alt Hacker NewsIt'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
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> 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.
No this is propaganda that fossil fuel companies have successfully imposed on us, that it's the consumers' fault when a large part of the pollution comes from the industrial side. But consumers have leverage in regards to industries - if they stop buying meat, the polluting meat industry would decrease and help solve this problem.
Also what do you suggest? It seems that you are implying that because we can't stop it now, we don't need to focus on the problem and can let it grow even higher?
This. I have, lying around unpublished, a few science fiction novels that I wrote where I assumed we actually did everything realistically needed to stop climate change. Like, not the deal "we make some solar panels but keep all the industries," but the real thing: "we take down the industries, we promote degrowth, we embrace and promote a proper demographic collapse, we shame meat eaters, we put youth into environmental enforcement militias, and we change global culture to embrace all of that."
It's a world that has nothing to do with this one. Of course deceiving ourselves with plastic straws is easier.
It’s really not, lots of people have been doing this work for a long time, if you want to understand what it’s going to take you can start here: https://drawdown.org/
The oceans warmed up by half a degree celsius in only 5 years. Everybody talks about air temperature, but the amount of energy that gets stored in the oceans is simply unimaginable. Until now, the oceans have been a great heat buffer, but I fear that this might come to an end.
We have much more than 15 more years of temperature rises to come. It's not like we reached net zero in 2026 or have a plausible plan to reach that anytime soon. Net zero is probably another few decades away.
I don't follow you. You say that the heating up is caused by "100+ years of extraction of massive quantities of sequestered carbon from the Earth's crust and burning it now baked into the system" but at the same time you say humans, who did the extraction and burning for 100+ years, cannot stop doing it? I mean, reverting the temperature to pre-industrial level it's not going to happen soon in any case, but at least stopping increasing it constantly IT IS a human-achievable goal, by definition.