Guest post: Tracking the unprecedented impact of humans on the climate - Carbon Brief
www.carbonbrief.org
New scientific assessment of how humans are affecting the climate is nothing short of alarming, yet it does contain some encouraging news.
  • nehal3m@sh.itjust.works
    4·
    5 months ago

    Scanning the article, this is the positive news: Yet, there is some positive news: greenhouse gas emissions have not yet risen beyond pre-pandemic levels and there is evidence that the rate of increase in CO2 emissions over the past decade has slowed compared to the 2000s.

    So growth of emissions has slowed. Not emissions, but growth thereof has flattened somewhat. If that’s the positive news we’re fucking boned.

    • Ben Matthews@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      3·
      5 months ago

      The key new info is not the decadal trend, it’s ‘not yet risen beyond pre-pandemic levels’ - in other words global emissions are ± flat. More recent info (also from carbonbrief) suggests that China’s emissions may now be falling (and therefore likely global too -as China was such a large fraction of recent growth). On the other hand feedbacks from high temperatures in 2023 - forest fires, ocean circulation etc., made the atmospheric CO2 rise break another record, but several temporary factors (e.g. reduced shipping sulphate, El Nino, solar cycle, etc.) contributed to that spike.