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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 | 3 comments | 17 Nov 24 18:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.506s | source
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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. animex ◴[17 Nov 24 20:41 UTC] No.42167033[source]▶
I wonder if there should be some scaling for extreme hot/cold countries. Most of our output here in Canada must be related to heating during our 6 months of cold climate.
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2. abdullahkhalids ◴[17 Nov 24 20:51 UTC] No.42167122[source]▶
Electricity and heat is indeed the largest sector by emissions in Canada (about a quarter) [1]. Though depends on where you are. In BC all electricity is hydropower, and if you have electric heating, your emissions are close to zero.

Transport is also about a quarter. So Canada can indeed cut emissions in half with present day tech by fixing these two sectors. Still a long way to go.

Also note that Estonia is at 7.3t, Finland 5.6t, Sweden 3.5t (Sweden was 8.6t in 1980). So climate is not really an excuse. It is just politics.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-sector?t...

3. ant6n ◴[18 Nov 24 01:55 UTC] No.42169051[source]▶
There’s lots of inefficiencies all around in Canada. Poor insulation, too much suburbanization, not enough heat pumps. Transportation is also very inefficient (not enough public transit, too much suburbanization, not enough rail).

Tar sands are an issue, as is other oil.