2.5C/3.0C target

[trm1958]

Since we seem to generally agree that the 1.5C/2.0C target is defunct, is this higher target still viable?

[solartim27]

Not with civilization as we know it, nor control of positive feedback tipping points.   Don't have kids (or push current kids for grandkids)

[Rodius]

Not with civilization as we know it, nor control of positive feedback tipping points.   Don't have kids (or push current kids for grandkids)

You could remove the poorest 50% of people and not a lot would change in terms of emissions.

The top 1% emit 16% of emissions.
Or to put that another way, the top 1% emit more than the bottom 66%.

Also, blaming the population sounds a lot like there is nothing you can do to fix the problem and gives you an excuse to do nothing.

So... civilization as we know it... you mean the top 1%, maybe the top 10%, are the problem.
The rest of humanity just gets to suffer the consequences.... that doesn't sound like a global civilization problem, it sounds like a minority of people being greedy problem

[Rodius]

Since we seem to generally agree that the 1.5C/2.0C target is defunct, is this higher target still viable?

If we get our shit together I think we have a chance of +2.5C... but by then, I am not sure our global civilization will look much like it does today.

[kiwichick16]

big mistake ....if we think we can park the temperature.....

https://thebulletin.org/2023/04/faster-than-forecast-climate-impacts-trigger-tipping-points-in-the-earth-system/

[kiwichick16]

imho  ....+ 2 degrees is bend over and kiss your ass goodbye territory

[Rodius]

imho  ....+ 2 degrees is bend over and kiss your ass goodbye territory

I tend to agree with that assessment.

+2 C is the end of modern society in a fairly rapid order.
It is why I lean into preparing for that rather than attempting to stop it.

The only question is the means to the end.... climate provides the conditions only.
It could be war, a pandemic that makes Covid look like a warm up, food collapse, bee deaths, ocean life collapse.... oh, the list if so long and it only takes one or two of them to do it.

[kassy]

2.0C and anything above is catastrophic. Some values below that will be for large parts of the world so we do not have that much margin.

It will be interesting to see what extremes 2024 brings. We have seen areas very close to lethal wet bulb temperatures at 1,2C so maybe we will see some cross that next spring and maybe that conveys a message that lands.

[John_the_Younger]

conveys a message that lands

We wish. 
But why would other's discontent^* affect what we do in our ivory towers^**?
_______
* - Who wouldn't be discontent with deadly temperatures just outside?
** - or fortified hideouts

[Rodius]

conveys a message that lands

We wish. 
But why would other's discontent^* affect what we do in our ivory towers^**?
_______
* - Who wouldn't be discontent with deadly temperatures just outside?
** - or fortified hideouts

That is why I think we are going to fail.... hardly anyone does anything until it DIRECTLY affects them.

And by the time that happens... well, it wont matter what we do to reduce the pending damage.

[interstitial]

This is another reason why we will fail.
Court orders wind farm torn down.



https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/court-orders-wind-farm-to-be-torn-down-after-golden-eagle-death/2-1-1572327

[kiwichick16]

NASA on + 2 degrees

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3278/nasa-study-reveals-compounding-climate-risks-at-two-degrees-of-warming/#:~:text=This%20is%20according%20to%20a,generated%20climate%20change%20will%20occur.

[The Walrus]

This is another reason why we will fail.
Court orders wind farm torn down.



https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/court-orders-wind-farm-to-be-torn-down-after-golden-eagle-death/2-1-1572327

Killing local wildlife is always a byproduct of progress.  Conservationists won this battle.

[interstitial]

This is another reason why we will fail.
Court orders wind farm torn down.



https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/court-orders-wind-farm-to-be-torn-down-after-golden-eagle-death/2-1-1572327

Killing local wildlife is always a byproduct of progress.  Conservationists won this battle.

Fossil fuel lobby won this one. Climate change kills more birds than wind farm strikes.

[The Walrus]

This is another reason why we will fail.
Court orders wind farm torn down.



https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/court-orders-wind-farm-to-be-torn-down-after-golden-eagle-death/2-1-1572327

Killing local wildlife is always a byproduct of progress.  Conservationists won this battle.

Fossil fuel lobby won this one. Climate change kills more birds than wind farm strikes.

Sounds like sour grapes.  This wind farm was poorly placed.  I am not of the belief that we must institute every climate action, regardless of the consequences.  That is how we arrived at our current predicament.  Unless calmer heads prevail, we are all doomed.

[kassy]

Yeah it was something location but that is all rather off topic.

[interstitial]

This is another reason why we will fail.
Court orders wind farm torn down.



https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/court-orders-wind-farm-to-be-torn-down-after-golden-eagle-death/2-1-1572327

Killing local wildlife is always a byproduct of progress.  Conservationists won this battle.

Fossil fuel lobby won this one. Climate change kills more birds than wind farm strikes.

Sounds like sour grapes.  This wind farm was poorly placed.  I am not of the belief that we must institute every climate action, regardless of the consequences.  That is how we arrived at our current predicament.  Unless calmer heads prevail, we are all doomed.

You say calmer heads I say stalling progress. If it takes 50 years to decarbonize the electric grid than it does not matter if you save the one bird they mention. The entire species will certainly become extinct and many others besides.


We are at about 27% renewable electricity and growing about 2.5% per year. Global data is slower to come out and current available data is around the pandemic (2020, 2021) so things are changing as well as becoming more urgent. That may look like 29 years but their are other factors. Building heat and transportation need to be electrified as well many industrial processes. Renewables will probably require overbuilding by at least 50% even with short term storage and some seasonal storage. Some estimates say it would be cheaper to overbuild 3 times than build less storage but whatever is done the last bit will be expensive and slow. Even that is optimistic because global energy consumption is still growing.


So we are on a 50+ year plan and you think we should let calmer heads prevail? No I strongly disagree we need to push much much harder even if the locations are not as ideal as we would like. Building renewable energy has some negative consequences but not nearly as much as continuing to burn fossils.

[The Walrus]

This is another reason why we will fail.
Court orders wind farm torn down.



https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/court-orders-wind-farm-to-be-torn-down-after-golden-eagle-death/2-1-1572327

Killing local wildlife is always a byproduct of progress.  Conservationists won this battle.

Fossil fuel lobby won this one. Climate change kills more birds than wind farm strikes.

Sounds like sour grapes.  This wind farm was poorly placed.  I am not of the belief that we must institute every climate action, regardless of the consequences.  That is how we arrived at our current predicament.  Unless calmer heads prevail, we are all doomed.

You say calmer heads I say stalling progress. If it takes 50 years to decarbonize the electric grid than it does not matter if you save the one bird they mention. The entire species will certainly become extinct and many others besides.


We are at about 27% renewable electricity and growing about 2.5% per year. Global data is slower to come out and current available data is around the pandemic (2020, 2021) so things are changing as well as becoming more urgent. That may look like 29 years but their are other factors. Building heat and transportation need to be electrified as well many industrial processes. Renewables will probably require overbuilding by at least 50% even with short term storage and some seasonal storage. Some estimates say it would be cheaper to overbuild 3 times than build less storage but whatever is done the last bit will be expensive and slow. Even that is optimistic because global energy consumption is still growing.


So we are on a 50+ year plan and you think we should let calmer heads prevail? No I strongly disagree we need to push much much harder even if the locations are not as ideal as we would like. Building renewable energy has some negative consequences but not nearly as much as continuing to burn fossils.

Fine.  Who cares about the extinction of a few species, when climate change is at stake?  The ends must justify the means.  Also, who cares if the poor are pushed further down and inconvenienced again?  They should be used to it by now. 

Personally, I feel that the fewer people we disenfranchise, the better chance we have of succeeding.  We should not proceed with a damned be the unfortunate in the name of saving the world.  So it takes a little longer to reach our goal.  If we can save others along the way, it will be well worth it.

[kassy]

We do not need to build wind or solar power everywhere. This is simply not necessary. So you can not allow wind farms in places where it negatively impacts wildlife and still build more then enough.

We can also reduce other parts of the equation. Improve the quality of houses so they use less energy. Use less energy overall?

[interstitial]

The poor? what does that have to do with our discussion?


Near as I could tell from what little I could read (the article was paywalled) they were talking about a single golden eagle. As far as I can tell the other birds were not the problem. I do not like bird strikes either but that does not mean we should loose all perspective about them.

[interstitial]

We do not need to build wind or solar power everywhere. This is simply not necessary. So you can not allow wind farms in places where it negatively impacts wildlife and still build more then enough.

We can also reduce other parts of the equation. Improve the quality of houses so they use less energy. Use less energy overall?

Everything has some impact there is no zero impact on wildlife.

[kassy]

But you can still minimize it.

All that still isn´t relevant to the actual topic.

[The Walrus]

The poor? what does that have to do with our discussion?


Near as I could tell from what little I could read (the article was paywalled) they were talking about a single golden eagle. As far as I can tell the other birds were not the problem. I do not like bird strikes either but that does not mean we should loose all perspective about them.

Then search further, before throwing up your hands in defeat.

It was much more than a single bird - estimates are a thousand.  But what’s the death of some pesky birds, when we can build a wind farm!  Who cares about the poor residents of a small, obscure village, when we generate a little big of electricity from the wind.  Notice how this farm was not built among the wealthy.  We are talking about one wind farm - not the wind generation industry - compared to the deaths of an endangered species, and other wildlife. 

We should absolutely not lose perspective.  Sacrificing for the common good is not to be done solely by the unfortunate.

https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/French-news/Noise-bird-deaths-Wind-farm-ordered-to-close-for-first-time-in-France

[Rodius]

The poor? what does that have to do with our discussion?


Near as I could tell from what little I could read (the article was paywalled) they were talking about a single golden eagle. As far as I can tell the other birds were not the problem. I do not like bird strikes either but that does not mean we should loose all perspective about them.

Then search further, before throwing up your hands in defeat.

It was much more than a single bird - estimates are a thousand.  But what’s the death of some pesky birds, when we can build a wind farm!  Who cares about the poor residents of a small, obscure village, when we generate a little big of electricity from the wind.  Notice how this farm was not built among the wealthy.  We are talking about one wind farm - not the wind generation industry - compared to the deaths of an endangered species, and other wildlife. 

We should absolutely not lose perspective.  Sacrificing for the common good is not to be done solely by the unfortunate.

https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/French-news/Noise-bird-deaths-Wind-farm-ordered-to-close-for-first-time-in-France

While you wait for the perfect location with almost no bird deaths... we can just build a few more coal power plants and kill 20 times more birds that way.

[Bruce Steele]

A thousand birds needs some perspective. “ In the United States alone, outdoor cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds every year. Although this number may seem unbelievable, it represents the combined impact of tens of millions of outdoor cats. Each outdoor cat plays a part.”

So we could keep the wind turbines and still save a couple billion birds if we outlawed outdoor cats.
But that isn’t how environmental extremism works. “Golden Eagle” is a dog whistle.
France has an aging nuclear infrastructure, it is importing a lot of fossil fuels, and needs more wind and solar. Just who benefits if you can’t site wind farms where the winds are the strongest?
 Supporting this shutdown as a benefit to the environment and all the other nimby siting decisions that are pawned off as environmental concerns is a big part of why onshore wind isn’t keeping pace. Too many lawyers, too little time.
 We had a local wind farm that had to settle for many fewer wind turbines and a long delayed process due to environmental concerns over birds. Texas maybe easier than Calif. in this regard. We could make better choices to both save birds and keep wind turbines but those decisions are about cats, or mono cropping GMOs and spraying the crap out of everything. But we don’t fix the big problems while we scapegoat renewable development.
Big oil donates a lot of money to keep these emotional tangents perpetuated. It serves their interests .
Wally just has a big heart for birds.

[SeanAU]

The topic is 2.5C/3.0C target , so now y'all talking about windfarms and birds. Jeez. Why did I even bother to look?

[Linus]

I live in Massachusetts. Delay after delay has stalled the promise of tapping the vast potential of our offshore wind. Now, due to the incredible accumulation of oceanic heat content as a result of our massive carbon emissions during the time that we wasted, ALL the birds are facing a threatened future. Us too of course.

[interstitial]

The poor? what does that have to do with our discussion?


Near as I could tell from what little I could read (the article was paywalled) they were talking about a single golden eagle. As far as I can tell the other birds were not the problem. I do not like bird strikes either but that does not mean we should loose all perspective about them.

Then search further, before throwing up your hands in defeat.

It was much more than a single bird - estimates are a thousand.  But what’s the death of some pesky birds, when we can build a wind farm!  Who cares about the poor residents of a small, obscure village, when we generate a little big of electricity from the wind.  Notice how this farm was not built among the wealthy.  We are talking about one wind farm - not the wind generation industry - compared to the deaths of an endangered species, and other wildlife. 

We should absolutely not lose perspective.  Sacrificing for the common good is not to be done solely by the unfortunate.

https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/French-news/Noise-bird-deaths-Wind-farm-ordered-to-close-for-first-time-in-France

From your article
"The bird in question is the golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos, 'aigle royal' in French). Last April, one of these rare birds was found dead at the base of a wind turbine, and the welfare associations estimate that the turbine’s blades have been responsible for the death of more than a thousand birds in the area."


The more than a thousand is for other birds. The golden eagle was "one of these rare birds was found dead". That is just a single rare bird and more than a thousand common ones.


I agree we should not lose perspective that was just one rare bird among thousands of common ones.

[kassy]

You need the common birds too. France has plenty of land to put stuff which is not near birds.

Anyway the target AKA the topic:

Climate-Driven Extreme Heat May Make Parts of Earth Too Hot for Humans
https://phys.org/news/2023-10-climate-driven-extreme-earth-hot-humans.html



If global temperatures increase by 1° Celsius (C) or more than current levels, each year billions of people will be exposed to heat and humidity so extreme they will be unable to naturally cool themselves, according to interdisciplinary research from the Penn State College of Health and Human Development, Purdue University College of Sciences and Purdue Institute for a Sustainable Future.

Results from a new article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicated that warming of the planet beyond 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels will be increasingly devastating for human health across the planet.

The researcher team modeled global temperature increases ranging between 1.5°C and 4°C—considered the worst-case scenario where warming would begin to accelerate—to identify areas of the planet where warming would lead to heat and humidity levels that exceed human limits.

The ambient wet-bulb temperature limit for young, healthy people is about 31°C, which is equal to 87.8°F at 100% humidity, according to work published in 2022 by Penn State researchers.

However, in addition to temperature and humidity, the specific threshold for any individual at a specific moment also depends on their exertion level and other environmental factors, including wind speed and solar radiation. In human history, temperatures and humidity that exceed human limits have been recorded only a limited number of times—and only for a few hours at a time—in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, according to the researchers.

Results of the study indicate that if global temperatures increase by 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the 2.2 billion residents of Pakistan and India's Indus River Valley, the one billion people living in eastern China and the 800 million residents of sub-Saharan Africa will annually experience many hours of heat that surpass human tolerance.

These regions would primarily experience high-humidity heat waves. Heat waves with higher humidity can be more dangerous because the air cannot absorb excess moisture, which limits sweat evaporates from human bodies and moisture from some infrastructure, like evaporative coolers. Troublingly, researchers said, these regions are also in lower-to-middle income nations, so many of the affected people may not have access to air conditioning or any effective way to mitigate the negative health effects of the heat.

If warming of the planet continues to 3°C above pre-industrial levels, the researchers concluded, heat and humidity levels that surpass human tolerance would begin to affect the Eastern Seaboard and the middle of the United States—from Florida to New York and from Houston to Chicago. South America and Australia would also experience extreme heat at that level of warming.

At current levels of heating, the researchers said, the United States will experience more heat waves, but these heat waves are not predicted to surpass human limits as often as in other regions of the world. Still, the researchers cautioned that these types of models often do not account for the worst, most unusual weather events.

"And remember, heat levels then were all below the limits of human tolerance that we identified. So, even though the United States will escape some of the worst direct effects of this warming, we will see deadly and unbearable heat more often. And—if temperatures continue to rise—we will live in a world where crops are failing and millions or billions of people are trying to migrate because their native regions are uninhabitable."

... To stop temperatures from increasing, the researchers cite decades of research indicating that humans must reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, especially the carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels. If changes are not made, middle-income and low-income countries will suffer the most, Vecellio said.

As one example, the researchers pointed to Al Hudaydah, Yemen, a port city of more than 700,000 people on the Red Sea. Results of the study indicated that if the planet warms by 4°C, this city can expect more than 300 days when temperatures exceed the limits of human tolerance every year, making it almost uninhabitable.

Vecellio, Daniel J. et al, Greatly enhanced risk to humans as a consequence of empirically determined lower moist heat stress tolerance, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023)
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2305427120

So it is no target. 2C needs to be avoided.
Since some cities were close at 1,2C we might well see such events way before 2C overall.

[interstitial]

You need the common birds too. France has plenty of land to put stuff which is not near birds.

Common birds are important but they are limited by their ecosystem so a thousand of their deaths will not change the population size.
All land is near birds. Birds fly everywhere.

Neither France nor anywhere else in the world are building much onshore wind it is a major problem. At the current rate of onshore wind construction it will take far more than 50 years to replace fossil fuels. It is one of the reasons why we are on track for around 8.5C and nowhere close to even 2.5C/3.0C.