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Earth

After 1.5-Degree Temperature Rise, What Happens Next? (washingtonpost.com) 128

Earth had its first year-long, 1.5-degree rise in temperature. But does this mean we've already missed our goal of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degrees?

No, argues the Washington Post: There's actually some disagreement about what exactly counts as breaching that threshold — but scientists and policymakers agree that it has to be a multiyear average, not a single 12-month period. Scientists estimate that without dramatic emissions reductions, that will happen sometime in the 2030s. But there could be other single years or 12-month periods that cross the line before then.

Can we still avoid passing 1.5C?

Most scientists say passing 1.5C is inevitable. "The 1.5-degree limit is deader than a doornail," Columbia University climate scientist James Hansen said in a call with reporters late last year.... The Washington Post analyzed 1,200 modeled pathways for the world to shift to clean energy and found that only four of them showed the world hitting the 1.5C target without substantially overshooting or using speculative technology (like large-scale carbon capture) that doesn't yet exist. At this point, many experts believe that the economy is too stuck on fossil fuels to transition fast enough for 1.5 degrees.

Does that mean we'll pass catastrophic tipping points?

That's a more difficult question. Scientists don't know exactly when certain tipping points — like the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet or the release of greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost — will occur. It's very hard to predict and model these types of catastrophic changes. And 1.5C isn't a magic threshold; it's not as though as soon as we pass that number, Antarctic ice sheets will collapse and ocean circulations will grind to a halt. But one thing is certain: For every tenth of a degree of warming, tipping points are more likely. Two degrees is worse than 1.9 degrees, which is worse than 1.8 degrees, and so on.

And at each tenth of a degree, the infrastructure and systems that the world has built — electric grids, homes, livelihoods — will become more strained. Our modern world simply was not designed for temperatures this high. At some level, the final temperature of the planet isn't what matters most. It's where countries can actually get carbon emissions to zero — and stop contributing to future warming altogether.

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After 1.5-Degree Temperature Rise, What Happens Next?

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  • Obviously (Score:4, Funny)

    by penguinoid ( 724646 ) on Saturday February 10, 2024 @04:45PM (#64230642) Homepage Journal

    Next is +2.0 C

    • Re:Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday February 10, 2024 @04:51PM (#64230660)

      Next is +2.0 C

      That is unavoidable. Even if we cut CO2 emissions to zero tomorrow, the temperature would continue to climb due to the excess CO2 already in the atmosphere. The oceans add a lot of hysteresis (lag) to the process.

      1.5C was never a realistic goal and neither is 2.0C.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by penguinoid ( 724646 )

        I don't think we should install Climate 2.0c (unstable). It's got too many unwanted changes that break important dependencies. Whoever approved using the unstable version on a production system is an idiot.

        • You don't have to. 2OC is an automatic upgrade that will be installed by CO2 even without you having to do anything.

      • Re:Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday February 10, 2024 @05:22PM (#64230742) Homepage Journal

        Even if the oceans didn't, the CO2 that's out there is out there for a good long time. Half life for atmospheric CO2 is a complicated issue because of exchange with ocean, but *effectively* it's on the order of 300 years.

        This is rather like driving a car with no brakes. You step on the gas and it speeds up, but when it comes time to slow down it takes its own sweet time.

        • For me the scary thing is, we're basically feeling the effect of 1970s CO2 right now. The lag on CO2 reaching the part of the atmosphere where it can do the most albedo damage can be 30-50 years, and then hundreds of years to scale back down again.

          Our grandkids will have every right to detest us for what we are doing right now.

      • by Qwertie ( 797303 )

        This is incorrect. It's true that there is "committed warming", meaning that positive feedbacks caused by past warming will lead to future warming. However, this can be roughly balanced by an opposite effect: natural carbon sinks (especially the oceans) that reduce CO2 concentrations.

        As this article by Carbon Brief puts it: [carbonbrief.org]

        Much of the confusion around committed warming stems from mixing up two different concepts: a world where CO2 levels in the atmosphere remain at current levels; and a world where emiss

        • This is incorrect. It's true that there is "committed warming", meaning that positive feedbacks caused by past warming will lead to future warming. However, this can be roughly balanced by an opposite effect: natural carbon sinks (especially the oceans) that reduce CO2 concentrations.
          As this article by Carbon Brief puts it: [carbonbrief.org]

          Much of the confusion around committed warming stems from mixing up two different concepts: a world where CO2 levels in the atmosphere remain at current levels; and a world where emissions reach net-zero and concentrations begin to fall.

          If you actually looked at the graph in that article, it shows that with zero emissions the increased temperature stays increased. It does not drop toward zero.

          • If you actually looked at the graph in that article, it shows that with zero emissions the increased temperature stays increased. It does not drop toward zero.

            Zero does not matter. What we are happy with is what matters.

      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Indeed. Obviously there is a lot of money and effort from the greedy traitors to humanity that want to keep getting richer, and that money is going into creating all kinds of fantasies that say there is no problem or it is still well manageable and there is no need to stop burning fossiles. The actual reality is much, much darker. We decide now whether we will have a working high-tech civilization in the next few hundred years and in the next few decades we will decide whether humanity will be around or not

        • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

          by mrbax ( 445562 )

          Obviously there is a lot of money and effort from the greedy traitors to humanity that want to keep getting richer

          Troll.

          all kinds of fantasies that say there is no problem or it is still well manageable

          Except that it is. You simply fail to grasp the scale at play.

          there is no need to stop burning fossiles.

          Because there is not. Cheap energy saves more lives than climate change can ever endanger. More people die from cold than from heat. It is not even close.

          As for the sea-level rise? Millimetres

          • More people die from cold than from heat. It is not even close.

            Well, that depends entire on where you live. Here in Australia, many more people die from heat than cold, and that will only continue to get worse in the future.

            • by gweihir ( 88907 )

              It will. The cold-deaths will also raise. Because the really bad effect climate change has is that the climate gets a lot more variable. Hence where you could do nice agriculture before, you will then have both flooding and droughts. After a few years of that, nothing grows anymore.

              • by mrbax ( 445562 )

                It will. The cold-deaths will also raise. Because the really bad effect climate change has is that the climate gets a lot more variable.

                More unscientific neo-Malthusian garbage. Reality matters.

                The facts are that both observations and the (overheated) models agree: variability will decrease [yaleclimat...ctions.org].

                Hence where you could do nice agriculture before, you will then have both flooding and droughts. After a few years of that, nothing grows anymore.

                Chicken Little called. He wants his delusional hysteria back.

            • by mrbax ( 445562 )

              Here in Australia, many more people die from heat than cold, and that will only continue to get worse in the future.

              Actually, the cold kills 13 times as many Australians as the heat [healthyhomes.org.au].

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            all kinds of fantasies that say there is no problem or it is still well manageable

            Except that it is. You simply fail to grasp the scale at play.

            I see you are practicing your "Big Lie" skills. Unfortunately I do not believe in Hell, otherwise I would be sure they would find a nice, permanent place for you there.

            • by mrbax ( 445562 )

              I see you are practicing your "Big Lie" skills. Unfortunately I do not believe in Hell, otherwise I would be sure they would find a nice, permanent place for you there.

              Typical warmist climatista: can't win on the science, so stoops to weak ad hominem attacks (look it up).

              You lose [archive.org].

      • https://www.thenation.com/arti... [thenation.com]

        It just won't happen because people are incredibly selfish and would rather condemn their children to environmental misery than eat a bit less beef.

        • by brunes69 ( 86786 )

          Everyone could become vegan tomorrow and we would not reduce CO2 by any reasonable amount. The often cited calculations used by vegan lobbyists are full of holes and borderline nonsensical because they fail to account for the necessary increased CO2 emissions that would be required to farm the high-protein crops - many of which are pesticide and very water intensive - needed to replace livestock in order to feed the world.

          • by UpnAtom ( 551727 )

            Absolute drivel. Soy grows pretty easily and, whilst needing lots of water, needs 87% less than beef. Soy also *reduces* CO2 in the atmosphere, being a plant. Nor does it belch methane into the atmosphere.
            It's staggering how wrong you are.

            https://www.nytimes.com/2021/1... [nytimes.com]

            • This is exactly the kind of hand wavy stat I am talking about.

              Soy is not an anabolic protein (aka it has low bioavailability and can't readily build muscle). Which means you need to consume far more of it to feed your body properly.

              • by UpnAtom ( 551727 )

                Firstly, I'm going to remind you that you you were completely wrong on needing more water, by a factor of 7.
                I'd be staying quiet if I was that wrong.

                And that factor of 7 makes your claim irrelevant unless you have to eat 7x more soy. Which of course you don't.

                Your low bioavailability claim is of course more drivel. It's not like you're shitting out protein unless there's something seriously wrong with you.

                Soy powder is frequently used by body builders. It is believed to work about 85% as well as whey and

        • Commercial farming of plant protein sources requires huge amounts of water, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and mechanized labour. Meanwhile, pasture-raised cows require none of the above.

          Also, the number of cattle in US right now is 40ish million. Before Europeans came to USA, the population of bison there was estimated at 60 million. Please lie to me some more on how cattle is "unsustainable". At most, some farming practices need to be changed.
          • That is comparing adult cattle vs all of bison, when you include calves there are 89.3M cattle in the US. Also Cattle releases at least 50% more methane than Bison according to the studies I could find.
            • That is comparing adult cattle vs all of bison, when you include calves there are 89.3M cattle in the US.

              No, there is 40ish M of adult cattle, and 50ish M of calves. And you, making the disingenuous leap of logic in pretending that the environmental impact of a calf is anywhere near that of an adult cow so these numbers can be added up. Slash them in half (more actually), and then see what you get.

              Also Cattle releases at least 50% more methane than Bison according to the studies I could find.

              Geez, methane is a completely solvable problem. We know how to inhibit methanogenesis in ruminants quite cheaply, you just add the chemical to feed, just like you do with antibiotics now (which do need to stop, but t

              • by UpnAtom ( 551727 )

                Pretty sure your 60m bison figure doesn't refer to just adults.

                https://www.ozarkbisons.com/ab... [ozarkbisons.com]

                It's only recently been proven that a certain seaweed reduces emissions but only by half. I'd be more than happy to implement a tax on beef in a month that doesn't use such seaweed.

                • Pretty sure your 60m bison figure doesn't refer to just adults.

                  https://www.ozarkbisons.com/ab... [ozarkbisons.com]

                  It pretty much does. Guess what, bison in wilderness lives 20 years on average, and the age pyramid is pretty flat, unlike in farm animals. So, there's like 5% calves in that number? 10%, depending on what you consider a calf?

                  It's only recently been proven that a certain seaweed reduces emissions but only by half. I'd be more than happy to implement a tax on beef in a month that doesn't use such seaweed.

                  Ah yes, typical leftist meddling again. This methane is good, let's allow it, this is bad, let's tax cows, preferably to hell. Hey, I have a radical idea: let's implement tax on *methane*, regardless of whether it's my cow burping it, or your leaks from your "green" gas peaker plant, n

                  • by UpnAtom ( 551727 )

                    You think your unnecessary beef is somehow equivalent to biogas plants each of which saves tens of thousands of tons of CO2. That the biomaterial wouldn't release that methane anyway, which is itself a million times less than the beef farming.

                    The leaps of logic you make are pretty funny.

                    • LOL, yes, the methane we're burning to compensate for swings from "green" energy comes from biogas. Yeah, you're grasping at straws now and rather than admit defeat start arguing in bad faith. Guess I'm done with you.
                  • by UpnAtom ( 551727 )

                    Your 5-10% figures are plucked out of your arse too.

                    • I gave an argument for why they are realistic. Want to dismiss them, fine, but the ball is in your court, so where are the links?
              • wait, you wrote no to 89.3M and then wrote that it's 90M (40-50). I hope you understand that there is no meaningful distinction between those two numbers considerer how they are estimates?
                • No, my point was cattle != calves. Environmental impact of calves is much less than that of adult cattle and you can't just add up the numbers and pretend that's how much cattle is "destroying the environment".
                  • well that was not the part you quoted and then wrote no and just wrote basically the same number. Ofc calves emit less gasses and requires less resources, no one doubt that, neither did I combine them to "that's how much cattle is destroying the environment" it was just to equate the number of cattle vs bison where your numbers made it look like there are fewer cows now than there where bison in total before.

                    Which also is false logic because there are more differences between now and then than just the amou

                    • well that was not the part you quoted and then wrote no and just wrote basically the same number

                      You: There's 90M cattle. Me: No, there's 40M cattle, and 50M calves, and that's different because calves don't have the same environmental impact.

                      Yes, I totally just "wrote no and quoted the same number".

          • by UpnAtom ( 551727 )

            Complete drivel again.

            One of the main uses for soy is animal feed. It's often literally the same stuff that the cow needs 10x as much of to produce a similarly sized burger.

            https://www.nytimes.com/2021/1... [nytimes.com]

            The other difference between now and when your lot genocided the natives is that we're pumping out 35 trillion more tons of CO2.

            https://ourworldindata.org/co2... [ourworldindata.org]

            So yeah we can stop doing that (which eliminates most heating and electricity), or we can cut down on beef.

      • It is true that we're unlikely to not stay below 2 C. But at the same time that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop trying to reduce CO2. Every little bit of CO2 we produce makes the long term situation worse. We cannot look at some number and say that because we are going past that number that we should give up.
      • 1.5C was never a realistic goal and neither is 2.0C.

        We are also not all going to die young and there will still probably be 10 billion or more of us at some point.

        Just sayin.

      • Next is +2.0 C

        That is unavoidable. Even if we cut CO2 emissions to zero tomorrow, the temperature would continue to climb due to the excess CO2 already in the atmosphere. The oceans add a lot of hysteresis (lag) to the process.

        1.5C was never a realistic goal and neither is 2.0C.

        The percentage of CO2 in the air is 0.04% of the air. Yes 0.04% All greens need CO2. Let's stop with the propaganda already.

        • The percentage of CO2 in the air is 0.04% of the air. Yes 0.04%

          All greens need CO2. Let's stop with the propaganda already.

          Yeah, that's the point. CO2 is very effective at preventing infra red radiation (heat) from leaving the planet into space. And the CO2 in the atmosphere has gone up by what, 30% since the industrial revolution?

          Significant figures matter.

    • Next is +2.0 C

      But . . . what happens after that?

    • We need at least 2 data points for the "a" in "ax+b" trend. ðY

  • Who should be lit up for the benefit of the world?

    • Pragmatically speaking the people who consume the highest per capita.

      • Damn, tough luck, Palau.

        The top 15 CO2 polluters per capita [wikipedia.org] as of 2022: Palau, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Trinidad and Tobago, Brunei, Gibraltar, New Caledonia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Australia, United States, Russia.

        • Re:Nuclear Winter. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by penguinoid ( 724646 ) on Saturday February 10, 2024 @05:40PM (#64230776) Homepage Journal

          With a GDP of 0.3 billion, the entire nation of Palau is probably responsible for less emissions than Jeff Bezos.

          • Maybe you missed the âoeper capitaâ qualifier. Palau IS the correct answer given the grandparent post. That was the point of the parent post: to show that it was a stupid add on. He should have said the country that pollutes the most and left off per capita.
            • Dunno, pretty sure Palau is not a person, OP said "the people" not "the nation". And as someone else mentioned, the people responsible for Palau's emissions seem to be largely the tourists (Palau is credited with the emissions from the fuel they sold to aircraft landing there). Those tourists would probably just fly to a different vacation island.

              • It is a pleonasm to talk about a person's per capita emissions, so naturally anyone talking about "per capita" means some group of people, and in this context that's usually nation states.

        • Palau has high CO2 emissions for two reasons:

          1. Electricity is generated by inefficient diesel generators.

          2. They are a major tourist destination and are credited with the carbon emissions of all departing planes.

          Trivia: Palau was the location of the Battle of Peleliu [wikipedia.org], the second stupidest battle America fought in WW2. It was a pointless and unnecessary waste of lives.

          The number one stupidest battle was, of course, Operation Cottage [wikipedia.org], fought between Americans and Canadians, who each thought the other were Ja

        • Don't see anything on this list that would make me go "oh no".

          Approval granted, fire those missiles!

      • Who knows, maybe the USA will descend into civil war & nuke itself?
    • Re:Nuclear Winter. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday February 10, 2024 @08:23PM (#64231072)

      That does not work. Anything changing too much either way wipes out food production and thereby civilization.

      • We still have the meteor or 'falling star' that is supposed to hit the earth and take out a third of the land of the planet and turn a third of the waters to wormwood. That will probably fix our little temperature fluctuations.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Radiation, trade winds, get a science degree so you can prevent foot-in-mouth disease.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Your mom gets even hotter!

  • > Can we still avoid passing 1.5C? What? You just said in the first sentence that we've already passed: "Earth had its first year-long, 1.5-degree rise in temperature."
    • by mabinogi ( 74033 )

      If you're having difficulty understanding, you could possibly try the rather unconventional approach of reading the second sentence too.

      Maybe even all of the sentences....

  • by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Saturday February 10, 2024 @05:30PM (#64230758)

    With the ambient temperature increase my swimming pool will be warmer. As a result I can use my 225,000 BTU gas pool heater less, which means I will spend less and emit less CO2. So this is a good for my wallet and the environment. Winning!

  • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday February 10, 2024 @05:56PM (#64230808) Homepage Journal

    They're different questions.

    Back in the 1990s what we *should* have done is look for low hanging fruit -- carbon and methane emissions that weren't accomplishing that much -- seriously mandating higher efficiency.
      We should have been subsidizing a lot more research and development in non-carbon emitting energy, at least doubling the rate of adopting renewables, investing in grid upgrades and storage projects, and adding more nuclear to get us over the hump.

    What we did initially was nothing, although later we had very small programs that would be politically popular but relatively cheap, like tax rebates for homeowners who insulate their houses.

    Assuming that what went before as guide, what happens now is that these cheap but small programs will grow somewhat while we argue about whether we should do more. Eventually we will as a society be paying to adapt to change, but initially the focus will be on shifting the cost away from politically influential groups (e.g. rebuilding waterfront houses after floods, relief for some farmers), and *eventually* we'll all be paying for engineering megaprojects like building tide gates around New York City and such.

    Think of this as a transition from to the age of a pound of cure. Unlike the ounce of prevention, we're not really going to have the choice to ignore the problem, but we'll put it off as long as possible. Fortunately America is quite rich and we'll adapt, even though it will cost us a fortune. Things will get really shitty for places like Bengaldesh or Tuvalu, who can't afford a pound of cure. Americans will actually be finding employment in massive public works projects and new government climate mitigation agencies, but the Tuvaluans will just disappear.

    What we should be doing is finally getting serious about eliminating CO2 and methane emissions. It won't stop what's coming, but it will slow it down enough we'll be able to afford to pay for it. We should also be seriously planning to adapt to the change we can no longer avert.

    • What is next? Apparently Gulf Stream Collapse [theguardian.com] and winters in England getting a bit frostier

      What could we have done? We _could_ have promoted nuclear power as a national defense initiative, used some defense intelligence to demonstrate that the greenpeace (etc) movement against nuclear power was paid for by the fossil fuel industries and avoided burning coal and gas for the past 60 years as we made a full transition to nuclear and then started implementing a new power grid that can move renewable energy arou

      • What is next? Apparently Gulf Stream Collapse [theguardian.com] and winters in England getting a bit frostier

        What could we have done? We _could_ have promoted nuclear power as a national defense initiative, used some defense intelligence to demonstrate that the greenpeace (etc) movement against nuclear power was paid for by the fossil fuel industries

        No, actually russkies, with their german partners in crime. They know that PV + windmills requires either gas peakers, or some fairy dust cheap and scalable battery technology implemented in a scale that'll never happen in 50 years and in the meantime is just a fig leaf excuse on how "we're going green just not there yet". And the plan was to get Europe completely dependent on their gas (through Nord Stream to Germany, which the Germans would be oh so perfectly willing to resell to others, at "perfectly rea

    • The best time to plant a shade tree was 50 years ago. The second best time is now.

      That said, when I think of the literal multiple trillions of dollars the Bushies poured out into a black hole in the desert in the name digging up more oil to burn, it makes my blood boil. Can you imagine if instead President Gore had been given a blank 13 figure check to spend on a Green Manhattan Project instead because "the terrorists attacked us because of our presence in the middle east. It's time to end that, permanen
    • Uh-huh. Leftist propaganda: Tuvalu underwater! Giant tsunami waves rushing inland to swallow all! Sharks with frickin lasers riding the waves! FEAR DEATH BY WATER!!!

      Actual, real, you know, reality: they will have to build some fucking dykes. That's all. Like the Dutch have been doing since the Middle Ages, else half of their country would be under water now. "Engineering megaprojects" my ass, that some feudal landlord with couple of peasants armed with shovels managed. Yes, kinda sucks for the tropical be
  • by Qwertie ( 797303 ) on Saturday February 10, 2024 @07:06PM (#64230944) Homepage

    Hopefully everybody can finally get behind an "all of the above" energy strategy now, starring not just the usual Chinese solar panels and Chinese/EU wind turbines, but also North American Enhanced Geothermal Systems, French nuclear plants, UK/US/Canadian Molten Salt Reactors and... say, did you ever notice we do emissions targets all wrong?

    The goal should be to reduce emissions globally, not just in our own country. From that perspective, who is the global leader in reducing emissions? China produces more than twice the carbon emissions of the United States (though China produces less per capita), but let me ask you a question: why are we building so many solar farms now? Because of subsidies? They're affordable without subsidies now! Many countries have been building without subsidies for years now! But who made them affordable? China! So after you after you consider China's contribution to actually solving the global warming problem, aren't they doing pretty well actually? (And sure, those old subsidies that were originally needed to afford solar panels helped pay for factories producing cheap panels on a huge scale. Even so, a lot of voters would prefer money be spent on local factories over Chinese ones.)

    And the funny thing is, looking at it this way is way easier politically, yet Greens don't do it. I remember seeing The Green Party of Canada's platform and something like 80% of their climate change plan was about punishing and then banning fossil fuels, with no mention at all of nuclear or enhanced geothermal, let alone manufacturing anything in Canada. So how popular is the Green Party in the oil-rich prairie provinces? Well, they got 2.3% of the vote nationwide.

    Imagine if instead their strategy were manufacturing and exporting clean Enhanced Geothermal technology or Small Modular Reactors. Wouldn't people actually vote for "retraining of oil workers for geothermal drilling! wind power jobs! nuclear power jobs! heat pump manufacturing jobs!"? Just a thought. (as for solar jobs, Canada needs much more energy in the wintertime, and are you familiar with that white, cold stuff that falls on top of solar panels from the sunless February sky?)

    Regulations and NIMBYs have been a big problem too. As the CEO of Fervo Geothermal noted [youtube.com], "we don't get the same tax credits as the... other renewable industries get"... "on the permitting side, the energy act of 2005 put in...for oil and gas drilling on federal lands...more streamlined development...but that policy did not extend to geothermal, so geothermal has to go through a much longer and much more intensive permitting process than oil and gas wells do." Luckily "The inflation reduction act...for the most part...we've finally be put on a level playing field...from a tax credit standpoint." Okay, but what about geothermal permitting? And oh God all the horror stories I've heard about nuclear power regulations, not to mention NIMBYs...

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MacMann ( 7518492 )

      why are we building so many solar farms now? Because of subsidies? They're affordable without subsidies now!

      I'm especially frustrated about subsidies as an energy solution because subsidies do not subtract from the cost, only add.

      If solar power costs more than some competing energy source then it might look to the buyer that a subsidy is saving money. It might save money for that individual but as a cost to the economy/society it only adds. If energy from X costs $10, gets a $5 subsidy to look on some balance sheet as $5 then it is still $10 lost from the economy. If energy Y costs $7, and there's no subsidy,

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      Affordable without subsidies? Really?

      A gas fired commercial plant has to commit to production. If it can not, it has to buy electricity on the spot market or pay fines. Which solar installations do that? A regular power company has to maintain the lines and build out new ones. How many repair crews do the solar farms pay for?

      I'll believe it when the wind and solar installations have to play by the same rules as the conventional plants.

    • This post is on-point, but what it really does is illustrate why, instead of puppetmastering the economy by handing out subsidies, tariffs, and incentives, we should just tax the emissions and let the market allocate resources accordingly.

      Incentives will always be gamed. And incentives working depends on the bureaucrats choosing the right incentives and policies to actually reduce emissions, which they aren't smart enough to do because they are never smarter than the people gaming the incentives.

      Just Tax Em
  • If these climatologists know what they're doing - presumably they can accurately model the climate and predict what it's going to do, as they claim? - this is all just marketing bullshit.

    It's all just a massive publicity stunt, done intentionally due to knowledge that, yes, the climate would warm over this period due to known factors.

    It's all quite disingenuous, and really doesn't speak to their honesty or trustworthiness.

  • https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]

    Melting Greenland etcs ice so fast will likely cause an ice age and the scientists say the climate could flip fast. "The Day After Tomorrow" may not have been so inaccurate after all.

    • https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]

      Melting Greenland etcs ice so fast will likely cause an ice age and the scientists say the climate could flip fast. "The Day After Tomorrow" may not have been so inaccurate after all.

      The article you linked doesn't mention "ice age" - I know that because I did a text search on the page. It DOES mention that "The southern hemisphere would become warmer. Europe would cool dramatically and have less rainfall". Ice Age? I don't think so.

  • ...the sun will come out tomorrow.

    No matter what imaginary lines in the sand we draw, life will go on, mostly the same way it did yesterday.

    Now, could the world end exactly the way the alarmists have predicted, with fires, floods, hurricanes and MAGA running loose on the streets. But until the world does end, they will always believe that the end is near.

    It seems to be a human trait shared across time and space.

  • by ishmaelflood ( 643277 ) on Sunday February 11, 2024 @01:07AM (#64231326)

    Record cereal production, record lack of poverty, reductions in cold weather deaths will outweigh increase in heat related deaths, perhaps the trend in low hurricane landfalls and low tornado activity will continue. The sea will continue to rise at 1/8" per year. The Earth will get greener. OK, this is all assuming linear trends based on the last 40 years. Catastrophising by going to non linear makes for good science fiction and bad policy.

    • by euxneks ( 516538 )

      reductions in cold weather deaths will outweigh increase in heat related deaths

      You do realize that more people live in the hot areas of earth than the cold areas?

  • We'll continue to ignore it, temperatures will rise more and at some point human life will cease to be possible. Then a couple million years will pass and maybe another species will develop sentience. Let's hope that they somehow manage to puzzle together how we finished ourselves off and avoid a similar fate.

    In other words, nothing. Just do nothing. We're fucked. There's nothing you can actually do, and nobody that could gives a fuck.

  • We should really start aiming at +10 C! Waterworld, here we come!
  • Ok guys 1.5C and nothing happened but wait until 2! This time we promise it will be catastrophic.
    • First of all that is not what was claimed, the claim was that if we reach 1.5 then things will be set in motion that we will not have a chance of mitigating. Further lots of shit have happened, that your AC controlled basement remains the same all year round doesn't count.
      • First of all that is not what was claimed, the claim was that if we reach 1.5 then things will be set in motion that we will not have a chance of mitigating. Further lots of shit have happened, that your AC controlled basement remains the same all year round doesn't count.

        No, I gotta admit, GP was wrong, the goal posts have not moved one inch. 30 years ago we were "just 10 years from point of no return, extinction, apocalypse", and the greens have not shifted that opinion, we're still 10 years away. So, gotta admit, I admire their conviction and immovable opinions.

  • What happens next? A lot of hand-wringing, and then nothing much.

  • FFS. The tipping point could bloody well be an average 1e-14 degrees more than 1.6 over [insert arbitrary period of time]. Why can't these people just say, "We don't really know. We were pulling the first number out of thin air - as an aspirational goal and a rough guess at a safe figure. It was not a scientifically significant figure. We won't pull another one out because the first didn't work, and we're now very sure we're in unsafe territory." What's more, I'm sure the scientists actually said that in le

  • If you put a pot of water on the stove and turn on a medium heat, it doesn't immediately begin boiling. But enough heat is being added to the system that it *will* boil at some point.

    Right now, we pass enough carbon in the system that about +1.8C to +1.9C is already inevitable and we pass the +2C amount of carbon by the end of 2026.

    And at our current rate*, we will pass enough carbon for +3C by 2050 even tho it might take til 2065 for the heat to rise to that new equilibrium point.

    * We are at about +41 to

"Why can't we ever attempt to solve a problem in this country without having a 'War' on it?" -- Rich Thomson, talk.politics.misc

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