https://www.pm.gov.au/media/setting-australias-2035-climate-...
Here's the NZ PM last month:
https://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/rural-news/rural-general-ne...
I would imagine it's a relevant political football in most first world countries. I avoid American news, but the bits I see make me think it's probably still focused on culture war garbage.
It's a ways outside of town
But the distance has its uses
Close enough to make the effort
Far enough to make excuses.
“Close enough to feel achievable” is a bug, not a feature.
Then nothing.
My guess is we passed the tipping point. It's inevitable by now.
February 29, 2024 - 2023 was the warmest year on Earth since direct observations began, and the first year to exceed 1.5 °C above our 1850-1900 average. ...
Do you have an example where you personally interrupted a politician effectively?
Then I'd be far more worried about nuclear war than minor temperature excursions. Aside from that "non recoverable" damage happens every day. What do you think mining is?
> Actual global average temperatures is what should be measured.
On average it was 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler last year than it was the previous where I live in northern CA.
More realistically, there’s vested interests in existing ships and shipyards not being made obsolete so any minute effect is overhyped as “this is how we solve global warming”.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with an acquaintance - he was convinced that anthropogenic global warming was impossible because a volcanic eruption emits so much CO2 and was completely unwilling to consider evidence that perhaps humans emitting annually 200x more than all volcanoes combined might have an effect.
Can you imagine an extant tech that can come close to doing that at the required scale? I can’t.
A realistic aircraft capable of those payloads will burn avgas, no solar craft comes close to the capability. The side effects such as a significant increase in acid rain, are not trivial either.
These are fantasies of people who cannot accept the reality of what we’re facing.
Plenty of solutions, but politicians will never make it happen.
We calculated that capping personal emissions (mostly doable via peer pressure should we get this moving as normal people) to some top 1 percent 25 metric carbon ton and going plant based would get us net-zero while additionally getting rid of the zillionaire problem and adding extra 50-100 gigaton rewilding effect to the table.
With no bigger than marginal effect on anyone's QOL.
But we're SOL as the propaganda machines of the zillionaires keep dividing normal people to fake dichotomies.
It's unlikely that something like carbon capture will ever significantly reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere. It's just too energy intensive.
But there are a lot of practical solutions to significantly curb emissions that mostly just require regulations and taxes.
Things like building out rail transport. Heavily taxing air travel. Taxing all forms of carbon emission (fuel taxes would be pretty effective). Subsidizing non-co2 emissions, pushing for electrification when possible and power generation which uses non-CO2 emission. Stop wasteful pipedreams like "clean coal". Force data centers to be better citizens. For example, make them buy the battery/solar systems to offset their consumption. Make them participate in district heating schemes.
There's also some hope that even without intervention some of this will happen somewhat naturally. Solar and battery is already very cheap. Both are causing changes in the shipping and transit equations.
Which was, stop using CFCs, and stop venting them into the atmosphere to "dispose" of them. We also stopped lighting rivers on fire for mostly the same reasons, stop dumping industrial waste in them.
> I guess we should just accept it and adapt?
Ocean shipping produces more pollution than most countries. There are only like 5 countries that produce more carbon than the worldwide shipping fleet. If they cared then "cheap crap from China" wouldn't exist.
It's a scam. They want to monopolize the economy and they're using your environmental consciousness as the wedge to push you against your own best interests.
Stress increases conflict risk. Fights for essential resources (land, water, food, shelter) will break out long before those essential resources are completely gone.
If we skip past the immense suffering and death part, we will probably end up on a planet where national borders have been redrawn by war and desperation, and a smaller population that lives in more northerly climes.
I'm sad all ocean megafauna are going to be extinct.
However we can slow down the effects and try to stop the effects. So it's "only" 1.5° or whatever, not 3°, 5° or 10°. And if we raise average by 10° at least not by the years 2100, but 2200 to give time to adapt.
"Adapting" means resettling people, restructuring agriculture and food production, etc.
(All numbers are quite arbitrary picks, just as any goal one tried to set before)
CO2 output per person in the US (all sources including industry, etc): ~13-14,000kg
Average distance driven per year per capita in the US: ~20,000km
Average CO2 output of current private vehicle fleet: ~250g/km
Therefore, over one third of total CO2 output per person is personal vehicle use. Considering only CO2 output due to personal choices driving has to be well over half.
Most people don't - or refuse - to consider the obvious choice to take personal responsibility. Drive less.
But beyond driving less, surely eating further down the foodchain helps as well. Plants and shellfish are efficient. Cows are not. Eat fewer burgers and a few more lentils and mussels. Unless you are RFK Jr then of course please eat lots and lots of fatty cow, tallow, butter. Go full on Atkins please and follow right behind him.
Also - does that per capita figure include cargo? If so, how much? Does it matter if random individual takes personal Responsibility and stops driving when all those long haul trucks will still be on the road?
Please catch up. Why we’re having a conversation from the year 2000 now is beyond me.
I also suggest reviewing the “nuclear isn’t part of the solution. Besides it takes a decade” discussion.
The nice thing about it is that it doesn't require global cooperation.
[1]https://www.onepercentbrighter.com/p/the-no-bullshit-way-to-...
Edit: I should probably link where I heard about it to give credit to someone who deserves it
https://uncomfortableconversations.substack.com/p/the-climat...
Politically practical? Not a chance. It was already a major struggle a decade ago when the political climate was much more favorable to addressing the problem. Now, even the countries that want to do something about it are going to be more concerned about more immediate threats like being invaded.
Our best hope is that green technology quickly gets to the point where it so heavily outcompetes CO2-emitting technology that the latter disappears on its own. But this will take longer than it should.
I think from the standpoint of predicting what will happen, my best guess is that people will use fossil fuels until it is economically not viable to do so. If you want hasten it at an individual level, buy solar panels and have your house disconnected from the grid until fees you pay no longer subsidize fossil fuels. Frown at people and refuse to give them positive social cues when they buy a car that isn't electric. Instead of "oh nice car" just say "it would be so cool if they had a plugin version!". Support electrification of things like heat and water heating so long as it can be powered by non-fossil sources.
In the long run I think solar power, effective battery technology, and the peaking of the global population combine to cause fossil fuel usage to reduce over the next 100 years or so until CO2 levels stabilize. Lots of large CO2 emitters are already leveling off - the output is too high to sustain but at least it's no longer increasing year over year - such as from cement production.
Honestly it's not much but that's what you can do, larger social movements and political action do not work when someone's decision is whether to spend $800 a month or $100 a month to heat their house. Anyone who says it does should buy a thermometer, but instead they will get a plane ticket to the next big city to run around in the street yelling at police (literally the only people paid to not care about your slogans) while nobody really notices.
You should check with Ford on that. 19B write off this year
Our ecological goals are to make biosphere damage scarce, but our economic practices aim to make scarce things plentiful. We need something to balance out the effects of scarcity-based economics.
In a similar way I think what works is to push back against growth only and growth at all costs approaches and back practises and models and communities that are working in other ways.
The kind of community action you're describing happens, but we need to find ways to help it scale.
Trying to tell poor nations to remain poor -- or telling rich nations to consume less -- is a losing game. There's evidence that as societies get richer, their populations demand cleaner air, water, etc. And, as another commenter mentioned, a realistic hope is that the whole green-tech stack matures to the point where it can compete on price.
We'll either make lower-carbon/lower-warming solutions work at near-market rates, in a way that allows personal and national economies to grow, or it'll just be talk for the next 50 years as well.
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/earth-indicators/glob...
first order: verify satellite data. Secondly, move all sensors to locations where they are unaffected by heat islanding and other man-made influences.
yes, if a city gets hotter in temperature because it grows, that obviously is a concern, but it doesn't affect people in the countryside, or on the other side of the planet, etc. (1/1000th as much if anything, i'll hedge).
the second thing will never happen. I am sure someone will reply why it's literally impossible and stupid to put thermometers someplace where the weather is natural. Because if we did move all of the sensors, suddenly there wouldn't appear to be any 1.5C change or anything, and there's thousands of egos at stake, here.
The Economist used to be a good publication until McElthwaite left for Bloomberg about 10-12 years ago.
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/earth-indicators/glob...
And have you looked into the records? satellite surface temps and high resolution recording have not been around for very long. 1880 methods were very crude and narrowly scoped.
I'm a journalist who has published "highest/lowest on record" statistics tens, if not hundreds of times, and I've never heard of anyone thinking it means "since Herodotus" or anything like that.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/graph_data/Global_...
If you read the NASA page, they explicitly cite GHCNd, a raw surface temperature and precipitation dataset that goes back quite far. There's many other similar datasets you can find if you're willing to look.
Check out the readme for the csv format description, and /by-year for the raw rows:
are you sure you linked what you think you linked?
[0] /by-station and then unclutched my scroll wheel and spun it for arbitrary amount of time, re-engaged clutch and clicked what was under the cursor. repeated 3 more times. i did a fifth, where the one i was looking at was identical to the fourth one, but had a 1 in the least significant portion of the station ID instead of a 4, in case it was like, "4" is precip, "1" is temps, and i happened to click "4" 4 times in a row.
What exact raw data would you want? I am sure ChatGPT can throw together some python that will download the relevant data.
Would you like more, or do you plan on analyzing the first few petabytes first?
30 years later it looks like he was right.
Edit: the IPCC was founded in 1988 thus people started in the 70ies to understand that there will be a problem but there was a very long period of inactivity. Personally I am quite optimistic that fusion will become commercially available before 2040.
And dear downvoters, dont shoot the messenger.