Climate change/oblivion: breaking point or slow death spiral?

Slowly, then suddenly

I had a french visitor the other day, he lives in Bordeaux but is moving to Brittany, He said it was happening a lot as people from the south of france were starting to feel it was too hot to live there now.

I'm no expert, although I work in oil & gas - I'm an environmental chemist, trying to mitigate/minimise what emissions I can - and I think it's definitely more likely to be a breaking point than a "boiling the frog" situation. The thought of it occupies a lot of my spare thinking time and I'm pretty terrified about what the future holds for my kids. We're basically living it up now while we can because I don't think life is going to be much fun in 20-25 years time. And I don't mean jetting off to all 4 corners of the earth to do 4x4 road trips, more choosing to buy the kids new mountain bikes instead of putting money away in case the roof blows off. L

I will find one of these people and buy their French chateau on the cheap, install aircon, then plant some trees to shade the pool and vines if needed.

Sure the French will pull off fusion at peak panic and my aircon will run at net zero.

I do wonder how the population of Africa or The Middle East survived all these years.

Personally I blame the ebikers.

They probably import a lot of food from places that aren't deserts but are about to be

And your two tonne SUV will soon be replaced by a three tonne EV SUV using loads more electrons than we really need to get to work. Me, I'll stick to my mainly traffic free route into the city.

I do wonder how the population of Africa or The Middle East survived all these years.

Appreciate that you're joking slightly, but population density of northern Africa away from the coasts is just 3.16% of the world population or 2.5 million people. Where I usually live in Spain, Andalucia has 8 million and is a fraction of the size of the Saharan region. By 2100, I read that soutern Spain will basically be the Sahara, so you do think where are all those people going to live, but also, where are the current 260 million residents of North Africa as a whole going to go if they are suddenly living in a desert. Regarding the middle-east, which formally supported only tiny populations of semi-nomadic tribes, the reality today is totally distorted by endless petrodollars. Not sure city states such as Dubai would last long without imported food.

It genuinely makes me feel sick. I feel like the same message has been repeated over and over and over my entire life and there has been, essentially, no meaningful change.

It will be IMO a boiling the frog type scenario but thats still horrific.  Billions will die - water and food shortages

If I was them I would get in early on Siberian real estate and plant some vines. Too many English driving SUV’s in Spain and England.

I'm in the slowly then suddenly camp. It seems that we as a species perceive an urgent need for everyone else to do what they can to ameliorate climate change.

I can't see how "boiling the frog" works though TJ. Pretty much the entirety of the natural world is based on biological process that operate within fairly specific chemical parameters, e.g. certainly chemicals being soluble at this pH or certain proteins becoming denatured at that temperature, etc. Everything works fine until you reach the edge of the parameter, there's no gradual decrease in activity it's just a case of yes @ 38°C, no @ 40°C (for example).

You cross one of those points and entire ecosystems die. I honestly think we'll get to a point in the near future where fish stocks just aren't there. We'll be having battered cod & chips by the Ingoldmells seafront one year, it'll be double the price the following year due to shortage, then it just won't be a thing after that.

We are there. Tipping point is now. Brace. Brace.

Honestly!

Another one in the slowly boiling until it suddenly erupts camp. It'll take just one thing to tip everything over but the warning signs will be plentiful (a lot are now) and then nature will just go "**** it, you've had warnings and I can't wait any longer!" then we'll be screwed. There's no supership like in Wall:E to take us away while the planet recovers, no major scientific cure that will let us continue somehow. It'll be gradually getting worse then we will find out life unsustainable.

It genuinely makes me feel sick. I feel like the same message has been repeated over and over and over my entire life and there has been, essentially, no meaningful change.

I feel the same. I may be a petrolhead (prefer gearhead as I don't care what provides the energy) but I always try to use the most appropriate transport for my journey. I really hate that my current commute is too far to cycle (cycled every day in my old job, in all weathers) and decided when I was young that I didn't want kids (due to various reasons but the environmental impact and future was a big consideration). I'm not perfect by by means but I do try and limit my impact where I have the option to.

People forget that the world existed long before we arrived and will long after we have gone. The human species in a geological scale is little more than a blip.

I cycle to work and am passed by an endless procession of luxury 2-ton SUVs

You started well. Two things:

1) A VW Up! is about a ton. A supposedly tree-hugging electric Tesla is two and a half, you don't need a "luxury SUV" to have a heavy motor.

2) Where this all falls down is in expecting people to make sacrifices. It's NIMBY syndrome, everyone wants to do the right thing until it affects them directly. Wind farms, brilliant idea, so long as I can't see the bloody eyesores myself. Etc etc. That's precisely the thing with 'boiling a frog,' there won't be a tipping point, we'll just boil.

It will be IMO a boiling the frog type scenario but thats still horrific. Billions will die – water and food shortages

And people won't starve and dehydrate quietly and conveniently. They'll be on the move en masse towards bearable areas of the planet.

And people won’t starve and dehydrate quietly and conveniently. They’ll be on the move en masse towards bearable areas of the planet.

Stop the boats!

CBA

Slow or quick death makes no difference coz the end result will the same.   Not bother at all.

Sobering tweet below, I think we’ve really ****ed this thing up by acting 50 years too late

https://twitter.com/edgarrmcgregor/status/1678877083093848064?s=46&t=qvPR6lBfBXtAWZ-6beFWyA

It's not really the climate change or warming you have to worry about, it's what humans do in the face of crop failure and flooding. Like, just look at India, with only a moderate rise in sea levels they'll be suffering crop failure and extensive loss of fresh water, the flooding of some of their critical cities and infrastructure... Oh and Bangladesh getting it even worse right next door.

We could adapt to even disruptive climate change, though at a terrible cost. But we can't necessarily adapt to the inevitable humans losing their shit. Especially as it'll inevitably be so unequal,

I think we're at breaking point already and the spiral had started.

I'm glad that the GF and I decided not to have kids..... If we did the impending feeling of doom would worry me sick.

I feel sorry for the next generation. They're the ones who are going to have to deal with the NMFP* attitude of their parents and grand parents generations. It's incredible to think how quickly humans have f***es things up. Micro plastics everywhere.

Welcome to the Anthropocene.

The world will keep spinning, but humans have made this planet uninhabitable for themselves.

*not my f*in problem

It has been pointed out for years that the biggest issue will be mass migration for millions and those can't/don't have the means will have to live or die with it.  Where are those millions going to go, places like the UK seem pretty good don't they as our weather is moderate and will just get a bit less moderate (bit windier, bit wetter, bit hotter, bit colder etc,.) and nothing to cause UK people to migrate.

And some people think immigration is a problem now.

Mass migration will be billions not millions and even places like the UK are in trouble - we import much of our food.  Where are we going to be importing it from and what are we going to be paying for it with?

places like the UK seem pretty good don’t they as our weather is moderate

As long the Gulf Stream doesn’t weaken.

The climate part will be relatively slow to reach a mass disaster.

The wars from mass food/water migration will be more sudden.

As a species and planet we will evolve and adapt, temperate zones will move north, inhospitable tundra in the north will be replaced by desert in the south.

The planet has been through worse and much more sudden changes. The impact will be on the people, there will be billions who find their homes uninhabitable but to some extent it's always been the case, famines and droughts in Africa, floods in Bangladesh etc. I think us in the UK are very sheltered from the worst of the weather, hence the lethargy, but it is getting more extreme and we see more of it reported now along with the narrative of global warming rather than it being a one off act of nature.

Looking at it a comparing to paleo climates:

The CO2 levels recorded at Hawaii, 420ppm correspond to the Eocène climate. However we're cooler. We're hotter than the post-glacial climatic optimum and about the same as in the Riss-Wurm interglacial. We're cooler than the Eocène because the ice and oceans are buffering. As the ice goes things are accelerating and even with current CO2 we  can expect things to be much hotter. As the CO2 goes even higher we'll heat toward Cretaceous conditions or even Permian. Then we're properly ****ed.

Methane, an even stronger greenhouse gas is leaking all over the planet, it's not talked about as much as CO2 but it's getting worse faster because of leak. At production sites it used to be flared to CO2 but that was banned so many wells just release it. When drilling methane is released, in operation it leaks (and is deliberately vented) from pipelines, combustion in appliances is incomplete. The idea gas is clean is false, given the level of leaks you may as well burn coal in term of greenhouse gasses.

So we're going crescendo, more methane, more CO2, less ice, warmer oceans. And less sinks: Forest fires, deforestation, replacement of Calcium skeleton algae with silica skeletons in the oceans. The perfect storm.

There was another gas central heating thread on STW yesterday, a van thread the day before, a petrolhead thread before that, STW editorials are about flying to the US etc and so are holiday threads.

I reckon there are about 10 of us on this forum who've done the minimum, in my case:

No more flying - 20hrs and 4 busses rather than fly on my most recent holiday, only 12hrs on the return.

Energy positive house - no gas, insulation, PV and solar thermal

Electric car if needs must a car

Low meat diet

I'm a geologist and know where we're going, and have done since about 1987.

+1 on water and food being the very pressing issue very shortly. Food crop failure is a big worry.

I feel very much like we've been gaslit (no pun intended) over climate change, constantly told about individual responsibility and how we can make "personal choices" that affect our contributions to the problems, while at the same time the presented choices are often made expensive and inconvenient.

I don't feel like all of those personal choices have been matched or really facilitated by governments and/or business.

This whole thing is going to shake out over the next hundred years or so with wars over resources and mass migration. Those of us dwelling in the global north are already seeing our governments 'pulling up the ladders' (see Rishi's migration bill). I think it's fair to say the people who led the drive to this situation are already planning on how they and their buddies survive the ensuing calamities...

The fundamental problem we face is still capitalism in all of this, the prevailing narrative still seems to be that humanity can invent and consume it's way out of problems created by invention and consumption. There's still not enough talk about "doing more with less"...

We're doomed. People are flocking to Death Valley in their cars to get selfies with the record temperature in the background. WTAF !

The Earth will recover but we won't be part of the recovery.

By the way for every comment about older generations not caring... how about the younger people with Amazon Prime next day delivery, Deliveroo crap processed food a click away, streaming content day and night, throw away fashion from Primark etc etc

It's not as simple as young Vs old but people want to blame others and not address their own behaviour

And your two tonne SUV will soon be replaced by a three tonne EV SUV using loads more electrons than we really need to get to work. Me, I’ll stick to my mainly traffic free route into the city.

Or a 2 tonne brick van to carry a pedal bike to hill where they then get in to a knackered land rover (spewing out loads of emissions as its in 1st/2nd gear all the time to drive them to the top of the hill) Then they drive home again in their 2 tonne brick van with a bike in the back.

Doesnt make sense does it.

how about the younger people with Amazon Prime next day delivery

Thats nice that at 50 you thing I am young 🙂  Our nearest shops are 20 miles away, most decent ones 30 miles + we get stuff from Amazon regularly. My justification that it is better a van full of stuff being delivered in my area, rather than me driving my 2 tonne SUV 30miles with just me and a tiny parcel inside it?

Back on topic, I think unfortunately things will have to get much worse before humans start really making an effort on climate change. Then it will be a question of have we done it too late to reverse the trend. I do agree though that at some point humans will become extinct which will then allow the planet to start recovering.

One of the best things we can do now to stop climate change is to stop having babies.

Mrs FD said to me the other day do we need to get an aircon unit as its getting hotter 🙁  She genuinely thought it was a better investment to buy an aircon unit rather than insulate the house

There’s still not enough talk about “doing more with less”…

Nah, we need to be doing less with less. As a species we have to reduce our impact. Some of that will be done on our behalf by nature, but we have to change how society organises itself, and that right there is why it won't.

My daughter has just done a module on climate change as part of her international politics degree - a significant portion of the module was about looking after your mental health as the out look wasn't great 🙁

population growth for Africa is going to be a major issue in the coming years,

1950: 2.5bn world pop >>>  7.9bn in 2021

(Europe 50% growth over those years) versus Africa 228m >> 1.34bn

https://www.statista.com/statistics/997040/world-population-by-continent-1950-2020/

I see everyone’s given up. You all know this thing is fixable right? But it will require political will and nothing less than a war-like collective effort, and yes quite a bit of sacrifice. And yet here are we are, moaning about how we’re all f**** to excuse our foreign holidays and luxuries, and being outraged at the likes of Just Stop Oil disrupting our lives.

We all need to look at ourselves and direct the doom and gloom to the politicians to force them to do the things that are required to fix this.

@Couger,

Sorry to bring SUVs into it, but to my mind they're the perfect reminder of inane conspicious consumption and sheer ludicrousy against the loudening background hum of societial and environmental collapse. In any case, I don't think a a 1-ton Up can ever justify a 2.3 ton Range Rover. Agree with you that, for the most part, Telsa's are ****ing stupid too.

@Edukator

Thanks for the summary. I always wished I'd studied Geology. Realistically, if you had to put a timeline on it, when will things really start to bite for Western Europe? I guess in another twenty years, we'll see forced migration at unprecedented levels, more and more extreme weather, displacement, failing crops, and already 'household' crops like Olives start to become luxuries, so this will eventually bite into staples like wheat, rice, etc.

Will any of this be offset by:

1) technology: carbon capture, new farming methods, etc.

2) adapation: e.g., previously inarable areas of the world being able to be inhabited/farmed?

You all know this thing is fixable right?

OK, I'm listening.

But it will require political will and nothing more than a war-like collective effort, and yes quite a bit of sacrifice

Ah. Never gonna happen.

Bring on oblivion while all the billionaires move into their underground bunkers in New Zealand.

There does seem to be a collective head in the sand attitude to the whole thing. I find it depressing that when Just Stop Oil protesters are run over or assaulted there's a collective cheer from society.

Let's not point the finger entirely at SUV drivers though. They're part of the problem but it's a global attitude that needs to change. IMHO the person in a Prius who's sitting in the supermarket car park with the engine running while they eat their lunch is far more culpable. The people who turn off stop/start on every journey because they're too stupid to use it.

And the people who keep voting for incompetent populist governments who fail to invest in sustainable travel and green energy schemes. FFS, we STILL have VAT on home batteries. We still have a massive media campaign orchestrated by the right-wing press to discourage electric vehicles.

I kind of look at the USA who have a spectacularly backwards attitude to the environment basking in 55C and from a purely personal point of view don't give a shit. It's not like they weren't warned.

You all know this thing is fixable right?

It isn't.

I watched threads last week. This is much scarier, as in, it's actually certain it's going to happen. If it gets to the point of civil unrest with an economic collapse, I'll just see myself off somewhere quiet.

I  haven't given up Dazh, read my post. It's not the politicians who a making the most damaging choices, it's the poeple, and any governement that tires to do anything gets protests and a kicking. Macron tried for a few months. The truck driver stopped the country when toll barriers for transport were installed, flyers from the yellow vests were anti-EV pro carbon, protests about energy prices led to subsidies.

It's not the politician who are the problem, it's the populace - it's the STW memebers who have for years rubbished those of us who have been promoting low carbon homes, transport and lifestyles. They still do, see the las heat pump thread, there's a load of anti-heat pump propaganda in there, and a general refusal to insulate to the point a heat pump is viable -with a couple of exceptions. We need those exceptions to become the majority.

Wall-E was prescient

I see everyone’s given up. You all know this thing is fixable right?

How?

Almost no models of climate change can accurately predict what a combination of technology, economics and social will, can do to change the picture.  A significant amount of climate impact modelling is based on variations of the DICE model and whilst their trends have thus far been accurate, that's because they're predicated on past events and gradual change.   I don't think we're going to see that.

I think just as we're seeing a snowball effect in climate change, you'll see a snowball effect in climate sensitivity and action in the coming years.  So whilst I don't think we'll avoid massive damage, I do think we'll avoid a total catastrophe.  I just wish we'd have reached the human snowball effect long before we reached the climate snowball effect, not the other way around.

People focusing on air travel is the wrong target.  Data centres now produce 50% more emissions and almost 300% more waste heat than aviation, but we don't see people railing against Netflix.  The global CO2 footprint of the Trainer industry (sneakers) is 50% more than aviation and almost 400% more damaging.  Aviation  also has significant positive effects in terms of food distribution which enables growth and energy stability by growing food where it's actually best to grow it rather than using huge amounts of power to MAKE it row elsewhere.

You could cut aviation emissions almost in in half if you removed business class.  You could cut them by a further 10-15% if Air Traffic Control (ATC) were centralised and continuous descent vectors were allowed.  You could cut it be a further 10% if you adopted formation flight patterns through co-ordinated ATC.  Aviation is an easy target, but not even close to the biggest problem.  It's also possibly toughest nut to crack due to weight and performance being so closely intertwined with safety and regulation.

Trust me - I'm a Dr and I do this for a living.  🙂

As long the Gulf Stream doesn’t weaken.

Might be quite useful it did, as it would effectively cool the UK off a bit. We're going to get hit my more and more heat waves from Europe over the next few decades....

love the it's the third world population thing, the average yank has 32 times the carbon footprint of the average african.... the population of Africa would need to be 11.5 billon to match the US

I reckon there are about 10 of us on this forum who’ve done the minimum, in my case:

I'd bet there are more - but you are right in that few folk are wiling to make the lifestyle changes needed and then there is the issue that even a lifestyle like yours Edukator or mine is still not sustainable

Massive lifestyle change now worldwide will only alleviate it - at least 2C is baked in.  Thats going to cause major disruption right across the population.  There is no political will let alone among the population at large to make those lifestyle changes so its going to be much worse than 2C

Until we start spending 100s of billions building atmospheric modification plants (eg as with LV-426), and start sucking millions of tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere, we're basically going to cook ourselves to death...

No government would survive making the changes necessary to make their country carbon neutral, they'd just be voted out at the next election.

Ah. Never gonna happen.

It already is happening, just not fast enough. You may feel you can't do anything but you can. Vote for the right people. Demand that your political representatives do what is required. When Just Stop Oil and others appear on the television, don't sneer and complain, support them. Tell your friends you support them, heck even join them! Then when you've got your head around the politics, start looking at what you can do. Accept that you'll be a hypocrite but make changes, and tell others what you're doing and encourage them to do the same. Individual action won't solve climate change but it will change mindsets, and that will lead to political change as it's already doing. The worst thing we can do is say 'ah f*** it, we're doomed, might as well give up and enjoy ourselves'.

Individual action won’t solve climate change but it will change mindsets, and that will lead to political change as it’s already doing.

And yet we've flown past 1.5C at breakneck speed, 2C isn't far off and still we have our foot flat on the accelerator....

Truthfully - the best outright solution right now is to put all our money into renewables and into carbon capture technology and to continue using FF whilst other technologies (H2, NH3, Fusion, etc) progress . We need MORE power.  More cheaper, green energy unlocks so many potential avenues for change.

The Physical Risk from Climate Change is pretty well known but the modelling has a huge sigma. Initial models were built assuming a stationarity of the systems in play but newer models are much more sophisticated and do take into account the climate change that has taken place to date.

The Transition Risk which includes migration, mitigation, adaptation etc is not being ignored but there is a huge amount of uncertainty around this piece. The finance sector is all over this at the moment due to it's ESG responsibilities but it's like the wild west in terms of the quality of what's being done. Some companies are taking this very seriously whilst others are just paying rogue consultants to give them the answer so they can demonstrate to the ExCo of their company that they've ticked this off.

You might be a doctor but your stats are suspect, Daffy. Five seconds with Google says the world total footware indsustry is 1.4% of CO2 and aviation is 2-3%.

Business class seats are only 12% of seats, unless your talking about business aviatin rather than just seats, really your figures need links because it takes seconds to contest them.

Just stop flying.

Truthfully – the best outright solution right now is to put all our money into renewables and into carbon capture technology and to continue using FF whilst other technologies (H2, NH3, Fusion, etc) progress

Meanwhile, all the right-wing social media sockpuppet accounts are railing against renewables and insisting we don't affect the climate.

Five seconds with Google says...

I had no idea we had an expert in the house! 🙂

Trust me – I’m a Dr and I do this for a living.

Don't you know we're sick of experts?

And carbon capture isn't the answer, Daffy, it's energy intensive and on the basis of efforts so far wholly inadequate even if massively adopted.

FFs whose side are you on ? your posts are a  greenwashing fantasy.

your posts are a  greenwashing fantasy.

And yet we wonder why nothing happens...

"I had no idea we had an expert in the house!"

Will a geologist with peer reviewed work on atmospheric polution do ?

I think a large part of the problem is that we've accidentally created a media environment where large parts of the media are absolutely terrified of upsetting their audience by challenging their beliefs, because an inherent part of their (the media) business model is maintaining audience attention at any cost.

Plus you've got various plutocrats like Rupert Murdoch, the Barclay brothers etc who a) sound like deeply damaged human beings and b) are so old that they don't give a shit about this stuff because it isn't going to effect them.

Fusion is decades/centuries away from being viable. We've only just proved experimentally that it may work, after about 80 years of effort FFS.

And yet we wonder why nothing happens…

The answer to that is simple, no one votes for governments which will make the necessary changes.

Climate Extinction, Just Stop Oil etc, they're just pissing in the wind, a complete irrelevance.

Sure, it was nice while it lasted. Almost reached peak everything, cars, bikes, TV's etc. It all has to end somehow.

Truthfully – the best outright solution right now is to put all our money into renewables and into carbon capture technology and to continue using FF whilst other technologies (H2, NH3, Fusion, etc) progress . We need MORE power. More cheaper, green energy unlocks so many potential avenues for change.

Fantasy.  The only solution is massive lifestyle change.  Technology can help but lifestyle change is what is needed

Whats your timescale for this stuff compared to the timescale to disaster?

My real worry is that, as climate change gets worse, politics will get more authoritarian and nationalist

Somewhere like the UK, people may be more fearful of climate migrants than actual warming, thus voting for the hard-border, climate-sceptical nationalists rather than politicians than may actually commit to proper mitigation

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainability/article/why-the-impacts-of-climate-change-may-make-us-less-likely-to-reduce-emissions/EEB33A2E7ED25E621872DF39122D7A52

My real worry is that, as climate change gets worse, politics will get more authoritarian and nationalist

Yep, we've not seen anything yet. Migration from Africa to Europe will turbo charge. Governments will move to the right, human rights will go out the window. And CO2 emissions will continue to rise....

Carbon capture could be an important component,  but with that we need a massive overproduction of very cheap renewable energy.

If we can make a huge amount of cheap clean energy then a lot of things become possible.

Trouble is our gov don't seem interested

Trouble is our gov don’t seem interested

None of the G20 are making any meaningful changes.

We've all got our foot on the accelerator...

It's basically a massive car crash in slow motion.

But don't worry, just stop oil caused a 5 minute delay to a Tennis match, so we're all going to be fine....

“Sure, it was nice while it lasted. Almost reached peak everything, cars, bikes, TV’s etc. It all has to end somehow.”

About a hundred years ago, didn’t the US patent office declare that everything useful that could be invented had been?

Will a geologist with peer reviewed work on atmospheric polution do ?

It was the "five seconds on Google" that made me chuckle - don't sweat it. 🙂

You might be a doctor but your stats are suspect, Daffy. Five seconds with Google says the world total footware indsustry is 1.4% of CO2 and aviation is 2-3%.

Business class seats are only 12% of seats, unless your talking about business aviatin rather than just seats, really your figures need links because it takes seconds to contest them.

Just stop flying.

As this is my sector, not yours, perhaps you should listen and read rather than skimming facts.

Business class is 12-14% of the seats but almost 1/3>1/2 of the aircraft volume.  If you removed that equipment and volume and filled it with economy seats, your emissions per passenger decrease and the number of flights you need also decreases.

That 1.4% is emissions though direct manufacturing, it doesn't include waste (which is enormous) and chemicals required to make the vast variety of different types/styles of materials for the trainers.

And carbon capture isn’t the answer, Daffy, it’s energy intensive and on the basis of efforts so far wholly inadequate even if massively adopted.

It is energy intensive, which is why I ALSO SAID, that we need massive investment in renewables as ENERGY WAS THE KEY!

CC is a viable, scaleable technology which can be applied in myriad ways.  It's also available NOW.  Coupled with vast renewable energy investment, it can be made to work effectively if not efficiently at industrial scale, worldwide in 5 years.  Nothing else can.  NOTHING.  So, do you want action, fantasy or catastrophe?

FFs whose side are you on ? your posts are a  greenwashing fantasy.

LOL.  You might have peer reviewed journals on the study of atmospheric pollution, but you're no expert on the interactions of climate change, technology, innovation, economics, social change, societal tipping points, etc, etc. It's all of them.  If you fail to take into account the system-of-systems (SoS),  your approach will ALWAYS be a fanciful one.

Do I like the solution I propose?  No.  not really, but I have modelling data (SoS) substantially more advanced than anything published which shows that when considering people, energy, economics, policy and their effects on climate change, this is one of the most promising short term avenues if pursued aggressively.

The sad thing is that the technology for anything more aggressive simply doesn't exist and won't for 10-15y.  There's also less social will to change that you might hope and what there is is substantially linked to economic capability and social mobility.

You might think of it as greenwashing, but I assure you it's not - much of this work has been at least partially funded by the Linux Foundation as part of os-climate.org.

In reality haven't we passed the tipping point ?

People in countries which were regarded as 3rd world but now have growing economies have aspirations. They don't want to cycle or use a small moped,they want a car. And it won't be electric. Income may increase giving them the opportunity to fly abroad. Do we,the perceived wealthy,tell them and their governments that they can't have our standard of living.

Over population equals over consumption.

Consumption needs resources and with it comes friction between states for those resources. The downward spiral will get worse until we get to a Mad Max scenario.

Trouble is our gov don’t seem interested
None of the G20 are making any meaningful changes.

We’ve all got our foot on the accelerator…

It’s basically a massive car crash in slow motion.

But don’t worry, just stop oil caused a 5 minute delay to a Tennis match, so we’re all going to be fine….

But governments of any side left or right wing only do stuff that they know will win them votes. So as long as the public dont see this as a priority, no government will.

What might start to force some stage is business lobbying. ie If you run a holiday company and you can no longer sell holidays to southern Europe, then those business leaders may be able to leaver some pressure on the government.

Last years World Cup was a joke, it was all about money. Lets blow air con over an open air pitch to cool the players !

Fantasy.  The only solution is massive lifestyle change.  Technology can help but lifestyle change is what is needed

And what's our success rate at getting people to alter their lifestyles?  You think technology is hard to crack - heck people couldn't even behave properly during the Pandemic, you think you can get them to change their ways for the better, FOREVER in less than 5 years?

Whats your timescale for this stuff compared to the timescale to disaster?

The technology for underground storage or chemical capture works now, we even have substantial storage sites well known thanks to almost a hundred years of oil and gas drilling.

The problems are to do with investment and energy (also investment) but both of these are issues which can be addressed by governments and borrowing, which means that social will is easier and will allow for a more gradual change in peoples attitudes and lifestyles.  It's almost a way of greasing the skids.  it allows people to get on-board without having to initially do much, they get a good feeling from that and will slowly be willing to do more.

The best thing is, it's enactable now.  It can be starting to work whilst other solutions come online and people come around (or die off).  It will, as I said, slowly snowball.  Perhaps its too slow, but I honestly cant see another way unless you enforce it and for that to work, it would have to be done on a level, global playing field.  THAT'S Fantasy.

Do we,the perceived wealthy,tell them and their governments that they can’t have our standard of living.

They are not the problem, we are. The developing world getting richer doesn't have to require higher carbon emissions. They can develop sustainably just as we haven't, but that's not going to happen unless we make the changes in our own economies first. So stop trying to shift the blame on poor people getting richer, and start focusing on how we got rich instead and change that.

And whilst we're on the subject of other countries, and before someone comes out with the good old 'what about China' excuse. Have a read of this.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/29/china-wind-solar-power-global-renewable-energy-leader

Daffy - the problem you face is these supposed technological fixes that will appear are too late and too little.  Much more radical solutions are needed.  Its pure fantasy to think that technology will do this without massive lifestyle change.

If we had taken those steps 25 years ago maybe but now?  You claim expertise - whats your timescale given collapse looks a handful of decades away?

What about developing countries?

I'm not looking for A solution - I'm looking for pathways to mitigation and maybe, eventual success.  In almost all of history, those pathways that led to the greatest successes happened when people were actively engage with the goal whilst increasing prosperity.  People are the key in the long term, but they're also the biggest source of inertia. What we need is to harness that inertia by making decisions which place that people inertia on the right track- and then their own inertia will keep it going though government cycles and changes.

If anyone wants to know more about this research than I can discuss on a public forum, please PM me.

I think a large part of the problem is that we’ve accidentally created a media environment where large parts of the media are absolutely terrified of upsetting their audience by challenging their beliefs, because an inherent part of their (the media) business model is maintaining audience attention at any cost.

Plus you’ve got various plutocrats like Rupert Murdoch, the Barclay brothers etc who a) sound like deeply damaged human beings and b) are so old that they don’t give a shit about this stuff because it isn’t going to effect them.

I was flicking through the channels one morning arrived @ talk TV Dr Bull ? and his other female Dr friend were on... So yeah there's man made climate change but why go on about it and why make it so scary and make me feel guilty.

Panic over.

What about developing countries?

Christ not you as well. Developing countries are the one place where all the tech stuff can work. They really aren't the problem.

They can develop sustainably just as we haven’t, but that’s not going to happen unless we make the changes in our own economies first.

Again this is pure fantasy.  Developing nations are going to increase their energy consumption massively in order to develop. This comes with a  CO2 penalty What is needed is massive reductions in energy usage worldwide not increased consumption

this is all the pale green myth that somehow technology can save us.  It cannot.  only massive reductions in energy usage and in population can