Overshooting 1.5C Climate Target 'Inevitable': UN Chief (nzherald.co.nz) 78
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says it is now clear that efforts to cap global warming at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels will fail in the short term. AFP: Before next month's COP30 climate summit in Brazil, Guterres said going beyond 1.5C would result in "devastating" yet predictable impacts. "One thing is already clear: we will not be able to contain the global warming below 1.5C in the next few years," Guterres said at the UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) weather and climate agency in Geneva.
"Overshooting is now inevitable. Which means that we're going to have a period, bigger or smaller, with higher or lower intensity, above 1.5C in the years to come." However, if leaders start taking the problem seriously by driving towards net zero greenhouse gas emissions, "the 1.5 still remains -- according to all the scientists I met -- possible before the end of the century."
"Overshooting is now inevitable. Which means that we're going to have a period, bigger or smaller, with higher or lower intensity, above 1.5C in the years to come." However, if leaders start taking the problem seriously by driving towards net zero greenhouse gas emissions, "the 1.5 still remains -- according to all the scientists I met -- possible before the end of the century."
Huh? (Score:3)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Climate is a long-term average over a large region. Weather is the specific conditions at one specific place at a given time.
You can predict the average value of, say, rolling two 6-sided dice a million times (average is 7), but that still won't tell you what you get on your next roll in a craps game. Averages are easier to predict than individual values.
Re: Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Shh! Shh! It's OK. The climate change denying retard isn't going to listen anyway.
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And the climate change shithead that thinks that we know what the average temperature of the planet was to a tenth of a degree in 1890 isn't going to listen anyway.
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Why would it matter if our average temp for 1890 was off by a tenth of a degree?
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All of your "data" is in fact garbage, just like your conclusions.
My data? What data is that exactly?
Elements like carbon and methane retain more heat then other atmospheric elements. Recognizing that pumping more of these elements into the atmosphere will cause it to retain more heat isn't hard to do for anyone who doesn't actively want for global warming to not exist for one reason or another.
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That just isn't true. We might be off by a smidge but there's enough data to get close.
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Shh! Shh! It's OK. The climate change denying retard isn't going to listen anyway.
Hm. Maybe they are a climate change denying genius? It all depends on your perspective. What I mean by that is that the person has something to lose by acknowledging climate change so it is smart to deny it so they don't lose what they want. They just don't want the same thing as you. They don't care if their children suffer, they are making money right now. Later is an afterthought.
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The great thing about Climate Change is that no matter what the weather does they can find a computer model which predicted it. Warmer, colder, more rain, less rain, more snow, less snow, there's always one model they can fall back on.
The great thing about being a board-surf-ified professionally educated expert on anything-weather, is you can be more dead wrong than a doctor with a decade of training who's still "practicing". The only thing logically lower on the acceptable professional standards scale, is a whorehouse.
Seriously. Pay attention to your weather apps. Compare them. Not only will they all manage to predict the next 12-24 hours differently in your local area, but they'll most likely be wrong enough you can hardly make outdoor plans more than 36 hours in advance. It's become quite pathetic given our technology. Can model a hurricane a week before it is one, but is still guessing at tomorrow afternoon.
Ask a farmer. They'll have a better chance at predicting the weather for the next couple weeks than any weatherman. At least older farmers who have been at it most of their lives. Why the computer nerds in weatherdom don't start by trying to figure out what the farmers already know is beyond me. Probably some bias against country folk, thinking them uneducated fools.
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Yeap, we need a startup which makes turns farmers into nodes in a weather-prediction cluster.
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> i mean probably 10% of people actually understand what "50% chance of rain means"
If that's true, I suppose the weather people know it and so choose to express the outcome of their core activity in a way which is deliberately misleading. One can only speculate why this might be.
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ProTip: maybe separate yourself from the "it must be sunny or I'll be sad / my picnic will be underwater" mindset and things will get way better. Bonus points for moving somewhere where it's always hot - which, if any of the climate-fear is real will be EVERYWHERE pretty soon - so, passive-win! Also, cockroaches the size of cars FTW etc.
Models are beyond criticism at this point (Score:2)
Yes, there are hundreds of different climate models. An abundance of models is not evidence that there is no such thing as climate change.
The value of a model is in its predictive power. If a model can bound historical data then the next logical step is finding the bounds of future data. All models have a greater spread the future they look into the future, because that's just math as you stack on tolerances over a greater time. You add up the error when you're looking at the extremes, but you also find a
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You cut off the conclusive part - we're going 1.5C above baseline. How much, being open in part to what we do now.
Inevitable (Score:1)
This was inevitable.
It was idiotic to proclaim 1.5 C as a target in the first place. I suppose that there are people who advocate for setting targets that won't be achieved, on the belief that this makes people try harder, but my thinking is that setting targets that won't be achieved only defeats the purpose, by conditioning people to give up.
There was never anything particular about the 1.5 C goal, other than that it's a conveniently round number. It's slightly worse than 1.4 C, slightly not as bad as 1.6
Re:Inevitable (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"There is a fairly wide uncertainty around that estimate,"
Exactly. On that page the error bars around the 1.5 C figure are so large that the specific number really has no meaning,
And the error bars around the other seven global tipping points are even fuzzier,
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"There was never anything particular about the 1.5 C goal"
It was the agreed on as the point above which most island nations could see devastating long term harm and also a target that could be achieved in the near term but that was before crypto & AGI
https://theconversation.com/1-... [theconversation.com]
Totally preventable if we went Nuclear (Score:1)
Nuclear winter (Score:2)
Lets act like we are surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not even
Under communism, once the decision is made to develop a resource, that is usually it. Anyone's objections reasonable or otherwise be damned.
At least under capitalism private ownership gives people some incentive to keep things they have 'nice' and resist policy that would deprive them of it, which they often successful can.
Look at the history of Russian Oil and gas, over the 20th century. Communism is most certainly NOT going to help the cause of saving the planet.
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"Under communism, once the decision is made to develop a resource, that is usually it. Anyone's objections reasonable or otherwise be damned"
that's the case for authoritarian regimes whatever their perceived ideology
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The middle, aka socialism, would be the best form.
But as a species we must start recycling our stuff. Massive reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and oil-plastic must just go.
Crap material that just pollutes and is about non-recyclable.
En go for efficiency, reduce our power needs across the board.
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A Capitalist American produces twice the CO2 as a Chinese Communist. So yes. Communism pollutes less.
But where would you rather live?
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Would you rather live within your means or use a credit card you're never intending to pay off? Everyone loves to have more stuff if they don't have to worry about the consequences.
Any credit card debt I have will become part of my estate, unlike government debt which gets passed on and becomes future generation's debt. But since we collectively appear to not care about the latter, I guess the correct answer is B.
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Re: Lets act like we are surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
What especially galling is the fact that money is totally fake (we made it ourselves and its value is arbitrary) yet it is driving us to extinction in the form of low birth rates, pollution excuses, energy stupidity, etc. with the exception of a particular dog in South America, humans are the only creatures that need money.
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A Rogue Country or Billionaire will save us (Score:3)
Re: A Rogue Country or Billionaire will save us (Score:2)
Stirring the pot that way will create unpredictable and likely horrifying side effects. Ask the people of Springfield.
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Rouge country? Don't you mean a green country? :D
Re:A Rogue Country or Billionaire will save us (Score:4, Interesting)
It is going to take a rouge country or billionaire to unilaterally initiate a geo-engineering program like stratospheric aerosol injection to save us all...[snip]...At that point, if humanity wants a cooler planet, geo-engineering will be the only choice.
Easy there, Ted Faro. :) Join us in the real world. The "clawback" that worked in Horizon: Zero Dawn isn't going to work in real life. You can't fix a planetary crisis with money and some technology. The idea that one nation or tech mogul can single-handedly geoengineer us out of this mess is just hubris of the tech-bro variety. Stratospheric aerosol injection might look like salvation, but it’s just as likely to wreck monsoons, acidify oceans, and torch what’s left of our climate stability. If we want to keep Earth from turning into Arrakis (to borrow from another excellent fictional world) it won’t be through a billionaire’s good intentions -- it’ll be through collective effort, shared sacrifice, and the will to change before the biosphere collapses.
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"collective effort, shared sacrifice, and the will to change before the biosphere collapses"
good luck selling that in the current political climate (pun intended)
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"collective effort, shared sacrifice, and the will to change before the biosphere collapses"
good luck selling that in the current political climate (pun intended)
Fair point — optimism is a tough sell in this atmosphere (pun also intended). But climates do change — that’s the whole problem and the whole opportunity. Political ones can shift faster than planetary ones if enough of us keep turning up the heat where it counts: at the polls, in the markets, and in our own habits.
If we can engineer the weather with aerosol jets, surely we can engineer a little political will. The trick is to start the feedback loop in the right direction this time.
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but do we have enough time?
this past Earth Day was the 40th since the 1st one i attended and although the awareness has long since grown tremendously, the global progress has been in the wrong direction.
if we are going to right the ship & row in the same direction, I doubt i'll live long enough to see it
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You can't fix a planetary crisis with money and some technology.
hmmm... what if an engineer managed to create a way to pull CO2 out of the air and break apart the carbon and oxygen, sell the oxygen to rocket launches and made carbon fiber thingies out of the carbon and sold those... all while using sunlight to do all the work?
Not saying this is likely, just pointing out that your proclamation may not be quite as solid as you think.
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You can't fix a planetary crisis with money and some technology.
hmmm... what if an engineer managed to create a way to pull CO2 out of the air and break apart the carbon and oxygen, sell the oxygen to rocket launches and made carbon fiber thingies out of the carbon and sold those... all while using sunlight to do all the work?
Not saying this is likely, just pointing out that your proclamation may not be quite as solid as you think.
You’re right that I should’ve written “with only money and some technology” — I thought the "only" was implicitly obvious, but I am happy to spell it out for you. To address your hypothetical, I'll provide one of my own: If an engineer really could build a self-sustaining photochemical CO cracker that turned greenhouse gas into profit, they’d already be running the table on carbon markets and Nobel nominations alike. The fact that nobody has done so isn’t because
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what if an engineer managed to create
By all means, show us working data, pilot results, or even a peer-reviewed prototype.
Reading comprehension is not really your strong suit.
Or do you have some issue with collective action and personal responsibility?
Why do you think I was speaking about collective action and person responsibility? I took issue to your assertion that money and tech couldn't solve the issue. It could. It probably won't, but it could.
Proposed solution (Score:2)
We should have the worlds wealthiest elites all get on their private jets and fly halfway around the globe to have a meeting to come up with a solution on how to reduce emissions. Our betters will solve this for us!
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No change in hypocrisy (Score:2, Insightful)
"Before next month's COP30 climate summit in Brazil, "
In which the sneering class will FLY in from all over the world to whine that the proles are not doing their part to protect the upper class's vacation destinations.
When they all arrive to a meeting by sailboat wake me up.
Bonus points for serving grass clippings and bugs at banquet.
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Passenger jets are going to fly regardless if the handful of people from this summit were on them.
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Passenger jets are going to fly regardless if the handful of people from this summit were on them.
It's almost as if principle does not matter.
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Last year, 45-65 private jets flew to COP29. [euronews.com] (A few might have been flying to...checks notes...Baku, Azerbaijan for other reasons.)
If they start taking it seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I can support all of that!
Someone didn't like it because my comment was moderated down.
My point is, no one in power is going to do anything to combat / tackle climate change as a hard goal.
Do you get my point that the powers-that-be don't need to make global warming a goal for the problem to be solved?
I'll see if I can clarify and summarize my point for those reading that might not have followed my longer explanation above...
Fossil fuels have problems beyond just CO2 and the global warming it causes. They are getting harder to find and therefore more expensive over time. They produce pollution. Because they are not spread evenly
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You can fairly ask why I Amazon'd Tide Pods. We r
Even a broken clock is right twice a day (Score:2)
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. The idiot-in-chief at the UN is correct, it is, and always was, inevitable that 1.5 will be exceeded, and that was before the AI fad. If the entire world had gone all in on nuclear for baseload and a whole bunch of other things (no airplanes for you, more than half of my CO2 budget is flying), then it might have been possible, but that was never going to happen.
Message from Scotland: (Score:1)
Thank you Lord, Oh Thank you Lord
p.s. any chance of 2.5C?
Ruling class lacks feedback (Score:2)
I'd like to say "If you don't protect the air and water, you won't have air and water: Your stupidity cures itself." Unfortunately, this problem lacks negative feedback: The ruling class will be protected by the corpses of those unable to buy protection. When the climate is restored, the people who caused the problem will be alive, to start anothe
It can't just be a few countries (Score:2)
So much pollution (and deforestation) being caused by so many.
I do my part and recycle and drive an electric car, but, in reality, Taylor Swift generates more carbon in a few months than I will for my entire life.
Instead of bullying individual normal people, let's call out the celebs, politicians, and bad-actor nations tha
Which Just Means.... (Score:1)
....they'll have to ignore more of the facts when global warming stubbornly doesn't happen.....
Ferret
Well most people apparently believe in sky fairies (Score:2)
i.e. people on average aren't empirical or rational at all, but rather, mostly tribal-social.
so it's not surprising that people with ferretman's climate-denial beliefs abound.
People don't actually know HOW to believe properly (i.e. how to use scientific method to weight and adjust their beliefs), never mind what to believe.
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Oh, gentle reader, I am a scientist. Retired now.
Not every scientist believes the alarmism you seem to endorse.
I'll be clear: I've never seen anything that would convince me that global warming is real. EVEN BILL GATES HAS TURNED AWAY FROM THE ALARMISM. I have seen a few things that are compelling, but there's a big gap between compelling and convincing.
You may of course be more easily convinced.
Ferret