Support the Arctic Sea Ice Forum and Blog

Author Topic: Meeting the goals?  (Read 1435 times)

trm1958

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 488
  • Will civilization survive Climate Breakdown?
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 71
  • Likes Given: 218
Meeting the goals?
« on: October 14, 2024, 06:44:18 PM »
I know half the nations of the world, responsible for a large majority of the planets carbon emissions, have pledged, for years now, to dramatically reduce the emissions in the near future.
Are they doing this? Never mind promising with hands on Bibles, Korans and copies of Dianetics, I mean actual measurements of how much carbon has been released as of now. Are we actually on track to meet our pledges?

John Batteen

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 259
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 67
  • Likes Given: 3
Re: Meeting the goals?
« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2024, 11:57:49 PM »
Absolutely not lol

trm1958

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 488
  • Will civilization survive Climate Breakdown?
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 71
  • Likes Given: 218
Re: Meeting the goals?
« Reply #2 on: October 18, 2024, 01:15:04 AM »
Goals for 2050 adapted in 2015.
One quarter there.
Like being in a high school course where the grade is based on a hundred page term paper, and it is Halloween and you are still partying, not yet even having picked the paper’s topic.
« Last Edit: October 18, 2024, 02:56:17 PM by trm1958 »

Rodius

  • Nilas ice
  • Posts: 2459
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 704
  • Likes Given: 46
Re: Meeting the goals?
« Reply #3 on: October 18, 2024, 01:41:16 AM »
Maybe a good place to start is defining which goals you are thinking about.

If you make them measurable, that would be helpful as well.

CO2 or CO2e for example (already has a thread and that is still going up far too quickly)

Maybe a focus on actions that were promised in 2015 and compare the promises to what has happened to date compared to what was promised back then.

Sciguy

  • Nilas ice
  • Posts: 1978
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 244
  • Likes Given: 190
Re: Meeting the goals?
« Reply #4 on: October 18, 2024, 05:57:09 AM »
Climate Action Tracker is a good website that summarizes this: https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-thermometer/



Currently, no countries are meeting the goals for 1.5C.  The CAT thermometer indicates that we’re on track for 2.7C rise under current conditions.


Bruce Steele

  • Young ice
  • Posts: 2699
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 861
  • Likes Given: 51
Re: Meeting the goals?
« Reply #5 on: October 18, 2024, 05:37:33 PM »
I am amused that anyone can give credence to goal projections that include huge negative emissions “net zero” credits from forests and tree planting. The whole fiasco of “net zero” should be obvious with the entire northern hemisphere terrestrial sink failure this year. Hell we can’t even maintain existing sinks let alone somehow conjure up even more forests while the existing ones burn.
 So if we were honest and just looked at fossil fuel use and project use without the imaginary tree planting scheme how do those temperature projections look?
« Last Edit: October 18, 2024, 06:15:04 PM by Bruce Steele »

trm1958

  • Frazil ice
  • Posts: 488
  • Will civilization survive Climate Breakdown?
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 71
  • Likes Given: 218
Re: Meeting the goals?
« Reply #6 on: October 18, 2024, 06:01:32 PM »
Saw on Paul Beckwith that 2023 CO2 emissions were 37.5 Gt, a record.
So we aren’t even leveling off.

gerontocrat

  • Multi-year ice
  • Posts: 22416
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 5576
  • Likes Given: 71
Re: Meeting the goals?
« Reply #7 on: October 18, 2024, 06:30:05 PM »
Bruce, give blind optimism credit where credit is due

COP29 starts in 23 days and finishes 22 November.

We will then have at least a few clues on how out-of-date is the https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-thermometer/ although the final communique will no doubt be infested with the normal soothing platitudes.

The IEA forecasts on oil demand and LNG production capacity to 2035 are not inspiring, while the growth in electricity demand is so high that at the moment increases in solar and wind renewable energy seem to be largely stuck in catch-up mode
So on CO2 emissions the 2020's may well be mostly another lost decade.

Although the collapse of the Land CO2 sink in 2023 may be much to do with the El Nino effect, it is difficult to see anything other than long-term decline through what is euphemistically called "land use change".

And for luck add increasing severe weather events as the years roll by.

So CO2 atmospheric concentration will have two upward drivers at least for the remainder of this decade, unless the universal paradigm of unceasing GDP growth is broken. Retrieving the situation gets more difficult every day.
"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
"And that's all I'm going to say about that". Forrest Gump
"Damn, I wanted to see what happened next" (Epitaph)

El Cid

  • Young ice
  • Posts: 2623
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1003
  • Likes Given: 234
Re: Meeting the goals?
« Reply #8 on: October 18, 2024, 07:10:56 PM »

 So if we were honest and just looked at fossil fuel use and project use without the imaginary tree planting scheme how do those temperature projections look?
3 c looks pretty sure by 2100...that would be cca 6 C for mid and 9-12 C for high latitudes (more for winter less for summer),Helsinki becoming Paris, Paris becoming Madrid, Madrid becoming Cairo... Cairo? Cairo goes to shit for sure.

Bruce Steele

  • Young ice
  • Posts: 2699
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 861
  • Likes Given: 51
Re: Meeting the goals?
« Reply #9 on: October 18, 2024, 07:36:54 PM »
Tom, https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2023/executive-summary
So yes 37.4 billion tons.
Normally the terrestrial sink would absorb about 9 billion tons so the amount that went into the atmosphere was about 28 billion tons instead of the normal annual addition of 18.7Gt.

Gerontocrat, Kassy linked an article in the carbon cycle page that says the Northern hemisphere terrestrial sink has been in decline for seven years so it was declining even though we had a strong two year La Niña . I can’t get the source for that data to open so I am taking it on faith the info is correct. The Canadian fires and the Siberian fires play largely into those figures undoubtably. But if Canada torches in El Niño and Siberia torches in La Niña the terrestrial sink historical percentage of carbon uptake will decline.  And tree planting becomes an empty panacea. We are taking the carbon cycle out of a nice balance maintained last 12,000 years.
 Cop 29 probably won’t be including the terrestrial sink declines in their projections . Kassy’s  article says preliminary data so maybe not published yet. But COP is hopelessly strangled by optimism and wanting solid verified data in a fast changing world. While ever looking backward they fail to see where we are headed.

El Cid, OK ~ 1.5 now to ~3 in seventy five years. But the ocean carbon sink will by then also be struggling. I would venture to guess the terrestrial sinks will fail every year when all the northern forests are baking under a Mediterranean climate year after year. I also think the ocean sink will be damaged by heat and acidification. The years between 2100-2300 may play out very badly from nasty feedback loops of reduced natural sinks and increased natural sources .

El Cid

  • Young ice
  • Posts: 2623
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 1003
  • Likes Given: 234
Re: Meeting the goals?
« Reply #10 on: October 18, 2024, 09:39:35 PM »

El Cid, OK ~ 1.5 now to ~3 in seventy five years. But the ocean carbon sink will by then also be struggling. I would venture to guess the terrestrial sinks will fail every year when all the northern forests are baking under a Mediterranean climate year after year. I also think the ocean sink will be damaged by heat and acidification. The years between 2100-2300 may play out very badly from nasty feedback loops of reduced natural sinks and increased natural sources .

I think we have two and a half more decades of 0,3-0,4 C/decade, that takes us to 2,2-2,4 C (cca by 2050). By then most of the oil and gas consumption will be gone, emissions will fall by a lot, so growth will be 0,2 and late 0,1 C/decade.

The optimistic scenario is regen agriculture sinking lots of carbon. We know that it is totally possible. in that case we will not hit 3 C. The soil is the biggest potential sink and we will be forced to use it

kiwichick16

  • Nilas ice
  • Posts: 1177
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 136
  • Likes Given: 61
Re: Meeting the goals?
« Reply #11 on: October 19, 2024, 01:16:28 AM »

kassy

  • Moderator
  • First-year ice
  • Posts: 9012
    • View Profile
  • Liked: 2186
  • Likes Given: 2031
Re: Meeting the goals?
« Reply #12 on: October 20, 2024, 05:00:07 PM »

El Cid, OK ~ 1.5 now to ~3 in seventy five years. But the ocean carbon sink will by then also be struggling. I would venture to guess the terrestrial sinks will fail every year when all the northern forests are baking under a Mediterranean climate year after year. I also think the ocean sink will be damaged by heat and acidification. The years between 2100-2300 may play out very badly from nasty feedback loops of reduced natural sinks and increased natural sources .

I think we have two and a half more decades of 0,3-0,4 C/decade, that takes us to 2,2-2,4 C (cca by 2050). By then most of the oil and gas consumption will be gone, emissions will fall by a lot, so growth will be 0,2 and late 0,1 C/decade.

The optimistic scenario is regen agriculture sinking lots of carbon. We know that it is totally possible. in that case we will not hit 3 C. The soil is the biggest potential sink and we will be forced to use it

A fractional BOE event can easily add the value you use for a whole decade in a year. Question is when but it is likely to happen some time during those decades.

Since our natural sinks are already failing and this will get worse as temperatures increase what we can compensate with the soils is at best fighting an uphill battle. We should do lots more of it but we really need to turn down our fossil fuel use much quicker. Sadly this is unlikely to happen in a world where we are suddenly reopening old nuclear plants to power data centres.

At a very critical point in time we add yet more energy waste because just mining bit coins was not enough. We really need an energy diet.

Just 2C is enough to make many areas unsuitable for living. The numbers are abstract now but they will translate into many deaths and other complications. The unaddressed question is what value is actually ´safe´?
Þetta minnismerki er til vitnis um að við vitum hvað er að gerast og hvað þarf að gera. Aðeins þú veist hvort við gerðum eitthvað.