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The rise of solar power and China's staggering EV growth may have pushed global emissions into decline

The world reaches a historic tipping point thanks to 'the most rapid change since the Industrial Revolution'

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-21/major-climate-agencies-call-global-emissions-peak/104016030

Renewable technologies are gathering speed, putting the world within reach of falling greenhouse gas emissions. Climate experts say they "struggle to wrap their heads around" the sheer size, scale and speed of the current transition.

The world reaches a historic tipping point thanks to 'the most rapid change since the Industrial Revolution'

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/42839371

7 comments

rekabis

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The growth of atmospheric CO2 is still accelerating. There has been zero evidence that this has changed.

Yes, renewables. But for every solar panel installed, our civilization’s lust for energy means that most of that added solar power is consumed without any appreciable commensurate decline in fossil fuel consumption.

bstix

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Yes, the atmospheric CO2 is still rising due to emissions from previous decades.

The decline mentioned in the title is the current emmisions. The article goes on to explain it like this:

Locally, Europe and America have lowered their emmisions in the recent years, but global emmisions have still rised due to China emitting even more.

This June however, China's emmisions have also decreased, so it might be a sign of a peak being reached.

Energy consumption is still increasing, but renewable sources provide enough for that, and it's economical the best option, so the rising demand does not cause more emmisions.

Personally, I'm afraid it is too soon to tell. I also wonder where all the drilled oil and mined coal goes, because if there is an actual decline in fossil fuel usage, we'd be hearing from the oil companies and experience lower gas prices etc. Any fossil that is mined or pumped up is going to get burned, so I'd really like to see a decline in fossil extractions before celebrating.

Also, in order to address the atmospheric CO2 levels, we need something entirely different. Forests and CO2 capture etc., which have a long way to go still.

Joshi

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Wondering if you read the linked article which presents evidence that this has changed?

dadGPT

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not to forget, the stupid ai craze is generating crap ton of emissions

stoy

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But AI does still produce something, cryptomining consume stupid ammounts of energy, and produce nothing usefull.

Oh, sure, we have defined the specific string of numbers that the crypto algorithm generates as important in highly specialized systems, but they are completely and utterly useless in other contexts.

felixwhynot

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LLMs produce a string of outputs (from numbers) that are sometimes useful in some contexts and utterly useless in other contexts 🙃

ruckblack

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When can we get some of those EVs and stop pretending that Tesla is a legitimate automobile company?