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Stop emissions, stop warming: A climate reality check | Why future warming isn't as "locked in" as you might think
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this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
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One part of the thing is that oil interests are far too powerful and people are far too complacent. We "could" do something but there is far more short-term economic incentive to not. We could all stop 80% of our polluting tomorrow. It would be super uncomfortable and probably boring, but we have done worldwide action in some form, as we saw in the COVID pandemic. But it's too convenient to just keep doing what we're doing.
The other part that I don't really see this author mentioning is feedback loops. When warming gets to a certain level, it can beget more warming. Icesheets that reflected solar energy back to space is now being absorbed by the oceans. Permafrost melts releasing trapped gasses. The ocean heat currents are weakening.
Now I enjoy optimistic takes. I do think it is possible to turn things around as a planet. But there is an overpowering collection of voices saying "I don't wanna" that need to be overcome. The natural disasters are still going to have to get worse before people want to do something about it. And I haven't even talked about human conflicts causing needless suffering.
The author literally wrote one of the commonly-used intro texts about climate.
They're well aware of feedbacks, and that's part of the standard understanding that scientists have.
From what I have observed, the jury is still out on whether we are overestimating or underestimating impacts of feedback loops, I'm sure this author knows about them but they shouldn't be ignored when talking about it for the sole purpose of painting a rosy but unrealistic picture towards a solution.
As my specialty is electrical and not climatology, I'm just hoping to avoid the equivalent of "thermal runaway". If the planet loses its magic smoke we have no replacement on order. Our window of opportunity to get things under control is still open and there are more technical solutions and a broader range of support for implementing emissions reductions than ever before. There are also countless barriers and obstacles.
It depends intensely on what you mean by "thermal runaway" — we can absolutely create a world which will support a much smaller population; we can't really create a world where we boil off the oceans like Venus.
We've seen a number of crashes in the O&G sector in my lifetime, typically paired with sharp downturns in the economy leading to contractions in consumption.
The COVID shock in '21 illustrates a big part of the problem is the Just In Time supply chain. We have relatively few places to store energy, so a crash in demand can create a big backup in supply. The end result is -$43/bbl oil, because nobody has a place to put the excess. That triggers huge layoffs and creditor liquidations that can rapidly reduce industrial capacity.
I can easily see a future in which US domestic production or Saudi Gulf exports suddenly tank out thanks to a war or another pandemic or a super-storm.
But the end result of a crash like that is enormous human misery for an extended period of time. Would prefer to do things the easy rather than the profitable way.