Greenhouse gases reach a new record as nations fall behind on climate pledges
Source: NPR
Earlier on Wednesday the U.N's climate office said current pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions put the planet on course to blow past the limit for global warming countries agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord.
It said its latest estimate based on 193 national emissions targets would see temperatures rise to 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial averages by the end of the century, a full degree higher than the ambitious goal set in the Paris pact to limit warming by 1.5 C (2.7 F).
"We are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on track toward a 1.5 degrees Celsius world," the head of the U.N. climate office, Simon Stiell, said in a statement. "To keep this goal alive, national governments need to strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them in the next eight years."
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/26/1131671933/greenhouse-gases-record-climate-pledges-un
Basically, while the GOP voters have their cocky heads in the sand, the future is looking even more bleak.
This is our last chance to stop the GOP from destroying the planet. We MUST have democrats elected so our children will have a fighting chance for something of a better future. Republicans will leave us with nothing but scorched Earth and a dying planet.
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at140
(6,245 posts)China and India.
Between those two, there are almost 200 new coal fired power plants under construction right now.
NNadir
(37,959 posts)It's rather typical of bourgeois first world people to attack less wealthy people for wanting to adapt the American lifestyle.
Together, China and India contain about 3 billion human beings, about ten times the population of the United States, which is still the second largest emitter of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide.
Worse, Americans think this problem will be addressed with wind turbines, solar cells and electric cars, and mindless bourgeois affectation. By contrast, China and India are building nuclear plants at a rate we can't approach.
I would be very careful about being smug and blaming the problem on poor people. A more fruitful approach would be to consider that we rather live in a glass house, and we're shooting stones out cannons.
Kaleva
(40,345 posts)The poor of China and India are very poor and have an extremely small carbon footprint.
What you need to do is compare apples to apples. What percentage of the Chinese and Indian populations have a standard of living comparable to that of your average American? Then compare the per capita output.
NNadir
(37,959 posts)I have no patience for excusing the horror of the American lifestyle by refusing that other human beings want it as much as we do.
What's the story? Americans have a right to live this way, but Chinese and Indians don't? Are they less human than we are?
Kaleva
(40,345 posts)The poor, no matter where they live, have a very small carbon footprint. If you want to compare the per capita output of various nations, you need to compare the populations of each that have a standard of living sufficient enough to contribute to the emission of greenhouse gases.
My guess is that if you look at the population of China that has a standard of living comparable or better then that of an average American, the per capita output of each group would be quite similar. It might even be higher for the Chinese as that nation produces twice as much greenhouse gases as does the US.
NNadir
(37,959 posts)...complete its collapse much faster than it is right now, and the collapse is accelerating, not decelerating.
"Per capita" is not adjusted to include only the poor or only the rich. It's an average, based on the entire population.
I read all the whining by Americans in their consumer society about Indian and Chinese emissions as completely oblivious and contemptuous.
An American living like the average Indian would consider himself, herself or themselves impoverished.
I have been to India and what I saw is out of the purview of smug Americans who think they're going to save the world by staring at pictures of wind turbines, solar cells and electric cars, while the amount of coal and gas Americans burn, dumping the waste into the planetary atmosphere, on average, per person, disgusts the rest of the world, and with good reason.
Chinese and Indians may not agree that they should live in dire poverty, overall, so oblivious Americans can declare themselves "green."
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)If you're going to excuse 200 coal fired plants simply because people don't live as good as we do, then its not really about climate change at all. As I always say, the earth doesnt care about borders or who lives how
NNadir
(37,959 posts)...at all that marketing stuff showing wind and solar junk, all of which will be landfill in 20 years that this isn't true, but we're just excusing ourselves for our myopia and wishful thinking.
By the way, without Chinese miners none of that so called "green" stuff would be here.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)And your last comment brings me to one of my points on my post #28. I just didnt go into the details.
Its all really a fantasy for so many reasons.
the only REAL chance of major changes is the development of things that hasn't happened yet. But who knows; smart people invent stuff all the time.
NNadir
(37,959 posts)...a century.
Are we building nuclear reactors at the same rate as China?
At the same rate as India?
We aren't?
China has over a billion people. We have about 1/4 their population.
Since China now dominates the nuclear industry we are relatively far behind them in a rational technological approach to addressing climate change.
To be perfectly honest, the situation in Europe is the path on which we are traveling, relying on our dangerous fantasies about so called "renewable energy" without recognizing that we abandoned it in favor of coal in the 19th century because reliability was important. We developed commercial nuclear power in this country and then set out to abandon it based on appeals to fear and ignorance. Nuclear energy was and is the only viable approach to addressing climate change. We demonized it. The Chinese have embraced it.
We have been able to cover up the inadequacy of wind and solar because we are fracking the shit of the continent for gas. Announcing smugly that we're cured of dangerous fossil fuels because we can destroy all the continental bedrock to get dangerous natural gas is rather like a whiskey drinking alcoholic announcing that he's cured because he has switched from a bottle of whiskey to two six packs of beer a day.
At one point we were operating almost 500 coal plants. We are still operating more than 200, and where they've been shut they were replaced by gas.
We are building gas plants. California just approved 5 of them, using the bald lie that they've "temporary." To repeat, that's a bald lie.
Simply because we refuse to confess doesn't mean we're not guilty. From my perspective the source of our enormous guilt is an unjustified refusal to look in the mirror.
I believe that poverty is inexcusable and a big part of poverty is energy poverty. There is one and only one way to meet both human development goals and climate goals. That is to build nuclear plants fast. The Chinese have demonstrated they know how to this. We no longer do. They have a better chance of meeting both goals than we do.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)Right here on DU every time I say that there's NO WAY to achieve meaningful change without it I get shouted down. Nuclear should've been the focus from decades ago.
Designs today are FAR better than in the old days. But it takes WAY too long.
Ga Pwr is adding a reactor to an existing plant in GA. It supposed to be done by late NEXT year. And at 30 BILLION. The cost over runs are ridiculous.
Meanwhile, we keep sending money to China to be used against us.
NNadir
(37,959 posts)He's a first year student, and is current thought is to 3D print reactor materials.
This claim of "takes too long" is just rote nonsense. The United Stayes built more than 100 nuclear reactors between 1960 and 1985 using 1950s and 1960s science, main frame computers less powerful than an average laptop while providing the lowest electricity in the industrial world. The majority of those reactors still run.
If we'd finished the job, climate change would be nowhere near the problem it is now.
France built more than 50 in about 15 years becoming the first coal dependent nation to phase out coal almost completely.
The Chinese have recently matched France's pace, and will exceed it soon. They built the first molten salt reactor to be built since the 1960s in three years, nearly two years ahead of schedule. In my view the Chinese are far more serious about climate change than we have any hope of being, despite the fact that we sit on our asses criticizing them.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)There's SO many reasons that "everyone drives an electric car" is just impossible.
NNadir
(37,959 posts)...the consequences of Chernobyl which differed greatly from my (then) anti-nuke assumptions.
Next month I will be at DU for 20 years; for the whole time I've advocated for nuclear energy as the only option left to save the world, and as the "renewables will save us" fantasy began to reveal it's grotesque inadequacy, and it's dependence on vast mining, the trashing of wilderness, and its intrinsic unreliability, I began to see a change.
There are still many people here who still think we "need" solar and wind - we don't - but now understand that we "need" nuclear energy as well.
My Journal in this space is filled with musings based on readings in the scientific literature on this topic.
When I started with this advocacy, I would say that as a political liberal trying to get my fellow liberals to "see the light" considerably more than 80% of the responses I got were negative, some extremely negative. I was banned at DailyKos for arguing that if the (formerly worshiped there, now probably despised) climate Scientist Jim Hansen was right when he wrote this paper...
Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)
...then opposing nuclear energy is murder. In other words, I was banned for telling the truth.
I would say that now more than 50% of my comments here on nuclear energy are well received.
What is the difference?
The difference is that the "wolf is at the door."
So called "renewable energy" - which is not even remotely close to being sustainable - has absorbed trillions of dollars and has failed graphically and disastrously to address climate change. You'd have to be a Trumpian scale delusional denialist to avoid seeing it.
Nuclear energy was always our last best hope, but now this fact - facts matter - is very difficult to avoid and deny.
The world is changing. The absurdity of policies like those of Germany, where the Greenpeace assholes running that country closed nuclear plants to burn coal, are drawing the stark and dire realities of the lies we've been telling ourselves to their just conclusion.
There may still be time to save what can be saved, and perhaps restore what can be restored.
When my son's institution flew all of the accepted graduate students down to convince them to sign on to that nuclear engineering program, in the first meeting the question was asked, "How many of you are here because of climate change?"
Three quarters of the nuclear engineering Ph.D. students there raised their hands.
This next generation will be a great generation. They will need to be so. We have left them a destroyed world.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)Nothing else makes sense. Unless, as I often say, some other major breakthroughs are invented. Which very well could happen; I mean look at the strides made over the past few decades in many areas. But right NOW, we have to use what we HAVE. And nuclear is the ONLY way today.
But don't get too comfortable telling the truth here either; I've had posts hidden that were actual verifiable facts. But they were unpopular facts!
NNadir
(37,959 posts)...really being "major."
There is only one area of energy research that may be comparable to nuclear fission in terms of sustainability, that is nuclear fusion. Energy to mass density is the key to sustainability; only fusion can have a higher energy density than fission. I regularly attend lectures at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab - a fusion lab - and my opinion is that there is only a 20% to 30% chance of it becoming a viable commercial form of energy. I hope I'm wrong; that it is higher, but I remain to be convinced. There is a 0% chance that it will be available in time to save much from climate change. The climate disaster is here, now.
As for hides:
I've certainly had a number of hides. A reality is that there is a 50% chance that a jury member here will be an anti-nuke, down I think, over the years from 80%. I no longer take it personally. (I'm something of a lightening rod on energy issues, particularly among poorly educated - there really isn't any other kind - anti-nukes.)
I am a Democrat because I have Democratic Values, contempt for racism, support of the rights of women as equal human beings, freedom to be free from religion and also to embrace it if one wishes, hopes for a sustainable world, respect for justice, and, although this is less popular than it used to be among us, the need to do away with human poverty, all over the world.
I think most Democrats want a sustainable world; but some of us are rather like a physician who can correctly diagnose a case of cancer, and then announce that the treatment should be prayer and saying the rosary.
The world needs a radiation treatment, seriously.
I commented on the 2022 World Energy Outlook released yesterday over in the E&E forum.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)at140
(6,245 posts)from what I have seen during visits to India.
Kaleva
(40,345 posts)Saw one report that stated the median income of the US is about ,$53k while the median income in China is $12k.
at140
(6,245 posts)$10k annual income in India buys far more services and many goods than $10k in United States.
Kaleva
(40,345 posts)Labor is cheap which reduces costs.
at140
(6,245 posts)For the same $$ income compared to US.
My point is it gives a false result if middle class in India is measured by Same $$ numbers used to define American middle class.
Kaleva
(40,345 posts)She was struck by the extreme poverty. She and others in her group were often mobbed by barely clothed children , done kids were completely naked, begging for anything.
If a sizeable percentage of the population s in India and China are living near or in poverty, that would mean the remaing population has a higher per capita output of greenhouses emissions as the poor and extremely poor have a very low carbon footprint. They don't have the means to be involved in the generation of greenhouse gases .
at140
(6,245 posts)There are millions of dirt poor people in India.
Last time I visited, there were no food stamps, no medicaid, no welfare benefits.
That makes difficult to climb out of poverty.
However capitalism is doing well to create plenty of opportunities for the business class.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)Because the earth doesn't care about borders or standard of living. Either it matters or it doesnt. I've always thought it was tilting at windmills anyway since much of the temp rises are already baked in. Not to mention the major assistance of Putin.
LT Barclay
(3,180 posts)Kaleva
(40,345 posts)LT Barclay
(3,180 posts)Some days I think it is wierd to continue to drive to a normal job like nothing is happening.
Kaleva
(40,345 posts)A number of years ago, I thought I'd pass on well before the situation became noticeably bad but now it looks like I'll still be around for a bit as reports of climate change indicators happening much earlier then previously predicted keep coming.
The Great Lakes region, where I live, is expected to become a mecca for climate change refugees from the gulf states, the coastal areas and the South West.
As North America adjusts, there will be shortages of goods and maybe some will no longer be available. Good, shelter and water are the 3 pillars of survival and if one has that, riding out shortages may be uncomfortable but is doable
To that end, I and some other members of my extended family have been working on increasing our ability to raise our own food. For the past several years, I've been slowly converting my backyard into a vegetable garden and fruit orchard. I'm in the process of building a root cellar in my basement for storage and learning about different methods of preserving food such as cold storage (the root cellar), fermentation, canning, and dehydration.
Next spring, we'll be getting chickens. Particularly a breed I believe that will do well where we live. The Buckeye chicken is known to be hardy, cold tolerant, long lived, docile, broody, a good forager and is a good dual purpose bird.
Another animal we may get is the American Black Belly sheep. I just talked to a lady yesterday who lives in WI and has a herd of that breed and sells lambs in the spring. The Black Belly is a hair sheep (doesn't have wool) raised for meat. It's hardy, cold tolerant , easy to care for and does well on a diet of grass and hay.
I could keep writing for awhile about the other projects I'm doing to ensure we have food, water and shelter but I think you get the gist of it
OtterDave
(61 posts)Kaleva
(40,345 posts)And much of this is stuff I enjoy doing anyways. I enjoy gardening. I like raising animals. I like doing projects.
OtterDave
(61 posts)So nice to grow your own food!
Kaleva
(40,345 posts)LT Barclay
(3,180 posts)is just to have a more intimate connection with where our food comes from. I grew up in the 60's-70's and our family was unusual for the times but common now. Everything we ate came from the freezer, box, can, restaurant, etc.
We got off to a rough start though. My wife has had health issues, and our kids are adopted so we have to supervise more than we would with other kids of the same age. So when she wanted a garden, I kind of took more of a hands off approach and everthing died. We have grow lights and I'm thinking about trying to start a winter garden indoors. If you have any suggestions that would be great.
I also think back to how my parents tried to prepare me for the future and always said "college, college, college" and by the time I graduated it seemed like everyone had a college degree. So now I'm wondering if I'm making the same mistake. Should I be preparing the kids for the world I see today or should I be teaching them to forage for mushrooms in the forest?
Kaleva
(40,345 posts)LT Barclay
(3,180 posts)Kaleva
(40,345 posts)Having a garden large enough to provide the vegetables a family if 4 would need for a year would require a bit of land. About 1 to 2 acres. An acre is about the size of a football field. An expert gardener using intensive gardening techniques might've able to do that using half an acre. And this is just for vegetables. We haven't mentioned meats, dairy products, grains, or fruit. Then there's the issue of storing and preserving all that produce.
In my situation, I have access to plenty of land and there's enough people involved to provide the labor.
I think for you that better route would be to stock up on shelf stable canned and boxed goods that one could use for easy to make meals. One project I'm doing is developing a meal plan for 30 days using such products to make meals that my wife and I like. Meals that don't require refrigerated ingredients. As we have an LP gas oven, I can light the top burners with a log lighter to cook food even if power goes out. Once I have a number of different meals picked out, I'll need to make sure I have all the ingredients on hand to make them.
An example of a meal would be quick oats for breakfast. I'd have enough in the pantry to make 1 1/2 cups for each of us and topped with either syrup or honey. To make oatmeal requires milk so I have dehydrated milk to use for that. Another meal is 1 1/2 cups of cooked white rice topped with a 5 oz can of tuna in vegetable oil along with a 1/2 cup of my homemade sauerkraut or kimchi for each of us . For fruit, I plan on each of us to have one can per day so I'd need 60 cans of pears, applesauce, fruit cocktail, peaches and apricots in my pantry for a 30 day supply.
Along with food, one will need to stock up on other essentials like medications, toilet paper, pet food and such.
You don't need to limit yourself to 30 days. You can stock for as long or short a period of time as you may think you'll need.
I think the kids should go to college but they can also aquire skills that could help them in an extreme situation. Like a 1st aid course, which I plan to take, good preservation and others.
LT Barclay
(3,180 posts)But we do need to learn to gather and preserve. And be sure we have enough for a couple of weeks.
NullTuples
(6,017 posts)That does not just mean that summers, falls, winters and springs will be 4.5 degrees warmer.
It means enough energy will be added to our current environment that the average will rise 4.5 F / 2.5 C
What's four or five degrees, right?
Well, just a degree or two - and we're already ahead of schedule on that - is resulting in huge shifts in weather patterns. Annual farm yields are already down because of it. 4.5 F / 2.5 C may well mean the end of large scale farming, as it will no longer be possible to *predict* the weather, and farming is notoriously finicky about timing vs yields. So now think: what happens to humanity without large scale farming?
Kaleva
(40,345 posts)while others not so much.
Kaleva
(40,345 posts)India is in 3rd place but rapidly catching up to the US and may soon move to 2nd place
NNadir
(37,959 posts)Kaleva
(40,345 posts)NNadir
(37,959 posts)jimfields33
(19,382 posts)Everyone will have an electric car. We’re so far ahead of China India and the rest of the world. We’ve been gradually doing exceptionally well at combating emissions.
Kaleva
(40,345 posts)NNadir
(37,959 posts)LT Barclay
(3,180 posts)and still think "coal rolling" is funny.
Kind of like the LED light thing. The cost came down, energy requirements came down, so now everyone in my neighborhood thinks they need a string of electric lights in their yard to shine all night and more buildings are lit from top to bottom.
The only way to counter that is by regulation. Then right wingers throw a tantrum, convince the wishy washy "undecideds" that big bag government is coming to take their toys and we are back where we started.
Dysfunctional
(452 posts)but there will still be plenty of gas-powered cars on the roads. About 25% of cars in use now are over 16 years old. If they want more people to buy electric cars, they are going to drop the prices on them. Also, a tax credit doesn't help poor people or anyone like me who doesn't pay taxes. If the government wants more people to buy an electric car give them a rebate even if they don't pay taxes.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)Imagine going to a hotel with 500 rooms & now 500 electric cars. How many chargers will be there? When can you use them? I'm SURE the hotel will gladly schedule a time for all of us for a handsome fee.
And look at the interstate; thousands of cars per HOUR going by; how many chargers are needed to keep them going if all are electric? people already wait in line for chargers in LA. What happens when there are 10x MORE electric cars?
Not to mention becoming dependent AGAIN on China & other not-so-nice countries for the raw materials for the batteries.
Its just not gonna work until some new developments are invented
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)Nobody ever considers just what that really means & what it will take.
former9thward
(33,424 posts)In 13 years everyone will have an electric car? Not even remotely. No interest or political will for that. If we are ever at "zero emission" it will be because of some accounting BS like selling "carbon credits", etc.
Javaman
(65,683 posts)Two tipping points we’ll see with in the next 5-10 years: 1) coral reefs dead due to acidification of the oceans 2) massive glacial melts in the Antarctic and in greenland
The result? Massive ocean rise and a giant chunk of our food vanished (seafood)
On top of that, due to rising temps, more evaporation, which means more water moisture in the atmosphere which means the likelihood of wet bulb temps increasing world wide.
Anyone paying the very least amount of attention should be hair on fire fucking terrified.
And this is just at 2.5. I can guaran-god-damn-tee you that’s the conservative estimate
The statements by climate scientists who don’t hold anything back and study this for a living, say that we will be lucky if we can hold it under 3.5
But they dumb down the studies so not to “freak” people out.
On the surface, 2.5 degrees should freak the people out, but it doesn’t. They should just tell the unvarnished truth and say we are completely fucked.
Heather MC
(8,084 posts)They waited too long to take this issue seriously 🤷🏾♀️
And wealthy billionaires and corporations have decided to insulate themselves from the effects of climate change they're just going to take all the money.
So when all h*** breaks loose most of us won't be able to afford to leave to do anything about it and where would we go?
Planning Earth is our only home, And we allow corporations and greedy governments to completely destroy it. And then they blame us claiming we need to do individual stuff to recycle.
Lovey completely ripped and raped all the resources out of the land, poisoned our water, And contaminated our food supply with all sorts of artificial ingredients that make us fat sick and nearly dead.
And then they created a scenario where we Americans can only get medication in America so they were allowed to run the prices up on all the medication. Knowing the food they were forcing us to eat was going to make most of us sick.
How can anyone really fight climate change when they're struggling to pay their mortgage or their rent and other basic survival tools, and they're not getting paid enough to do either.
Starfury
(860 posts)oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)ALL could have been avoided.
melm00se
(5,159 posts)US emissions have been dropping:
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carbon-co2-emissions#:~:text=U.S.%20carbon%20(co2)%20emissions%20for,a%201.53%25%20decline%20from%202016.
Kaleva
(40,345 posts)The US could achieve zero emissions and the world will still be hit by catastrophic climate change.
Elessar Zappa
(16,385 posts)I think in the coming decades that their emissions will be substantially lower than our unless we get rid of our fear of nuclear. Solar, electric cars and wind just won’t cut it.
Kaleva
(40,345 posts)honest.abe
(9,238 posts)Like a chunk of ice the size of Florida slipping into the ocean and raising sea levels by 10 feet.
https://scitechdaily.com/doomsday-glacier-holding-on-by-its-fingernails-spine-chilling-retreat-could-raise-sea-levels-by-10-feet/
electric_blue68
(26,823 posts)took down Carter's WH solar panels. 🤬
But Not enough people listened back then. 😐😔
Torchlight
(6,782 posts)Every man-made problem possesses a man-made solution.
But as long as we focus on blaming everyone but ourselves, and purchasing "How to Churn Your Own Butter" pamphlets, we will collectively get nowhere.
roamer65
(37,945 posts)jgo
(1,020 posts)I would highly recommend this source for rigorous, well-informed, and well-reasoned information from a physics professor:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/category/climate-change/
There is no easy choice, and no easy path. No, electric vehicles don't magically solve the problem because the energy to power the vehicle stills needs to be produced (somewhere else), among other issues. No, nuclear reactors don't magically solve the problem because they generate heat, and waste that is hard to store, among other problems. The arc of using more and more energy, and then exploiting technology that makes energy usage more efficient, to then use even more energy, is the issue. Not only is there no free lunch, but there would have to be a lot fewer lunches.