this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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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: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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How a single word could hold up global talks to save the planet | The COP28 climate talks in Dubai feature a big fight over whether to phase ‘out’ or phase ‘down’ fossil fuels (wapo.st)
submitted 11 months ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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[–] uphillbothways@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

People have been talking about reducing carbon output for a while and not doing it because the economics weren't there. Now, it's starting to happen because it's profitable. Solar and wind have become cheap.

It needed to happen sooner and could have been done better. But, idiots platforming idiots isn't really going to change this one way or another. I feel like these climate talks are primarily theatre. Probably always were. But in this case, that makes me hopeful. Why would we listen to a Saudi oil exec when we didn't listen much to scientists explaining the impacts for decades? The money talks and it's beginning to tell a slightly less hopeless story.

https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/about-40-percent-of-the-worlds-power-generation-is-now-renewable

Today, I choose guarded optimism.

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 2 points 11 months ago

This just in: as a compromise, they opted for “phase sideways”

[–] kbal@fedia.io 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Proposed text: "All countries that are financially and culturally able shall in the near-term work to develop plans to phase through fossil fuel use in order to enhancify the prospects of reducing unabated emissions moving forward and thereby limit warming to 1.5°"

[–] 1stTime4MeInMCU@mander.xyz 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Or just set milestones and penalties for failure. Who gives a shit about out vs down the target is X tons yearly emissions by 2030. Meet it however you want, if you fail you owe this fine to disaster fund.

[–] sonori@beehaw.org 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The argument is whether we plan to slow down how much fossil fuels we use, or plan to get rid of them entirely.

Obviously we need to eliminate them, at the very least beyond what’s directly created by capture in order to not go beyond 5c eventually, but oil company executives don’t like hearing that by definition in order for civilization to function they need to go from the most powerful unelected people on the plant to owners of a niche specialty supply company.

Ergo, it’s not realistic to stop global warming, we should just slow it down a bit until, I retire as head of head of Dubai’s national oil company, I mean until future generations are capable of not burning oil anymore.

[–] 1stTime4MeInMCU@mander.xyz 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I understand that. My point was that even using words like phase out is still giving too much weasel wording. Just set numerical targets and if countries want to try to meet them with carbon capture that is their prerogative.

if you use numerical targets it forces the companies/countries defending fossil fuels to reckon with the infeasibility of carbon capture. They will be disincentivized to do something that only gives the appearance of being helpful while not actually helping that much if they are penalized for failing.

At the end of the day all that matters is net carbon emitted comes down and eventually goes negative. it ends the endless debate about fossil fuel discontinuation. If they can make it work good for them, while the rest of us will switch to renewable.

[–] sonori@beehaw.org 1 points 11 months ago

Of course numerical targets would be best, but if they can’t even agree that they need to get rid of fossil fuels than it’s going to be hard to set thouse targets.

[–] OrteilGenou@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Here's an idea, use 'phase down' and set a five year target.

There's no conceivable way we could phase them out that quickly, so once the approach to doing that becomes clear, change the language to 'phase out' and outline the plan.