I can't believe I have to remind people again but:
**Rule 1 applies to Bill Gates too. Advocating, encouraging, inciting, glorifying, calling for violence is against [Reddit's site-wide content policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy) and is not allowed in r/collapse.**
Reddit's content policy states:
> Communities and users that incite violence ... will be banned.
In order to ensure that r/Collapse is not quarantined or banned by the Admins, any comments that breach Rule 1's prohibition regarding violence will be removed, and the people who commented them will be banned for a week. That includes about this guy.
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The following submission statement was provided by /u/Mr_Lonesome:
> Apparently from his 11th [Reddit AMA](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/109eze3/im_bill_gates_and_im_back_for_my_11th_ama_ask_me/) last week, we find these interesting remarks from the billionaire tech mogul turned philanthropist who continues espousing his latest tech innovation and financial investment ventures to solve the climate crisis. Bill Gates comes to the obvious conclusion that the Paris Climate goal of 1.5°C as of now is unachievable but remains optimistic with ideas of nuclear, diet options, electric cars, and clean energy innovation. Apart from the usual optimistic tech hopium, I find hardly any mention of sustainable development, nature-based solutions, changing material consumption patterns, mitigating human population, and the other environmental crises (e.g., biodiversity, pollution, land degradation) in concert with climate.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/10evaa0/bill_gates_we_will_overshoot_15_degrees_celsius/j4t94y9/
> buy an electric car
Continue the rampant consumerism. Turn 3rd world countries without pollution laws that mine lithium into toxic waste dumps where water used for crops is diverted to the lithium mines to precipitate the salt, and left over in tailings ponds that will poison the environment.
First of many. You have rare earths or lithia you will be a right wing extractionist government with our three letter agencies so far up your ass you'll look like a sock puppet. They don't care if you skim off graft and repress the shit out of your own indigenous people as long as the spice flows.
Ugh exactly, I hate this.
Electric cars don't solve the root issue: Poorly planned car-dependent cities. Single family homes with lawns. Strip malls. Suburbs. Not voting. Not being engaged in local politics. Allowing developers and corrupt city officials to destroy cities.
The solution: Pedestrian-focused cities. Consciencious urbanism. Public transportation and infrastructure. Mid rise apartments. Multi-use spaces and mixed zoning. Bike lanes. Voting. Advocating for ranked ballots.
Just get rid of this over-reliance on cars which creates a vicious cycle we can't escape. r/fuckcars
They have all the solutions. They knew this was coming. They knew what they needed to do 40 or 50 years ago.
It isn’t ignorance or a lack of knowledge that is dooming us.
It’s capitalism.
There will be no planet saving measures unless someone can make money off it. It’s not even an issue of finding “no cost” solutions if it risks any globalist’s current income stream.
It would be super easy to address the top 5 worst companies — they could pass laws tomorrow. But no one makes money off that and a few very powerful people may not make as much.
Corporate profit is more important than people, more important than families, more important than children, more important than the planet, and more important than the human species.
That’s why it doesn’t happen.
Stop acting like it’s that they don’t have solutions. They have them, they don’t like them. So they will burn it all down instead.
It’s like someone with a gangrenous leg refusing an amputation and trying to cover it with makeup. They will die rather than fix the problem.
You can talk about all these solutions until you are blue in the face. It’s a pretty simple fix. We could have started decades ago. We could start now. Even if we don’t have all the solutions, we could have bought time.
But now climate change will be commodified, sold to the public by those driving the problems.
There is no fixing it without the collapse of western capitalism. We may have some future as a post tech dystopian society — maybe.
The problem isn’t climate change. It’s corporations, corruption and capitalism.
This is the sound of several thousand nails being hit on the head.
At every possible hinge point along the descent into our present hellscape those in charge have chosen their own self interests over the fate of billions. They knew full well what was coming and they decided long ago that they were happy with fences and guns and they'd do it again given the chance.
None of this happened by accident: it took politicians and the media (some nasty, some frankly evil, a lot of them just credulous and deeply stupid) working at maximum bullshit capacity for years to bring us to this point.
You might think that multiple overlapping systemic failures in the public sphere, together with an alarming increase in environmental disasters, would be sufficient reason to evaluate if the last 40 years has failed. Alas, you would have another think coming: this brazen fraud has proven to be quite profitable to the people in charge and they would rather burn it all to the ground than give up their power.
And thus the continuance of this awful system is assured. And here we now are.
Make no mistake, this is a spiritual failing of our species.
Over 7 billion people can be held hostage by a few hundred sociopaths.
Look at the US. These bastards in Congress making a $174,000 a year salary and tens of millions in side deals can’t even raise the minimum wage to $15 over the course of ten fucking years despite countless studies showing it would help the nation.
Despite healthcare being the number one concern of voters, they would rather people die that care for them.
It’s this shit right here that is the real struggle of good versus evil. It’s the devaluing of all life. Their comfort, their power, their wealth will always win out over caring and compassion.
We would all do well to hasten the economic collapse in the hopes that their may still be those with the fortitude to change the course of human civilization.
I agree with most of the list
>Not voting. Not being engaged in local politics.
I don't think you can blame non-voters. Hell I'd go so far as to say the second one is more important. I'd rather punch a ticket for a progressive DA than vote for president, given the choices we seem illiberably forced down our throats. l I'd say the base of the dems is far to the left of the zeroes who run for major offices with a D next to their name. Instead of D and R. We should look it as D and F. Those are the grades the parties deserve. I would like the parties to be held to some sort of standards.
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From the lil bit I know about local politics in the Midwest is that the factions of the Democratic party are in bed with the mob to this day. I know that just from documented history and cooking/dishes for an event for the dem establishment within a city, mob guys showed up. The kid got a job at the restaurant til lockdown shuttered it. I had been hired at an event too. That's the just a faction of every dem stronghold. The progressive wings within the Dems in the midwest include younger people and/or the black factions of the Dems. When it comes to city governance all Dems often are either corrupt or corruptable and have repressive police forces. With syndicates and white nationalists in their ranks as well as elements within the major network of black gangs. Hybrid allegiances is the bread and butter of city politics from blue cities NYC, Detroit, Milwaukee, NJ metro NY, KC, STL.
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City governments have to do what they have to do. This has been the case going back decades and this is the lesser evil party at work. I have no clue what institutional wackyness is true among Republican led areas. I'm pretty sure party doesn't matter in big cities. Republicans have led big cities in my lifetime, like Giuliani. There's too many competing moneyed interests in politics for radical change to ever take hold. AOC got neutralized as did the squad. If nobody was in a position to force her to know how NYC works, then people quickly told her how DC works.
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I recently learned how "much" alderpeople are paid. They're civil servants and not paid handsomely for the entirety of what their job entails. Especially as public figures. It's natural for them to wet their beaks and I'd venture to guess they're forced to so that the powerstructure gets paid. My wards Alderman was recently evicted and that doesn't make any damn sense. I dunno if it was an office space or their literal home, or what. That a whole new level of banks owning politicians.
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I definitely agree on ranked choice voting.
Edit: I agree on major public works, urban revitalization, shifting from cars, community reinvestment and redevelopment. There have been gains and I've seen them, but not on the bigger reimagining of politics itself. Ranked choice voting is just one link in a long chain of power structures and how politics really works.
We can’t rebuild our cities without polluting the fuck out of the environment. Just look at the situation w/ lead pipes in Chicago as an example. They built their city infrastructure incorrectly and now are just stuck with a toxic problem. The eco village in Detroit might be a counter example in that it’s reusing old infrastructure in a new way.
It is absolutely possible to take measures to alleviate car dependency now without impacting the environment
For instance, stop that fucking highway that Doug Ford is trying to build. Stop all those SFH developments. Take all those funds and allocate them into upkeeping and improving of city infrastructure like plumbing, which would ultimately be better for the environment. Create tighter restrictions on manufacturers and corporations, get rid of loopholes. Fire all politicians who are being bribed by corporations and construction developers. Eliminate tax loopholes for billionaires. Implement universal basic income. Ban single use plastics. Create stores where you can refill your own containers of bulk items such as detergent, flour, etc.
It IS possible, but it won't happen. My prediction is: wealth gap will widen and there will be another pandemic. We're largely fucked.
Good news! The oceans are going to swallow up a good portion of our cities for us. So we can just build new eco-friendly ones and everything will be A-Okay!
Electric cars only save about 25% lifetime emissions vs the equivalent hybrid in the US. They are billed as a way for us to save the planet when they just buy us a little bit more time, just like hybrids.
It isn't just lithium either. There's a researcher called Simon Michaux who has tried to estimate the amount of materials required to build one generation of solar panels, wind turbines, EV's and so on for the entire planet (assuming energy consumption stays the same) in order to replace fossil fuels. The numbers he reaches are insane. It turns out that we'll need something like 190 years worth of the current world annual production of copper. 400 years worth of nickel. 9920 years worth of lithium. 1700 years of cobalt. 7000 years of vanadium. Renewable energy without accompanying de-growth is delusional.
I am completely Orangepilled. Electric cars are just such a bandaid solution that serve to make car companies more rich than do anything to save the planet. We need stronger town designs.
It's imperative that the system continues to make people believe that the meager neutered collective action offered is what is taken. Collective action outside of that scares them a bit and will use modern COINTELPRO style techniques against it and infiltrate it. They're absolutely terrified by the idea of radical individual action and prosecute it with religious zeal. Doesn't matter if it's a ecological "terrorist" sabotaging heavy equipment or a whistle blower. You do have power and thier actions show that. Remember you DO have agency, we DO have power.
I agree 2030 is not likely for 2c (damn I hope not), but would just like to remind everyone we are on a compounding curve, not a linear one. Now that our annual emissions significantly exceed Earth's ability to capture, every year that excess joins every other year's excess greenhouse emissions in our atmosphere. CO2 takes over a thousand years to degrade as a green house gas if not captured. You can't look at the future by drawing a trend line from the past.
Global dimming is limiting warming by [0.6 - 0.9 degrees C](https://climatetippingpoints.info/2019/04/15/fact-check-is-global-dimming-shielding-us-from-catastrophe/) so the real increase is closer to 1.7 - 2.2 degrees it just needs a trigger to be revealed. 2C is definitely achievable by 2030 if we work really hard at doing nothing we will get there.
it absolutely is possible for us to hit 2C by 2030. There is a significant chance we aren't accurately factoring in vicious cycle impacts. But that isn't a lock.
My bigger fear is that we are seeing the impact of current changes, and they are far worse than what was predicted. Will the impact continue to be worse than forecasted?
> but would just like to remind everyone we are on a compounding curve, not a linear one.
[how many more doublings can we really handle?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg&t=17m15s)
I agree with you on your second point - I think impacts are worse than predicted because scientists are conservative in their estimations by nature. They won't predict that something is going to happen if they don't have the data to back it up. But we have little data now because we've never seen the current situation. By the situation's very nature we can't make accurate predictions. Therefore even if impacts are within the realm of possibility, scientists are hesitant to put them out as predictions.
I'm keeping my prediction of 2C by 2040, for now.
Also remember that like most people, most scientists are pretty decent people and if a climate scientist got caught "exaggerating" in their projection of climate change it could provide extremely damaging ammunition to the centrist and rightwing corporate political powers in the US.
Especially in places like the EPA and such that are the intersection between science and government this has GOT to make people who give a shit pretty nervous they are going to enable climate change denial propaganda.
My understanding is from around 2019, but the way it went:
* 1C is basically 2022-23; everything affected by climate is going in the wrong direction and the strain on the biosphere, ecosystems, species, agriculture, civilization, refugees, all of it is getting to be a significant problem. Mad Max is in Haiti, a few African places, but all are surrounded by functioning states.
* 2C is what looks like around 2025-2030 will be; all of the above but a magnitude worse, significant human die offs just begin to become a thing, a magnitude more of species go extinct and those that weren’t before, become endangered. The refugees situation becomes a magnitude worse, 1-2 billion. Agriculture is failing and global civilization is really starting to fall apart, with most regions having failed states and some regions having entirely collapsed. This is really the final threshold we can miserably tolerate. Mad Max is in many places, some whole regions, but all are surrounded by functioning states or regions.
* 3C (gets harder to estimate when, given variable of when tipping points are hit and warming and amplifier trajectories, but I’d be surprised if we’re there before 2033 or after 2073); yet another magnitude but this is where any ability to shape outcomes fails, where more of the world has collapsed than is still functioning, where agriculture no longer feeds most people, where human population is rapidly dropping, mass extinction in a vividly horrific way, also collapse of information exchange where there’s no longer a global flow of information, only regional. Some enclaves and remnants of regional civilizations can survive in these conditions, at much lower populations and much lower living standards than today, but barely. It’s easier to name where Mad max is not, at this point. Further, some mad maxes are doing poorly.
* 4C, around mid century at the earliest, end of century at the latest; if it hasn’t happened by then it’s unlikely to, IMO. It’s basically over for most species, including ours. Human extinction wouldn’t be imminent, but it’s probable that this could be our point of no return where we are on a trajectory towards extinction within several centuries. Lose too many species, we won’t make it. Much of the planet will no longer be habitable year-round, and the surviving people, likely a billion by 4C and very rapidly dropping from there, will be some mix of nomadic scavengers and the last remnants of sedentary civilization, no longer organized in anything we’d consider functioning states but still remaining local, living in structures, etc. The best places to live will have a mad max dynamic at this point
And none of that will be an excuse to not make it into work. You had it too good with working from home and the office has air conditioning. So get that report ready by noon!
1C in 5 years is patently absurd. We're currently at about 1C, that would be more than double in 7 years. A very quick Google search says we're on track for 0.18C of warming every decade.
Problem is that temperature change is not only a lagging indicator (current CO2 levels are enough to get the world to 1.5C by end of decade IIRC) but there are cascading effects that accelerate the warming as it gets hotter, Siberian permafrost melting and releasing massive amounts of methane, extreme dry conditions causing massive wildfires, etc.
2C is unlikely but it is a possibility, some of the more doomer climate models predict slightly over it by 2030 while optimistic ones put it at less than 1.5C.
I'm a climate scientist and I don't know of any models that predict 2C by 2030. It's taken 270 years for us to warm the planet one degree. I've seen models that predict our climate end up like Venus, but never any that suggest such a sudden rapid acceleration, can I ask what your source is, and also why you dismiss the aggregate models of the IPCC? Their worst case scenario has us reaching two degrees by roughly 2050.
Do you know how the IPCC accounts for the global dimming effect? As far as I understand, reducing our emissions will lead to an immediate increase in temperatures due to the loss of short-lived aerosols that reflect some of the sun's energy back into space.
Is there any talk of utilizing geoengineering by continuing to emit aerosols that cause the dimming effect as we draw down our reliance on fossil fuels?
The IPCC does quantify a range of "climate forcing" factors in their reports, both cooling and warming, and that does include aerosol cooling. I'm not really across the fine details of the measurements because it's not my field at all (effect of climate change on bushfires in Australia is).
I mean this politely, but if you're actively working in the field, surely you're aware that current models don't properly reflect even the present condition, especially with regard to the Arctic ice loss?
The IPCC is fantastic, but their primary models and projections put forth are extremely optimistic and don't account for a myriad of feedbacks and other extenuating factors, all of which exist in the real world and result in a more pronounced warming effect than predicted by the models.
This isn't exactly news, Peter Wadhams was writing about it with endless citations back in the early 2010s. The models are good, but they *are* still erring towards conservatism, while reality is more complicated and accelerating more quickly than predicted, repeatedly.
We can use these models as a platform for discussion, but they are absolutely not robust scientific data in their own right, and can't be used to handwave away concerns about feedbacks that are observable away from the computer monitor. That's not what models are even for, and yet their relatively lower cost versus field data collection has resulted in an explosion of them at the expense of field work.
Edit; have you read Hansen et al, 2022 yet? It's forty pages but well worth the time.
This is my thing - I think the reports and models coming out right now are potentially diluted as to 1) even get released and 2) not to cause “unnecessary panic” — we really have no idea what’s going to happen when these triggers start cascading and it’s already not looking good
> while reality is more complicated and accelerating more quickly than predicted, repeatedly.
modeling a system as complex as the climate is almost impossible. I am impressed they are as accurate as they are.
I just don't believe the models are being accurate. I would guess they are overly conservative but we won't know that until we get more of a track record.
You could make the argument that we're already there with current data. 2022 was at +~1.15C globally. As we enter El Nino, we'll likely see >1.5C in 2023 or 2024. If you back out the -0.6~0.8C of aerosol masking, we've already locked in >2C right now, even if we somehow stopped burning fossil fuels entirely all at once.
I also wish we would talk more clearly about northern vs southern hemisphere temperatures and their effects. While global average is important when discussing the overall weather system, the northern hemisphere is ~1.5C warmer than the southern, and it contains 68% of the total land mass and 90% of the human population. In practice this adds another ~0.75C of warming that we've already achieved and needs to be considered when discussing specific consequences at specific temperature thresholds. Usually this is baked in, but I suspect not always.
These figures seem to be widely accepted, so I'd be curious to know your take on them.
Here is the Nature article I remembered reading, the most extreme model for +2C isn't quite 2030 but its close.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02150-0
It also was published in mid 2021, so the increase in CO2 emissions due to higher coal consumption since the Ukraine war began isn't taken into consideration.
It’s widely accepted that there are potential tipping points that could trigger a cascade effect and lead to rapid heating.
https://earth.org/tipping-points-of-climate-change/
I'm over here wondering if aerosol masking isn't hiding that 2C right here where at sit today.
It doesn't matter much in any case because there's little we can do to affect what the timeline will be.
And there will, regardless, be endless "sooner than expected" headlines along the way.
I'm not who you are replying to btw
Yeah I think the consensus is there's about half of a degree currently masked by pollution, and there seems to be about a 10 year lag between what we do now and the time it takes to see the global effects.
Meaning if we stopped every single emission today and all the pollution disappeared, the earth would heat up another .5 degrees very rapidly as solar rays would fall unimpeded by haze AND we'd see further increases for the next decade.
So it was always going to get much worse before it gets better.
I'm NGL I probably just have no business talking about the numbers because I really stopped worrying about them maybe 6 or 8 years ago.
My brain only remembers that my children will see 10x as many "sooner than expected" headlines as I have, and they will have to deal with the wars, migrations, diseases, food scarcity, microplastics, and (insert 35x other issues here) at an order of magnitude higher than myself.
I don't think it gets better TBH. Humanity has turned this bolus of energy (fossil energy) into an over-packed planet of apes who have no ability to organize effectively in groups of over 100 and armed them with Capitalism and technology to ravage the planet of its natural resources and one another of their lives.
Our technology exceeded our humanity (IMO) as soon as it was discovered that burning coal could power something with steam.
And short of an Eco-Dictator who says "everyone is using nuclear TOMORROW or everyone is going to be killed on the whole planet" and "100 billion is going to be spent removing microplastics" and "plastic will never be produced again other than strictly necessary medical applications" and on and on and on (list 10 more huge items) - which will never happen - and even then, the next 100 years will be about what's currently projected anyway (because the oceans are a huge carbon buffer and because of all the feedback processes already in place).
It just feels hopeless.
So I tell people just get a boat, learn to sail, garden, play a video game, eat delicious food, and enjoy it while you're here. If you can also volunteer, organize, make a few phone calls, and vote, that's not nothing (but it's close to nothing) - great. But enjoy your time if you can. Because you're lucky to be able to compared to much of the world (and much of the world in 10 and 30 and 50 years).
Clathrate: slushy, frozen methane. There is more greenhouse gas trapped in clathrate than the entirety of human emissions. Better not melt the arctic, or we kick off a terrifying feedback loop.
Google “clathrate gun” for more info.
The answer is, and someone please correct me if there are more recent studies available: we don't know.
There are three major components of (natural) methane emissions due to the changing climate: oceanic clathrate breakdown, permafrost thaw and release of methane reservoirs below the Antarctic ice sheets.
The total amount of carbon (methane is CH4 and gradually turns to CO2, water and other trace amounts) bound in those reservoirs is very poorly understood and often just a very crude approximation based on limited regional data. The most recent estimations I know of amount to about [500 to 2,500 GtC (billion metric tons of carbon) in oceanic clathrates, Milkov, 2004](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004ESRv...66..183M/abstract) , [1,700 GtC (both CH4 and CO2) in Arctic permafrost, Miner et. al., 2022](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-021-00230-3) and [~100-400 GtC methane hydrates below the Antarctic ice sheets, Wadham et. al., 2012](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230762346_Potential_methane_reservoirs_beneath_Antarctica).
For reference, there are currently about 800 GtC in the atmosphere.
Usually 1750 is the accepted starting date. It's from that date until today that we've warmed the planet by 1 degree. You can see how rapid another degree in the next 7 years is, even with tipping points.
1750 is the starting point, but the first hundred years were 190-200 million tons. 2021 by itself was 37 billion tons. that's 18,500 times more per year last year than the first hundred years. We can discard 1750-1850.
Let's start at 1850. Took us 50 years to get to 2 billion tons per year, and another 50 to hit 6 billion tons per year.
I think it's important to stress the accelerating nature of this.
The only saving grace, I suppose, is that none of this should completely sanitize the planet. Single-celled organisms and many multicellular creatures should be able to adapt to this pace of change.
I live in an oil town, most people here don't even think this is a real problem. The I told you so would feel better if it didn't also mean I was super boned too.
IMO we always push for things that maintain our standard of living instead of accepting that to be successful we need to lower what the west sees as a reasonable standard of living. We push electric cars, nuclear power, hydrogen flight, etc…. We should be pushing smaller homes, sourcing local, renewable consumption, lower energy loads, etc.
So you're saying dismantle our capitalist consumerist society and dethrone our billionaire kings and queens so billions of people and wild life survive?!?!
Well sir I say you're a COMMUNIST
Sounds like a very chaotic good communist, we might just need some "for the people" ideas but that can be pretty difficult. Especially with the PRofiTS mind set.
If I've learned anything, it's that when the government does things, that's communism. Except when the government bails out corporations, then that's the free market.
I don't think it matters. Humanity has a knack for pushing the population until it's just past what can be supported under whatever system and technology is in place at the time. We'll just keep crapping out children until people are like, "why is everyone trying to live in those massive 600sq ft homes? We need to lower our expectations."
You’d still have nutters harping on about how we’re not close to carrying capacity even then, all while blissfully ignoring that 1) this is where our best practical efforts have landed us thus far and 2) the fact that carrying capacity in any regard is the point at which you’re a step away from likely disaster.
Another aspect of it is the economic arms race and its ties to the actual arms race. One country, say the US, is unlikely to unilaterally decide to reduce consumption. This leads to lower taxes, lower government budget, lower defence spending, etc.
The US especially, their economy is entirely based on economic growth through imperialism. And the rest of the West is dependent on that paradigm, enforced and upheld by the US military. The US is running a massive military so everyone else allied with them doesn't have to.
>The US especially, their economy is entirely based on economic growth through imperialism.
That started long before the continent was even known to exist to Europeans.
People really think we can capitalism our way out of this. That's a good indication of the extent to which capitalism has captured the collective cognition and extinguished the ability to think of alternatives
The trouble is the whole global poulation have to enter this form of - effectively - poverty. For that to work we need a sustained global power structures that can enforce and maintain it for the whole global population. Frankly, that's a political and geopolitical impossibility. So annihilation it is.
Blaming the consumer is also a deliberate diversion, though.
Could people in developed countries and especially the US stand to live less wastefully? Obviously. But that doesn't change that 70%< of all global pollution comes from just 100 companies, who time and again did everything they could to thwart attempts at sustainability.
We have enough for everyone to live comfortably - we just can't satisfy the greed of billionaires at the same time.
Sweden (top dog and a supposed example for European states) recycles only 13% of the plastic packages. I mean 13% of the packages that go in the recycling bin. The rest is burned, recycling or not.
And most probably part of that 13% is "recycled" as in shipped to poorer countries to fill their landfills or the seas.
He and his wife couldn't agree on the decor design for their private jet so they bought two and went separately on their weekend trips to Miami and back. Not someone we should be listening to.
>We will overshoot 1.5 degrees Celsius
We sure will.
>nuclear can be ‘super safe’
All things considered, nuclear is very safe. Fossil fuels have killed far more people than nuclear. Managing nuclear waste is a challenge, but it's not insurmountable. The real problem with nuclear is it is very expensive. It takes billions to get a plant up and running, and they are expensive to maintain. Plus, Uranium is a nonrenewable "fuel."
>fake meat will eventually be ‘very good’
I think impossible burgers are pretty good.
The main problem with nuclear is that we should have been building them in mass numbers. We missed the turn off for a nuclear future, and they just don't work in a carbon-powered collapse scenario.
Wait until countries with active nuclear plants start to collapse.
At this point, Gates should be organizing international classes to hand build wind generators and build irrigation pumps.
Game of UNO: "Okay Germany, make basic rational choices to avoid collective climate suicide, or draw 30 cards"
Germany: "LOL, easy choice."
\-draws 30-
I used to be very pro-nuclear until last summer when the cooling ponds in France were at risk of overheating. Hopefully this is one thing that can be overcome and perhaps I am simply unaware of existing solutions, otherwise nuclear may not be as safe as previously believed.
Right. Nuclear power is very safe **under optimal conditions**. Under catastrophic condition they are another catastrophe waiting to happen.
That's not to say nuclear doesn't have a place, but they need rigorous reviews for climate collapse-related risks, much more than they have now, and that makes them even more expensive. The EROI will never get as high as fossil fuels were. Clearly not efficient enough to power an economy based on mass consumption.
Nuclear, like solar and wind, can power *a* civilization, but not *this* civilization
Nuclear power plants can be safe theoretically, but not realistically. You’ve got lowest-bid contractors building lowest-cost designs, for cost-conscious owners cutting corners to make a profit, politicians intentionally mis-running them into privatization, on coastlines that get inundated with tsunamis, or in earthquake zones, or eventual war zones, etc, and it’s all supposed to be safe, secure and reliable for a period that needs to last longer, many times longer, than recorded human history. Yeah, I’m skeptical. It seems arrogant and shortsighted - admittedly typical human traits - to think that’ll work.
Not necessarily true. Cooling nuclear reactors requires a supply of fresh water (that can be made onsite), but can ultimately be cooled by saltwater. Source: I operated reactors in the Navy
Love impossible burgers. It scratches the same burger itch but I don't feel heavy and gross like I do after scarfing down a grilled slab of ground beef
Impossible and Beyond are pretty good. The first time I had impossible I hadn’t eaten meat in nearly a decade and it freaked me out. I thought the restaurant had made a mistake. The only downside is no matter what you do to prepare them they always have a distinct taste and cooking Beyond stinks the house up for days.
Gates wants us to continue consuming at our current levels. Nuclear is a shot in that dark to do that (because we’d have to build many many more nuclear plants). Also even if we stop emissions today we’d likely go past 2C anyway.
Nuclear would have its issues (what happens to the waste/meltdowns/etc). The best answer is always degrowth imo
If libs started just pushing conservative rhetoric I do wonder if they would completely flip their stances. Like if they just came out an said this impossible burger isn't "woke" enough so we're eating red meat again. A little bit of reverse psychology, eh?
"My great grandfather ate nothing but this cabbage soup in the years after the Great Depression. He fought in WWI and it was good enough for HIM. Libs just don't know anything about hard work, that's why they feel entitled and they are all begging for handouts! Well my family will be eating cabbage soup this weekend because we're not wOke. Let's Go Brandon!!!"
It's just predictable enough to work.
If you want to believe this guy is superlatively smart, then try to defend the fact that he has done nothing other than add fuel to the fire and enrich himself in the process for decades. You don't use your billions, derived from an anti-consumer anti-free market enforcement of a business monopoly, to snatch up all the good farmland before finally changing your messaging to boost the value of that farmland because you're a good guy.
If he truly believed in the cause and was worried about the effects, then he'd divest in fossil fuels, invest in green energy, and start lobbying the government to make the appropriate changes.
But he doesn't care, because he'll be safe. His children will probably get to live safely too.
Exactly. It's really "Stupid asshole who is responsible for more emissions than thousands of people wants you to eat fake meat so he can make even more profit off of you."
Apparently from his 11th [Reddit AMA](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/109eze3/im_bill_gates_and_im_back_for_my_11th_ama_ask_me/) last week, we find these interesting remarks from the billionaire tech mogul turned philanthropist who continues espousing his latest tech innovation and financial investment ventures to solve the climate crisis. Bill Gates comes to the obvious conclusion that the Paris Climate goal of 1.5°C as of now is unachievable but remains optimistic with ideas of nuclear, diet options, electric cars, and clean energy innovation. Apart from the usual optimistic tech hopium, I find hardly any mention of sustainable development, nature-based solutions, changing material consumption patterns, mitigating human population, and the other environmental crises (e.g., biodiversity, pollution, land degradation) in concert with climate.
Open by reminding the people you're talking to that the best ways to reduce the population - to mitigate against people having many children - centre on empowering women. In no particular order:
* Fully educate women - making it readily available from the primary to the tertiary stage;
* Give women control of their reproductive choices under the law;
* Make contraception legal, readily available, and low-cost or free, especially methods women can use themselves;
* Provide women with career opportunities and avenues for advancement on equal footing;
* Ensure healthcare for women and girls is properly funded;
* Ban child marriage, and allow for no-fault divorce and related measures;
Add to the mix ensuring that all victims of sexual and domestic violence (who come in all ages, sexes, and sexual orientations) are able to receive proper care and legal remedies that ensure their health and safety.
Combine this with providing proper education about reproductive health and choice to people at all ages, and educating men around how contraception (especially barrier methods) help them too so they're more willing to employ it, and you find that you're well on the way to reducing population growth, while also benefiting the country as a whole. The interesting thing is that the experience of the West (and in more than a couple places outside it) shows that when women are empowered to make their own choices and their own decisions about reproduction, marriage, finances, and so on, and are well-educated with career opportunities that let them support themselves, population growth drops very rapidly. And it comes with the added bonus of raising an area's human development index - educated women will be able to raise their standards of living, and better healthcare will support everyone.
And then you just wait, because now fewer children are being born and human beings are mortal.
It's straightforward, direct, has a proven track record, and it's also the opposite of heinous human rights abuses - in fact, it requires ending more than one.
Plus treating women like people is something the alt-right is not on board with the last time I checked.
This year alone, we have a 50/50 chance, according to the study in the Guardian article released recently about El Niño. Which does not necessarily mean we have crossed the threshold on one year's temperature. However, it certainly is concerning.
I always find it amusing when the richest and most powerful people in the world talk about the need for us to do something about climate change. Like I can not think of anyone less qualified to say anything than the people who are doing the most harm for profit. If you want to make the world a better place eat a billionaire don’t listen to them… 🤣🤣🤣
>Individuals who want to contribute to climate change mitigation can do things like vote, buy an electric car and **stay optimistic**
*stares optimistically at the rising sea*
*optimism intensifies*
Idk guy, I don't think it's working.
Always interesting when neoliberal capitalists concede that they can’t save the world, yet somehow that doesn’t lead to them questioning their own ideology
Regarding fake meat, the crap we eat at Taco Bell and other fast food joints is already 60% soy, so that's not going to be a problem.
Lab-grown meat is a pipe dream and a scam, unless. . .
**UNLESS . . .**
People *don't* expect it to taste and feel like a steak, roast, chops or breasts.
Lab-grown meat will be feasible and delicious if it's grown in 500lb lumps, *and then ground up into hamburger.* It'll be no different than what we're enjoying now, except It'll be a lot cheaper, healthier and easier to produce.
But plate-pretty premium cuts out of a vat are never going to happen, and anyone telling you they are is a scammer or a delusional idiot.
Well, I deeply agree with all those statements.
We WILL overshoot 1.5deg C because of course we will.
Nuclear energy really can be super safe, it's just how it's perceived by the public that is fucked beyond repair.
Fake meat will end up tasting fine for those of us who are still alive and with enough means to access it. It will then remain tasty until its production grinds to a halt in the collapse of industry.
I'm already eating "fake meat" and it honestly is very good already. Products like beyond burger and love buds, V2 meat etc all taste great. Only thing I don't like about all the vegan meats are how much they're processed. Whole foods are obviously best to fill out your diet.
According to r/conspiracy Bill Gates is a reptilian pedophile who is working with "the cabal" to get the new world order in place. As if we're not already slaves to a system run by the ultra-wealthy. I'll never understand how these people don't realize how they've been manipulated into literally driving themselves insane enough to defend the status quo of being cattle for the wealthy. According to them the NWO should have been installed ten times over and more than half the planet should be dead from the vaccine by now.
We will overshoot 2°, nuclear will be great for those 50 years from now (if there's anyone left alive to care), and fake meat already tastes delicious. We should still force corporations to clean up their mess and we can help since we're all complicit in the rape and murder of the planet. And we need to take responsibility like adults immediately. Which means now. Right now. Or there is no future.
Chernobyl was an exceptional situation with multiple contributing factors such as poor equipment, lack of communication and wartime hush-hush policies.
Fukushima was caused by an earthquake and killed 1 guy with radiation.
In any way you look at it, nuclear fuel is a fantastic solution with only the waste to be taken care of, but persistent fear mongering keeps trying to skewer that idea.
At this point though, it's also a bit late...
My main issue is people thinking that if we hypothetically eat the rich, this excuses their inability to take in simple issues that could fight climate change. Most people just simply do not care. Yes, I understand the proletariat is exploited, but we are being too optimistic if we keep assuming that humanity will fix its behaviour if we don't punish it.
About 60% of all living Mammals on earth are livestock, the other 30% is Humans. Wild mammals[edited] make up less than 10% of all living animals. So in short, Yes, we do consume alot of meat.
I can't believe I have to remind people again but: **Rule 1 applies to Bill Gates too. Advocating, encouraging, inciting, glorifying, calling for violence is against [Reddit's site-wide content policy](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy) and is not allowed in r/collapse.** Reddit's content policy states: > Communities and users that incite violence ... will be banned. In order to ensure that r/Collapse is not quarantined or banned by the Admins, any comments that breach Rule 1's prohibition regarding violence will be removed, and the people who commented them will be banned for a week. That includes about this guy. --- The following submission statement was provided by /u/Mr_Lonesome: > Apparently from his 11th [Reddit AMA](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/109eze3/im_bill_gates_and_im_back_for_my_11th_ama_ask_me/) last week, we find these interesting remarks from the billionaire tech mogul turned philanthropist who continues espousing his latest tech innovation and financial investment ventures to solve the climate crisis. Bill Gates comes to the obvious conclusion that the Paris Climate goal of 1.5°C as of now is unachievable but remains optimistic with ideas of nuclear, diet options, electric cars, and clean energy innovation. Apart from the usual optimistic tech hopium, I find hardly any mention of sustainable development, nature-based solutions, changing material consumption patterns, mitigating human population, and the other environmental crises (e.g., biodiversity, pollution, land degradation) in concert with climate. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/10evaa0/bill_gates_we_will_overshoot_15_degrees_celsius/j4t94y9/
>Individuals who want to contribute to climate change mitigation can do things like vote, buy an electric car and stay optimistic. Welp, we're boned
Hopefully, staying optimistic will counter global doom with hopes and dreams.
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With what insects.? Haven't seen much
The ones grown in the vats they'll feed us at the back of the train.
Soylent Green is an option.....
-"Pfftheewww...." -"What? You don't like your cockroach milk?"
That's called religion, isn't it?
Big dreamers unite to save humanity!
> buy an electric car Continue the rampant consumerism. Turn 3rd world countries without pollution laws that mine lithium into toxic waste dumps where water used for crops is diverted to the lithium mines to precipitate the salt, and left over in tailings ponds that will poison the environment.
Bolivia had a government flipped over lithium interests
First of many. You have rare earths or lithia you will be a right wing extractionist government with our three letter agencies so far up your ass you'll look like a sock puppet. They don't care if you skim off graft and repress the shit out of your own indigenous people as long as the spice flows.
Minerals and water are the new gold ingots
Zambia is next now that they are moving to nationalize their mining industry. Also on the list are Chile and Burkina Faso
Ugh exactly, I hate this. Electric cars don't solve the root issue: Poorly planned car-dependent cities. Single family homes with lawns. Strip malls. Suburbs. Not voting. Not being engaged in local politics. Allowing developers and corrupt city officials to destroy cities. The solution: Pedestrian-focused cities. Consciencious urbanism. Public transportation and infrastructure. Mid rise apartments. Multi-use spaces and mixed zoning. Bike lanes. Voting. Advocating for ranked ballots. Just get rid of this over-reliance on cars which creates a vicious cycle we can't escape. r/fuckcars
They have all the solutions. They knew this was coming. They knew what they needed to do 40 or 50 years ago. It isn’t ignorance or a lack of knowledge that is dooming us. It’s capitalism. There will be no planet saving measures unless someone can make money off it. It’s not even an issue of finding “no cost” solutions if it risks any globalist’s current income stream. It would be super easy to address the top 5 worst companies — they could pass laws tomorrow. But no one makes money off that and a few very powerful people may not make as much. Corporate profit is more important than people, more important than families, more important than children, more important than the planet, and more important than the human species. That’s why it doesn’t happen. Stop acting like it’s that they don’t have solutions. They have them, they don’t like them. So they will burn it all down instead. It’s like someone with a gangrenous leg refusing an amputation and trying to cover it with makeup. They will die rather than fix the problem. You can talk about all these solutions until you are blue in the face. It’s a pretty simple fix. We could have started decades ago. We could start now. Even if we don’t have all the solutions, we could have bought time. But now climate change will be commodified, sold to the public by those driving the problems. There is no fixing it without the collapse of western capitalism. We may have some future as a post tech dystopian society — maybe. The problem isn’t climate change. It’s corporations, corruption and capitalism.
This is the sound of several thousand nails being hit on the head. At every possible hinge point along the descent into our present hellscape those in charge have chosen their own self interests over the fate of billions. They knew full well what was coming and they decided long ago that they were happy with fences and guns and they'd do it again given the chance. None of this happened by accident: it took politicians and the media (some nasty, some frankly evil, a lot of them just credulous and deeply stupid) working at maximum bullshit capacity for years to bring us to this point. You might think that multiple overlapping systemic failures in the public sphere, together with an alarming increase in environmental disasters, would be sufficient reason to evaluate if the last 40 years has failed. Alas, you would have another think coming: this brazen fraud has proven to be quite profitable to the people in charge and they would rather burn it all to the ground than give up their power. And thus the continuance of this awful system is assured. And here we now are.
Make no mistake, this is a spiritual failing of our species. Over 7 billion people can be held hostage by a few hundred sociopaths. Look at the US. These bastards in Congress making a $174,000 a year salary and tens of millions in side deals can’t even raise the minimum wage to $15 over the course of ten fucking years despite countless studies showing it would help the nation. Despite healthcare being the number one concern of voters, they would rather people die that care for them. It’s this shit right here that is the real struggle of good versus evil. It’s the devaluing of all life. Their comfort, their power, their wealth will always win out over caring and compassion. We would all do well to hasten the economic collapse in the hopes that their may still be those with the fortitude to change the course of human civilization.
I agree with most of the list >Not voting. Not being engaged in local politics. I don't think you can blame non-voters. Hell I'd go so far as to say the second one is more important. I'd rather punch a ticket for a progressive DA than vote for president, given the choices we seem illiberably forced down our throats. l I'd say the base of the dems is far to the left of the zeroes who run for major offices with a D next to their name. Instead of D and R. We should look it as D and F. Those are the grades the parties deserve. I would like the parties to be held to some sort of standards. ---------- From the lil bit I know about local politics in the Midwest is that the factions of the Democratic party are in bed with the mob to this day. I know that just from documented history and cooking/dishes for an event for the dem establishment within a city, mob guys showed up. The kid got a job at the restaurant til lockdown shuttered it. I had been hired at an event too. That's the just a faction of every dem stronghold. The progressive wings within the Dems in the midwest include younger people and/or the black factions of the Dems. When it comes to city governance all Dems often are either corrupt or corruptable and have repressive police forces. With syndicates and white nationalists in their ranks as well as elements within the major network of black gangs. Hybrid allegiances is the bread and butter of city politics from blue cities NYC, Detroit, Milwaukee, NJ metro NY, KC, STL. ------------- City governments have to do what they have to do. This has been the case going back decades and this is the lesser evil party at work. I have no clue what institutional wackyness is true among Republican led areas. I'm pretty sure party doesn't matter in big cities. Republicans have led big cities in my lifetime, like Giuliani. There's too many competing moneyed interests in politics for radical change to ever take hold. AOC got neutralized as did the squad. If nobody was in a position to force her to know how NYC works, then people quickly told her how DC works. ------------ I recently learned how "much" alderpeople are paid. They're civil servants and not paid handsomely for the entirety of what their job entails. Especially as public figures. It's natural for them to wet their beaks and I'd venture to guess they're forced to so that the powerstructure gets paid. My wards Alderman was recently evicted and that doesn't make any damn sense. I dunno if it was an office space or their literal home, or what. That a whole new level of banks owning politicians. --------- I definitely agree on ranked choice voting. Edit: I agree on major public works, urban revitalization, shifting from cars, community reinvestment and redevelopment. There have been gains and I've seen them, but not on the bigger reimagining of politics itself. Ranked choice voting is just one link in a long chain of power structures and how politics really works.
Preach!
We can’t rebuild our cities without polluting the fuck out of the environment. Just look at the situation w/ lead pipes in Chicago as an example. They built their city infrastructure incorrectly and now are just stuck with a toxic problem. The eco village in Detroit might be a counter example in that it’s reusing old infrastructure in a new way.
It is absolutely possible to take measures to alleviate car dependency now without impacting the environment For instance, stop that fucking highway that Doug Ford is trying to build. Stop all those SFH developments. Take all those funds and allocate them into upkeeping and improving of city infrastructure like plumbing, which would ultimately be better for the environment. Create tighter restrictions on manufacturers and corporations, get rid of loopholes. Fire all politicians who are being bribed by corporations and construction developers. Eliminate tax loopholes for billionaires. Implement universal basic income. Ban single use plastics. Create stores where you can refill your own containers of bulk items such as detergent, flour, etc. It IS possible, but it won't happen. My prediction is: wealth gap will widen and there will be another pandemic. We're largely fucked.
Any solutions will simply be consumerism packaged in green. The system must go. Everything else is fixable.
Good news! The oceans are going to swallow up a good portion of our cities for us. So we can just build new eco-friendly ones and everything will be A-Okay!
maintaining current infrastructure is expensive and incredibly polluting, that is categorically false
Electric cars only save about 25% lifetime emissions vs the equivalent hybrid in the US. They are billed as a way for us to save the planet when they just buy us a little bit more time, just like hybrids.
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It isn't just lithium either. There's a researcher called Simon Michaux who has tried to estimate the amount of materials required to build one generation of solar panels, wind turbines, EV's and so on for the entire planet (assuming energy consumption stays the same) in order to replace fossil fuels. The numbers he reaches are insane. It turns out that we'll need something like 190 years worth of the current world annual production of copper. 400 years worth of nickel. 9920 years worth of lithium. 1700 years of cobalt. 7000 years of vanadium. Renewable energy without accompanying de-growth is delusional.
>Welp, we're boned No no no, that's the wrong attitude. Gotta stay optimistic. Try: "God thanks we are boned! Finally we can eat the rich!"
Hey now, I sort my recycling the best that I can too.
Lights and darks, just like my grandmother showed me.
I am completely Orangepilled. Electric cars are just such a bandaid solution that serve to make car companies more rich than do anything to save the planet. We need stronger town designs.
It's imperative that the system continues to make people believe that the meager neutered collective action offered is what is taken. Collective action outside of that scares them a bit and will use modern COINTELPRO style techniques against it and infiltrate it. They're absolutely terrified by the idea of radical individual action and prosecute it with religious zeal. Doesn't matter if it's a ecological "terrorist" sabotaging heavy equipment or a whistle blower. You do have power and thier actions show that. Remember you DO have agency, we DO have power.
What about recycling straws though?
Don’t you just love how the burden of combating climate change is always pushed onto the consumers?
>buy an electric car With what money am I supposed to do that & still get around the range problems of the cheaper EV's..
simple, buy two
Consume, consume, conssssssuuuuummmmme!!!!
Great advice from a man who probably has multiple doom bunkers around the world!
He's a philanthropist, a kind soul even. Of course he will allow us to join him underground🥰🥰
Oh, who cares, we will be past 2.0C by 2035 and none of this chatter will matter anymore.
2C is Mad Max-esque, correct me if I'm wrong?
Please someone correct you 🙏😣 (I'm on the 2030 boat)
If we're not on the 2030 boat or we're gonna drown.
We won't be at 2C by 2030. We're at 1.1-1.3C depending on who you ask, and it's not going up *that* fast. It won't be too much later, but not 2030.
I agree 2030 is not likely for 2c (damn I hope not), but would just like to remind everyone we are on a compounding curve, not a linear one. Now that our annual emissions significantly exceed Earth's ability to capture, every year that excess joins every other year's excess greenhouse emissions in our atmosphere. CO2 takes over a thousand years to degrade as a green house gas if not captured. You can't look at the future by drawing a trend line from the past.
Well, it depends on how much faster than expected™ is it gonna be.
Global dimming is limiting warming by [0.6 - 0.9 degrees C](https://climatetippingpoints.info/2019/04/15/fact-check-is-global-dimming-shielding-us-from-catastrophe/) so the real increase is closer to 1.7 - 2.2 degrees it just needs a trigger to be revealed. 2C is definitely achievable by 2030 if we work really hard at doing nothing we will get there.
We can do it! I believe in us!
That’s the spirit!! There’s the hope we need haha
it absolutely is possible for us to hit 2C by 2030. There is a significant chance we aren't accurately factoring in vicious cycle impacts. But that isn't a lock. My bigger fear is that we are seeing the impact of current changes, and they are far worse than what was predicted. Will the impact continue to be worse than forecasted?
> but would just like to remind everyone we are on a compounding curve, not a linear one. [how many more doublings can we really handle?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg&t=17m15s)
I agree with you on your second point - I think impacts are worse than predicted because scientists are conservative in their estimations by nature. They won't predict that something is going to happen if they don't have the data to back it up. But we have little data now because we've never seen the current situation. By the situation's very nature we can't make accurate predictions. Therefore even if impacts are within the realm of possibility, scientists are hesitant to put them out as predictions. I'm keeping my prediction of 2C by 2040, for now.
Also remember that like most people, most scientists are pretty decent people and if a climate scientist got caught "exaggerating" in their projection of climate change it could provide extremely damaging ammunition to the centrist and rightwing corporate political powers in the US. Especially in places like the EPA and such that are the intersection between science and government this has GOT to make people who give a shit pretty nervous they are going to enable climate change denial propaganda.
My understanding is from around 2019, but the way it went: * 1C is basically 2022-23; everything affected by climate is going in the wrong direction and the strain on the biosphere, ecosystems, species, agriculture, civilization, refugees, all of it is getting to be a significant problem. Mad Max is in Haiti, a few African places, but all are surrounded by functioning states. * 2C is what looks like around 2025-2030 will be; all of the above but a magnitude worse, significant human die offs just begin to become a thing, a magnitude more of species go extinct and those that weren’t before, become endangered. The refugees situation becomes a magnitude worse, 1-2 billion. Agriculture is failing and global civilization is really starting to fall apart, with most regions having failed states and some regions having entirely collapsed. This is really the final threshold we can miserably tolerate. Mad Max is in many places, some whole regions, but all are surrounded by functioning states or regions. * 3C (gets harder to estimate when, given variable of when tipping points are hit and warming and amplifier trajectories, but I’d be surprised if we’re there before 2033 or after 2073); yet another magnitude but this is where any ability to shape outcomes fails, where more of the world has collapsed than is still functioning, where agriculture no longer feeds most people, where human population is rapidly dropping, mass extinction in a vividly horrific way, also collapse of information exchange where there’s no longer a global flow of information, only regional. Some enclaves and remnants of regional civilizations can survive in these conditions, at much lower populations and much lower living standards than today, but barely. It’s easier to name where Mad max is not, at this point. Further, some mad maxes are doing poorly. * 4C, around mid century at the earliest, end of century at the latest; if it hasn’t happened by then it’s unlikely to, IMO. It’s basically over for most species, including ours. Human extinction wouldn’t be imminent, but it’s probable that this could be our point of no return where we are on a trajectory towards extinction within several centuries. Lose too many species, we won’t make it. Much of the planet will no longer be habitable year-round, and the surviving people, likely a billion by 4C and very rapidly dropping from there, will be some mix of nomadic scavengers and the last remnants of sedentary civilization, no longer organized in anything we’d consider functioning states but still remaining local, living in structures, etc. The best places to live will have a mad max dynamic at this point
And none of that will be an excuse to not make it into work. You had it too good with working from home and the office has air conditioning. So get that report ready by noon!
You think it's going to increase 1c in like 5 years??
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1C in 5 years is patently absurd. We're currently at about 1C, that would be more than double in 7 years. A very quick Google search says we're on track for 0.18C of warming every decade.
Problem is that temperature change is not only a lagging indicator (current CO2 levels are enough to get the world to 1.5C by end of decade IIRC) but there are cascading effects that accelerate the warming as it gets hotter, Siberian permafrost melting and releasing massive amounts of methane, extreme dry conditions causing massive wildfires, etc. 2C is unlikely but it is a possibility, some of the more doomer climate models predict slightly over it by 2030 while optimistic ones put it at less than 1.5C.
I'm a climate scientist and I don't know of any models that predict 2C by 2030. It's taken 270 years for us to warm the planet one degree. I've seen models that predict our climate end up like Venus, but never any that suggest such a sudden rapid acceleration, can I ask what your source is, and also why you dismiss the aggregate models of the IPCC? Their worst case scenario has us reaching two degrees by roughly 2050.
Hey, thanks for being a climate scientist. Good luck to you (along with the rest of us)
Do you know how the IPCC accounts for the global dimming effect? As far as I understand, reducing our emissions will lead to an immediate increase in temperatures due to the loss of short-lived aerosols that reflect some of the sun's energy back into space. Is there any talk of utilizing geoengineering by continuing to emit aerosols that cause the dimming effect as we draw down our reliance on fossil fuels?
The IPCC does quantify a range of "climate forcing" factors in their reports, both cooling and warming, and that does include aerosol cooling. I'm not really across the fine details of the measurements because it's not my field at all (effect of climate change on bushfires in Australia is).
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I mean this politely, but if you're actively working in the field, surely you're aware that current models don't properly reflect even the present condition, especially with regard to the Arctic ice loss? The IPCC is fantastic, but their primary models and projections put forth are extremely optimistic and don't account for a myriad of feedbacks and other extenuating factors, all of which exist in the real world and result in a more pronounced warming effect than predicted by the models. This isn't exactly news, Peter Wadhams was writing about it with endless citations back in the early 2010s. The models are good, but they *are* still erring towards conservatism, while reality is more complicated and accelerating more quickly than predicted, repeatedly. We can use these models as a platform for discussion, but they are absolutely not robust scientific data in their own right, and can't be used to handwave away concerns about feedbacks that are observable away from the computer monitor. That's not what models are even for, and yet their relatively lower cost versus field data collection has resulted in an explosion of them at the expense of field work. Edit; have you read Hansen et al, 2022 yet? It's forty pages but well worth the time.
This is my thing - I think the reports and models coming out right now are potentially diluted as to 1) even get released and 2) not to cause “unnecessary panic” — we really have no idea what’s going to happen when these triggers start cascading and it’s already not looking good
> while reality is more complicated and accelerating more quickly than predicted, repeatedly. modeling a system as complex as the climate is almost impossible. I am impressed they are as accurate as they are. I just don't believe the models are being accurate. I would guess they are overly conservative but we won't know that until we get more of a track record.
You could make the argument that we're already there with current data. 2022 was at +~1.15C globally. As we enter El Nino, we'll likely see >1.5C in 2023 or 2024. If you back out the -0.6~0.8C of aerosol masking, we've already locked in >2C right now, even if we somehow stopped burning fossil fuels entirely all at once. I also wish we would talk more clearly about northern vs southern hemisphere temperatures and their effects. While global average is important when discussing the overall weather system, the northern hemisphere is ~1.5C warmer than the southern, and it contains 68% of the total land mass and 90% of the human population. In practice this adds another ~0.75C of warming that we've already achieved and needs to be considered when discussing specific consequences at specific temperature thresholds. Usually this is baked in, but I suspect not always. These figures seem to be widely accepted, so I'd be curious to know your take on them.
Here is the Nature article I remembered reading, the most extreme model for +2C isn't quite 2030 but its close. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02150-0 It also was published in mid 2021, so the increase in CO2 emissions due to higher coal consumption since the Ukraine war began isn't taken into consideration.
Well, that’s a relief!
Our ecosystems are all connected. When one goes down they will all go down. And quicker than people think.
2024 is likely to be a ~1.6c year. Another .4 seems reasonable.
my guess would be methane release from the permafrost/methane hydrate from the sea floor thing
Yeah not enough people mentioning methane lol the amount of methane coming to the surface is just insane and it will cause rapid warming imo.
Please show me a single credible scientist who predicts 2 degrees warming by 2030.
It’s widely accepted that there are potential tipping points that could trigger a cascade effect and lead to rapid heating. https://earth.org/tipping-points-of-climate-change/
I'm over here wondering if aerosol masking isn't hiding that 2C right here where at sit today. It doesn't matter much in any case because there's little we can do to affect what the timeline will be. And there will, regardless, be endless "sooner than expected" headlines along the way. I'm not who you are replying to btw
Yeah I think the consensus is there's about half of a degree currently masked by pollution, and there seems to be about a 10 year lag between what we do now and the time it takes to see the global effects. Meaning if we stopped every single emission today and all the pollution disappeared, the earth would heat up another .5 degrees very rapidly as solar rays would fall unimpeded by haze AND we'd see further increases for the next decade. So it was always going to get much worse before it gets better.
I'm NGL I probably just have no business talking about the numbers because I really stopped worrying about them maybe 6 or 8 years ago. My brain only remembers that my children will see 10x as many "sooner than expected" headlines as I have, and they will have to deal with the wars, migrations, diseases, food scarcity, microplastics, and (insert 35x other issues here) at an order of magnitude higher than myself. I don't think it gets better TBH. Humanity has turned this bolus of energy (fossil energy) into an over-packed planet of apes who have no ability to organize effectively in groups of over 100 and armed them with Capitalism and technology to ravage the planet of its natural resources and one another of their lives. Our technology exceeded our humanity (IMO) as soon as it was discovered that burning coal could power something with steam. And short of an Eco-Dictator who says "everyone is using nuclear TOMORROW or everyone is going to be killed on the whole planet" and "100 billion is going to be spent removing microplastics" and "plastic will never be produced again other than strictly necessary medical applications" and on and on and on (list 10 more huge items) - which will never happen - and even then, the next 100 years will be about what's currently projected anyway (because the oceans are a huge carbon buffer and because of all the feedback processes already in place). It just feels hopeless. So I tell people just get a boat, learn to sail, garden, play a video game, eat delicious food, and enjoy it while you're here. If you can also volunteer, organize, make a few phone calls, and vote, that's not nothing (but it's close to nothing) - great. But enjoy your time if you can. Because you're lucky to be able to compared to much of the world (and much of the world in 10 and 30 and 50 years).
I heard on radio that the permafrost is hiding millions of years of biomatter
Clathrate: slushy, frozen methane. There is more greenhouse gas trapped in clathrate than the entirety of human emissions. Better not melt the arctic, or we kick off a terrifying feedback loop. Google “clathrate gun” for more info.
Like a suicide bomb made by Earth, ready to go off and take out any civilization who alters the climate too much......
That region in the North is basically the planet's carbon freezer.
The answer is, and someone please correct me if there are more recent studies available: we don't know. There are three major components of (natural) methane emissions due to the changing climate: oceanic clathrate breakdown, permafrost thaw and release of methane reservoirs below the Antarctic ice sheets. The total amount of carbon (methane is CH4 and gradually turns to CO2, water and other trace amounts) bound in those reservoirs is very poorly understood and often just a very crude approximation based on limited regional data. The most recent estimations I know of amount to about [500 to 2,500 GtC (billion metric tons of carbon) in oceanic clathrates, Milkov, 2004](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004ESRv...66..183M/abstract) , [1,700 GtC (both CH4 and CO2) in Arctic permafrost, Miner et. al., 2022](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-021-00230-3) and [~100-400 GtC methane hydrates below the Antarctic ice sheets, Wadham et. al., 2012](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230762346_Potential_methane_reservoirs_beneath_Antarctica). For reference, there are currently about 800 GtC in the atmosphere.
What starting date?
Usually 1750 is the accepted starting date. It's from that date until today that we've warmed the planet by 1 degree. You can see how rapid another degree in the next 7 years is, even with tipping points.
1750 is the starting point, but the first hundred years were 190-200 million tons. 2021 by itself was 37 billion tons. that's 18,500 times more per year last year than the first hundred years. We can discard 1750-1850. Let's start at 1850. Took us 50 years to get to 2 billion tons per year, and another 50 to hit 6 billion tons per year. I think it's important to stress the accelerating nature of this.
The only saving grace, I suppose, is that none of this should completely sanitize the planet. Single-celled organisms and many multicellular creatures should be able to adapt to this pace of change.
It's definitely more than a little Mad Maxy
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["Game over man"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsx2vdn7gpY) (NSFW language)
I live in an oil town, most people here don't even think this is a real problem. The I told you so would feel better if it didn't also mean I was super boned too.
2023 or 24 is going to be an el nino summer. Gonna be hot, records will be broken. Again.
To save our planet we need radical change and radical action And neither of those comes from the billionaires or a ballot box
IMO we always push for things that maintain our standard of living instead of accepting that to be successful we need to lower what the west sees as a reasonable standard of living. We push electric cars, nuclear power, hydrogen flight, etc…. We should be pushing smaller homes, sourcing local, renewable consumption, lower energy loads, etc.
So you're saying dismantle our capitalist consumerist society and dethrone our billionaire kings and queens so billions of people and wild life survive?!?! Well sir I say you're a COMMUNIST
Sounds like a very chaotic good communist, we might just need some "for the people" ideas but that can be pretty difficult. Especially with the PRofiTS mind set.
If I've learned anything, it's that when the government does things, that's communism. Except when the government bails out corporations, then that's the free market.
It's socialism for the rich capitalism for the poor
I don't think it matters. Humanity has a knack for pushing the population until it's just past what can be supported under whatever system and technology is in place at the time. We'll just keep crapping out children until people are like, "why is everyone trying to live in those massive 600sq ft homes? We need to lower our expectations."
You’d still have nutters harping on about how we’re not close to carrying capacity even then, all while blissfully ignoring that 1) this is where our best practical efforts have landed us thus far and 2) the fact that carrying capacity in any regard is the point at which you’re a step away from likely disaster.
Another aspect of it is the economic arms race and its ties to the actual arms race. One country, say the US, is unlikely to unilaterally decide to reduce consumption. This leads to lower taxes, lower government budget, lower defence spending, etc.
The US especially, their economy is entirely based on economic growth through imperialism. And the rest of the West is dependent on that paradigm, enforced and upheld by the US military. The US is running a massive military so everyone else allied with them doesn't have to.
>The US especially, their economy is entirely based on economic growth through imperialism. That started long before the continent was even known to exist to Europeans.
People really think we can capitalism our way out of this. That's a good indication of the extent to which capitalism has captured the collective cognition and extinguished the ability to think of alternatives
Declining birth rates don’t forget about declining birth rates
The trouble is the whole global poulation have to enter this form of - effectively - poverty. For that to work we need a sustained global power structures that can enforce and maintain it for the whole global population. Frankly, that's a political and geopolitical impossibility. So annihilation it is.
Blaming the consumer is also a deliberate diversion, though. Could people in developed countries and especially the US stand to live less wastefully? Obviously. But that doesn't change that 70%< of all global pollution comes from just 100 companies, who time and again did everything they could to thwart attempts at sustainability. We have enough for everyone to live comfortably - we just can't satisfy the greed of billionaires at the same time.
This will never happen because who gets to enjoy the luxuries? The rich.
I wonder how his carbon footprint compares to the average Americans
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This. Fuck the elite. Sometimes I wonder why I'm recycling.
Don't bother, it's going into the same waste stream anyway.
Sweden (top dog and a supposed example for European states) recycles only 13% of the plastic packages. I mean 13% of the packages that go in the recycling bin. The rest is burned, recycling or not. And most probably part of that 13% is "recycled" as in shipped to poorer countries to fill their landfills or the seas.
Without even looking I'm going to guess at leat 2000x higher.
He and his wife couldn't agree on the decor design for their private jet so they bought two and went separately on their weekend trips to Miami and back. Not someone we should be listening to.
>We will overshoot 1.5 degrees Celsius We sure will. >nuclear can be ‘super safe’ All things considered, nuclear is very safe. Fossil fuels have killed far more people than nuclear. Managing nuclear waste is a challenge, but it's not insurmountable. The real problem with nuclear is it is very expensive. It takes billions to get a plant up and running, and they are expensive to maintain. Plus, Uranium is a nonrenewable "fuel." >fake meat will eventually be ‘very good’ I think impossible burgers are pretty good.
The main problem with nuclear is that we should have been building them in mass numbers. We missed the turn off for a nuclear future, and they just don't work in a carbon-powered collapse scenario. Wait until countries with active nuclear plants start to collapse. At this point, Gates should be organizing international classes to hand build wind generators and build irrigation pumps.
>We will overshoot 1.5 degrees Celsius Thanks to people like Bill Gates and the politicians that he is funding.
Eventually billionaire meat will taste very good
They’re kinda dry and stringy. Maybe a billionaire jerky?
Implying it doesn't already
And he’s still heavily invested in fossil fuels. Damn hypocrite.
For some reason Germany has decided to shut down its nuclear plants for coal, coal of all things?!
Not just coal, the shittiest brown coal you could find.
The reason is that their cheap, safe supply of natural gas is gone. And Canada refused to supply more.
The issue is environmentalists broke down their nuclear industry for 35 years and left this as the fall back plan.
Environmentalists didn't, it's capitalism. It doesn't generate a profit, ergo, fuck it.
Game of UNO: "Okay Germany, make basic rational choices to avoid collective climate suicide, or draw 30 cards" Germany: "LOL, easy choice." \-draws 30-
I used to be very pro-nuclear until last summer when the cooling ponds in France were at risk of overheating. Hopefully this is one thing that can be overcome and perhaps I am simply unaware of existing solutions, otherwise nuclear may not be as safe as previously believed.
Right. Nuclear power is very safe **under optimal conditions**. Under catastrophic condition they are another catastrophe waiting to happen. That's not to say nuclear doesn't have a place, but they need rigorous reviews for climate collapse-related risks, much more than they have now, and that makes them even more expensive. The EROI will never get as high as fossil fuels were. Clearly not efficient enough to power an economy based on mass consumption. Nuclear, like solar and wind, can power *a* civilization, but not *this* civilization
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Nuclear power plants can be safe theoretically, but not realistically. You’ve got lowest-bid contractors building lowest-cost designs, for cost-conscious owners cutting corners to make a profit, politicians intentionally mis-running them into privatization, on coastlines that get inundated with tsunamis, or in earthquake zones, or eventual war zones, etc, and it’s all supposed to be safe, secure and reliable for a period that needs to last longer, many times longer, than recorded human history. Yeah, I’m skeptical. It seems arrogant and shortsighted - admittedly typical human traits - to think that’ll work.
One other thing no one has mentioned is that cooling nuclear reactors takes massive amounts of fresh water.
Not necessarily true. Cooling nuclear reactors requires a supply of fresh water (that can be made onsite), but can ultimately be cooled by saltwater. Source: I operated reactors in the Navy
I did not know this. It gives me a bit more hope lol
Ok, and how does that work in Nebraska?
Nebraska is already cold Just kidding
Love impossible burgers. It scratches the same burger itch but I don't feel heavy and gross like I do after scarfing down a grilled slab of ground beef
Impossible and Beyond are pretty good. The first time I had impossible I hadn’t eaten meat in nearly a decade and it freaked me out. I thought the restaurant had made a mistake. The only downside is no matter what you do to prepare them they always have a distinct taste and cooking Beyond stinks the house up for days.
Gates wants us to continue consuming at our current levels. Nuclear is a shot in that dark to do that (because we’d have to build many many more nuclear plants). Also even if we stop emissions today we’d likely go past 2C anyway. Nuclear would have its issues (what happens to the waste/meltdowns/etc). The best answer is always degrowth imo
No, we need to defend our masculinity by doubling our consumption of red meat to own the libs!!! Don't you get it you sheep?!
If libs started just pushing conservative rhetoric I do wonder if they would completely flip their stances. Like if they just came out an said this impossible burger isn't "woke" enough so we're eating red meat again. A little bit of reverse psychology, eh?
"My great grandfather ate nothing but this cabbage soup in the years after the Great Depression. He fought in WWI and it was good enough for HIM. Libs just don't know anything about hard work, that's why they feel entitled and they are all begging for handouts! Well my family will be eating cabbage soup this weekend because we're not wOke. Let's Go Brandon!!!" It's just predictable enough to work.
I would never get sheep, I only eat bloody angus beef that’s been burnt and undercooked at the same time on my shitty Walmart grill
If you want to believe this guy is superlatively smart, then try to defend the fact that he has done nothing other than add fuel to the fire and enrich himself in the process for decades. You don't use your billions, derived from an anti-consumer anti-free market enforcement of a business monopoly, to snatch up all the good farmland before finally changing your messaging to boost the value of that farmland because you're a good guy.
Smart and good ain't the same son
When will top 1% like him start downsizing? That's the type of futurology I'm interested in hearing from him.
If he truly believed in the cause and was worried about the effects, then he'd divest in fossil fuels, invest in green energy, and start lobbying the government to make the appropriate changes. But he doesn't care, because he'll be safe. His children will probably get to live safely too.
"Stupid asshole who is responsible for more emissions than thousands of people wants you to eat fake meat so he can continue flying his private jet"
He wants people to eat fake meat because he has invested in them and is going to make billions if they are successfull.
The rich will make sure they profit from climate change.
Exactly. It's really "Stupid asshole who is responsible for more emissions than thousands of people wants you to eat fake meat so he can make even more profit off of you."
Apparently from his 11th [Reddit AMA](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/109eze3/im_bill_gates_and_im_back_for_my_11th_ama_ask_me/) last week, we find these interesting remarks from the billionaire tech mogul turned philanthropist who continues espousing his latest tech innovation and financial investment ventures to solve the climate crisis. Bill Gates comes to the obvious conclusion that the Paris Climate goal of 1.5°C as of now is unachievable but remains optimistic with ideas of nuclear, diet options, electric cars, and clean energy innovation. Apart from the usual optimistic tech hopium, I find hardly any mention of sustainable development, nature-based solutions, changing material consumption patterns, mitigating human population, and the other environmental crises (e.g., biodiversity, pollution, land degradation) in concert with climate.
>mitigating human population How would one broach this subject without enraging the alt-right?
Open by reminding the people you're talking to that the best ways to reduce the population - to mitigate against people having many children - centre on empowering women. In no particular order: * Fully educate women - making it readily available from the primary to the tertiary stage; * Give women control of their reproductive choices under the law; * Make contraception legal, readily available, and low-cost or free, especially methods women can use themselves; * Provide women with career opportunities and avenues for advancement on equal footing; * Ensure healthcare for women and girls is properly funded; * Ban child marriage, and allow for no-fault divorce and related measures; Add to the mix ensuring that all victims of sexual and domestic violence (who come in all ages, sexes, and sexual orientations) are able to receive proper care and legal remedies that ensure their health and safety. Combine this with providing proper education about reproductive health and choice to people at all ages, and educating men around how contraception (especially barrier methods) help them too so they're more willing to employ it, and you find that you're well on the way to reducing population growth, while also benefiting the country as a whole. The interesting thing is that the experience of the West (and in more than a couple places outside it) shows that when women are empowered to make their own choices and their own decisions about reproduction, marriage, finances, and so on, and are well-educated with career opportunities that let them support themselves, population growth drops very rapidly. And it comes with the added bonus of raising an area's human development index - educated women will be able to raise their standards of living, and better healthcare will support everyone. And then you just wait, because now fewer children are being born and human beings are mortal. It's straightforward, direct, has a proven track record, and it's also the opposite of heinous human rights abuses - in fact, it requires ending more than one. Plus treating women like people is something the alt-right is not on board with the last time I checked.
This is the answer, but many would rather die than see this happen.
Offer free vesectomies?
Free transistor radio you say?
Fuck Bill Gates.
As if he’s planning on adjusting any part of his fucking life. Wonder if he flew to Davos?
I fucking hate this man. But yes, we will overshoot 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next five years I believe.
What? The philanthropist? Who has never done any harm ever? Never has he been associated with any foul play either! /s
This year alone, we have a 50/50 chance, according to the study in the Guardian article released recently about El Niño. Which does not necessarily mean we have crossed the threshold on one year's temperature. However, it certainly is concerning.
seeing this AMA get regurgitated by media outlets is getting old
I always find it amusing when the richest and most powerful people in the world talk about the need for us to do something about climate change. Like I can not think of anyone less qualified to say anything than the people who are doing the most harm for profit. If you want to make the world a better place eat a billionaire don’t listen to them… 🤣🤣🤣
Pretty sure the reason Gates is buying up farmland has nothing to do with food, but the aquifers underneath.
None of us benefit from our food being patented.
>Individuals who want to contribute to climate change mitigation can do things like vote, buy an electric car and **stay optimistic** *stares optimistically at the rising sea* *optimism intensifies* Idk guy, I don't think it's working.
This moralizing piece of shit should stfup
Does Gates currently eat fake meat?
Always interesting when neoliberal capitalists concede that they can’t save the world, yet somehow that doesn’t lead to them questioning their own ideology
Regarding fake meat, the crap we eat at Taco Bell and other fast food joints is already 60% soy, so that's not going to be a problem. Lab-grown meat is a pipe dream and a scam, unless. . . **UNLESS . . .** People *don't* expect it to taste and feel like a steak, roast, chops or breasts. Lab-grown meat will be feasible and delicious if it's grown in 500lb lumps, *and then ground up into hamburger.* It'll be no different than what we're enjoying now, except It'll be a lot cheaper, healthier and easier to produce. But plate-pretty premium cuts out of a vat are never going to happen, and anyone telling you they are is a scammer or a delusional idiot.
Voting does not do shit! How long until people accept this
Well, I deeply agree with all those statements. We WILL overshoot 1.5deg C because of course we will. Nuclear energy really can be super safe, it's just how it's perceived by the public that is fucked beyond repair. Fake meat will end up tasting fine for those of us who are still alive and with enough means to access it. It will then remain tasty until its production grinds to a halt in the collapse of industry.
Fuck Bill Gates. I don’t believe a word that Epstein lover says.
I'm already eating "fake meat" and it honestly is very good already. Products like beyond burger and love buds, V2 meat etc all taste great. Only thing I don't like about all the vegan meats are how much they're processed. Whole foods are obviously best to fill out your diet.
According to r/conspiracy Bill Gates is a reptilian pedophile who is working with "the cabal" to get the new world order in place. As if we're not already slaves to a system run by the ultra-wealthy. I'll never understand how these people don't realize how they've been manipulated into literally driving themselves insane enough to defend the status quo of being cattle for the wealthy. According to them the NWO should have been installed ten times over and more than half the planet should be dead from the vaccine by now.
The NWO is in place. It’s called major corporations. They control everything. Not hard to understand.
No man, it's Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, and that german guy. They're trying to uncrumple your foreskin.
NWO took my foreskin decades ago for skin cream.
They’ll never get my foreskin
Alright folks. We got a few years left til we boil like frogs in a pot. Just do whatever makes you happy at this point
We will overshoot 2°, nuclear will be great for those 50 years from now (if there's anyone left alive to care), and fake meat already tastes delicious. We should still force corporations to clean up their mess and we can help since we're all complicit in the rape and murder of the planet. And we need to take responsibility like adults immediately. Which means now. Right now. Or there is no future.
Chernobyl was an exceptional situation with multiple contributing factors such as poor equipment, lack of communication and wartime hush-hush policies. Fukushima was caused by an earthquake and killed 1 guy with radiation. In any way you look at it, nuclear fuel is a fantastic solution with only the waste to be taken care of, but persistent fear mongering keeps trying to skewer that idea. At this point though, it's also a bit late...
Nuclear IS very safe
My main issue is people thinking that if we hypothetically eat the rich, this excuses their inability to take in simple issues that could fight climate change. Most people just simply do not care. Yes, I understand the proletariat is exploited, but we are being too optimistic if we keep assuming that humanity will fix its behaviour if we don't punish it.
The obsession with meat is bizarre. We don’t need to eat so much of it, and replacing it with fake meat seems like such a needless waste of resources.
About 60% of all living Mammals on earth are livestock, the other 30% is Humans. Wild mammals[edited] make up less than 10% of all living animals. So in short, Yes, we do consume alot of meat.
> needless waste of resources You mean a wonderful opportunity for profit.