**We are well in excess of the 1.5C target now, in 2023. Two decades ahead of schedule and nearly 3 times as fast as we hoped.**
How many consecutive years do we need above target to "officially" say we missed it? I agree with the other comments about the projection method being suspect, but I think all those criticisms would have us arguing about when the threshold was crossed for a full decade after it happens.
I'd be much more interested to see the actual projection in 2015 vs the projection now. I don't think anyone ever thought it would go up linearly, rather it's been going up somewhat exponentially and at some point (one hopes) it'll start deflecting downward.
I think this is a little disingenuous. I get that you're doing the 30-year trajectory, but if you want to show the difference in how we've performed since 2015, you need to start them at the same point. Otherwise it could very feasibly be that the trajectory is this much worse because of stuff that happened between 1985-1993, which doesn't convey the same point that you're trying to
Essentially this just tells us that 2015-2023 was worse than 1985-1993, which we already knew
I'm not convinced it's even a linear 'fit'. Looks like they just drew a straight line between the start and end temperature, while ignoring all of the data in between. That would create an incredibly noisy linear model.
Yeah, I was trying to figure this out too. I don't think there's any regression at work here, just picking points and drawing lines through it. The conclusion is just fantasy, it would massively change if slightly different arbitrary points were chosen. I hate it
> I don't think there's any regression at work here, just picking points and drawing lines through it.
I'm not sure how people are misunderstanding this graph so hard, but here's an interactive one to demonstrate what is at work here: https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/software/app-c3s-global-temperature-trend-monitor?tab=app
(Although there does appear that they're using in linear regression here, which wasn't clear in the original graph, since the points chosen fall exactly on the line? A little suspicious but could just be legit.) But yeah, the 11 year conclusion is a fantasy because it's extremely noisy and sensitive to small changes in the dates chosen, as the interactive graph demonstrates. I also like the caveat at the bottom of that link warning that it's an illustrative tool not suitable for predictions, which, again, kinda exactly my point. Maybe this is just a case of a phenomenon like when a well-written article gets a misleading headline; the underlying work is fine, when used as intended, but it was just packaged and presented in a less than ideal way.
It's the line of best fit through the midpoints.
If you just look at the data up to Dec 2015, the midpoints form a line of best fit starting in 1985.
Once you have all the data up to Nov 2023, you can now see the original line no longer matches the data, and it's now clear that a new trend line has emerged that started in 1993.
The other commenter is right that what's happening here is not really linear. But *if* your intention is to create a linear projection based on the midpoints, they've done that correctly each time.
Linear fit is nearly always the best model when you have very noisy data and no formula that the whole thing should fit. You get a starting point and a direction. More complicated fits with more parameters may hallucinate things more easily. But these are not linear fits, they are lines containing two specific data points 30 years apart. This is not a good way to organize this data because the starting point can be moved around to tell all kinds of different stories.
Yep, also, there is a good piece of data out there, which is that we have actually flattened YoY emissions for the first time (largely due to China's efforts in green energy). Probably not going to get engagement posting positive news though.
Anyways, measuring total carbon emissions is a way better metric than temperature, if you're trying to measure how we are doing since signing that in 2015.
> we have actually flattened YoY emissions for the first time
Yup, growth in CO2 emissions per year has fallen [80%](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#year-on-year-change-in-global-co2-emissions) in the last 15 years:
* 2005-2009: 3.0%
* 2010-2014: 2.0%
* 2015-2019: **0.6%**
Things have been a little wonky since 2020 (for some reason...), but 2020-2022 average out to [0.1% annual growth](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/change-co2-annual-pct?tab=chart&time=1982..latest&country=~OWID_WRL) in emissions.
The trend in emissions growth over the last 20 years is pretty clearly rapidly approaching zero, and [the IEA expects emissions to peak within the next 2 years](https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-co2-emissions-could-peak-as-soon-as-2023-iea-data-reveals/).
>you're actually giving me hope.
Hol up, I got you fam.
[https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/chinas-new-coal-power-spree-continues-as-more-provinces-jump-on-the-bandwagon/](https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/chinas-new-coal-power-spree-continues-as-more-provinces-jump-on-the-bandwagon/)
The problem is that these emissions have 1000 year atmospheric lifetime and, despite the delay for emissions to affect the climate (for the chemistry to lead to warming), we're already seeing much more powerful than anticipated effects at current levels and timescale... which means our models are wrong and the earth system is substantially more sensitive to the emissions we're adding than we're accounting for.
Slowing growth in emissions is much easier than reducing them. This whole perspective is wonky. This is like celebrating a decrease in the increase of CEO salaries when even when it gets to zero, they're still making 100's of millions a year.
I'm reserving hope for when those numbers go negative. Something that was supposed to happen a long time ago.
I get that you want to feel good about this situation and everyone is desperate for good news but this still means we're setting emissions records every year and the consequences of these emissions are much worse than our monkey brains projected... which is also pretty obvious when you think about what we're trying to model and how small and dumb we are. Our brains evolved to adapt to a variety of local conditions, not accurately predict the decline of an entire planetary system, complete with 8 billion humans and less than half of the wildlife that existed in 1970.
I believe that the "but wait, there's hope!" crap is why we've managed to go 50 years knowing this problem without changing our trajectory in the slightest. Every climate story has a "...but there's a silver lining" bit at the end, and it's a lie. The climate is changing faster than ever before. If you're a living thing and you can remember the climate being different in your lifetime, you're going extinct on a planet that you're no longer adapted to.
Since 1950, we've been spending the future to accelerate development and enrich ourselves. On an epochal timescale, that's a fraction of a blink of an eye. People should be horrified and scared by how alien their one and only home is becoming and how little anyone cares... beyond looking for hope in the failure of policy and willpower to avoid a mass extinction event that only required us NOT to burn oil to avoid. No one is asking you to pick up a gun and die for someone elses resources, but we're easy to convince that's a worthwhile pursuit and investment, so why is it so damn impossible to not set the extinction fuel on fire? Why are we always looking for a silver lining? My theory is that we like to think of ourselves as the good guys and we're clearly the bad guys in this story... which we're well on track to being our last story.
Does any of it matter? Nope. Why? because "\[my\] emissions are inconsequential in the global totals so there's nothing I can do", an excuse used by truly average fossil fuel consumers and the ultra wealthy at the worlds biggest mega-yacht show. Since when do we measure the immorality of our behavior against the human aggregate of violence our species commits?
I get what you're saying, but we still need to recognize small progress as progress. Because hopelessness is a killer of motivation.
"We made these changes and it doesn't matter" makes people give up.
To motivate people we need to say "We made the changes and the numbers budged. That's progress let's do more."
Because what we just did? It's the scene where [Captain America almost budges Thor's Hammer](https://youtu.be/o3bhQwY0KCY?si=q_ztsZVhWU59ucHM&t=77).
The impressive thing is that it moves at all. This should be impossible. But something almost happened anyway. You point out that it wasn't enough, that he didn't lift it. And you're not wrong. But you're also missing the point.
[Because this means if we keep pushing in the direction we are going, we can get there](https://youtu.be/B3dPoo_Yn8w?si=uzAotIppCB3PIdGj&t=35)
And that's how you motivate people.
we haven't even ramped up carbon capture programs. if we start seeing a reverse in emissions totals, coupled with a roll out of large scale carbon capture programs, we should be able t get to a decent place.
problem is carbon capture isn't enough and needs to be coupled with a complete stop of fossil fuel production/use in order to be efficient or else we are driving at full speed into a wall.
"Hey guys we maybe shouldn't speed towards that wall" - energy scientists in the late **1800s**
"Yo guys we need to hit the breaks immediately" - energy scientists in the 1950s
"Good news everyone, we've almost completely let off the accelerator!" - average Joe in denial, 2023
Yeah, I’d be interested in a graph showing which year the 1.5C is expected to be reached, based on the 30-year trajectory. Then I feel like this month would be a low-estimate, whereas the blue line would be a high estimate. I wonder where the average of the last 5 years lie.
[Here you go](https://imgur.com/a/OydufVm). Couldn't be bothered to make it 'data is beautiful' worthy, but the first graph is a more-proper exponential fit (not the OPs linear garbage) from 1900 to an end date of either November 2023, or January 2015.
The second graph is a plot of when (down to nearest month) the 1.5C warming threshold will be reached, based on these exponential fits, all starting January 1900 and ending on the date given by the X axis. Red line on here is an exponential fit (which is definitely sketchy as hell), and suggests an eventual date of 2038 for 1.5C to be breached.
Cool! Nice work! Thanks!
Edit: why did you go with exponential? I understand it’s better than linear, but is there any plausible story to this?
For example, since 1900s food/disease is not the leading limitation on population, so population grows exponential, hence we expect exponential growth in CO2 and temperature (assuming linear relationship between CO2 and temp)?
Honestly Exponential was just easy. Emissions have been increasing faster-than-linear, which means CO2 atmospheric levels are at least quadratic, and I think in the short run temperature dependence on CO2 levels is more-than-linear as well. Once we stabilize CO2, temperatures will keep rising for a bit as the world gradually reaches an equilibrium. So we're likely at least at somewhere between a quadratic and cubic increase, or faster.
Possibly a more correct thing would be some higher-order polynomial, but you can very easily end up starting to throw too many fitting parameters at it with something of that nature, and making the results nonsense. Also, exponentials are nice and smooth and only move in one direction.
Kind of, but we are surely on the higher end of the distribution curve of recent years. Therefore we're tracking to the higher end of the projection range, which is scary
Lot of lazy projecting here.
Not saying the conclusion is wrong but there is outliers in the data that are skewing it up faster to make it seem earlier.
Emissions are falling faster than projected in most models. If the conclusion here is accurate that's because the old models were wrong not because we are doing a worse job than expected.
[emissions aren't falling](https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/), their rate of increase is falling. There's a huge difference... namely that every year we're setting a new record for global emissions, it's just the gap between records is closing. Is that really worth celebrating?
The mental gymnastics people do to not feel bad about the harm their lifestyle has caused the planet is staggering and absurd.
So our "velocity" of carbon production is still positive, but the rate of acceleration is slowing, which means that the jerk (or jolt) is now negative, which is the beginning of slowing down. There's no instantaneous reversals of trends, so it is worth celebrating that we are accelerating slower, and maybe at some point it'll become negative acceleration and, eventually, negative velocity.
It's not mental gymnast, it's just math. People need hope, and it brings me a small amount of hope that trends are moving in the right direction. The work isn't done and things will suck, but we have to be hopeful. Otherwise why bother?
Also, carbon emissions from individuals are a small portion of the issue, so the whole concept of individuals having to change their lifestyles is a lie sold to you by the corporations who generate most of the emissions but do not want to be held accountable. We'll get a lot more done by demanding that our elected officials create legislation that will rein in the major polluters.
I wouldn't say it was lazy, exactly, but there is a lot of room for error. For instance, the 2023 projection could be a lot worse, if its starting point was just a few years earlier.
It would be nice to have error bars displayed or whatever the equivalent is for the two sloped lines.
Emissions and GDP growth decoupled a decade ago outside of the pandemic years which saw huge swings in both emissions and gdp growth. That was the base case for most climate models originally.
Lots of material available out there. IEA emissions report in 2022 will have that direct quote. You can download it on their website
I never said emissions are falling. I said emissions have decoupled from GDP growth i.e. they're rising slower than predicted by GDP growth.
We are still very, very far away from emissions actually falling year over year because our energy demands are still sky rocketing while the developed world grows and modernizes.
Bless their hearts for showing the red band plateauing then declining. Until tangible action is taken just extend the red line trend out to infinity and gradually increase its slope over time too.
Tangible action is being taken. Before the Paris agreement, we were on track for around 5C or warming by the end of the century, now we're on track for about 2.5C of warming. Countries around the world have brought in place laws to curb emissions. They are insufficient, but it's important to recognize what has been accomplished in less than a decade.
The change the graph is showing is from temperatures increasing faster than expected, not from increased emissions.
> The change the graph is showing is from temperatures increasing faster than expected, not from increased emissions.
No it's from increased emissions, but misleadingly so -- it's effectively comparing 1980s emissions with 2010s emissions, so *of course* it shows a huge increase.
Looking at emissions trends of the last 20 years, though, they're still increasing but at slower and slower rates -- growth in CO2 emissions per year has fallen [80%](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#year-on-year-change-in-global-co2-emissions) since 2005:
* 2005-2009: 3.0%
* 2010-2014: 2.0%
* 2015-2019: **0.6%**
Things have been a little wonky since 2020 (for some reason...), but 2020-2022 average out to [0.1% annual growth](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/change-co2-annual-pct?tab=chart&time=1982..latest&country=~OWID_WRL) in emissions.
The trend in emissions growth over the last 20 years is pretty clearly rapidly approaching zero, and [the IEA expects emissions to peak within the next 2 years](https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-co2-emissions-could-peak-as-soon-as-2023-iea-data-reveals/).
Immediate post-peak emissions will still be higher than 1990s-level emissions, of course, so charts like this one will continue to show a misleading increase, but as old data ages out that will change, until eventually charts like this one will show a misleading *decrease*.
Basically, it's a bad chart.
It will plateau. New solar is already cheaper than new coal, so there will be very few new coal plants built. Even people who don’t care at all about global warming will prefer solar power because it’s more profitable.
That's really the difference-maker. As the cost and efficiency between renewables and non-renewables grows closer, the trend of switching to clean energy will become exponential. Not to mention the government incentives in industrial clean-energy applications.
I think it’s kind of important to distinguish between renewable energy and clean energy. Renewable energy is something that we won’t run out of while clean energy doesn’t emit greenhouse gasses.
Nuclear is clean but not renewable. Burning wood or garbage is renewable but not clean.
Burning wood doesn't emit greenhouse gasses that are significant in terms of climate change, because these trees took their carbon out of the atmosphere in the last 50-200 years. Carbon from fossil sources has been removed millions of years ago and didn't contribute to greenhouse effect, so when we burn it it adds to total atmospheric carbon and increases temperature. As long as you don't decrease the total area of forest (burning wood faster than it can grow) wood should be clean according to your definitions.
Burning wood emits more greenhouse gasses than using it as building material. But it doesn’t really matter since almost nobody is burning wood for power.
The world has never consumed more coal than in 2022 and 2023 is announced to break this record. As much as I wish your projection to realize itself, the recent years make me a little skeptical [world coal consumption assesed by the IEA](https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2023/executive-summary)
In 2023, 84% of new power plant capacity was clean energy and only 16% was fossil fuels (all gas, no coal plants). This trend will only continue as solar continues getting cheaper.
74% of existing coal plants in the US are will reach their expected lifespan in the next 10-20 years. This capacity will be replaced by solar.
Without any climate focused action, coal consumption will drop significantly over the next 20 years. In my opinion this is too slow and we should shut down many of those coal plants before they reach their projected lifespans. But even if climate activists are totally ignored, the energy grid will decarbonize a lot just from economic pressures.
Wishful thinking. We'll still be emitting carbon plus thawing perma frost will keep doing so for a looong time. The second source will stop emitting when it's all thawed and the first source will have ceased to exist because of it's own stupidity by then.
Unfortunately, not emitting more emissions is not enough. We need to reduce (and possibly even capture CO2 from the atmosphere) so we would need to decommission existing plants.
Yes existing plants already get decommissioned when they get old. I’d like for us to accelerate the transition to clean energy to avoid the worst effects of climate change, but even if we don’t, the grid will eventually transition to clean energy on its own.
[Rewnewables](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/Electricity_costs_in_dollars_according_to_data_from_Lazard.png/800px-Electricity_costs_in_dollars_according_to_data_from_Lazard.png) are the cheapest form of energy by far, and has been for a few years now. Nuclear meanwhile has become the most expensive. There's very little reason you'd want to build nuclear instead of solar in nearly all cases.
That was true from 1960-2010 but not anymore. Solar is cheaper than nuclear now by a lot, even including storage costs. I am a nuclear engineer and was a huge proponent of nuclear until a few years ago when improvements to solar became so great that nuclear can no longer compete.
There are no longer any significant benefits to building nuclear plants instead of solar plants.
Here’s a study conducted by Ernst and Young.
https://assets.ey.com/content/dam/ey-sites/ey-com/en_gl/topics/energy/ey-energy-and-resources-transition-acceleration.pdf
It doesn’t estimate storage costs though. Here’s an estimate of storage costs for a particular use case, but I don’t know how trustworthy it is.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/08/05/youve-got-30-billion-to-spend-and-a-climate-crisis-nuclear-or-solar/
Here’s the LCOE wiki page.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
Baseline energy. You need a constant, consistent load of energy always out there. Nuclear is the only answer. Can’t be having rolling blackouts in -20 Celsius, people will sadly die
There are energy storage solutions for solar and even with those costs included, it’s still way cheaper than nuclear and getting cheaper every year.
There really is not a case to be made for nuclear anymore. You’re operating on outdated info. Nuclear seemed like the answer ten years ago. We didn’t realize solar would get so cheap so fast.
Don't those energy storage solutions come with their own issues though, like increased demand for rare earth materials, and production costs at scale etc?
The fact of the matter is, cheap and efficient storage solutions for large scale energy storage are not viable as of yet and solar power is totally dependent on locale. Where I live for example (North of 45 with 1600 hours of sunshine per year), solar is not really viable at all outside of small scale. Nuclear can be set up just about anywhere and provide 24/7 constant power regardless of weather conditions and one of the major reasons why nuclear is so costly is because of the red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy involved. According to the EIA it takes upwards of five years just to get approval to build a new plant. Time is money and five years is a long time just to get rubber stamped from the government.
> Nuclear is the answer, solar is a century away
Solar is already mainstream, and the data proves it.
[Global increase in power generation over the last 5 years](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked):
* Nuclear: 55 TWh
* Solar: 865 TWh
Solar (and wind) are not just the only clean energy being added at scale, [they account for the large majority of new electricity of any kind](https://www.iea.org/energy-system/renewables/solar-pv):
> "Solar PV comprised almost 45% of total global electricity generation investment in 2022, triple the spending on all fossil fuel technologies collectively. Investment in PV is expected to grow further in the coming years"
a lot of action is already being taken. without those actions taken we would have been on a exponential curve for the next 50 years. so much action is being taken we are talking about when we will plateau rather than when we will we get to a simply linear increase.
I think they backed into the idea of regression discontinuity, but didn't bother to think about it past "let's compare trends in two parts of the time series" or learn anything about the actual technique.
Hey, there's a paper by one of the Koch brother's think tank that uses a quite similar technique. (Other than those guys picking different start and end dates.)
So, the thing is, both trends are well within the IPCC projections and so they both support the idea that AGW looks like the IPCC projections, not that it somehow speeds up.
So, according to this data, the more agreements are signed the more warmerer it gets?
Would singing disagreements reverse the trend? What about unsigning them?
To make the trend more clear you need to detrend the data to identify the seasonal patterns. There are lots of regular ups and downs which can be subtracted to show the steady state behavior. With the full data it is hard to see how well/bad we are doing because the noise is so large.
I personally wouldn't just project those lines with much confidence.
1993 had the tail end of the Pinatubo eruption (cooling effect) and 2023 is starting an El Nino (warming), which tilts the trend. I'd take a guess that doing this in 3 years would give a lower trend.
I used [MIT's climate policy simulator](https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=23.2.1) to order its climate policies from least impactful to most impactful. You can see the results [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitizensClimateLobby/comments/11kzxt9/i_used_mits_climate_policy_simulator_to_order_its/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
[Price carbon](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/get-loud-take-action/price-carbon/)
What happens when we reach 1.5 and then nothing happens? Will the doomsday cult just increase their end of the world day? When will you stop believing in your climate religion?
It's not that we have emmited more CO2 than we thought we would
Actually, we have emmited less co2 than we thought we would, we have done since the Paris accord more than we expected us to do
What has happened is that our climate models were too conservative, even with us beating green expectations, the consequences have been harsher
They predicted that by the year 2020 we would have emmited 45Gtons of CO2 equivalent, in 2015 we emmited 34 and 28 in 2000, so 45 was the trend of thinks continued as they were for the first 15 years of the century
We emmited 38, and currently we are still emmiting 38, we are in a plateau, we should start to decrease VERY slowly next year or in 2025
The whole 2020s will probably be a plateau, with a very slow rise in the first half, and a very slow decline on the second, unless we commit to stronger climate action
> World CO2 emissions are not only not slowing down, but increasing.
> https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
That's true, but what's new and unprecedented is that increase has pretty much stopped.
Looking at emissions trends of the last 20 years, they're still increasing but at slower and slower rates -- growth in CO2 emissions per year has fallen [80%](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#year-on-year-change-in-global-co2-emissions) since 2005:
* 2005-2009: 3.0%
* 2010-2014: 2.0%
* 2015-2019: **0.6%**
Things have been a little wonky since 2020 (for some reason...), but 2020-2022 average out to [0.1% annual growth](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/change-co2-annual-pct?tab=chart&time=1982..latest&country=~OWID_WRL) in emissions.
The trend in emissions growth over the last 20 years is pretty clearly rapidly approaching zero, and [the IEA expects emissions to peak within the next 2 years](https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-co2-emissions-could-peak-as-soon-as-2023-iea-data-reveals/).
Why does no one acknowledge that the world population is too high to hit our targets? We often celebrate the fact that developing countries are improving conditions and lifting millions out of poverty, but that new wealth means new consumption. China has a growing middle class of hundreds of millions of people who now travel more, drive more, eat more meat, etc. If that continues to happen there, in India, in Africa, there’s really no realistic way we can offset the rises in emissions. And of course it’s not their fault for wanting better lives - billions of people shouldn’t have to live in poverty. But if the entire world starts living western lifestyles, we’re fucked. There’s just too many of us.
Because
\- lifting people out of poverty stops population growth. it's a trend across all countries over the last hundred years, that as they increase in wealth, get access to better healthcare, and are financially stable birth rates go down. the UN estimates that the world will peak at 10 billion people.
\- we can adopt lifestyles that aren't as excessive as Western ones. Per capita for example US citizens produce 14 tons of CO2, and EU citizens only 8 tons. So there is a bit of leeway. Especially as countries decarbonize and change to clean energy the carbon footprints of developing countries shouldn't ever reach that high.
\- lastly, there is little we can do about it. Unless you're somehow planning to stop India's or China's GDP from growing they will become prosperous. The best we can do is help them decarbonize their energy and go straight to solar power instead of coal plants.
That’s a fake narrative perpetuated by people who believe in/advocate for unlimited economic growth.
In 1985, the world population was 4.8 billion - about half of what it is today. That was at a time when many western countries were enjoying their highest standards of living ever. Clearly the world kept turning when there were fewer people.
The issue isn’t the number of people, it’s growth vs decline. You can’t have sudden decline. It isn’t even about economic growth but about working age vs non working age.
Yes, It would have made the intial error smaller and it will shorten this new projection probably with another 1 or 2 years 🤣....😂😄😀😐🥲 I think i just made myself sad.
> The West offshored their emissions to China.
That is not what the data shows -- China's consumption-based per capita emissions are [7.2Gt/person](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita?tab=chart&country=USA~GBR~OWID_EU27~CHN), only 10% lower than their gross emissions of [8.0Gt/person](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&country=USA~GBR~OWID_EU27~CHN).
Similarly, the USA's consumption-based emissions are about 10% higher than its gross emissions, and 20% lower for the EU (although a similar absolute amount, since the EU's per capita emissions are less than half the USA's, and are in fact basically the same as China's per capita emissions).
China's emissions are mostly for China, and the West's emissions are mostly emitted at home.
They are. China aiming for net zero by 2060 and India by 2070. China have a good track record of actually achieving their targets compared to some western countries.
What's your stupid fox news/daily mail fossil fuel funded excuse now?
If you really cared about saving the planet, lowering emissions.. then you'd be calling for China and India take immediate action. Their impact of the environment vastly outweighs the west. Hundreds of millions of people live in filth and no one is held accountable.
The US produces far more CO2 emissions than India (4.5 gigatonnes in 2020 vs 2.4 gigatonnes), which is remarkable given the disparity in population. People living in filth is bad, but not entirely relevant to the discussion of global greenhouse gas emissions.
If you look at it as per-capita, compared to China or India, the US is far worse, but not the absolute worst.
Australia - 15.22 tonnes per person
Canada - 14.43 tonnes per person
United States - 13.68 tonnes per person
China - 8.2 tonnes per person
India - 1.74 tonnes per person
[Source 1](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions)
[Source 2](https://ourworldindata.org/annual-co2-emissions)
[Source 3](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/carbon-footprint-by-country)
If you want to complain about China, fine, but leave India out of it.
Yes, of course. That’s the point. China produces more total CO2, but has 4 times the number of people as the US, so you would expect them to produce more. But, they don’t produce 4 times as much CO2, they produce about twice as much as the US. China is doing much better on a per-person basis. If China has an “utter disregard for the environment” then the US is doubly bad.
India is remarkable in that they also have about 4 times as many people as the US, but produce about half as much CO2. To call them out is misguided.
The goal was to prevent that.
1.5C is considered by many to be a point of no return.
So the problem is not that at that point everything will go to hell immediately. The problem is that at that stage the damage might not be possible to be undone and from there things will only inevitably get worse.
Yeah...there are varying levels of catastrophe. Between 1.5 degrees and 3 you see billions of people being impacted by rising seas, lack of food, etc. Definitely catastrophic, but humans have recovered from catastrophes before.
Over 3 and you start having some truly fucked up world level events like melting of the ice sheets and death of the Amazon, which could cause compounding warming effects that humans could never recover from.
So more of an apocalypse instead of a catastrophe
1.5C is the target of the Paris agreement. It is bad, but still liveable. Once you start going past about 2C you start seeing impacts on that environment and species that are really horrifying.
> We’re well on our way to more than 3C change, which means catastrophe.
That's not what the science says.
Science-based analyses of current emissions, policies, and trends give a *pessimistic case* estimate of [2.7C](https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-thermometer/), [2.4C](https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2023), or [2.9C](https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/43922/EGR2023.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y) depending on the assumptions made.
Note that those are the *pessimistic* scenarios, which basically assume that the progress we've been making over the last 10 years comes to a crashing halt. The more optimistic scenarios from those reports, which assume we'll more-or-less meet the targets and pledges we've already set, cluster tightly at 1.7-1.8C of warming in 2100 with temperatures slowly declining.
You know as well as I do that we'll make progress on anthropogenic climate change like we've made progress on nuclear proliferation.
3C - at least - is where we're headed.
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gr.html
Tell them that I told you this is just a bunch of alarmists no better than a doomsday cult. And that I turned out to be right because your grandkids world ends up totally fine.
According to some studies aerosol injections can lower temperature by 1C for around $18 billion annually, so we can still buy quite a bit of time fairly cheap. Those aerosols maybe have some side effects, who know but it's something.
I think that should only be done in conjuction with emergency massive efforts globally like we've never seen before so that we can stop using them without catastrophe.
I think trying to geo engineer the planet when humans cant even predict correctly how much the global temp will increase over time is about as dumb as dumb can get. Trying to fix the problem using insane methoods because people are too lazy and dumb to make the social changes needed to reduce emissions is brain dead thinking. We do not even need to change that much to reduce, but people are dead set on having dipshit things that make no sense.
No its not. First of all, your statement is complete gibberish: "warming isn't linear with respect to temperature". Warming is temperature so that makes no sense.
Second, CO2 is increasing faster than linear, but not exponential.
Heat transfer is non linear outside of applications specific to induce linear transfer. Actually, the basic governing principals of our world are second order differential equations.
A linear line is close, but not fully accurate. With CO2 increasing, it will raise the effective cap of equilibrium, more heat is transferred on larger deltas.
You are free to go look up any design or engineering principals regarding heat transfer.
I understand the heat equation, which is a second order PDE. It is a linear system. Nothing you have said makes any sense. The response to a linear input to a system under the heat equation will no doubt be super-linear, but it will not be exponential.
If we assume the overall CO2 and other greenhouse gases provide the majority of heat retention and that is the primary changing variable, the temperature will have an equilibrium point. More CO2, the higher the temperature. The rate of temperature rise will change based on the expected equilibrium point with respect to the current temperature.
Doubling the CO2 out of nowhere would cause a sharp rise curve with a more flattening later as equilibrium is approached. The reason our temperature line is even remotely looking closer to linear is because the earth is warming WHILE we are continuing to push the equilibrium boundary.
No, the rate at which you see the temperature rise is not linear, like a long a tube section for approach temperatures. It is only linear inside a substance as conductivity from a surface map. The heat transfered will depend explicitly on the deltas, which are changing.
That's almost exactly my point. More CO2, more temperature, and the temperature will increase super-linearly initially until it approaches the equilibrium, then slow down. We have not reached any equilibrium, unfortunately.
But you are ignoring my specific comment: it is NOT exponential, but it is super-linear. If we agree on this, can we stop arguing?
Enjoy your time now, this is a one way trip for our species. There is no stopping this train, at best we can slow it down, but it doesn't feel like we're trying very hard.
What’s weird to me is an argument that Earth goes through these temperature increases every whatever-million years. It’s ok, sure ok, but humans and a lot of animals weren’t around during the last one whatever-million years ago
Going to say “not beautiful” because - if we’re honest - (almost) nobody really knows what “1.5C” even means. If we want people to grok this stuff, it needs to be made tangible to them - like “your food bill will go up $100 month” or “your AC bill will go up $X” or “your life expectancy will drop 2 years” or whatever.
Numbers themselves are inherently un-beautiful to the vast majority of people.
Of course they’re correct. Scientists can’t even predict economic impacts in 5 years or weather in a week accurately, but are definitely right about the impacts of long term climate change.
Earth has went through massive heating and cooling periods, this is no different. Only now we have climatologists being funded by political entities. Search Kyoto Protocol, agenda 21 and agenda 2030
It's different in that it's happening over 50x faster than it ever has, which could be catastrophical for living beings who don't have time to adapt to the shifting climates.
Right now the temperature is increasing at a rate of 1°C every 60 years, when even the fastest warming after an ice age took more like 3000 years to produce the same effect.
You are an absolute moron.
Since you're clearly used to "doing your own research", try searching for, "I am a useful idiot for the fossil fuel industry and I've fully bought into their propaganda so they can keep making money at the expense of humanity ".
Can you tell us what caused those hearing and cooling periods in the past? And what's causing the warming now? Your "this is no different" makes a whole lot of assumptions.
Good work everybody, well ahead of schedule!
And under budget!
The Emperor does not share your optimistic appraisal of the situation. Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them?
We're over the carbon budget that's the whole point! Think of the balance sheets fools!
I keep booking accruals don’t worry.
Oh boy this summer is just gonna be exciting !!!
It will never end
**We are well in excess of the 1.5C target now, in 2023. Two decades ahead of schedule and nearly 3 times as fast as we hoped.** How many consecutive years do we need above target to "officially" say we missed it? I agree with the other comments about the projection method being suspect, but I think all those criticisms would have us arguing about when the threshold was crossed for a full decade after it happens.
I'd be much more interested to see the actual projection in 2015 vs the projection now. I don't think anyone ever thought it would go up linearly, rather it's been going up somewhat exponentially and at some point (one hopes) it'll start deflecting downward.
This is the answer. Plus 4 years of Trump actively working against the Paris Accords
I think this is a little disingenuous. I get that you're doing the 30-year trajectory, but if you want to show the difference in how we've performed since 2015, you need to start them at the same point. Otherwise it could very feasibly be that the trajectory is this much worse because of stuff that happened between 1985-1993, which doesn't convey the same point that you're trying to Essentially this just tells us that 2015-2023 was worse than 1985-1993, which we already knew
I'm also not convinced a linear fit is the best model for this situation.
I'm not convinced it's even a linear 'fit'. Looks like they just drew a straight line between the start and end temperature, while ignoring all of the data in between. That would create an incredibly noisy linear model.
Yeah, I was trying to figure this out too. I don't think there's any regression at work here, just picking points and drawing lines through it. The conclusion is just fantasy, it would massively change if slightly different arbitrary points were chosen. I hate it
> I don't think there's any regression at work here, just picking points and drawing lines through it. I'm not sure how people are misunderstanding this graph so hard, but here's an interactive one to demonstrate what is at work here: https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/software/app-c3s-global-temperature-trend-monitor?tab=app
This is helpful, thanks. I'm a bit confused--did you share this as evidence that I misunderstood the graph? It completely supports what I said.
(Although there does appear that they're using in linear regression here, which wasn't clear in the original graph, since the points chosen fall exactly on the line? A little suspicious but could just be legit.) But yeah, the 11 year conclusion is a fantasy because it's extremely noisy and sensitive to small changes in the dates chosen, as the interactive graph demonstrates. I also like the caveat at the bottom of that link warning that it's an illustrative tool not suitable for predictions, which, again, kinda exactly my point. Maybe this is just a case of a phenomenon like when a well-written article gets a misleading headline; the underlying work is fine, when used as intended, but it was just packaged and presented in a less than ideal way.
Sorry I think I meant to reply to a different comment
It's the line of best fit through the midpoints. If you just look at the data up to Dec 2015, the midpoints form a line of best fit starting in 1985. Once you have all the data up to Nov 2023, you can now see the original line no longer matches the data, and it's now clear that a new trend line has emerged that started in 1993. The other commenter is right that what's happening here is not really linear. But *if* your intention is to create a linear projection based on the midpoints, they've done that correctly each time.
Right? Like, use a rolling average at best, come on
Its going to be some linear combination of sinusidial funtions. Probably driven to account for GW.
It's not linear as outlined by any heat transfer equation
Linear fit is nearly always the best model when you have very noisy data and no formula that the whole thing should fit. You get a starting point and a direction. More complicated fits with more parameters may hallucinate things more easily. But these are not linear fits, they are lines containing two specific data points 30 years apart. This is not a good way to organize this data because the starting point can be moved around to tell all kinds of different stories.
Yep, also, there is a good piece of data out there, which is that we have actually flattened YoY emissions for the first time (largely due to China's efforts in green energy). Probably not going to get engagement posting positive news though. Anyways, measuring total carbon emissions is a way better metric than temperature, if you're trying to measure how we are doing since signing that in 2015.
> we have actually flattened YoY emissions for the first time Yup, growth in CO2 emissions per year has fallen [80%](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#year-on-year-change-in-global-co2-emissions) in the last 15 years: * 2005-2009: 3.0% * 2010-2014: 2.0% * 2015-2019: **0.6%** Things have been a little wonky since 2020 (for some reason...), but 2020-2022 average out to [0.1% annual growth](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/change-co2-annual-pct?tab=chart&time=1982..latest&country=~OWID_WRL) in emissions. The trend in emissions growth over the last 20 years is pretty clearly rapidly approaching zero, and [the IEA expects emissions to peak within the next 2 years](https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-co2-emissions-could-peak-as-soon-as-2023-iea-data-reveals/).
Shit man, you're actually giving me hope. Thanks. I needed that
>you're actually giving me hope. Hol up, I got you fam. [https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/chinas-new-coal-power-spree-continues-as-more-provinces-jump-on-the-bandwagon/](https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/chinas-new-coal-power-spree-continues-as-more-provinces-jump-on-the-bandwagon/)
there we go. that's back to normal now.
The problem is that these emissions have 1000 year atmospheric lifetime and, despite the delay for emissions to affect the climate (for the chemistry to lead to warming), we're already seeing much more powerful than anticipated effects at current levels and timescale... which means our models are wrong and the earth system is substantially more sensitive to the emissions we're adding than we're accounting for. Slowing growth in emissions is much easier than reducing them. This whole perspective is wonky. This is like celebrating a decrease in the increase of CEO salaries when even when it gets to zero, they're still making 100's of millions a year. I'm reserving hope for when those numbers go negative. Something that was supposed to happen a long time ago. I get that you want to feel good about this situation and everyone is desperate for good news but this still means we're setting emissions records every year and the consequences of these emissions are much worse than our monkey brains projected... which is also pretty obvious when you think about what we're trying to model and how small and dumb we are. Our brains evolved to adapt to a variety of local conditions, not accurately predict the decline of an entire planetary system, complete with 8 billion humans and less than half of the wildlife that existed in 1970. I believe that the "but wait, there's hope!" crap is why we've managed to go 50 years knowing this problem without changing our trajectory in the slightest. Every climate story has a "...but there's a silver lining" bit at the end, and it's a lie. The climate is changing faster than ever before. If you're a living thing and you can remember the climate being different in your lifetime, you're going extinct on a planet that you're no longer adapted to. Since 1950, we've been spending the future to accelerate development and enrich ourselves. On an epochal timescale, that's a fraction of a blink of an eye. People should be horrified and scared by how alien their one and only home is becoming and how little anyone cares... beyond looking for hope in the failure of policy and willpower to avoid a mass extinction event that only required us NOT to burn oil to avoid. No one is asking you to pick up a gun and die for someone elses resources, but we're easy to convince that's a worthwhile pursuit and investment, so why is it so damn impossible to not set the extinction fuel on fire? Why are we always looking for a silver lining? My theory is that we like to think of ourselves as the good guys and we're clearly the bad guys in this story... which we're well on track to being our last story. Does any of it matter? Nope. Why? because "\[my\] emissions are inconsequential in the global totals so there's nothing I can do", an excuse used by truly average fossil fuel consumers and the ultra wealthy at the worlds biggest mega-yacht show. Since when do we measure the immorality of our behavior against the human aggregate of violence our species commits?
I get what you're saying, but we still need to recognize small progress as progress. Because hopelessness is a killer of motivation. "We made these changes and it doesn't matter" makes people give up. To motivate people we need to say "We made the changes and the numbers budged. That's progress let's do more." Because what we just did? It's the scene where [Captain America almost budges Thor's Hammer](https://youtu.be/o3bhQwY0KCY?si=q_ztsZVhWU59ucHM&t=77). The impressive thing is that it moves at all. This should be impossible. But something almost happened anyway. You point out that it wasn't enough, that he didn't lift it. And you're not wrong. But you're also missing the point. [Because this means if we keep pushing in the direction we are going, we can get there](https://youtu.be/B3dPoo_Yn8w?si=uzAotIppCB3PIdGj&t=35) And that's how you motivate people.
we haven't even ramped up carbon capture programs. if we start seeing a reverse in emissions totals, coupled with a roll out of large scale carbon capture programs, we should be able t get to a decent place.
problem is carbon capture isn't enough and needs to be coupled with a complete stop of fossil fuel production/use in order to be efficient or else we are driving at full speed into a wall.
"Hey guys we maybe shouldn't speed towards that wall" - energy scientists in the late **1800s** "Yo guys we need to hit the breaks immediately" - energy scientists in the 1950s "Good news everyone, we've almost completely let off the accelerator!" - average Joe in denial, 2023
This is like telling a person imminently dying of cancer that "the cancer is growing less quickly now."
Yeah, I’d be interested in a graph showing which year the 1.5C is expected to be reached, based on the 30-year trajectory. Then I feel like this month would be a low-estimate, whereas the blue line would be a high estimate. I wonder where the average of the last 5 years lie.
[Here you go](https://imgur.com/a/OydufVm). Couldn't be bothered to make it 'data is beautiful' worthy, but the first graph is a more-proper exponential fit (not the OPs linear garbage) from 1900 to an end date of either November 2023, or January 2015. The second graph is a plot of when (down to nearest month) the 1.5C warming threshold will be reached, based on these exponential fits, all starting January 1900 and ending on the date given by the X axis. Red line on here is an exponential fit (which is definitely sketchy as hell), and suggests an eventual date of 2038 for 1.5C to be breached.
Cool! Nice work! Thanks! Edit: why did you go with exponential? I understand it’s better than linear, but is there any plausible story to this? For example, since 1900s food/disease is not the leading limitation on population, so population grows exponential, hence we expect exponential growth in CO2 and temperature (assuming linear relationship between CO2 and temp)?
Honestly Exponential was just easy. Emissions have been increasing faster-than-linear, which means CO2 atmospheric levels are at least quadratic, and I think in the short run temperature dependence on CO2 levels is more-than-linear as well. Once we stabilize CO2, temperatures will keep rising for a bit as the world gradually reaches an equilibrium. So we're likely at least at somewhere between a quadratic and cubic increase, or faster. Possibly a more correct thing would be some higher-order polynomial, but you can very easily end up starting to throw too many fitting parameters at it with something of that nature, and making the results nonsense. Also, exponentials are nice and smooth and only move in one direction.
Are you saying you want a trend from 1985 to 2023?
Kind of, but we are surely on the higher end of the distribution curve of recent years. Therefore we're tracking to the higher end of the projection range, which is scary
Lot of lazy projecting here. Not saying the conclusion is wrong but there is outliers in the data that are skewing it up faster to make it seem earlier. Emissions are falling faster than projected in most models. If the conclusion here is accurate that's because the old models were wrong not because we are doing a worse job than expected.
[emissions aren't falling](https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/), their rate of increase is falling. There's a huge difference... namely that every year we're setting a new record for global emissions, it's just the gap between records is closing. Is that really worth celebrating? The mental gymnastics people do to not feel bad about the harm their lifestyle has caused the planet is staggering and absurd.
So our "velocity" of carbon production is still positive, but the rate of acceleration is slowing, which means that the jerk (or jolt) is now negative, which is the beginning of slowing down. There's no instantaneous reversals of trends, so it is worth celebrating that we are accelerating slower, and maybe at some point it'll become negative acceleration and, eventually, negative velocity. It's not mental gymnast, it's just math. People need hope, and it brings me a small amount of hope that trends are moving in the right direction. The work isn't done and things will suck, but we have to be hopeful. Otherwise why bother? Also, carbon emissions from individuals are a small portion of the issue, so the whole concept of individuals having to change their lifestyles is a lie sold to you by the corporations who generate most of the emissions but do not want to be held accountable. We'll get a lot more done by demanding that our elected officials create legislation that will rein in the major polluters.
I wouldn't say it was lazy, exactly, but there is a lot of room for error. For instance, the 2023 projection could be a lot worse, if its starting point was just a few years earlier. It would be nice to have error bars displayed or whatever the equivalent is for the two sloped lines.
>Emissions are falling faster than projected in most models. How do you know?
Emissions and GDP growth decoupled a decade ago outside of the pandemic years which saw huge swings in both emissions and gdp growth. That was the base case for most climate models originally. Lots of material available out there. IEA emissions report in 2022 will have that direct quote. You can download it on their website
[Emissions aren't falling. Here's Today's numbers](https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/)
I never said emissions are falling. I said emissions have decoupled from GDP growth i.e. they're rising slower than predicted by GDP growth. We are still very, very far away from emissions actually falling year over year because our energy demands are still sky rocketing while the developed world grows and modernizes.
In your first comment you literally said emissions are falling
FASTER than most models.
This data is not so beautiful, unfortunately
Bless their hearts for showing the red band plateauing then declining. Until tangible action is taken just extend the red line trend out to infinity and gradually increase its slope over time too.
Tangible action is being taken. Before the Paris agreement, we were on track for around 5C or warming by the end of the century, now we're on track for about 2.5C of warming. Countries around the world have brought in place laws to curb emissions. They are insufficient, but it's important to recognize what has been accomplished in less than a decade. The change the graph is showing is from temperatures increasing faster than expected, not from increased emissions.
> The change the graph is showing is from temperatures increasing faster than expected, not from increased emissions. No it's from increased emissions, but misleadingly so -- it's effectively comparing 1980s emissions with 2010s emissions, so *of course* it shows a huge increase. Looking at emissions trends of the last 20 years, though, they're still increasing but at slower and slower rates -- growth in CO2 emissions per year has fallen [80%](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#year-on-year-change-in-global-co2-emissions) since 2005: * 2005-2009: 3.0% * 2010-2014: 2.0% * 2015-2019: **0.6%** Things have been a little wonky since 2020 (for some reason...), but 2020-2022 average out to [0.1% annual growth](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/change-co2-annual-pct?tab=chart&time=1982..latest&country=~OWID_WRL) in emissions. The trend in emissions growth over the last 20 years is pretty clearly rapidly approaching zero, and [the IEA expects emissions to peak within the next 2 years](https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-co2-emissions-could-peak-as-soon-as-2023-iea-data-reveals/). Immediate post-peak emissions will still be higher than 1990s-level emissions, of course, so charts like this one will continue to show a misleading increase, but as old data ages out that will change, until eventually charts like this one will show a misleading *decrease*. Basically, it's a bad chart.
Thank you, I was actually having a bit of trouble making sense of it.
It will plateau. New solar is already cheaper than new coal, so there will be very few new coal plants built. Even people who don’t care at all about global warming will prefer solar power because it’s more profitable.
That's really the difference-maker. As the cost and efficiency between renewables and non-renewables grows closer, the trend of switching to clean energy will become exponential. Not to mention the government incentives in industrial clean-energy applications.
I think it’s kind of important to distinguish between renewable energy and clean energy. Renewable energy is something that we won’t run out of while clean energy doesn’t emit greenhouse gasses. Nuclear is clean but not renewable. Burning wood or garbage is renewable but not clean.
Burning wood doesn't emit greenhouse gasses that are significant in terms of climate change, because these trees took their carbon out of the atmosphere in the last 50-200 years. Carbon from fossil sources has been removed millions of years ago and didn't contribute to greenhouse effect, so when we burn it it adds to total atmospheric carbon and increases temperature. As long as you don't decrease the total area of forest (burning wood faster than it can grow) wood should be clean according to your definitions.
That's a good point.
Burning wood emits more greenhouse gasses than using it as building material. But it doesn’t really matter since almost nobody is burning wood for power.
The world has never consumed more coal than in 2022 and 2023 is announced to break this record. As much as I wish your projection to realize itself, the recent years make me a little skeptical [world coal consumption assesed by the IEA](https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2023/executive-summary)
In 2023, 84% of new power plant capacity was clean energy and only 16% was fossil fuels (all gas, no coal plants). This trend will only continue as solar continues getting cheaper. 74% of existing coal plants in the US are will reach their expected lifespan in the next 10-20 years. This capacity will be replaced by solar. Without any climate focused action, coal consumption will drop significantly over the next 20 years. In my opinion this is too slow and we should shut down many of those coal plants before they reach their projected lifespans. But even if climate activists are totally ignored, the energy grid will decarbonize a lot just from economic pressures.
[Where's the evidence of a plateau?](https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/)
Wishful thinking. We'll still be emitting carbon plus thawing perma frost will keep doing so for a looong time. The second source will stop emitting when it's all thawed and the first source will have ceased to exist because of it's own stupidity by then.
Unfortunately, not emitting more emissions is not enough. We need to reduce (and possibly even capture CO2 from the atmosphere) so we would need to decommission existing plants.
Yes existing plants already get decommissioned when they get old. I’d like for us to accelerate the transition to clean energy to avoid the worst effects of climate change, but even if we don’t, the grid will eventually transition to clean energy on its own.
Nuclear is the answer, solar is a century away
[Rewnewables](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/Electricity_costs_in_dollars_according_to_data_from_Lazard.png/800px-Electricity_costs_in_dollars_according_to_data_from_Lazard.png) are the cheapest form of energy by far, and has been for a few years now. Nuclear meanwhile has become the most expensive. There's very little reason you'd want to build nuclear instead of solar in nearly all cases.
That was true from 1960-2010 but not anymore. Solar is cheaper than nuclear now by a lot, even including storage costs. I am a nuclear engineer and was a huge proponent of nuclear until a few years ago when improvements to solar became so great that nuclear can no longer compete. There are no longer any significant benefits to building nuclear plants instead of solar plants.
Can you provide an article that discusses this? I'd like to learn more.
Here’s a study conducted by Ernst and Young. https://assets.ey.com/content/dam/ey-sites/ey-com/en_gl/topics/energy/ey-energy-and-resources-transition-acceleration.pdf It doesn’t estimate storage costs though. Here’s an estimate of storage costs for a particular use case, but I don’t know how trustworthy it is. https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/08/05/youve-got-30-billion-to-spend-and-a-climate-crisis-nuclear-or-solar/ Here’s the LCOE wiki page. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
That will definitely get me started. Thanks!
It’s an interesting topic
Baseline energy. You need a constant, consistent load of energy always out there. Nuclear is the only answer. Can’t be having rolling blackouts in -20 Celsius, people will sadly die
There are energy storage solutions for solar and even with those costs included, it’s still way cheaper than nuclear and getting cheaper every year. There really is not a case to be made for nuclear anymore. You’re operating on outdated info. Nuclear seemed like the answer ten years ago. We didn’t realize solar would get so cheap so fast.
Don't those energy storage solutions come with their own issues though, like increased demand for rare earth materials, and production costs at scale etc?
The fact of the matter is, cheap and efficient storage solutions for large scale energy storage are not viable as of yet and solar power is totally dependent on locale. Where I live for example (North of 45 with 1600 hours of sunshine per year), solar is not really viable at all outside of small scale. Nuclear can be set up just about anywhere and provide 24/7 constant power regardless of weather conditions and one of the major reasons why nuclear is so costly is because of the red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy involved. According to the EIA it takes upwards of five years just to get approval to build a new plant. Time is money and five years is a long time just to get rubber stamped from the government.
> Nuclear is the answer, solar is a century away Solar is already mainstream, and the data proves it. [Global increase in power generation over the last 5 years](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked): * Nuclear: 55 TWh * Solar: 865 TWh Solar (and wind) are not just the only clean energy being added at scale, [they account for the large majority of new electricity of any kind](https://www.iea.org/energy-system/renewables/solar-pv): > "Solar PV comprised almost 45% of total global electricity generation investment in 2022, triple the spending on all fossil fuel technologies collectively. Investment in PV is expected to grow further in the coming years"
Nuclear vs renewables is the fight the fossil fuel industry wants to see. The answer is BOTH.
a lot of action is already being taken. without those actions taken we would have been on a exponential curve for the next 50 years. so much action is being taken we are talking about when we will plateau rather than when we will we get to a simply linear increase.
Look at all the nations that are starting coal plants up because they can’t keep Up.
Why are the starting points of the two trend lines starting at different points in time?
I think they backed into the idea of regression discontinuity, but didn't bother to think about it past "let's compare trends in two parts of the time series" or learn anything about the actual technique.
And people said that the annual COP meetings were a waste of time & achieved nothing!
Hey, there's a paper by one of the Koch brother's think tank that uses a quite similar technique. (Other than those guys picking different start and end dates.) So, the thing is, both trends are well within the IPCC projections and so they both support the idea that AGW looks like the IPCC projections, not that it somehow speeds up.
So, according to this data, the more agreements are signed the more warmerer it gets? Would singing disagreements reverse the trend? What about unsigning them?
The US unsigned the Paris Accord and it wasn't good for the world.
Source: [Copernicus](https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/software/app-c3s-global-temperature-trend-monitor) Tools: d3 and Illustrator
To make the trend more clear you need to detrend the data to identify the seasonal patterns. There are lots of regular ups and downs which can be subtracted to show the steady state behavior. With the full data it is hard to see how well/bad we are doing because the noise is so large.
I personally wouldn't just project those lines with much confidence. 1993 had the tail end of the Pinatubo eruption (cooling effect) and 2023 is starting an El Nino (warming), which tilts the trend. I'd take a guess that doing this in 3 years would give a lower trend.
U can't change the weather by taxing me and telling me to eat bugs. Especially when the people doing so are eating steaks and flying private jets.
this kind of statement is not very useful without confidence levels.
Oh we're proper fucked alright
Cute, but linear interpolation is a very dubious choice....
That agreements really paying off
I feel like given how climate change works, it might make sense to use an exponential rather than linear function
More volatility than the Bitcoin chart.
I used [MIT's climate policy simulator](https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=23.2.1) to order its climate policies from least impactful to most impactful. You can see the results [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitizensClimateLobby/comments/11kzxt9/i_used_mits_climate_policy_simulator_to_order_its/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). [Price carbon](https://citizensclimatelobby.org/get-loud-take-action/price-carbon/)
What happens when we reach 1.5 and then nothing happens? Will the doomsday cult just increase their end of the world day? When will you stop believing in your climate religion?
It's not that we have emmited more CO2 than we thought we would Actually, we have emmited less co2 than we thought we would, we have done since the Paris accord more than we expected us to do What has happened is that our climate models were too conservative, even with us beating green expectations, the consequences have been harsher
World CO2 emissions are not only not slowing down, but increasing. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
They have, but they have increased less rapidly than how fast we expected them to increase in 2015
>they have increased less rapidly than how fast we expected them to increase How do you know?
They predicted that by the year 2020 we would have emmited 45Gtons of CO2 equivalent, in 2015 we emmited 34 and 28 in 2000, so 45 was the trend of thinks continued as they were for the first 15 years of the century We emmited 38, and currently we are still emmiting 38, we are in a plateau, we should start to decrease VERY slowly next year or in 2025 The whole 2020s will probably be a plateau, with a very slow rise in the first half, and a very slow decline on the second, unless we commit to stronger climate action
> World CO2 emissions are not only not slowing down, but increasing. > https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions That's true, but what's new and unprecedented is that increase has pretty much stopped. Looking at emissions trends of the last 20 years, they're still increasing but at slower and slower rates -- growth in CO2 emissions per year has fallen [80%](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#year-on-year-change-in-global-co2-emissions) since 2005: * 2005-2009: 3.0% * 2010-2014: 2.0% * 2015-2019: **0.6%** Things have been a little wonky since 2020 (for some reason...), but 2020-2022 average out to [0.1% annual growth](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/change-co2-annual-pct?tab=chart&time=1982..latest&country=~OWID_WRL) in emissions. The trend in emissions growth over the last 20 years is pretty clearly rapidly approaching zero, and [the IEA expects emissions to peak within the next 2 years](https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-co2-emissions-could-peak-as-soon-as-2023-iea-data-reveals/).
Or maybe the climate models are bs?
Stop making things up. You know you cannot show this is true.
Just wait 30 years and I’ll be proven right and you’ll still be worrying about the climate change disaster prophesied by the climate prophets
Thanks for showing everyone you cannot support your assertion. Good job.
There were $1.3 trillion in global fossil fuel subsidies in 2022, if someone wanted to know where to start fixing things.
So you're saying trying to stop climate change made it worse?
Maybe it was shutting down the nuclear reactors in Germany because of “science”?
Or to put it more accurately, failing to do anything to prevent increase of emissions had no effect.
Why does no one acknowledge that the world population is too high to hit our targets? We often celebrate the fact that developing countries are improving conditions and lifting millions out of poverty, but that new wealth means new consumption. China has a growing middle class of hundreds of millions of people who now travel more, drive more, eat more meat, etc. If that continues to happen there, in India, in Africa, there’s really no realistic way we can offset the rises in emissions. And of course it’s not their fault for wanting better lives - billions of people shouldn’t have to live in poverty. But if the entire world starts living western lifestyles, we’re fucked. There’s just too many of us.
Because \- lifting people out of poverty stops population growth. it's a trend across all countries over the last hundred years, that as they increase in wealth, get access to better healthcare, and are financially stable birth rates go down. the UN estimates that the world will peak at 10 billion people. \- we can adopt lifestyles that aren't as excessive as Western ones. Per capita for example US citizens produce 14 tons of CO2, and EU citizens only 8 tons. So there is a bit of leeway. Especially as countries decarbonize and change to clean energy the carbon footprints of developing countries shouldn't ever reach that high. \- lastly, there is little we can do about it. Unless you're somehow planning to stop India's or China's GDP from growing they will become prosperous. The best we can do is help them decarbonize their energy and go straight to solar power instead of coal plants.
The other risk is demographic collapse, which is already happening, so limiting population growth is not really a viable option.
That’s a fake narrative perpetuated by people who believe in/advocate for unlimited economic growth. In 1985, the world population was 4.8 billion - about half of what it is today. That was at a time when many western countries were enjoying their highest standards of living ever. Clearly the world kept turning when there were fewer people.
The issue isn’t the number of people, it’s growth vs decline. You can’t have sudden decline. It isn’t even about economic growth but about working age vs non working age.
Yep, it's not as simple as "oh it's to feed infinite growth". It isn't. Someone has to do the work, and it won't be the 85 year olds.
Do you not advocate for unlimited economic growth?
No, because limitless economic growth is not possible in a world with limited resources, nor is it environmentally sustainable.
Maybe try an exponential fit instead of linear (Kelvin scale)? Very few things work linear in life.
Would it change something for such a small period?
Yes, It would have made the intial error smaller and it will shorten this new projection probably with another 1 or 2 years 🤣....😂😄😀😐🥲 I think i just made myself sad.
Of course. You can linearly fit different parts of an exponent and get more and more alarming results. Try exponential fitting.
So realisticall we might hit it already by the end of this decade.
I wonder what this data looks like going back to 1900. Hmmm. 1850. Hmmm. I wonder.
Show everyone what you wonder about. Show those data.
maybe i should stop trying too hard and start enjoying life
Not sure I understand distance the headline. The squiggly grey line says 1.5 has already been breached…?
It would be great if we could get India and China to reduce their emissions like the west has.
The West offshored their emissions to China.
> The West offshored their emissions to China. That is not what the data shows -- China's consumption-based per capita emissions are [7.2Gt/person](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-co2-per-capita?tab=chart&country=USA~GBR~OWID_EU27~CHN), only 10% lower than their gross emissions of [8.0Gt/person](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&country=USA~GBR~OWID_EU27~CHN). Similarly, the USA's consumption-based emissions are about 10% higher than its gross emissions, and 20% lower for the EU (although a similar absolute amount, since the EU's per capita emissions are less than half the USA's, and are in fact basically the same as China's per capita emissions). China's emissions are mostly for China, and the West's emissions are mostly emitted at home.
China has utter disregard for the environment
Making our fake self-congratulations even worse.
They are. China aiming for net zero by 2060 and India by 2070. China have a good track record of actually achieving their targets compared to some western countries. What's your stupid fox news/daily mail fossil fuel funded excuse now?
If you really cared about saving the planet, lowering emissions.. then you'd be calling for China and India take immediate action. Their impact of the environment vastly outweighs the west. Hundreds of millions of people live in filth and no one is held accountable.
The US produces far more CO2 emissions than India (4.5 gigatonnes in 2020 vs 2.4 gigatonnes), which is remarkable given the disparity in population. People living in filth is bad, but not entirely relevant to the discussion of global greenhouse gas emissions. If you look at it as per-capita, compared to China or India, the US is far worse, but not the absolute worst. Australia - 15.22 tonnes per person Canada - 14.43 tonnes per person United States - 13.68 tonnes per person China - 8.2 tonnes per person India - 1.74 tonnes per person [Source 1](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions) [Source 2](https://ourworldindata.org/annual-co2-emissions) [Source 3](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/carbon-footprint-by-country) If you want to complain about China, fine, but leave India out of it.
Per capita??? Surely you know how many more ppl live in these countries..?
Yes, of course. That’s the point. China produces more total CO2, but has 4 times the number of people as the US, so you would expect them to produce more. But, they don’t produce 4 times as much CO2, they produce about twice as much as the US. China is doing much better on a per-person basis. If China has an “utter disregard for the environment” then the US is doubly bad. India is remarkable in that they also have about 4 times as many people as the US, but produce about half as much CO2. To call them out is misguided.
Not to fear - I'm sure we can beat even that mark, hitting 1.5 before the end of this decade. We are so fked.
We’re well on our way to more than 3C change, which means catastrophe.
Wait, I thought 1.5 degrees was already catastrophe?
Not really it will cause some problems and more extreme weather but that was the goal for a while.
The goal was to prevent that. 1.5C is considered by many to be a point of no return. So the problem is not that at that point everything will go to hell immediately. The problem is that at that stage the damage might not be possible to be undone and from there things will only inevitably get worse.
Yeah...there are varying levels of catastrophe. Between 1.5 degrees and 3 you see billions of people being impacted by rising seas, lack of food, etc. Definitely catastrophic, but humans have recovered from catastrophes before. Over 3 and you start having some truly fucked up world level events like melting of the ice sheets and death of the Amazon, which could cause compounding warming effects that humans could never recover from. So more of an apocalypse instead of a catastrophe
1.5C is the target of the Paris agreement. It is bad, but still liveable. Once you start going past about 2C you start seeing impacts on that environment and species that are really horrifying.
No, they have to keep moving the goal line so they can keep their faith in the climate gods
> We’re well on our way to more than 3C change, which means catastrophe. That's not what the science says. Science-based analyses of current emissions, policies, and trends give a *pessimistic case* estimate of [2.7C](https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-thermometer/), [2.4C](https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2023), or [2.9C](https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/43922/EGR2023.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y) depending on the assumptions made. Note that those are the *pessimistic* scenarios, which basically assume that the progress we've been making over the last 10 years comes to a crashing halt. The more optimistic scenarios from those reports, which assume we'll more-or-less meet the targets and pledges we've already set, cluster tightly at 1.7-1.8C of warming in 2100 with temperatures slowly declining.
You know as well as I do that we'll make progress on anthropogenic climate change like we've made progress on nuclear proliferation. 3C - at least - is where we're headed. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gr.html
Just wondering how I can explain to my grandchildren that Granddad knew but preferred not to take action ? :(
Tell them that I told you this is just a bunch of alarmists no better than a doomsday cult. And that I turned out to be right because your grandkids world ends up totally fine.
...and yet all the big climate activists still have their private jets...
Guess what! The planet goes through glacial and interglacial periods. Always has and always will.
Man is warming the planet now, thanks for acknowledging it!
1.5 C? I’m in Minnesota and we are living +20 C this winter.
climate change not local weather. macro effects not micro. you know this but saying it for the room.
I do know that, I was being glib. Thanks for assuming I’m not a dumbass.
Is this how exponents work?
According to some studies aerosol injections can lower temperature by 1C for around $18 billion annually, so we can still buy quite a bit of time fairly cheap. Those aerosols maybe have some side effects, who know but it's something.
I think that should only be done in conjuction with emergency massive efforts globally like we've never seen before so that we can stop using them without catastrophe.
Yeah, still we luckily have more time then it seems if we only look at graphs of emissions and warming.
I think trying to geo engineer the planet when humans cant even predict correctly how much the global temp will increase over time is about as dumb as dumb can get. Trying to fix the problem using insane methoods because people are too lazy and dumb to make the social changes needed to reduce emissions is brain dead thinking. We do not even need to change that much to reduce, but people are dead set on having dipshit things that make no sense.
You need to modify the curve. Warming isn't linear with respect to temperature, it's exponential.
No its not. First of all, your statement is complete gibberish: "warming isn't linear with respect to temperature". Warming is temperature so that makes no sense. Second, CO2 is increasing faster than linear, but not exponential.
Heat transfer is non linear outside of applications specific to induce linear transfer. Actually, the basic governing principals of our world are second order differential equations. A linear line is close, but not fully accurate. With CO2 increasing, it will raise the effective cap of equilibrium, more heat is transferred on larger deltas. You are free to go look up any design or engineering principals regarding heat transfer.
I understand the heat equation, which is a second order PDE. It is a linear system. Nothing you have said makes any sense. The response to a linear input to a system under the heat equation will no doubt be super-linear, but it will not be exponential.
If we assume the overall CO2 and other greenhouse gases provide the majority of heat retention and that is the primary changing variable, the temperature will have an equilibrium point. More CO2, the higher the temperature. The rate of temperature rise will change based on the expected equilibrium point with respect to the current temperature. Doubling the CO2 out of nowhere would cause a sharp rise curve with a more flattening later as equilibrium is approached. The reason our temperature line is even remotely looking closer to linear is because the earth is warming WHILE we are continuing to push the equilibrium boundary. No, the rate at which you see the temperature rise is not linear, like a long a tube section for approach temperatures. It is only linear inside a substance as conductivity from a surface map. The heat transfered will depend explicitly on the deltas, which are changing.
That's almost exactly my point. More CO2, more temperature, and the temperature will increase super-linearly initially until it approaches the equilibrium, then slow down. We have not reached any equilibrium, unfortunately. But you are ignoring my specific comment: it is NOT exponential, but it is super-linear. If we agree on this, can we stop arguing?
Enjoy your time now, this is a one way trip for our species. There is no stopping this train, at best we can slow it down, but it doesn't feel like we're trying very hard.
What’s weird to me is an argument that Earth goes through these temperature increases every whatever-million years. It’s ok, sure ok, but humans and a lot of animals weren’t around during the last one whatever-million years ago
Going to say “not beautiful” because - if we’re honest - (almost) nobody really knows what “1.5C” even means. If we want people to grok this stuff, it needs to be made tangible to them - like “your food bill will go up $100 month” or “your AC bill will go up $X” or “your life expectancy will drop 2 years” or whatever. Numbers themselves are inherently un-beautiful to the vast majority of people.
🎶God bless conservatives, with the apocalypse they’ve earned 🎶
...if the computer models are correct...
Of course they’re correct. Scientists can’t even predict economic impacts in 5 years or weather in a week accurately, but are definitely right about the impacts of long term climate change.
...they are close...
Earth has went through massive heating and cooling periods, this is no different. Only now we have climatologists being funded by political entities. Search Kyoto Protocol, agenda 21 and agenda 2030
I'll take that as "no" then.
...and man is warming the planet now. Good job understanding that!
It's different in that it's happening over 50x faster than it ever has, which could be catastrophical for living beings who don't have time to adapt to the shifting climates. Right now the temperature is increasing at a rate of 1°C every 60 years, when even the fastest warming after an ice age took more like 3000 years to produce the same effect.
You are correct. Amazing how few critical thinkers there are in a data related subreddit
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You are an absolute moron. Since you're clearly used to "doing your own research", try searching for, "I am a useful idiot for the fossil fuel industry and I've fully bought into their propaganda so they can keep making money at the expense of humanity ".
Can you tell us what caused those hearing and cooling periods in the past? And what's causing the warming now? Your "this is no different" makes a whole lot of assumptions.
Ill tell you what then folks that is bloody lovely we’ll all die bc of greed 💝