Global temperature record could be broken as soon as 2027, with El Niño expected later this year
A record-breaking hot year is almost certain by 2030 as the climate crisis intensifies, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization has warned.
With an El Niño event expected later this year, the global temperature record could fall as soon as 2027.
Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are continuing to rise, trapping more heat and driving more extreme weather, including the record-breaking heatwave that has hit the UK and Europe this week.
Global heating is already estimated to be taking one life every minute, with the toll likely to rise unless emissions fall rapidly.
Will there be a solution ???
Well, we’re about 60 to 80,000 years from the next ice age. If we haven’t all died by then we could wait for that?
Or just about every developed nation on the planet needs to move to sustainable fuels now!
Nuclear fusion would be an absolute game changer. Clean, infinite energy, but it is too far away for it to make a difference let alone be able to reverse the damage that is being done. For future generations sake, as a leader of a nation, I’d be throwing all my money at it. Like, yesterday.
Just a friendly correction: we currently are in an ice age. You’re thinking of the next glaciation. The confusion is understandable because you are using that term exactly how it’s generally used by lay people, but I think the distinction is important, especially as we’re thinking of long term natural history and understanding climate science.
It’s not a technology problem. It can be solved with wind farms, solar arrays, batteries and trees. All of which exist today, and are already cheaper than building new fossil fuel, nuclear or fusion power.
The problem is that those solutions decentralize and democratize power generation, which cuts into big corpo profits.
Anyone still advocating for nuclear or fusion power now that better, cheaper alternatives exist, just wants a solution that keeps power generation in the hands of a few.
I disagree. Fusion / fission is a long term goal. Solar is cheap to produce but requires big areas and currently not very efficient. Wind power i think is probably our best immediate term bet. The UK nearly went through the whole of April this year entirely on sustainable fuels alone. Within fusion there are enough countries doing their own thing with varying levels of success that there is enough competition for it to be spread world wide. It is also easily monetized, however i envision it would be expensive for the consumer first as companies claw money back from R&D.
Fusion and even new nuclear power plants will be too late to fix this.
We need non-fossil power at a global scale within 10-20 years.
In that context, framing fusion and nuclear as solutions for the climate crisis is just plain wrong.
We need to put all available funding into solar and wind NOW cause they can be built much faster.
When the immediate crisis is over (hopefully), sure go ahead and develop fusion, although I’m not sure at that point it will still be necessary.
At least theoretically yes. We can release particles into the atmosphere that has the opposite effect of the greenhouse gasses. That instead of keeping the heat within the atmosphere, would reflect heat back to the universe.
But since USA seems keen to continue to completely drop the ball on the issue, for such solutions we probably need to look to EU or China.
My suggestion would be to put particles in geostationary orbit above USA, because they are the main villain that has caused this problem, and has done the least to help solve it. So it might as well be them that get less sunlight.