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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 | 2 comments | 17 Nov 24 18:49 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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yobbo ◴[17 Nov 24 19:28 UTC] No.42166377[source]▶
That is not how money and "work" functions. There is no way to "spend money" without spending energy and emitting CO2.

Assuming there is validity to the numbers (and no new source of energy), it means you need to reduce GDP by 2-5% yearly until 2050. But GDP and money is a "sliding" scale so it might mean something different by next year.

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AlphaEsponjosus ◴[17 Nov 24 19:49 UTC] No.42166570[source]▶
What are you talking about? If you take 2.5% to spend it on better infrastructure and existing technologies (that are more environmentally friendly) and develop new technologies, you are not reducing GDP. GDP just measures the ammount of money a country spends.

Of course you need to spend money and energy (specially energy, everything in the universe is energy), but the solution is not to stop moving. We need to use energy and resources in order to switch to better technologies.

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1. yobbo ◴[17 Nov 24 20:17 UTC] No.42166816[source]▶
A new energy source is not like a new technology that can be developed. It needs to be discovered - as in a scientific break-through. A plan can not assume that break-throughs occur.

GDP measures the total production of an economy. That is mostly equivalent to energy_consumption * p_efficiency.

Investing in new technologies that increase efficiency has always been a good decision. Maybe you can improve solar panels by a further 5% and batteries by 10%?

Realistically, energy_consumption will need to decrease, but that isn't actually that terrible.

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2. AlphaEsponjosus ◴[18 Nov 24 06:17 UTC] No.42170185[source]▶
No. The energy consumption does not need to decrease, the source must be more eficient. We have nuclear energy, despite the propaganda, nuclear energy (specially the Thorium reactors) produce very little waste and pollute less than fosil fuels or even solar panels. You do not need to discover a new source of energy to stop climate change. The problem is that people keep thinking in how much it will cost.

Again, GDP measures how much money is spent within a country, if there are several intermediaries in a supply chain, the cost of products and services increases and the GDP tends to rise.

If a country change direction and leans towards nuclear energy, the GDP (that is in fact a terrible measure) will increase cause the new expenditures.