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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday November 09 2019, @07:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the making-progress dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have found that current forecasts call for the U.S. electric power sector to meet the 2020 and 2025 CO2 reduction requirements in the Paris Agreement—even though the U.S. has announced its withdrawal—and also meet the 2030 CO2 reduction requirements contemplated by the Clean Power Plan—even though it has been repealed.

Despite the absence of a national policy aimed at reducing CO2 emissions, the U.S. is ahead of schedule to meet the short-term and mid-term goals of both the Paris Agreement and the Clean Power Plan, according to a recent viewpoint article published in Environmental Science & Technology.

"A year ago, it looked like our ability to meet these larger carbon reduction targets would have required more proactive steps, such as new regulation or new incentive programs," said Jeffrey Anderson, lead author of the paper and Ph.D. candidate of Engineering & Public Policy (EPP). "However, as renewable energy costs have fallen and are projected to continue decreasing even further, we are now well on the path to achieving even the 2030 goals in the Clean Power Plan."

Based on an analysis of projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, these carbon reductions will be met without any additional legislative or regulatory activity, said David Rode, faculty of CMU's Electricity Industry Center. The team also included EPP professors Haibo Zhai and Paul Fischbeck, also a professor of Social & Decision Sciences.


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  • (Score: 2) by zeigerpuppy on Sunday November 10 2019, @08:07AM (9 children)

    by zeigerpuppy (1298) on Sunday November 10 2019, @08:07AM (#918551)

    Please explain. has global warming become less of a problem in the last 40 years?

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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Sunday November 10 2019, @02:35PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 10 2019, @02:35PM (#918596) Journal

    has global warming become less of a problem in the last 40 years?

    You haven't even shown net harm from global warming. Think about that.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 10 2019, @03:10PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 10 2019, @03:10PM (#918606)

    Let me quote this [apnews.com] article, emphasizing how dire climate change has become:

    UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2030. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said David Cooper, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.

    He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.

    As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations, Cooper told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday. Coastal regions will be inundated; one-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta would be flooded, cutting off its food supply, according to a joint UNEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study.

    Shifting climate patterns would bring back 1930s Dust Bowl conditions to Canadian and U.S. wheatlands, while Russia could reap bumper crops if it adapts its agriculture in time, according to a study by UNEP and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown. ...

    So we're screwed! Or not...? That article was written in 1989. I changed the names/dates but left everything else verbatim. Kind of funny having to edit out "Soviet Union" which would have been a give-away. Anyhow, the "tipping point" in his article was not 2030, but 2000 - nearly 2 decades ago. We did nothing, nothing tipped. As for his "the most conservative scientific estimates" showing that Earth's temp will increase by 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, today is more than 30 years later. And here [nasa.gov] are NASA's climate temperature data. The temperature has increased by 0.52 degrees celcius. Perhaps he meant fahrenheit, since he was speaking to a US reporter and worked in New York. 0.52C = 0.936F. So... we're under even "the most conservative scientific estimate." Why? Well nobody really cares why we keep hitting well below predicted warming. They just keep repeating "well, it's warming at least" and then going on with more doomsday predictions several decades down the line.

    I think a big part of the problem today is mostly the media. They've been struggling since the normalization of the internet, and so sensationalism, drama, and fear-mongering has become their go-to means of click/revenue generation. So, yes global warming has become less of a problem. Tell me the sky is falling once or twice, with a decent facade of science behind it and I'm very much concerned for the future (and indeed 20 years ago climate change was probably the single most relevant political issue for me). Do it for half a century while you just keep pushing your timelines back a few years, without ever engaging in any fundamental overhaul of the science, and at some point it becomes clear you are either a charlatan or basing your predictions on fundamentally broken science correlations. It amounts to the same thing in either case.

    • (Score: 2) by quietus on Sunday November 10 2019, @05:54PM (6 children)

      by quietus (6328) on Sunday November 10 2019, @05:54PM (#918651) Journal

      You heavily edited that source. There's no mention of a "tipping point" at all -- the UNEP official was simply stating that if we took action in the 90s, we could reduce the risk of an escalation to a 3 degrees celsius rise. The effects you try to present as belonging to your "tipping point" of the year 2000 are not associated by the report with that date; in fact, the article takes some pains to indicate these are long term effects -- the 2030s and beyond.

      A pretty prescient report, with the UNEPs prediction most likely based on information provided by biologists and climatologists/meteorologists.

      I do remember the head of the British Mycological Society, an Oxford Don, explicitly blocking us young scientists giving out a press release about the effects of climate change, in 1994.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @01:32AM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @01:32AM (#918784)

        No, I didn't. Literally the third sentence in that article, and in my quote:

        He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.

        And that was alongside his "most conservative scientific estimate" suggesting there would be 1-7 degrees of warming by 2019. If that's the "most scientific conservative estimate", what does it mean when we see real warming was below a degree while our emissions were not only capped by 2000, but roughly doubled? It means he was fundamentally incorrect and engaging in unjustified fear-mongering. As it seems to always be the case, what's new is old.

        I find it interesting to consider how and why people are rationalizing being actively deceived. Stockholm Syndrome [wikipedia.org] is quite a real phenomena. Obviously nobody's being held captive here, but they are being actively deceived. But, like Stockholm Syndrone, because people get convinced by the deceivers that they have good intentions, they become immune to impartial consideration of what's happening.

        • (Score: 2) by quietus on Monday November 11 2019, @12:49PM (3 children)

          by quietus (6328) on Monday November 11 2019, @12:49PM (#918907) Journal

          And I find your reading comprehension skills ... interesting.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @01:46PM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @01:46PM (#918922)

            Feel free to elaborate if you think you have any particular insight. I'm quite happy to change my views in light of evidence that contradicts my biases or misunderstandings, unlike most. So a few questions:

            1) You suggest, quote, "the article takes some pains to indicate these are long term effects -- the 2030s and beyond." Where at?

            2) You seemingly do not consider the statement "governments have [until 1999] to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control." as suggesting a tipping point. How, then, do you interpret it?

            3) The article states, "The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees [by 2019]". That presumably was a best case scenario of solving climate change before the not-a-tipping-point deadline he mentioned. Needless to say we not only did not solve emissions before his not-a-tipping-point deadline, but dramatically increased emissions. The real temperature rise since then was less than a degree (regardless of whether we measure in C or F). How do you reconcile this?

            I anxiously await your enlightenment.

            • (Score: 2) by quietus on Tuesday November 12 2019, @01:55PM (1 child)

              by quietus (6328) on Tuesday November 12 2019, @01:55PM (#919370) Journal

              LMAO. Your bias is that you know better than the vast majority of scientists all over the world -- and yet you'll be swayed by an anonymous comment on the Internet.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @05:33PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @05:33PM (#919471)

                As you go back in our history it's quite remarkable how often we collectively adapt unbelievably awful ideas. It was less than a century ago that the brightest minds in this nation were all vocally advocating for government driven eugenics. It's pretty easy to see that this is an absolutely idiotic idea, even if only because of the inevitability of abuse. Yet nonetheless it happened and indeed we were a major inspiration for a young German artist who would come to power some time later.

                Why did that happen? Nearly all of top tier academia was fully supportive of eugenics, including Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, etc. And all of the old money philanthropists - Carnegies, Rockefellers, etc- were also fully in support of it. And needless to say the government was full on board with having the right to choose who can and cannot reproduce. Even though government driven mandatory eugenics is clearly an awful idea - people became afraid to speak for themselves out of social pressure. It become very much the tale of The Emperor's New Clothes [wikipedia.org]. And this wasn't like some far gone time hundreds of years ago - this was happening as recently as about 80 years ago. The only thing that really changed our trajectory was that aforementioned German artist. Social pressure is powerful, and dangerous.

                The only way to avoid such scenarios happening in the future is for each person to think for themselves. And indeed you do risk being wrong - such is life. But cowering under appeals to authority is precisely how so many awful things have happened in our past. Even look more recently than eugenics and the "scientific consensus" was that leaded fuel was safe. Everybody knew lead was dangerous, but "science" claimed leaded fuel was safe. It was just a little bit of lead in it, after all. Those who chose to think for themselves and made every effort to avoid exhaust so much as possible, regardless of the "scientific consensus", would have been quite wise - and indeed there were plenty who did just that.

                ---

                So yes, give me a stark raving fool and the world's most brilliant man. If the stark raving fool can present a more compelling and logical argument than the world's most brilliant man, then I would be more than happy to adopt the argument of the fool. And so here is your chance! Presumably if you never thought you could convince me of anything you would not have engaged in this discussion to begin with. So, again, I await your enlightenment with bated breath.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @01:45AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 11 2019, @01:45AM (#918788)

        Ahhh!! I think I see the mistake you might be making. This is what the first sentence actually says:

        A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2030 2000.

        There was 0 mention of 2030 (let alone beyond) in the original article. I changed the date there. It, like his tipping point, originally said 2000 - but it quite ruins the point I was making if you realize the article is from 30 years ago after the first sentence. It's "prescient" only in the sense that people keep saying the same doomsday nonsense and simply adjusting their dates after none of it comes to pass.