Useful analysis, plots do suggest that there’s an anomaly beyond the usual pattern, but maybe the underlying trend fit is too simple, missing factors such as the post-covid spike due to shipping sulphate, also the 11yr solar cycle (we’re near a peak). Also worth checking whether the anomaly is concentrated in one region - as 24 months is a short timescale for global averaging.
That’s a pity, I had been expecting level or a slight decrease in fossil CO2 (due to economy in China which has 1/3 of emissions), so maybe I was wrong, or maybe it’s just too soon to say (they give error range -0.3% to +1.9%). There’s still 1/6th of 2024 to go, including part of the NH winter whose heating demand varies with weather, most of the raw data that goes into these calculations is likely not so fresh, and chinese economic projections tend to be ‘optimistic’. The rise in LUC CO2 is mainly hangover from tail of El Niño early this year, leading to fires in southern hemisphere. So it’s still possible, if we think monthly, that the global peak was early this year, i.e. in the past.
Of course, they release GCB before the end of the year to try to influence the COP, which makes more sense when the COP is in mid-December (as typical, but not necessary - iirc COP1 was April and COP2 July). But does projected bad news really help motivate the world? I’d emphasise mixed news - some trends up, others down, which shows what difference we can make.
Och some things never change … at least Ed Uni had the same reputation when I was a student there from 1990, but in reality this mainly applied to humanities departments - in chemistry, geology, agric, etc. down at the ‘King’s buildings’, it was mostly Scottish students. Overall a fine diversity.
Indeed there is huge momentum in renewable costs. I recall 20 years ago climate economists starting to model endogenous technological change, but they just had to invent ’ learning curves’ with magic numbers. Now it has happened.
On the other hand, I still wish heat pumps were cheaper. Where I live, the cost is inflated by the requirement for installation by people qualified with refrigerant gases.
Some sense to this - global emissions probably just peaked because China’s housing bubble burst - responsible for much more CO2 than AI/crypto, and even a communist government can’t effectively control such crashes. So no, we are not f****d, but not always saved for noble reasons.
Also regarding crypto - how much of that was sustained by russians evading sanctions - which new team in US is likely to remove ?
Makes sense. China holds a good hand now, as they have probably peaked emissions five years ahead of their promise, and are not yet obliged with financial contributions. Also they need to sell renewables, electric cars etc. - especially to southern countries while US and EU put big tariffs. And if you look at the numbers, US is no longer so important in the world.
Your first sentence is correct. But if you look at the historical data, the sharpest drop in chinese fertility rate was several years before they introduced the one-child policy, which also ended several years ago without apparently making any difference. Also, fertility rates in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan are even lower. As these rates are also lower than europe, that maybe related more to housing affordability and density, possibly combined with some common evolution of ‘eastern’ values.
In high latitude winters, snow provides light and contrast - without it the world is just shades of black brown grey. Some people there may think a little extra warmth could be welcome, but -2ºC with snow is much better than +2ºC with cold grey drizzle.
Actually, if you swapped ‘on’ for ‘by’ (and cut ‘US diminishment’ etc.) you’d have a point there - Russian emissions per capita are among the world’s highest and growing, while they decline in the rest of the north - most commentators don’t notice as Russia has no NGOs left to shout about it.
(Note emissions fell since 1992 but from an even higher peak - while soviet industry produced that huge stockpile of missiles, tanks etc. now being used up). Also there are potentially huge climate feedbacks in Siberian forests and tundra, and we should be cooperating globally to help manage that. Maybe ‘europe from lisbon to vladivostok’ was a missed opportunity. I crossed siberia by train, helping local scientists attend COP3 in Japan, even studied many russian songs. Maybe one day we’ll cooperate again. But now I and many others here think the only way to end these wars, is for russians to dump their crazy leadership which started them.
I’m not an expert on biodiversity, although I’d like to be. Of course extinction is forever, and habitat loss is exacerbated by climate feedbacks.
But we have to accept change, making less fuss about protecting ‘native species’ (to me this feels rather like nativism wrt human immigration), and recognise that life on earth has suffered and survived worse calamities in geological history, so it will re-adapt to new situations, if we let plants and animals (including ourselves) move with the climate. We can’t save all the old ecosystems (for example from considering thermodynamics of the symbiosis within coral reefs, I have little hope for their survival with combination of higher T and CO2 and SLR), but we might help create new opportunities for new ecosystems in new places. In this context, what matters is the rate of changes - as it takes time for trees to grow, soil to accumulate - rather than ‘equilibrium’ changes.
I don’t know whether the OP was specifically reacting to lack of progress at the Biodiv COP16 in Cali, as well as US election and climate news, but as an old hand at COPs too, I hadn’t expected much, at the end of these circuses the only certainty is that the show must always go on (or diplomatic teams would kill their own job). In my opinion both COP processes have got bogged down talking mainly about money, and the UN system as a whole has not been working for many years, so we need some radical rethinking about global cooperation. Nevertheless on a local and regional level plenty of positive things are still happening. Also human population growth is also peaking, or heading that way, on all continents except Africa, and in many countries there is reforestation recently.
In general, bear in mind that many big science consortiums publish reports around this time of year, with extra-worrying headlines, in a bid to influence the COP processes. This is just part of the new-normal seasonal cycle, like the grey skies where I live, but not a reason to lose hope - brighter days will follow.
Hey, I study curves of climate change for decades now, and can tell you there is hope.
The world probably just passed peak global emissions - mainly due to China, which counts for a lot more than USA, whose emissions were falling anyway - that trend may slow down but not stop - as renewables are cheaper now.
China is manufacturing most renewable stuff now, but the science that drove the transition was led by europe and US, the work wasn’t wasted.
Indeed, peak emissions is not peak concentration, and there’s a lot of inertia in the deep ocean and ice-caps, so temperatures will keep rising during my lifetime, but peak temperature, at least below 2ºC, is foreseeable now, we are succeeding to bend those curves.
That wasn’t the case when I lost hope, due to the gap between climate science and policy, back in late 1990s. But I’m still alive now, and glad of it, and would like to stay around longer to see how the future evolves, only wish I’d prepared better for later life, as it’s a long path, not easy but challenges can be inspiring, no simple answers but the complexity is beautiful. Keep going.
I’m aware of the racism issue, I even observed it myself in China, even many years ago.
But i’ve also seen similar problems in other corners of the world. Such cultural concepts can change slowly, as they did over here.
Anyway, I doubt this would dissuade people trying to connect what will become the world’s main supply of surplus young labour, with the world’s greatest demand for care-services, combined with spare apartments, money, and a milder climate. Not saying it’s good or bad, just trying to anticipate future changes.
I agree. For global discussions, are many Indians going to learn Chinese, Swahili, Hausa, Arabic, and vice-versa ?
Meanwhile international-english is the new latin… Even within India, the south insists to keep english as an official language, to avoid being dominated by more populous hindi-speaking north.
Alternatively LLM-translation may facilitate multi-lingual discussion, but in this case the language of software development may still be influential during such transition.
By the way - this is an important topic for future of lemmy, which should expand more towards the south - where’s a good place to develop it (beyond such set of replies)?
That seems like a big change in one year. It may to some extent reflect delay, as on average chinese used to pair-up at a younger age than typical in europe, also maybe some feel old traditions aren’t necessary to keep a stable family with children. But the article says, the core factors are economic. Even so, as they have built so many surplus apartments, the [real] prices must drop, I wonder how many years before they are trying to sell the chinese dream to migrants from Africa or elsewhere.
Back in 2011, I with my young family took a local bus north from Mariana, which diverted through several villages including that one Bento Rodrigues just below the dam, soon to be washed away. Through gaps in the trees we could glimpse those huge orange lakes just behind earth dams - it was obvious even to a casual tourist that it was a disaster waiting to happen. But the bus was run by the mining company, like all services around there, I suppose that’s why people didn’t complain more.
By the way I was told Brazil didn’t even make much from iron mines, as most of raw ore was exported to China, which got the real value.
Emissions grew in 2023, that’s not the same as ‘are now growing’. There is a good chance global CO2 emissions fall in 2024, mainly due to trends in China. Of course it takes time to gather data, but NS should be more careful with the headline.
The spinscore link has useful refs - but keeps mixing up CO2 emissions with “CO2 equivalents” including methane, landuse and minor gases. Methane rising is a big issue, but might potentially be turned around faster. Regarding landuse, deforestation was exacerbated last year by El Niño feedbacks - it’s hard to separate the anthropogenic part of these fluxes.
Rather than simple headlines which encourage fatalistic doom, it’s more useful to explain how some factors progress better than others. They are right to highlight growth in road transport and aviation (even if some growth still covid-rebound), although more effort still needed in all sectors.
Hmm. I’m still using a 2014 iMac, as its 27" 5k screen still very good for coding (with added memory). Sometimes develops a bunch of thin vertical lines, which come and go maybe dependent on temperature, but hasn’t changed for for ten years and i can live with those. Just wish they’d continue providing security updates for it.
Odd that Estacio de França is now the terminus only of lines from the opposite direction - but it makes sense to run all across the centre.
I’ve been calculating and struggling with climate change for - well, seems a long time now.
As a young man, I didn’t expect that world society would survive as long as it has, I thought climate was existential now - in the 1990s - so I tackled what I could then, rather than planning for my life decades later (which is consequently not easy).
But we’re still here, and actually the range of scenarios looks somewhat better now than projections back then.
Probably emissions in China have just peaked, and as these are such a big chunk of the global total over last 20 years, so that may have peaked too. Global science and civil society has, collectively, helped to influence that. We have bent the curves.
Of course there is inertia in the system, it takes time for carbon and heat to penetrate the deep ocean and the ice, so the surface temperature will continue to rise for decades, but not necessarily for centuries - that’s still our choice. Yes, some megacities will drown beneath the sea, and others become uninhabitable due to heatwaves and drought, but there will be plenty of other places to live, we’ll need some redistribution. Many other species will be (and have been) lost, but life on earth has survived worse catastrophes, life will go on.
Especially people who care about such future, who educate themselves about the challenges, yourself included, should be part of that. But it’s a long-term problem, without quick-fixes, so plan accordingly, saving some strength for later, we’ll still need it.
Makes sense, rail is ideal for such a long thin country.
Probably a nine-hour overnight trip is preferable to a five-hour day trip, but of course there are shorter distances too.
I recall the last time they were thinking about this ±15 yrs ago, a delegate to a COP told me they were already concerned about adaptation to sea-level rise affecting part of the route along the coast. Seems better future-planning than some more ‘developed’ countries.