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IEA Warns of Irreversible Climate Change In 5 Years
iONiUM writes "As a follow up to the previous slashdot story, there has been a new release by the International Energy Agency indicating that within 5 years we will have irreversible climate change. According to the IEA, 'There are few signs that the urgently needed change in direction in global energy trends is under way. Although the recovery in the world economy since 2009 has been uneven, and future economic prospects remain uncertain, global primary energy demand rebounded by a remarkable 5% in 2010, pushing CO2 emissions to a new high. Subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption of fossil fuels jumped to over $400bn (£250.7bn).'"
As 60% of the energy usage is all the third-world countries, the answer is obvious.
is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
I don't expect changes to be made. Capitalistic culture has no thought of the future; people are selfish and will sacrifice their descendants to make things just a bit easier and more profitable to themselves.
I'm kind of curious to see how the world will end up by the time I die.
we are past the point of the last Irreversible claim... and the one before that... and the one before that...
There will be irreversible climate change. The corporate powers that profit from the status quo have more than enough money to continue confusing the issue for centuries to come. Short of a major catastrophe (i.e. millions dead in first world countries), nothing will ever break through the wall of propaganda to awaken the masses.
Cue deniers coming in to lie about how all the world's climatologists are in a conspiracy being funded by Big Solar or whatever.
this will turn into a discussion assigning political blame, and nothing but a lot of hot air will be generated (pun intended)
what should happen:
blame should be set aside, and fixing the problem should be talked about. seed the ocean with iron to create phytoplankton blooms to suck out CO2 and sink to the ocean floor? it has flaws. so strategize some other ideas. yes, some will have anxiety about doing such major ecosystem altering activity when we aren't sure of every infinitesimal outcome... missing the whole goddamn point about what is already happening to the climate. penny wise, pound foolish. it's time for dramatic action, not hand wringing
look: natural, manmade, whatever: obviously the climate is changing, only complete idiots still insist it isn't. so the most compelling, overarching argument is: we have a vested economic interest in keeping our environment the way we are used to it. so we can talk about a price point about what we are willing to invest to keep the thermostat where it should be. so find the price point and fit a plan of action. end of discussion
we are homo sapiens: we don't evolve fur, we kill animals and wear their hides. we don't look for berries, we slash and burn and make the berries grow where we want them. and we don't get used to a hotter earth with more violent storms. we put our hands on the thermostat, and put the earth in the climate zone we like
we are homo sapiens: we don't adapt to the environment, we adapt the environment to us. we aren't fatalistic spineless scatterbrains. this whole climate change topic is really just an engineering problem, with currently not enough engineers working on it, and too many talking heads and other assorted nitwits involved. roll up the sleeves and get to work
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
For example, in the linked article.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
So what are any Of you going to do about it? Continue to point fingers at China? The third world? Oil companies?
How about accepting that you can't change others, and instead set examples yourself. I moved into the city, leave my A/C and heat off whenever possible, bicycle for 95% of my trips (including commuting), grow as much of my own food as I can, and buy the rest locally and in-season whenever possible.
2 years ago, I was doing none of that. Now my personal energy footprint is a fraction of what it had been. Perhaps not as much as is needed, but it's something, and none of it has honestly even been hard.
So again I ask: what are you going to do about it? What will you or have you changed about your lifestyle to help avert global disaster?
No comment.
Built a cheap portal to an alternative Earth that is 85 million years in the past, in order to colonize it.
Or wait for the rapture.
Because the above choices are more realistic than expecting the human race to put short-term greed aside to save the planet.
Ask a bunch of people if they would be willing to receive a billion dollar now, in exchange to blowing up the Earth 200 years in the future, you would be surprised how many of them would say yes. That is the problem with the human race.
Don't worry, according to Family Radio, the world will end several times before then.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It's not "almost all China". That's completely retarded.
It's not the rate that CO2 output is increasing that is the problem, it's the level of CO2 output. China only recently surpassed US in level.
Worse than that though, it's not just a yearly output that's the problem, but decades worth of output, because CO2 stays around in the atmosphere for a very long time.
Check out this chart from a recent slashdot story: http://planet3.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/cdiac.gif
Compare the area under the graph of the US relative to the area under China.
It's more appropriate to say "It's almost all US" at this point. China, having produced less CO2 in the past decades but now producing more, has only just started to catch up. It's got a long way to go.
That said, with the US not slowing down and China racing to catch up, if their rate of production keeps up then things are going to get a lot worse a lot faster. However you spin it, rate of CO2 production by the US is not sustainable, whether they're producing most of the world's CO2, or (worst case) if their dangerously high levels are only a small fraction of it. In the latter case, in the future the US would be making things generally worse, while China might be rapidly endangering the planet, but that hasn't yet happened and it still wouldn't make the problem "almost all China".
from the summary :
Subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption of fossil fuels jumped to over $400bn
that dwarfs green subsidies.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
If you think China gives one rat's ass what the IEA thinks about 'climate change' you've got more lead and mercury in your brain than a resident of Shenzhen. The only way their CO2 output is going to stop growing is if we apply tariffs. We won't do that, because we like keeping the industry that makes our stuff faaar away from our precious selves.
Funnily enough, China's actually doing a heap more stuff on reducing emissions than most countries, including starting trial emissions trading schemes next year. And their investment in renewable energies is extraordinary. Unfortunately, they're also the largest country in the world and they're industrialising their population at a crazy rate -- so whether they do enough remains to be seen.
But they certainly care a lot more than one rat's ass, and more than a lot of developed countries also.
Good Lord, look at that graph. In the past I would say something like, "China's per capita emissions are still 1/4 of ours, even though we exported all our heavy industry there." But look at that graph! Scientists are saying we need to immediately make major reductions, and instead the curve is headed almost straight up. We are so screwed.
But saying that there is a 'point of no return,' a point where massive feedbacks start making the planet vastly hotter than what CO2 could do on its own, where ocean currents stop flowing.......that stretches belief.
No one is saying that. The "Irreversible Climate Change" in the article means the 2C warming considered unsafe will be unavoidable.
The evidence for it is sparse. In fact, there is good evidence to believe the opposite: that each successive ton of CO2 causes a smaller and smaller effect on the earth's climate (see the above equation and consider its implications if you are in doubt). Thus going from 380ppm to 480ppm atmospheric CO2 will have a smaller effect than going from 280ppm to 380ppm.
Yes, the warming is proportional to the exponential of CO2, so every doubling of C02 will give roughly the same amount of warming. This is well known.
True but irrelevant. It's like saying it's okay to flood cities with water, because fish depend on it.
No, mon ami, it is almost all US. In fact, about 25% of world greenhouse emissions, more than any other nation, even if weighted by economic activity.
Beware of any statistics presented in English, for the publishers have an obvious incentive to skew the output for political reasons.
Let's face it, CO2 emissions will drop as soon as we run out of fossil fuel. And not a minute before that. There are no two ways about it. On the whole we are a greedy kind of breed and we will always rationalise reasons for doing the wrong things. So we'd better get used to this.
... Repeat until oil is finished. Expect a fluctuation in oil price in the near years to come.
Viable alternatives to fossil fuel will emerge as soon economics allow this. Remember when oil prices boomed a couple of years ago? Suddenly all kinds of research boomed as well. But the oil price all of a sudden stabilised to a level we perceive as fine and dandy.
I don't believe in a well organised conspiracy of oil producing countries as that would require much more intelligence and cooperation than portrayed by any kind of existing governing body. Instead I believe that almost everyone in the energy market is acting in the best possible interest of their limited awareness. Oil prices rise, alternative research boosts, oil prices drop, alternative research slows down,
I don't see developments going in any other significant direction in the current way the world is governed. And I don't expect world government to change any time soon. Who or what would be powerful, charming and effective enough to change mankind's nature? It would require a disproportional amount of concentrated power to achieve such a thing, which after having saved our civilisation will inevitable start at exploiting it.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
That's not what they say in the article, and not what they mean by the phrase 'point of no return'.
The generally accepted 'safe' minimum rise from pre-industrial levels is 2 degC, which we'll reach with 450ppm atmospheric CO2. We know how many Gigatons of CO2 we're pumping into the air every year. Every new fossil power plant we build increases those emissions, and will do so for several decades. The forcing effect of the CO2 they emit lasts for several more decades.
A rise close to 2 degC is already inevitable due to the amount of CO2 we've already dumped, and are dumping in the air. If we keep building at even close to our current rate, it will be impossible for us NOT to put enough CO2 in the air to cause a rise higher than 2 degC. The longer we wait, the more we build, the higher the final temperature will be that we won't be able to bring down again without some fantastical pie-in-the-sky geo-engineering project.
Going above a 2 degC rise increases the risk that we will trigger an equilibrium change; by for example, causing enough permafrost to melt that mass methane clathrate stores release their methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas - we're already seeing a big increase in methane emissions - up to 100x in places - in the siberian arctic. The higher the rise, the bigger the risk. We don't know precisely how much bigger, because we have one shot and only one experimental model. And we're living on it.
Even assuming that that doesn't happen, the predictable effects of a 2 degC rise are bad enough with loss of arable land, alterations to fresh water routes - and quantity, increase in storm violence and damage, worse flooding of coastal regions etc. The higher we go, the worse they get.
If the IEA, a really conservative body when it comes to predictions, is saying we're going to hit 2 degC whether we like it or not if we don't radically change course in the next couple of years, frankly it's probably already to late to avoid a 2 degC rise.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Last time I checked China was building hydroelectric and nuclear power plants far faster than any other country.
Most of the 'developed' countries seem to think that going back to coal is a good idea.
No sig today...
The increase in CO2 is not natural, and it's not by definition irreversible.
Warning that we're about to go over the 450 ppm level isn't over hyped doomsday rhetoric. It's just simple extrapolation of current trend.
We can still argue whether 450 ppm is the correct upper limit, and scientific discussion is still ongoing. The question is: while the discussion is still going on, should we go ahead and exceed the 450 ppm level, knowing that we don't really have a way to extract the CO2 from the atmosphere if we're wrong.
Do you realize that it's possible for what you say to be true (and I agree with the general point) AND for it to also be true that humans are capable of altering the environment? Given that, it's also possible that the natural changes wouldn't be so bad, but the human caused changes might end up being very bad for us. So shouldn't we do something to stop the changes we can stop?
The answer to your questions lies not in the direct answer, but the indirect one. To give the answer I have to give a little background.
The Earth's climate has always been changing and it always will. The treehugger notion we could or should stop the climate from changing is great irony - because that would be a bigger imposition on the Earth's ecology than doing nothing. It would introduce a static climate never before seen on Earth - if it were possible - with inevitable and unforeseen consequences. But there are temperature zones the Earth appears not to like, and it transitions through them swiftly - and then stays on one side or another of this zone for a longer time. There are other zones that global average temperature can vary in for a considerable period of time - until it enters this unsavory zone and then rapidly crosses over it again. I'll leave the "why" of this to some philosopher or trained scientist, but it's a useful observed fact without understanding why.
Giving the average global temperature of the 21st century as 0, we reached the peak of the current temperate zone about 5,000 years ago at a level called the Holocene Climatic Optimum at about +1C. This is about 4-8C below the maximum temperature for the last 450K years or so, and there appear to be feedback effects which prevent the temperature from going any higher than that maximum because it hasn't deviated from this pattern for 2.5 million years - longer than humans have been around. There is a climate danger zone at -0.6C and if we enter it the temperature drops quickly to a new range of -5 to -8C for a very long time. Glaciers march and scrape our cities into the sea, owning the land for a hundred thousand years.
Unfortunately for our teeming billions, up until about 300 years ago the temperature had declined from the Holocene Optimum of +1C to -0.6C and was trending down. -0.6C appears to be the upper bound of one of those unsavory zones, and the next stop is -5C which is quite a drastic change. We were on the cusp of transition into the ice, and in fact that period is called the "little ice age". Each time in the last half-million years the average temperature passed below -0.7C it skipped directly over the intervening temperatures and went directly to the lower level - resulting in the die-off of terrestrial animals including humans, glaciation, and other unpleasant effects. The duration of this cold period averages 100,000 years which is likely longer than we could bear it. If it had not been for the warming currently attributed by some to the burning of fossil fuels and its concomitant CO2 discharge, we would likely already be suffering the cold dipping to -5C or more.
Perhaps 6 billion of us would be dead already, or never born - not from the cold, but from the inevitable famine and struggling for resources that it would bring. But that's not the end. 300 years from now there would be only a few million of our seven billions left, if the resulting wars didn't leave the planet uninhabitable entirely. Our entire industrial revolution, sciences and arts these last 200 years? Lost, perhaps forever.
No matter what we do the Earth will not stay habitable to this many humans forever. In the last half-million years we've had only four such periods lasting an average 12,000 years or so. This warm period we now enjoy is not the Earth's normal temperature. And when it's over, it really and truly does appear to be over for a very long time. It will be cold sooner or later. For me and mine, I
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If we ended the Federal Breeding Subsidy in the U.S., we could reduce our carbon footprint as a species in very short order. Even better: $1k per child tax ($200 federal, $800 state). Would help pay for schools too.
You are so not going to make the cut as a Republican candidate. ;^)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
You oppose a scientific report [an interesting word to choose], calling it propaganda. Why? Tautologically, your answer is
You also call troll to posters who point out the strong dichotomy in your belief system; that you want a scientific view, but not a science that actually works as science. Instead, you'd prefer one that finds things that you oppose to be incorrect.
I withdraw my accusations of your profligacy with resources, your perceived selfishness, and I apologise. I now think you do not understand the scientific arguments surrounding climate change and should withdraw from further commentary.
The same thing will happen if we just continue to burn fossil fuels. We can't keep producing them at current rate for much longer. The peak oil problem is likely more urgent than global warming, so an aggressive plan for transition would benefit us either way.
Sure, we have plenty of ideas.
But I see your point. Short term benefits outweigh long term doubts. Since, long term, we're all dead anyway, I can't argue with that.
This is the kind of unscientific sensationalism we need to get away from.
Ahh. You're one of those people that thinks all the climate change research done so far is bunkum, and we don't need to worry. We're already observing changes. Have you even read the IPCC reports? Actually, don't bother answering. Looking at your other postings in this thread alone, you're clearly entirely closed to the idea that there is a problem, or that it will get worse. The rest of this is for the benefit of people who are prepared to look at the actual evidence.
For example - fresh water;
Current vulnerabilities to climate are strongly correlated with climate variability, in particular precipitation variability. These vulnerabilities are largest in semi-arid and arid low-income countries, where precipitation and streamflow are concentrated over a few months, and where year-to-year variations are high (Lenton, 2004). In such regions a lack of deep groundwater wells or reservoirs (i.e., storage) leads to a high level of vulnerability to climate variability, and to the climate changes that are likely to further increase climate variability in future. In addition, river basins that are stressed due to non-climatic drivers are likely to be vulnerable to climate change. However, vulnerability to climate change exists everywhere, as water infrastructure (e.g., dikes and pipelines) has been designed for stationary climatic conditions, and water resources management has only just started to take into account the uncertainties related to climate change.
Floods;
A warmer climate, with its increased climate variability, will increase the risk of both floods and droughts (Wetherald and Manabe, 2002; Table SPM2 in IPCC, 2007).
Food:
Water balance and weather extremes are key to many agricultural and forestry impacts. Decreases in precipitation are predicted by more than 90% of climate model simulations by the end of the 21st century for the northern and southern sub-tropics (IPCC, 2007a).
There's plenty more of that sort of thing in the IPCC reports. But if you live in a wealthy country away from the seaboard and can afford the increases in prices for fresh water, food and military spending to keep the oil flowing from areas less lucky than you; then yes, the impact won't be so bad in your lifetime. Lucky you. Shame about the rest of the planet, and our descendants though.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
No, mon ami, it is almost all US. In fact, about 25% of world greenhouse emissions, more than any other nation, even if weighted by economic activity.
The map you linked to was data from 2002, with some data from 2004. Go ahead, download the linked data and look for yourself.
In the meantime, China has been growing economically at an incredible clip, and lots of their energy comes from coal. They have surpassed the United States, and with a billion+ people moving from agriculture to Western lifestyle, are going to dwarf whatever the United States does in the future.
Beware of any statistics presented in English, for the publishers have an obvious incentive to skew the output for political reasons.
Beware of your own biases. English is the world's de-facto common language between countries. It's not like you're going to get unbiased data from China government newspapers.
Australia's emission may be insignificant now but Australia is 14th (out of 200) in the total accumulated emissions since the start of the industrial revolution.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
At least the US' emissions are only on a slight increase and are slowing down. China's have almost gone vertical in the last ~7 years 8-(
On the other hand, consider that the USA is emitting nearly as much as China with less than 1/4 the population 8-(
WTF guys!? You're doing something seriously wrong over there, especially considering that all the heavily polluting industry has been outsourced and people don't commonly ride 2-stroke bikes in the US.
Are you putting WW2 fighter engines in your SUVs now or what?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I fear so too. We have such fools leading our nations and large corporations. Trolls like Rupert Murdoch are deliberately confusing the public, sowing doubts about science itself, not only climate science, and telling outright lie after lie. In 1993, I personally heard a speech from the CEO of Lennox to employees in which he said that 1) he didn't believe in global warming, but 2) if global warming was real, then good, because it would be good for Lennox's business of selling more A/C's! (He also complained that he would have made more money in the stock market than he made having it all tied up in Lennox, implying that the employees didn't work hard enough or something, but for the sake of everyone's jobs, he stayed with the company. What a guy!) They ought to be our best and brightest people. They evidently believe they are, the way they carry on. But they don't seem to understand something basic that separates children from adults, which is that you can't make problems go away by ignoring them. They've done worse. They've actively worked to deny everything, actually spent money that they are so greedy to have, on propaganda dressed up as science. What the hell! We have a huge, huge leadership problem. In Lennox's case, I know that CEO inherited the company. He didn't win his position on any sort of merit at all. He was the son of the previous leader, that's all.
What a bunch of lying, smug, lazy hedonists. Every generation can use a challenge, to keep life from becoming too easy and boring. We ought to embrace this problem. We could solve it. The US didn't go AWOL for WWII, didn't chicken out and let Japan grab half the Pacific, didn't leave the Brits to the Nazis. We demonstrated to the world that democracy is superior to fascism. Now we call them the Greatest Generation. If Rupert Murdoch had been a media mogul then, I can imagine he'd have spewed ridiculous pro-Nazi propaganda, maybe suggest that the US ought to cut a deal to sell Hawaii to Japan in exchange for peace. Solving global warming doesn't require the sacrifice that war did. Yet, we're running away from it. We don't deserve to stay #1 with that attitude. Our parents would be ashamed. All the work and sacrifice they did so we'd have a better life, and this is how we repay that.
So, we won't do enough to address this problem, not until it's far too late. Greenland will melt, and maybe western Antarctica will too, most of Florida and Bangladesh will drown, and the Netherlands may find it impossible to raise the dikes high enough. Then we'll engage in recriminations as we fight over higher ground and food. There will be war, maybe even WWIII and use of nuclear weapons. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"