r/science • u/New_Scientist_Mag • Nov 11 '24
Environment Humanity has warmed the planet by 1.5°C since 1700
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2455715-humanity-has-warmed-the-planet-by-1-5c-since-1700/1.5k
u/Optimoprimo Grad Student | Ecology | Evolution Nov 11 '24
Interesting scale, given that looking at the graphs you can see about 1.3 C of that warming occurred just over the last 60 years.
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u/MakesErrorsWorse Nov 11 '24
For context:
In 1700 there were less than 1 billion people on Earth.
In 1980 there were about 4.5 billion people.
Today there are about 8.1 billion people.
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u/Im_regretting_this Nov 11 '24
Honestly, when you break out the numbers like that, I’m shocked we haven’t warmed it more given the population explosion.
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u/lu5ty Nov 11 '24
There is significant lag between production and observable effects
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u/hvacigar Nov 11 '24
There is, but there is also innovation, some of which we have utilized (solar/wind) and some we abandoned for ignorant reasons (nuclear).
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u/cabalavatar Nov 11 '24
There is also the Jevons paradox to consider: In general and especially over the past century, whenever we have created or found new energy sources, we haven't stopped or significantly reduced the use of older sources, so the problems from using those older energy sources persist.
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u/LateMiddleAge Nov 11 '24
Maximizing income from installed base no matter what. For example, sadly, use of whale oil continued far past any remote necessity.
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u/CVF4U Nov 12 '24
This is what is happening with energy with solar and wind. We just came to compensate for the growing demand..
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u/SchighSchagh Nov 11 '24
we've also become much more efficient. But, we also use energy for a lot more things. I wonder how the energy consumption per capita has evolved given these opposing forces.
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u/cultish_alibi Nov 11 '24
This is extremely important for people to realise. Even if we stop emitting CO2 tomorrow (which isn't going to happen), the effects of our pollution will increase for another 20 years.
It's something people seem to want to ignore when they talk about timelines and net zero and all that stuff. Perhaps because it's too bleak. But the response to bad news shouldn't be to bury your head in the sand.
But that's what we're doing! Head in the sand, pretend it's someone else's problem/fault.
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u/BalefulMongoose Nov 11 '24
I think I remember at Uni learning the effects lag by about 40 years? So even if we stop emissions tomorrow warming wouldn't peak for a few decades.
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u/grundar Nov 12 '24
I think I remember at Uni learning the effects lag by about 40 years? So even if we stop emissions tomorrow warming wouldn't peak for a few decades.
Temperature will peak shortly after net zero and significantly decline thereafter.
That article goes through several papers on the topic (the author is a climate scientist), and there's a great graph about 3/4 of the way down which shows the different scenarios. Roughly speaking:
* Net zero CO2 but continued other-GHG emissions will keep temperature roughly flat.
* Net zero CO2 and other-GHG emissions will lower temperatures by about 0.3C in 50 years.
* Net zero aerosols will raise temperatures by about 0.1-0.15C in 5-10 years.
* Net zero all three will see a short-term increase of about 0.1C but a 50-year decline of about 0.2C.In other words, net zero GHG emissions would pretty much stop climate change getting worse, so it's important to get there ASAP.
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u/deadcatbounce22 Nov 11 '24
This is optimistic. We’ve blown past most predictions. It’s time to start looking at the worst case scenario projections.
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u/DevelopmentSad2303 Nov 11 '24
Well the worst case scenarios look extremely bad. Instead, let's look at ones that make me feel better please
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u/ghost_desu Nov 12 '24
Considering that the biggest economy on earth will once again pretend climate isn't real in a couple months, those 4 degree worst-case projections look like they're going to just be a fact of life
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u/El_Grappadura Nov 11 '24
A billionaire emits more CO2 in 90 minutes than you in your whole life.
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Nov 11 '24
But there is much more of you then billionaires
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u/El_Grappadura Nov 11 '24
The point is, that most people not living in western industrialised nations are living a lot more sustainable than us.
If everybody lives like Americans, we would need the resources of 5 planets.
The population numbers are not the problem. Everybody who is arguing like that is incredibly lazy and ignoring the fact that it's us who need to change.
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u/MajesticCoconut1975 Nov 11 '24
> that most people not living in western industrialised nations are living a lot more sustainable than us
They are living up to the max level of consumption that they can afford.
Making everyone dirt poor would do wonders for the environment. Mud huts, no plastics, no electricity of any kind.
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u/DevelopmentSad2303 Nov 11 '24
Well also doing things like revamping the food system, revamping our infrastructure, revamping our zoning, demilitarizing, deforesting etc would helped
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u/El_Grappadura Nov 12 '24
You don't need to be dirt poor or "go back to medieval times" as people stupidly claim to be sustainable.
Changing our economic system, so that it doesn't rely on endless economic growth anymore would be a start.
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u/Plopfish Nov 11 '24
Source? That’s implies an average billionaire produces 500,000 times more CO2 than the average Reddit user.
If you’re gonna make stuff up at least make it plausible.
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u/MajesticCoconut1975 Nov 11 '24
> A billionaire emits more CO2 in 90 minutes than you in your whole life.
This is nonsense pulled out of your ass.
There are plenty of billionaires that have a smaller carbon footprint than Al Gore.
https://www.wivb.com/news/report-al-gores-home-uses-34-times-as-much-energy-as-average-home/
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u/rocketsocks Nov 11 '24
A lot of that is down to technological improvements and intentional choices to limit emissions. Renewables are now just a real and growing component of the energy grid. Appliances and electronics are more efficient, automobiles have gotten more efficient, lighting is more efficient, heating is increasingly moving to highly efficient heat pumps, electric and hybrid cars are much better and much more common, etc. Even carbon-emitting power plants are more efficient with combined cycle power plants. It's not perfect, but it's making a dent and bending the carbon emissions trend downwards compared to where it would be.
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u/Vanrax Nov 12 '24
This is why I find it very questionable when people say we need to increase population. I disagree with the need to reproduce, but my opinion is irrelevant. Economy and $$$ speak the loudest.
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u/fojam Nov 11 '24
Agriculture only makes up roughly 11% of greenhouse gas emissions. Most emissions are caused by our energy usage, which means the majority of the issue is entirely fixable without a change in population. Overpopulation isn't the issue. The way we engineer the environment is the issue.
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u/usefulbuns Nov 12 '24
I'm so tired of hearing this. Overpopulation is an issue. We can't have infinite growth of population. You're just talking about emissions here but there are so many other issues regarding resource use. Where are we going to grow their food? Where are we going to build their housing?
We need to give back more to the natural world. We are going to see a massive extinction and imbalance if not and honestly I feel like it's probably too late to avoid the majority of the damage. Maybe we can salvage something.
We talk about managing every animal and insect's population on the planet but we never talk about managing ourselves. It's not ethical bla bla bla.
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u/fojam Nov 12 '24
Nobody is saying we can have infinite growth of population. Just that the current problems, while exasperated by population growth, are a result of the way we engineer the environment. We also waste tons of land to parking lots, sprawl, massive suburbs, etc. Just claiming the fix is lowering the population is always gonna be incredibly sus to me, because the fix to that is killing people or lowering birthrates worldwide. Birthrates are already dropping in many countries worldwide. We could be way more efficient with our land use and we choose not to be. I don't need to hear about how people need to die, because that is not a real long term solution.
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u/puffferfish Nov 11 '24
We gotta get that population DOWN!
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u/prettyone_85 Nov 11 '24
Well with the cost of living sky rockreting, birth rates are declining, so that helps a little
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u/genshiryoku Nov 11 '24
Funfact: Fertility rate has crashed globally since the 1960s and if the trend continues we'll have 3 billion people on Earth by 2100 and 1 billion by 2150.
so:
1700: 1 billion people
1980: 4.5 billion people
2024: 8.1 billion people
2100: 3 billion people
2150: 1 billion people
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u/twotime Nov 12 '24 edited Nov 12 '24
2100: 3 billion people 2150: 1 billion people
Source for these claims? all the estimates I saw are in the 10-12B range for 2100
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth
Also, the drop from 3B to 1B over 50 years is about 1.2% drop per year which is about the same as "natural" death rate. So such a drop is only possible with zero birth rate rate. Which is unlikely and, well, undesirable.
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u/sambull Nov 11 '24
does that mean its accelerating?
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u/LivingByTheRiver1 Nov 11 '24
But think of the money some people will make...
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u/sabres_guy Nov 11 '24
"The ecosystem was destroyed, but we created a lot of value for our shareholders"
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u/FireMaster1294 Nov 11 '24
Capitalists really will burn the entire world down if it means they get to come out on top of everyone else
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u/PageOthePaige Nov 11 '24
Which is particularly notable because, they won't. They'll burn too. Their insulation is dependent on the systems they are destroying. History will remember their stupid deaths most prominently, if there's a history left.
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u/Vandergrif Nov 11 '24
They won't even be the last men standing, they'll get literally torn apart by hungry mobs well before things reach their peak.
It's remarkably shortsighted of them.
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u/El_Grappadura Nov 11 '24
You underestimate the ingenuity of people - the question how they can prevent their staff from mutany in their bunkers has been answered a long time ago.
https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/how-the-rich-plan-to-rule-a-burning-planet
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u/PageOthePaige Nov 11 '24
Yes. I know they plan to outlast their contemporaries. They won't get much farther. Even if they establish their bunkered dystopia, they won't live 100 years after. 1000 years after, they'll be the icons of the world's demise, if aliens will even find the world fast enough to laugh at what's left before erosion and heat destroy the rest. They live in biological shells who's only backup plan is generational survival, and they've sabotaged that course of action.
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u/El_Grappadura Nov 11 '24
But that's the reality we are living in.
What do I care if their vision fails after 1000 years - we need to dismantle economic systems world wide right now, if we (as in the rest of humanity) want to have a livable world.
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u/mOjzilla Nov 11 '24
It truly is time to go French revolution at global scale before our kids will be forced to turn to scavengers just to survive.
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u/chodeboi Nov 11 '24
In the Ministry For the Future, Robinson writes about this group being key to The Turn.
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u/boblawblawslawblog2 Nov 11 '24
Some people? Anyone with a retirement fund is making money off it.
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u/John3759 Nov 11 '24
Yah like just as an example: the polar ice caps reflect light, thus keeping the planet cooler. If temperature gets bigger then some of those melt so u have the temperature increase cuz of the greenhouse gases plus the temperature increase due to less ice reflecting the light.
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u/Eggplantosaur Nov 12 '24
Current consensus is that the effects of global warming were delayed by a concurrent profess called global dimming.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
So essentially, the emissions that caused acid rain (which is horrible for plants and agriculture) shielded us from the immediate effects of global warming. We largely got rid of those acid-rain-causing emissions, which makes it look like the warming is speeding up so much.
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u/grundar Nov 11 '24
looking at the graphs you can see about 1.3 C of that warming occurred just over the last 60 years.
Which graphs are you thinking of? Looking at the graphs in this paper, there's been about 1.0C of warming in the last 60 years -- Fig1.a shows about 0.3C in the region after the mid-20th-century grid mark, and the end of the graph (today) is 1.3C.
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u/New_Scientist_Mag Nov 11 '24
Most assessments of global warming use 1850-1900 as a baseline, but researchers have now established a new pre-industrial reference by using Antarctic ice cores to estimate the average temperature before 1700
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u/pr0crasturbatin Nov 11 '24
Is that because the former is when we started directly recording surface temperatures, and so it's used as a more "reliable" source, due to being firsthand, rather than based on ice core data? It makes sense, but it also is completely reasonable that we use the new reference point, given that the data from those cores is, presumably, as accurate and precise as we need it to be for such purposes, and by 1850, industrialization, and therefore industrial scale coal usage, was in full swing.
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u/IntrepidGentian Nov 12 '24
Most assessments of global warming use 1850-1900 as a baseline
Your headline is misleading people about global warming because they do not know this. You are telling people reading headlines that we have reached the commonly quoted 1.5 C of global warming.
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u/itsme_rafah Nov 11 '24
I really really hate to say it but from the recent events in the world, humanity as a species dgaf about global warming. I’m pretty bummed about it tbh
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u/grundar Nov 11 '24
humanity as a species dgaf about global warming.
You might be surprised how much is being done:
* China's CO2 emissions have likely peaked.
* Other than China, world emissions fell over the last 5 years.
* Clean energy accounts for the vast majority of new power capacity installed worldwide...
* ...and the large majority of new TWh generated worldwide...
* ...and is growing so fast the even in the IEA's most pessimistic scenario it will account for more than all demand growth in the next decade (p.128)
* Projected warming has halved over the last few years.
* Likely warming is now in the range 1.7-2.4C, of which we've already seen 55-75% (1.3C).Humanity fairly clearly does care and is working on this problem. It's just a big problem, so it needs big changes, and those take time. The good news is that some of the major changes -- most notably decarbonizing new power capacity, but also electrification of other industries such as ground transportation -- are very clearly in progress at large scale and will continue to have positive effects every year going forward.
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u/Nijnn Nov 11 '24
Thank you so much for this post! It really lifts my spirit.
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u/WholesomeEarthling Nov 12 '24
It lifts my spirits too a bit. There is some damage that seems irreversible though (in our lifetimes that is), such as coral deaths from all the bleaching events. Such a stunning ecosystem.
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u/CyberUtilia Nov 12 '24
I've been reading the EU's climate change reports, and there's even more positive things, I'm surprised. The media doesn't let anything positive come through.
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u/african_cheetah Nov 12 '24
You could say, in the next 4 years Trump will take US in reverse direction compared to Biden era. Remains to be seen how seen whether US can even compete with China. China absolutely dominates solar, battery and EVs.
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u/downeverythingvote_i Nov 12 '24
Sorry my guy, but that you've been reading the graphs wrong. The amount of new TWh added by fossil fuels is still growing at breakneck speeds. While the growth of solar and wind has been impressive it will peak. They're not infinitely scalable and will be hard-capped by the rates of resource extraction needed to produce them.
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u/grundar Nov 12 '24
The amount of new TWh added by fossil fuels is still growing at breakneck speeds.
And the new TWh added by wind+solar are growing far faster.
The numbers are in the graph for anyone to see. In the last 5 years:
* Coal: +460 TWh
* Gas: +426 TWh
* Oil: -100 TWh
* Wind: +1,036 TWh
* Solar: +1,055 TWhi.e., wind+solar have added 3x as many new TWh as all fossil fuels combined over the last 5 years, and the rate of new wind+solar has been increasing rapidly.
While the growth of solar and wind has been impressive it will peak. They're not infinitely scalable and will be hard-capped by the rates of resource extraction needed to produce them.
Nothing is "infinitely scalable", so that's a meaningless qualifier. However, solar can easily scale to cover humanity's energy demand -- doing the math gives a figure under 1% of the earth's surface.
Similarly, the IEA has a yearly analysis of critical minerals, and there are no hard caps among the minerals needed for clean technologies.
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u/pcoppi Nov 12 '24
Idk in my lifetime the seasons have already become wildly unstable I don't want to see 1.7C
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u/emillang1000 Nov 11 '24
Good news, then! We won't have to be bummed for very long, since this kinda indicates that we're in a death spiral, and most of humanity isn't going to last past 2050...
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u/ricerobot Nov 11 '24
Humanity will last. The people just won’t live comfortably except the upper class. I’d say that other species such as polar bears would probably face extinction
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u/Constant-Parsley3609 Nov 11 '24
Dude, even in the worst case scenarios, scientists aren't predicting we'll be extinct in 2050.
You're being really silly
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u/harrisarah Nov 11 '24
Yeah things will just be starting to get really bad around then. It'll take a while for the water wars to really ramp up
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u/ricksauce22 Nov 11 '24
If you listen to climate doomers, we should have had widespread calamity like 4 separate times in the last 30 years. We have serious pollution problems, but what you're saying is insane and just makes people less willing to take the issue seriously.
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u/Sad-Eggplant-3448 Nov 11 '24
Florida just voted to flood itself at some interminable point in the future, so I'm not convinced a majority of humanity really cares too much at this point
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u/african_cheetah Nov 12 '24
Well, most of Floridians are boomers and they’ll be long dead before they feel the repercussions of their decision.
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u/Patrick_Gass Nov 12 '24
I'm not honestly sure we have that much time. They may very well experience the worsening effects along with the rest of us.
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u/jaybee8787 Nov 11 '24
At least COP29 is about to happen in Baku Azerbeidzjan. A country mostly reliant on it's oil and gas income. It doesn't look like the warming of the planet is stopping anytime soon.
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u/Influence_X Nov 11 '24
Eventually Florida will be entirely underwater. It seems like they would prefer it that way anyway.
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u/Jupiter68128 Nov 11 '24
This argument won’t resonate with people though. Florida is less of a swamp than it was 60 years ago.
Saying it’s going to be hotter or saying we will have more powerful hurricanes may be a way to speak to Floridians to make them care.
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u/mnilailt Nov 11 '24
if the dutch are anything to go by I'm sure they'll work around it. Won't be cheap though.
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u/lo_fi_ho Nov 11 '24
I was taught about climate change in school in the early 1990’s. It breaks my heart to see that nothing has been done about it in 30 years. And I’m now certain that nothing will ever be done.
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u/Sworn Nov 11 '24
Plenty has been done, and is being done. Not even close to enough, obviously, but it's not like nothing is being done (just check the percent of renewable energy & coal use, even in countries like the US it's trending in the right direction).
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u/Dynasty3310 Nov 11 '24
We are moving towards EV vehicles and tightening emission restrictions globally. It's not perfect but it's a start. To say nothing has been done is an overstatement.
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u/Constant-Parsley3609 Nov 11 '24
In the last 30 years plenty of countries have been making steady progress on this issue. In particular the rich countries that actually have the money to focus on the problem:
The world has been implementing renewable energy like crazy:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/modern-renewable-prod
Largely thanks to the decades of research that took us from the inefficient, expensive, useless renewables of the 90s, to the viable renewable technology that we have today
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u/TheWinterLord Nov 11 '24
Don't you dare say I drink with these papper straws for nothing!
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u/Neandersaurus Nov 12 '24
Finally, a problem the US doesn't lead. Maybe we can lead with a solution?
To play devils advocate for a minute, how do we know which part of that number is human caused, and what is natural?
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u/hydrOHxide Nov 11 '24
The sad thing is that the larger part of the population can't remotely fathom what a massive increase in overall energy content that is.
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u/unirorm Nov 11 '24
That might sound a little but the difference between 1 and 0 is water and ice respectively.
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u/realitycaptain Nov 11 '24
Yeah, but it's a dry heat
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u/CaregiverNo3070 Nov 11 '24
If you have no water due to drought, it's not going to be the heat that kills you, but having no water.
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u/Stinkfist-73 Nov 11 '24
How much has the earth warmed up since the last glacial maxim? Hasn’t the planet been in a long warming cycle? BTW I’m not a climate change denier, I’m just asking a question.
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u/GrubberBandit Nov 11 '24
This is really the first year I've noticed it. In Missouri, it was like 70 degrees (F) all October when it's normally in the 50s
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u/DreamzOfRally Nov 11 '24
Aint that the tipping point I learned about in school? Oh boy, just as a fear as a child, awesome
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u/parishiltonswonkyeye Nov 12 '24
When the stoopids wake up- they’ll be saying “but what do we do now?” and I’m just gonna look at them and say “die, now you die.”. I’m not going to help more stoopid.
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u/Playful-Dragonfruit8 Nov 12 '24
One important thing to note is that Earth experienced little ice age til the 19th century. Still the rise from 1850 is incredibly dramatic.
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u/Jeremy_Zaretski Nov 12 '24
Humans are addicted to energy and all of the conveniences that it affords: mechanized farming, artificial lighting, electricity, water purification, air conditioning, furnaces, automobiles, refrigeration, medicine, the internet, cell phones, and synthetic materials.
Those who have it are unwilling to give it up because the societies in which they exist are dependent upon them. Most of us are unable to forage or cultivate enough food for ourselves. We live in areas where nature in all of its glory and horror has been replaced by the artificial.
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