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Humans have caused 1.5 °C of long-term global warming according to new estimates

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399 points gmays | 10 comments | 17 Nov 24 18:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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abdullahkhalids ◴[17 Nov 24 19:21 UTC] No.42166327[source]▶
The last IPCC report estimates that to limit warming to 2C, humans can only emit at most 1150 GtCO2 (at 67% likelihood) [1].

There are 8.2 billion humans, so about 140tCO2/person left on average. If we assume that we get to net zero by 2050, that means the average person can emit about 5.4tCO2/person/year from today to 2050 (hitting 0tCO2/person/year in 2050). This is what emissions look like currently [2]

    Top 5 countries > 10m population
    Saudi Arabia  22.1t 
    United Arab Emirates 21.6t  
    Australia            14.5t 
    United States  14.3t
    Canada          14.0t
    Some others
    China           8.4t
    Europe 6.7t
    World average 4.7t
    Lower-middle-income countries of 1.6t
    Low-income countries 0.3t
Guess what's going to happen and who is going to suffer, despite not doing anything.

[1] Page 82 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6...

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-metrics

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1. kingkongjaffa ◴[17 Nov 24 19:30 UTC] No.42166397[source]▶
> United Arab Emirates 25.8 t

> Saudi Arabia 18.2 t

> Australia 15.0 t

These are all pretty low population though so net CO2 from these countries is not the largest.

In terms of per capita, what drives this? These places are hot, is it the 24/7 Air conditioning running?

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2. quonn ◴[17 Nov 24 19:35 UTC] No.42166431[source]▶
That is balanced by not having to heat.

The more likely explanation for the first two is that plenty of fossil fuels are available so they are used inefficiently.

3. abdullahkhalids ◴[17 Nov 24 19:40 UTC] No.42166474[source]▶
I generated this list a few months ago. I picked a threshold population (I think 10 million) and listed the top 5 and then some other groups. I think I would also guess that resource rich countries spend a lot on cars and AC.

FYI, I edited list with latest numbers after your comment.

4. mrkeen ◴[17 Nov 24 19:47 UTC] No.42166545[source]▶
It could make more sense to bucket these three together if you're looking for what they have in common.

  Australia     14.5t 
  United States 14.3t
  Canada        14.0t
My guesses are: houses rather than apartments, driving everywhere, percentage of SUVS compared to sedans, meat consumption, general consumerism?
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5. ducttapecrown ◴[17 Nov 24 19:53 UTC] No.42166598[source]▶
Probably mining and refining natural gas and oil?
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6. vivekd ◴[17 Nov 24 20:03 UTC] No.42166690[source]▶
I'm Canadian most of our emissions this past year was because of forrest fires.
7. cosmic_cheese ◴[17 Nov 24 20:09 UTC] No.42166747[source]▶
In the US, we also have large numbers of homes that have not been brought up to modern efficiency standards and cheap/outdated, grossly inefficient heating/cooling contributing. That number could probably be brought down quite significantly without negatively impacting quality of life by “simply” (I’m aware it’s a huge undertaking) properly insulating homes and in urban/suburban areas banning heating/cooling solutions below a certain efficiency threshold.
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8. alwayslikethis ◴[17 Nov 24 21:21 UTC] No.42167410[source]▶
AC is pretty efficient and the temperature differential it needs to overcome is smaller than winter heating in most places. For these places specifically it seems to obviously be the production of oil for the first two and coal for the third. The availability of fossil fuels tends to make them cheaper and consequently a lot more is used.
9. dangravell ◴[18 Nov 24 08:57 UTC] No.42170844{3}[source]▶
The tragedy of of this is that these are improvements that would actually improve life in these houses - making them healthier, more comfortable. Trouble is, retrofit is expensive.
10. whazor ◴[18 Nov 24 10:46 UTC] No.42171286[source]▶
In that case there is so much to win by improving the mining/refining processes.