What if the world can’t cut its carbon emissions?

[GliderGuider]

Here's a sobering summary of the world political situation with regard to CO2 emissions.

What if the world can’t cut its carbon emissions?

According to the IPCC:

To have a better than two-thirds chance of limiting warming to less than 2°C from pre-industrial levels the total cumulative carbon dioxide emission from all human sources since the start of the industrial era would need to be limited to about 1,000 gigatonnes of carbon. About half of this amount had already been emitted by 2011.

First, the developed nations:



Next, the developing nations:



The bottom line is that the developed countries won’t commit to emissions cuts of the magnitude necessary to stay below the 2C threshold unless the developing countries shoulder at least some of the burden, but the developing countries aren’t going to sacrifice economic development on the altar of climate change, threshold or no threshold. The most they are likely to agree to is token measures that get good publicity but which don’t cut emissions, as China has already done. As a result the developed countries will again be left to go it alone, which as shown in Figure 6 is an exercise in futility:

It looks to me as though, barring a sudden and utterly improbable reversal in the world's value system regarding the relative importance of GDP versus a livable planet,

We're Fucked.

Smoke 'em while you got 'em.

[unblock]

1. hah! "if"!

[Kelvin Mace]

2. It can, but it won't

And since climate scientists are scared silly of politicians they have been soft-pedaling the numbers, taking the best case scenarios in most published, despite the fact that the empirical data indicates things are getting much worse, much faster. They call it "being conservative" in their predictions so as not to be labeled "alarmists".

The other problem is that even if GHGs vanished tomorrow, the damage being done by the CO2 in the air will continue causing problems for decades if not centuries (and that would be if we had ZERO emissions starting tomorrow).

Our climate is like a freight train, it takes a hell of a lot of energy to get moving, and once moving does not stop on a dime.

[GliderGuider]

4. Climate change is driven by the energy of 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs per second

And the sun isn't going to run out of them any time soon.

Here's a link to the most sobering climate meme yet invented: 4 Hiroshima Atomic Bombs Per Second

[hatrack]

3. The only possibility I see is something beyond our control - as in Spanish Flu 2.0

And while a global pandemic with mortality rates of 10-15% would certainly impose carbon output cuts (in the most direct manner imaginable), would post-epidemic societies be able to take advantage of the "pause" so imposed?

Doubtful - there would likely be way too many other pieces in need of picking up to concentrate on long-term issues like this. See also 14th-Century Europe if you'd like to gauge the social, economic and political impacts of a deadly pandemic, and how well things went for decades after the 1340s.

[GliderGuider]

5. Yes, it would take a major global disruption

All-out thermonuclear war, a pandemic as you mention, or a near-complete collapse of the global economy are likely candidates.

Short of that, we'll get climate change, which will bring with it the risk of ... all-out thermonuclear war, pandemics, or a near-complete collapse of the global economy.

Welcome to Fram-world. You can pay me now, or pay me later...

[Systematic Chaos]

8. Yup....

You sure are one big-ass tub of sunshine

Me? I just have a big ass!!

[GliderGuider]

11. Hi! Good to see you back again!

[Systematic Chaos]

13. Always a pleasure, GG!

I continue to fight the hard slog in rehab, but I'm nearly wound-free now -- after being almost down to the bone after my limb salvage surgery just 6 months ago I might add! -- and once I get to that point in another month, tops...then the really good things are going to start to happen! Nothing like learning to walk again at the age of 45/46!

I'll post about everything on here somewhere, when the time comes!

[hatrack]

9. Fram-World? Cool!

Oh, wait . . .

[daleanime]

6. kick, kick, kick.....

Bookmarked

[Systematic Chaos]

7. And another kick -- for the only story that matters, really.

[ellenrr]

10. Perhaps some answers here: "Front Row Seat to the Eco-Apocalypse"

http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/

Another year has turned over on Earth, home to an exothermic, bipedal omnivore known as capitalist carbon man whose expanding numbers and army of fossil-fueled machinery spans the globe. There’s nothing subtle or restrained about his reign of terror.

He pokes and prods the climate change beast while taking for granted the stability of the Holocene, a peculiar aberration in the paleoclimate record. Plotted on a graph, the history of Earth’s climate resembles the jagged teeth of a demonic monster, a volatile creature whose abrupt and catastrophic shifts have wiped landscapes clean of most life.

The consequences of burning the equivalent of an olympic sized swimming pool of oil (300,000 liters) per second, year after year, into the atmosphere will ultimately prove lethal to the planet’s habitability. Recently, scientists were surprised to discover a “Delaware-sized methane cloud” hovering over the U.S. southwest, the remnant of “years of intentionally released and errantly leaked natural gas during fossil fuel drilling operations.”

No less problematic to the Earth’s homeostasis are the many other destructive habits of capitalist carbon man such as moving ten times more dirt than all natural processes, fixing more nitrogen than all terrestrial bacteria, and producing more sulfate than all ocean phytoplankton.

[GliderGuider]

12. That's what happens when we're not right with Tao.

It is what it is.