At 11,000 feet up, scientists find Earth broke a scary record
At 11,000 feet up, scientists find Earth broke a scary record
"Rising faster than ever."
That record ? CO2 levels at their highest in millions of years and still growing faster than ever.
thank you for declickbaiting the title.
I thought it was the record for polluting everywhere that isn't Earth as much as the Earth itself. I mean we have a long way to go yet, but still.
"This May, atmospheric CO2 levels hit 427 parts per million, or ppm, an almost 3 ppm increase since last May (annually CO2 levels peak in May, due to natural global fluctuations). What's more, combining the increases since 2022 results in the largest two-year CO2 leap on record."
I feel like we are gonna have to tech ourselves outta this one, there is no chance to stop it.
Tech obeys economics, and economics says polluting but cheaper is better.
Economics actually says it's far cheaper overall to stop polluting right now than trying to mitigate it in the distant future. But that goes against the short-termism our economic indicators are built around. The line must go up, and shareholders need their maximized profit next quarter. Meanwhile pollution will only become more of a problem the further away in the future you look. And that sounds like a problem for future us.
Do more with less!
As in, you get a lesser salary, while *I* get more!
The dangers of geoengineering cannot be overstated, and we have a good chance of dying from the results of deliberately fucking with the climate as we do from our centuries of inadvertent fucking with the climate.
Not saying that we shouldn't if we have no choice, but people need to understand that this is NOT a good option we're left with and our species needs to really take notice how close we are to ending our time here due to lack of forethought or care.
The dangers of geoengineering cannot be overstated
Certainly the risk of geogineering is potentially more catastrophic than anything else humans have done, including use of nuclear weapons (short of all out Armageddon). However we’re screwing up our response to climate change badly enough that we’re already heading there. That last desperate hope is starting to appear like our only hope, even among those who think they understand the risk.
5-10 years ago, I would have agreed: just say no to geoengineering. The risks are way too high. But we keep getting worse at climate change, not better. A lot of the technology we need to reduce output impact on the climate has been developed, is affordable and practical, yet there are still so many obstacles to building it out. As a tech guy I relish the challenge of figuring out a tech solution, but we have many partial solutions yet society won’t budge and I don’t know how to fix that. It’s so frustrating and hopeless.
It’s time to consider our last desperate hope. Time to try to figure out a way. Time for serious investigation, including pilots. We may never want to take that risk, but it’s starting to look like we’ll have to
Ironically, because we are too stupid a species to put willingly pit ourselves through any austerity on a large scale. No one is will accept less than they have it seems, even though the only people who would actually need to downgrade their lives are the ultra wealthy. It doesn't make it any easier though because they hold all the power. And they use their propaganda power to tell us to change our lifestyle choices, while they flaunt their own wealth. They tell us to choose more expensive "eco-friendly" or "ethical" options most of us can't afford, and so are encouraged to feel guilty for failing to buy. And they buy them of course, but then still drive million dollar cars and own multiple multimillion dollar mansions.
We've really got to find a way to stop fucking over ourselves like this. And we've got to do it by somehow getting the richest people and organizations of the world on board. Violent revolution has rarely worked long term, and it's slipping further and further away as security technology gets more powerful. Nevermind drones and the inevitable rise of autonomous weapons systems. The "rabble" will never have access to these ordinances. So we've got to get in their heads. Trick them into doing the right thing enough to see that as the challenge to which their should commit their wealth.
There is, air was so good during the covid 2 week lockdown, India was able to see their Himalayan mountains that were previously obscured by pollution for the first time in decades. We are polluting daily and stopping for even 2 weeks shows signs of healing. gonna need a lot more than 2 weeks to go back to 1900's co2 levels tho
Something people need to understand is that there is a difference between smog and CO2.
You can get everyone off the road and the smog will clear, but as long as industry and power grids are still running, the vast bulk of CO2 is still being pumped into the air and it's totally invisible. Covid was great for a lot of things in nature, but even if we all went to Covid-lockdown-levels of activity we would still have an out-of-control death-spiral greenhouse effect happening.
CO2 is just a gas that has molecules of three atoms instead of one or two, so it stores more energy than say, an O2 molecule. As long as we're sending stuff into the air that can wiggle just a little harder and store a little more energy, we're going to continue to see temperature increases. Smog is particulates, like basically dirt, soot, chunks of material. It falls out of the air relatively fast when the fires and tires aren't moving, but most machines that power our grid and supply our products still push tons of carbon molecules into the air, and that gas goes much higher than smog where it gets lit up by the sun and stores energy that it then releases into the air and ground.
Thought experiment. Suppose tomorrow we invent a carbon dioxide engine that runs by pulling CO2 out of the air and is equally effective at pulling it out of the air as an internal combustion engine is at putting it into the air. This would be an ideal solution in that it would reverse our predicament and generate energy too. Consider how many engines we would need to run and for how long we would need to run them to get back to preindustrial levels. Factor in population decline and even this ideal (and unrealistic) solution would take centuries to restore the atmosphere to balance. I'm a humanist and I believe we can solve the problem but it's going to take a mobilization of resources that would rival those used to wage WWII. I'm not sure the powers that weild those resources have the will to get the job done.
Man, the Earth looks so small 11,000 feet up...
So even thought more is being done now than ever before in human history to curb CO2 output, the levels are rising faster now than they ever have? Kinda seems like all the “green” shit we’ve been paying more for doesn’t do anything.
What? We're burning more fossil fuels than ever and the earth feedback loops seem to be kicking off. Just because we're also expanding use of less destructive energy sources doesn't mean we're curbing output. Making things worse slightly less quickly isn't making things better.
This comment has antivaxxer energy.
It's dumb lazy ass thinking. Yeah we have been increasing green energy but CO2 output has also increased dramatically and has always been underreported. Stopping green energy is completely backwards. We need a hell of a lot more of it.
Solid argument! Good job.
Problem is, we're ADDING shit. While building solar panels, we're also still building coal plants, bigger cars, consuming ever more from the other side of the planet.
We need to de globalize our economies. And even politically, it would not be a bad thing with the ever more power of China.
Problem is, it's gonna cut either in billionairs benefits...
So won't be done before it's too late.
If we weren’t doing any of the “green shit” that we’ve been working in for decades we’d probably be a decade further down the catastrophe hole than we are.
This chart on Wikipedia sums it up neatly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption#/media/File:Global_Energy_Consumption.svg
You can see that from 2000 to 2021, renewable energy usage grew faster than any other type. However, coal, oil, and gas usage still grew, by a lot (with a couple recent dips that don't appear to constitute a trend yet). Overall energy usage is increasing and that is unlikely to change. For now we're merely slowing the growth of fossil fuel usage. Slowing down is not the same as reversing course.
So yeah, it's true that "more is being done now than ever before", but we're operating from a baseline of nearly zero from 40 years ago. It's easy to grow in proportional terms when you're tiny to begin with.
Out of all the comments here, this is the only one to bring data and a legitimate argument, so I commend you.
You’re right, we are still growing overall energy usage and the balance is not being picked up solely by alternative energy. But that’s not really my point.
We keep hearing about this climate change topic in ways that put the responsibility on the general consumer, but clearly that is not solving the issue. Maybe the issue is that the type of alternatives we are picking aren’t actually working. Maybe the issue isn’t how people get to work but how they’re entirely reliant one getting the things they need to survive being supplied through unsustainable means.
I’ve had people shame me for driving a gas powered car but the reality is my Corolla puts out next to nothing compared to the shear volume it takes to get me a solar powered phone charger off of Amazon. Think about food and clothes and shelter. How much pollution does it take to fill a wardrobe. People need to think about things other than basic transportation. Bicycles aren’t going to make the planet greener.
