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Global warming has accelerated significantly

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Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#641

Post by joquarky »

adrian_b wrote: post #588
tsoukase wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most people can't afford to go 100% electric.

Many of them are already sacrificing health care to afford food and shelter.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#643

Post by Ancalagon »

moralestapia wrote: post #608
lm28469 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can split up every single industries/topics/&c. into "yeah but it only use 1.5% of energy", "yeah but it only produces 1.5% of the co2" Guess what happens when you add them up...

>Guess what happens when you add them up... I'll guess, they add up to 100%? I don't see what's the insight here.

Thats OP's point - you need to reduce usage everywhere and pointing out that AI is only 1.5% doesn't take away from the fact that usage needs to be reduced there as well.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#644

Post by dang »

afandian wrote: post #2

This is open access. No need to post a researchgate link. Here's the original: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-6079807/v1

Ok, we've changed the URL from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389855619_Global_Wa... to what that doi.org link redirects to. Is it better now?

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#645

Post by triceratops »

ezst wrote: post #630
triceratops wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ironic OECD countries actually REDUCED their emissions based on a peak in 2007 OECD countries' past emissions are causing the warming we see today. > and continue to do so China's emissions declined last year. The US's increased. > It's all China, but I guess it's cool to blame things on developed countries. China used their emissions to make solar and batteries the cheapest source of electricity today.

> OECD countries' past emissions are causing the warming we see today. China passed EU's cumulative emissions in 2014, if I remember correctly. It's totally fair to blame industrialised countries for their share in causing global warming, irrespective if that happened in the early days of industrialisation and was propped up by dirty energy sources. Though, it's morally much harder to give a pass to countries polluti…

> China passed EU's cumulative emissions in 2014

Not yet according to https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-....

> it's morally much harder to give a pass to countries polluting now using the same sources

Developed countries should subsidize their use of cleaner energy sources. That balances things out, morally speaking.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#646

Post by getnormality »

imglorp wrote: post #482
sulam wrote: post #295

FWIW 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…

> 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…

> Otherwise it doesn't make sense to put CO2 into the air with one hand and take it out with another.

I agree that it doesn't make sense, but I also want to challenge the engineering assumption that an extremely relatively inefficient solution should be ruled out.

If direct air capture worked and simply required absurd amounts of carbon-free power, say from nuclear, it would mean that we no longer have to fight political battles against the entrenched incumbents. They could simply emit whatever our elected politicians let them get away with, and DAC would soak it up.

I completely acknowledge that it seems somehow egregious to do it this way. I am an efficiency-minded person and would hope that we could do it the efficient way. But given all the ugly constraints and lack of progress so far, should we really expect this to be solved the way an efficency-minded engineer might prefer?

If we get to that level of desperation though, I would hope that we could simply pay the emitters to install carbon capture.

What I don't think will work is a politics of rage, righteous or otherwise. I don't recall any incidents in history where a politics of rage led to cool-headed, efficient technocratic solutions. The perennial problem is that the same politics of rage is equally accessible to your opponents, and it spirals down from there towards disorder and violence.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#647

Post by acdha »

tlogan wrote: post #360
Shin-- wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilarious take. China and India have historically emitted much less carbon than many western countries, per capita they emit less Co2, and a large part of emission is to produce for western countries, which have effectively outsourced their emissions to other (poorer) countries. At the same time, the US is the main force fighting against carbon neutrality, renewable energy and pretty much anything reasonable. By dire…

Using the IEA’s 2024 energy-related CO₂ data, advanced economies emitted 10.9 billion tonnes out of a global 37.8 billion tonnes in 2024, which is about 28.8% of the world total. So if developed countries completely eliminate all pollution we will reduce it by 30%. Good. Then what is the next step? War with China? Attack India? [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2025/co2-em...

Let China continue to cancel fossil fuel plants as they roll out renewables and electrify at rapid scale? It’s not 1980, China is leading a lot of key technologies and they’re looking like they value long-term planning a lot more than we do.

To the extent that they need a nudge, a carbon tax would be very effective for correcting export market incentives, too.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#648

Post by cshores »

qgin wrote: post #188
pjmlp wrote: post #89

What a surprise with all the wars going on, and AI depleting Earth resources, what a change from about the pandemic era when everyone was into paper straws and cups and promising to be a better person, because that is what was going to change anything.

All data centers in aggregate (AI and all other uses) use about 1.5% of electricity production, which itself is about 20% of total energy use. So when people are focusing on AI above all other energy uses, it doesn't really paint an accurate picture of what's going on.

It will normalize though once everyone is out of a job

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#649

Post by oblio »

lunias wrote: post #611
crims0n wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you are getting downvoted, you are absolutely correct: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/09/1...

People like to get worked up about this topic haha. All I'm sayin' is, it might get a lot hotter. Or maybe it will get cooler? I think it's important to put things in context because it's not some monotonically increasing function even if there is a local trend. I'm pro doing what we can to correct our impact on the environment; I'm even pro going beyond and attempting to control for other non-human externalities. My…

Look at all the comments under your original comment.

Their point is very valid. Geologic scales are extremely long and the planet does not care.

Humans, on the other hand would physically not be able to survive in most climates going back 100 million years or more. Too little or too much oxygen. Temperatures too high or too low, etc.

We cannot compare this event, which is much, much, much faster than any natural warming, to natural warming events. Those generally take tens to hundreds of thousands of years to shift as much as we're moving things in under 200 years.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago we were basically apes living in caves that could barely speak.

Re: Global warming has accelerated significantly

#650

Post by ComputerGuru »

WarmWash wrote: post #174
ecshafer wrote: post #134

The issue with any significant steps to curbing the climate or environmental impacts with laws or treaties is always: But the economy. It creates an incentive where someone doesn't follow the laws, burn everything they can to accelerate their economy, and take industry from other countries. My proposal is thus: create a supranational treaty organization with a EPA like authority(or whatever the European equivalent is…

The real problem is that everyone has to sacrifice, but half the people think there is no problem and then other half thinks only corporations need to sacrifice (and are unwilling to sacrifice themselves).

No one thinks only corporations have to sacrifice; they do think that it's folly to ask individual members of society, who on average contribute the smallest overall proportion to global warming, to sacrifice while corporations continue to squander away our natural resources. And the pareto principle agrees.
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