It’s good that we’re decreasing our impact. That said, the climate is a really massive thing that we’ve been pushing against for over 200 years, and climate change now has an incredibly massive amount of momentum behind it.
Tthis is perhaps good news, but it does not amount to a change of course, unfortunately. If we have passed peak emissions, it is still a long way from net-zero emissions. Like if you pass your peak rate of overspending your salary, but you are still continuing to go farther into debt. Even when you get to parity between salary and expenditures, you will STILL have the accumulated debt and in the case of CO2, that debt is wreaking ecosystem destruction. Do not cheer this news.
…that debt is wreaking ecosystem destruction…
I’m curious as to where you are getting your information from. Would you mind providing credible sources for your claims?
From the article:
Still, this means that humanity is adding to the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — and doing so at close to its fastest pace ever.
It’s good that this pace is at least not accelerating, but the plateau implies a world that will continue to get warmer. To halt rising temperatures, humans will have to stop emitting greenhouse gases, zeroing their net output, and even start withdrawing the carbon previously emitted.
The problem with the ecosystems is that evolution can’t adapt fast enough.
When it takes 500-5000 years for 1 degree rise, then yeah nature adapts pretty smoothly. When it’s 50 years then things get really screwed.
Obligatory XKCD but I think this one explains the problem extremely well: https://xkcd.com/1732/
you want proof that accumulated carbon dioxide is causing environmental destruction?! https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf
Thanks.
I’m curious, what part of that statement needs substantive proof? I feel like you can come to this conclusion from first principles, as long as you have some level of understanding of the greenhouse effect and knowledge of how it has affected ecosystems in the past.
It’s worth noting that even in the best case where we hit net zero by 2050, we will still be dealing with 1.25-2 degrees of warming for centuries. We will have to go significantly negative to get back to where we started. In worse scenarios we will be dealing with 2-3 degrees of warming for centuries.
2-3°C is the worst case if we stick to existing policy. If we flinch or back down on those policies, then the sky’s the limit.
Yeah and another war would cause those policies to go on the backburner immediately. For example nobody in Ukraine cares about greenhouse emissions now, they are dashing their diesel tanks through the mud like there is no tomorrow. And in fairness, if they don’t do that there may not be a tomorrow for them. So a lot of this depends on world stability. Which is pretty unlikely with the type of ‘leaders’ the world is seeing now IMO.
The actual article is not nearly as positive as the headline :)
As they mention reducing is key. But I think it’s going to be really hard to do carbon capture at a scale that actually matters. It will require a lot of additional green power generation, and the material extraction for the capture machinery, the transportation, the maintenance etc will have to be low carbon as well, otherwise there is still no point.
And there is significant inertia in greenhouse production so the greenhouse effect would keep rising for a decade even if we were at zero now.
It’s difficult to feel the cut of emission. I just hope it’s actually happening. All I can do for now is trust that report.
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Still, that it’s possible at all to conceive of bending the curve in the near term after more than a century of relentless growth shows that there’s a radical change underway in the relationship between energy, prosperity, and pollution — that standards of living can go up even as emissions from coal, oil, and gas go down.
“That puts us in this race between the really limited time left to bend the emissions curve and start that project towards zero, but we are also seeing this sort of huge growth, an acceleration in clean technology deployment,” Grant said.
There will still be year-to-year variations from phenomena like El Niño that can raise electricity demand during heat waves or shocks like pandemics that reduce travel or conflicts that force countries to change their energy priorities.
In its own analysis, the International Energy Agency reports that global carbon dioxide emissions “are set to peak this decade.” The consulting firm McKinsey anticipates that greenhouse gases will begin to decline before 2030, also finding that 2023 may have been the apogee.
Many governments are also contending with higher interest rates, making it harder to finance new clean energy development just as the world needs a massive buildout of solar panels, wind turbines, and transmission lines.
The next few years will shape the warming trajectory for much of the rest of the century, but obstacles ranging from political turmoil to international conflict to higher interest rates could slow progress against climate change just as decarbonization needs to accelerate.
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