The tragedy: by the time a big enough % of the public finds their own lives in turmoil, panic breaks out, politics shift, Big Oil & co get shoved aside, chances are tipping points have passed & we're in for the ride no matter what. These processes have a decades-delayed fuse.
So it may just be too little, too late, with our species' extinction on the table (never mind all the 1000s of species we've already wiped out).
Don't get me wrong: every little bit helps (especially now), and sooner = better. So please keep deploying solutions, and stop contributing to the problem!
But I can't say I'm optimistic. Public at large does not understand how quickly the state of a system can change once underlying factors cross critical thresholds.
Some argue that another form of climate denial is the denial that we're headed for certain doom.
Of course it's an easy cop-out, to say "well the planet's doomed anyway, let's book those flights to the Maldives! (Before the sea swallows them)". Or to deny responsibility by saying "Why should I change, look at those private jets!".
I agree when Kurzgesagt argues, the fix is to push for political change https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc . I like meat, petrol cars and flying vacations, but if they get heavily taxed to help save the planet, I'll sign up for that!
I'll grumble that meat is such a luxury, but that's how it's supposed to be...
Stopping burning coal might be a strong top step towards fixing this.
Perhaps replace burning the coal with renewables/nuclear. And simultaneously keep methane leaks as low as humanly possible given how toxic methane is to our protective atmosphere.
If environmentalists and governments really wanted to solve this problem, they would be all in on nuclear energy. It is by far the safest, cleanest, most carbon-neutral form of energy we have that we can produce reliably at volume (base load). We went decades without building any new nuclear power plants in the US.
Instead, what you actually see happening is environmental groups actively working to _shut down_ nuclear reactors before alternate power sources are ready and available, like in Germany and New York. This of course then results in higher prices, brown outs, and burning more coal and natural gas until more alternate power sources can be built to meet demand, also making the pollution issue much worse in the short term. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
> It can no longer be denied: Climate change is progressing unabated and accelerating. In 2023 and 2024, global average temperatures were 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time. It is even possible that the 1.5-degree limit for global warming agreed upon in Paris may already have been permanently exceeded.
The value they are talking about is the political definition, and not the scientific definition. The political definition requires a +1.5℃ increase to be unbroken across a number of years - 20 years, as set by the IPCC - before it is “accepted”.
Not the first year in which warming never again drops beneath +1.5℃, but 20 unbroken years of said minimum.
Many scientists consider +1.5℃ to have been reliably and consistently breached at some point in the very early 2010s.
And by that same metric we might have already blown past +2℃, which may have happened by 2023.
The reason why this is so alarming is because +4℃ is the point at which megafauna - all animals over 45kg, like humans - can no longer survive on this planet. They go extinct.
There are adults alive today which will see this come to pass.
> Many scientists consider +1.5℃ to have been reliably and consistently breached at some point in the very early 2010s.
Do you have a source for that? The 20 year average (not minimum) is considered reasonable to provide an estimate the GWL 10 years ago and is simple to calculate but obviously we'd only have the data going up to 2015 if using those.
While I do not know directly about what happens in distant places on Earth, where I live in Europe there are about 15 years since the last time when I used my winter clothes and my winter boots.
When I was young, where I live there was permanent snow cover from early December until late March.
All the historical sources from hundreds of years ago mention similarly heavy winters.
Now there is more than a decade since there was any snow that lasted more than a day before melting.
So I find it strange when there are people who are still skeptical about the reality of climate warming.
+1.4 °C on average is pretty serious warming, I don't know how you got the impression I was "skeptical about the reality of climate warming". I'm even willing to believe that AR6 WGI is more conservative than it should be on GMST and underestimating current levels, seeing as they have previously underestimated things like sea level rise, but I don't think I am out of line for actually asking to see those alternate estimates which put us potentially above +2 °C from the preindustrial reference before accepting such a conclusion.
Desertification, wet bulb temperatures, heat stress, loss of food in the environment, ecosystem collapse due to climate change happening too fast for ecosystems to migrate, and the massively increased range required to find food causing them to not find mates.
And capitalism demands the “business as usual” path that is also the worst-outcome-possible path.
Wholesale civilizational collapse has already been modelled to occur between 2035 and 2045 to an extremely high degree of confidence, with a 50-80% collapse in human population to occur before the end of the century. You can’t maintain a post-iron-age civilization through that degree of collapse.
I would even posit that a post-bronze-age civilization would be difficult enough to maintain. Because you need a fair amount of tech to work iron on scales larger than a blacksmith’s shop.
And these models do not include major attributes of climate change, such as wet bulb temperatures forcing billions to migrate into first-world countries to survive, or how regional ecosystem collapses cause trophic cascades that ripple around the globe. They only looked at simple things like desertification, topsoil loss, chaotic weather (unreliable rainfall) and so forth.
They have definitely done some damage but there's some overlap between "special interest groups" and anti-nuclear if I'm not mistaken. If you're catching my drift.
The tragedy: by the time a big enough % of the public finds their own lives in turmoil, panic breaks out, politics shift, Big Oil & co get shoved aside, chances are tipping points have passed & we're in for the ride no matter what. These processes have a decades-delayed fuse.
So it may just be too little, too late, with our species' extinction on the table (never mind all the 1000s of species we've already wiped out).
Don't get me wrong: every little bit helps (especially now), and sooner = better. So please keep deploying solutions, and stop contributing to the problem!
But I can't say I'm optimistic. Public at large does not understand how quickly the state of a system can change once underlying factors cross critical thresholds.
Some argue that another form of climate denial is the denial that we're headed for certain doom.
Of course it's an easy cop-out, to say "well the planet's doomed anyway, let's book those flights to the Maldives! (Before the sea swallows them)". Or to deny responsibility by saying "Why should I change, look at those private jets!".
I agree when Kurzgesagt argues, the fix is to push for political change https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc . I like meat, petrol cars and flying vacations, but if they get heavily taxed to help save the planet, I'll sign up for that!
I'll grumble that meat is such a luxury, but that's how it's supposed to be...
We’ve had 4 decades.
If you’re still telling people flying is the problem, then you’re part of the problem
Where is all that renewable power we were promised every time we said “use nuclear”.
We still haven’t hit peak coal.
People were probably saying the same about the declining population of the dodo. "We'll all starve".
Yet the world goes on, and usually future people tend to not care so much about mistakes of the past.
The population problem was solved by some chemical reaction using fossil fuels to create fertiliser so crop yields could increase
What’s going to be the tech solution this time?
Stopping burning coal might be a strong top step towards fixing this.
Perhaps replace burning the coal with renewables/nuclear. And simultaneously keep methane leaks as low as humanly possible given how toxic methane is to our protective atmosphere.
111 comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48915244
“Global Warming at 3 °C by 2050? What's Behind the New German Climate Warning” (worldcrunch.com)
If environmentalists and governments really wanted to solve this problem, they would be all in on nuclear energy. It is by far the safest, cleanest, most carbon-neutral form of energy we have that we can produce reliably at volume (base load). We went decades without building any new nuclear power plants in the US.
Instead, what you actually see happening is environmental groups actively working to _shut down_ nuclear reactors before alternate power sources are ready and available, like in Germany and New York. This of course then results in higher prices, brown outs, and burning more coal and natural gas until more alternate power sources can be built to meet demand, also making the pollution issue much worse in the short term. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
Point of contention:
> It can no longer be denied: Climate change is progressing unabated and accelerating. In 2023 and 2024, global average temperatures were 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time. It is even possible that the 1.5-degree limit for global warming agreed upon in Paris may already have been permanently exceeded.
The value they are talking about is the political definition, and not the scientific definition. The political definition requires a +1.5℃ increase to be unbroken across a number of years - 20 years, as set by the IPCC - before it is “accepted”.
Not the first year in which warming never again drops beneath +1.5℃, but 20 unbroken years of said minimum.
Many scientists consider +1.5℃ to have been reliably and consistently breached at some point in the very early 2010s.
And by that same metric we might have already blown past +2℃, which may have happened by 2023.
The reason why this is so alarming is because +4℃ is the point at which megafauna - all animals over 45kg, like humans - can no longer survive on this planet. They go extinct.
There are adults alive today which will see this come to pass.
> Many scientists consider +1.5℃ to have been reliably and consistently breached at some point in the very early 2010s.
Do you have a source for that? The 20 year average (not minimum) is considered reasonable to provide an estimate the GWL 10 years ago and is simple to calculate but obviously we'd only have the data going up to 2015 if using those.
I don't think there are any, even current-year GWL indicators that have us at close to +2℃ above the standard 1850-1900 reference. LOESS is probably the simplest one (the others are usually 10 years of observations + 10 years of projections) and that was ~1.31 [1.16 — 1.42] in 2023 according to https://climate.metoffice.cloud/current_warming.html and 1.44 ± 0.09 °C for 2025 according to https://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperature-report-for-2025...
While I do not know directly about what happens in distant places on Earth, where I live in Europe there are about 15 years since the last time when I used my winter clothes and my winter boots.
When I was young, where I live there was permanent snow cover from early December until late March.
All the historical sources from hundreds of years ago mention similarly heavy winters.
Now there is more than a decade since there was any snow that lasted more than a day before melting.
So I find it strange when there are people who are still skeptical about the reality of climate warming.
+1.4 °C on average is pretty serious warming, I don't know how you got the impression I was "skeptical about the reality of climate warming". I'm even willing to believe that AR6 WGI is more conservative than it should be on GMST and underestimating current levels, seeing as they have previously underestimated things like sea level rise, but I don't think I am out of line for actually asking to see those alternate estimates which put us potentially above +2 °C from the preindustrial reference before accepting such a conclusion.
In what way does +4C kill all animals exactly?
Desertification, wet bulb temperatures, heat stress, loss of food in the environment, ecosystem collapse due to climate change happening too fast for ecosystems to migrate, and the massively increased range required to find food causing them to not find mates.
To add: ratio of surface area (skin, sweating/cooling), versus volume/weight (muscle activity, biochemical processes etc).
The bigger the animal, the harder it is to keep cool.
Yes, I tried to encapsulate that within the term “heat stress”, but thank you for laying that all out for those not in the know.
We are already living through a mass extinction event: https://www.worldwildlife.org/news/press-releases/catastroph...
+4C would be game over.
And capitalism demands the “business as usual” path that is also the worst-outcome-possible path.
Wholesale civilizational collapse has already been modelled to occur between 2035 and 2045 to an extremely high degree of confidence, with a 50-80% collapse in human population to occur before the end of the century. You can’t maintain a post-iron-age civilization through that degree of collapse.
I would even posit that a post-bronze-age civilization would be difficult enough to maintain. Because you need a fair amount of tech to work iron on scales larger than a blacksmith’s shop.
And these models do not include major attributes of climate change, such as wet bulb temperatures forcing billions to migrate into first-world countries to survive, or how regional ecosystem collapses cause trophic cascades that ripple around the globe. They only looked at simple things like desertification, topsoil loss, chaotic weather (unreliable rainfall) and so forth.
Jesus Christ
I was just recalling 1.5 being a “everything is fucked” Paris agreement number
Then it was “some people will survive” 2.5
It’s like 100% of climate scientists were ignored by industry and society
They were, mostly because they were actively undermined by Republican administrations and "special interest groups" going back decades.
I believe the anti-nuclear people have done more damage.
They have definitely done some damage but there's some overlap between "special interest groups" and anti-nuclear if I'm not mistaken. If you're catching my drift.
It’s what happens as long as buying a larger SUV and burning more gas is somehow considered good for the ‘economy’ …