Are we making meaningful progress on climate change

Great Debates
1

The world produced 37.41 billion tons of CO2 in 2024.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/

World GDP was 166 trillion in 2023.

However, in 2012 the world produced 34.38 billion tons of CO2 a year and had a global GDP of about 120 trillion.

So in the last 12 years the world has gained about 46 trillion in annual GDP and produced an extra 3 billion tons of CO2 a year.

By comparison, the world was at about 80 trillion GDP in 2000 and world CO2 production was 25 billion tons.

So global GDP going from 80 to 120 billion tons resulted in CO2 emissions growing by 10 billion tons a year, but global GDP growing from 120 to 166 trillion only resulted in CO2 emissions growing by 3 billion tons a year. So on the surface, it looks like economic growth and CO2 growth are decoupling. Then again, if most of that growth occurred in nations that are already developed, that may be a misleading statistic.

Renewables have dropped dramatically in price, and the vast majority of new energy installation is renewables. Storage is still an issue though, I’m not sure when that’ll be fixed.

But CO2 production is also going down in places like the US & UK. Production in the US peaked at 6 billion tons in 2007 and is down to about 5 billion tons now. Part of this is renewables, part of it is switching from coal fired plants to natural gas plants, which produce 1/2 the CO2 per unit of energy.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2022.05.13/main.svg

My understanding is that the worlds PPM of CO2 is growing by about 2-3 PPM per year.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1091926/atmospheric-concentration-of-co2-historic/

Its at 424 PPM in 2024. However I think half the world’s CO2 is absorbed by the ocean, acidifying it. So the real figure should be 4-6 PPM a year, but the ocean absorbs a lot.

However, even at that rate of growth that means by around 2060 the world would be at about 530 PPM in 2060. A lot of nations in the west as well as China want to be carbon neutral by 2060. So does that mean that world CO2 levels may peak at around ~500 PPM before starting to go down this century?

Some concerns is that advances in AI will require massive energy investments which could drive up CO2 production. Also a lot of Africa hasn’t industrialized yet. And many parts of Asia and latin america are caught in the middle income trap.

But I’m wondering if we are reaching a point where we can have GDP growth with far less CO2 growth, and due to advances in energy efficiency, renewables, etc that CO2 growth will stay stable at 2-3 PPM per year until it peaks and starts to go down mid century.

2

The answer to your question is no, and even if we were foreseeing some actual progress in a net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (which is not just carbon dioxide but also methane and a number of industrial waste gasses) it will not be sufficient to make a meaningful dent in our current path toward a >3.7 °C increase in global mean temperature over the pre-industrial baseline before end of century, and more likely by 2070, notwithstanding positive feedbacks from climate tipping points such as devastation of tropical and temperate rainforests, degradation of carbon-rich wetlands and grassland soils, melting of methane-containing permafrost, release of methane clathrates due to the warming ocean, and the ocean acidification you mention reducing net atmospheric carbon absorption by the oceans, as well as the excess heat content that would be rejected by the overheated oceans even if we could finagle a way to cool the atmosphere.

All of the people proud of themselves for buying electric cars, installing solar panels, buying into the scam of ‘carbon credits’, and going on endlessly about how nuclear power is going to “save the planet” by reducing global heating are basically nibbling on the edges of the shit-filled pie that we have baked into the foreseeable future.

Stranger

3

James Hansen, the well known climate authority, says the situation is even much worse than most have been saying:

Here is his full open source article which just came out a few days ago:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494?needAccess=true

4

I’ll just note that recent history has borne out Hanson’s predictions since his work in the 1980s and testimony before his testimony before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in 1988. If you want to bet on a ‘sure thing’, Hanson has a track record of being largely correct (aside from some niggling about the temperature baseline he used). I’ve spent about the last fifteen years understanding climate modeling and measures so that I could have a deeper understanding of the ‘uncertainties’ in climate models and projections, and while they certainly exist the bias is almost always to the less worse of possible conditions in the aggregate while Hanson has always been regarded as more of an ‘alarmist’ (although by no means the most radical of doomsayers), and this was before we started seeing anomalous heating and feedbacks from loss of ice cover and warming of permafrost.

I’ve taken a greater interest in cryosphere research (the action of ice sheets and sea icepack on the overall climate) and I’ve seen a rising tide (pun intended) of barely restrained horror only somewhat muted by the fatalism of just how radically the Greenland and various Antarctic ice sheets and seasonal Arctic icepack has changed in even just the last decade, and how little could be done to ameliorate it even if we could stop all excess heating today by magic. Even if we could make meaningful change in carbon dioxide emissions (which we won’t and largely can’t without massive reduction in the standard of life in developed nations and population reduction globally) we will be experience indefinite alterations in the Earth’s climate due to cryosphere impacts on a human timescale.

Stranger

5

So what I’m hearing is that nothing matters and we should shut down those futile environmental programs and laws, live it up, and burn those fossil fuels while we can, possibly banning pregnancy while we’re at it. Woo hoo!

Tooting my own horn a bit to note that this is a key factor in the question I asked in this thread. There’s differences in opinion there, but I think good points were made.

6

ISTM @Stranger_On_A_Train nailed it. As usual.

And the snip just above is key. The first world public will not accept a voluntary loss of standard of living on that scale. Period. Meanwhile first world capital investors will not accept the losses on existing investments, nor the volume of new investment in unproven things, necessary to prevail over AGW.

Everything we have done or might do is mere cheerleading for rain while Rome burns. Better than fiddling in terms of attitude, but equivalently zero in practical effect.

7

The question of whether they are bad people or somehow otherwise morally deficient for not doing so is one that I’ve mused over a lot, but that may be out of scope for this thread. (Though I do note that in my thread linked above, there seems to be a lot of disagreement on how much sacrifice is needed, which is a key factor in all this, although someone there makes the good point that fundamental change even without sacrifice is still pretty difficult to enact on a societal/global scale. Is tyranny the only way?)

8

Hanson himself is a proponent of geoengineering to avoid the worst effects of climate change. There are various tactics to do that and like the article above mentioned, the reduction in sulfur compounds in diesel fuel in shipping has unmasked some of the worst effects of climate change.

The world needs to do much more to address climate change. I think the world spends maybe 600 billion on investments in new renewable projects a year at this point, but that is like 0.4% of global GDP. During WW2 nations were spending 40% of GDP a year on military spending.

Having said that, it does seem like we may be decoupling GDP growth from CO2 production. We are getting more units of GDP growth per unit of CO2 created. China cut its carbon intensity almost in half from 2005 to today. So they produce half as much CO2 per unit of economic growth. But who knows.

We aren’t turning the tide on global warming. We are still adding 35-40 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere every year. But it seems like the amount of new CO2 we put out for new economic growth is going down. CO2 production is going down in places like the US & UK. US levels are close to 20% lower than they were in 2007 despite the US economy being bigger.

I feel like the growth in CO2 each year is slowing down, which hopefully is an early sign that the amount of CO2 produced each year may start to decline globally just like it has declined in places like the US and UK.

As far as methane, yes its a problem but within 10 years or so it converts to CO2 which has far less global warming effect.

It was my understanding that the clathrate gun was unlikely to happen.

9

Explain how he’s wrong.

10

When did I say he was wrong?

11

The question of whether they are bad people or somehow otherwise morally deficient for not doing so is one that I’ve mused over a lot, but that may be out of scope for this thread.

The problem is we keep thinking its “they” when in reality its “us.” No one really wants to personally be inconvenienced, and we keep thinking that some mysterious “other people” really should get their act together and do something about it…

…as long as I don’t have to be inconvenienced.

12

I have not said and would not say that we should “shut down those futile environmental programs and laws, live it up, and burn those fossil fuels while we can, possibly banning pregnancy while we’re at it. Woo hoo!” because performative debauchery is neither healthy or useful but we do need to acknowledge that staying within a +2 °C above baseline mean global surface temperature is not going to happen regardless of intentions or notional commitments, and need to start making plans for adaptation and preservation of biodiversity and human knowledge such as can be effected within the expected timeframe and plausible state of agriculture and industry that can be maintained under those conditions. Just pretending that some magical technology is going to come along that will let us extract the hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at any price point or available energy that would be remotely feasible, or continuously spraying Sun-blocking particles into the stratosphere, or any other unproven and unworkable scheme of geoengineering to stave off warming beyond the tolerance of industrial society and sea level rise is just as blithely nihilistic as dancing on the graves of those who tried to warn us while burning every last scintilla of oil and gas in spite-filled celebration of extinction.

Stranger

13

Not “they”, you. You are one of the people with a standard of living that is killing the planet. (As am I.) The moment you give up electricity, internal combustion engines, everything derived from petroleum products, everything mined in a destructive way, everything that uses tons of water in their production, and meat, and start living in a small tent eating algae paste you can criticize “their” moral deficiency about profligate consumption, but not before then.

14

well, I don’t think i was as forceful in my reply to Leaper but it was essentially the same

15

Correct me if I’m wrong, but why do people have to give these things up?

There are something like 500 nuclear power plants that provide 20% of the world’s electricity. We could go nuclear and still have electricity. Putting aside renewables, we could probably provide western levels of electricity with 5,000 to 10,000 nuclear power plants on earth.

Internal combustion engines can hopefully be replaced with EVs, or hydrogen, or some other fuel source. Or perhaps gasoline can be made from algae, which would make it carbon neutral.

Lab grown meat is being worked on in the labs.

Why do people have to go back to a pre-industrial standard of living? Part of why I posted this is that the world’s GDP has grown by 46 trillion a year in the last decade or so, but CO2 production hasn’t moved that much.

16

Good thing that there is an unlimited supply of easily obtainable uranium on Earth. Oh, wait…

17

Why are you guys so eager to be pessimistic?

Breeder reactors could keep nuclear fission power going for millions of years. Even if breeder reactor supply ‘only’ last thousands of years, that is enough time to invent new technologies in the meantime.

Nuclear power plants only came into existence in the 1950s. You’re assuming no changes will happen in the next 70 years.

meanwhile the cost of solar, wind and battery storage have undergone massive declines in the last 20 years.

18

Globally, we’ve never produced as much CO2 emissions as have the last 2-3 years (2024 was likely another record). That’s only CO2 – we’ve pumped out a lot of methane, too.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/526002/energy-related-carbon-dioxide-emissions-worldwide/

As much as I like the idea of clean energy, the reality is that we’re not replacing FFs with renewables/clean energy; they just add more energy to our overall consumption. They make more energy available, which actually allows us to do more things with that extra energy, and thus increases the demand for total energy in all its forms.

19

We probably don’t have 70 years before something catastrophic happens, and by catastrophic, I don’t necessarily mean ‘end-times’ type scenarios, just waves of catastrophic weather events that disrupt economies and civilization itself. We’re likely heading into a future in which nature topples our Jenga towers faster than we can finish rebuilding them. Rinse/repeat.

20

There is lots of “new” tech in the pipe for nuclear reactors. They have a lot of promise. No need even for “big” reactors. SMRs (small modular reactors) have a lot of promise as well. And they are scalable. And they are inherently safe (they can’t melt down…physics makes them safe).

They can use stuff like thorium or nuclear waste that is lying around for energy. Enough for thousands of years.

Want to get rid of nuclear waste? Here is a solution. There will still be waste left but not as much and not as long lasting when it comes to being dangerous.

That means less reliance on fossil fuels and the climate change they cause. It is not a complete solution but it is a good start.