“When you’re among young people, it’s hard for them to understand how long we’ve known all the basic facts about climate change,” said Rahmstorf, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research who has worked on the topic for 35 years. “Even when I started as a PhD student in the 1980s, it was very clear that our emissions were causing global warming and all the consequences it would have.”
Yet even as Europe’s leaders acknowledge the scale and cause of the problem, they have weakened the very rules in place to stop it from getting worse. Two weeks ago, the European Commission proposed watering down the continent’s emissions trading system, a form of carbon market widely hailed as its most successful tool to cut pollution.
“What people are not getting is that we can’t turn this back – the CO2 to a large part remains in the air for thousands of years,” said Rahmstorf. “Some people think we can wait and, when it gets too bad, then we reduce emissions and things will get better again. People don’t realise that we can’t make it get better again. We can only prevent it from getting much worse.”
A study Rahmstorf co-authored in 2023 found ExxonMobil’s predictions of global heating over the following decades to have been mostly accurate, as skilful as independent academic and government models, and also very much at odds with its public statements on the matter.
I’ve read papers talking about co2 warming the planet from back in the 1890’s somewhere.
We’ve known this for multiple generations and even a century later we stubbornly refuse to stop co2 production because shareholders.
Fuck humanity, I guess
We made was not focusing on mitigation and adoption. We spent decades messing around with fake protocols and accords and targets that politicians used make it seem like they were doing something when they weren’t.
If we had spent the same time and money getting ready for climate change we would be a million times better off. In the future, and they’re not too distant future mind you, the technology will finally advance to the point where we can begin to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. But we’re not there yet and we’re not talking governments and people into giving up their jobs and lifestyle until we can offer them technology but doesn’t require that. That’s just a simple fact
We should have been talking about climate change but we should have been doing something completely different. By now we could easily have deployed forest fire technology to allow us to identify and smother fires effectively and we just don’t have it yet and we’re only now getting serious about making that happen.
In the future, and they’re not too distant future mind you, the technology will finally advance to the point where we can begin to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. But we’re not there yet and we’re not talking governments and people into giving up their jobs and lifestyle until we can offer them technology but doesn’t require that. That’s just a simple fact
We’ve had this technology for decades already. Trains / Buses for transportation, local bikes, solar and wind power for electricity. Sure, this wasn’t 100% carbon neutral and still is not, but we’ve had the opportunity to heavily reduce our fossil fuel dependence for decades without compromising on lifestyle.
We haven’t got the technology now, never mind in the past
Even if we eliminated every single car and switched to buses and trains and every single one of those buses and trains was electrically driven and there were no fossil fuels, which at this point in time is pretty much impossible, it would still only reduce fossil emissions in the transportation sector by about 40%. The rest would still be there, and that doesn’t address any of the other sources of carbon such as power generation which would be necessary to provide all of that electricity so we’d lose about half the benefit right there.
Right now we couldn’t come close, to be blunt we couldn’t even make a significant difference as near as I can tell. Which is why politicians keep making great promises to make the public happy and then fail to deliver
Which is why we should have been worrying about adoption and that’s where our focus should be today. Absolutely we should also be putting energy and resources into developing the next generations of technology that we will need to eventually eliminate fossil fuels, but that isn’t going to save us in the short term
We need massive advances in battery technology more than anything else. When it becomes as easy, efficient and cheap to store electricity as it is to store oil then this fight is over. And we need for environmental groups to get behind "not perfect’ solutions. For now the latest nuclear tech is amazingly safe and pollution free but many such groups still fight it tooth and nail, even though it could massively cut fossile fuel use.
But while we wait to get there, we need to be doing what is necessary to adapt. Changing laws about making cooling options mandatory in new buildings and homes, having detection and firebomber capacity to deal with wildfires properly, figuring out how to deal with water issues etc etc.
We can’t stop climate change right now. We can’t even substantially slow it down. The day will come but it’s not here
we can start to think about mitigation whenever we go depose the ones responsible. anything before that is a waste of time.
But the Canadian economy… But China… But the Alberta separatists… But Trump…
By the time we start going after the companies and the greedy old fucks that are responsible for this rapid decline they’ll all be dead and we’ll be left with a slow roasting hellscape.
There is already a couple of generations of dead people who were responsible for decades of this rapid decline.
It’s infuriating that we have known about the source of the problem, and have known what problems it will cause for my entire lifetime and now it becomes my children’s generation’s problem to deal with.
History is repeating itself at ever grander scales. It really is a shame that we always end up led by sociopaths (governments and businesses alike) because humans are terrible about misidentifying confidence as competence, only to discover the guy with zero shame has no idea what he’s doing and is happily marching us into the fires of hell.
*by the time - have you been outside this summer?
I mean, that’s the point of the article - it’s going to get much worse than this.
Yes smartass i HAVE been outside and i work for a textile company so imagine over a hundred machines producing heat while it’s 40+degrees outside and the AC was busted so a comfy 40+ outside and 50+ inside, an absolute fucking dream.
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I would argue this is where carbon capture should come in. But before you slam the downvote button…
What carbon capture is being hailed as a solution for is exactly the wrong use. Carbon capture is currently being seen as a way to continue polluting because - “hey, look, we’re pumping carbon into the air but where taking it out of the air elsewhere, making it net zero”. Essentially, it’s being used as an excuse to not reduce or eliminate emissions, which just pushes us down the path we’re on.
IMO, carbon capture does have a use - to try to fix what we’ve already fucked up. We’ve done a lot of damage with fossil fuels, and we’ll never really get to the “before times”. But we can use carbon capture to try and fix what little we can.
I have not seen a carbon capture that takes less energy that what we got from the burning the carbon. as long as that is the case carbon captures has no use until we are 100% not using fossil fuels.
I highly doubt we will ever be close to having a carbon capture system that uses less energy than was gained through burning the carbon, but the biggest advantage of burning carbon isn’t the efficiency. The biggest advantage for fossil/carbon-based fuels is that it is relatively easy to “transport” the energy. In the case of gas, for instance, a couple of gallons of “energy liquid” that can easily be taken just about anywhere can drive you a hundred miles. Without, you’re stuck with batteries or similar - which means systems need to change. Car usage needs to be drastically reduced. Railroads need to invest in catenaries. And we need better systems to store large amounts of power to compensate for when there is less power from renewables.
So essentially, the idea of carbon capture (if we set aside the corporate bullshittery for a moment) in order to offset burnt carbon is not a question of energy efficiency, but of keeping the advantages of burning carbon while using more energy to give it “green credentials”. Thing is, though, companies generally talk about building those facilities, but at the same time fight tooth and nail against carbon pricing. If companies actually took as much carbon out of the air as they put into it, burning fossil fuels would become prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of use cases (which should be the trend), forcing them to pivot away - the precise thing they’re trying to avoid.
ahh. see carbon capture that actually creates fuel is even more rare of a thing from what I have seen. I don’t see any problem with creating it and burning it as much as creating it with fossil fuel energy to begin with. This is why we need to be basically completely off fossil fuel for it to start making sense. At that point using solar and wind energy to sequestor the carbon may be alright but even green energy is just sorta a energy multiplier of other energy and creates waste.
I wish I had an article on-hand at the moment. We’re able to remove like 5% of annual, ongoing emissions at most with carbon capture. And, as you say, carbon capture is primarily used as a reason to delay the transition away from fossil fuels by its proponents. So the solution is not “Carbon capture, but don’t slam the downvote button just yet,” it’s "reduce and stop burning fossil fuels (first, second, third, fourth, etc.), and then and only then does carbon capture become relevant. We need to be careful about discussing carbon capture since, as we agree, “carbon capture” is primarily a fossil fuel industry speaking point. After all, (created) confusion about a so-called “carbon tax” completely beat us as an electorate and slowed our progress away from FF
I swing between the extremes of “maybe we’ll finally take action” and “we’re doomed”. At my most dejected, including today, I wonder if we’ll just see more climate change denialism because taking action means changing our lives and giving up some little bit of comfort and convenience at time when our own backyard isn’t on fire or flooding or buried under unusual amounts of snow or… well, I think we’re very good at sticking our heads in the same even as our asses ablaze. And it seems we can’t rely on the politicians to do sba.
To drastically reduce fossil fuel use, I don’t think the average person needs to do that much.
We need the uber-rich, who have the largest carbon footprints, to rein in their fossil fuel use. More than anything, we need governments and other decision-makers to say “no” to the FF lobbyists and commit to transitioning to clean energy through policy.
But the mega-rich don’t want to make their concessions. So they spend billions trying to convince average persons like you and me that the transition will be too burdensome FOR US, so we should be opposed to it. For example, the villainification of “carbon tax”.
Something I’ve been thinking about lately is how failure to pivot to renewables (and the associated propaganda I outlined above) predominantly affects ‘the West’ (ie, US, Canada, UK, Australia). In contrast, China still burns a lot of coal but they’re pivoting to renewables faster than anyone. This helps them build relations with Cuba and African countries such as through solar energy development partnerships. With the US-Israel-manufactured war with Iran showing how volatile fossil fuel prices are to interruption and manipulation - I think ‘the West’s’ relative failure to pivot to renewables will be a big means by which it cedes soft power to China already and especially going forward. The O&G industry doesn’t mind dependency on its products though, and they won’t sacrifice their profits today to position Canada for success tomorrow. Keep lobbying for that next (taxpayer-funded) pipeline! /s
Yes systemic change is the most important, but I don’t believe in abdicating my personal responsibility. I do what I can to mitigate my personal impact. For me personally, that means walking/cycling most places, following a vegan diet, just consuming less generally. I can’t change my heating or cooling because I live in a condo, but I do what I can to lower my energy costs.
There’s still more I could do (like less doomscrolling) but I believe in trying to take action on an individual level, both because a million people doing the same adds up but it also signals to governments and corporations that I take this seriously. I also feel better making the effort to live according to my values.
But the mega-rich don’t want to make their concessions. So they spend billions trying to convince average persons like you and me that the transition will be too burdensome FOR US, so we should be opposed to it. For example, the villainification of “carbon tax”.
You forgot the part where they will make us pay the sacrifice for them if we press the issue. In blood, without the least bit of shame or scruples.
It would take a global change. I fully believe some places can change, but not change in a sufficient way to make a meaningful difference.
I’m doing my part, no kids, no car, public Transit, I avoid meat, etc but even if everybody in Canada did the same as me, while it would significantly reduce our climate footprint, it wouldn’t realistically change anything.
That said, people should still do it. Better to die fighting I believe.
If you look at the last 50 years I think you know what will happen
