There is no ceiling. It might go up 6 or 7C. The people who have the power to change things do not give a shit if the rest of us die. They don’t care, and they won’t change anything. That’s the world we live in.
They (selfishly) believe that allowing the problem to flourish is what will get us to solve it.
They’re not wrong. There’s just way better, more humane approaches.
So you’re mostly right. Because they know they have the wealth to weather the discomfort in comfort. But it is accurate that humans historically are fucking aces at reacting and kinda piss poor at proacting.
Yes, they are wrong. Because we don’t know if there are positive feedback loops that will take us beyond survivable temperatures once we’ve crossed an invisible line.
Even the ultra-rich won’t survive +5C because the entire concept of “wealth” falls apart when society does.
Finally some good news on the climate. Our ability to fuck the Earth will mostly go away when our civilization collapses. We might even get a second Genghis Khan cooling when everyone dies.
There isn’t one definitive paper I can give. They’re are of course also papers claiming the opposite.
I’ve seen multiple articles about this. Less yield from staple crops, productivity loss with heatwaves, storm damage. There are a bunch of papers too, usually about a specific region. But roughly above 2°C, the hurt really begins with the cost to the economy exceeding almost every country’s growth. Exact numbers differ per article.
Too bad, I’ll have to hunt around myself. Simulation is always a bit vulnerable to assumptions when human behavior is involved, but it’s definitely worth trying to model things.
If that’s true, the political landscape is going to become starkly different. We expect growth right now; it’s used as the yardstick of economic success. Obviously past civilisations didn’t, and we could go back, even peacefully for all I know, but it would be uncharted territory post-industrialisation.
I kind of suspect climate adaptation produces more CO2 than other forms of activity, because it would be construction heavy. I wonder if that’s factored it. Actually, I wonder what the adaptation assumptions are in general.
There is a problem of lag. By the time temperatures are high enough to force the economy to stop, the amount of CO2 will be sufficient to continue pushing the temperature up considerably.
The problem is that feedback loops start to kick in above 2°C so it doesn’t matter if the economy crashes.
In fact, in some cases that makes things even worse. One example is that without smokestacks and ships pumping out sulfur dioxide the albedo of the atmosphere will rapidly drop, which might cause immediate and rapid warming over a period of only a few years.
We could be pushed past 2.5°C or even 3°C without industrial forces contributing at all.
Yes and no. Renewables are now cheaper than other forms of energy but cost isn’t the only issue.
There are practical limits on how many renewables projects we can build and integrate at a time. We’re not even remotely close to building them fast enough to save anything. We can’t even build them fast enough to keep up with the ever increasing demand energy.
Nuclear is expensive as fuck but we need to be building more of it as well as renewables because we can’t build enough renewables fast enough to avert the catastrophe, and that’s about the only other tech we have that can generate energy in the massive quantities needed without significant greenhouse gas emissions.
I don’t think that’s quite true. Where I live it has expanded from nothing to a major power source in just a few years. We’ll need grid storage of some kind to kick fossil fuels completely, but that seems surmountable. Worst case scenario we build pumped air and just eat some round trip losses.
Nuclear plants take many years to get off the ground, so I’m not sure that’s actually an easier solution. Once they’re up and running at scale they’re actually really cheap per unit production, so I would have agreed with you a decade ago, but as it is solar and wind have just pulled ahead.
Don’t take my word for it. Look up the numbers for yourself and do the math.
Search for “National GHG inventory {your country}”.
You find a report listing (among a bunch of other things) the amount of electricity generated each year by each method, and the emissions from each. Look up the total TWh of electricity produced by fossil fuels.
Then look at the total TWh from renewables, and rate it has been growing Y-o-Y and extrapolate until it reaches the number needed to eliminate fossil fuels.
You’ll find it will take decades to build enough renewable capacity to replace fossil fuel based electricity generation.
And that’s before you realize that only about 25% of fossil fuel combustion goes to electricity generation. As we start switching cars, homes, industries to electric we’re going to need 2x-3x more electricity generation.
Yes it takes a long time to bring on a new nuclear plant, roughly 7-9 years. If it was remotely realistic that we could build enough renewable power generation in that time to replace all fossil fuel generation then I’d agree we don’t need nuclear. But we’re not anywhere close to that.
It’s also helpful to note too just how much power a nuclear reactor generates. I live in Canada, our second smallest nuclear power plant in Pickering, generates almost 5 times more electricity annually than all of Canada’s solar farms combined. It will take 1000s or solar and wind farms covering and area larger than all of our major cities combined to replace fossil fuels…
…or about 7 nuclear power stations the same size as Pickering.
Then look at the total TWh from renewables, and rate it has been growing Y-o-Y and extrapolate until it reaches the number needed to eliminate fossil fuels.
You’ll find it will take decades to build enough renewable capacity to replace fossil fuel based electricity generation.
I get ~2 decades when I extrapolate these numbers (from 2010-2023) to get to 2022 total primary energy usage for solar alone.
Energy usage will grow as well, and keeping that growth is ambitious, but it the future doesn’t look that bleak too me if you look at it that way.
Did you use linear extrapolation, or something else? Because it’s an actual paradigm shift happening now, I’d guess some kind of exponential or subexponential curve would be best. That would bring it even faster.
Extrapolation is tricky, and actually kind of weak, although I think it’s appropriate here. This XKCD explains it really well, and I end up linking it all the damn time.
Exponential, it fits the curve very nicely. I can give you the python code if you want to. I got 2 decades for all energy usage, not only electricity, which is only one sixth of that.
I just took the numbers for the whole world, that’s easier to find and in the end the only thing that matters.
The next few years are going to be interesting in my opinion. If we can make efuels cheaper than fossil fuels (look up Prometheus Fuels and Terraform Industries), we’re going to jump even harder on solar and if production can keep up it will even grow faster.
E-fuels are a big deal, particularly for aviation. Non-electricity emissions are also something to watch. Hydrogen as a reducing agent seems like it can work very well as long as we do phase out fossil fuels like promised, so that solves steel production and similar. Calcination CO2 from concrete kilns is a very sticky wicket apparently, since they’re extremely hot, heavy, and also need to rotate, which is challenging to combine with a good seal.
Cheap grid storage is a trillion-dollar question, but I suspect even if new technology doesn’t materialise, pumped air with some losses can do the trick, again subject to proper phase-out of dirty power sources.
So that’s just solar, then? Long term, it does seem like the one that’s the biggest deal, but right now there’s also a lot of wind and hydro in the mix, so that’s another point in favour of the assumptions here being conservative.
Yes, just solar. Hydro is bigger now, but it doesn’t have the growing potential. Wind is currently also growing exponential, but I don’t see it doing that for 20 more years. And even if it does, it doesn’t really make a big difference since exponential + exponential is still exponential. If it grows as fast as solar that would mean we’re just a few years ahead of the curve.
Alright, I can’t seem to find useful numbers anywhere. We went from 50% coal to nil in just a few years, though, so big changes fast are possible. If you’re in Ontario, you also have to consider your local renewables penetration was really high to start with, because of those waterfalls.
And yeah, like I said to the other person, exact growth pattern matters. It’s probably exponential-ish right now, not linear, because it’s just unambiguously cheaper to move to renewables, and so just getting ducks in order to do it is the bottleneck.
I respect you for doing your own research. People need to understand the scope of the problem if there’s going to be meaningful action.
The reason I’m passionate about nuclear in particular is that only about a quarter of all fossil fuel consumption is from electricity generation.
Most of the rest is burned in transportation, buildings, commercial and residential applications. We have the tech already to switch most of these things to electricity, and eliminate their direct emissions, but that’s not much of a win if we’re burning fossil fuels generate that electricity. Which is what happens today when electricity demand is increased, we can’t just turn up the output of a solar/wind farm in periods of high demand, but we can burn more natural gas.
Switching to electric everything (Car, trucks, ships, heat pumps, furnaces, etc) will increase electricity demand by 2-3x.
Even if renewables growth is held to the exponential-ish curve it’s been so far (doubtful) we still need 15+ years just to get to the point of replacing current global fossil fuel electricity production in the most optimistic case, never mind enough to handle 2-3x demand.
Massive quantities of new carbon free electricity generation is needed to “unlock” the electrification technologies we need to deploy if we going to avoid the worst of the disaster. If we wait until renewables alone get us there it’ll be too late.
The more carbon free energy we can build in the next 20-30 years, the more options we have. Even if we can reach a place of excess capacity, there are a lot of things like DAC and CCS, that we could use it for that today result in more emissions from electricity generation than they sequester.
I don’t mean to diminish your point about the utility of nuclear, but (a) it’s subject to the same ramping up/scaling issues as anything else*, and (b) you’d be surprised how quickly we could ramp up manufacturing of renewables if The Powers That Be actually wanted to.
(* Or worse: in particular, the absolute debacle that was Plant Vogtle 3 and 4 – delivered years late and billions overbudget, while bankrupting Westinghouse in the process – shows that we definitely did not maintain our nuclear expertise over the past several decades of building exactly fuck-all new plants.)
Same. England for me, but I think it’ll bother the people in power who abhor people migrating and also deny climate change or at the least taking adequate action to mitigate the effects / affects (which is it).
uh no florida has already made the next play, and it was to repeal all protections for outdoor workers against the elements
in other words the next move is literally “Fuck you, die”, apparently, so, good to know we’re past the bullshit and can get on with actually solving the problem properly.
“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” Gretta Pecl of the University of Tasmania told The Guardian. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”
But, reason to keep fighting:
Others found hope in the climate activism and awareness of younger generations, and in the finding that each extra tenth of a degree of warming avoided protects 140 million people from extreme temperatures.
The Global South? Those people aren’t going to lay down and die. They’re gonna climb North, as they should. And then we’re gonna have to decide whether to shoot people approaching the borders or accept a huge population influx. Given our political reality, I think there’s a good chance we try the first option at first.
Yup. Sadly the truth. And then probably cry about all these migrants bothering them “for no reason”, and that it’s hard to find a good reef to dive in on vacation.
Right wing parties are already massively strengthening Frontex. They're fully aware what will happen, but still not willing to kill our emissions.
"Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make."
People will be fleeing famine, uninhabitable areas, rising sea levels and wars. The areas that can support life will grow smaller, more valuable and crowded.
Will we be assholes if when this happens we be like. WE FUCKING TOLD YOU THIS WOULD HAPPEN, but y’all more concerned with arguing over pronouns and protests (I support both).
I get your frustration. I feel it myself. Still, I fear, calling people assholes won’t be helpful and prevent folks from admitting they did wrong. At the same time, it can always get worse (hotter) and I think it would be best to win as many people over as possible, to do the right thing.
hear hear! please stop fighting over the petty things and get to work on the things that matter. electing a president that will fight climate change is far more important than what happens in the middle east.
What worries me is that combined with anti immigrants sentiment. I fear beaches of dead as people are prevented from fleeing. I read a SciFi with that and it chilled me as I can see it happening.
I have a postmortem science degree, but hobby in studying paleontology/pre-history. It took a rise of only 10°C and excess pollution to wipe out over 83% of all life on the planet between the Permian and Triassic eras. Entire chains of life just wiped out. Carbon dating, sediment layer study, fossil records, they all show how screwed me are if we keep this up. The earth will survive, it always does, but it took 30 million years before life recovered.
Humans need to learn from the past, see the consequences of what most would think is a small change, but the ones in power don’t seem to give a shit.
The majority of people on both sides of the spectrum don't give a shit. People need to stop acting like this is just politicians, or CEOs, when it is the vast majority of the voters & potential voters. You'd see a lot more votes towards green parties & candidates if it were different. But the truth is, most people don't want to lose their comfortable lifestyle. Real climate action would affect us all, in our lives, in the prices we have to pay for products, in the products available to us, how we move around, etc etc.
But the truth is, most people don’t want to lose their comfortable lifestyle.
The real truth is, the notion that a lower-carbon lifestyle is somehow inferior to our current car-dependent bullshit is 100000% fallacious bullshit brainwashed into us by the automobile industry. Walkability is just better in every way (environmentally, economically, sociologically) and people whose lifestyle doesn’t depend on cars are, statistically, happier and healthier than people who do.
Now try to explain that people have to give up their job that's in the neighboring city, or having to get up 1-2 hours earlier due to bad train or bus connections, or that they now cannot get groceries anymore because they live in suburbia and have to drive an hour out to some massive parking lot desert to shop in their IKEA sized grocery halls.
And that's just relating to the personal transport sector.
Why do you persist in assuming that all those shitty circumstances would continue to exist when they are exactly the things I’m saying we should be fixing? The whole idea is to have lots of nearby employers, good train and bus connections, grocery stores within walking distance (and with little to no parking), etc.
The #1 priority for reducing climate change (and fixing almost all our problems, from housing affordability to obesity) is zoning reform.
Because no one is willing to change those things. No politician who would be willing to go this far would be voted in because of the intermediate issues this would cause for people. And doing a super slow transition would be too late at this point, especially since we're way past schedule already in regards to our emission models. It even starts with the simple fact that people are simply not willing to get rid of their cars, even if public transport was good and completely free. So you'd be left with enforcing people not to drive, which is obviously also not going to happen for the same reasons.
The #1 priority for reducing climate change (and fixing almost all our problems, from housing affordability to obesity) is zoning reform.
Only in countries like the US, who have a disproportional large portion of transport emissions. But a lot of our emissions in the West simply come from the production of our goods that we buy and give us our comfy lives.
It even starts with the simple fact that people are simply not willing to get rid of their cars, even if public transport was good and completely free. So you’d be left with enforcing people not to drive, which is obviously also not going to happen for the same reasons.
Induced demand can work in reverse. Stop expanding roads. Redesignate some lanes to public transport only. Why take the car and sit in a queue for 2 hours when a bus can get you to work in 30 minutes without any queues?
That’s a decades long process. We need proper action done within this decade.
We don’t know that. If it turns out that the actual ECS value is higher than predicted we’re already fucked because whatever faction we might take today should’ve already been taken decades ago. If a global humanitarian crisis is mere decades away, no changes we’ll feasibly make today or in the near future will stave it off.
You’d be surprised how many people would take that over a ride with other people.
An alternative is also that those who can, do their job remotely. Covid proved the feasibility of that. You couldn’t pay me enough to start commuting or doing my own grocery runs again. I only go outside for enjoyment and none of it involves vehicles. Unless said vehicle is a bicycle, because my dog really enjoys cycling.
We do, because the opposite effect took that long. It's likely even worse for the reasons mentioned.
we're already fucked because whatever faction we might take today should've already been taken decades ago.
That's true either way with where we're at. That's why we call for drastic actions to be taken, especially since governments can't even agree to implement what's asked for by scientific advisors, who are already very conservative in their predictions in order to not push those politicians too extremely.
If a global humanitarian crisis is mere decades away, no changes we'll feasibly make today or in the near future will stave it off.
That's not correct, because it can always get even worse. The more and sooner we get rid of our emissions, the better are our chances. That's also why, on a fixed time scale, it is important to do the bulk of the work as early as possible, instead of doing it towards the end. The longer those greenhouse gasses are in the air, the more damage it will cause for us in the long run. But right now literally all of our measurements taken are still causing us to shoot far beyond our set targets (which turns out, were already too conservatively set too).
Mortuary science, pathology, autopsies, etc. I was going for a masters in Anatomic Pathology before I became disabled. I just research all things dead. I was always the weird little girl that liked studying mummies and fossils, so it seemed the logical step when I was choosing a career
That’s part of the issue, but the even bigger problem is that people fallaciously think they have to give up much to fix it when the reality is a combination of (a) they don’t, and (b) the changes that they do have to make actually represent an improvement in lifestyle, not a deprivation.
For example, Americans who’ve been brainwashed for decades by GM propaganda about the “open road” and car-dependent suburban “American dream” and whatnot have to be dragged kicking and screaming into higher zoning density and walkabilty, but once people have it they realize they’re happier, healthier, have more free time, etc.
Well, no. Burning fossil fuels was indeed cheaper than any other energy source, until recently, and for some things still is by far the cheapest. So yeah, we have to sacrifice something today to not cook the Earth. Apparently that’s too abstract for us, though, and we will knowingly steer towards a cliff a few decades away.
As an example, in Canada we have a modest carbon tax, and one that comes right back to people as refunds. It’s still become a political lightning rod and the entire campaign target of the opposition, who is decisively leading in the polls right now. Another one, gen Z says they care, but it’s not grandma buying Shein.
Could you help me understand how we differentiate the latest warming temperatures being related to climate change and not just another period like the one you mentioned?
To be clear, I fully believe that climate change is real, but sometimes when discussing it with people they will be of the camp that things are cyclical and just natural. I want to better arm myself for these arguments.
Mass extinction events have a cause. The Permian/Triassic one I mentioned, is generally agreed to be from unusual movement of earth’s crust, creating severe volcanic activity. The eruptions caused CO2 and pollution, meaning greenhouse gasses built up. The heat shifted water currents and the temperatures, mixed with acid rain, decimated life in the oceans.
Humans are basically the volcanoes in modern times. Yes, the earth goes through normal changes, but these temperatures are increasing at a speed that, to my knowledge, has never happened. There is a way of teaching kids about how long the earth’s had life, that visualizes it pretty well. If all of earth’s history were to fit on your arm, shoulder to fingertips, if you gently scratched your fingernail on something rough, you’d erase all of humankind. We have barely existed on earth, but are throwing it off balance like never before. (With the exception of the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, but that’s a whole other tangent)
Having taken years of pathology/physiology classes, it really feels like the earth is a body, and it’s getting a fever to try and deal with an illness… us.
Lmk if you need any sources. I can’t exactly copy my books or the ones from my old college’s libraries, but there’s plenty of studies/resources out there if you’re nerdy enough to dig 😊 (fossil pun)!
Mass extinction events have a cause. The Permian/Triassic one I mentioned, is generally agreed to be from unusual movement of earth’s crust, creating severe volcanic activity.
I think you’d get your point across even better with less understatement.
We have barely existed on earth, but are throwing it off balance like never before. (With the exception of the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, but that’s a whole other tangent)
I think we may very well be on par with the meteor, TBH. Especially in the worst-case emission scenario.
(Speaking of the K-Pg meteor, another large igneous province, similar to but smaller than the one at the P-T boundary, was basically the “exit wound” of that meteor impact. It could very well be that the P-T extinction was caused the same way, but all evidence of the crator would have been obliterated by subduction over the past 250 MY because the antipode of Siberia back then would’ve been somewhere in the middle of the Panthalassic Ocean. Edit: I take that back; turns out there that managed to survive, so that’s neat.)
Thank you for adding more information. I love reading more about this stuff. It would make sense if a meteor was related to the P-T volcanic activity. It would easily have enough force to mess with the crust of the earth.
I have a fun snarky way to handle “cyclical” people. If they say it’s cyclical I’ll say “so there will be dinosaurs.” And if they ask what I mean, I say “it’s a cycle, so there will be dinosaurs again.” If they say no, I ask if the continents will come together again. It’s an argument towards absurdity to point out that the world is always changing, as is the climate, so there is not a “cycle.”
Okay, we might get to 2.5 degrees, but the economy!
This will go on until we get to around 5 degree and most parts of the world have become uninhabitable and most animals and vegetation has gone extinct and we’ve locked ourselves in perpetual wars due to water and food shortages. Sounds like a shitty B movie, but this is what I truely believe we will end up with.
I’m hopeful economies and governments will collapse before 3 degrees and measures will be put in place. I’m not extrapolating a utopian future. Before we get to the point where the world reacts, there will be many wars, migration and fascism. But as it gets worse, I’m hopeful groups will work together and fight for a better future.
Nah, what will happen is that said incompetent governments will be replaced by incompetent dictatorships that will just tell people over the barrel of a gun that things are better now.
If it makes you feel any better, once it gets that bad, society will eventually break down and our CO2 levels will naturally return to normal over the next several centuries while the Earth is reclaimed by nature as we go extinct.
Bit of a misdirect in the headline. This was not primarily a scientific projection. This was a political reckoning by scientists who had recently suffered the bureaucratic pain of serving on the IPCC, and voluntarily responded to a survey.
As one climate scientist put it:
“As many of the scientists pointed out, the uncertainty in future temperature change is not a physical science question: It is a question of the decisions people choose to make,” Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe wrote on social media. “We are not experts in that; And we have little reason to feel positive about those, since we have been warning of the risks for decades.”
Change never comes from politicians first, but these are people who are zoomed in on whether politicians are changing their minds.
They’re not going to change their minds slowly over time. It’s gonna be nothing at all until the electorate is too loud to ignore, and then suddenly 100% of officials will claim they’ve “always condemned fossil fuels”, “from day one”, and “in the strongest terms possible”.
We’ve seen time and again that policy changes tend to bubble just below the surface for long time and then suddenly emerge with multiple changes happening in quick succession.
I was of voting age when just saying the word “civil union” in the context of gay rights was political suicide, and I’m not that old. Things can change quickly. Keep your hope alive and keep agitating. We can do this.
Fun fact: a lot of mining companies have been incorporating climate change projections into their closure plans for years now, using RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5 scenarios. Hey, we are using a thermal cover to make sure this gargantuan pile of mine waste rock doesn’t cause metal leaching/acid rock drainage issues later on: we’d better over-engineer it to take on higher-than expected warming, given that we’ll be liable for it for the next 100+ years
There was a powercut this week in a large part of Mexico (I know because of family from there). They’re getting rarer now as Mexico has really tried to get its grid uptogether. The downside of countries like this having more stable grids is more people and business installing aircon systems, which just means more energy used, more emissions.
The funny thing is there are ways to passively cool areas. You can literally install shading over windows and walls that face the main sun. Last year in the UK we had a few days where it was over 35C. Nobody here has aircon. So that heat is a shock to us. But I managed to cover the outside of open windows with reflective bubble wrap insulation cut into sheets.
I also installed a small solar system on our shed to run a fridge freezer out there. The funny thing is the half inch stand-offs actively created significant shading and the inside of the shed really cooled down to where we could sit in there and chill out or do tasks without melting. When I realised this I started looking online for research on solar power and shading and found agrovoltaics. Solar panels over farm crops such as fruit in hotter regions mean less watering needed… its more spread out than usual solar farms as it has to let the sun in a bit more to the food but its something that needs to be done more.
I also read of people ignoring their energy policy for their home electric and installing grid-tie solar. They use sheds, stands in their garden, conservatory roofing etc, and usually just a few hundred watts of solar. Typically homes have a fuse rating of 30-50 amps. One 300w solar panel grid tied is not going to be anywhere near that, but will mean up to 300w of clean energy. Energy companies should just allow these systems, even provide them if its a problem or worry to them. You can buy this stuff off amazon for a few hundred quid.
Also, and it’s kinda insane to me that not more people do this: just grow any plant on the sides of your house. If you are worried about your walls build a cheap metal fence a few centimetres before that wall. It’s the cheapest insulation you can get.
Wild wine, ivy, anything that will climb and live more than a year would work.
we need some people, either hacking or inside job, setting the temperature in all conference rooms used by any politicians worldwide 2.5 degrees C higher than normal.
The shitty thing is they’d start wearing lighter clothes, and use it as a campaign point that it’s not that bad, actually. Power appears to be a hell of a drug.
It’s all just scare tactics, they’ll say.
Also, that feeling of power.
Ah, the entire collection of S. Harris’ Global Warming cartoons, though lumped together with other environmental topics, is worth linking.
I can see some climate scientists just saying that 2.5C won’t be as dire as others predict without being stupid or paid off. There are often contrarians and sometimes (not often, but sometimes) they can be right, so it’s healthy to have them even when there is broad consensus. It’s how we came to accept ideas like plate tectonics.
So sure, maybe some of them are paid off (I doubt any of them are stupid since they have scientific degrees), but maybe some of them just disagree about the predictions for whatever semi-legitimate or maybe even legitimate reason and that’s fine. It’s worth exploring why just in case they could be right. The thing is, they’re scientists who are dissenting, not just some random guy on Facebook, which is why it’s worth exploring them.
I think we’ll be looking back, waving longingly to the incredible hulk ending song, to 5c
Because the world doesnt exist to serve the 8 billion humans. It exists to serve a few thousand rich and business owners. . which means as long as there is profit to be had, the killing of the planet and the population will continue not only at pace, but ever accelerating
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