Mastodawn

I get annoyed at the narrative that all the awareness and work on climate change hasn't done anything. Yes, global CO₂ emissions indeed continue to climb, but we don't know the counterfactual. When I was in grad school, we were on track for 5°C of warming. Now it's below 3°C. That's progress, even if we should do a lot more.

MinmiTheDino Jun 22

@davidho yea, every degree not warmed is a win. No binary thinking in climate.

Florian Kummerer Jun 22

@minmi True, and 1.5° isn't some magical bar that if we barely keep under we will not notice anything.

Dan Neuman 🇨🇦Jun 22

@winkelmesser @minmi True, we are definitely noticing it now.

elpolacodesplegado Jun 22

@davidho
We're drowning slower, but I'm afraid it's too late. For too long politicians and industry have been telling people that innovation will solve climate change. The truth is we all have to sacrifice a lot of convenient goods to actually slow it meaningfully. The counterfactual should be: Where would we need to be by now?

@elpolacodesplegado @davidho

kundu 🌱🔻🐧Jun 22

@davidho I love this and I think it is also useful data to keep fighting global warming. It gives some kind of hope in the future.

Travis Scott Jun 22

@davidho thanks corporate America

This is important information. When we think about climate change, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed and hopeless. Your big picture approach helps us to keep trying in many small ways. Thanks for posting.

Dr. Jürgen Knödlseder Jun 22

@davidho What’s your reference for claiming that we are on track for below 3 degrees?

Ben Aveling Jun 22

@davidho It wasn't that long ago that 3 degrees was gone for all money and the question was could we avoid 4 degrees.

SpaceLifeForm Jun 22

Every bit of effort makes a difference.

Not trying to reduce greenhouse gas emmisions is not an option.

Of course, BigOil will disagree because their main concern is profit.

Jo with elbows up & chin up Jun 22

@davidho we’d have made much more progress were it not for AI, Crypto, Data Centers, NFTs…a massive counter investment in fossil fuel burning, and also taking from people whatever sustainable energy was made available. Redirecting clean resources to these unsustainable models of ‘progress’.

Richard W. Woodley ELBOWS UP 🇨🇦🌹🚴‍♂️📷 🗺️Jun 22

@JoBlakely @davidho

So fucking true, at a time when we need to conserve energy those in positions of power think they can get richer by wasting it.

Jo with elbows up & chin up Jun 22

@the5thColumnist @davidho it’s so infuriating and deliberate sabotage to environmental protections we are investing in.

Abram Kedge 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇨🇦Jun 23

@JoBlakely @the5thColumnist @davidho

I'd like to add fracking to that list. In Texas they're intentionally emptying precious clean water aquifers that will take another ice age to refill. They're polluting that water with unknown additives (trade secret combos), then using it to flush out oil, gas, and fossil brine water ten times saltier than seawater.

THEN the plan is to "clean" the dirty, oily, briny, carcinogen-loaded water using huge amounts of energy, after which they will put it on crops (as is already done in the San Quentin valley in CA).

Make it make sense. How is this better than green energy and NOT consuming the entire drinking and irrigation water reserves for half the State in a couple of dozen years? Let alone introducing dangerous pollutants into the food chain?

Nicole Parsons Jun 22

The role the fossil fuel industry plays in all problems needs attention.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/20/supreme-court-ruling-california-emission-limits

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/18/trump-oil-gas-industry-donors

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wind-and-solar-energy-are-cheaper-than-electricity-from-fossil-fuel-plants/

https://www.ft.com/content/dbb34bdf-fff6-4df3-93ea-de779b5783e7

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-06-20/banks-are-financing-their-own-multitrillion-dollar-fossil-fuel-nightmare

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/indias-power-push-nearly-half-of-indias-power-capacity-now-non-fossil-fuel-based-coal-remains-dominant/articleshow/122004290.cms

https://www.wired.com/story/cheap-and-effective-ways-to-cut-methane-pollution-arent-being-used/

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Banks-Drop-the-Climate-Pretense-and-Follow-the-Money.html

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/UK-Reconsiders-North-Sea-Oil-and-Gas-to-Lower-Energy-Bills.html

https://globalnews.ca/news/11245714/canadian-banks-fossil-fuel-funding-report/

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jun/17/world-banks-fossil-fuel-finance-2024

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5326566-supreme-court-fossil-fuels-climate-change-trump/

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2025/06/trump-banks-fossil-oil-investment-report/

https://theconversation.com/one-lawsuit-just-helped-melt-the-fossil-fuel-industrys-defence-against-being-held-accountable-for-climate-change-257840

https://www.desmog.com/2025/06/02/map-70-percent-trump-cabinet-tie-project-2025-heritage-afpi-convention-states-dunn-doge/

https://www.desmog.com/2024/10/25/project-2025-trump-mapped-how-6-billionaire-family-fortunes-fund-climate-denial/

Fuel firms can challenge California’s emission limits, supreme court rules

Court votes to back challenge to state waiver that allows it to set tougher car emission standards than federal limits

The Guardian

A Sweet Gentleman Jun 22

@davidho It's so interesting to see the dips in CO2 emissions in 2008 with the economic crisis and 2020 with covid.

RevPudDudley Jun 22

@davidho A book called "Six Degrees" was very good ... a rise of 3 degrees C begins to be almost unimaginably bad already ...

Brad Rosenheim Jun 22

@davidho I wonder how it would have looked had we not started building data centers and training LLMs all over the place. We certainly have made great headway in implementing more renewables into grids.

@Brad_Rosenheim @davidho

SUVs alone are the second biggest contributor to the increase in CO₂ emissions after the whole power sector.

AI may play a significant role, and AI has many social downsides but it's not the sole reason for increasing electrical use.

https://www.wired.com/story/suvs-are-worse-for-the-climate-than-you-ever-imagined/

SUVs Are Worse for the Climate Than You Ever Imagined

But if you drive one, you can still reduce your carbon footprint—and you can vote for climate change policies with even bigger impact.

WIRED

HumToTable Jun 23

@Brad_Rosenheim @davidho Hard agree.

MatthewToadAgain Jun 22

@davidho While the anticipated maximum temperature may be lower, we have learned a lot about the impacts of a given temperature in the last 20 years.

2.7C now is nearly as scary as 4C was 20 years ago. The thresholds for the major positive feedbacks are lower. Climate chaos is already happening. And there are good reasons to believe that climate change has sped up significantly.

Of course there's been some progress. But there hasn't been *enough* progress, and in many areas we are actively backtracking.

Right wing politicians are perfectly capable of killing off even the inadequate market-driven solutions that are acceptable under capitalism.

And they are doing so. Trump is blocking offshore wind and ordering coal fired power to stay open.

And there are huge areas of policy where there is precisely zero chance of the market delivering in time. Heating/cooling, transport, large parts of industry, agriculture.

All of them require leadership and spending from government. But government is either in bed with the fossil fuel industry or terrified of their proxies in various forms of media. Or making up budgetary excuses that ultimately are based arbitrary ideology around taxation.

Even in the UK, after Labour promised not to approve any new fossil fuel licenses, the chancellor is pushing to approve the Rosebank (500MT of CO2 on its own), and Jackdaw oil fields.

Meanwhile while there is some capital for public transport, last year they cut funding for the bus fare cap, and they're now cutting funding for EV charging points. They are also politically buying in to the data center/AI bubble, which will also leave stranded assets and huge carbon emissions.

On the upside, the money for insulation and other measures to upgrade old leaky housing did survive.

And Germany, once a leader, still burns significant amounts of coal for power.

Bottom line?

Hope is not the same thing as hopium.

We have already missed 1.5C. We are probably going to miss 2C as well. We are heading for 2.7C at present on current policies. In spite of recent positive signs emissions have not yet peaked. Trump alone adds around 4 billion tonnes, and the UK will probably go the same way in 2029.

Business as usual will not fix the problem. "Hopium" is passively hoping for the best while cherry-picking good news and ignoring the bad.

Hope, on the other hand?

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal... To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.”

Rebecca Solnit

@davidho I think it is highly unlikely the world will achieve net zero by 2050. Too much wasted time and intransigence by vested interests. Even if we as private citizens do our bit, the big emitters are mostly only pretending.

VerifiedClimate

That graph is fossile fuels only.
Using an image that states something (ff rise) that is not part of the given theory (predicted temp (when exactly?)) is ... optomizable.

@davidho important perspective, and encouraging

@davidho The other factor which generally seems hushed up in future climate change scenarios:

The less we do now, the more people will die, which will also bring down greenhouse gas emissions. Not nicely, but you know what they say about Mother Nature.

At a 5C increase, it would have probably gotten most of us before things equilibrated. At 3C, many more will survive.

If we had the sense to stay below 1.5C, we'd have enough elbow room to steer the process and avoid many tragedies altogether.

Titia Schuurman Jun 23

@quixote @davidho Most deaths will be in the countries with the lowest emissions though.

@titia @davidho Yeah. That too. But I still find it weird how very not-my-problem the richer countries can be about that statistic. Especially since they're so very upset about migrants. When it gets way worse, they think people will just quietly die somewhere else and not bother them?

Titia Schuurman Jun 23

@quixote @davidho Indeed. Here in Finland, I watch the deadly heatwaves in Southern Europe and try to tell people that in addition to the millions from outside Europe, we'll soon be facing an influx of climate refugees even from Spain, Italy, Greece. But no. People just don't connect the facts.

Sebastian Fourier Jun 23

@davidho fair point, but now that we have hit 1.5 C we have effectively unlocked many of the tipping points in the climate system, triggering positive feedback mechanisms, runaway warming etc

@davidho another way to look at it is that per capita emissions are down from their peak: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?country=~OWID_WRL.

ofc, there's still a huge disparity between wealthy countries and poor countries, and between wealthy and poor withing countries, and we need that number to be zero, but it does show progress imo.

CO₂ emissions per capita

An interactive visualization from Our World in Data.

Our World in Data

@davidho
Can you find us a graph on ecosystem destruction? How about ocean acidification?

@davidho
Also, sadly, the graph is annual emissions, not total accumulated co2. From what I've read, to reach three degrees of global warning, we need that line to drop to zero, yes zero, in 2 years.

@davidho
A better graph...

#climate #climatechange

🍻 Alexander 🇪🇺Jun 23

@davidho The trouble is that even 3°C is far too much warming.

I weep for my daughter and the disasters that will likely occur in her lifetime.

Martin Vermeer FCD Jun 23

@davidho It's progress, but attribution is hard. How much of it is due to new technologies coming on-line, and how much - if any - is due to activism and resulting policy change?

Efi (nap pet) 🦊💤Jun 23

@davidho that valley on 2020

Karl Heinz Häsliprinz Jun 23

@davidho ... This is the counterfactual as by the 1990 IPCC Report. It did do something, but not very much. Red Dot is today.

Morten Grøftehauge Jun 23

@davidho How do these models account for momentum? Like, if emissions stopped tomorrow the planet would continue to heat, right? Because it would take centuries before the ice caps and glaciers reached equilibrium and stopped overall melting. And do we understand the ocean's part enough to say what would happen to its effect on the temperature of the atmosphere?

Mikołaj Hołysz Jun 23

@davidho And as far as I remember my stats, emissions per person in developed countries are actually falling, the reason global emissions are rising is because the world population is rising, and many poor countries are developing and slowly approaching western standards.

Lyndsay Barwell Jun 25

@davidho considering world population has doubled since 1976 and people are richer it is surprising we're not in a worse place but still, co2 is going up more quickly.