alt Hacker NewsGlobal warming has accelerated significantly
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For those (like me) who don't know the authors, apparently they are well-published authors in the field of climate science whose work is very highly cited:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=gra...
Not a perfect measure of whether this is a reputable article but at least readers should know this isn't from some randos in a basement somewhere.
The issue with any significant steps to curbing the climate or environmental impacts with laws or treaties is always: But the economy. It creates an incentive where someone doesn't follow the laws, burn everything they can to accelerate their economy, and take industry from other countries.
My proposal is thus: create a supranational treaty organization with a EPA like authority(or whatever the European equivalent is) that can inspect and fine companies in member organizations. Then any treaty members agree with the following conditions: The EPA can enter their nation freely, inspect, and are able to fine companies that break rules. Members send delegates to a session to create new rules democratically. And most importantly all members act as a cartel, imposing large tariffs on any country outside of the organization. So if US was in and Mexico was out, you couldn't just pollute in Mexico, without some massive tariff. This creates an economic incentive to be in and clean.
Don't kid yourself - we closed this one with "Won't Fix" a while ago.
"But what about <technology/option>?"
No. Full stop. We're not going to do it, and we're not even going to apologize for it either.
All we can do now is prepare, not that I've seen a lot on this front either.
This is open access. No need to post a researchgate link.
Here's the original: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-6079807/v1
Let’s not pretend anymore.
The uncomfortable truth is that that people in affluent countries don’t want to change their lifestyle. Affluent countries are less affected by global warming than countries responsible for a fraction of global emissions. All the emissions from manufacturing follow suit.
The main driver of this is human-produced CO2, and there are meaningful ways to reduce usage.
-Switch to an electric vehicle -Migrate from gas appliances (range, furnace, water heater) to electric (induction, heat pumps) -If your power grid isn’t clean, add rooftop or balcony solar -Encourage friends and family to do the same
FWIW my personal assessment is that this acceleration is both real and largely out of our control. Models in the past did not attempt to account for non-anthropogenic carbon emissions, but as we experience further warming, most especially in the Arctic, feedback loops and tipping points mean that this (carbon emissions caused by “natural” processes) are becoming more evident. This is especially sensitive because a large proportion of such emissions are methane, which is a much more powerful greenhouse gas vs CO2, albeit with a much shorter expected effect time once airborne (~12 years). Consider also that warming is not uniform and the polar regions are warming significantly faster (3x) than lower latitudes, making permafrost melting a very significant climate tipping point. The last point I’ll mention is not about non-anthropogenic emissions but rather absorption. The world’s oceans have been a significant absorber of CO2 however that process is sensitive to temperature and is less effective as the planet warms, not to mention acidic ocean waters prevent shell formation, which is a minor but meaningful carbon sink all by itself.
I’m of the opinion that direct air capture is the primary escape hatch we have for not hitting 3 or even 4C warming in the next 100-200 years, which mean major dieoffs in warm latitudes, even for humans, due to exceeding wet bulb limits. Oh and roughly 65M of sea level rise as the planet shifts to a snow/ice-free mode.
> Our data is "approximate"
> and there can be "no longer any doubt".
Who has written this?
The paper doesn't seem to account for the reduction in sulfur emissions from ships, which was widely reported to be the cause for some of the recent warming?
To be honest, looking at Paleogene climate reconstruction I believe it was the best time in earth history. The way things go shows us that all attempts to resist burning fossils are quite futile. It takes some kind of catastrophe to change people habits. The level of coordination required to achive the goal of lowering emissions looks unachievable to humanity. We have enough time to adapt, adaptation is more reasonable and pragmatic approach.
Wasn't this attributed pretty much directly to cleaning of the shipping lanes? With more direct sunlight on the ocean, we are getting warmer oceans. With warmer oceans, we get everything that goes along with that.
I didn't see it mentioned in the article, though I did do a very brief read through. And it has been a while since I looked at the shipping lanes thing.
I hasten to add this is not to claim we should not have cleaned the shipping lanes. I don't know enough to say on that front. My gut would be that it was still the correct move.
It's my understanding that if you look at a large enough historical time window, although warming has accelerated recently (and we are in part to blame); the Earth is still relatively cool compared to historical averages.
Companies are setting up constantly running gas turbines for powering AI datacenters - insanity.
Nothing will change until developed rich countries are starting to hurt.
And I don't think it's going to hurt enough in 10 or 20 years.
The pain will come slowly, people won't see it.
It's like going back to the middle age so slowly, that the population don't realize or feel it.
And honestly, wars and trump are making climate concerns so difficult to think about.
I am in Wuhan, China. This past winter, I was able to bike along the lake all day. In previous winters, due to the cold and strong winds, we rarely exercised by the lake. This has had the biggest impact on me, and it's still a positive one.
This ship has sailed, warming is irreversible. Developing nations mainly in Asia (China, India etc) are, well, developing and burn like there is no tomorrow. But they are not to blame. It is their turn to live nicely, like the US and Europe did for decades. Nobody can remove this right from them.
I wish more people understood the severity of the situation but all we ever get is that "New York has been underwater since 2010". Do people really want to take action only after the problem is irreversibly bad!?
World is plagued by consumerism and gaslighted into over focusing on relatively smaller energy savings instead of overall habits.
I have friends shoving sausages and burgers into them while ordering countless things on Amazon every day, yet they think they help by buying a hybrid car, couldn't even be bothered by using public transport even though it's faster and cheaper where they live, because "too many people, dirty".
Go figure.
This is terrifying, and those fighting against stopping or reducing global warming should at this point be regarded as hostis humani generis
I'm hoping the current oil-war will cause people to re-assess fossil fuel use as expense becomes untenable and we start choosing electric vehicles and renewables.. which will just become "normal" and oil can stick around for synthetic chemistry routes.
We could chop of a quarter of total emissions (directly + rewilding effect) by ending factory animal production and swapping to plant based.
Another quarter from the top 5 percent emissions that have practically nothing to do with the wellbeing, but only social comparison mechanisms (envy, herd mentality).
But for that humanity would need leaders that are not either idiots, corrupt or spineless and toothless.
But hey, I guess that's too much to ask, after all we're talking about unconscious reactive species that's only rumored to have brains or morals.
I think we're well past the point of no return. In my part of the world, this year's weather has been ---- weird. Global warming doesn't mean warming per se - but it does mean unpredictability.
I think it is already pretty clear to everyone, save a few scientistis who keep on preaching "we can prevent this!!!" that global warming will continue. I am all for being more energy efficient and what not, but the reality of the situation is that there are factors that are orthogonal to this - as well as a few states that sabotage everyone else. The USA in particular; the US government is by far the biggest troublemaker here. China and India are also troublemakers because they are so huge, although to be fair, China also invested a lot into green energy.
We need to adjust strategies here. The "zero emission" strategy failed; it is not practical. Politicians love them because they are in the media, but everyone sees that this strategy is not working. Same with carbon tax - it drove prices up but didn't really help much at all otherwise. We need to stop pursuing strategies that do not work here.
The article has comments on pubpeer (below) and comments on the pre-print page. https://pubpeer.com/publications/973ABFB81F504E8CB1B50E941CF...
The gist of several comments is that the paper does not actually demonstrate an accelerated global warming, but instead an acceleration of anthropogenic global warming, when removing the influence of several natural factors. To be clear, they are not discussing the fact that there is global warming, just saying that currently, we cannot say that global warming has been getting faster after 2010 with statistical certainty.
I am wondering how much did war in Ukraine contribute to it? On one hand, EU is pushing green agenda, on the other hand there are daily oil storage facility explosions evaporating weeks of oil consumption in a few hours.
Don't Look Up
How are people handling this... mentally? and preparedness wise? I can't imagine what the next generation may have to live through.
The only extant “X-risk” is, and always has been, climate change. “AGI” is science fiction, and actually-existing AI is making climate change harder to deal with, by increasing electricity demand on our fossil-fuel-powered grid with no attendant increase in clean generation.
Serious engineers need to stop whatever they’re doing and work on this problem.
Also, if you’re hiring: I’m an expert on the U.S. regulated utility industry, demand management, and solar & battery system design, fabrication and deployment.
I’ve heard hints of this same thing, the rates are described as quadratic, not linear. The feedback mechanisms I do not know, but it’s something related to a high degree of released ocean warming that was stored.
We might actually hit the jackpot from The Peripheral.
Basically this is the slowest train wreck in history that just won't be stopped. By 2050 (only 24 years away), these cities are projected to flood more than 1/3 of the days of every year:
Galveston, Texas
Morgan’s Point, Texas
Annapolis, Maryland
Norfolk, Virginia
Rockport, Texas
Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
Miami and Miami Beach, Florida
Charleston, South Carolina
Atlantic City, New JerseyLet's be real, this won't be solved by reducing consumption, only carbon capture technology (likely well into the future).
It's in no nation's interest, from a game theory perspective, to stunt their own growth to reduce emissions. If the US stops, Russia and China will destroy the west. If China stops, they'll never catch up technologically. Ditto for India. Smaller nations have even less incentive (they'll easily be conquered by neighbours), except for the ones surrounded entirely by friendly nations...
We need the government to release the alien technology to the public now.
Only good news these days eh
There's a huge hypocrisy in wanting others to pollute less, yet still have a lifestyle that pollutes, but just less than those polluting the most.
I personally won't criticize people who take flights to go on vacation (I don't but I accept those who do). But I'll be pointing out the hypocrisy of those who take flights to go on vacation and yet want to micro-manage how others should live their lives so that they'd be "polluting less".
Recently some infographic made the round for it showed the act a human can take and the pollution it generates. The reason it circulated a lot is because the first item was highly controversial: "having a kid". And yet there's lots of truth in that.
For example my wife and I we got one kid and my wife is now in her forties and we won't have a second one. And I'll never ever take a single lesson about pollution from anyone who had two kids or more.
I'm the one who don't fly. I'm the one who only had one kid. And I'm not criticizing other people's lifestyle and choices. But if you open your mouth, I'll point out the hypocrite you are if you either fly or had two kids or more.
I'd be interested to see what things look like on a longer timescale, say 500, 1000, 2000, 7000 years. 80 years of time feels like a long time on a human lifescale, but on a civilizational timescale it is a lot shorter.
What! you're saying that my selective recycling of paper and having the plastic caps attached to the bottles didn't work? SHOCKING
(only europeans will understand)
the good news is that nuclear power is coming soon
curiosity rabbit hole spawned from the article, which got me wondering if the earth axis precession over ~26k years influences ice ages and those cycles:
Oh no!!! The Earth is Earthing!
Can we hope that the Strait of Hormuz remains essentially blocked to oil exports for an extended amount of time...?
Unfortunately, I can't accept the climate change narrative because I've been doing my own research.
I've lived in multiple countries and came back to visit after decades. I didn't notice any change of temperature. Some years are slightly warmer, some years are slightly cooler but they all feel within the norm from how I can remember. I remember some very bad heat-waves during my childhood which I've never experienced again.
I know this is anecdotal evidence, but it's MY anecdotal evidence which I gathered first-hand and therefore I can trust. I gathered many data points over several decades.
Also I have many alternative narratives which better fit the data. I've identified some critical flaws in climate models related to simulation complexity and also plant evolution, both backed by professional insights and independent scientific observations.
So unfortunately, I just don't believe current narratives about climate change. The data doesn't fit that narrative, it fits other narratives much better.
We already mined enough uranium for 500+ years of energy but people want to bury it in a mountain instead.
There's plenty of money to be made mitigating this, unfortunately, there's plenty of money currently being made causing this, and those moneymakers are the ones in power and are happy to kill the planet as long as they themselves can live in luxury while it happens.
Until they ban private jets, why take this seriously?
There's literally nothing that can be done about it. The people with actual ability to make a change don't care.
We're going to have to figure out how to adapt to it. Expect many of the things you love now (seafood, coffee, etc) to be gone within your lifetime.
The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) outline draft has listed making new and significant progress in building a Beautiful China as one of its main objectives, with achieving the carbon peaking target on schedule being a crucial aspect of this goal.
In 2020, China made a commitment to the world: to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and strive to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Last year, China announced its 2035 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for addressing climate change.
"The outline draft clearly emphasizes actively and prudently advancing and achieving carbon peaking, proposing that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP will be reduced by 17%, and a preliminary clean, low-carbon, safe, and efficient new energy system will be established. This clear roadmap will help us achieve high-quality 'dual carbon' phase goals and lay a solid foundation for carbon neutrality," said Wei Yuansong, member of the CPPCC National Committee and Director of the Water Pollution Control Laboratory at the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
from： https://www.news.cn/20260305/7ad8d5ee3a6d4b28b1b62230199f1d0...
this is in china's next 5 year plan