Every year an outfit called Climate Action Tracker publishes an estimate of how much warming we're on course for by the year 2100. Cipher, a news site focused on climate change, has collected those estimates for the past decade and made a chart out of them:
The projected amount of warming has dropped from 3.7°C to 2.7°C. That's surprisingly good news. I've had a pretty definitive opinion that we were making essentially no progress, but it looks like I was wrong. The Paris Agreement has had a real impact.
There are, of course, some caveats. First, there's no guarantee that everyone is going to do what they've promised. Second, we've plateaued at 2.7°C for the past few years, and that's still an alarmingly high number.
Still, progress is progress. The more we make, the less pressure there will eventually be for geoengineering solutions. And if we do end up shooting sulfur aerosols into the atmosphere, it means we can shoot less of it. More like this, please.
I'm glad to see you are using your degree in physical chemistry.
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Imagine how much progress we could have made if an entire generation of dumbshits hadn't been brainwashed into believing it was all a hoax?
25 years since Karl Rove came up with that idea.
Drum made a silly comment that "The Paris Agreement has had a real impact". Global CO2 emission have been flat from 2010 and has had zero impact on the future temperature in 2050 or 2100.
Our World in Data, 2016 to 2022:
The increase in solar and wind energy as a percentage of global energy has been tiny since 2017.
natural gas consumption, +10%
oil consumption +0%
coal consumption +5%
2016: fossil fuels 133,000 TWh
2022: fossil fuels 137,000 TWh
Drum: "I've had a pretty definitive opinion that we were making essentially no progress, but it looks like I was wrong."
He was right. There will be more solar and wind by 2040 but nuclear fission and fusion will probably be higher
Insofar as there is not a huge material difference betweeen USA progress and Rest of World, the actual difference is that alternative timeline is unliekly to be very large.
As the current European backlashes on EU Green regs is showing (farms, German gas boilers, heat pumps etc) - and the ealrier French 'Yellow Vests' the reality is that underneath mere words, and Activist declarations, real material action has common constraints including the limits of what mass populaces will swallow in terms of visible up-front actual cost of change. (not egg-heads forecasts their experienced cost)
It is further the case that the current serious binding constraints in decarbonisation are Grid and the industrial capacity to expand it. Grid and Grid and Grid. The physical expansion from both industrial mfg constraint and the from regulatory red-tape slowing down both expansion and connexions.
And here again comparatively EU and USA are not doing so differently such that sans idiotic Climate Change Denialism your situation probably does not look hugely different, a bit better probably but unlikely night and day.
These are presumably long-range projections based on how rapidly there is or will be changeover from fossil fuels. Apparently they are showing that this changeover is taking place, or will take place, faster than previously projected.
They are not actual temperature measurements. The actual temperature measurements:
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/?intent=121
Show that the rate of warming has not yet decreased. This might be an improvement if your prediction model involved exponential or other greater-than-linear temperature increase, but any such models are very approximate. The time to celebrate will be when temperature increase actually slows.
Who is this “we” of whom you speak? Is the vehicle which you drive on your astrophotographry jaunts at least a hybrid? Does your home have a heat pump instead of a gas furnace? …
There's a carbon footprint associated with buying a new car, you know. There's no shame in driving a 10-year-old vehicle.
Kevin bought his car in 2020: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2021/01/raw-data-vehicle-sales-in-2020/
There were plenty of hybrid vehicles then. And they weren’t exactly wet behind the ears. There had been plenty for the ten-odd years prior.
But what about new vehicle purchases. I can't be optimistic when I see all the NEW sedans with big engines, and NEW huge SUVs. Not to mention behemoth pickup trucks. Folks that can afford those $50k - $90k rides have good jobs, aka education. So I guess they either don't believe in climate change or don't care.
I still fear "Drill Baby Drill" will carry the day. Be thrilled to be wrong.
It’s about ten percent of the total. Scrapping a ten year old vehicle in order to replace it with a new one that is about 20% more efficient is an environmental wash.
10% sounds low - I usually see numbers around 50%. That said,this is a complicated calculation and the results vary quite a bit as you move from compacts to full-size SUVs, and making the battery for an all electric vehicle has a huge footprint.
Imagine how much better it would be if we implemented zero population growth until 2100. Current forecasts are the world will be 10.4 billion* (up from today's 8 billion). If there is ZPG, human activity would be 75% of projected, which, if you apply that to the 2.7°, you get 2.1°. That's an improvement which doesn't involve *additional* GW measures (more fusion 'bridges' to green energy, technical breakthroughs, geo-engineering).
* I think that estimate is too low, but it's consensus, so I'll go with it - reluctantly.
Thanks for having the courage to advocate zero population growth. I get the feeling that it is not very popular to advocate having fewer babies. I certainly don't think any candidate for political office would dare to have this as part of his platform.
Without more people, where would you get enough people to be cannon-fodder for the wars that political leaders like to fight? (And in some cases are forced to fight in order to resist aggression)
Well, I won't be around to see how this will turn out. When I go, I will leave with a clear conscience that I have contributed zero babies to the future history of the Earth. I suspect Kevin will also.
What exactly do you mean when you say IMPLEMENTED? Telling people they cannot have kids of something? That would be a hard no there, buddy.
BTW, humanity is doing a pretty good job of having fewer children without the need to "persuade" them.
I suspect that we're doing about as well as we can on population control. Looked at country by country, much of the world is at or below zero population growth, and in the countries that are still growing, most of them are growing slowly and are expected to hit zero quite soon. The most notable regional exception is sub-Saharan Africa, where most countries still have quite high, but declining, population growth rates. If you have a practical idea of how to persuade those African women to have fewer babies, there are organizations pursuing that goal who would be delighted to hear it.
"Imagine how much better it would be if we implemented zero population growth until 2100."
Unnecessary. In 1950 the global birth rate was 5.0.Today it is 2.2 and still declining.
If you are younger than 30 or so, there is an excellent chance that you will live to see the Earth's population plateau and begin to shrink.
Advocate zero population growth, well why not advocate the world wearing hair shirts to expircate their climate sins.... about as useful and effective.
Globally population growth is more and more confined to Sub-Saharan Africa and it is pure magical thinking that Uni educated Westerners "advocating" for whatever has any meaning other than self-serving empty moralising.
Meanwhile in the real world outside of uni-educated professional class Lefty fantasies, native born populations in High Income Developed Countries and even most middle income countries is below replacement levels.
USA: https://cis.org/Report/Fertility-Among-Immigrants-and-NativeBorn-Americans - native population ex-immigrants total fertility rate c. 2019 is well below replacement level - only immigration is holding up overall USA net population birth rates.
Considering the temps this year and last, I wasn't expecting good news but I'll take what I can get. But climate engineering, I'm deadset against. It would lead to extra CO2, since the planet "can take it" will be said, and that will a timebomb under life on Earth on the day we stop shooting those aerosols or doing whatever. To make life dependent on the survival of political systems is the greatest of all follies; they seldom survive even a century. Better to let civilization fall a few decades earlier than make our Earth barren for millions of years.
Climate change will cause civilizations as they are now to collapse. It will trigger mass extinctions. But it will not leave the Earth barren.
I agree with that EXCEPT IF climate engineering allows us to postpone the "natural" collapse of civilization until there is so much CO2 in the atmosphere, that a sudden end to the engineering will indeed render the Earth barren.
If only we had science and historical deep climate records to benchmark.... oh wait we do.
Humanity may be capable with climate change to cause it's own collapse.
It is not within human power to render the earth "barren" - this is stupid. Life and the biosphere has and will go through much worse than humanity.
I’m starting to feel cautiously optimistic about this, though obviously we’ve got a long way to go. The really good news is that both the business community (outside of the fossil fuel industry) and the armed forces understand that climate change is a serious threat, and have bought into the need for mitigation. That means progress will probably continue the next time the US votes in a GOP government.
Even with reducing carbon output and the likely need to use climate mitigation, we will also need carbon sequestration if we want to avoid some really heinous effects.
More likely is some legitimate progress but continued and worsening consequences that disproportionately affect the poor and week. But there remains a legit hope that some technological fix (fusion power? the singularity? some biotech thingy?) will completely change the equations?)
Progress. But like driving on ice, we're going to go in the wrong direction for quite some time - with damage almost guaranteed.
https://thinc.blog/2024/04/18/climate-change-bringing-crushing-economic-costs/
Also here are the board members of Breakthrough Energy supporting Cipher, for your information:
Bill Gates
Jeff Bezos
Marc Benioff
Michael Bloomberg
Richard Branson
Ray Dalio
Reid Hoffman
Jack Ma
George Soros
Tom Steyer
Meg Whitman
Dani El Zain
Mark Zuckerberg
University of California
Nat Simons
Mukesh Ambani
I stopped following the climate change discussion in any detail a while back, but on my understanding reputable scientists have always framed forecasts of future temperature increases as quite wide ranges, not precise figures. This acknowledges the enormous number of variables that are involved, not all of which can be predicted with any confidence and some of which aren't yet even understood. Therefore I take a chart like this with several grains of salt.
First, we've given up on the cap of 1.5C, obviously. That's not a win. It means we (the entire world) have to be spending trillions on mitigation. How much have we spent? Maybe a billion?
Second, "implemented policy" is not the same as actually hitting targets. If we're all alive in 6 years, what are the odds that countries have not backslid under far-right control? Have we hit any targets? Nope. How do we know? See...
Third, the world hasn't hit peak GHG emissions. BTW, have you seen our methane emissions? It's accelerating.
Fourth, the long tail is loooong.
Fifth, the 2023 IPCC range is between +1.75C and +3.9C by 2100. Recall, recent reports suggest the reduction in aerosols may trigger faster heating that had been previously unaccounted for.
Totally agree. Talk of hope is a smoke screen. Only hard, unmerciful action (financial murder of Capital) will do any good. And with the way our system of economics is set up to reward bad behavior, it won't happen, but as your say, will only accelerate the crisis in the other direction.
It is a culture change that must happen.
Lots of luck...
Way too early for any optimism. CO2 emissions are still increasing and the annual increase of the atmospheric CO2 concentration is accelerating! As far as I can tell none of the actions being taken have made any difference. Part of this might be that building all of these solar and wind facilities uses more energy than they produce. Beware of false solutions!
Can't shoot that stuff into the air above Tennessee. Our legislature made it illegal a couple of weeks ago. And no, I'm not kidding. They also made it illegal to inject vaccines into produce. Thankfully we're nearing the end of the session cause the stupid stuff they do is endless (although they DID reject a bill to let first cousins marry).
The warming effects are highly non-linear and long lasting. Once we get to a methane release tipping point (tundra melts) the warming will accelerate exponentially. We are currently whistling past the graveyard. Not the slightest bit of evidence for optimism.
PhD in physics from a world class university.