Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
At 4C of warming the feedback loops of Earth begin to accelerate at an unprecedented rate, the economy is irrelevant from this point onwards.
Just one of these feedback loops has more CO2 equivalent than over 60% of anthropogenic emissions since the industrial revolution.
At 4C of warming the human race is due for extinction unless through its self perceived exceptionalism it somehow manages to circumvent the laws of thermodynamics.
The alternative is we start building a better tomorrow TODAY.
Agreed. I'm getting tired of these pencil-pusher reports implying that "the economy" is going to keep chugging along at a reduced rate, as if we can just shuffle around our stock portfolios and weather the storm.
The "Planetary Solvency" report by IFoA is one of the first mainstream papers that's taking a sober look at the climate crisis. If we hit 2°C by 2050, they're seeing a significant likelihood of:
I don't even want to think about 3°C and 4°C scenarios.
Oh I can definitely get behind that, I have my gripes with how the current climate consensus is insidiously stacked to give policymakers leeway and mislead the public with this bullshit.
I'm reading through it now and this part on NGFS reports really captures the sentiment:
This is analogous to carrying out a risk assessment of the impact of the Titanic hitting an iceberg but excluding from our model the possibility that the ship could sink, the shortage of lifeboats, and death from drowning or hypothermia.
As much as I hate talking about 'duh economee' when it comes to climate change (a thing that threatens the existence of us and many other beings) this report nails it.
Also the critical observations are good talking points when dealing with deniers/idiots
My favorite climate consensus roll-eyes is how all the graphs always stop at 2100. As if the heating will just stop at that point and we won't be looking at 6 degrees of warming by 2150. And 8 by 2200.
CO2 stays in the atmosphere for at least 500 years. There's no getting off this train.
The one dependable thing has always been that all models end up underestimating results. "Worse/faster than expected" was never funny, but now it's so cliche that I don't even see it mentioned much anymore.
There goes my avacado toast stocks
We are going to be 40% poorer regardless.