At the same time, the CO2 increase measured at Mauna Loa for 2024 was over 3.5ppm/yr, way up from the ~2.5ppm/yr seen previously this decade[0]
2025 State of the Climate report[1] said (on top of other horrible things)
> A dangerous hothouse Earth trajectory may now be more likely due to accelerated warming, self-reinforcing feedbacks, and tipping points.
I haven't seen hothouse earth mentioned in mainstream papers for a long time (decade+?), as it was deemed unlikely before.
Also The German Physics Society and the German Meteorological Society issued a joint statement warning about the possibility of 3 °C warming by the 2050s[2]
I am actually angry to people that they're irresponsible enough to vote for this without caring about others, but it feels like it was such a horrible timing for all this stupidity as well.
I feel these agreements are highly asymmetric and are used to gain market advantage by countries that don't have qualms violating these agreements behind closed doors.
This then leads to more pollution.
Before Trump, the US had a higher rating than China (though both were bad):
This is a controversial opinion but an outside view of COP is that in its most positive light, it has failed, miserably. It has not solved the climate crises, and even the few agreements which it has managed to pass have promised way to little and even then are still broken anyway.
I know the USA is boycotting for a different (and a very bad) reason, but I feel like (with hindsight) it would have been a smart move for other countries to abandon this conference and demand something better.
Many have called it COP-out for years simply because of how useless it has been, or worse yet actually is used to tighten the relationship better countries and companies that handle high emissions with the incentive to double down. That and that COP28 was held in the UAE the nation equivalent of a Gas station, this funnily enough doesn't feel like a big loss.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't try these things, but COP has become the poster child of the failure of these kind of events.
I guess the world has now given up on staving off climate change, and accepted it as inevitable.
Hopefully, or so the unstated thinking goes, it will be those poors who bear most of the brunt. Yes, many will perish or be uprooted, but humanity as a whole is nowhere near threatened with extinction.
Or, another strain of thought goes, technologies that are yet to be developed will suddenly appear to save the day...
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 31.9 ms ] thread2025 State of the Climate report[1] said (on top of other horrible things)
> A dangerous hothouse Earth trajectory may now be more likely due to accelerated warming, self-reinforcing feedbacks, and tipping points.
I haven't seen hothouse earth mentioned in mainstream papers for a long time (decade+?), as it was deemed unlikely before.
Also The German Physics Society and the German Meteorological Society issued a joint statement warning about the possibility of 3 °C warming by the 2050s[2]
I am actually angry to people that they're irresponsible enough to vote for this without caring about others, but it feels like it was such a horrible timing for all this stupidity as well.
[0] https://www.carbonbrief.org/met-office-atmospheric-co2-rise-... [1] https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1... [2] https://worldcrunch.com/focus/green-or-gone/global-warming-a...
This then leads to more pollution.
Before Trump, the US had a higher rating than China (though both were bad):
https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/usa/2024-11-13/
(Same as EU's rating: https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/eu/)
https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/2024-09-17/
The sad reality is that unless there is uniform compliance across major countries, these talks are just climate theatre.
I know the USA is boycotting for a different (and a very bad) reason, but I feel like (with hindsight) it would have been a smart move for other countries to abandon this conference and demand something better.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't try these things, but COP has become the poster child of the failure of these kind of events.
Hopefully, or so the unstated thinking goes, it will be those poors who bear most of the brunt. Yes, many will perish or be uprooted, but humanity as a whole is nowhere near threatened with extinction.
Or, another strain of thought goes, technologies that are yet to be developed will suddenly appear to save the day...