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eykanal
notarobot123
Ironically, those still unconvinced of the human influence on climate change seem to be the sort that would trust the basement randos more than they would reputable scientists
jihadjihad
Because they are practicing the reverse scientific method. They hold a conclusion in their hand, like, man-made climate change is a hoax, and seek to find any threads of "evidence" that support their foregone conclusion.
4er_transform
Actually I think a lot of climate change denialism has more to do with the “…and so we have to do X to solve it” part of climate change. It’s “climate change activism” that turns people off.
Climate change is real. That doesn’t mean we should halt economic growth. Unfortunately this is another area that gets so wrapped up in political power and incentives where: Democrats have factions and groups that want to implement world changing measures and redirect billions of dollars in a way that benefits their interests, and climate scientists seem to weigh the climate costs far higher than the economic devastation a hard switch would bring, so naturally there’s a level of skepticism at the whole affair.
There should be level headedness about it: climate change is real, it’s not world ending yet but we should get ahead of it, we need to make investments in changing our societal behavior to get on a track that balances mitigating the harms while keeping the real economic boon that comes with our current approach.
logicchains
The scientific method is making testable predictions. You can look back 10, 20, 30, 40 years at the predictions of sea level rise made by climate scientists, and the sea level today is nowhere near where they predicted it would rise to. If someone's continuously making incorrect predictions it's not reasonable to assume their predictions will suddenly become accurate, especially when there's no feedback loop to weed out people making bad predictions (unlike e.g. in finance where people whose models have little predictive power eventually go bankrupt). No climate scientist has lost their job for making incorrect predictions of sea level rise twenty years ago.
assaddayinh
[dead]
blell
You can apply that too to the “man-made climate change is real” argument.
like_any_other
[flagged]
funkyfiddler369
that's cute but you can't blame people for holding opinions based on phenomenal observations before they learn the language and can perform experiments. the fact that so many can't is the sole reason you might be considered somewhat superior or competent. more people with scientific skills and a personal way to explain and adhere to the scientific method would mean that your competence would be no more than average, if at all. how would that make you feel?
more importantly though, is the fact that there are enough "critics" that consider Global Warming a cycle that "man" merely accelerated by a few decades. most of these "skeptics" are also perfectly capable of discerning between the amount of energy "wasted" in office buildings and lit up skyscrapers as well as anything at the end of luxury supply chains and markets and what the rest of the world "wastes" or expends. to them, the hoax is the "man-made" part ...
it should be "some-man-made climate change"
ai-x
There are various levels of perspectives
- Climate Warming is a hoax
- Climate Warming is happening, but not Man Made and part of larger cycles
- Climate Warming is Man Made, but drastic De-growth strategies cause more harm.
- Climate Warming is Man Made, don't need de-growth strategies because Technology will solve energy efficiency, clean energy growth and carbon capture and humans adapt along the way
- Climate Warming is Man Made and we need drastic de-growth strategies and complete ban of fossil fuels.
For people in the last group, all other groups look like Climate Deniers because they don't agree to their de-growth/ban plans
yongjik
Things must be bleak for climate deniers if they have to make an itemized list of strawman arguments to feel good about it.
imtringued
You forgot to list like a dozen variants in-between the last two groups. The abrupt end and extremely biased framing is almost comical.
>Climate Warming is Man Made, don't need de-growth strategies because Technology will solve energy efficiency, clean energy growth and carbon capture and humans adapt along the way
Green growth aka energy efficiency doesn't work, so one more category.
Carbon capture doesn't work without government subsidies. Hence you need a group of people who would be willing to pay tax money to solve climate change. One more category.
Human adaptation can mean many things. People accept climate change even if it means mass immigration. One more category.
People accept climate change even if it means armed border conflicts where immigrants get shot (see Poland) due to closed border policies. One more category.
People resign and accept the negative consequences of climate change as the new normal, similar to people living in polluted cities, except globally. One more category.
JackMorgan
You're missing: "Climate is warming, but this is a good thing because it means Jesus will come back sooner and I'll live in endless bliss and not have to go to work anymore, so I'm going to do my part by driving a huge truck and pretend like it's fake."
truculent
Hypothetically speaking, if people in the last group were right, and that is the logical conclusion to be reached from careful evaluation of the evidence, wouldn’t the other positions indeed be ones of wilful denial of the state of the climate?
Ma8ee
I would be in the second to last group if we actually did something when there still was time, and more was done to actually do something now. Yes, there's a lot of energy efficiency measures that could be done, and much more clean energy could be build, and we will be forced to adopt whether we want to or not. (Carbon capture from the atmosphere is a fucking joke though, which should be to everyone when you know that CO2 in the atmosphere is measured in parts per million!)
But we didn't start when we had to, and we are still doing only a fraction of what must be done. So, we are screwing ourselves over majorly. And this is not some fringe hysteria, this is the scientific consensus and has been for a long time. You can almost hear screams of frustration and desperation through the lines if you pick ut the latest IPCC report.
Biologist123
Maybe add climate change is real but there’s little we can do to stop it/change the systems which result in it.
Toutouxc
> humans adapt along the way
These people are about to be really surprised when the bees die.
michaelsbradley
- Climate Warming in the last ~200 and current years is Man Made, but given Man’s relative shortsightedness and propensity for becoming preoccupied, his ongoing impact on climate change will run its course to one end or another, probably redefining coastlines in the process and including other effects on agriculture, diversity of species, and so on. Much, much later the Earth will more than likely enter another Ice Age and most of the planet will be frozen over. Between the Man induced (relatively) extreme warm period and the next Ice Age, Man will find his way one way or another. Or Not.
yfw
Theres a mistrust of government and the establishment. Not saying fringe is better but the behavior of govts, corruption and influence by rich donors doesn't help
Forgeties79
It also doesn’t help that anyone with few scruples and a desire to make a buck can quickly monetize screaming about how up is down on YouTube
mmooss
> Theres a mistrust of government and the establishment. Not saying fringe is better but the behavior of govts, corruption and influence by rich donors doesn't help
These are scientists, not the government, and the US government, at least, has long opposed or been ambivalent toward climate research.
I'm not sure how rich donor influence is involved. Rich donors generally have acted to oppose climate research.
scottLobster
Also scientists generally suck at messaging and persuasion. They think if they just dial up the stakes and consequences a little more, it'll be compelling! Maybe if we make one more documentary with bad CGI disaster movie scenes, that'll do it! Same with the stupid "Doomsday clock" that is somehow always "the closest we've ever been to nuclear war!" whenever it gets trotted out. You'd think people who know what stochastic noise is would realize when they're producing it.
They would have made a lot more headway talking about clean air, clean water, jobs, and a bright prosperous future where we manufacture wind turbines, batteries and solar panels in deep red Missouri. A minority tried that, but most stuck with the catastrophizing for decades and now that they've ruined their social credit no one will listen to the message they should have opened with.
You need people emotionally invested, and it's a lot easier to get them invested in their lives than in the abstract consequences of computer models that are at least 100 years out if they're even accurate. And most people are not independent enough to direct their own lives. If they make the right decisions on abstract concepts, it was more because the incentives/disincentives in their environment were set up correctly than they actually understood the decision they were making. Message accordingly.
thrance
Except the same people disbelieving in climate change hold a blind faith in Trump's administration, that is extremely corrupt and influenced by rich donors. This isn't skepticism, these people have just been completely ideologically captured by the oligarchy's propaganda.
nxm
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designerarvid
There’s actually research to support the claim you’re making here (Elaboration Likelihood Model).
When forming attitudes in an area where one doesn’t care, one tends to rely more on who is saying it than what is being said. The opposite is true, if you care about [climate change], you listen to the arguments regardless of who is presenting it.
rootusrootus
It's a culture thing, nobody on the right would ever be convinced by science, they will shop around until they find what they need to hear. My sister in law sent me a video and told me that she thought it was a really good explainer and had a lot of good facts and figures to support it. To humor her, I took a brief glance at it, and saw that it was produced by Dr. Shiva. I was thinking "no way, it can't be that Shiva, could it, email guy?" Yes, yes it was.
We are doomed.
madaxe_again
Tell her that you have a greenfield synergistic solution to upscale her big tent.
BoingBoomTschak
Because "the left" would be willing to listen to scientific arguments attacking their pet issues, right? It's really not a left/right thing.
amelius
It depends if they can agree with what they are saying.
devwastaken
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longitudinal93
While it's true that China is currently responsible for the largest share of CO2 emissions at least their output is trending down:
See https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
longitudinal93
Worth also noting that on a per capita basis China aren't even in the top ten.
virgildotcodes
Tax plundering, really dude?
Quick guess, do you think more tax dollars have gone to the fossil fuel industry, or climate scientists?
Political power, just again, amazing.
Who do you think wields more political power in the world? The fossil fuel industry and petro states, or climate scientists?
It's such a blatant, weird attempt to invert reality. It's the whole "accuse your enemy of that which you are guilty" approach.
I don't understand how this propaganda talking point sticks in anyone's head and doesn't fall apart with two seconds of critical thought.
undefined
aaron695
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timr
Setting aside the names of the authors, this is a very bad paper. They take temperature data sets, "adjust" [1] them by attempting to remove the biggest recent factors (volcanism, solar and el nino cycles) affecting temperatures, then do a piece-wise regression analysis to look at trends in 10-year chunks. This is just bad methodology, akin to what a junior graduate student with a failing thesis might do to find signal in a dataset that isn't being cooperative to their hypothesis.
Climate data is inherently noisy, and there are multiple interconnected cyclic signals, ranging from the "adjusted" factors to cycles that span decades, which we don't understand at all. "Adjusting" for a few of these, then doing a regression over the subset of the data is classic cherry-picking in search of a pre-determined conclusion. The overall dubious nature of the conclusion is called out in the final paragraph of the text:
> Although the world may not continue warming at such a fast pace, it could likewise continue accelerating to even faster rates.
They're literally just extrapolating from an unknown point value that they synthesized from data massage, and telling you that's a coin toss as to whether the extrapolation will be valid.
I am not a climate scientist so you can ignore me if you like, but I am "a scientist" who believes the earth is warming, and that we are the primary cause. Nonetheless, if I saw this kind of thing in a paper in my own field, it would be immediately tossed in the trash.
[1] You can't actually adjust for these things, which the authors admit in the text. They just dance around it so that lay-readers won't understand:
> Our method of removing El Niño, volcanism, and solar variations is approximate but not perfect, so it is possible that e.g. the effect of El Niño on the 2023 and 2024 temperature is not completely eliminated.
bjourne
Your summary of the article is wrong. The authors model temperature using time series over solar irradiance, volcanic activity, and southern oscillation. They calibrate that model using time series over global surface temperatures. This allows them to isolate and remove each of the three listed confounding factors. The resulting time series fits a super-linear curve -> accelerating global warming.
timr
> Your summary of the article is wrong. The authors model temperature using time series over solar irradiance, volcanic activity, and southern oscillation. They calibrate that model using time series over global surface temperatures. This allows them to isolate and remove each of the three listed confounding factors.
No, it isn’t. You’re just rephrasing what I said with more words: they attempted to adjust for three of the biggest factors that affect temperature, then did a piecewise regression to estimate a 10-year window.
You can’t do it in a statistically valid way. Full stop. The authors admit this, but want you to ignore it.
tgsovlerkhgsel
They also don't seem to account for the reduction of sulfur emissions from ships, which is surprising given how widely this was reported even in mainstream media.
Is this an oversight (or "oversight") or something that is reasonable for some reason that would be so obvious to experts in the field that it's not worth mentioning?
cbility
Doesn't that fall outside the scope of "natural variability factors" which they are trying to account for?
timr
I mean...they're just cherry-picking the sources of "noise" that prevent their preferred window from showing "significance". It's not like they did a thorough analysis of every uncontrolled factor and carefully tried to control them all. Even that would be crap, but at least it would be good-faith crap.
refurb
This has always been the big issue I have with the conclusions draw in climate publications. I encourage anyone with strong opinion on climate change to do a deep dive on the temperature analysis.
The best example I can think of is the "global warming hiatus" that was discussed in depth in the top climate journals in the mid-2010s. Nature Climate Change even devoted an entire month to it.[1]
5 years later publications were saying "there was no hiatus at all".[2]
And as you said, when you dive into the paper, you realize that temperature measures are not objective at all. And I would ask - If everyone was in agreement that temperature increases paused, then 5 years later everyone agrees they didn't, how much confidence do we really have in the measures themselves.*
As someone who conudcted scientific research, this has a ton of inherent problems. It doesn't matter what I'm measuring, if the data collection is not objective, and there is no consensus (or at least trong evidence for adjustments), then the data itself is very unreliable.
If I tried to publish a chemical paper in a top journal and manually went in and adjusted data (even with a scientific rationale) the paper would be immediately rejected.
[1] https://www.nature.com/collections/sthnxgntvp [2] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/global-warming-pause-cli...
timr
> And as you said, when you dive into the paper, you realize that temperature measures are not objective at all.
I don't know if I'd go that far. The measurements are as objective as they can be given the limits of technology and time, but what we do with the datasets afterward is usually filled with subjective decisions. In the worst cases, you get motivated actors doing statistically invalid analysis to reach a preferred conclusion.
This happens in every field of science, but it's often worse in fields that touch politics.
tarr11
It says this in bold red at the top - "This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal."
I am not a climate scientist - how should I think about this statement? Normally I am looking for some statement that shows a document has been vetted.
epistasis
For non-specialists, I think the most important view on papers is to not view them as nuggets of truth, but communications of a group of people who are trying to establish truth. No single paper is definitive!
Peer review is an important part of scientific publication, but it's also important for the general public to not view peer review as a full vetting. Peer reviewers look for things like reproducibility of the analysis, suitability of the conclusions given the methods, discussions of the limitations of the data and methods, appropriate statistical tests, correct approval from IRBs if there are humans or animals involved, and things like that. For many journals, the editors are also asking if the results are interesting and significant enough to meet the prestige of the journal.
Peer review misses things like intentional fraud, mistakes in computations, and of course any blind spots that the field has not yet acknowledged (for example, nearly every scientific specialty had to rediscover the important of splitting training and testing datasets for machine learning methods somewhat on their own, as new practitioners adopted new methods quickly and then some papers would slip through at the beginning when reviewers were not yet aware of the necessity of this split...)
Any single paper is not revealed truth, it's a step towards establishing truth, maybe. Science is supposed to be self-correcting, which also necessitates the mistakes that need correction. Climate science is one of the fields that gets the most attention and scrutiny, so a series of papers in that field goes a long ways towards establishing truth, much more so than, say, new MRI technology in psychology.
tgsovlerkhgsel
Sometimes reviewers also look for whether the paper cites enough of their own papers, who is publishing it (regardless of whether the review is supposed to be anonymous or not), whether it clashes with a paper they're about to publish... science is just as full of politics and corruption (if not more) as any other field.
jfengel
I'd say that for a non-scientist, you should treat it as a non-event -- a paper that hasn't happened yet.
The climate is not something for which you need daily, weekly, or even monthly updates. Rather, this paper is just one more on top of a gigantic pile of evidence that that climate change is serious, something that we can and should do something about.
If the paper passes muster, you'll hear about it then, though all it'll do is very slightly increase your confidence in something that is already very well confirmed. Or, the paper may not pass review, in which case it doesn't mean anything at all, and you fall back on the existing mountain of evidence.
If the paper had reached the opposite conclusion, that might merit more investigation by you now, since that would potentially be a significant update to your beliefs. And more importantly, it would certainly be presented as if it were a fait accompli, even before peer review.
Instead, you can simply say, "I don't know what this paper means, but I already have a very well-founded understanding of climate change and its significance."
sleet_spotter
Peer review is still very relevant in climate science. But given it is from well-respected authors, I am more inclined to trust the results at this stage.
Nevermark
There is no need for "trust".
There is no benefit in non-expert readers inserting their own subjectivity into an already complex topic. Even for themselves.
What we know: It is an interesting paper. It is going to get attention.
Good to be aware. It is also good to reserve judgement while the community evaluates the results.
juujian
It is already published at Geophysical Research Letters, a highly (if not the most) reputable source in the area. But that journal is behind a paywall: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...
FabHK
Oh, that contains an ELI5:
> Plain Language Summary The rise in global temperature has been widely considered to be quite steady for several decades since the 1970s. Recently, however, scientists have started to debate whether global warming has accelerated since then. It is difficult to be sure of that because of natural fluctuations in the warming rate, and so far no statistical significance (meaning 95% certainty) of an acceleration (increase in warming rate) has been demonstrated. In this study we subtract the estimated influence of El Niño events, volcanic eruptions and solar variations from the data, which makes the global temperature curve less variable, and it then shows a statistically significant acceleration of global warming since about the year 2015. Warming proceeding faster is not unexpected by climate models, but it is a cause of concern and shows how insufficient the efforts to slow and eventually stop global warming under the Paris Climate Accord have so far been.
jaredklewis
A paper being peer reviewed is a good sign, but I feel like the signal is usually over interpreted.
Peer reviewed does not mean the findings of the paper are established fact or scientific consensus. It does not mean that the findings have been replicated by other scientists. It does not mean that the paper relied on a robust methodology, is free of basic statistical errors, or even free of logical fallacies.
Some of these limitations are due to the limitations of peer review itself. Others are just side effects of the way science works (for example, some ideas start as small, unimpressive experiments that are reported on in papers, and the strength of the findings is gradually developed over time). Obviously sometimes the prestige (or lack thereof) of the journal the paper is in decreases (or increases) some of these issues.
Anyway, peer review is a very noisy channel (IMHO).
tialaramex
For one thing, some of the places which would publish this kind of thing will authorize authors to provide anybody and everybody pre-prints but not the final copy they published.
In principle you could go (pay to†) read the actual final published copy, maybe it's different, but almost always it's basically the same, the text is enough to qualify.
If you go to https://eel.is/c++draft/ you'll find the "Draft" C++ standard, and it has this text:
Note: this is an early draft. It's known to be incomplet and incorrekt, and it has lots of bad formatting.
Nevertheless, the people who wrote your C++ compiler used that "draft" document, because it isn't reasonable to wait a few years for ISO to publish the "real" document which is identical other than lacking that scary text and having a bunch of verbiage about how ISO owns this document and it mustn't be republished.
And you might be thinking "OK, I'm sure those GNU hippies don't pay for a real published copy, but surely the Microsoft Corporation buys their engineers a real one". Nope. Waste of money.
† If you have a relationship with a research institution it might have this or be willing to help you order it from somewhere else at no personal cost.
bjourne
Pre-prints exists because it can take up to 18 months to get a paper published in a journal or reputable conference. Since lots of people can publish pre-prints[1] what you should think depends on the authors. If they have a record of publishing good research you should think highly of the paper.
[1] - Actually, there are hoops on pre-print repositories, such as arXiv, so not everyone can post there. I guesstimate that 99% of the public has no means of posting on arXiv.
mold_aid
Are you? How many preprints are posted here every day?
yanhangyhy
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
iLoveOncall
China is already so much ahead in some aspects.
I'm literally in the plane flying back from Shanghai right now, where cars have blue plates for petrol cars and green plates for electric ones.
Easily 70% of the cars on the road are electric, and basically all of the scooters used for deliveries.
The roads are so quiet it's sometimes dangerous because you don't hear the scooters come behind you.
They'll undoubtedly be the world leaders in clean energy.
DeepSeaTortoise
Isn't Shanghai a Tier 1 city? IMO it's not very representative of the whole country.
It's also not like China is an overachieving outlier, but western nations actively having been sabotaged by its leadership at least since 1990 and MUCH MUCH more so since occupy wallstreet.
FFS Germany is blowing up its nuclear powerplants on a never before seen record breaking schedule so that a potential successor government cant reactivate them.
iLoveOncall
Yes but it was the same in the two Tier 1.5-2 cities I also went to.
Obviously it's not the whole country, but it's setting a trend still, especially when it's always the richest who pollute the most per capita.
yanhangyhy
Remind me of this video
plaidfuji
China is the world’s largest fossil fuel importer, so this is a case where their economic incentives align with global environmental trends. I suspect they would be trying to do this regardless of whether global warming were a problem. And now that they’re heavily invested in green tech manufacturing, it’s kind of a self-fulfilling feedback loop - they have an interest in promoting electrification worldwide.
throwaway290
But for now it is the country with 3x coal plants than the next country (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/number-of...), 95% of coal plants under construction in the world (not counting how many coal plants were approved but not yet started), and emits more CO2 per year than US and EU combined https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re...
GreenWatermelon
of course, we shouldn't forget that they manifacture the entire world's shit, and have a larger population than US and EU combined. And despite manufacturing all shit, they still emit less per Capita than US and EU.
cbeach
I've always found it odd that the Paris Accord allows China to keep building coal powered stations when it is already the leading global contributor to climate change:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...
Meanwhile the Paris Accord seems to bludgeon Europe and America (who are reducing their CO2 emissions significantly), with the net effect of accelerating the deindustrialisation of the West (thus helping industry grow in China).
The Accord should focus on moving industry away from China to countries where electricity predominantly comes from renewables.
ecshafer
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.
jtr1
"But the economy" is an out-of-date framing. The cost of renewables has been plummeting for well over a decade. New renewables are now cheaper than new fossil fuel plants in most of the world, and in many regions they're already competitive with or cheaper than simply running existing fossil fuel infrastructure. As modern wars in Ukraine and now Iran are increasingly demonstrating, they are not only cost effective but rapidly a matter of energy sovereignty and national security.
That's not to say we won't need treaties and supranational entities for some aspects of decarbonization. Methane emissions outside of agriculture are notably a problem of enforcement.
We're badly in need of a collective update to our priors regarding renewables. In the US, a hostile policy toward renewables is not only shooting ourselves in the foot environmentally, we are now actively impoverishing ourselves due to entrenched economic interests across the fossil fuel industry and the cultural inertia they actively worked to develop.
goatlover
A new US administration and Congress need to be voted in. There is one party who backs fossil fuel interests and denies anthropogenic climate change. They're currently in charge. The American public didn't see that as an important enough issue in 2024.
lokar
They are forcing power companies to run coal plants that they don’t want to run (at a loss).
FrinkleFrankle
They need a complete reworking of the government. The fact is that bum-fuck states with a handful of citizens can use their senate seats to hold the country hostage. Nothing will ever get better until that is resolved.
Aerroon
>"But the economy" is an out-of-date framing.
Then why is my electricity and gasoline both so much more expensive than they used to be?
jtr1
For many possible reasons, depending on where you live.
breakpointalpha
In principle, you are right. Cheaper than coal renewables are winning. Don't forget though, that fighter jets can't operate on batteries.
hdgvhicv
Every mile you drive in an f150 steals fuel that should be going to American planes
Patriotic red blooded Americans use renewable energy
mr_toad
> fighter jets can't operate on batteries
Gas turbines can run on a variety of fuels, natural, synthetic or a mixture of both. It’s actually one of the reasons that a turbine was chosen for the M1.
lokar
They don’t contribute enough to matter
UqWBcuFx6NV4r
That’s a red herring. It’s not worth mentioning.
BLKNSLVR
So we won't be able to fight air wars over the last remaining pieces of arable land.
I'm convinced.
cogman10
> 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.
I think the flaw in this thinking is thinking that burning things is the cheapest way to get energy.
Oil processing and extraction is a complex industry which requires a huge continued investment. Coal requires massive mining operations. Natural gas is probably the least intensive of the burny things, and it still requires a pretty advanced pipeline to be competitive.
Renewables are relatively cheap one time purchases. Save energy storage, the economy that is most competitive at this point is one powered by renewables.
That transition is already happening in the US without a massive government regulation/mandate. In china, it's happening a whole lot faster because the government is pushing it. And the chinese economy is at no risk of being outbid by smaller economies burning fuel.
The main reason burning remains a major source of fuel is that for most nations, the infrastructure to consume it has already been built. It's not because it's cheap.
Findecanor
We have needed tariffs for many years now. The EU has some tariffs on imports, but they are only used to level the playing field for companies in EU countries with emission rules against companies in countries without, and only in some select industries.
They need to apply overall, on all goods and services.
And emission limits need to be progressive over time, with a limit for each year, not just "x% at year 2030".
Nevermark
Cap and trade is so much more efficient. It allocates fossil fuels to the places where replacing it would be most expensive, without central planning.
And slowly raising the price on a smooth forward looking schedule lets businesses make rational choices about budgeting for that or for migrating to greener options.
Companies are excellent at adapting to acheive their best interests, to any predictable continuous (as apposed to discontinuous) economic change. Especially when it is a market based change, as that creates a level playing field.
jmye
My country mines rare earth metals. Your country processes them into computer chips. Joe and Jane's country want those computer chips to fuel their economy.
Who's getting fined, here? Me, because mining the stuff is inherently dirty (without, probably, significant research and capital investment)? You, because you need the stuff to build other stuff? Joe and Jane because they're the ones ultimately driving the production of the stuff? If you fine me into not producing the raw materials, what, ultimately happens to your economy and Joe and Jane's? If I don't sign up, where are you going to get the raw materials, if I'm tariffed into oblivion?
Sorry, I'm not trying to like, doom this away - but there are so many interconnected pieces, that I don't think it's a problem that can even start to be solved from an internet comment. At some point, voters in democratic societies need to decide that they care as much about the world their children will inherit as they do a ten cent difference in gas prices ten minutes from now. It's unclear that they ever will on a long term, consistent basis.
bryanlarsen
Nobel memorial prize winning solution: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Faer.15000001
curiousObject
Rationally, you apply fines as close to the source as possible. Because they will pass those costs up the stack.
But the source could be the most likely place for corrupt reporting. Or: Maybe the source element is not dangerous but downstream by-products are.
Like you’ve said: It’s a problem.
bryanlarsen
There is a Nobel memorial prize winning plan to do something like this in a more elegant, voluntary fashion. Nordhaus' Climate Club.
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Faer.15000001
It's essentially a carbon tax on local production and a corresponding carbon tariff on imports. Countries that already have a carbon tax or equivalent don't get tariffed. IOW, they're part of the club.
Usually a carbon rebate is also included in the plan, although that's not strictly necessary.
Germany was spear-heading an effort to create a carbon club, but it fell apart, unfortunately. At the time a club that didn't include the US seemed infeasible.
In 2026 a club that doesn't include Trump's America is a good thing, not a bad thing IMO.
undefined
WarmWash
The real problem is that everyone has to sacrifice, but half the people think there is no problem and then other half thinks only corporations need to sacrifice (and are unwilling to sacrifice themselves).
ComputerGuru
No one thinks only corporations have to sacrifice; they do think that it's folly to ask individual members of society, who on average contribute the smallest overall proportion to global warming, to sacrifice while corporations continue to squander away our natural resources. And the pareto principle agrees.
kibwen
No, that's insufficient. Yes, corporations that cause the most warming will need to be curtailed if we're to survive. But those corporations are in the act externalizing costs. Once you force them to internalize those costs, the visible costs to consumers will increase, meaning less consumption overall. If you can't convince those consumers that less consumption is a good thing if it's in the service of saving the biosphere, then they're going to rebel against your efforts to properly force companies to account for the environmental costs of their products. There's no either/or here, it's the responsibility of both corporations and individuals.
JuniperMesos
Yeah but there's a lot of individual members of society, and nearly all of them benefit from supply chains that emit CO2 and would have to stop doing so in order to not emit the CO2.
If gasoline in the US cost $20/gallon this would reduce the amount of CO2 emissions because suddenly driving a gasoline-powered car is much more expensive for everyone. This would make a lot of ordinary Americans very upset.
Aerroon
Oil companies sell you gasoline that you burn.
wolvesechoes
1% of richest people produces as much as poorest 66%. Wealthiest 10% are responsible for 2/3 of warming effect since 1990.
It is not equal responsibility.
carlosjobim
One rule which always holds true in life: people who ask for sacrifice will never sacrifice an inch themselves. No matter what cause.
ministryofwarp
People love to point out a hypocrite but math and statistics are rarely kind to laws that always hold true.
BLKNSLVR
Recycling someone else's quote:
"The economy is a wholly owner subsidiary of the environment"
Many people use the 'but the economy' argument (including my mother in law, maddeningly) without seeming to have any remote clue as to the truth of the quote above.
microtonal
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.
Or quickly develop to the point where solar, wind, and hydro is cheaper than getting dead fossils out of the ground and processing them.
I am not familiar enough with the economics of this to know whether we are close to that point, but I can imagine once we cross it, combustible fuel burners will be at a disadvantage if they haven't invested in infrastructure needed for renewables.
queenkjuul
Solar plus batteries is the cheapest form of energy now as of 2025
nancyminusone
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.
sph
Worse, even if we’re going to do it, the next idiot in power is going to roll it back and declare to big fanfare and applause that coal is back.
You can’t change the world with plans that last no longer than a presidential term.
apublicfrog
Thankfully most of the world ignores America and does their own thing.
sph
Do you truly believe that the rest of political world has longer foresight than their electoral terms? Often they just promise something that they immediately discard as soon as they get in. The problem is inherent in representative democracy.
BLKNSLVR
There are plenty of people who find it convenient to listen to the current administration, and these people vote. I just hope they remain in a minority in my country. It's always a close run race though...
And a 'more conservative than conservative' party is getting increased media attention here at the moment, which could do serious damage.
undefined
billywhizz
the chinese can
drdaeman
Don’t give up!
I have this gut feeling the world had finally got to the point it decided to fix this pesky warming issue among other things, with a nice and cozy nuclear winter.
(/s, obviously)
boxedemp
We'll fix it if it become cost effective. It might, but probably won't because if the scale.
nielsbot
we're going to chose the most convenient path. if climate disaster becomes inconvenient, we'll attempt to do something about it.
it will be a disaster.
BLKNSLVR
In the immortal words of Zapp Brannigan:
casey2
Nothing can be done about it. If you leave it up to the market it will spiral away forever since the cost of dealing with the problem always increases both due to the size of the problem growing and the cost to insure solutions compounding.
The "obstructionist" greens understand that the system is flawed and needs a structural change. We don't live in capitalist fairyland, there are baseline energy costs that can't be inflated away and our ability to work on the problem degrades after every disaster.
kaiwen1
"But what about <technology/option>?"
That blank will not be filled in with today's technologies, but with technologies we cannot conceive of today and with an energy abundance that we can hardly imagine.
Even in this apparently dire predicament, optimism is warranted.
wolvesechoes
No tech will fix it because, as all important problems, it is not a tech problem.
bdangubic
tech has solved a lot of problems that weren’t tech problems
ares623
Just need a map for all the bunkers. It's gonna be the future version of open-world video games.
afandian
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
dang
Ok, we've changed the URL from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/389855619_Global_Wa... to what that doi.org link redirects to. Is it better now?
afandian
Cool, thanks. I approve!
In a pure world everyone would use DOIs to refer to published literature. This would give two benefits: first, always link to the current version. Second, be a persistent identifier for the content.
But HN isn't a specialist scholarly content platform, so it's practical to link to the landing page.
rcbdev
And what about countries where URNs are the identifier of choice? In my perfect world, we'd ban DOIs entirely from academic conduct and use only URNs respectively.
luxuryballs
I’m out of the loop on researchgate, when you say “No need” is it like an archive.is? Why is it less desirable or, if I’m reading your tone correctly, a “backup option”?
afandian
I'm a bit of a scholarly infrastructure purist. The paper has a DOI, it leads to a landing page that has the full text, and the content is open licensed.
Like if someone posted a link to an archive.is version of a Wikipedia page, you'd probably prefer to get the canonical link to that content.
ResearchGate is a bit of commercial enclosure of infrastructure that is, and should be, open. Who knows, maybe it has other value. I'm not an academic so I don't know.
kergonath
My position is that when it’s open access, we might as well link the primary source. ResearchGate is generally legal. It’s the responsibility of the authors to upload accepted manuscripts if the final document is not open access. AFAIK it does not do anything dodgy like archive.is does.
serioussecurity
They're a user hostile attempt to extract money from people. They make their website hard to use.
kergonath
How so? I am not paying anything and I don’t have any problem getting full texts when the authors uploaded them. In fact, I just logged in and don’t see even the possibility to pay for anything there. I assume they monetise their database, but everything there is supposed to be publicly accessible anyway.
If I am not mistaken we can get documents without an account as well, unlike others.
pc86
If the original is available, posting anything else is by definition less desirable.
nyeah
ResearchGate isn't open access.
bee_rider
ResearchGate isn’t a journal, right? I think it is some sort of… pseudo-social-networking site for papers.
noboostforyou
How so? I don't have an account but I am able to read the entire paper directly from the OP's link, is there some sort of free limit or something that I have yet to hit? I get some banner ads served on their site but I'm not seeing how it isn't open access.
cubefox
The researchgate link has for me a deceptive ad at the bottom: it has a PDF logo and says "download now", suggesting that this will download the paper. It then links to a download page which in the fine print says it will actually download some kind of ebook collection which costs 30 bucks per month. That's a scam.
miclill
As far as I understand this is a pre-print under CC-BY license, if this answers your question?
dana321
The clue is in the name, research "gate"
Kiboneu
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.
fasterik
It's not primarily a lifestyle issue, and the problem is no longer primarily developed countries. Per-capita carbon emissions in developed countries have decreased 30% in the past 20 years, and energy demand has remained relatively constant, in fact decreasing slightly in some places due to increases in efficiency. Meanwhile, developing countries like China and India are projected to account for 35-40% of total global emissions in the next decade, far outweighing the impact of individual lifestyle choices in the West.
Of course, people should do everything they can to reduce or offset their own emissions. But the solution is going to have to be societal, keeping up with energy demand by adding more nuclear, solar, and wind to the grid.
brewdad
China and India currently make up 35% of the global population. So saying they account for 35%of emissions is to be expected.
budududuroiu
> Meanwhile, developing countries like China and India are projected to account for 35-40% of total global emissions in the next decade, far outweighing the impact of individual lifestyle choices in the West.
Sure, but that's still mostly driven by Western demand for... Stuff. I'd like to see that share of global emissions if the West was still industrialised and didnt rely on China to be its factory
fasterik
80% of China's manufacturing output is consumed domestically. Of the goods exported from China, only about 15% go to the United States. While that still represents a lot of exports in absolute terms, it's simply false to say that it's "mostly driven by Western demand for stuff".
Ekaros
35-40% considering their population and Africa still not getting their people to same consumption level as west seems entirely reasonable.
jwrallie
It also includes social pressure, try to have a kid and no car, people will look at you like you are crazy. I even live in a country with great public transportation.
aniviacat
The EU has less than half the emissions per capita compared to the USA.
The USA has uniquely high emissions (matched only by a couple oil states). This is not solely explained with affluency.
yowayb
As a nomad, can confirm. Coming back to America, the scale and quality of materials is remarkable.
grosswait
Could you elaborate on your observations?
cbeach
[flagged]
triceratops
> India and China’s contribution to CO2 emissions dwarfs the rest of the world
Such brazen, bald-faced lies. How do you sleep at night?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-...
cbeach
I wasn't talking about historic emissions. I was talking about the current state of affairs, and in particular, the projections over the next few years, as this is what's relevant.
I'm not interested in political judgements of "past guilt." I'm interested in the trends that will matter for our childrens' future.
throwaway290
do you know how to read that graph? because this graph you linked exactly shows what you call "lies" is true.
michaelt
Is China often moved by western ire?
xracy
Saying "The West has deindustrialised" is incredibly disingenuous. The west's consumerism has driven a race-to-the-bottom for pricing of products in China and India.
cbeach
Seeking the cheapest goods is not a practice that's isolated to Westerners.
But destroying our own industrial capacity by government policy is certainly something unique to our countries.
standeven
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
tgsovlerkhgsel
Prices are a great incentive.
In Germany, 1 kWh of electricity costs roughly 3x as much as 1 kWh of gas. That doesn't make heat pumps very attractive. Historically the differences were even worse.
Relying on people individually making choices that are better for the environment at a disadvantage for themselves is not going to work.
jillesvangurp
The way a good heat pump works is that you can get about 3-5kwh of heat out of 1 kwh of electricity. So, they can save money over gas even though electricity is more expensive per kwh. And of course gas prices fluctuate quite a bit. Right now Germany is low on gas and gas prices are going through the roof because of the situation in the middle east.
Here in Germany this issue is lack of policy, financing, and a lot of people are renting. I actually pay about > 100/month for gas. I live in a 20 apartment building with a big furnace in the basement for the whole building. A heat pump would be cheaper to run but you'd have to do a big one for the whole building. This is actually a good thing. Big heat pumps can be quite efficient. It's probably cheaper than having to install 20 heatpumps for 20 apartments.
But buying and installing heat pumps costs money. Technically, it is actually an investment (i.e. it has an ROI). If you do this collectively as a building, you'd do it to lower your monthly bills. This is something that should be possible to finance out of those savings (at least partially). That's literally why private home owners install heat pumps and get their money back in 6-10 years typically. Faster if they also invest in solar. And get an EV that also powers from those panels.
But this where things break down in Germany. You need consensus. And financing. And there are home owners that can block things and it's their renters that pay the heating bill so the owners don't care. And so on. And if you are renting, you are not going to pay for this either. So, everybody just coughs up the money every month without even questioning it. My apartment doesn't even have a thermostat or a smart meter for electricity. Apparently that's normal in this country. Germany is just deeply bureaucratic and inefficient. For all the talk about environment, they can't be arsed to do what the rest of the world did decades ago: save some energy with smart meters.
Policy could help here. Mainly clearing up bureaucracy. And maybe some more subsidies/incentives (those already exist) or low interest financing. And a clear political goal to vastly reduce expensive gas imports. Even if the electricity for powering these heat pumps would come from gas powered electricity plants, it would still require a lot less gas. And of course Germany has lots of wind power. I think other countries in the EU are a bit further with their thinking than Germany on this front. On paper it having lots of apartment buildings like mine actually means it is fairly straight forward from a technical point of view to upgrade these buildings.
0wis
If only the German infrastructure hadn’t been built for Nordstream…
In France, with Nuclear power and renewable it’s 20% lower.
Prices also depends on who you want to give power.
tzs
A gas furnace produces at most 1 kWh of heat from 1 kWh of gas. A heat pumps produces 3-4 kWh of heat from 1 kWh of electricity. If electricity is 3x as much as gas per kWh the heat pump should be less expensive to operate.
Plus, it also gives you AC which comes in handy if you live someplace where you want AC.
orthecreedence
> If electricity is 3x as much as gas per kWh the heat pump should be less expensive to operate.
This would be true if heat pumps were free. But "less expensive to operate" needs to justify cost of installation over some measurable period of time. If electricity is 3x more expensive than gas, and the heat pump is 3-4x (2.5-3.5x realistically) then you're barely squeeking by except on the days when the pump is most efficient (when it's already warm out). That 3.5 - 3 leaves 0.5, amortized over the lifetime of the heat pump...might not even pay for installation.
So, make heat pumps free or energy cheaper, I guess.
mdhen
germany is an excellent example of an industrial powerhouse imploding their country by adopting the stupidest power strategy possible. Just utterly incomprehensible.
blell
[flagged]
greekrich92
It's the year of our Lord 2026 and people are still making personal responsibility pitches to fix the CO2 levels which haven't been seen in 300 million years
ajam1507
What would you have them do instead?
jackp96
Not OP, but my understanding is that voting for politicians who prioritize more sustainable policies and advocating for industry regulation to cut down on things like single-use plastics (or promoting EV use/infrastructure build outs) has a much bigger impact than recycling or not flying.
I (unfortunately) just don't think it's pragmatic/reasonable to expect enough people to make personal sacrifices/reduce QOL to make a dent. It's a tragedy of the commons, and we need some form of reasonable regulation to cut down on the worst offenders (probably carbon taxes) while we invest heavily in improving the technology so it makes financial sense to switch.
Renewables have come so far in the past decade and are now competitive with fossil fuels in terms of pricing. As the technology continues to become more efficient and cheaper, we'll likely start to see significant drops in emissions in addition to cheaper energy.*
*Assuming the US elects a rational adult to the presidency in 2028.
iLoveOncall
The number one solution is obvious and I don't know why nobody talks about it: mandate work from home whenever possible.
Daily commute represents 20% of CO2 emissions, it's an insanely high number, and it has an incredibly easy, already tested thanks to COVID, solution.
People will say "but what about the shops that will close". They won't, they will relocate in residential neighborhoods where people now live AND work.
All the potential issues people might raise actually disappear as WFH becomes the new normal and not a potentially temporary state like it was during COVID.
Even if only 50% of jobs can be done from home, that's an instant 10% reduction JUST from commute. But in reality it'll lead to a much larger decrease, with less spending on fast-fashion, more proximity businesses, etc.
nairoz
And don't fly
Findecanor
I think there should be a progressive flight tax. The more flights you've taken, the more the next flight should be taxed.
That should allow anyone to do that once-in-a-lifetime trip to a far-away country they've always dreamed of, but discourage people from flying often.
A lot more fuel is needed during take-off and landing than during cruising, making the number and frequency of flights more significant than the distance.
hnfong
COVID proved that not flying barely made a dent in the global emissions.
Sure, if we never fly again and reverted to living like a medieval peasant, maybe things will kinda work out.
Findecanor
During COVID, airlines flew empty planes back and forth at a loss just to keep the right to their established routes and air ports.
Aachen
What nonsense. I certainly feel like a medieval peasant sitting in a high speed train crossing a large country while I read a book for a few hours, costing three hours of work at the median salary if you book your ticket far enough ahead. (They also allegedly run on wind energy, but of course that's creative accounting and another industry is simply attributed the corresponding amount of coal/gas electricity.) Traveling is accessible, fast, and comfortable. The main expense is the hotel(s)
mr_mitm
And eat vegan and regional produce
And don't build things out of concrete
And better get a few room mates
iLoveOncall
Flights represent 3% of CO2 emissions. It's nothing. A tiny drop in the bucket.
pinkmuffinere
My impression is that flying on a commercial plane produces less CO2 than driving? So if your only options are drive vs fly, I think flying is the correct choice -- is that right?
zaken
It's about 60 mpg per passenger to fly domestically and 90 mpg per passenger to fly internationally.
If you have a family of 4, you can think of it as the equivalent of a 15 mpg vehicle for domestic flight and 22 mpg vehicle for international flight. So somewhere in the range of a full-size pickup truck.
But -- when you fly, you go very far. If you go on vacation to Hawaii from San Francisco once a year with your family, that's the equivalent of driving a Ford F-150 for 5000 miles. If you visit India or China that's 15,000 Ford F-150 miles! In a single trip, more than what most people drive in an entire year!
So you can make a big difference just preferring local vacations instead of remote ones.
tgsovlerkhgsel
It's code for "don't travel, especially long distance"... because most people would simply not be willing to make many trips if the trips took as long as the non-flight option would require.
undefined
Dormeno
> Switch to an electric vehicle
I can't afford it. For context, I paid £500 for my current vehicle back in 2020. My bills have only gone up since, but my salary has not.
> Migrate from gas appliances (range, furnace, water heater) to electric (induction, heat pumps)
I can't afford that either. When I got my home assessed, switching to heat pumps requires replacing all the radiators in my house and extra insulation, etc. My gas boiler does have a built-in electric induction system, but it's only used when the tank is cold.
> If your power grid isn’t clean, add rooftop or balcony solar
I can afford the solar panels, but I can't afford the battery storage, nor the installation, and my area does not allow for an inverter connected to the main grid.
yesfitz
Reduce consumption of farmed animal products to zero.
Ekaros
Live smaller. Look examples from cage living from say Hong Kong. You can survive in capsule. You should not really ask for more space.
phasnox
> Switch to EV
Most people can't afford one
> -Migrate from gas appliances (range, furnace, water heater) to electric (induction, heat pumps)
Electricity is considerably more expensive, people that leave paycheck to paycheck would not be able to afford it
Here are somethings YOU can do personally to help:
- Never fly in an airplane again
- Never use ANY vehicle again, walk everywhere(yes EVs also pollute)
- In the winter, don't turn on the heat.
- Eat only vegetables and things you don't need to cook
- etc
If you are not doing ALL OF THESE you have no right on telling other people how they produce their CO2.
sulam
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.
masklinn
> Models in the past did not attempt to account for non-anthropogenic carbon emissions
They're literally mentioned by the first IPCC report already.
culi
Early IPCC reports, all the way up to AR5 basically threw their hands up when it came to permafrost emissions. They admitted we didn't have the necessary data yet and for the most part didn't account for it at all in their models
Check out the 1.5C special report. Go to section 2.2.1.2, last paragraph says
> The reduced complexity climate models employed in this assessment do not take into account permafrost or non-CO2 Earth system feedbacks, although the MAGICC model has a permafrost module that can be enabled. Taking the current climate and Earth system feedbacks understanding together, there is a possibility that these models would underestimate the longer-term future temperature response to stringent emission pathways
https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-2/#:~:text=Geophysi...
Someone
The claim being discussed is not that they didn’t account for it, but that they didn’t attempt to account for it. Reading that text, I think they did, but chose not to include it (I guess because they didn’t need to to make their point and, by not including it, avoided opponents from arguing about the validity of the result based on uncertainties in those models)
baq
> major dieoffs in warm latitudes, even for humans, due to exceeding wet bulb limits
my extremely pessimistic position is nothing will happen systemically even after the first few such events, and they'll take tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives.
I hope writing this out jinxes it.
wing-_-nuts
You saw our reaction to covid. Millions. It will take millions of deaths in a nuclear armed country. See 'The ministry for the future'
fwipsy
I generally endorse that book but I am not sure we are quite so short-sighted. What's necessary is for the people who have power (not just billionaires and politicians, but even the middle class in democracies) to feel that they are in danger. A heat wave with a million casualties might do it, but I'm not sure it's the only way.
netsharc
The ingredients for the Syrian conflict came about because of climate change (dried up farms - farmers moving to cities to find jobs - social tension). The last 10+ years has shown that the relatively well-off Europeans would rather watch the Syrians drown rather than "pollute" their luxury enclaves...
We'd rather kill everyone else rather than give up our luxuries...
estimator7292
We are already far past the point of mere thousands of lives. Entire cities have been wiped off the map by floods.
It will take millions, if not close to a billion lives before we get serious
zahlman
> Entire cities have been wiped off the map by floods.
Could you name some?
zeryx
Are you kidding? It will be Millions easily. It will just take 1 or two blackouts in wet bulb conditions to cause that
yoyohello13
I wish it were different but I would not be surprised if it’s billions before anything changes. And even then there will be a major proportion of people that celebrate it as the second coming.
fwipsy
Billions? Sounds optimistic. Try trillions or quadrillions before anything really changes. Orders of magnitude are just a dime a dozen after all.
deepsun
Re carbon capture -- we can cut trees and dump them in "carbon storage" places like the bottom of some water bodies where due to lack of oxygen no rotting happens, like peats and e.g. Black Sea.
And grow new trees in their place of course.
tasty_freeze
Considering the scale that we are burning oil and gas, our sequestration efforts would have to be comparable. Continuing to burn oil and gas and trying to recapture it is madness, like realizing you are driving way too fast and instead of taking your foot off the gas, you keep flooring it but start applying the brakes.
If we could actually grow trees to capture carbon equivalent to 250M+ barrel of oil per day, it would be better to just grow trees and burn them for energy.
chinathrow
If we just could stop burning that oil, that would be great.
adrianN
It’s difficult to scale this to the levels we would need to make a difference.
deepsun
Yes, agree. But I'm not sure direct air capture is more scalable than trees. Yes trees need to be moved, but at least they grow by themselves.
zdragnar
Depending on the tree, freshly cut wood can have anywhere from 1:3 to 2:1 ratio of water to actual wood fiber.
So, unless we want to remove a massive amount of fresh water from the ecosystem, we also need to invest energy in drying out the wood well below natural humidity levels (transport to a desert maybe?) on top of electrifying what is currently a diesel and gas heavy industry (cutting and transporting logs with heavy machinery).
There's definitely lower hanging fruit for getting C02 out of the cycle.
lazide
The more likely candidate is mineral based, because yes trees are hard to scale this way.
pfdietz
Albedo modification (stratospheric aerosols) seems much cheaper than direct air capture, as a stopgap.
pier25
Excellent comment. I would only add two points.
I think it's important to mention the effects we're seeing today are caused by the emissions from decades ago.
Second, not sure if the paper in the OP touches this but we've reduced aerosols in the atmosphere. These previously were masking the effects of climate change by cooling the temperature.
adolph
The paper states it adjusts for "ENSO, volcanic eruptions, and solar variations" and not (afaict) the changes in shipping bunker fuel that reduced atmospheric SO2 (if that is what you mean by "reduced aerosols"). Below is a summary of the topic for those who are unaware. I withhold any opinion of validity of mechanism or effect.
Sulphur particles contained in ships' exhaust fumes had been counteracting
some of the warming coming from greenhouse gases. Lowering the sulfur content
of marine fuel weakened this masking effect, effectively giving a boost to
warming.mempko
Regarding carbon capture, it will take more energy to capture the carbon than we burned putting it up there in the first place. Alan Kay, who actually did some systems work on the environment, explained it to me that the climate system is like an upside down coke bottle. It doesn't take much energy to tip it over, but it takes a lot more to put it back up.
In other words, we shouldn't have tipped it over in the first place. We may not have the energy to put things back to a habitable place.
danny_codes
Physically that’s not the case.
Scaled up nuclear power could be had for $3-4B a gigawatt/h. We waste say $1T a year on basic things, like not having universal healthcare. So a simple policy change would let us build about 300 reactors a years, after some scaling period. The excess energy can be used to turn C02 back into oil.
It’s not technically that difficult, we just chose to waste money on stupid things and rich people toys instead.
Energy abundance is simply the choose to build nuclear power plants at scale
mempko
Since the industrial revolution we've emitted about 1.5 trillion tonnes of CO2. Direct air capture requires roughly 1,500 kWh per tonne, so recapturing all of it would take around 2,250,000 TWh. Current global electricity production is about 30,000 TWh/year. That's 75 years of the entire world's electricity output just for capture, before you even convert it back to fuel, which costs even more energy. And thermodynamically you can never break even: we only extracted maybe 30-40% of fossil fuel energy as useful work, but reversing the dispersal of CO2 from 420ppm in the atmosphere fights entropy all the way back. It will always cost more energy to put back than we got taking it out. As for the nuclear numbers: Vogtle, the only recent US build, came in at ~$16B/GW, not $3-4B. The world started construction on 9 reactors total in 2024. The all time peak was ~30/year in the 1980s. 300/year has never been close to reality. Average build time is about 9 years per reactor. I'm not anti-nuclear but you can't hand-wave your way past thermodynamics and industrial scaling with "it's just a policy choice."
jgalt212
> Oh and roughly 65M of sea level rise as the planet shifts to a snow/ice-free mode.
Where is this new figure coming from? It seems about 60X what's being published elsewhere.
toxik
If all glaciers and ice sheets on Earth melted, sea levels would rise roughly 65–70 meters (about 210–230 feet). It’s worth noting that a full melt of Antarctica alone would take many thousands of years even under extreme warming scenarios, so this is more of a thought experiment than a near-term risk. Current projections for this century focus on partial contributions, with estimates ranging from roughly 0.3 to over 1 meter of rise by 2100 depending on emissions pathways.
marssaxman
That's been known for a long time - it just hasn't been considered a likely scenario. It's the rise we'd expect if all the ice on Greenland and Antarctica were to melt:
https://sealevel.nasa.gov/understanding-sea-level/global-sea...
01100011
What about solar shades? Seems like a relatively quick and easy way to regulate solar input. It's nice too because you can quickly remove it if necessary.
tremon
How long would a single cargo-load of shades have to be operational just to offset the amount of CO2 emitted by its launch?
teamonkey
What percentage of the 128-million-square-km cross-sectional area of the earth are you proposing to shade?
jpadkins
kinda obvious, the wealthy parts?
ACCount37
Only becomes viable if you have things like Starship online and fully operational, with launch rates at the level of Falcon 9 today. At the minimum.
Still a more viable option than bringing greenhouse gas emissions into the negatives globally, by the way. But that's a low bar. Nuking the ocean floor is probably a better call.
casey2
I'm confident that pushing everyone involved with Starship into the ocean would be a better and faster and more ethical green transition.
post-it
Reducing sunlight to the surface means we lose solar power effectiveness and we need to use more power for artificial lighting to grow plants.
ACCount37
Not to a significant degree.
Preventing 1% of sunlight from hitting Earth is more than enough to offset climate change heating. It's not enough to make agriculture or photovoltaics uneconomical. In many regions, it might make agriculture more viable on the net, not less - by reducing climate risks.
altruios
Most of the surface of the earth is covered with water...
What if we cover the ice caps, and cover parts of the ocean instead of messing with grow cycles of plants on land...
No reduction in solar power, no artificial lights to grow plants. What effects might that have on ocean life? (below a certain depth - probably nothing, so surface ocean life is what we need to look at).
Just my two cents... we got plenty of surface area we can cover and potentially not affect much at all for day to day for animals, plants, and humans.
shashurup
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.
adrian_b
During the Paleogene, the terrestrial plants and animals were very different from those of today.
Now on all continents and islands most of the big animals and plants are humans, domestic animals and cultivated plants. The wild animals and plants, even if they are much more varied, with many thousands times more species than the domestic ones, are much smaller in quantities, with only a few kinds that are non-negligible, e.g. ants, termites, rodents.
So if we will return in a short time to the Paleogene climate, the main question is how this will affect the few dominant animal species, like chicken, humans, pigs, sheep, cattle, dogs and the main cultivated plants, all of which are not adapted to a Paleogene climate and which will not be able to adapt in such a short time.
It is likely that places like Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Siberia, Antarctica might become nicer places where to live and practice agriculture, but the few people who live now there would not welcome invaders coming from places that are no longer habitable.
shashurup
I don't see that everything except Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Siberia and Antarctica was inhabitable. For instance in Eocene the climate remained fairly warm and homogeneous (the most uniform in the Cenozoic).
From the equator to the poles, forests grew. Fossilized remains of cypress and sequoia have been found on the Arctic Ellesmere Island, and palms — in Alaska and northern Europe.
Equatorial and tropical forests (with palms, fig trees, and sandalwood trees) persisted in Africa, South America, India, and Australia.
Eucalypts, sequoias spread widely, and new types of broad‑leaved trees appeared.
By the end of the Eocene, rainforests were preserved only in the equatorial parts of South America, Africa, India, and Australia — due to the onset of cooling.
throwaway5752
The only outcome is advanced human civilization will go extinct, with the carrying capacity of the world to support enough humans to specialize. Maybe that's the AI rush and drive to distract everyone with divisive presidents and pointless wars.
taeric
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.
blueeon
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.
apt-apt-apt-apt
Isn't this like a frog in a pot saying, ah the water was cold but now it's warm!, moments before getting cooked?
blueeon
Some say that when encountering difficulties, one should either change them or adapt to them, and be able to distinguish between the two. It is obvious that we cannot change climate change, and even if individuals can do some environmental protection, they still cannot change it.
apt-apt-apt-apt
Humans are actively causing climate change (or greatly contributing to it), so it must be possible to change it to some degree.
tgsovlerkhgsel
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?
moffkalast
The worst thing you can do when you're actively geoengineering is to abruptly stop doing it. So naturally we found a way we were already doing it and cut it immediately to make sure we fuck ourselves as much as possible :)
I'm almost convinced it's intentional at this point, the rich are busy building their offbrand vault tec bunkers and starting random wars for no real reason. Longtermism nonsense over the today.
zahlman
Airborne sulfur comes with its own negative environmental consequences, though.
moffkalast
Clearly worth the tradeoff of not making the worst catastrophe we've ever faced as a species exponentially worse?
I mean hell, piston engined airplanes use leaded fuel and crop dust it over everyone daily, but nobody cares as long as they get to fly them and that's a just minor money saving measure that causes a lot environmental consequences.
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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.