"It's Not Fast Enough. It's Not Big Enough"; World Struggles To Meet Even Tepid Paris Climate Goals

[hatrack]

EDIT

Global emissions of carbon dioxide are rising again after several years of remaining flat. The United States, under President Trump, is planning to withdraw from the Paris accord and is expected to see emissions increase by 1.8 percent this year, after a three-year string of declines. Other countries, too, are showing signs they might fail to live up to the pledges they made in Paris. In short, the world is off target.

“It’s not fast enough. It’s not big enough,” said Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research in England. “There’s not enough action.”

Even as renewable energy grows cheaper and automakers churn out battery-powered and more efficient cars, many nations around the world are nonetheless struggling to hit the relatively modest goals set in Paris.

The reasons vary. Brazil has struggled to rein in deforestation, which fuels greenhouse gas emissions. In Turkey, Indonesia and other countries with growing economies, new coal plants are being planned to meet the demand for electricity. In the United States, the federal government has scaled back its support for clean energy and ramped up support for fossil fuels.

EDIT



EDIT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/its-not-fast-enough-its-not-big-enough-theres-not-enough-action/2018/02/19/5cf0a7d4-015a-11e8-9d31-d72cf78dbeee_story.html?utm_term=.fd5ca284ae1e

[Delphinus]

1. Damn.

[hatrack]

2. Atmospheric CO2 continues to rise - the must fundamental metric has not changed

We will likely break 420 ppm at seasonal peak this May - though likely only for a few days.

www.co2.earth

[Delphinus]

3. It really

seems there is nothing we can do to stop this - the tipping point was reached years ago and now we deal with the consequences of our inaction. And will our dealing with the consequences, trying to mitigate the changes that are upon us, only make things worse?

[NNadir]

6. We're in a post El Nino year.

The increases this year have running at a less dramatic rate than mid decade. (They would have been appalling in the 20th century but are less shocking in the 21st.)

I'm thinking 415 max in May.

[hatrack]

8. 415? Why so optimistic?

[NNadir]

9. I'm the paragon of optimism. Seriously, last year's weekly max was on May 14...

and came in at 410.36 ppm at Mauna Loa. (It was 2.97 ppm higher than the same week of 2016).

There were, as I recall, several days around those weeks in mid-May in which individual readings recorded figures around 412, but no weekly average that high.

Nonetheless, 2017 overall was (in 21st century terms) a rather "mild" year, coming in overall "only" at 2.13 ppm average over 2016, which came in at 2.98 ppm over 2015, which came in at 3.05 ppm more than 2014.

In the 42 years recorded at Mauna Loa in the 20th century, only 5 years exceeded 2.00 ppm increases in a single year. One of those was 1998 - also an El Nino year - when the Indonesian and Malayan fires set to clear rain forest for palm oil plantations to provide "renewable" biodiesel for Germany's "renewable fuel portfolio" went out of control. At that time it was a record, 2.93 ppm.

In the 21st century, thus far, 11 years have exceeded 2.00 pm, and one, for the first time ever, as mentioned above, exceeded 3.00 ppm.

2016 was the first year in recorded history during which no single weekly average fell below 400 ppm. No one now living will ever again see a reading at Mauna Loa that will be lower, particularly with our overwhelming impetus to lie to ourselves and to disguise doing nothing as doing something, as pretending to care.

We don't care. We happily run along reporting that future generations will do what we have proved unable to do, which is the big lie between all this "by 2050" or "by 2100" crap put out by Greenpeace and other anti-science "do nothing but offer (mystic) prophesy" organizations.

In any case, the maximal reading in 2017 was 10 ppm higher than the minimum in the previous year.

The minimum for 2017 came a little late this year, in the week of October 1, when it was 402.97 ppm, "only" 2.17 ppm higher than the same week of previous year. This suggests that I have failed to be optimistic, and we will "only" see a maximum of around 413 ppm in May of this year.

420 is probably between 2 to 4 years off, "by 2022" in the parlance of the optimists, depending on the nature of extreme weather swings.

Someone should write to Bill McKibben. I'm sure he's all pumped up to reverse this and bring us back to 350, by slogans or by prayer, if not by engineering.

[NNadir]

10. We broke 410 for this year this week.

March 09: 409.97 ppm
March 08: 410.17 ppm
March 07: 410.18 ppm
March 06: 409.03 ppm
March 05: 409.62 ppm
Last Updated: March 10, 2018

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/monthly.html

This matches the weekly maximum for 2017 set on the week of May 14, 2017. Last year this time of year we were at 407.6.

Probably this year we'll come in at somewhere around 413-414.

I'm so glad that wind and solar prices are falling, just like they've been doing for the last 50 years.

[pscot]

4. This comes as a complete surprise

to exactly no one who's been paying attention.

[Boomer]

5. We're decades too late

I'm still not persuaded that any actions over the past few decades could substantially change the outcome, but we'll never find out.

[Delphinus]

7. Following up,

I just watched this video, Our Rising Oceans (VICE on HBO: Season 3, Episode 1) - and this was at least 2016, perhaps 2015. Oy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2554&v=Kp6_sDiup6U