This is the key part…
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Your version of realistic usually is not.
XOM needs to be realistic. And most certainly the company is totally screwy. Like big tobacco. Realistic is to stop the crap and getting in the way.
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Yup, for now. We all probably won’t be around anyway when the digested matter makes contact with the air conditioning unit. So who cares, right?
Pete
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I am worried about the extremist political people who are totally in the pocket of fossil fuel companies or just plain ignorant putting up illogical barriers to achieve net zero in many areas of energy. We need to get fossil fuels money out of politics.
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Gas stations declining in numbers (happening in USA too) is a lot different than “finding petrol stations in many European regions will be difficult.”.
The point is that in 2030 there will still be MANY MANY ICE vehicles on European roads, and while the number of gas stations will surely be lower by 2030, all those ICE cars will not have much difficulty finding a gas station. By 2040 it may be a different story.
We’ll be around; don’t underestimate human ingenuity and adaptability. A recent example:
Climate related deaths have been falling for decades.
Sea levels are rising and, at the same time, coastlines have gained more land.
www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37187100
Coastal areas were also analysed, and to the scientists surprise, coastlines had gained more land - 33,700 sq km (13,000 sq miles) - than they had been lost to water (20,100 sq km or 7,800 sq miles). “We expected that the coast would start to retreat due to sea level rise, but the most surprising thing is that the coasts are growing all over the world,” said Dr Baart.
And, as Albaby has pointed out a number of times, cities are being rebuilt all of the time and over eight decades the building stock changes dramatically as do population patterns. When the waves roll over downtown Miami it won’t be over gleaming high rises. Picture instead what happened to cities such as Buffalo, New York. People moved and new construction happened elsewhere.
We will muddle through.
DB2
It’s difficult to reverse a tragedy of the commons, but not impossible. It’s been done but usually only when the costs of doing so are hidden from most people or when the bad effects are so obvious that people have to acknowledge it and change their behavior (usually only a minor modification.)
We’re pulling groundwater out faster than it can be replenished, but nobody wants to tell farmers and lawn waterers they can’t do that, so it goes on until a mega drought makes it obvious that it can’t continue.
People throw away plastic bags and bottles to the point of overstuffing landfills, but hate it when you impose even a minor recycling fee.
We tried to solve the “clogged roads” conundrum with even more roads, and then even those roads got clogged so … we’re building even more roads, because most people don’t want to walk, take a bus, or carpool.
Now you take something as amorphous as “global warming” and people aren’t going to do anything about it until they are burning up (literally), and even then all they’ll do is turn on the air conditioning and make the problem worse.
Yes, I would have to say we are doomed. We are too comfortable and too reluctant to take any substantive measures to fix the problem. And I include myself in that; I drive, I water my lawn, I bring home plastic bags (although at least I recycle them). George Carlin was depressed at the end of his life because he realized we are a failed species. I’d have to say he’s right.
Hey! No rapture today after all! Who could have guessed?
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Your graph of deaths is 6 years old and not applicable to the current situation.
Here are disasters that have occurred since 2017:
- It does not includes the fires in California, Oregon, Hawaii, Canada, Australia, Europe and Asia.
- It does not include the deaths due to floods in Pakistan, Libya, China, Philippines, and many other parts of the world.
- It does not include the extreme temperature related deaths in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia and N&S America.
- It does not include the drought related deaths in Africa and Asia.
- It does not include the deaths due to major winter storms in places like America, Europe and Asia.
- It does not include the deaths due to major tropical storms in Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.
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It would be odd to not be doomed. All species eventually go extinct. Only a tiny number of species last for an appreciably long period of time. And those that do always change with time. Unless you somehow think that humans are different than all other animal species that have ever existed in the past or exist now.
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In the mid-2020s, we are hitting a major tipping point on all things alternative energy. Using the data from early 2020s will get your thoughts washed away.
I’m closer to Bob than Goofy.
Nuclear winter is the end-game and you can envision many scenarios, both with and without climate change, that lead to an extinction-level medium-sized nuclear exchange. Climate change ups the odds. Even then, a few bunkerfulls of people might survive if they’ve stockpiled enough food, seeds, tools, and knowledge. Human stupidity will ultimately be the deciding factor. The fact that it’s been 78 years since Hiroshima and we haven’t blown ourselves up yet, even with the war in Ukraine, gives me hope.
The choices we make today will have a substantial impact on just what “muddling through” means. And who the “we” is that get to muddle through. With relatively small investments we can significantly reduce the damage we’re leaving our grandchildren. We should massively accelerate those investments.
If all goes well, by 2200 world population will have dropped significantly, and we’ll have a fully functional sustainable wealthy world economy, the Star Trek future, perhaps without the aliens, faster-than-light travel, and retro-futurism. At Halloween people will dress as their ancestors and whine about waiting an hour, at a fully stocked fast food superstore, with instant communication to everyone on the planet, and with every book, song, movie, and tv show in their pocket, for their car to charge.
Or we could bury our heads in the sand, invest in neither mitigation or adaptation, and play defense until we’re too broke and dysfunctional to do anything else. In that scenario the only hope is that we lose the skill to launch nuclear weapons before the world devolves into a collection of North Koreas.
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I need to start selling Prozac as a second income.
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You are correct; world population will have dropped to zero by 2200. As the surface temperature will exceed the temperatures that allow for biological processes to function. Life as we know it will be impossible.
JimA
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The major danger of GCC for humans is not rising temperatures making planet uninhabitable for us, but rather that our complex systems of economic exchange, legal agreements, politics, religious beliefs, mostly blow their gaskets and our cultures go “insane”, a triumph of incivil stupidity.
Look at who/what has already come into political prominence world wide.
d fb
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What about the EV money out of politics, the Covid money out of politics, the student loan money out of politics, corporate campaign funds out of politics. People should be aware of Joseph Schumpeter’s opinion that Social Democracy is not about governing, it’s about winning elections. You get the best politicians money can buy. Corporate campaign funds was a huge win for capitalists.
Green has to win by attrition, one EV at a time, one home at a time, one business at a time, one electric utility at a time. The secret is making green cheaper than fossil fuels.
The Captain
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As you may know, the earth has been generally cooling for the last 50 million years and during the last 3-5 million years. Overall, there are three basic states for climate – hothouse, icehouse and in between.
The icehouse state is characterized by ice at the poles, so you know where we find ourselves now. In fact, the Little Ice Age period which ended a couple of centuries ago was the coldest in several hundred million years.
Here’s a graph:
DB2
The EM-DAT database tells us that in 2022 the number of deaths from natural disasters was 30.7K which is lower than the 2002-2021 average. Note that this also includes deaths from non-weather events such as earthquakes.
This is about one-tenth of the annual deaths 50 years ago even as world population has doubled.
DB2
If we look at only climate change disasters, then we see a different picture of deaths.
The EM-DAT database tells us that in 2022 the number of deaths from extreme temperatures was 16,416 which is higher than the 2002-2021 average of 8,538.
The EM-DAT database tells us that in 2022 the number of deaths from floods was 7954 which is higher than the 2002-2021 average of 5195.
The EM-DAT database tells us that in 2022 the number of deaths from drought was 2601 which is higher than the 2002-2021 average of 1057.
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Now add those together and you get 27K. Now look at the earlier graph:
The current data is not significantly different than the earlier graph.
DB2
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We need to add deaths from storms, landslides and wildfires for a new total of 29K which shows that deaths are increasing instead of decreasing.
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