Soaring temperatures. Unusually hot oceans. Record high levels of carbon pollution in the atmosphere and record low Antarctic ice. We’re only halfway through 2023 and so many climate records are being broken.
Soaring temperatures. Unusually hot oceans. Record high levels of carbon pollution in the atmosphere and record low Antarctic ice. We’re only halfway through 2023 and so many climate records are being broken.
I wish that for even every 10 alarmist articles about climate change published there was one about the various steps and programs being worked on to address it.
But no. Just more selling of fear and sensationalism.
There is very little information regarding that in mainstream news and it is a serious disservice. People need to understand these issues if we are going to contribute to them or vote for them intelligently.
China for example is doing a huge amount to decrease their impact, but you won’t hear about anything positive in China since they must be portrayed as the enemy. That aside, the only way out of even worse global warming and the only way we can mitigate it is to move on from capitalism, and that’s a non starter in the western mainstream.
Mainstream news is meant to run interference for billionaires (who of course benefit by destroying the survivability of the planet). Why would it present these issues in a clear, accurate, and understandable way?
What steps have China taken recently? Out of the loop
There are lots of good programmes, of course. But the fact is that global emissions continue to rise year on year. We haven’t even managed to stabilise emissions yet, let alone cut.
Of course not. That isn’t remotely possible for well over a decade. That doesn’t mean that there is not a massive effort to build new sustainable infrastructure that will replace what we currently have. We spent 50 years building the current infrastructure that depends on fossil fuels. It’s not going to be replaced overnight, or even in a few years.
What people don’t realize is that when emissions finally start dropping year after year, the reduction will happen relatively quickly after that. That part of the change will be dramatic and observable. The hard work being done right now not so much.
Think about EV cars and trucks; once adoption rises to over 50% a year, the transition to 90% EVs will happen very quickly because no one will want to invest in the old tech and the manufacturing will have scaled up dramatically and be much more mature. What people don’t realize is how much of the hard work was done before EVs were being mass produced. Developing and building the battery and car factories and establishing all the supply lines is the hard part, not building cars in the factory.
The same timeline will happen with many other sustainable technologies that are where EVs were in 2005 or 2010.
It’s a very lucrative industry now. People are making fortunes and careers on climate change. You can’t expect honesty or clear information on the back of that. It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
My take is that a) man-made climate change is happening, and b) it’s not nearly as bad as alarmists claim. [The global average temperature is projected to increase by 2-4C over the next 80 years. I’m sorry, but that’s just not an “emergency.” You know what is an emergency? The 4.6 We should, immediately, work to make energy cheaper and more abundant for more people, even if it increases our carbon output. Saving lives today is obviously much more important than potentially saving lives 100 years from now.
I respectfully disagree.
At our current trajectory there will be mass death and significant swathes of the planet will simply be uninhabitable.
The view that we should release more carbon than we already are doing now is, in my opinion, reckless and selfish.
I’ll have to find the source later, but I read somewhere that each 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature reduces overall crop yields by 10%. Also, tropical forests that rely on high humidity environments will start drying up causing drastic ecological and an increase in fires. Yes, the fear mongering sells news, but that doesn’t mean you can write off climate change as a big deal.
That sounds on the high side, so I’d want to read a source before I accept it. Let’s say it’s true for a moment, and crop yields decline by 20-40% over the next 80 years. Take a look at global wheat yields over time. The use of technology to improve yields has resulted in explosive growth to output. Our continued improvements for the next 80 years will more than make up for even a 40% reduction.
I must be clear: I am well aware that there will be consequences to a 2-4C increase in temperature. I’m claiming that those consequences are not as bad as the millions of people dying each year at present because they lack access to cheap energy.
Agreed. Also making the manufacturing of all the new sustainable infrastructure more expensive would not hasten anything. Anyone who knows what the 1970s were like will understand how bad high oil prices are and the dangers of depending upon Middle Eastern countries for our energy.
Energy austerity will not speed the transition at this point.
Fortunately solar can actually fuel a lot of the most crucial air conditioning power needs, just not the manufacture and transport of AC units yet.