alt Hacker NewsThe 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement is no longer viable
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So, the devil comes to Davos and says: "You can enjoy cheap energy, but some poor people in the global south will suffer and die" And after a long silence the US president says: "I feel like there is a catch there, but I just can't figure out what it is"
I would not say people have given up. The problem is that this search for saving the planet and humanity all together is hard to understand for the common folk, much in the same way other banners that have been imposed on people in the past 2 decades.
Common people want to go to work and know that they have a working transport system, that they can walk in between a few streets and feel safe, that they can have enough money for a mortgage and to feed themselves and their families.
None of these things are exactly addressed by putting solar panels, and wind farms all around, especially when the cost of fuel keep rising. When the security of the grid on a once thought-of super-power like UK is constantly put in question.
The common people doesnt care much about these topics and explanations because they don’t have time for it, because they do still need to get on with life. It’s generally youth and retirees the ones gluing themselves to the pavement, have you noticed? whats in common in these two groups is they can both still afford to be idealists.
Then you turn on the TV and see how much damage is being done to the environment in other regions, and so, why do I need to suck it up in my jumper all winter then? Why am I the one using paper straws that break before I finish my drink?
This whole thing was always a tough sale, but it’s gotten even harder in the current political climate.
I highly recommend this graphic to everyone:
https://globaia.org/_astro/GA_1750-2024_DARK2.CKx3duw8_ZQd9m...
It lists 24 socio-ecological KPI across the planet since industrialisation beginning - as you can see:
There is not a single KPI where the curve shows even the slightest sign of recovery - and you can expect other graphs of adjacent KPI to show similar development.
In one sentence: There is no chance that humanity will ever come back to any pre-industry levels within the next 500 years. And by overusing our environment, our civilisation wont last 500 years. (sure, some hotspots will survive, but they wont have ASML Twin:Exe machines or cheap flight travel anymore etc.)
We could all try and do a bit with our daily choices:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/best-source-protein-tofu
"Tofu has been crowned the prince of protein by a scientific scoring system that measured human health, sustainability and affordability.
...
To assess the environmental impact of each food, MacDonald compared the greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, land use and water use involved in producing 100g (3.5oz) of protein from each food.
Tofu was judged the best in this category, followed by chia seeds, quinoa, beans and sunflower seeds. Meanwhile, pork, beef and cheddar cheese came last."It's difficult for humans to comprehend the scale of what it would take to stop the planet from heating up. There are 100+ years of extraction of massive quantities of sequestered carbon from the Earth's crust and burning it now baked into the system, with an approximate 15-year lag on observed atmospheric and ocean temperature increases i.e. the temperatures we are currently seeing are those caused by emissions up to around 2011. Since then, carbon emissions have increased, not decreased, so we have a minimum of 15 more years of temperature rises to come.
As a though experiment, ask people if it would be possible for humans to prevent the tides coming in and out each day. Mostly you will be laughed at. Yet the same people usually think that preventing the Earth from heating up, which is a problem on a similar scale, can be achieved with a bit of recycling, eating less meat and cycling to work.
This single graph [1] is enough to demonstrate that 'solving' climate change is beyond the scale of human capabilities.
[1] https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/?dm_id=world2
Human greed will lead to human extinction. It is a foregone conclusion, too many would rather die owning the latest iphone or latests trends than care about the global whole. You see it all around us, between the Congo, Sudan, Palestine, Ukraine and so much more... we just don't give a shit.
In summary, we are the architects of our own demise. (this is not pessimism, but realism)
The climate change advocates have lost all their credibility by lobbying against nuclear. Because of their religious fanaticism Germany closed their nuclear plants and is compensating for it by burning coal. If this wasn't so tragic it would be hell of a comedy.
The propaganda spilled since the 1970s by large cooperations and politicians had two effects. People understand the problem is huge, and worse, they feel they cannot do anything about this issue themselves.
What we tend to forget is that large changes in society tend to start with us. Try eating less meat, eat healthy food, reduce car and plane usage when possible, buy less stuff (especially online), these are things anyone can do (rich or poor). When you start, family members and friends might follow.
From there, more people will try to change their consumption, and when enough people do that, politicians that are willing to tackle these issues will be elected. And when politicians are elected at some point your government will take the right step. From there we go to countries and eventually a large part of the world will do what must be done to survive.
You want a better world? Start by improving your own life and health.
From the report:
"Under current policies, only six G20 members (China, India, Indonesia, Russian Federation, South Africa and Türkiye) are assessed as likely to achieve their unconditional 2030 targets, while the assessment of the European Union is inconclusive. Overall, this suggests limited progress in narrowing implementation gaps across the G20."
"All G20 members except Argentina, Saudi Arabia and the United States of America have new NDCs with mitigation targets for 2035."
Unfortunately, even if we exceed and then bring temperature back to 1.5 degree over preindustrial, the damage has already been done. Many ecosystems and species will be lost, and many of the feedbacks (for example arctic sea ice) have hysteresis in them which will not get us to the same state even though nominally our temperature will be lower again. And because of hysteresis, larger reduction in CO2 might be required to get us back to 1.5 degrees.
That's why all this CO2 capture and drawdown using some kind of unspecified, new technology, is such a distraction. Ideally we shouldn't release the carbon in the first place.
https://nowcity.org/ - Now City is an experiment in long-term urban planning based on the course we’ve set for ourselves, including complete loss of ice and roughly 4°C of warming with the associated shift in the human climate niche. This map accounts for the new hazards and new opportunities, and attempts to anticipate how populations might migrate and settle.
People are still talking about 1.5C at 2100 as if it's not some high fantasy? :) Wake up, it was greenwashing all this time. The question is rather are we lucky to have 3C by the end of the century, or the hot models are correct and we'll get 4-5C. That's the question. 1.5C... Phah! Fun joke :)
On my last vacation I came across a similar message on reddit[0] and it totally spooked me. I have been telling my wife I want to move as my area (at some point) will be flooded. I live in the Netherlands and when the icecaps have melted (WHEN not IF) I live in the wrong part.
[0] https://reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/comments/1vejkf4/i_am_a_...
the thing with the climate goal is just an arbitrary number to the person on the street.
for us that come from poor countries - it fuels degrowth. you want us to shut down coal plants & yet you don't want us to trade with china.
even in rich countries such as Germany - cost of energy has been a factor in slowing down growth because bureaucrats said so. while private planes keep flying, good keep getting shipped from overseas.
china has enabled cheap solar - which in turn has enabled cheap access to electricity. china has enabled cheap electric vehicles. for a bunch of people in 'poor' or 3rd world countries - in the next few years their first cars will be chinese EVs not Japanese 2nd hands or other 2nd hands from western countries.
I eat vegetarian. I own a Fairphone. I take the night train instead of a flight when possible.
To me, the most workable solution to global warming I have heard of is: building a giant Cannon on the moon and have it shoot moon dust in-between the sun and the earth. This won't stop ocean acidification but at least things will cool down. And we have a cannon on the moon which is cool.
It's hilarious that the EU is busy putting tariffs on electric vehicles and blocking nuclear power... but they still call it an "emergency".
Can anyone provide a list of bad things that have happened because of climate change, genuinely curious and I want to learn from the experts here!
> The emissions gap is now a leadership gap. And the world is running out of time and excuses to close it.
The leadership of some countries, including the former "leader of the free world", fixed that by declaring global warming to be a hoax, so they don't need any excuses anymore and can just continue catering to their fossil fuel donors.
The number #1 best thing we in the west can do to mitigate climate change is having fewer to no children.
Source:https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541
The problem is that having no children means having no skin in the game. Which defeats the whole purpose.
For those who want the Emissions Gap Report the article is based on, here's the Executive Summary: https://wedocs.unep.org/rest/api/core/bitstreams/80aaab0e-2a...
And full report: https://wedocs.unep.org/rest/api/core/bitstreams/8819b586-8d...
I recommend putting the full report in your favorite LLM and asking questions as a start!
Historical fact: the developed world is developed mostly via industrial revolution, a.k.a. they find out how to turn coal into wealth first
Current situation: the developed world emits much more than the developing side per capita. Even France, a country powered by nuclear, emits twice as much as India per capita
Yeah, good luck convincing the developing countries to limit their emission. "Bro please stay poor" and "you have too much population" aren't very nice things to say.
It was born dead.
Regards, A meteorologist
I have to say, if you looked at the graphs of the last reports, 1.5C was never going to happen.
"Après moi, le déluge"
The problem is that people today do not have skin in the game for what happens generations down the line. No real consequences, little desire for actual change.
The question is... Was it ever viable?
I remember, around 2016, a european climate scientist saying that he had to fill up more forms and prove every experiment in the most strict way. The justification was that their conclusions could have economical repercussions. The results of their experiments were always a few years late because of that.
Welcome to the "absence of economical repercussions" world.
Humans are given heaven on earth, only to turn it into hell itself
I'm sure temperature ceiling will just work like debt ceiling.
I would build some thousands of datacenters and ask AI how can we solve this problem, I'm sure this will fix the problem.
For something as unpredictable as the climate, setting goals is not viable.
Increased carbon emissions is a result of prosperity and progress.
I've always thought it's a little hypocritical that the first movers were 'allowed' to cut down all their trees, burn coal like no tomorrow, and yolo industry. However, when other cultures try and industrialise, it's a big nono.
We need to face the reality that our lifestyles come with a carbon cost which will impact the planet, and plan for something realistic. Setting moving, impossible goalposts is a pipedream, and a sign that someone has sat in a classroom too long.
The planet will change, it always has. Instead of endlessly whinging and spreading doom, we need to be realistic about who we are as a species and plan accordingly. We also need to build resilience into our systems so we can weather any future storms.
Also, a serious global carbon tax is the cleanest solution internationally; taxing extraction at source in line with the resulting costs of negative externalities and mitigation strategies. Could set up a nice fund for offering prizes to companies who hit certain milestones in green tech. A little bit like global competitions in Civ5.
Just a reminder that the worse climate change gets, the larger the difference is that a single 0.1 degrees makes. 1.0->1.1 degree difference in global warming is barely noticeable, but 2.9->3.0 makes a huge difference.
So, paradoxically, the worse the situation gets, the larger our incentive should become to avoid yet another increase in global warming.
We're now in 'stage 4':
>“Every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of warming above 1.5°C raises the risk of irreversible changes including in ice sheets, permafrost carbon, ocean circulation and coral systems, along with devastating human impacts,” the report states.
The mention to coral systems, from an ignorant perspective, seems weirdly specific to me. Kinda like "civilization will collapse and the price of sweaters will go up".
Does their disappearance have indirect consequences I'm not aware of?
> The 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement is no longer viable
Good. Now, let's drop that goal and go on.
At least in Europe, higher priority should be saving human lives by providing air conditioning and a climate-friendly environment instead of putting more money into climate money washing machines.
You mean more datacenters wasn't a move in the right direction?
There was a book on the overshoot nonsense a few years ago (literally called Overshoot) that talks about the make believe story of carbon capture and how during the negotiations for CAP in the 2000s and 2010s those were included as otherwise the US would have agreed to no plan at all. And even if something like removing carbon at scale through forestry, burning, and co2 capture was ever so viable who would pay for that. That only works with emissions trading (which every other month gets watered down because muh energy bills, muh aviation cost, etc) or some “energy costs nothing” mythological tech. We are fucked and while there are many who care the vast majority of people oscillates between too dumb, too selfish, and too manipulated to ever be willing to give up today’s comforts for a happier tomorrow.
Wanting to control the temperature is the worst kind of thing we want.
Its time to admit that government will not be able to solve this in a reasonable amount of time. Can we please fund private charities that are actually doing something about this and could make a huge difference if they were funded better?
Demand that your government create a charity funding program where you as the tax payer get to decide where your tax money goes and choose a charity that aligns with your values and goals to tackle this once and for all.
Is there anyone who actually cares about any of this?
Look at flightradar. Look at Marinetracker. Look how many cars are used every day and the billions of barrels of oil we're consuming.
We are not going to consume less oil, unless there's some manufactured event that stops us, or we physically run out.
People are addicted to moving about, making things, entire economies rely on it.
And nobody here would sacrifice opportunity for a future that may not even happen. Even if you're the most conscious consumer, the world's going to heat up anyway.
And I plan to use as much oil as possible, take as many planes, eat as much meat, because I frankly care less.
If anyone cared about the Paris Agreement nuclear adoption would have been significantly more rapid, but the fact is, it was never about climate.
We will continue extracting absolutely everything we can from Earth, at whatever the cost ... with the hope that technology will one day save us from our weakness.
And, yes, technologyy may "save us", but there are many different definitions of what that will look that ... some may be horrendous for the majority, but none of them will inconvenience those making the most significant decisions.
Since Covid no one seems to care that much any more.
Even the Greens party in Australia is more interested in social issues than environment.
"New goal: not exceed 2°C, then bring the temperature back down to 1.5°C"
It kind of feels people have given up. I'm working on a startup that aims to replaces aviation (the most difficult emissions to avoid) with night trains in Europe (currently economically uncompetitive). It's an obvious impact story, but impact appears to be "out".
At some point, people have to stop looking at Govts, COP summits for solutions.
1) The purpose of a system is what it does
2) For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law.
Govt exists to steal from us (top 10% who pay the most taxes), figure out how to best transfer this money (taxes + money printing) to the top 1000 - 10,000 people.
And people are distracted and entertained. And engaged in active debate, not realizing that all of this is Kayfabe.
Climate change is a lost cause because most people can't think about complex things, only quick soundbites. Metabolic syndrome, cancers, all lifestyle diseases can be prevented by just walking a bit, not eating junk food. Nearly everyone knows that and should be personally interested in their own health, yet, everyone just wants to continue, get obese and rely on GLP-1.
The average person is dumb, once he has been lied to 3 times, they remember it as truth. Fossil fuel companies employ marketing agencies and inject falsehoods about clean energy. It is shocking how many people believe in these things. These are designed to be emotionally manipulative, whatsapps forwards about batteries catching fire (fake) have been circling around for quite some time.
Any discussion about climate change goes into lots of graphs and hard science, which most people can't follow or understand or do anything about it. Also, people have been talking about climate change for a long time, I see movies/shows/articles from decades past. So people tend to think, yeah they are always talking about it, nothing to see/do here.
Also, movies/shows make 'environmentalists' as supervillians (I'm sure someone has a well-researched article about it), for eg: Thanos wants to kill half the Universe to save them and there are a dozen Avengers movies with superheroes saving the planet. There are many many ridiculous movies which make a caricature of people who think about unsustanability. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but a lot of these movies make me wonder why subconsciously program everyone against
Then, there are lots of videos of economists (and other folks) making fun of Greta and her protests. It doesn't help that these protestors/activists change causes and are now protesting some other things happening.
Climate change is guilty by association. By activists, protestors. By fake 'environmentalists', which are fossil fuel fronts. By the biggest, baddest supervillians in movies and shows.
First rule of climate change is to stop talking about climate change (fight club). We should work on things that solve climate as an unintended side effect without talking about it. What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Pett)
We should talk about pollution. Air pollution kills 10M/year. Every city can have breathable air. Thats a goal everyone can get behind.
Everyone can behind cheap/free energy.
We have to rethink all the climate comms, work with everyone to get political consensus. Politicians also have to think about what the people are thinking to get reelected.
It needs to be made simple, as simple as they can be, like during covid - wash your hands with soap.
We are burning the only planet we have in a contest to be king of the ashes.
Who gives a fuck whether the US or China win the AI race if they both burn tons of hydrocarbon to get there? Either way, the race itself will fuck the planet up worse than either victor would.
Same about all the dumb wars of conquest, Ukraine, Iran. Who gives a fuck over those lines on a map if the map itself is on fire? All the burning of oil depots, all the explosives used are all an assault on humanity itself, not just on whatever state construct.
I have a growing suspicion that this is the Great Filter. Dumb, self-important squabbles that destroy the material basis for a species' survival in an attempt to gain control instead of cooperation.
Yes lets do it by continuing to outsource the pollution to China and deindustrialize Europe.
Cut the nuclear, add the imported solarpanels and experience the joy of 10x electricity prices.
Blame the consumer for not turning the kettle off during peak hours and make sure you give tax breaks to Google and BiGData to open a couple more datacenters that use more power than a average city.
Oh, ban combustion engines, fuck up every batteryfactory by thinking its enough to buy the Make-Your-Own-Battery-Kit on Aliexpress.
Wow such strategy.
I know i’ll be downvoted, but at this point whatever.
I largely stopped caring about these announcements and also about this initiatives.
The reason is that we see these pushes but at the same time we see no real initiative, with all the burden left on individuals with little to no power to make meaningful changes.
Some examples:
1. Travel: I’m constantly told that travel by airplane is bad and should be avoided and to prefer travel by train. Yet my last trip (milan <-> munich) was 1h for ~75€ each way via airplane BUT 8h and ~200€ each way via train. And this before even pulling in the “rich people private planes” talking point.
2. I still see essentially zero push towards widespread nuclear energy for proper electrification
3. Cars keep getting fucking larger and larger. It’s crazy to see how many SUVs i see everyday burning gas with just one person on board. Electric cars don’t really solve this issue because electricity generation is not yer 100% clean.
4. I still don’t see a general push towards unified public transportation. I don’t even want it to be completely free but FUCK i don’t want to deal with three different providers if i ever dare to get out of my city while staying within the region. God forbid i decide to go to another region somewhere outside a main city.
5. I still don’t see a general push towards work from home. I live in a city large enough to have public transportation but I know very well this is the exception and not the rule. Most people burn gas and emit co2 to unwillingly go to the office to do the same things they’d do from home while also bringing their company laptop from home. This is beyond moronic.
And don’t star blaming capitalism or whatever: i don’t see any meaningful push in the right direction from either side of the political tribune.
So whatever, shit is fucked up and stuff, we’re getting extinct, such is life i guess.
I’m 38 years old, and I’ve worked in climate tech for the last 12 years. In my relatively short lifetime, and my relatively short career, I have seen the environment for political action, and funding for climate solutions, fluctuate maybe half a dozen times.
The physics, however, don’t change, and neither does the task in front of us.
I just spent ten months finding a job, the longest and most difficult job search of my career. It was hard because the macro environment is terrible, but also because I insisted on finding a role working on clean energy hardware.
At a time when basically all VC funding, and in many ways the entire productive capacity of the economy, is shifting to AI, it would have been smarter in some respects to just pivot to AI. I sat out the crypto bubble too, in which some of my peers made a lot of money by working on projects that were either useless, or straightforward scams.
We crossed the 1.5 degree threshold because the money can’t help itself. The slow, steady work of transitioning away from fossil fuels is never going to be as profitable, as quickly, as the various forms of gambling and addiction that have driven the tech industry for most of my lifetime.
But you, individually, can make the choice to keep your eye on the ball. You can commit to working on this problem until it’s done, no matter what. You can choose to find the others to organize and prepare, so that the ideas closest at hand when the next crisis comes are yours.
It’s the best solution I’ve come up with so far, and in spite of the challenges, it’s still working.