This is the most important part most people don't get:
> And what would 3 °C mean for Germany?
> FB: In summer, meteorological records could reach up to 50 °C. Three degrees of global warming does not mean hot days will just be 3 or 4 degrees hotter. It could mean up to 10 degrees hotter. We would also face much longer droughts.
3°C warming implies summer days can get 10°C hotter. This is nightmare scenario.
this also means thermal turbulence which means breakup of flow, and that means failure of distribution, leading to localized torrid spots, that translates to heat dome regions of more than 10°C hotter.
I'm sure you know that "up to" means the same as "no more than", and "could" means "might or might not". So there's no meaning in what you quoted, so why did you not only quote it but say that it's important and most people don't get it? It's not important, it's intentionally misleading.
Are you being intentionally obtuse? In normal language the quoted text means there is a meaningful chance of record temperatures 10 degrees hotter than current records.
If we coat and paint the entire human occupied land surface in white nano-diversely-sized barium sulfate, it will reflect the excess heat into space. We will still have to lower our CO2 and emissions but we will get a break from warming.
We _are_ doing something about this. We’re locating concentrated millions of years of trapped fossil energy and moving it into our atmosphere as fast as we possibly can. To a first approximation, that is the world economy.
Both Europe and US's emissions are significantly (18%-30%) below their peak (which was 20 years ago. The rest of the world is also moving towards renewables.
Co2 parts per million are a stock, like the level of water in a bathtub. Annual emissions are a flow, like how strongly the water is flowing in.
The tub is fuller than ever before AND filling at the fastest rate ever.
The problem is that carbon energy is useful. So unless something globally beats almost all use cases then somewhere marginally it will be worth burning vs not burning it.
There has been a lot of debate over AC use. Everyone chiming in only discusses runtime energy use.
The biggest issue is mining and manufacturing, and the moving of all the materials, parts, and such.
Every AC has sheathed wires and circuit boards.
Every airplane, car, phone, network router, refrigerator... same expansive mess creation.
Gamers complaining about disc less games despite that problem pipeline and waste.
Complaining about RAM prices despite the problem pipeline.
No one is focused on the lag effects, externalities, of billions using up an endless supply of technologies and dumping airplane smog in the atmosphere. Etc, etc, etc
Thermodynamics makes it pretty clear that energy is not gone just hanging out in the atmosphere.
Thermodynamics means we may be fucked even if we slow down; that energy in the atmosphere can only go from atmosphere into oceans, glaciers, and permafrost. There's a lot of potential energy in the Earth to release as it absorbs the heat already in the atmosphere
You may enjoy Ian McEwan's What We Can Know: "Civilization as we know it ends. A pair of scholars in 2120, risking death from roving predatory gangs, travel across what’s left of England in search of a long-lost, epoch-making poem titled 'A Corona for Vivien.' They are the last, it seems, historians alive" [1]. (It's less apocalyptic than this makes it seem, at least relative to the modern apocalyptic genre à la Mad Max.)
On the path we're on I don't think we'll have to worry too much about future generations.
The EU has already seeing 10,000 excess deaths from climate changed caused heat waves and this is a minuscule taste of what's to come.
A very large percentage of mass extinction events have their roots in increased atmospheric CO2, but all of them on dramatically increased time scales. The closest thing in the history of the planet to what's happening to day was PETM [0] and that was only a lessor extinction even because the Earth was already quite warm (for example, there was already no polar ice at the time).
China (13 GT), the US (4.6 GT), and India (3 GT) alone represent 51% of global carbon emissions - and at least in India's case, it is growing at a rate of 5%.
Throw in other large polluters like Russia (2 GT), Indonesia (0.8 GT), KSA (0.6 GT), Brazil (0.5 GT), and Vietnam (0.5 GT) whose rate of carbon emissions is growing in the 5-10% range and you see there is no path forward.
Any amount of de-carbonization that China or the collective West does is automatically negated by the other countries I listed. At best global carbon emissions stagnate - which by default is going to lead to a 2-3 °C increase in temperatures.
You conveniently left the US out of that and the US's role in driving global emissions. China is also likely rapidly de-carbonizing right now just like they rapidly spun up. They are an issue, but the US and its policies have a massive impact on this problem. Same with Europe. Rapidly adopting renewables and not externalizing our emissions to other countries would go a long way.
I have seen the argument shift from 'That's a lie. Global warming doesn't exist. Stop pushing regulations for a non-existent problem.' To 'Maybe it does, or there is some human impact but this is all within normal variation and the climate can take some amount of pollution so stop trying to regulate it!' to, I guess the new argument of, 'It's too late so why try? We shouldn't change course because it won't matter so stop trying to regulate the problem away.' It isn't too late. Do something.
> China is also likely rapidly de-carbonizing right now
Huh. "China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 1% in the final quarter of 2025, likely securing a decline of 0.3% for the full year as a whole" [1].
So "rapidly de-carbonising" is wrong. But decarbonising per se is correct.
Chin's emissions rose by 20% from 2017 to 2024 and then flat-lined in 2025 with emissions expected to decline in 2026. That is what decarbonization looks like, the rate of change has swung massively in the right direction. The .3 in 2025 will likely turn into -1.5 in 2026 and more after that. They have embraced alternative energy because it is now making them money and gaining them influence. That trend won't change and they will keep on decarbonizing because it is the easy, profitable, route.
Its only falling per Chinese gov data. The trend since 2019 is for them to downplay emission data and when the next international review comes around we'll have seen that it was actually increasing for the past 3 years and everything will be revised and they will say oh its decreasing starting from now and everyone will forget that the gov stats were lying and take their word that its decreasing.
China is not rapidly de-carbonizing. They've put off even starting to transition to clean energy by 15 years and they lag behind the other nations. They shouldnt be where the US is as the US has done an awful job. They should be where the EU is.
Both China and the US have similar carbon emission growth rates (0.3-0.5%).
And that does nothing to stop the collective 6 GT of carbon emissions coming from India and the other countries I listed with an average emissions increase rate of around 3%.
1.1 GT combined but shrinking yearly by 1-3%, which isn't enough to make up for the combined increase in carbon emissions from India, ASEAN, MENA, LatAm, and Russia.
But the UK and EU (the only large polluters who have even considered carbon tariffs) have largely watered them down - for example, yesterday with the UK increasing it's duty free steel quota for India [0] as Tata Steel owns much of the UK's steel capacity and demand (JLR is a Tata company). Add to that the EU's largest steel maker is owned by India's Mittal family (AcrelorMittal).
And all of that ignores domestic growth in all those countries. Base GDP growth rates are expected to be in the 6.5-8% for India and ASEAN despite deglobalization because domestic markets are growing.
Developing countries like India, Indonesia, and Vietnam are continuing to expand their emissions as they industrialize. Both are expected to have an GDP growth rate in the 6.5-8% range over the next decade, as will their peers across Asia, so the carbon footprint globally will only increase.
Even China's emissions rate aren't decreasing - they're stagnant, which is a good shift, but not enough to turn the tide given how large China's existing carbon footprint is.
I have already accepted that there is nothing plebs can do about climate change. I can try hard by using public transport, using less plastic, and using less air conditioning, but all of those efforts are rendered useless by rich people going on vacation in yachts or private planes. And if you talk about reducing meat consumption, Americans will go mad, lol.
Ordinary plebs trying to prevent climate change is like subtracting $100 from a billion dollars - it does not make any meaningful difference.
EU has done its part, but all efforts are just drop in the ocean. Also, can these studies be trusted? EU basically throws money anything "green" (except buying forests and making them protected), so naturally these studies benefit from it.
Protecting forests is good and all, but it will not reverse climate change. We'll have to stop all fossil fuel burning and, additionally, sequester around 600 billion tonnes of CO2 (that's taking into account all the natural carbon sinks) to get back to +1.5C by 2100.
UK official body of actuaries basically says we are on trajectory of "Extreme" rating:
> 3°C or more by 2050.
Multiple climate tipping
points triggered,
tipping cascade.
> over 4 billion
deaths
If so, big shifts would already be imminently felt within next 5-10 years.
Remember that there would basically be no place to hide from these direct or knock-on effects.
Not for any self sufficient "prepper with a Mac Studio" nor for any billionaire with their "Galapagos" private island data center come habitat or any other short-sighted fantasy escape scenarios.
> there will basically no place to hide from these direct or any knock-on effects
This is nonsense. (And your own source doesn't support the claim that the consequences of global warming will be unmitigable for anyone.)
Many parts of the world will become milder for human occupation as a result of climate change. And nothing realistically forecast is unavoidable with wealth–rich countries will A/C and seawall their ways around the consequences.
The effects would definitely be felt by anyone when global population is on its way to be halved. Also knock-on effects like mass emigration putting additional pressure in an already difficult political landscape. Potential for many more wars; more unknown unknowns etc.
Is the major issue here that 3 degrees Celsius is like an average so all the hot tropics places just become uninhabitable whereas temperature rises are more moderated in higher latitudes?
Also how much faster and higher will that number go with all the data centers? Can't imagine it not just getting worse.
One major issue is the extreme difficulty of being precise about tipping points.
Eg: Have you seen a train derail? A couple of degrees of tilt - nothing .. and then .. whoops.
The global climate has been 'stable' about mean values for the bulk of human written history and development of urban civilisations. The planet now hosts 7 billion+ people, largely urban, and feed by a century of stable agriculture patterns write large.
The disruption of that will have a major impact across the human population of the planet.
The tipping points, when they come, are related to the significant loss of polar ice, and the beginning of positive feedback of atmospheric insulation factors other than CO2.
Melting ice, the transformation from near zero degree ice to near zero degree water, takes up a large amount of the energy from the sun trapped by increasing insulation. The energy used to melt X tonnes of ice, if no ice can be melted, will instead raise the temperature of X tonnes of water by some 66 degrees C (or there abouts - worth looking it up exactly).
Increased land and sea surface temperatures releases methane from peat bogs and tundras, and increases the water vapour content of the lower atmosphere.
Both of these things increase the insulation factor of the atmosphere to a greater degree than CO2.
I think the problem is much worse than people imagine as well. Of those around 5.5 to 6 billion people live in "developed world" conditions (sanitation, water & electricity to the home). Over the next 20 years that's expected to grow to by another 1.5 billion (the previous 20 years was around the same). That alone is going to be a huge demand in energy, for construction and ongoing day to day energy usage.
On the other hand global energy demand has a very close correlation with the number of people living in developed world conditions - so after this point the growth in energy demand should start to level off.
Let's hope China continues to push renewables, and their investment in developing countries favours that instead of fossil fuels.
Yet Europeans will continue to hamstring their economic activity to lower their footprint which is really not doing anything in the grand scheme of things vs. China/India and what Africa will produce if/when they modernize.
But there have been way higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels historically, and those have largely coincided with plant and animal life climaxing. See the Jurassic.
> But there have been way higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels historically
Historically? In written human history?
If we're talking the state of the planet throughout the past 4 billion odd years of existence, it once had no breathable atmosphere and had a stretch with a largely molten surface, and got smacked up hard when the moon was spun off.
None of these things are relevant to the planets near future as a direct result of human induced changes of the past century and a half.
As I understand it just means there's a lot more energy in the atmosphere. Like imagine the amount of energy it takes to increase water temperature in a pot by 3° and scale it up to the planet. All that energy makes everything bigger, badder, and less predictable. Longer, dryer droughts; bigger, longer winter storms, etc.
The first is that 3C represents a lot more energy in the atmosphere. That translates to more water evaporating from the oceans creating bigger more violent storms (think more frequent flash floods).
It changes the ocean currents which can be really bad. Right now Europe is warm for it's latitude because of a weakening current from the equator to the UK brings a lot of heat. If that completely collapses, Europe can enter an ICE age.
The rising temperature also ends up weakening the vortex of the north pole which mostly keeps the arctic temperatures sealed up north. As that vortex weakens, spills of crazy blizzards can hit unusual places pretty hard. The winter storm in 2021 is an example of that happening.
Then of course there's the potential melting of the ice caps which will release a lot of methane into the atmosphere (speeding up warming). That will ultimately cause sea levels to rise which won't be great for the state of Florida.
Mass migration, crop instability, more frequent and more extreme weather. It's just a combo of bad things that all come together at once.
> more evaporation over oceans, which makes the air denser
More humid air is less dense than less humid air at the same temperature and otherwise same composition. H2O has a molar mass of 18, vs ~29 for dry air.
It’s sort of all over the place but it’s mostly the other way round. The poles might see like +5-8c. It’s also the overall temperature. Today’s high temperature where I am is 33 and the low is 25. 33 isn’t super unusual, maybe a dozen days a year. 25 as a low though is crazy high even on days historically above 30. It all averages out to +whatever.
The most extreme warming happens at the poles, doesn't it? Plus increases in volatility on top of a rising baseline, so more extreme heat wave peaks even in temperate climates that don't change as much on average.
This is the most important part most people don't get:
> And what would 3 °C mean for Germany?
> FB: In summer, meteorological records could reach up to 50 °C. Three degrees of global warming does not mean hot days will just be 3 or 4 degrees hotter. It could mean up to 10 degrees hotter. We would also face much longer droughts.
3°C warming implies summer days can get 10°C hotter. This is nightmare scenario.
this also means thermal turbulence which means breakup of flow, and that means failure of distribution, leading to localized torrid spots, that translates to heat dome regions of more than 10°C hotter.
Are you saying those researchers got their upper bound too low? You should inform them of their mistake.
I'm sure you know that "up to" means the same as "no more than", and "could" means "might or might not". So there's no meaning in what you quoted, so why did you not only quote it but say that it's important and most people don't get it? It's not important, it's intentionally misleading.
Are you being intentionally obtuse? In normal language the quoted text means there is a meaningful chance of record temperatures 10 degrees hotter than current records.
Unfortunately Germany phased out nuclear power, but continues to burn coal.
If we coat and paint the entire human occupied land surface in white nano-diversely-sized barium sulfate, it will reflect the excess heat into space. We will still have to lower our CO2 and emissions but we will get a break from warming.
If we don’t do something about this, I fear future generations will not view us in a positive light.
We _are_ doing something about this. We’re locating concentrated millions of years of trapped fossil energy and moving it into our atmosphere as fast as we possibly can. To a first approximation, that is the world economy.
Or did you mean to do something differently?
Both Europe and US's emissions are significantly (18%-30%) below their peak (which was 20 years ago. The rest of the world is also moving towards renewables.
Global co2 emissions are at an all time high.
Co2 parts per million are a stock, like the level of water in a bathtub. Annual emissions are a flow, like how strongly the water is flowing in.
The tub is fuller than ever before AND filling at the fastest rate ever.
The problem is that carbon energy is useful. So unless something globally beats almost all use cases then somewhere marginally it will be worth burning vs not burning it.
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
How much of that is just outsourcing much of our industry to Asia/etc.?
We have to do less
There has been a lot of debate over AC use. Everyone chiming in only discusses runtime energy use.
The biggest issue is mining and manufacturing, and the moving of all the materials, parts, and such.
Every AC has sheathed wires and circuit boards.
Every airplane, car, phone, network router, refrigerator... same expansive mess creation.
Gamers complaining about disc less games despite that problem pipeline and waste.
Complaining about RAM prices despite the problem pipeline.
No one is focused on the lag effects, externalities, of billions using up an endless supply of technologies and dumping airplane smog in the atmosphere. Etc, etc, etc
Thermodynamics makes it pretty clear that energy is not gone just hanging out in the atmosphere.
Thermodynamics means we may be fucked even if we slow down; that energy in the atmosphere can only go from atmosphere into oceans, glaciers, and permafrost. There's a lot of potential energy in the Earth to release as it absorbs the heat already in the atmosphere
You may enjoy Ian McEwan's What We Can Know: "Civilization as we know it ends. A pair of scholars in 2120, risking death from roving predatory gangs, travel across what’s left of England in search of a long-lost, epoch-making poem titled 'A Corona for Vivien.' They are the last, it seems, historians alive" [1]. (It's less apocalyptic than this makes it seem, at least relative to the modern apocalyptic genre à la Mad Max.)
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/books/review/ian-mcewan-w...
They'll be too dumb from CO2 poisoning to understand the problem!
On the path we're on I don't think we'll have to worry too much about future generations.
The EU has already seeing 10,000 excess deaths from climate changed caused heat waves and this is a minuscule taste of what's to come.
A very large percentage of mass extinction events have their roots in increased atmospheric CO2, but all of them on dramatically increased time scales. The closest thing in the history of the planet to what's happening to day was PETM [0] and that was only a lessor extinction even because the Earth was already quite warm (for example, there was already no polar ice at the time).
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_therm...
How many excess deaths from cold?
> If we don’t do something about this...
We can't. We're too late.
China (13 GT), the US (4.6 GT), and India (3 GT) alone represent 51% of global carbon emissions - and at least in India's case, it is growing at a rate of 5%.
Throw in other large polluters like Russia (2 GT), Indonesia (0.8 GT), KSA (0.6 GT), Brazil (0.5 GT), and Vietnam (0.5 GT) whose rate of carbon emissions is growing in the 5-10% range and you see there is no path forward.
Any amount of de-carbonization that China or the collective West does is automatically negated by the other countries I listed. At best global carbon emissions stagnate - which by default is going to lead to a 2-3 °C increase in temperatures.
You conveniently left the US out of that and the US's role in driving global emissions. China is also likely rapidly de-carbonizing right now just like they rapidly spun up. They are an issue, but the US and its policies have a massive impact on this problem. Same with Europe. Rapidly adopting renewables and not externalizing our emissions to other countries would go a long way.
I have seen the argument shift from 'That's a lie. Global warming doesn't exist. Stop pushing regulations for a non-existent problem.' To 'Maybe it does, or there is some human impact but this is all within normal variation and the climate can take some amount of pollution so stop trying to regulate it!' to, I guess the new argument of, 'It's too late so why try? We shouldn't change course because it won't matter so stop trying to regulate the problem away.' It isn't too late. Do something.
> China is also likely rapidly de-carbonizing right now
Huh. "China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 1% in the final quarter of 2025, likely securing a decline of 0.3% for the full year as a whole" [1].
So "rapidly de-carbonising" is wrong. But decarbonising per se is correct.
[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
Chin's emissions rose by 20% from 2017 to 2024 and then flat-lined in 2025 with emissions expected to decline in 2026. That is what decarbonization looks like, the rate of change has swung massively in the right direction. The .3 in 2025 will likely turn into -1.5 in 2026 and more after that. They have embraced alternative energy because it is now making them money and gaining them influence. That trend won't change and they will keep on decarbonizing because it is the easy, profitable, route.
Its only falling per Chinese gov data. The trend since 2019 is for them to downplay emission data and when the next international review comes around we'll have seen that it was actually increasing for the past 3 years and everything will be revised and they will say oh its decreasing starting from now and everyone will forget that the gov stats were lying and take their word that its decreasing.
China is not rapidly de-carbonizing. They've put off even starting to transition to clean energy by 15 years and they lag behind the other nations. They shouldnt be where the US is as the US has done an awful job. They should be where the EU is.
Both China and the US have similar carbon emission growth rates (0.3-0.5%).
And that does nothing to stop the collective 6 GT of carbon emissions coming from India and the other countries I listed with an average emissions increase rate of around 3%.
What is Western Europe's #?
1.1 GT combined but shrinking yearly by 1-3%, which isn't enough to make up for the combined increase in carbon emissions from India, ASEAN, MENA, LatAm, and Russia.
Are those domestic emissions only? Or do we include emissions from purchasing goods from other countries?
Overall emissions.
But the UK and EU (the only large polluters who have even considered carbon tariffs) have largely watered them down - for example, yesterday with the UK increasing it's duty free steel quota for India [0] as Tata Steel owns much of the UK's steel capacity and demand (JLR is a Tata company). Add to that the EU's largest steel maker is owned by India's Mittal family (AcrelorMittal).
And all of that ignores domestic growth in all those countries. Base GDP growth rates are expected to be in the 6.5-8% for India and ASEAN despite deglobalization because domestic markets are growing.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-14/india-win...
Despite all the pollution, 24% of Indians live below the lower-middle-income poverty line of $4.20 per day...
Yes, and?
That's why nothing will happen.
Developing countries like India, Indonesia, and Vietnam are continuing to expand their emissions as they industrialize. Both are expected to have an GDP growth rate in the 6.5-8% range over the next decade, as will their peers across Asia, so the carbon footprint globally will only increase.
Even China's emissions rate aren't decreasing - they're stagnant, which is a good shift, but not enough to turn the tide given how large China's existing carbon footprint is.
I have already accepted that there is nothing plebs can do about climate change. I can try hard by using public transport, using less plastic, and using less air conditioning, but all of those efforts are rendered useless by rich people going on vacation in yachts or private planes. And if you talk about reducing meat consumption, Americans will go mad, lol.
Ordinary plebs trying to prevent climate change is like subtracting $100 from a billion dollars - it does not make any meaningful difference.
But 800B dollars would matter. And you can vote.
They're not rendered useless. Do you argue the same way about voting too?
Ultimately consumption is 2/3s of all emissions, and the majority of it is not billionaires.
Are you saying that no billionaire profits from the consumption of others?
And, if some do, do they not maximise that profit by seeking to maximise the consumption of others?
I say no such thing.
Original article: (14 points, 4 hours ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48913407
EU has done its part, but all efforts are just drop in the ocean. Also, can these studies be trusted? EU basically throws money anything "green" (except buying forests and making them protected), so naturally these studies benefit from it.
EU has a lot of historic emissions to make up for.
https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2
> EU basically throws money anything "green"
Including paying to have wood pellets shipped across the Atlantic using bunker fuel and then calling it "bioenergy"
The EU is 'clean' largely out of it's own limited access to fossil fuels and other energy resources rather than because they are "doing their part".
Protecting forests is good and all, but it will not reverse climate change. We'll have to stop all fossil fuel burning and, additionally, sequester around 600 billion tonnes of CO2 (that's taking into account all the natural carbon sinks) to get back to +1.5C by 2100.
UK official body of actuaries basically says we are on trajectory of "Extreme" rating:
> 3°C or more by 2050. Multiple climate tipping points triggered, tipping cascade.
> over 4 billion deaths
If so, big shifts would already be imminently felt within next 5-10 years.
Remember that there would basically be no place to hide from these direct or knock-on effects.
Not for any self sufficient "prepper with a Mac Studio" nor for any billionaire with their "Galapagos" private island data center come habitat or any other short-sighted fantasy escape scenarios.
https://actuaries.org.uk/media/ni4erlna/planetary-solvency.p...
> there will basically no place to hide from these direct or any knock-on effects
This is nonsense. (And your own source doesn't support the claim that the consequences of global warming will be unmitigable for anyone.)
Many parts of the world will become milder for human occupation as a result of climate change. And nothing realistically forecast is unavoidable with wealth–rich countries will A/C and seawall their ways around the consequences.
The effects would definitely be felt by anyone when global population is on its way to be halved. Also knock-on effects like mass emigration putting additional pressure in an already difficult political landscape. Potential for many more wars; more unknown unknowns etc.
Is the major issue here that 3 degrees Celsius is like an average so all the hot tropics places just become uninhabitable whereas temperature rises are more moderated in higher latitudes?
Also how much faster and higher will that number go with all the data centers? Can't imagine it not just getting worse.
One major issue is the extreme difficulty of being precise about tipping points.
Eg: Have you seen a train derail? A couple of degrees of tilt - nothing .. and then .. whoops.
The global climate has been 'stable' about mean values for the bulk of human written history and development of urban civilisations. The planet now hosts 7 billion+ people, largely urban, and feed by a century of stable agriculture patterns write large.
The disruption of that will have a major impact across the human population of the planet.
The tipping points, when they come, are related to the significant loss of polar ice, and the beginning of positive feedback of atmospheric insulation factors other than CO2.
Melting ice, the transformation from near zero degree ice to near zero degree water, takes up a large amount of the energy from the sun trapped by increasing insulation. The energy used to melt X tonnes of ice, if no ice can be melted, will instead raise the temperature of X tonnes of water by some 66 degrees C (or there abouts - worth looking it up exactly).
Increased land and sea surface temperatures releases methane from peat bogs and tundras, and increases the water vapour content of the lower atmosphere.
Both of these things increase the insulation factor of the atmosphere to a greater degree than CO2.
We hit 8 billion in 2022 btw.
I think the problem is much worse than people imagine as well. Of those around 5.5 to 6 billion people live in "developed world" conditions (sanitation, water & electricity to the home). Over the next 20 years that's expected to grow to by another 1.5 billion (the previous 20 years was around the same). That alone is going to be a huge demand in energy, for construction and ongoing day to day energy usage.
On the other hand global energy demand has a very close correlation with the number of people living in developed world conditions - so after this point the growth in energy demand should start to level off.
Let's hope China continues to push renewables, and their investment in developing countries favours that instead of fossil fuels.
Yet Europeans will continue to hamstring their economic activity to lower their footprint which is really not doing anything in the grand scheme of things vs. China/India and what Africa will produce if/when they modernize.
But there have been way higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels historically, and those have largely coincided with plant and animal life climaxing. See the Jurassic.
> But there have been way higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels historically
Historically? In written human history?
If we're talking the state of the planet throughout the past 4 billion odd years of existence, it once had no breathable atmosphere and had a stretch with a largely molten surface, and got smacked up hard when the moon was spun off.
None of these things are relevant to the planets near future as a direct result of human induced changes of the past century and a half.
As I understand it just means there's a lot more energy in the atmosphere. Like imagine the amount of energy it takes to increase water temperature in a pot by 3° and scale it up to the planet. All that energy makes everything bigger, badder, and less predictable. Longer, dryer droughts; bigger, longer winter storms, etc.
There's a lot of bad things that happen at 3C.
The first is that 3C represents a lot more energy in the atmosphere. That translates to more water evaporating from the oceans creating bigger more violent storms (think more frequent flash floods).
It changes the ocean currents which can be really bad. Right now Europe is warm for it's latitude because of a weakening current from the equator to the UK brings a lot of heat. If that completely collapses, Europe can enter an ICE age.
The rising temperature also ends up weakening the vortex of the north pole which mostly keeps the arctic temperatures sealed up north. As that vortex weakens, spills of crazy blizzards can hit unusual places pretty hard. The winter storm in 2021 is an example of that happening.
Then of course there's the potential melting of the ice caps which will release a lot of methane into the atmosphere (speeding up warming). That will ultimately cause sea levels to rise which won't be great for the state of Florida.
Mass migration, crop instability, more frequent and more extreme weather. It's just a combo of bad things that all come together at once.
Among _many_ other things, 3 degrees Celsius globally means more evaporation over oceans, which makes the air denser.
Denser air carries more momentum, which means more frequent (and more severe) hurricanes.
> more evaporation over oceans, which makes the air denser
More humid air is less dense than less humid air at the same temperature and otherwise same composition. H2O has a molar mass of 18, vs ~29 for dry air.
Greenpeace literature in the 1980s predicted hurricanes from Global Warming.
And here we are.
It’s sort of all over the place but it’s mostly the other way round. The poles might see like +5-8c. It’s also the overall temperature. Today’s high temperature where I am is 33 and the low is 25. 33 isn’t super unusual, maybe a dozen days a year. 25 as a low though is crazy high even on days historically above 30. It all averages out to +whatever.
For temps by latitude/region this source seems ok on a quick search https://scied.ucar.edu/interactive/compare-climates-regional...
The most extreme warming happens at the poles, doesn't it? Plus increases in volatility on top of a rising baseline, so more extreme heat wave peaks even in temperate climates that don't change as much on average.
lets plant more trees!