Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Global warming has accelerated significantly

researchsquare.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 1001 posts

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#581

Post by LegionMammal978 »

vrganj wrote: post #324
O5vYtytb wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

China's actively fixing the problem. [0] Why aren't we? [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/11/china-co2-emis...

U.S. and EU CO₂ emissions have been actively dropping for the last ~20 years [0]. (Of course, it's different question how quickly they ought to be dropping.)

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#582

Post by epistasis »

nicoburns wrote: post #442
bko wrote: post #409

Earlier 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…

A reminder that reducing emissions isn't enough. We actually need them to be net-negative.

Eventually we want to get there, post 2050, but at a very low rate compared to our net emissions right now. Still, it's far cheaper to avoid emitting now than it is to pull it down later, so every time you drive your kids to school remember the debt you are saddling them with.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#583

Post by hanspeter »

bko wrote: post #409
jokoon wrote: post #147

Nothing 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…

> 100k deaths in Europe that can be prevented if they lifted restrictions on AC

Please don’t repeat this anti-Europe myth. Anyone applying a bit of common sense should realize how improbable that claim is.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#584

Post by apt-apt-apt-apt »

blueeon wrote: post #281

I am in Wuhan, China. This past winter, I was able to bike along the lake all day. In previous winters, due to the cold and strong winds, we rarely exercised by the lake. This has had the biggest impact on me, and it's still a positive one.

Isn't this like a frog in a pot saying, ah the water was cold but now it's warm!, moments before getting cooked?

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#585

Post by cataphract »

exceptione wrote: post #572
bko wrote: post #409

Earlier 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…

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.

Yeah, never heard of such a thing. The restrictions are placing the units in common areas of the buildings -- in that case you need permission -- and external walls are usually common parts. Placing them in the façade may have additional restrictions.

But, if anything, energy efficiency standards for new construction are so strict that heat is becoming less of a problem.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#586

Post by epistasis »

M95D wrote: post #566
epistasis wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The energy situation is actually changing very quickly precisely because renewables and storage are so cheap. Building a new natural gas plant today is really hard to justify in most places in the world. Capitalism will actually save the day, because a bunch of capitalists advanced renewable technology to the point where it was cheap. The biggest impediment to change right now is actually political interference in de…

> Capitalism will actually save the day, because a bunch of capitalists advanced renewable technology to the point where it was cheap. That "bunch of capitalists"... why are you avoiding the true word: "China"?

That's not the true word though, is it? It's an effort of capitalists the world over. And crucially, German government incentives when solar was still very expensive.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#587

Post by myrmidon »

cataphract wrote: post #579
myrmidon wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Even for a giant country like India you control So why would India take more expensive and painful steps than say, the US or EU, or Japan? India both indisputably affects and controls climate change less then the US or EU, so why would they put in completely outsized amounts of effort to fight it?

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#588

Post by adrian_b »

tsoukase wrote: post #565
imglorp wrote: post #482

Earlier 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…

Stopping burning fuel now will return us centuries in the past, I suppose to about 1700. Twenty years ago it would return us to 1500. Then a handful of people had heating in their homes and a horse to travel. This will happen again if we stop burning now.

Such claims are ridiculous. Nobody needs burning fuel. Everybody just needs energy and it does not matter which is its source.

If enough energy is produced by other means than burning fossil fuel, nobody will return to the past.

I happen to be one of those who does not use directly any kind of energy, except electrical. Despite the fact that I am still connected to methane gas distribution, I have never burned it for already around a decade. (And unlike most, I cook myself from raw ingredients everything that I eat, but I stopped using flames for that many years ago.)

If burning fossil fuel would stop completely right now, that would not affect me at all, much less would return me centuries in the past, as long as the electrical energy supplier has enough sources in its hydroelectric, solar, wind and nuclear plants, all of which are abundant where I live.

For aircraft and spacecraft, hydrocarbon fuel will remain the best solution, but synthesizing hydrocarbons was already possible at large scale before WWII and it could solve easily this problem in a CO2-neutral manner, if a fraction of the money wasted for various useless or harmful things would be invested in improving the efficiency of such critical technologies.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#589

Post by BikiniPrince »

myrmidon wrote: post #573
bko wrote: post #409

Earlier 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…

[flagged]

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#590

Post by ActorNightly »

stfp wrote: post #106
latexr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you based in the US? Seeing how the current regime is doing its best to gut climate protections I get how it could seem that way, but it’s definitely not the case in e.g. Europe where energy from renewables continues to grow.

Anecdotally, as I spend time between the US and the EU, the divide is large and clear now. It feels like folks in the US sort of just gave up (me included to an extent), whereas in Europe there seems to be a stronger resolve at a personal level and institutional level, to keep reducing energy use, plastics, driving, waste, etc. The US on the other hand is accelerating overconsumption in all directions. It's especiall…

The individual contributions from emissions are much smaller than industrial scale emissions. People can still do what you describe if we magically move all power production to solar/nuclear, and move to cleaner airplanes, and things would be headed in the right direction global warming wise.
Post reply on HN