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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 | 4 comments | 17 Nov 24 18:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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oezi ◴[17 Nov 24 19:06 UTC] No.42166179[source]▶
Looking into the numbers a couple if months ago I was surprised how little it costs to stop climate change.

On the order of 100-200 trillion USD. Which is roughly 100-200% of global yearly GDP. Or 2-5% of yearly GDP until 2050. This could well be provided by printing money at all the federal reserve banks.

This investment will likely bring in a positive return on investment because it reduces the negative climate impacts.

Without such investments the downstream costs in climate change adaptation will be very expensive

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ein0p ◴[17 Nov 24 19:12 UTC] No.42166244[source]▶
And the question is, then, what if you spend all those trillions (which we don't have, BTW), and it doesn't "stop". Who's going to be responsible, and in what way?
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not_kurt_godel ◴[17 Nov 24 19:17 UTC] No.42166293[source]▶
Then we'll only have just eliminated air pollution that kills millions of people per year and established independent energy security
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1. johnfernow ◴[17 Nov 24 19:50 UTC] No.42166577[source]▶
Right, fossil fuels cause around 8 million deaths a year from air pollution [1], so regardless of climate change it'd be worth making a dent in those numbers.

And no, air pollution isn't just a problem in places like India and China, it kills over 100,000 Americans a year and costs society $886 billion. [2]

The evidence of anthropogenic global warming existing is extraordinarily strong [3] [4], but you're right, even if somehow 97% of climate scientists with studies published on the matter from 1991 to 2011 and 99% of them from 2012 to 2020 were wrong (in addition to NASA, The European Space Agency, NOAA, the World Meteorological Organization, and the national academy of science (or equivalent organization) of basically every country that has one), it'd still be worth avoiding millions of deaths a year and having established independent energy security.

1. https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj-2023-077784

2. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1816102116

3. https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024

4. https://doi.org/10.1088%2F1748-9326%2Fac2966

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2. ein0p ◴[17 Nov 24 20:43 UTC] No.42167049[source]▶
Would spending 100 trillion dollars that we don't have cause more deaths than it prevents, due to increased poverty and rising cost of living? That's all I'm really asking here. Has anyone bothered to run the numbers?
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3. johnfernow ◴[17 Nov 24 22:19 UTC] No.42167873[source]▶
Subsidies for oil, coal and natural gas currently cost us about 7.1% of global GDP. [1]

I imagine if we were willing to spend 2 to 5% of global GDP on fighting climate change, we'd also be cutting those subsidies. So in that scenario we'd be reducing government deficits and reducing the rate at which we print money, not increasing it.

1. https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel...

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4. ein0p ◴[17 Nov 24 22:33 UTC] No.42167970{3}[source]▶
I agree on ending the subsidies, that's fine. But the US alone spends over $2T more each year than it earns. Oil/gas subsidies in the US are a tiny fraction of that sum.