There is A LOT of money to be made in climate change. What you don’t hear in the news cycle is that we’ve made extensive reductions in all forms of pollution, but especially air pollution. We have slowed the rate of global warming as a result. Now big money “green” corporations don’t want you to know that. Many on here will point to China using more coal or that our efforts are not enough. Fact is that the change is occurring and we are making an impact and need to keep that trend going, but know that the majority of the data that is published on the long term forecast is using 1970s data and not 2023 data to skew the impact as being worse and more fearsome. All the ‘were past the tipping point’ and such are using the old data. Things are better than that, but not to the point we need for major recovering.
Reduction isn’t enough. We’ve only been successful in exporting our pollution to places like China. We actually haven’t reduced anything because of that fact. We may have reduced pollution here but only at a cost of increasing it some where else.
With that said co2 emissions today are the highest they’ve ever been. We haven’t slowed anything. Climate change is increasing at an exponential rate. It’s going to keep increasing until we can figure out how to eliminate emissions and reduce what is already in the atmosphere.
Reality is no matter what reductions we take here the overall emissions in the world is still going up.
Hate to say it but it’s a little too late. By the time we figure out how to eliminate emissions the world will have burnt to a crisp. The time for aggressive changes was 50 years ago. We’ve already passed the temperature at which run away climate change is possible.
It’s quite clear our leaders decided to run it all into the ground instead of making an effort to change our way of life.
Facts are facts, it is to little too late, call me a doomer all you want, we are fucked
instead of making an effort to change our way of life.
the unfortunate reality is the only way to significantly change carbon emissions in a fast enough time period would essentially mean throwing all of humanity back a couple of centuries in tech and standard of living
you try being a politician who advocates for this. you’re not gonna get elected
even worse, convince all the 3rd world countries who are currently developing trying to get their people out of poverty. the chinese have finally gotten the taste for a little bit of meat with their dinner. of course that comes at the cost of mountains of coal being burned.
you tell those hundreds of millions of people that they need to go back to the farms and eat rice for the climate - meanwhile we got our chance to burn as much coal as we wanted to last century.
the reality is that we won’t be able to stop climate change. the reality is that we’re going to have to learn to live with it. and we will. climate change will not destroy us. it will destroy many species, will destroy many habitable zones. but we will survive.
i’m more worried about nuclear war & AI - which i think has a much more acute danger
It’s not necessarily true that we have to throw humanity back to the 1600s. Nuclear fission could realistically and safely bring out carbon emissions under control and serve as an actually viable load backbone for a renewable grid (as opposed to having giant battery facilities). We can also pivot away from car dependent infrastructure and long-haul trucking in favor of more walkable cities, better public transit, and expanded freight rail networks.
There’s alway more opportunity and money to be made in new emerging markets, just not by the current top dogs.
That’s why cigarette companies fought against e-cigs while buying those companies out.
That’s why power companies for the longest time poo pooed solar while quietly investing in solar capacity.
The big guys block and depress these new markets while they get their ducks in a row cause if these new markets just exploded uncontrolled they’d miss out on getting in cheap.
Why would using 1970s data instead of 2023 data give a more fearsome forecast? Are you saying that emissions have decreased since 1970?
Certain types of pollutants have decreased, CO2 for example hasn’t decreased and won’t as long as logging continues. Trees store vast quantities of CO2 and when cut down it is released. Vehicles are releasing less CO2, industry is releasing less CO2, but there are more of them so we are not seeing the offset. What it come down to is that we need to avoid those trying to distract us from the end game which is reducing pollutants through better techniques and practices. Driving vehicles that don’t use carbon emissions is a great example of this. Building Nuclear Power Plants is another.
Co2 is released when those trees rot. If they’re cut down for construction material then they don’t release their carbon it’s actually stored away.
Do you have any sources to back up your claims? Because NASA has consistently been able to make predictions about climate patterns and how they’ll change in 10-15 years if no meaningful impact on emissions occurs, and they pretty reliably come true. That, for me, is pretty good evidence that NASA knows what they’re talking about, and they’re certainly not saying that everything’s fine.
