The last IPCC report estimates that to limit warming to 2C, humans can only emit at most 1150 GtCO2 (at 67% likelihood) [1].
There are 8.2 billion humans, so about 140tCO2/person left on average. If we assume that we get to net zero by 2050, that means the average person can emit about 5.4tCO2/person/year from today to 2050 (hitting 0tCO2/person/year in 2050). This is what emissions look like currently [2]
Top 5 countries > 10m population
Saudi Arabia 22.1t
United Arab Emirates 21.6t
Australia 14.5t
United States 14.3t
Canada 14.0t
Some others
China 8.4t
Europe 6.7t
World average 4.7t
Lower-middle-income countries of 1.6t
Low-income countries 0.3t
Guess what's going to happen and who is going to suffer, despite not doing anything.
> that means the average person can emit about 5.4tCO2/person/year from here on out. This is what emissions look like currently
Using a world average target number and then presenting a list that leads with world outliers is misleading. This is the kind of statistical sleight of hand that climate skeptics seize upon to dismiss arguments.
The world average is currently under the target number:
> World average 4.7t
I think you meant to imply that the CO2 emissions of poor countries were going to catch up to other countries, but I don’t think it’s that simple. The global rollout of solar power, battery storage, and cheap EVs is exceeding expectations, for example.
I don’t want to downplay the severity of the situation, but I don’t think this type of fatalistic doomerism is helping. In my experience with people from different walks of life, it’s this type of doomerism that turns them off of the topic entirely.
So, the world average is currently below the ration, and thus as long as we're actually headed for that net zero we're going to be in reasonably good shape?
>Guess what's going to happen and who is going to suffer, despite not doing anything.
Oh, this is actually about calling people bad because of what country they live in, never mind where the innovation is going to come from that would actually make net zero possible (assuming it actually is).
Carry on, then, I guess.
Russia is not far behind that top 5 list, at 12.5t/person/year, by the way.
The next target should not be 2.0C but rather 1.6. Understand that everything we’re adding is going to cost us going forward. 2.0 is when the cost become inconceivably high.
Are those figures per capita for consumers or producers? Is Saudi Arabia scoring high because of the oil industry?
> Guess what's going to happen and who is going to suffer, despite not doing anything.
Low income countries also don’t have good tracking or data. I’ve seen lots of practices in developing countries that are really damaging environmentally (GHGs and other things) that probably don’t get reported or tracked anywhere, because they’re so local (things like illegal refineries, manufacturing operations with no waste disposal, stubble burning, etc). But they exist. In part those damaging practices are here because of globalism (economic pressure) and changing lifestyles, so it’s not their fault. But my point is we probably just need a global reduction in luxury and quality of life ultimately.
I wonder if there should be some scaling for extreme hot/cold countries. Most of our output here in Canada must be related to heating during our 6 months of cold climate.
Looking into the numbers a couple if months ago I was surprised how little it costs to stop climate change.
On the order of 100-200 trillion USD. Which is roughly 100-200% of global yearly GDP. Or 2-5% of yearly GDP until 2050. This could well be provided by printing money at all the federal reserve banks.
This investment will likely bring in a positive return on investment because it reduces the negative climate impacts.
Without such investments the downstream costs in climate change adaptation will be very expensive
Only 1% of GDP is agriculture, yet 100% of society relies on agriculture for survival. Because we don't have food shortages right now, GDP is heavily slanted towards things that don't really matter. You can't take that sort of monopoly money and try to influence the real world, if it were that easy then governments would be changing gas prices to win elections a lot more effectively.
Not disagreeing that there should be a lot more funding of climate change reducing endeavors, I just don't think that GDP should/could be an anchor to base that on.
> investment will likely bring in a positive return on investment because it reduces the negative climate impacts
There is a demographic conflict of interest between those who will be alive in 2050 and those who will not. The long-term gains are difficult to deny. The short-term costs, however, will be massive.
If you're referring to he economist one, I've read it too, and I think it would be much cheaper.
But anyway, I don't believe half the numbers out there.
To cut emissions, we need to kill materialism, consumption economy and most importantly tell people that they should choose between what's good for them (eating a burger to make them happy) or the planet (not bringing the equivalent pollution of driving an SUV 50 miles+ by eating something much less polluting than beef).
Governments will keep chasing the kind of changes that can only make more money, not less.
Although a useful metric about the size of economy, I dont think this gives any metric of the level of liquidity, or size of investment, or austerity measure necessary to change it
It doesnt give any indication about the level of debasement of currency to accomplish it to that scale, to pay for what? to whom?
and even if you identified some answers to those questions, this is where the disagreements are, ranging from cordial disagreement to outright denial of a problem
but most of it comes down to who is paying, for what, why are we paying, will it change anything, and how do we make a return on it
There is also a good case to be made that the prices being bandied around are actually much too high [1]
TL;DR is three major factors:
1. The agencies that are doing the estimates are _very_ bad at exponential development curves (cough cough IEA estimating solar [2])
2. Unfortunately much of the developing world's economy is not growing as fast as we previously thought it would (similar thing happening with birthrates)
3. Many costs are absolute and _not_ marginal, which is just wrong IMO. We are going to need the energy either way, we should be talking about the "green premium" (as far as it exists), not how much it'll cost to generate XX TWH of energy
Trump just won an election in a very large part because -- and I quote -- "Prices are high!"
People were talking about gas prices, food prices, etc...
Any politician that would raise prices deliberately for any reason will be immediately voted out and replaced by literally anybody that doesn't do so, even someone like Trump.
The evidence for this should be fresh in your collective minds right now.
That is not how money and "work" functions. There is no way to "spend money" without spending energy and emitting CO2.
Assuming there is validity to the numbers (and no new source of energy), it means you need to reduce GDP by 2-5% yearly until 2050. But GDP and money is a "sliding" scale so it might mean something different by next year.
> I was surprised how little it costs to stop climate change.
Is that the cost for the duct tape needed to plug the airvents of data centers all over the world? The whole AI hype is driving energy consumption through the roof and when you see the companies behind the hype eye having their own nuclear power plants you know they are going to outscale cities housing millions in waste heat production.
And the question is, then, what if you spend all those trillions (which we don't have, BTW), and it doesn't "stop". Who's going to be responsible, and in what way?
Warming is one aspect of climate change, but we'll likely see cascading effects in the system.
---
For example, as global temperatures rise we are seeing that AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), and as a result the Gulf Stream, are "slowing down". [1]
This could result in EU cooling down.
The clathrate gun hypothesis suggests that large releases of methane could cause abrupt climate shifts due to methane’s strong greenhouse effect. [2]
---
Its likely developing nations and their citizens will increase CO2 usage as they move towards a more western lifestyle.
That means there will be an increasing amount of energy production and usage.
Ideally we generate more with solar and nuclear.
Decreasing energy production and consumption is not a real solution.
Since this is the most important and urgent topic humanity should be working on: why isn’t this the case? Idiocracy is here. Don’t look up.
We have to throw everything into the race. But how to do this with the current inner workings of our societies? How to overcome greed? What about the power of (social) media? Why do we have Netflix and so on? How can we make people spend their time solving climate crisis, saving our planet earth?
Saving the planet doesn't make the stock prices go up, so no one will care.
Private companies are now getting their own nuclear power stations to power AI. We can't get new nuclear power for public use, but private for profit initiatives? Absolutely.
It's classic game theory. The benefits are public and delayed, and the losses are private and immediate. This dramatically incentivizes defection.
Few people are going to give up their modern convinces so their great grandchildren will have better lives. This behavior is everywhere. Few people give up, say, their excess capital to reduce suffering in developing countries, or eating meat for the benefits of the animals that suffer to produce it.
I've gone to enough city council meetings in the last two decades advocating for exactly the things that would incentivize GHG reductions while increasing some quality of life (everything from urbanism, to walkability, to dutch-style cycle infrastructure, to expanded train systems, to general electrification). The number of people who won't even try an induction range because they view a gas range as important to their identity is astounding. Most people are against repurposing any public streets for transportation alternatives, even in the most left-wing cities, much less the absurdity of actually proposing anyone should actually give up their car.
Doesn't seem like there is any foreseeable future where climate change can be addressed. It's not just the leadership of the u.s, but the citizens themselves reject climate change as a real issue. Hopefully I'm just being pessemsitic.
I remember about 20 years ago I was pretty entrenched in circles of thought that were not quite "denialist" so much as they were "it's not gonna be as bad as they say it is-ist". I remember a prevailing line of thought was that climate "alarmists" only chose the most extreme predictions of the various models in order to sell the urgency of acting quickly to stop it. There were those that said that the most extreme predictions came from models that emphasized positive feedback loops (like arctic permafrost thawing), and ignored or de-emphasized negative feedback loops (like increasing vegetation growth rates). And above all, I remember one particular number standing out as where they thought we would plateau. It was at 1C of warming arriving around 2030.
Whoops. Maybe the scientific consensus should be listened to more often, and the fringe less often.
It feels like we're getting much more than 1.5 degrees. Here in NYC it used to snow several times a month, we've had one tiny storm the last two years. Just 20 years ago I rarely used AC in the summer, now its on nearly every day from May to September. Its not just that the temperatures are more variable, and the rainfall patterns are much more random it really feels like we're at +4 degrees already.
Call me pessimistic but I don't think anything is going to change and a lot of people are going to die due to climate-forced migration.
That being said, it's a difficult topic to discuss rationally. Part of the issue is deciding on what your baseline is. Looking at the last 200 years tells a pretty limited view. Consider around 100,000 years ago when global temperatures were similar [1].
That raises some questions about what caused that spike but, more importantly, what caused it to lower. You can say "an ice age" but what really triggers an ice age?
My point here is that doomsday predictions of Venus-like runaway inflation I think are both unrealistic and unhelpful in actually motivating people about an otherwise very real problem. We really have no idea of the mechanics in place.
But like I say, we're going to do absolutely nothing about it anyway.
It's funny seeing people groan and moan about climate change on HN when the average neolib here most likely voted Trump lmao, especially based on the comments in the winner announcement thread. You are preaching to people who wouldn't blink twice to burn an actual mountain of coal if it got them YC funding or a 1% reduction on their tax bill.
This article spends a lot of time worrying about which baseline to use as that determines how much global warming has occurred. Which is important because the 1.5 C limit was raised in the Paris accords. But wouldn't the measurement be absolute. The 1.5 increase is just because that was the baseline they used then.
Don't take me wrong, I'm not in the denial camp, quite the opposite in fact. But I cringe when I read a non sequitur like this:
> “If you plot global temperatures against the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, they both fall on a remarkably straight line, much straighter than current theory would predict,” said Dr Jarvis. “That line tells you not only how much the Earth has warmed since pre-industrial times, but also how much of that warming can be blamed on human activity.”
How can a straight line tell us anything more than a mere correlation between the two measures, without any hint about which is the cause and which is the effect?
Long-term should be defined. We can cool the planet the same amount long-term. Why is it taken as a given that any warming is irreversible when we have historical natural patterns showing global cooling (ice age)?
Our response to a global pandemic was a disaster other than getting the vaccines made. The most recent large scale collective effort to defeat an existential threat prior to that was probably WWII. We’ve gotten pretty good at waging war but I fear that’s probably where our evolution in the matter of dealing with existential threats will probably remain.
[+] [-] abdullahkhalids|1 year ago|reply
There are 8.2 billion humans, so about 140tCO2/person left on average. If we assume that we get to net zero by 2050, that means the average person can emit about 5.4tCO2/person/year from today to 2050 (hitting 0tCO2/person/year in 2050). This is what emissions look like currently [2]
Guess what's going to happen and who is going to suffer, despite not doing anything.[1] Page 82 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6...
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-metrics
[+] [-] Aurornis|1 year ago|reply
Using a world average target number and then presenting a list that leads with world outliers is misleading. This is the kind of statistical sleight of hand that climate skeptics seize upon to dismiss arguments.
The world average is currently under the target number:
> World average 4.7t
I think you meant to imply that the CO2 emissions of poor countries were going to catch up to other countries, but I don’t think it’s that simple. The global rollout of solar power, battery storage, and cheap EVs is exceeding expectations, for example.
I don’t want to downplay the severity of the situation, but I don’t think this type of fatalistic doomerism is helping. In my experience with people from different walks of life, it’s this type of doomerism that turns them off of the topic entirely.
[+] [-] zahlman|1 year ago|reply
So, the world average is currently below the ration, and thus as long as we're actually headed for that net zero we're going to be in reasonably good shape?
>Guess what's going to happen and who is going to suffer, despite not doing anything.
Oh, this is actually about calling people bad because of what country they live in, never mind where the innovation is going to come from that would actually make net zero possible (assuming it actually is).
Carry on, then, I guess.
Russia is not far behind that top 5 list, at 12.5t/person/year, by the way.
[+] [-] isodev|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kingkongjaffa|1 year ago|reply
> Saudi Arabia 18.2 t
> Australia 15.0 t
These are all pretty low population though so net CO2 from these countries is not the largest.
In terms of per capita, what drives this? These places are hot, is it the 24/7 Air conditioning running?
[+] [-] blackeyeblitzar|1 year ago|reply
> Guess what's going to happen and who is going to suffer, despite not doing anything.
Low income countries also don’t have good tracking or data. I’ve seen lots of practices in developing countries that are really damaging environmentally (GHGs and other things) that probably don’t get reported or tracked anywhere, because they’re so local (things like illegal refineries, manufacturing operations with no waste disposal, stubble burning, etc). But they exist. In part those damaging practices are here because of globalism (economic pressure) and changing lifestyles, so it’s not their fault. But my point is we probably just need a global reduction in luxury and quality of life ultimately.
[+] [-] animex|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] iLoveOncall|1 year ago|reply
Well according to your own data which shows the average comfortably below the target number, nothing will happen and nobody will suffer?
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] oezi|1 year ago|reply
On the order of 100-200 trillion USD. Which is roughly 100-200% of global yearly GDP. Or 2-5% of yearly GDP until 2050. This could well be provided by printing money at all the federal reserve banks.
This investment will likely bring in a positive return on investment because it reduces the negative climate impacts.
Without such investments the downstream costs in climate change adaptation will be very expensive
[+] [-] tinco|1 year ago|reply
Not disagreeing that there should be a lot more funding of climate change reducing endeavors, I just don't think that GDP should/could be an anchor to base that on.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|1 year ago|reply
There is a demographic conflict of interest between those who will be alive in 2050 and those who will not. The long-term gains are difficult to deny. The short-term costs, however, will be massive.
[+] [-] Panino|1 year ago|reply
If you read Drawdown, you'll see that it doesn't cost money to stop climate change, it saves money.
https://drawdown.org/the-book
[+] [-] richardwhiuk|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] epolanski|1 year ago|reply
But anyway, I don't believe half the numbers out there.
To cut emissions, we need to kill materialism, consumption economy and most importantly tell people that they should choose between what's good for them (eating a burger to make them happy) or the planet (not bringing the equivalent pollution of driving an SUV 50 miles+ by eating something much less polluting than beef).
Governments will keep chasing the kind of changes that can only make more money, not less.
[+] [-] baq|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] llsf|1 year ago|reply
Estimate is COVID in 2020 cost 3.4% of GDP (source: https://www.statista.com/topics/6139/covid-19-impact-on-the-...)
We are talking about one new COVID (2020 style), every single year for 25 years. That is significant enough to not spontaneously do it.
[+] [-] yieldcrv|1 year ago|reply
It doesnt give any indication about the level of debasement of currency to accomplish it to that scale, to pay for what? to whom?
and even if you identified some answers to those questions, this is where the disagreements are, ranging from cordial disagreement to outright denial of a problem
but most of it comes down to who is paying, for what, why are we paying, will it change anything, and how do we make a return on it
[+] [-] colincooke|1 year ago|reply
TL;DR is three major factors:
1. The agencies that are doing the estimates are _very_ bad at exponential development curves (cough cough IEA estimating solar [2])
2. Unfortunately much of the developing world's economy is not growing as fast as we previously thought it would (similar thing happening with birthrates)
3. Many costs are absolute and _not_ marginal, which is just wrong IMO. We are going to need the energy either way, we should be talking about the "green premium" (as far as it exists), not how much it'll cost to generate XX TWH of energy
[1]: https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2024/11/14/th...
[2]: https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2024/11/14/th...
[+] [-] jjtheblunt|1 year ago|reply
Do you account for unpredictable, but climate changing, events like solar flare activity and volcanic activity, which also can contribute?
[+] [-] jiggawatts|1 year ago|reply
Trump just won an election in a very large part because -- and I quote -- "Prices are high!"
People were talking about gas prices, food prices, etc...
Any politician that would raise prices deliberately for any reason will be immediately voted out and replaced by literally anybody that doesn't do so, even someone like Trump.
The evidence for this should be fresh in your collective minds right now.
[+] [-] patrickhogan1|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] yobbo|1 year ago|reply
Assuming there is validity to the numbers (and no new source of energy), it means you need to reduce GDP by 2-5% yearly until 2050. But GDP and money is a "sliding" scale so it might mean something different by next year.
[+] [-] josefx|1 year ago|reply
Is that the cost for the duct tape needed to plug the airvents of data centers all over the world? The whole AI hype is driving energy consumption through the roof and when you see the companies behind the hype eye having their own nuclear power plants you know they are going to outscale cities housing millions in waste heat production.
[+] [-] ein0p|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] shdh|1 year ago|reply
Warming is one aspect of climate change, but we'll likely see cascading effects in the system.
---
For example, as global temperatures rise we are seeing that AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), and as a result the Gulf Stream, are "slowing down". [1]
This could result in EU cooling down.
The clathrate gun hypothesis suggests that large releases of methane could cause abrupt climate shifts due to methane’s strong greenhouse effect. [2]
---
Its likely developing nations and their citizens will increase CO2 usage as they move towards a more western lifestyle.
That means there will be an increasing amount of energy production and usage.
Ideally we generate more with solar and nuclear.
Decreasing energy production and consumption is not a real solution.
---
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39810-w
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
[+] [-] astahlx|1 year ago|reply
We have to throw everything into the race. But how to do this with the current inner workings of our societies? How to overcome greed? What about the power of (social) media? Why do we have Netflix and so on? How can we make people spend their time solving climate crisis, saving our planet earth?
[+] [-] oldstrangers|1 year ago|reply
Private companies are now getting their own nuclear power stations to power AI. We can't get new nuclear power for public use, but private for profit initiatives? Absolutely.
[+] [-] scoofy|1 year ago|reply
Few people are going to give up their modern convinces so their great grandchildren will have better lives. This behavior is everywhere. Few people give up, say, their excess capital to reduce suffering in developing countries, or eating meat for the benefits of the animals that suffer to produce it.
I've gone to enough city council meetings in the last two decades advocating for exactly the things that would incentivize GHG reductions while increasing some quality of life (everything from urbanism, to walkability, to dutch-style cycle infrastructure, to expanded train systems, to general electrification). The number of people who won't even try an induction range because they view a gas range as important to their identity is astounding. Most people are against repurposing any public streets for transportation alternatives, even in the most left-wing cities, much less the absurdity of actually proposing anyone should actually give up their car.
[+] [-] root_axis|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] darksaints|1 year ago|reply
Whoops. Maybe the scientific consensus should be listened to more often, and the fringe less often.
[+] [-] rr808|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jmyeet|1 year ago|reply
That being said, it's a difficult topic to discuss rationally. Part of the issue is deciding on what your baseline is. Looking at the last 200 years tells a pretty limited view. Consider around 100,000 years ago when global temperatures were similar [1].
That raises some questions about what caused that spike but, more importantly, what caused it to lower. You can say "an ice age" but what really triggers an ice age?
My point here is that doomsday predictions of Venus-like runaway inflation I think are both unrealistic and unhelpful in actually motivating people about an otherwise very real problem. We really have no idea of the mechanics in place.
But like I say, we're going to do absolutely nothing about it anyway.
[1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/analysis-is-it-actually...
[+] [-] xyst|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] shdh|1 year ago|reply
Developing nations will continue to increase individual CO2 usage as their economies improve.
People want to live a modern western lifestyle, and that requires more energy.
Realistically the world is going to generate far more energy, not reduce energy usage/production.
Moving to solar and nuclear is the only likely solution that will result in reduced CO2 volume.
[+] [-] diath|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nojvek|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] moffkalast|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] varelse|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] OtomotO|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] henry2023|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dvfjsdhgfv|1 year ago|reply
> Humans have caused 1.5 °C of long-term global warming according to new estimates
First sentence of the article:
> humans may have already caused 1.5 °C of global warming
[+] [-] HWR_14|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pstrateman|1 year ago|reply
For every ton of CO2 that the west has reduced in the past decade China has produced three tons of CO2.[1]
We need another breakthrough on the scale of the Haber process.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?country=OWID_WRL~Hi...
[+] [-] teo_zero|1 year ago|reply
> “If you plot global temperatures against the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, they both fall on a remarkably straight line, much straighter than current theory would predict,” said Dr Jarvis. “That line tells you not only how much the Earth has warmed since pre-industrial times, but also how much of that warming can be blamed on human activity.”
How can a straight line tell us anything more than a mere correlation between the two measures, without any hint about which is the cause and which is the effect?
[+] [-] patrickhogan1|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gcheong|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] chriscappuccio|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] whiplash451|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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