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submitted 1 year ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net

The study is this one

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[-] zcd@lemmy.ca 74 points 1 year ago

The assholes causing it happen to own all the media outlets, and will be the last to die from it

[-] Neato@kbin.social 39 points 1 year ago

Because the solution is not something we can throw money at and expect a fast cure. Even cancer has the hope of a treatment that works in months to years. Climate change requires changing nearly everything about how we generate energy and requires us to find novel ways to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. This latter bit can have money thrown at it, but without the former it's pointless. It'd be a cancer treatment while the patient huffs burning asbestos.

The difficulty in treating coupled with the fact that climate change is a slow process that wreaks havoc over years to decades means the short-term-focused economies and markets largely try to adapt to long-term changes instead of solving the issues. When you're only concerned with a few fiscal quarters at a time, why would you think on the scale of decades?

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 23 points 1 year ago

About 70% of new electric generation is non-emitting already. It's actually not that big a change to go to 100%

So yes, we can do it on a scale of decades

[-] Razzazzika@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago

Should have started it on the scale of decades 40 years ago when scientists were saying we had 40 years to fix it. Too late now, we're in the beginning of the apocalypse.

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 28 points 1 year ago

We're at a point where it's too late to avoid all impact, but we've got a very real choice about exactly how much impact we do see. There's a big difference between 1.5°C and 2°C and more.

[-] vivadanang@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago

1.5c by 2030s? lol, we'll have 1.6c in the next couple of years. it's bonkers. literally.

[-] makyo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yes, didn't I just read that we hit 1.5C already this year?

[-] EnmaAi22@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Only for parts of the year.

We will officially hit 1.5c once the average temperature of that year is 1.5 degrees hotter than pre industrial baseline

Thanks. Please propagatw this fact more.

I hear and read it too often that people are falling into devastation mode and say, back up, we lost, its over.

However its a difference in being "over" which is 2.5 - 4.5 degrees or above.

[-] interolivary@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As @vivadanang@lemm.ee pointed out, it's extremely likely we're going to be at 1.5°C in just a few years. Even if we went carbon negative literally right at this instant, we'd likely still fly past 2.5°C in the relatively near future (well, depending on which research you believe re. how fast carbon neutralaity / negativity would affect temperature change.)

This isn't to say that we shouldn't do anything, but I think we really need to start putting more resources and thought into survival instead of just blindly hoping that mitigation will save us (and it's not exactly looking great on the mitigation front).

I'll be surprised if mass-scale industrial society is still around in 100 years and we're more or less fucked, but we'll be even more fucked if we don't start thinking more about how we're going to deal with the inevitable.

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[-] makyo@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

There was this moment after 9/11 when Tom Daschle proposed a 'Manhattan Project for Green Energy' to get us off foreign energy and help avoid climate change. Imagine if Al Gore had been president at the time, what might have happened. This was 20 years ago! But instead we (extremely questionably) got W. Bush and endless wars and 'drill baby drill'. Such a knife's edge for history and we came off the wrong side of it...

[-] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 12 points 1 year ago

and electricity only makes up 28% of ghg emissions globally.

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 14 points 1 year ago

We're also seeing a big shift to heat pumps for space heating, electrification of transport, and even the beginnings of steel reduced by using hydrogen made with electrolysis instead of using coal. So a lot of things are happening, but not yet on the scale and pace we need.

[-] HerrBeter@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

The elephant in the room still exists, all the added CO2. I applaud change, and fast moving even more, but it needs to be faster

[-] Vegoon@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago

Not only CO2 but also Methan. It is 84 times more harmful in the first 20 years. But it is degrading on its own with a half-live of 7-12 years in the atmosphere. Methan makes up 20 to 30% of the human made GHG. Change to a plant based diet can reduce the emissions by 40%.

It is one of the few things we can change on our own very fast and does not need additional technological solutions to have a big impact.

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[-] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago

Why isn't this the top news story around the world?

Because that would require looking up.

[-] matlag@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 year ago

Because the overrich and the elected politicians they fund are clueless enough to think they'll survive this and tackling the change would impact the economy that keeps them overrich. Since that group pretty much control the media, this doesn't make the news.

Even better: they're getting more and more agressive with climate activists.

[-] NegativeLookBehind@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago

There’s still money to be made by exploiting nature!

[-] z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Too many of our modern conveniences rely on fossil fuels or fossil fuel derivatives for us to even make a dent against climate change without reverting back to a pre industrial revolution era. You should read Fossil Capital by Andreas Malm on how the fossil fuel industry is intrinsically linked to the history of capitalism.

The prevalence of petroleum derived fertilizers and pesticides that are essential to grow the large amount of the worldwide animal and plant food supplies and also products are one of the reasons I don't think we can feasibly solve this problem without causing mass famine and war (itself a massive contributor to the climate crisis).

One has only to look at how reliant we are on fossil fuels in fertilizers alone to see that the goal of cutting carbon emissions in any meaningful way is highly likely to be insurmountable without also incurring mass death due to famine.

Many people who are conscientious about their own personal practices and how they relate to the environment still don't understand the scope of the problem imho. The smart phone or computer you and I are utilizing to communicate right now, the server it is being run on, think carefully about it.

Sure, all could be powered by solar, wind, or some other renewable energy source, but what about the CO² emitted in the manufacturing process? The cities where the factories are located which produce these computer parts and other engineering marvels are some of the most polluted places on Earth, and the process by which they are created requires fossil fuel to be possible, and indeed, the production of these devices accounts for emitting more CO² than the energy it will use during its lifetime.

What alternative packaging solutions do you have for the massive and powerful beverage industry where the convenience of disposability is a deal breaking feature that the lobbyists representing said industry will fight to have it never addressed meaningfully by governmental bodies?

How do you convince people not only to insist on veganism, but also on organics AND most important to every aspect of our modern capitalist lifestyles, turn a profit from it?

My simple answer is you can't. Environmentalism isn't compatible with modern day capitalism, and I'd argue isn't compatible with modern life. These technologies have simultaneously trapped and freed people in different ways, but tech has made it so our lives are no longer solely determined by a might makes right life, and rather has more to do with utilizing said technologies to concentrate power in the hands of those that solely wish to keep the status quo going for just the next 3 months (quarterly income reports to stock holders).

By eliminating the technological boons that fossil fuels have made possible, it is likely that the expansion of human rights, that only came into conversation after new technologies made it possible to not solely rely on the strongest and most powerful among us, will recede.

Either we solve climate change, and after suffering mass deaths from famine due to the lack of fossil fuel dependant crops, and then go back to a preindustrial era lifestyle, with all the societal implications that entails (the subjugation of women, minorities, and the disenfranchised, as well as the return of blatant human slavery).

Or we don't, and honestly probably end up in a more nightmarish situation. The mass deaths in this alternative scenario won't be from famine, but from war, and those wars (powered by fossil fuel) will cause the effects of climate change to last longer and possibly that will send us into runaway climate change, in which case we won't survive at all.

I know which nightmare I'd prefer, and which nightmare is likely to happen, but either way, we're not in for a good time.

Get ready for the greatest tragedy mankind has ever bore witness to. Drink plenty of water, cuz at best you'll be dehydrated from all the tears.

So why isn't the media covering this all day every day? Cuz they secretly know it's probably not solvable, that pointing this out would likely tank their ratings, and ultimately we're all just partying at the end of the world. Not to mention making money is easier than cleaning up this inherited mess.

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The US just kicked billions into the manufacture of hydrogen via electrolysis, which works just fine off renewably-generated electricity. Hydrogen is the key ingredient in nitrate fertilizers that has been coming from fossil fuels, so we will have a path off of them for fertilizers.

Fossil fuels aren't necessary, they're just how people did things the first time. This means we can get off them as part of a managed transition and keep on feeding everybody.

[-] z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Great article with a nuanced and well researched take. I abandoned my hope in a grave a long time ago, but perhaps when I see these changes actually happening within my lifetime it'll rise again like Jesus or Frankenstein.

[-] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 1 year ago

this honestly feels like oil industry astroturfing, what does this comment accomplish other than make people complacent and give up? How does this in any way further the fight against fossil fuels?

[-] z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Totally up voting this. Personally I watch my plastic consumption, l was vegan for 4 years and refused to travel by anything other than bicycle in one of the most bicycle unfriendly cities in the world for 8 years before I gave up the ghost and fell into despair when it came fo the climate.

My take on it is doing something about the environment these days is more like having props for the afterlife, where you can say, "Hey, I tried." But make no mistake about it, this is the end, but choosing to do something about the environment is choosing to go out fighting, and I'm all for that.

At the same time, I'm not gonna blame people for giving up either. It's hard not to when you know it's now and inevitable. And I refuse to throw shade at people who have fallen into despair and don't provide helpful rhetoric. Sometimes people just need to express their despair publicly. It doesn't help the cause, and therefore it doesn't help SOME people who want to keep up the good fight. But I'm done looking for solutions, I just want to grieve.

To be clear though, I don't shill for big oil. They couldn't pay me enough to endorse a mass murder to the point of extinction.

[-] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

To be clear though, I don't shill for big oil.

Be careful you don't end up doing it by accident. When climate change denial stopped being effective, they switched to "Oops, looks like it was real all along but we've fucked it now anyway so go buy a truck".

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[-] tomi000@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

How about this crazy idea: We keep essential emissions like fertilizers and still reduce overall emissions by 95% by mildly inconveniencing most people.

Nah thats crazy, if we cant get to zero, why even bother? Doesnt matter if earth heats up by 1° or 5°, right?

[-] z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Do what you can. I'd say definitely do that. But 95% is waaaay too generous a number.

[-] SirStumps@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I appreciate your passion and the energy you put into this. We will soon feel the great equalizer that nature has for us and it was honestly inevitable. Once the human population goes down to a reasonable number the planet will have a chance to heal and it can start all over again. It will be the greatest tragedy of our time. Currently out consumption and the population are unsustainable. Even if we were to fully correct or pollution today we wouldn't see the effect for a hundred years or more.

[-] z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not if the latter nightmare scenario occurs. Runaway climate change will ensure the extinction of humanity outright.

Runaway global climate change is not reversible by any amount of human action. Once a certain rise in global temperatures occurs, pockets of previously trapped methane gases in the ocean will be released into the atmosphere, heating the climate even more. The oceans themselves will then proceed to acidify, killing the necessary diatomes that produce the majority of O² on Earth that is necessary for the survival of most life on Earth.

100% chance of human extinction event. You better hope evolution repeats itself for humanity to get another chance at this.

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[-] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 year ago

If everyone accepts that the world is ending, economies everywhere will collapse. So they keep us as distracted as possible to ensure their private jets can continue to fly.

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The thing is...it doesn't have to end. Leave the remaining fossil fuels in the ground, end deforestation, stop raising huge herds of ruminants and end use of a few really nasty trace gases, and temperatures will stabilize.

Do it before things get really bad, and we end up with a decent life for a lot of people.

[-] krashmo@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

For the sake of discussion let's assume that's all true. Do you have any reason to believe that even one part of the solution you outlined will be implemented in anything resembling a timely fashion?

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The trace gases for sure; the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol has been ratified by the key countries which manufactured them, and their use in new equipment ended about a year ago.

Fossil fuel use phase-out is getting started. It very roughly looks like this:

  • Generate electricity without using fossil fuels
  • Electrify everything we can
  • Stop doing the things we can't

It's unclear if fossil fuel phase-out will happen at a pace fast enough to limit the warming to 2°C above what it was in the late 1800s.

Deforestation is proceeding at a slower pace in some parts of the world due to local political change. Not everywhere though, and there's a lot of work still.

Cutting the ruminant herd...not even started yet.

What I do know is that every person out there has the power to put their thumb on the scale of politics and policy and industry just a tiny bit to make it happen. And it's worth trying.

[-] krashmo@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

It's definitely worth trying. The issue I see is simply that not enough people believe that to be true. I don't think that's going to change either. The people who aren't concerned now aren't going to change their tune until the 11th hour and even then the attitude will shift from "it's not happening" to "it's too late to fix now".

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 11 points 1 year ago

Only thing you can do there is to encourage the people around you and show them what trying is like

[-] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago

The people around you can't make a dent in this crisis. The ones that need convincing are the CEO's of the most greedy companies in the world.

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[-] soulfirethewolf@lemdro.id 13 points 1 year ago

Probably because most people already know this by now.

[-] callouscomic@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

Most people also know fighting in the middle east will continue forever, yet that's being covered incredibly.

[-] LogarithmicCamel@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

Because none of these articles explain to the reader what exactly they should do to minimise this problem and how much exactly they stand to gain and lose from doing it. People are only interested in obtaining useful (aka actionable) information.

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 10 points 1 year ago

Pick one of these:

Make implementing it how you earn a living.

Actively support politicians who will push for additional decarbonization with both volunteer time and money.

Get involved with a local in-person activist group

[-] LogarithmicCamel@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Already do many of those. World is still heating up. Somehow I don't think I can cool it with my recycling bin, the petitions that I signed and the votes that I cast. That's the problem.

[-] skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 year ago

Also, because the majority of humans on this planet don't have any power to actually do anything. A few rich people in power control our lives. Thinking otherwise is just deluding oneself. There's no way around it until we rebel on a planetary scale (even if it means just not going to work for a few weeks, the rich need to be forced to feel discomfort), we just don't like thinking about this reality because it makes one realize one is helpless.

Bonus points: With countries like America eroding our education system at every turn, our citizens will soon be too dumb in one or two generations for the independent thought necessary to even know how screwed we are.

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[-] skybreaker@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

it is important to note that climate models consistently underpredict the probability of extreme events (7), so the expected impact of climate change on future heatwaves may be biased too low.

This is the scariest part. It seems like all the models have been wrong so far. We really need to take back control of our planet out of the hands of the politicians, oligarchs, and CEOs. It's the only way we'll actually be able to make a difference. It's time to clean house and that needs to start from the top

[-] Treczoks@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago

Because this being a headline in inconvenient for The Rich.

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[-] Damage@feddit.it 7 points 1 year ago

I guess we found the Great Filter

[-] masterofn001@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

Because Elon is making the space ships for the people who control the news.

[-] benjhm@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago
  • It's not all the earth, nor all the time, even in future projections. The jet-set, who also control news media, fly for holidays and live in air-con, both of which make the problem worse. Dubai even has ski-slopes.
  • 'News' over-emphasises 'breaking' surprise events, drowns gradually evolving statistics - boiling frogs. Maybe learn to comment on 'news' events with equivalent numbers due to climate change impacts?
  • Exaggeration and blaming other groups just lead to fatalistic doom. Although temperatures rose in the last decade, the projections for end of century fell due to policies, although not enough it's important to emphasise that we still have choices.
[-] Malfeasant@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Cooling is less bad for the environment than heating. The reason being, cooling moves heat from one place to another - it does increase heat overall, but only from its inefficiencies, it's not the goal. Heating, in most cases, is just creating heat. Unless you have a heat pump, you're burning some fuel to create heat, which adds a great deal of heat to the environment.

[-] benjhm@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

Well, air-con cooling and heat pump are basically the same, the plan (not yet reality) is that we'll all transition to renewable-powered heat pumps. In either case, insulation matters - I was surprised when staying in Brazil (decade ago), how rare was double glazing (despite noisy streets). Anyway I still think ski-slopes in the hot desert, around mega-cities grown on oil and aviation-hubs, is crazy.

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this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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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: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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