Comic Strips

Even America is taking some steps forward in some odd ways.

Trump: “Alaskan refuge drilling is wide open! Drill, baby drill! Who wants first bid?”
Shell: “Ew, no. Literally no one wants that bad PR.”

The videos assessment is fatally flawed and meaningless. (Admittedly, I watched the first half then skipped through the rest quickly)

It talks about the amazing growth of renewables and other unrelated things like Ozone. Climate change has nothing to do with renewables. Climate change is based almost entirely on emissions of GHGs. Building gigawatts of renewables means nothing unless you displace fossil fuels with it. Spoiler alert: we didn't.

CO² emissions are higher now than ever. All the renewables were only added to our energy mix. No fossil fuel was displaced. In fact, today we burn more fossil fuel than ever before.

The keeling curve is steeper now than it was in the 60's showing that unfortunate exponential growth rate curve.

We are emitting more CO² now at a faster rate than ever before.

Renewables are are only good if whatever comes online replaces fossil fuels. It didn't. 2024 we are now at 1.5°C above, and if we magically turned off all emissions today we still have 20 years of baked in warming. All we did was find new ways to grow and consume. AI datacentres are the new gobbler of energy.

As a rule of thumb, agriculture output is anticipated to drop 10% for every degree of warming. Our propposed plan, which is no where near realistic or on track is 3.5°C. 35% less food doesn't bode well.

Then the real fun part kicks in. If we ever manage to stop human emissions from fossil fuel use, entirely, we will still have to contend with natural warming from a planet that is not in a stable state. Tipping points are natural phenomena that behave one way at first until you tip it over then it falls into a new state. The interesting ones are arctic ice cover where sunlight that used to be reflected off polar ice caps now gets absorbed by dark oceans. Then you get the frozen methane hydrates under the arctic that melt and have the potential to release even more methane with no way to shut it off.

If you're not a doomer, you don't understand. Shits bad man. Real bad. No one should be feeling good about our accomplishments to date. You shouldn't feel hopeful. You should be panicking into radical action.