cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/28875492
Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere soared by a record amount in 2024 to hit another high, UN data shows, deepening the climate crisis that is already taking lives and livelihoods across the world.
Largest ever leap in atmospheric CO2 to 424 ppm.
Good work humanity. Ugh we don’t deserve this planet.
True. Stupid humans.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
Indeed, I was reading this yesterday and through up a little in my moith. As an Australian, this is a b listed Australian “celebriry” I have never heard off, I can’t even imagine what the really rich are doing with their best effort to desteoy the planet.
The former medic requested the huge spousal support figure in order to maintain the “luxurious and upper-class lifestyle” he had enjoyed with Sia, which included over $US400,000 in monthly expenses for private jets, vacations, high-end dining and several full-time members of staff.
It is wild interacting with people who have functionally checked out of caring about climate change because the rise of rightwing fascism has made publicly opting out of having empathy so much more acceptable.
We are hitting the pedal to the medal and 10 years ago I wouldn’t have been able to convince myself we would be so much less prepared culturally and societally to act to mitigate Climate Change (at least here in US), I am cynical as fuck but that would have been even too cynical for me to believe then.
I mean the technology is amazing, alternative energy has blown away my expectations in the evolution and growth it has had but here in the US centrists and rightwingers have been acting like Climate Change was a tv show everyone used to tune into and now the fad has passed… it makes me nauseous.
https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
This is grossly understated, and 2024 is date. April 2025 peaked at 431ppm. 4ppm higher than 2024. Other months did have “more normal” 3ppm increases, But that is still over the last 10 year growth rate, which was higher than previous 10 year growth rate.
Getting this growth to slow down is step 1 in long path to getting to 0 growth. Ukraine war and forest fires have offset any energy transition gains.
have offset any energy transition gains.
There is no energy trnaisiton and never has been, we still burn wood, each enery use is just an addiiton to more and more energy conunption that ensures we consunes more and more resources.
Sure, a little bit of renewables rationed per person used frugally and equitably may be answer but that has zeeo cjnave of success aside at the fringe.
Some large markets have peaked their fossil fuel use. Only Europe has significant declines so far though.
Most of the accounting for fossil fuel use specifically neglects to count the embedded fossil fuels in global trade. So many of the countries that deindustrialized or offshored heavy manufacturing are merely gaming the stats because they purchase manufacturing by coal powered nations and don’t count that in their domestic totals. Obviously that’s silly.
Partially true. Certainly shipping from China is big emissions in of themselves. But China fossil electricity is down, even as they’ve grown electricity over 8% last 2 years. China is decarbonizing manufacturing. But EU electricity consumption rose slightly the last 2 years with 25%+ cummulative fossil fuel electricity generation declines.
Certainly shipping from China is big emissions in of themselves.
Yeah, that’s also not counted, but it’s usually only 5% of the total Lifecycle energy inputs. The majority of the embedded energy costs are in things like mining, refining, machining, smelting, welding, making carbon fiber etc etc etc.
None of the extraction and manufacturing of imported goods gets counted.
When countries don’t do heavy manufacturing, don’t raise all their own food etc, they are striking absolutely staggering amounts of carbon and other pollution from their accounting. But that’s just fake. Their economy still produces that waste.
But China fossil electricity is down, even as they’ve grown electricity over 8% last 2 years. China is decarbonizing manufacturing.
Same exact trick. China outsources stuff like mining, machining etc now. China does the final assembly…
That’s why global carbon isn’t slowing down.
Everyone is playing the same shell games.
A lot of environmentalists soemhow want to believe this and they blind themselves to what is really going on… That increasing reliance on technology and technical development doesn’t make the problem worse. There are no clean sustainable industrial processes. It doesnt much matter what tech you make, you make an indelible impact on the environment.
When countries don’t do heavy manufacturing, don’t raise all their own food etc, they are striking absolutely staggering amounts of carbon and other pollution from their accounting. But that’s just fake. Their economy still produces that waste.
For sure carbon accounting, needed for carbon tax and dividend, should have 100% of the “responsibility” on the consumer side, which works fine for imposing carbon tariffs on the exporting country, which get passed down to domestic consumer (who can afford to buy stuff because of dividend).
China outsources stuff like mining, machining etc now. China does the final assembly…
Mining can be global, but China does a lot of the refining and machining. At any rate, mining equipment getting electrified, and using vast land resources unusable for any other purposes surrounding mines for solar to power mining equipment is a great investment, and something to expect in near term as a vast growing sector.
There is no energy trnaisiton and never has been, we still burn wood
Once you have oil + gas, you can make gas powered chainsaws, logging trucks and even do heli-logging.
In fact, the all time record lowest forests and highest amount of logging is right now, today.
Growing algae for carbon capture as a exetential crisis hobby. 1lb dry solid carbon this year, equivalent to 4lbs atmospheric CO2, I have a process down now and equipment for next spring, as well as a substantial indoor grow/storage over winter.
Doing something is better than nothing.
My friend is a marine biologist who did his thesis on a research project to try to develop biodiesel from algae.
In short, small scale efforts in a laboratory were very successful, but there were significant roadblocks to scaling it up. One of the issues in open environments was that once there was a large amount of algae it would always become contaminated by one cell organisms that would take the algae as their food supply. Algae in the wild have a wide array of symbiotic and pathenogenic relationships within the living world.
What do you do with the dried carbon? As I understand, you will need some way to store it long-term if you want to take it out of the atmosphere. Otherwise it might (at some point, given enough moisture, but this can already happen under high air humidity) be broken down by microorganisms to CO2 (which incidentally will end up in the armosphere again).
Anyway, I wanted to mention that I think your hobby is very cool. Algae are amazing, and growing them for carbon capture sounds like a fun project.
Currently… Paper bag to make it easy to weigh. Trying to sell as fish food to fund the project. I would like to transition to converting it to algenic acid for sale. A bit of funding and I could also probably purchase a better strain of algae to farm than the yellow-green I collected from a pond.
