119
Government told to prepare for 2C warming by 2050
(www.bbc.co.uk)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2025
119 points (100.0% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
7470 readers
250 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Coal use is still growing.
The IEA says "Global coal demand grew by 1.2% in 2024 in energy terms, rising by around 67 million tonnes of coal equivalent (Mtce) (or in physical terms by 1.4% or 123 million tonnes). "
India is up 5% itself which is more than enough to offset European and North American reductions. President Poopy Pants is cancelling renewables and begging for coal to come back.
"China remains the dominant player in global coal markets, consuming roughly 30% more coal than the rest of the world combined. Its power sector alone accounts for one-third of global coal consumption, underscoring China’s central role in shaping the trajectory of global coal demand."
I see lots of articles about China being a green leader in renewables, but fossil fuel use is still growing.
I’m not arguing that coal use isn’t growing. Rather, I’m saying that the assumptions researchers made when making the RCPs, about the availability of coal and the rate at which its use would increase, do not line up with what actually happened. As well, the price of renewables has dropped faster than was previously expected. So I’m just saying we shouldn’t base our understanding of where we are and where we’re headed on outdated and flawed models.
This article is a few years old, but it gets into the weeds about RCP 8.5, if you’re interested: https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-the-high-emissions-rcp8-5-global-warming-scenario/
Good post. But it's a little nerve racking when it says "Global coal use is down from it's peak in 2014", but also this..
A bit of rose coloured glasses.
But I conceed the point, RCP 6.5 is the more likely candidate. I don't feel any better about it.
Yeah, it can get messy, depending on which data source you’re looking at, or if one article pulls from multiple different data sources. But I agree, any increase in coal use is a bad thing, and certainly no one should be building new coal plants, and we should be retiring existing coal plants ahead of schedule.
Seeing the recent news that renewables has overtaken coal for global energy supply makes me happy, but there’s still so much work that needs to be done.