Trump Administration foresees 4 degree temperature rise

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So, not only do they foresee catastrophic warming, they're saying that the current trajectory is so bad and since the changes necessary to mitigate it are too onerous for them, it's better to abandon even halting steps in that direction and to race even faster towards the cliff.

Think about that. 4 degrees warming by 2100. That's within the lifetime of someone being born now.
I'm always amazed at how time-limited these studies are. What happens after 2100? The warming just stops?

Well thank fuck they've actually acknowledged the problem at last....

From what I understand though isn't there a critical point in terms of the breakdown of long term frozen organic matter at which the buildup of greenhouse gases becomes an unstoppable cycle no matter what we do?

This was, of course, always the long game, and it's not a new observation: They lie and lie and lie until it no longer makes any difference. That was how they got into Vietnam, how they destroyed the standards for American public schools, and how they got into the second Iraq War. And that's why they stop at 2100, too, because if we take further futures into account, there is no point of no return, and truth still has meaning for rational decisions. They can't have that!

Not an unstoppable cycle, just a cliff -- things will be a lot worse beyond that point, but there is always still more catastrophic damage to be done. But yes, there is such a point, and it's impossible to say where exactly, and we are most likely well past it.

Sorry for the "sad" emojis, but I could hardly smile about such a prospect, it's a reflection of the situation, not your posts.

Well at the local level this endless summer heat is PISSING ME OFF! It's still around 90 degrees EVERY FUCKING DAY with no end in sight. Night time temps barely get below 70 and it's only for an hour or two at most. Factor in the stores starting to gear up for CHRISTMAS and you have one pissed-off hombre!

You can't just blame the US on this.

China is ramping up coal production again. Germany plays accounting games whilst its CO2 emissions inch upwards. I keep seeing various claims of nations running X days on renewable energy, but I suspect they'll be found to be greenwashing (I hope I'm wrong, but Germany has led the way on the bullshit and my faith in such figures has all but evaporated.) There are no doubt oodles of other examples (including the UK) I've not encountered yet.

Individual states seem to be doing their own thing though, I was on the freeway from Amarillo towards New Mexico last week and I saw wind farms-a-go-go. So Texas seems to be heavily investing in wind (although I wonder if solar may be more efficient) and I passed something that looked like a solar farm in the Mojave.

Meanwhile you see push backs against gas and nuclear, both of which can reduce overall CO2 emissions, and Trump spouting crap about moving back to coal.

It's not all bad - the US has cut its emissions by around 10%, and several EU nations have gone beyond that - but realistically, we're going to have to accept the warming is going to happen and see what we can do to mitigate things. It's going to be expensive, but we've run up the bill.

Yeah, that's what that button is for -- shared sadness, and also commiseration.

I'm not blaming the US. I'm blaming the corrupt liars in the US and everywhere else. Thinking of this global problem by nation is much less useful than thinking about it by policy. China, for instance, has about half the carbon footprint per capita as does the US, and even a little less than Germany -- per capita being a much better measurement than per country.

It would help though if the US didn't withdraw from the Paris Agreement. International cooperation is going to be crucial here, not isolationism

What good is the Paris Agreement if nobody abides by it? The biggest violators are "hiding in plain sight" under the Paris Agreement. Only an idiot can't see right through it.

Failing to meet one's responsibilities despite trying is a long remove from abdicating from those responsibilities and denying the problem exists at all.

Oh, it'll reverse itself eventually.

Our greed will have done us in by then, but the Earth itself will be fine.

On the plus side, all those Confederate monuments in coastal cities will be underwater soon!

I recently had occasion to drive from LA to Phoenix and in SoCal we went thru an IMMENSE wind farm, around about Palm Springs / Desert Springs. Very impressive.

This really baffles me. We start building some next generation nuclear plants and we can take a lot of dirty old coal and oil-fired plants offline. You'd think the greenies would be all over this, but nooooooooo - "Nucular is bad!!" Idiots. And that's without even getting into the potential of thorium-based reactors.

The problem with that is capitalism. Older reactors that were clearly unsafe, and have devastated whole regions beyond repair, were sworn to be safe for decades, because lying about them made the liars rich. People have learned you can't trust those statements, and now they won't trust nuclear energy at all.

Which is a shame, because @Lanzman is right. We have a great opportunity to switch to nuclear power, and we have the capability of making it safe. At the same time, we reduce pollution. As far as I'm concerned, that's win/win!

even though I am not an environmental scientist I think we have gone beyond the point of no return when the methane deposits of the planet are beginning to melt and go into the atmosphere. From what I understand the planet can do so much worse than we can, and it is starting to. We are really still nothing compared to the planet and it's energies. It is the beginning of the proverbial flood and it may be true that limiting emissions is like bailing out lake michigan with a solo cup.

That does not mean we should do nothing, and it also does not mean we should not learn from our mistakes. It means that we should focus our efforts onto surviving and dealing with the flood and realize that as the planet gets worse it will become harder to live on fossil fuels and if we can install renewable energy sources it will be beneficial to our future survival. Things will be changing as our climate changes. We may need to go back to older ways where we live near our resources. We will need to worry about land capable of growing our food.

Greatest of all we will need to shed the religious notion that things like abortion and birth control are bad as higher populations will be forced into famine and strife because of lack of resources. I had to laugh at AWA as one kid was holding up a sign for Thanos 2020, and I was thinking he might not be too far off considering how war and death will facilitate the lower populations needed to survive, and also power the respective political parties who seek them with money and profit from the MIC. the MIC may have guarnteed it's importance in survival with the changing climate meaning there is a possibility we will have to start fighting more heavily for resource access again or pass away in hunger for our principles. Those people outside of the US who think trump is terrible should wait until the US has a choice between starvation in the dust bowl or using it's army against you. Of course the US citizens will probably all be jailbird conscripts of the US military by that point anyway.

Yeah. I'm not that enthusiastic, because I think even a technically safe nuclear plant is just a giant bullseye for terrorists, and because we will immediately become stupid and use nuclear energy instead of renewables rather than as a bridge to renewables, but I agree it would be a better policy in many places than what we are doing now. But corruption is real; just because we can build safe nuclear power plants doesn't mean the plants we build will be safe. So that's just one solution our economic system makes impossible.

Lol we're hyperfucked if Republicans are finally admitting climate change is real. Like, it's probably even worse than we think if even they're willing to admit we're fucked, and especially since they aren't going to do jack shit to help alleviate it.

Nuclear energy's been pretty safe. The most destructive accident (by far) occurred in a socialist country where capitalism was clearly not at fault.

I'd also point out that the nuclear energy was, is, and always will be tightly regulated by governments, so if there's any successful lying about safety going on, you have those government to blame for failing to fulfill their promises and duties.

Yup. Even in Fukushima, the exclusion zone is out of an overabundance of caution. There are beaches in Brazil that are naturally more radioactive than all but tiny spots in the Fukushima exclusion zone. I wouldn't eat any crops grown there, but I'd live there without worrying about radiation.

In preparation for my trip to Japan, I came across a video where someone was visiting Fukushima prefecture and my first thought was "Wow, isn't that area dangerous?" But, no, you're absolutely right. Even a lifetime spent close to the quarantined area only raises your chances of radiation-related cancers by a small amount. According to Wikipedia, normal lifetime exposure to radiation in Fukushima is 170mSv, a lifetime spent there now would increase that by less than 10mSv.

To put it in perspective: almost 16,000 people died from the earthquake and tsunami and some people died in accidents/health events evacuating the area, but none died of radiation exposure.

The design of the reactor in Chernobyl--thankfully free of any considerations of profit--led to an area that's so contaminated that it will be many years before it's once again safely inhabitable.

"even though I am not an environmental scientist" - Tererun

worst pickup line ever.....

I agree that nuclear power is a better, safer option than fossil fuels. The problem is NIMBYism (which is pretty much a byproduct of democracy and capitalism). No community wants a new nuclear reactor in their area. So it's a better option, but not the best option.

The ideal solution is renewable energy because it's safer, cleaner, renewable, and less prone to NIMBYism (though not entirely immune with e.g. wind farms or solar panels). And we're thankfully seeinh a push towards that, so much so that California, for example, has more electricity than it can handle. We either have to pay other states to take our excess or shut down power plants. The problem that arises is that when we still have fossil fuel plants, it's far more costly to shut those down than to shut off green energy production. We need to move fully away from fossil fuel plants ASAP to make this 4 degree increase less likely.

Republicans do not care about things like science. They think if they just ignore reality it will go away.

But I heard from glorious republican leader that coal was clean because they wash it and stuff. Maybe if coal is so clean we can put it in areas where rich people live. I am sure a mar a lago clean coal plant would be great for visitors. We could pump the clean exhaust right into glorious leaders room there and the fresh air would imrove his health. With all the importance of clean coal I cannot imagine NIMBYism stopping trump from having such a clean power plant on his properties.

Time to move to the PNW and just accept areas further south will become wastelands.

Renewables would be great, but given our current state of technology and the requirements of maintaining our civilization, nuclear is really the only option with sufficient energy density and reliability that we have in hand to make a substantial difference.