Carbon Dioxide Emissions Increased in 2022 as Crises Roiled Energy Markets (nytimes.com) 64
Global fossil fuel emissions will most likely reach record highs in 2022 and do not yet show signs of declining, researchers said Thursday, a trend that puts countries further away from their goal of stopping global warming. From a report: This year, nations are projected to emit roughly 36.6 billion tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide by burning coal, natural gas and oil for energy, according to new data from the Global Carbon Project. That's 1 percent more than the world emitted in 2021 and slightly more than the previous record in 2019, which came before the coronavirus pandemic caused a temporary drop in global energy use and emissions.
The findings were released at the United Nations climate change summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, where world leaders have gathered to discuss how to avert catastrophic levels of warming. Scientists have warned that the world as a whole will need to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by around midcentury in order to stabilize global temperatures and minimize the risks from deadly heat waves, sea-level rise and ecosystem collapse. That deadline is getting harder to hit, experts said, with each passing year. "Every year that emissions go up makes it that much more challenging to bring them back down again by a certain date," said Glen Peters, a research director at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, who is one of more than 100 scientists involved in the research.
The findings were released at the United Nations climate change summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, where world leaders have gathered to discuss how to avert catastrophic levels of warming. Scientists have warned that the world as a whole will need to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by around midcentury in order to stabilize global temperatures and minimize the risks from deadly heat waves, sea-level rise and ecosystem collapse. That deadline is getting harder to hit, experts said, with each passing year. "Every year that emissions go up makes it that much more challenging to bring them back down again by a certain date," said Glen Peters, a research director at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, who is one of more than 100 scientists involved in the research.
Stop making people commute for no reason (Score:4, Interesting)
People commuting into an office to do a job they could do at home is pumping how much carbon into the air? Plus heating and air conditioning an office doesn't mean the home isn't still being heated or air conditioned.
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the United Nations climate change summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt
44,000 people traveled thousands of miles, by plane, so they can " discuss how to avert catastrophic levels of warming".
Failing to understand the stupidity of that is the first problem.
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Indeed. The problem here is not that there is nothing we can do, but that nobody wants to do the things we can.
Abstaining from flying is a major one. Allowing your employees to work from home is another major one, but some employers will never accept this, environment be damned. On the flip side, using public transportation to get to work every day would also dramatically reduce pollution, but commuters all hate each other far too much to accept this.
There is also the issue about factory farms being deva
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Are you sure? How do you get enough vitamin B12 without any animal derived foods in your diet or supplements?
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ALL vitamin B12 comes from supplements. [heartilyvegan.com] Animals don't make it in their bodies (or not in amounts useful to us). B12 is made from bacteria that lives in topsoil. Animals are supposed to get it by grazing. But the way we produce food (including animal feed) strips all that out. So, we must supplement the B12 into animal feed in order for them to have enough for our bodies to use when we eat the animals.
So your B12 is either supplemented in your food (including your vegetarian options), or it is supplemen
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I find your response quite strange. I presented facts and you responded with very misguided mockery. For example, you think that humans would not have evolved to require vitamin B12 if it is only produced by soil-resident bacteria. Did you think this through?
The bacteria in the soil produce the B12. Animals eat plants, including that soil and the bacteria (through contact, since plants grow in this soil), and get B12. Humans eat the animals and thus get the B12. Also, humans drank water that contacted
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There is plenty that many large businesses could do to clean up their pollution, but they won't want to. It costs money.
If all of your solutions for lowering CO2 cost businesses money then they will simply go out of business from not being able to compete with companies that don't care about global warming. In some luxury markets they can get away with the extra cost of the lower CO2 emitting option but not every consumer item is in such a luxury market. Caring about global warming is a luxury many people, and businesses that serve them, simply do not have.
Because the global economy is in a recession there simply isn't the
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Electricity from wind power may lower the prices but it doesn't lower the costs. With too many windmills we see an overproduction of electricity when the wind blows, and when there is an abundance of a commodity then prices go down. Costs are dictated by materials and labor, and like any commodity the prices for materials and labor are influenced by an abundance or scarcity. Because windmills take more labor and materials than coal, natural gas, or nuclear power for the same annual production the costs w
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Electricity from wind power may lower the prices but it doesn't lower the costs.
Prices tend to reflect costs, so this makes no sense.
With too many windmills we see an overproduction of electricity when the wind blows, and when there is an abundance of a commodity then prices go down.
And then, new entrants are discouraged and prices stabliise over time at a price that covers costs.
Because windmills take more labor and materials than coal, natural gas, or nuclear power for the same annual production the costs windmills have to bear are higher.
Build costs, you are neglecting the cost of fuel.
Windmills also take a lot of land, and if put out in the sea to avoid land use then there's more costs for labor and materials.
And yet, companies are able to create offshore wind farms in the UK with virtually no subsidy. So it doesn't seem to be an impossible level of cost. The facts are on the ground (or in the sea).
These differences are not trivial, wind power takes ten time the steel and concrete for the same power generation capacity.
But still turns a profit.
We need only government permission to build nuclear power plants.
Which, in the USA and UK, has been given. And yet the level of building is slow because the r
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Prices tend to reflect costs, so this makes no sense.
You don't understand how competition can drive a business to be unprofitable?
Wind power is unreliable and will be competing with natural gas and nuclear fission, electricity sources that will produce power in any weather. Wind power will also be competing with other wind power, and when the wind blows then all the windmills in the area are producing power and the spot price of the electricity will drop. Natural gas and nuclear power plants will run at a temporary loss to compete with wind power just so th
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You don't understand how competition can drive a business to be unprofitable?
Where demand is elastic, this is true. Where demand is not elastic, if costs go up, prices go up. In terms of cost per MWh, wind is one of the cheaper options, thus unlikely to become unprofitable.
Wind power is unreliable
Yet again, you confuse unreliable with intermittent. They are slightly different concepts.
and will be competing with natural gas and nuclear fission
No, they will compliment each other. They each have different production profiles but different cost. If in a direct competition, competing with nuclear, wind will win as it is so much cheaper. But as I note, they will be com
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If we make laws that raise the cost of producing food and other necessary commodities then we will see people voted in to remove those laws. We can't write laws for other nations so we could simply see imports replacing domestic production. If we put in an import tax to compensate then we get back to where people will vote in politicians to remove the taxes that raise the costs of getting their food.
Do you understand yet? People don't like it when the government makes their food and fuel cost more. Conc
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Abstaining from flying is a major one.
As long as you actually don't have to be somewhere else, sure. I'm looking forward to vacationing in Hawaii again, or going to Europe ... sorry, that'll have to be by plane for me.
On the flip side, using public transportation to get to work every day would also dramatically reduce pollution, but commuters all hate each other far too much to accept this.
And in some countries, public transportation is so minimal to non-existent that it's impossible to do this. But where it's available I do support that. It's non-existent where I live and so minimal it's not very useful in the nearest major city to me.
Switching to a vegetarian diet is totally healthy and nutritionally-complete, and it significantly drops a person's carbon footprint. But people would rather adamantly insist on lies about the ease of getting full nutrition on a vegetarian diet than give up meat (the more educated ones will concede on the nutrition front but simply state that eating meat is more important to them than the environment.
Unless of course you have a health issue that makes giving up meat harder than it
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Also when vegan's say their cat/dog is vegetarian it shows you have definitely lost the plot and are missing something very important in your diet
For those with a sense of humour https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] about the minute in
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Fun fact: the Shao-Lin monks (master martial artists with intense daily exercise regimens that require tremendous energy) are all vegetarian [pangeabuilders.com]. They start out that way when they are still growing children, and in need of several times more protein and carbs than normal kids (due to their intense daily training). Not only do they turn out perfectly healthy, they push the boundaries of what humans can do in terms of strength and endurance.
So, no, humans do not require meat for a high energy job. You are just
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This site https://shifuyanlei.blog/categ... [shifuyanlei.blog] states
"Inside the Shaolin Temple we eat vegetarian food but outside the temple, the fighting monks are allowed to eat meat if they feel their body needs it. Some people believe that all Buddhists are vegetarian but the historical Buddha was not a vegetarian. He begged for his food and accepted whatever was given to him"
and this site https://www.livestrong.com/art... [livestrong.com]
"Shaolin monk Shi Dejian told Kung Fu Maga
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the United Nations climate change summit in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt
44,000 people traveled thousands of miles, by plane, so they can " discuss how to avert catastrophic levels of warming".
What is your fix? We dismantle civilization, return to the stone age, eliminate cooking?
Actually that will work. We'll breathe clean air, eat only organically grown food, drink pure water, and die by the age of 30. 8^)
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Nice strawman. Is it 100% organic?
Wrong, at worst it is a slippery slope argument, so get your fallacies right.
And you could have avoided that by simply answering my question. What is your fix?
You are apparently upset about people flying to a conference - so what do they do? Humans cannot have zero impact. Not one of us. Our existence at this time has some effect. Driving a car, heating your house. Riding a bus or train. A nuclear plant has carbon emissions from the mining and processing of ore, and concrete processing. TANSTAAFL writ
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People commuting into an office to do a job they could do at home is pumping how much carbon into the air? Plus heating and air conditioning an office doesn't mean the home isn't still being heated or air conditioned.
How dare you contradict the Great Imperator of Mars!
Elon Musk has stated that remote workers are lazy & unproductive & must spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office.
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People commuting into an office to do a job they could do at home is pumping how much carbon into the air? Plus heating and air conditioning an office doesn't mean the home isn't still being heated or air conditioned.
I thought all of you people have refused to go back to work, and now you have an even better excuse. I'm saving the planet!
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Seems OK here in my part of Australia. Tech jobs and recruiters are heavily promoting 100 percent WFH, I assume because they're finding it a key precondition for a lot of workers. Shit, if you can work on a remote Aussie beach why would you not want to?
Need more CO2 (Score:1, Troll)
This is encouraging. We need more CO2. It makes plants grow better. Less people freeze to death when it's warmer.
Don't cancel me.
Edwin
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This is encouraging. We need more CO2. It makes plants grow better. Less people freeze to death when it's warmer.
Don't cancel me.
Edwin
I believe "cancel culture" is starting to backfire. It turns out that the people that do the "cancelling" can also get "cancelled". When fighting fire with fire all you get is a lot of people burned. It appears that people are starting to learn that the best option is to make an argument than try to suppress. There is a reason why truly free nations protect the ability of people to say unpopular things. If there is an authority that can suppress unpopular ideas then our education suffers, and when edu
Stop subsidising... (Score:3)
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utter nonsense. Civilization is powered by fossil fuels
And for years before that, it was powered by horses and oxen, and fueled with firewood. What's your point? Fuels change.
and that won't change for decades.
Yep, it won't happen instantly. What's your point?
You're a dreamer disconnected from reality, and if we actually did the folly you're suggesting there would be starvation and mass death.
He suggested that governments should stop subsidizing fossil fuels. Do you really believe government subsidies of fossil fuels are really all that keeps us from "starvation and mass death"?
It might result in more of the price of fossil fuels being paid by consumers and less of it by governments.
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I'll believe global warming is a crisis when the people who tell me it's a crisis start to act like it's a crisis themselves.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne... [dailymail.co.uk]
All of our leaders should lead by example. We saw Jimmy Carter put on a sweater indoors and put solar panels on the roof of the White House, which seems quite foolish means to address a heating fuel shortage for much of the USA but it was at least leading by example. If these people want to shout the benefits of teleconferences then they need to actually hold a teleconference. Put the entire event online, with possible exception for a handful of keynote speakers and emcees.
Here's a few thoughts on this t
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Germany (Score:5, Insightful)
German lawmakers announced on Monday that they are going to burn coal and keep two nuclear power plants available as a last resort to get through the winter.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/0... [cnbc.com]
Germany had 17 nuclear power plants in operation in 2011, when the Fukushima accident (caused by a massive ocean tsunami) occurred. That resulted in the totally irrational fears that prompted Germany's leaders to shut down nuclear power. Of course that was a terrible decision which made them dependent on Russia for fuel, irregardless of what it does the environment.
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I agree this was an irrational decision by Merkel goverment (conservative). Still, I think you comment is highly misleading: Tsunamis are not the only thing that could cause a meltdown: This could be earthquakes, air plane crashes, terrorist attacks, war, or also simply engineering issues (such as in Forsmark in Sweden were all emergency generators were affected by the same flow). Second, despite the nuclear exit in Germany, Germany continuously reduced CO2 emissions roughly according to plan and especiall
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Germany continuously reduced CO2 emissions roughly according to plan
...until now.
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This was a completely rational decision. This is what the overwhelming majority of German citizens wanted. Germany is a democracy. Democracy worked. Sorry, if German citizens are not rational, but religion is a strong motivator.
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Well, I agree with you, but the decision was not made simply because the German citizens wanted it. They wanted it for a long time and conservatives governments never considered such a step before Fukushima.
Yes... (Score:5, Funny)
The planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.
Re: Yes... (Score:1)
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Relax. The earth will be just fine, after humans are gone.
And there is the real problem too many humans.
Blame China? (Score:4, Insightful)
What happened to all those "blame China" posts?
Oops, this is what happened, "China’s emissions are projected to decline by roughly 0.9 percent this year", "Rapid growth of wind and solar power also helped keep China’s once-insatiable demand for coal roughly flat in 2022."
What would happen if this trend continues? Will that mean China had already hit their peak CO2 in 2021? My bet is if that's the case, Americans will stop talking about CO2 and pretend it was never an issue because it cannot be used to blame China anymore.
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The reasons Emissions are down are due to ongoing COVID lockdowns an factory shutdowns to save power due to energy shortage https://edition.cnn.com/2022/0... [cnn.com]
to fix that guess what china is building https://www.wilsoncenter.org/b... [wilsoncenter.org]
there isn't a country on the planet that cares less for the environment than CCP run China
fake news (Score:2)
TFA leaves out any graph of long-term CO_2 or GHG emissions. This has been essentially linear forever (forever = since say 1950). Basically, nothing has changed.