A decade ago, It was predicted that we would hit 1.5°C between 2050-2060, and even as recently as 2 years ago the prediction had moved forward to between 2030-2040.
The next decade or two are going to be very… interestingThe IPCC calculations were always criticized for being overly optimistic. Anyone following this debate knew that we would hit 1.5 C sooner rather than later.
We are definitely going to hit 3 degrees in our lifetime, once the melting tundras release their methane store.
Melting tundra releases methane, accelerating the increase in temperature. Rising temperature reduces polar ice, making oceans absorb more heat, accelerating heating. Climate pattern changes cause more frequent and larger wildfires, accelerating heating.
There are probably processes that work to reduce heating as it increases that I’m not aware of, but there are a lot of positive feedback processes which is concerning.
I believe the IPCC 1.5C was criticized because it included effects of a carbon sequestering process that hasn’t been invented yet. That’s pretty optimistic.
There are probably processes that work to reduce heating as it increases
Nuclear war, for one. In a more naturalistic vein, asteroid strike or massive volcanic eruptions. People worried about climate change just refuse to look on the bright side.
Which is why I support the idea of setting up bases on the Moon and/or Mars.
Everything is accelerating, and nobody gives a fuck to do anything before it’s too late. I hate the argument that NASA doesn’t push its budget to prevent CC or even Space X. Because stopping CC is a global effort on a colossal scale. It’s not going to work until it’s too late. Might as well get off this rock.
Edit: Very fucking optimistic of you all
Again, I’m not going to read that. It will just make me sad and angry a d nothing will change.
Politicians don’t give a shit, even of they’d understand what is going on, they’re mostly too dumb…
Things are going to get a LOT worse and nobody seems to understand that there is no quick fix here. “Yeah but CO2 scrubbers can…” no they cannot. Building those generates tonnes of CO2, then run ing them effectively generates CO2 as well. Think about it. Even if you put them on a solar grid (which too will initially cost CO2, not hugely important but just to keep in mind), the electricity that that grid generates to pull 100 tonnes of CO2 out of the air will NOT be available to other systems which will generate 150 tonnes of CO2 for their electricity.
Untill ALL electricity is solar, wind or nuclear, it literally is just throwing away energy. It’s actually more efficient to just connect those solar cells for your CO2 scrubbers to the electrical grid. You won’t pull 100 out, but now at least somewhere else won’t put in 150 into the system.
And even if they work. Do you have any idea how much CO2 we currently generate, and worse, how much we have generated that is in the atmosphere that we need to pull out for things to get better?
The current state of CO2 scrubbers is close to carrying water out of the ocean with buckets.
You wanna pull the extra CO2 out of the air? We’ve been adding extra on an industrial scale for near 2 centuries. RHAT amount of CO2 is what we need to pull out to get back to what it should be.
You always have losses with conversions, but taking that the earth has beeb pulling more CO2 you can more or less say that getting all the extra CO2 out of the atmosphere will take at least the same amount of energy that we’ve been generating with burning fossil fuels for the past 2 centuries. Think about it, were talking spending energy to pull air through a system, spending energy to filter the CO2, spending energy to store it, spending the same amount of energy we got from bur ing fuels to split the c from the O2 (same process in reverse), then spend energy to process and store all that carbon. Mayke Plastics out of it, maybe? Storing co2 is a problem as the amounts are astronomical. Where do youbstire cubic kilometers of CO2 , every year? If it escapes your back to square one.
Yes, that is a shit load of energy that we can’t produce all at once. For the next decades we’ll have to dedicate 25-50% of our energy output to cleanit the atmosphere, there is no way around that, there are no free lunches here.
Electrical cars are NOT the solution. For a small part, maybe, but mostly not. Electrical cars require roughly the same amiunt of energy as a gas car, that still needs to be generated. We need to use less energy. Wasting tonnes on energy on transporting 2 tonnes just to move a 70kgs person for a few kms is just insane. Use bikes. Walk. Use public transportation.
You wanna solve the climate change crisis?
- make sure all central electrical power generation is solar /wind /water /nuclear within 10 years. Until we are at that point, the rest doesn’t even matter.
1a) in parallel, start redesigning all our cities to become walkable. This doesn’t mean the conspiracy bullshit that American criminally lying politicians are saying, this means that stored and stuff we want is close by. Cities will be primarily for people, not cars. You can walk to stores because they’re close by. You can use bicycles to go everywhere we want. Public transportation can take care of the rest and with that we can get rid of 90+% of cars. Not because it’s forbidden, hit because we’ll designed cities don’t NEED cars.
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There are loads of things that can’t go electrical, like airplanes. Reminds me: BUILD TRAINS. FFS America get your shit together and start building good railroads. Then you can get rid of half your airplane flights. Most flights are short enough that a high speed train is faster than flying anyway. The longer flights s yous still need cannot go electrical. You’ll need to build and run scrubbers spending the same amount of energy as those airplanes (and other systems that can’t go electrical) just to make sure their CO2 doesn’t add to the problem.
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increase our energy capacity by a factor of two. We need to generate twice the amount of energy (all green) so that 50% can go to scrubbing our atmosphere for the next, say, century.
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think about how to store all the captured CO2 or convert it to plastics or something.(double the energy required)
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get ready to pay 2-3 times more for our energy. We’ve been the party generation who have enjoyed cheap energy from burning crap. The next 3-4 generations at least will be paying the bill, that is if they get to live to do so.
THIS IS IMPORTANT, I CANNOT CLARIFY THIS ENOUGH:
None of us will see this problem solved. Even if we actually seriously start working on fixing this shit today, we will be long dead and gone before this is done. THERE IS NO QUICK FIX. It took centuries to get here, it will take at least a century to get back where we started
Anyone claiming that this is easy to solve, sorry, is lying.
This is the biggest threat mankind has faced and people somehow just don’t give a shit and it is fucking depressing