Climate change target of 2C is ‘dead’, says renowned climate scientist
Climate change target of 2C is ‘dead’, says renowned climate scientist
Prof James Hansen says pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, though other scientists disagree
We've been cooked since we've depended on capitalists to do the right thing.
It was never going to happen.
Global pledges and targets, if reached leave us with 2.1C. That was before the US elected Trump again, which means not pledges and commitments from them. Also obviously pledges and targets have to be reached and that gave us 2.7C. That again was before Trump was elected again and the massive problems the second largest emitter being activly hostile to climate action brings. So it will not just be the US, Trump has already anounced that he is working to sell more US oil and gas, which means making other countries emit more.
So yeah he is probably right. It can be changed, but that is going to a bloody hard journey.
Were those pledges from before or after February 2022?
February 2022 is when Russia expanded their invasion of Ukraine. A lot of the gas that Russia is not exporting to the eu anymore, is now being flared off instead, and I wonder if that is included in those predictions.
All pledges made until November 2024. Also Russia does flare a lot, but that is wasting resources. They prefer to sell it or keep it in the ground. I can not find numbers for 2024, but in 2023 they flared 28bcm of gas and in 2019 it was about 20bcm. So they do flare gas, but not even close to as much as they used to export to the EU.
The word of one scientist does not consensus make. No matter how renowned. Remember, making targets seem impossible is a tactic to keep going as we are since there's "no point in even trying".
Sure but didn't we already hit 1.5 C warming? We've barely slowed the amount of CO2 we are dumping in the atmosphere. Even If we stopped all CO2 emissions today we are getting to 2C.
Unfortunately we haven't even slowed it at all. 2024 was the highest-emission year yet. We're still accelerating
We had a year of average +1.5C, but the coming years are unlikely to be as hot on account of moving into La Niña. This is bad, but it's not the same as having crossed the +1.5C-threshold, which is measured in a window of multiple years.
Even if stopping warming before 2C is impossible, the sooner we do stop it the less bad things will be down the line.
Scientific truth is not reached by committee. Especially in the case of Hansen, he’s consistently been way out in front of said committee, and typically he’s been right every time.
40-60% of humans are too fucking stupid to understand any kind of attenuated causality. This was clearly demonstrated during covid by their inability to quarantine and wear masks in the face of deadly disease. If it is not don't stick your dick in a hornets nest painful, they cannot comprehend that their actions have consequences.
Unless the rest of us are willing to exterminate them, I don't know anyway that we'll ever make climate targets. We have failed badly at every attempt so far. Because the extermination option is politically impossible, I expect the worst consequences of climate change to be inevitable.
Education resistant humans are insurmountable.
Also, I'm fairly certain I remember the name, and he's been on the doomer circuit for a while, now (iirc). This is his schtick, to go around giving quotes and sound bites to journalists.
The thing is, cynicism is easy and cheap. The universe is ruthlessly neutral, so being on the side of "everything sucks and we're going to die" appears intelligent to some, but it's actually the laziest, safest bet you could make.
Member 1.5 or bust?
We bust. Bad.
I usually like TheGuardian but doomer clickbait like this isn't helping at all. Yeah it's looking grim right now, so let's focus on solutions and change that's already happening, instead of disencouraging people who care. People who don't will not after reading this.
What's clickbait about it? The guy is as renowned in his field as it suggests, and he did say exactly that.
There's no line at which our failure means we should give up. 4C is better than 5C, 5C is better than 6C and so on