Climate Change III - The Power of Chaos

[Rippounet]

Random stuff I'm reading that ties in to recent discussions. Apologies for the poor English, I used an automated translator to make it quick:
 

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Let’s quickly do the math for climate change mitigation. France reduced its territorial emissions by 1.7% per year between 2010 and 2019 (8.1 Mt less each year). Let us now compare these figures to the French climate objective in accordance with the European objective of reducing emissions by 55% in 2030 compared to 1990. This would require a reduction in French territorial emissions of 4.7% per year between 2022 and 2030, or 16 Mt less each year. This would amount to doubling the reduction observed between 2010 and 2019 – an already ambitious bet.

But if we want to limit warming to 1.5°C while leaving room for poor countries to develop, the effort must be even greater. Without recourse to "negative emission technologies", the necessary annual reduction must more than double: it is not a necessary 5% per year, but rather between 10% and 13% (to understand the order of magnitude, the reduction of emissions in France between 2019 and 2020 linked to lockdowns was around 9%). Not in ten or twenty years, but today and for decades to come. French carbon decoupling, even if it is one of the most significant in the world (due to low-carbon nuclear electricity), is far from sufficient.

On a global scale, it is even more worrying. The carbon budget to be respected in order not to exceed 1.5°C of global warming is estimated at 420 billion tonnes of CO2, or around eleven years at the current rate of emissions. Taking into account the fact that developing countries will be required to use a great part – and if we respect the principles of equity, the entirety – of this carbon budget, this imposes even faster reduction rates for rich countries. We are very far from the mark.

Timothée Parrique, Slow down or perish, the economics of degrowth (2022)

 

 

Edited October 8, 2023 by Rippounet

[Rippounet]

It took me a bit too long to find it, but here it is, the article that manages to sum up, in English, our current situation in only about 14 pages: Nate Hagens's "Economics for the future – Beyond the superorganism."

Now, I don't want to overplay it, but I think it is the ultimate narrative, because unlike most others, it is grounded in reality. Hard facts and science, decades of research linking multiple disciplines, explaning the current situation in all its dimensions - from the environmental to the political, with a basis in anthropology and neuroscience.
It's an amazing piece of work. It doesn't solve anything by itself, but it provides the keys that might save our civilization.

[Liffguard]

14 hours ago, Rippounet said:

It took me a bit too long to find it, but here it is, the article that manages to sum up, in English, our current situation in only about 14 pages: Nate Hagens's "Economics for the future – Beyond the superorganism."

Now, I don't want to overplay it, but I think it is the ultimate narrative, because unlike most others, it is grounded in reality. Hard facts and science, decades of research linking multiple disciplines, explaning the current situation in all its dimensions - from the environmental to the political, with a basis in anthropology and neuroscience.
It's an amazing piece of work. It doesn't solve anything by itself, but it provides the keys that might save our civilization.

A very engrossing read. In particular, I find myself dwelling on the idea of money being a social/legal claim on energy without actually being tethered to the physical availability of energy. And subsequently, debt being a claim on future energy, again without being constrained by whether or not that energy is materially available.

 

[ThinkerX]

A victory of sorts I suppose...

Supreme Court passes on red state challenge to Biden ‘social cost of carbon’ rule (msn.com)

The court denied a writ of certiorari Tuesday in the case, Missouri v. Biden, without further explanation. In the case, 11 Republican-led states, guided by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R), challenged the formula used by the administration to determine the financial costs associated with greenhouse gases, which are considered the primary cause of climate change. 

After the Trump administration significantly slashed the cost measure to around $1 per metric ton, the Biden administration increased it to around $51 — using the Obama administration’s measure adjusted for inflation.

In the lawsuit, state attorneys general claimed the rule would be associated with “a host of injuries that relate to the fact that the Interim Values will inevitably expand the federal regulatory burdens on the States and their citizens in virtually every major sector of American economic life.”

[The Anti-Targ]

Interesting use of superorganism, because really that's what earth as a whole is. I don't have the bandwidth to read the whole paper, but my perspective isn't a concept of "beyond" the superorganism, but rather collective consciousness of and healing the superorganism. I guess in this paper superorganism is really being limited to humanity and human endeavour. As analogies go I would say humanity is one organ in the earth superorganism and it's become cancerous (became cancerous in the industrial revolution). With cancer you either treat it or remove it, you don't just let it keep growing.

[Mentat]

I too think that it is a great article. What resonates most with me is that degrowth won't come (mainly) through policy and choice (as a species we are poorly equipped to make choices that hurt us in the short term while benefitting us in the long term), but through inflation (of raw materials, energy and the interest rates on debt/credit) and a decrease in productivity. How we react to this impending degrowth, will be the key to our future welfare.

[Kalbear]

Shocking no one, the rate of growth in clean energy will increase significantly and heavily, and also not be enough to stop 2 degrees of warming.

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The same acceleration is likely to make the current policies (as well as the STEPS scenario that tracks them) irrelevant before the decade ends. Those policies can be met by ramping up solar installations to roughly a half-Terawatt a year. The IEA estimates, however, that we'll have the capacity to manufacture 1.2 Terawatts of photovoltaic panels. Obviously, this means that we're likely to be installing solar at a rate far in excess of the demands of current policies.

The 1.2 Terawatt figure is striking for another reason: The IEA estimates that we'd only need to install 0.8 Terawatts of solar per year by 2030 to be on track for the net-zero-by-2050 target. So, our manufacturing capability may allow us to exceed the net-zero target by a full 50 percent, which could either accelerate the process or allow us to offset slower progress elsewhere. Even at 0.8 TW of production, that much solar would accelerate the retirement of fossil fuels, dropping coal use by 20 percent in China compared to current projections. Across the Global South, fossil fuel use would drop by a quarter.

That said, the net-zero pathway foreseen by the IEA involves a lot more than solar power. Transportation needs to be electrified or switched to biofuels. Europe will need to have 70 percent of its new heating installations transition to heat pumps by the end of the decade, and 80 percent of all new power generation facilities will need to be renewable in Latin America by 2030. Incidental emissions of methane from fossil fuel production have to be significantly curtailed. And so on. So, while an excess of solar can give us some breathing room, there will still need to be significant changes in our energy mix

 

 

[The Anti-Targ]

global warming will mean the need for more AC, in more places for more days per year which means even though heat pumps are really efficient it will still mean a larger demand for energy in hot times of year. Which is great for solar power since the hot times of year are when solar panels work best. But it still means increased energy demand that would not exist without global warming. 

Interesting to see a bit of an uptick in positivity towards nuclear as part of the transition away from fossil fuels. Too many greenies are still reflexively opposed to nuclear energy, but hopefully energy policy can be informed more by what will work to get us off fossil fuels fastest rather than ideological opposition lacking objective rationale.

[The Anti-Targ]

I think it was in Insider that I read car manufacturer's are seeing significant softening in demand for EVs. I think that's to be expected they way the EV market is right now. You've either got expensive cars with good range and decent charging times, or you have [relatively] cheap cars with slower charging and low range. Market saturation for these types of cars was bound to happen sooner rather than later. Until you can get small and mid size family cars, with holiday road trip range at mid-income family prices the rate of adoption will slow down. I have an EV for my home town use, and I have an ICE car for the holiday road trips. I could replace my ICE car with a hybrid, but I don't see the point in this half-way house, since our use of the ICE car is infrequent enough that swapping to a hybrid won't save all that much gas money or lower my carbon footprint very much. I might as well wait for an EV, but the cost/range ratio is simply not there for me to be able to afford the change. I imagine there are a few people out there like me. The previous govt had a reasonable subsidy for buying EVs, but the new govt is scrapping it. With a subsidy I calculated that the cost/range ratio would get to a level I could afford in about 3 years. Now with no subsidy it might be more like 5 years.

[DireWolfSpirit]

I also saw that reporting from the automakers saying they were over supplied with EV inventory and would need to slow production till demand increased.

I believe a billion dollar EV battery plant project was postponed and another joint venture with Honda was scrapped.

In total these actions must point to  signicantly weaker consumer appetite for the EV products and price points they are offered at.

[The Anti-Targ]

OECD Agriculture Policy and Monitoring report, executive summary copied in its entirety. Line formatting is a bit shit because copied from PDF.

Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2023 : Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change | OECD iLibrary (oecd-ilibrary.org)

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Executive Summary
Rising impacts of climate change underscore the necessity of adaptation and reform of policies that
hinder adjustments to agricultural production systems
Agricultural markets have been facing successive crises while being confronted with climate-change
challenges. Policies urgently need to be reformed, to meet the triple-challenge of providing adequate,
affordable, safe and nutritious food for a growing global population; providing livelihoods all along the food
value chain; and doing so while increasing the environmental sustainability of the sector. Harmful support
should be reduced or reoriented notably towards climate change adaptation, emission reductions,
resilience, and sustainable productivity growth.

Support to agriculture continues to grow
Total support to agriculture reached USD 851 billion per year during 2020-22 for the 54 countries covered
by this report. This is a historical high and an almost 2.5-fold increase compared to 2000-02, even if below
the 3.6-fold growth in the value of agricultural production. Support to the agricultural sector includes
transfers to producers (both individually or collectively) and to consumers. Most producer support hinders
climate change adaptation, often is market distorting, and risks harming the environment.
Support remains highly concentrated in a few large producing economies: the People’s Republic of China
(hereafter “China”), now representing 36% of this total, has emerged as the country providing the most
support, displacing large OECD economies which have historically held that role. India, the United States
and the European Union, all large agricultural producers as well, now represent 15%, 14% and 13%,
respectively. Overall, China and India, although different in the structure and implications of their
agricultural policies, together account for 87% of the support provided to agriculture in the covered
emerging economies. In turn, the United States and the European Union provide close to two-thirds of
support among OECD countries.
Across the 54 countries, USD 518 billion per year was paid from government budgets, with the remaining
USD 333 billion per year being provided through policies lifting domestic prices above reference prices.
Both have continued to increase over most of the past five years. That said, higher prices on international
markets resulted in lower price support and counter-cyclical budgetary transfers in 2022. Global agriculture
has experienced exceptional conditions with Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine hitting agricultural
markets that were still recovering from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In terms of direct beneficiaries of support, USD 630 billion per year was transferred to individual producers
during 2020-22. This positive producer support accounted for 14% of gross farm receipts across the
54 countries covered in the report, with significant variation between them. While this average represents
a decline compared to the 20% measured for 2000-02, it has changed little since the early 2010s. In 2022,
two countries, Costa Rica and Israel, took steps to reduce market price support. However, efforts to reform
support have largely stalled over the past decade. More than half the producer support was provided
through higher market prices paid by consumers, while the remaining USD 297 billion per year was
transferred from public budgets and hence paid by taxpayers. Policies in several countries suppress
domestic prices for some or most commodities, generating average annual transfers of USD 179 billion
away from producers in 2020-22, a more than seven-fold increase from the USD 24 billion two decades
earlier and on a strong rise in recent years. Differences in support across commodities, and the coexistence
of significant price support for some products with price-depressing policies for others, add to
the distortions generated by the overall price support, including within individual countries.
Finally, consumers and other first-level buyers of agricultural commodities received USD 115 billion per
year in budgetary support during 2020-22, a four-fold increase relative to the beginning of the century.
Despite this increase, however, this budgetary support did not, on average, offset the higher prices induced
by trade barriers and other price-increasing policies. Overall, consumers were implicitly taxed by close to
USD 150 billion per year, or 4% of their expenditures at farm-gate prices, down from 10% implicit taxation
20 years earlier but still adding to consumers’ cost of living.

Governments have taken significant policy actions to limit the market impacts of the war in Ukraine and to address inflationary pressures more broadly
While the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are still lingering, the war in Ukraine has further
disrupted international markets and value chains for both agricultural commodities and key inputs, notably
energy and fertilisers. Many governments have extended emergency measures or put in place new ones
to assist producers and consumers. These include helping Ukraine to continue to produce and export,
reducing import barriers for food and fertilisers, and providing support to compensate for rising input costs.
Countries also provided additional support to partly shield consumers from rising food costs.
At the same time, some countries have also implemented additional export barriers that added to pressures
on international markets, increased market uncertainty and risk increasing global food insecurity, as was
the case for those put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Others eased or suspended environmental
requirements to encourage domestic production and increase global commodity supplies, or subsidised
fertiliser and fuel, which may result in environmental degradation.

Governments are scaling up efforts to help agriculture adapt to climate change…
In addition to these acute crises, climate change is increasingly affecting agricultural production worldwide
through increased variability of temperatures and rainfall, disruptions to ecosystem services, and a
slowdown of productivity growth. Agriculture faces an increasing frequency and severity of extreme
weather events, including droughts, floods, heat waves, and storms. While some regions may benefit from
longer growing periods, production in most parts of the world urgently needs to adapt to less favourable
and more variable growing conditions.
This report identifies close to 600 measures for climate change adaptation in agriculture adopted in the
countries covered. Among the adaptation programmes, social, economic and institutional measures, such
as adaptation planning, investments in capacity-building, provision of climate services, and creation of
financial and insurance mechanisms, are most prominent. Together, they jointly account for 61% of all
adaptation measures. Other initiatives, which are more targeted to finding solutions for farmers and farming
systems, such as various ecosystem-based approaches, infrastructure and technical solutions, and
behavioural approaches, together account for the remaining 39% of the total.

…but further actions and reforms are urgently needed
Effective adaption of agriculture to climate change will require further actions. Governments should move
beyond planning and urgently advance implementation, monitoring and assessment of adaptation
measures. Policy approaches for a more resilient agriculture should balance efforts to support short-run
recovery from climate and other shocks, with medium-term incremental adjustments to changing conditions
as well as the long-run transformation needed when existing systems become untenable. Although the
context matters, it is essential to evaluate to what extent the programmes developed by countries
contribute to strengthened resilience.
The growing number and severity of extreme weather events, together with other shocks, have made what
was once considered exceptional situations increasingly common. Preparing agriculture for a future where
climate change introduces new risks and exacerbates existing vulnerabilities calls for agricultural policies
that encourage agility and incentivise adaptation in a changing environment, yet most support reinforces
existing production structures. The continued prominence of market price support in many countries,
together with other forms of support that are potentially production and market distorting or commodityspecific,
discourage changes in production systems. These types of support also distort international
markets, which remain a key mechanism to smoothen the impacts of shortfalls or bumper harvests.
Avoiding trade barriers to the extent possible therefore contributes to the resilience of agriculture and food
systems.
In parallel, countries should urgently enhance their efforts to reduce agricultural greenhouse-gas (GHG)
emissions given that 11% of global anthropogenic emissions are directly agriculture related (with an
additional 11% related to land-use change that often is linked to the expansion of farming). Several
countries have updated their economy-wide mitigation targets, and an additional five countries have joined
the Global Methane Pledge calling for reducing global methane emissions. Still, today only 19 of the
54 countries covered in this report have put in place some form of mitigation target for their agricultural
sector. Mitigation efforts in agriculture are essential to meet the 1.5-degree target stipulated in the Paris
Agreement. This requires adjustments to production structures and methods, calling for reforms to the
same support policies that are hindering adaptation, and further reinforcing the importance of
transformative approaches to respond to the impacts of climate change. This calls for a need to foster
synergies between adaptation and mitigation efforts.

Opportunities to foster climate change adaptation are being missed as the share of expenditures for general services declines
While overall support to agriculture has increased, investments in general services (GSSE), including R&D,
biosecurity services, infrastructure and other expenditures benefitting the sector overall, continue to
represent a small and declining share of transfers towards the agricultural sector. In 2020-22, these
investments amounted to USD 106 billion, or 12.5% of the total positive support, a share that had fluctuated
between 15% and 17% since 2000 but has fallen significantly after 2018. Almost half of this is spent on
investments in infrastructure, notably related to irrigation. While irrigation plays an important role to
withstand production under arid conditions, greater consideration needs to be given to unintended
consequences caused by such investments in the absence of adequate water management policies, such
as increased GHG emissions or growing pressures on water availability and water tables.
Less than a quarter of the general services investments across the 54 countries are for agricultural
knowledge and innovation systems. Research and development, as well as extension services and other
forms of knowledge transfer, are known to be highly efficient investments with high payoffs, even if the
returns may materialise only many years later. Nonetheless, public expenditures on innovation have
declined relative to the sector’s size, from 0.9% of the value of agricultural production in 2000-02 to less
than 0.6% in 2020-22, with countries missing a significant opportunity. Continued technical progress
requires public investments in innovation complemented by private ones. At the same time, such
investments should be better targeted towards avoiding environmental damage and lowering the use of
natural resources, rather than just labour-saving technologies, as seen in many countries in recent years.
Agricultural productivity needs to rapidly increase in an environmentally sustainable manner to meet stated
global food security targets while reducing agricultural emissions and preserving natural resources.
Under a changing climate, investments in biosecurity may also play an increasingly important role.
Expenditures on inspection and control systems, including those related to pests and diseases, correspond
to 0.2% of the value of agricultural production, with little relative change over the past 20 years. These
activities are particularly relevant in the context of risks related to invasive species that can harm domestic
food systems and biodiversity, which can generate significant economic and environmental costs.

Transformative action for sustainable agriculture and food systems
At the OECD Meeting of Agricultural Ministers in November 2022, ministers and high representatives of
42 OECD member countries and emerging economies as well as of the European Union jointly committed
“to support the transformation of agriculture and food systems towards more sustainability and resilience”.¹
In line with the ministers’ declaration, the following actions for governments are identified for improving
agriculture and food system’s resilience to successive shocks, including related to climate change.

• Phase out measures that hinder adjustments to production, such as price support and other policies targeting specific commodities that increase the rigidity of food systems by reducing farmers’ incentives to adjust their production programmes to changing conditions. These are the same policies, that previous editions of this report have found to be economically inefficient and potentially most environmentally harmful. To facilitate reform, short-term non-trade-distorting measures may be required. Periods of high food prices provide an additional impetus to reduce and eliminate price support policies with minimal adjustment costs to producers and consumers. Nonetheless, the persistently high levels of such support in some OECD countries and the increased levels in some emerging economies suggest that more concerted multilateral action may be required to facilitate such reforms.
• Prioritise government engagement in agriculture’s risk management on information, facilitation, and catastrophic risks. Governments should ensure that risk-related information is available to farmers and other market participants, that insurance markets function well, and that recovery-related support focuses on large-scale systemic or catastrophic risks that cannot be borne by farmers or risk markets.
• Invest in targeted interventions supporting climate-change adaptation and the sector’s transition to more sustainable and resilient agriculture and food systems. This should include significantly increasing investments in research, development and innovation to enhance on-farm resilience, such as through activities that can safeguard genetic and species diversity, encourage farmers to develop entrepreneurial skills and human capital, foster innovation on and promote the uptake of resilience-enhancing practices and technologies. Governments should also consider measures to increase agriculture’s transformative capacity, including the facilitation of structural adjustments. This could also relate to diversifying income sources for farmers, including off-farm employment. Although the context matters, governments should evaluate to what extent the programmes developed by countries contribute to strengthened resilience.
• Favour no-regret measures that support resilience in a wide range of circumstances. Given the unknown nature of future crises and stressors, governments should focus on policy opportunities that provide benefits and address underlying vulnerabilities under different conditions. Facilitating international trade in agricultural commodities and their inputs, R&D focused on improved management of natural resources and the provision of other general services such as biosecurity and key infrastructure, are important elements in this regard and should receive increased attention.

In addition, governments should foster sustainable productivity growth in agriculture and food systems to
meet its triple challenge of providing adequate, affordable, safe and nutritious food for a growing global
population; providing livelihoods all along the food value chain; and doing so while increasing the
environmental sustainability of the sector. In addition to reforming policies and reorienting support as
recommended above, governments should:

• Enhance the agricultural knowledge and innovation system and its focus on sustainable productivity growth. Public expenditures should target productivity growth that reduces the sector’s use of natural resources, its emissions of pollutants and their harmful effects. They should also target the adoption of innovations by both small and large producers through enhanced extension and farm advisory services, the designation of model farms, or other means. Public investments need to complement private ones, and public-private R&D projects can facilitate the adoption of innovative tools and practices. Reducing food losses and waste can further contribute to lowering economic and environmental pressures.
• Incentivise the supply of public goods. The agricultural sector faces an increasing demand for contributions towards improved environmental outcomes and public goods, such as biodiversity conservation, water quality, habitat restoration, or other ecosystem services. Governments should increasingly consider targeted and tailored payments to support such activities where regulations and market incentives are insufficient. This includes efforts towards reducing agricultural GHG emissions, including by carbon pricing or other market-based approaches and through complementing supply and demand side measures. Reorienting existing support that is distorting or environmentally harmful provides an opportunity for supporting public goods without requiring additional resources. Standards on the monitoring, measurement and reporting of such public goods, and digital technologies to measure and trace them, could facilitate their provision and valorisation. Countries may need to collaborate to avoid possible environmental leakages and other issues that may arise from asymmetries in policies across countries.

Note
1 OECD (2022), Declaration on Transformative Solutions for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems,
OECD/LEGAL/0483, https://legalinstruments.oecd.org/en/instruments/OECD-LEGAL-0483.

Was in two minds about putting it here or the international thread. But a lot of the report is talking about climate change, so that was the decider for where to put it.

My overall takeaway: the net effect of agricultural support payments/transfers is to adversely distort markets (as opposed beneficial market interventions), disincentivise climate change action in the agriculture sector and increase consumer prices for food. Governments are trying to do some good things and do have some good policies, but its not enough to deal with climate change, achieve sustainability or provide food security for the whole world. 

And then we have an example  from a news article of the market distortions of increased interest rates negatively impacting clean energy investment funds. Awesome!

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The worst performer over the quater was Kernel's S&P Global Clean Energy Fund, at negative 18.1%. Over the year, the worst performance was in Koura’s clean energy fund, which dropped 29.1%.

Morningstar has highlighted problems with clean energy funds in recent times.

“Clean-energy stocks have fallen out of favour, with pressures created by rising interest rates outweighing supportive government policies,” its US analysts noted.

“The iShares Global Clean Energy ETF reached its lowest level since July 2020 [last] week. The exchange-traded fund invests in renewable-energy companies and utilities in line with a benchmark compiled by S&P Dow Jones Indices, including First Solar and Plug Power. It has plunged 33% this year.

 

Edited October 30, 2023 by The Anti-Targ

[Rippounet]

I'll go out on a limb and say this sentence may be important:

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Governments should move beyond planning and urgently advance implementation, monitoring and assessment of adaptation measures.

I've been seeing this kind of line in more than one report lately. It's always possible that I used to miss them, but I feel that there is a growing acknowledgment that governments will have to take over at least some sectors of the economy.

[The Anti-Targ]

And yet there is still a firm belief by many that the solutions should be left to the free market. I fear any full realisation of the need for govt to drive solutions and the political will to do it is going to lag far behind the time when it became necessary. Obviously the OECD report says the time is now, which really means the time was a best a few years ago. And we just elected a govt that is ideologically opposed to direct govt action with more than one climate change sceptic (to put it kindly) and they are likely to remain largely consistent with that ideology.

I can possibly see global warming splintering this new govt in a couple of year because the govt straddles people who recognise the reality of global warning and who support some level of direct govt action (though not enough IMO) through to outright deniers who oppose any global warming adaptation or mitigation policies. When you have a group of people trying to run a country who fundamentally disagree on facts that have major implications for civilisation it's hard to keep everyone in line.

[ThinkerX]

Well, this is a twist, though I take the stance that additional research/evidence is required...

Cleaner air is accelerating global warming (msn.com)

 

The reduction in atmospheric pollution, often associated with burning coal, oil, and fossil fuels, has led to clearer skies and that means more sunshine. Paradoxically, this seemingly cleaner environment from burning less fossil fuels is actually exacerbating global warming, not preventing it.

The phenomenon hinges on the presence of aerosols, minute particles resulting from the pollution of the atmosphere. While burning coal and other fossil fuels release carbon dioxide (CO2), a potent greenhouse gas (GHG) that contributes to global warming, the accompanying smog contains aerosols that reflect sunlight back into space, which has a significant cooling effect on the planet. This counter-intuitive cooling effect has been disrupted as pollution levels have decreased.

[IheartIheartTesla]

This is a well known effect though. Back when 'dirty coal' was a thing. the sulfur-based particles in the atmosphere were known to contribute to a cooling effect, and when they started employing scrubbers we started noticing warming again. I should note that there are associated bad things with the additional pollutants like acid rain. 

There is a scenario where cleaner skies AND lowered emissions exist together to reduce the rate of heating, in my opinion.

[The Anti-Targ]

New flash, sunny days are warmer than cloudy days. Who would have thought? Given one of the geoengineering proposals to mitigate climate change has been the mass deployment of inert particulates in the upper atmosphere to reflect some of the Sun's rays there's nothing surprising or counter-intuitive here. The net effect of burning dirty fossil fuels is warming, not cooling, the influence of the particulates on the rate of warming means it's slower than the same amount of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere without the smog. Sooo, that means we should do what about it? What is the article advocating for exactly?

 

 

[Kalbear]

I think it's not advocating for anything; it's pointing out a side effect of some of the cleaner air and that it may be speeding up the effects of the already existing CO2. It's also been heavily criticised for its modeling and it's not clear at this point how accurate it is, though it does make a bit of intuitive sense.

If it is advocating for anything it's advocating for FASTER decarbonization of energy sources.

[Rippounet]

Latest report explaining why things are really bad right now:
 

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https://productiongap.org/2023report

Governments, in aggregate, still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C. The persistence of the global production gap puts a well-managed and equitable energy transition at risk.

Taken together, government plans and projections would lead to an increase in global coal production until 2030, and in global oil and gas production until at least 2050. This conflicts with government commitments under the Paris Agreement, and clashes with expectations that global demand for coal, oil, and gas will peak within this decade even without new policies.

 

I confess I haven't read the report yet, but it's in line with the data I've had.

The interesting thing for me here, is that this conflicts with the relative optimism coming from the latest IEA reports. And quite frankly, I've seen environmentalists be alarmed at some of the IEA reports which seem... uh... too optimistic in some way.

So in a nutshell, the IEA is kinda optimistic becaus renewables are cheap(er) while the UN is pessimistic because we're still planning to extract a shitton of oil and gas.
 

[The Anti-Targ]

Our new govt (not quite new yet, since the parties haven't reached a coalition deal) has pledged to issue new oil and gas exploration permits, at the same time as saying it is fully committed to our net zero legislation. The previous govt didn't cancel any permits, just committed to not issuing any new ones.

Can they truly believe one thing does not affect the other?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Not sure whether this belongs here, in one of hte Israel threads I avoid, or just International news.

With all the need of a global climate/enviromental movement, Greta Thunberg is atm busy wrecking her Fridays For Future.

If you were tasked with a beter way to discredit/destroy Firdays for Future, you'd be heard pressed to come up with better way then to give semi-informed speeches on Israel-Palestine. Or post on Twitter about it.

Somebody seriously needs to keep her away from microphones.