazon burning and I was like "well, you could eat less beef as that's driving a lot of that in Brazil". Turns out they didn't care that much. With how generally hippie my family is it really made me realize how absolutely screwed we are ecologically.
There's a reason bird populations are down 30% in my parents' lifetimes (https://www.audubon.org/press-room/us-bird-populations-conti...) and I don't think my generation is going to do much better.
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#579Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt. Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007 and continue to do so. Not reduced as a percentage of GDP or adjusted for population growth, but reduced in absolute levels. It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries. There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented…
> It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries. This is just a naive take. You'd obviously expect chinese emissions to be higher (than the US) assuming similar industrialization, because you are counting emissions for like triple the amount of people. What you conveniently fail to mention: US citizens still emit over 50% more CO2 each, and China basically just caught up to emission lev…
> Why would a country like India pay/sacrifice to reduce emissions while western citizens still pollute at much higher levels after reaping all the spoils from historical pollution?
To avoid their country having large regions become uninhabitable?
Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly
#580Nothing 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.
> Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt. Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007 and continue to do so. Not reduced as a percentage of GDP or adjusted for population growth, but reduced in absolute levels. It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries. There are literally 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented…
Euro intransience about AC is confusing.
As for PRC, they brrrted out enough solar last year to replace about 40 billion barrels of oil over their life time, or about annual global consumption of oil @100m barrels per day. They have enough renewable manufacturing capacity to displace global oil, lng and good chunk of coal.
PRC is basically manufacturing the largest carbon displacement, i.e. emission avoidance system in the world, and if not for them, global fossil consumption would double+.
It's even more retarded accounting that taxes PRC manufacturing renewables as generation emissions while fossils extractors, i.e. US whose massively increased oil/lng exports do not count towards US emissions.
At the end of the day, PRC's balance of emissions vs how much they displace via renewable manufacturing makes their emission contribution net negative, by a large margin. OCED countries reducing their emissions don't even compare in terms of contribution, it's borderline performative. OCED need to be reducing emissions and generating equivalent displacement to be net negative. It doesn't have to be domestic net negative, simply export/fund enough renewables to developing countries whose power consumption and downstream emissions will increase by magnitudes... you know subsidize them like OECD was suppose to do. Reality is rich countries don't want to do shit about the "global" emission problem, at least PRC selling renewables at commodity pricing to displace velocity of fossil consumption increase. Ultimately, 4 billion developing people going to 10/100x their energy consumption, which like AC is net moral good over net emissions. The real battle is how to keep new power use as emission free as possible, and only PRC is doing that in numbers that matter.
Wanking over OCED reducing their emissions is overlooking OCED was suppose to help developing countries minimize (not reduce) as they grow. All OCED has to do is give PRC renewables the 100b they once pledged on to help developing countries transition for PRC to run renewables manufacturing at 100% utilization (or even expand) so significant % of new power generation is renewables. 100b at current PRC prices of $0.1O/watt buys about 1000GW of panels (enough to power all of Africa & India and more). Or OECD can manufacture at sell at/below cost themselves.