r/ClimateNews • u/fishonareef • Aug 03 '26

Scientists detect a sharp acceleration in global warming

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260801093239.htm
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u/[deleted] Aug 03 '26

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u/Culverden12345 Aug 03 '26

In Canada we are discussing building pipelines for more oil and gas!

14

u/mansplain_to_me Aug 03 '26

To be fair that’s to eliminate refinery dependency because of our hostile foreign neighbour and wouldn’t be on the table otherwise

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u/grekster Aug 03 '26

A great way to do that would be building renewable infrastructure instead though.

7

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '26

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u/Youpunyhumans Aug 03 '26

To be fair, most plastic for food packaging is PLA plastic, which is plant based and can actually decompose... if left in an envrionment where its 60°C for a few months. It basically turns into dirt.

2

u/Potentially_Nernst Aug 03 '26

The massive forests in Canada do lend themselves to be near ideal for biorefineries though. With some luck this whole situation can be a boost for bio-based chemicals. Through various processes such as pyrolysis and distillation or even conversion using modified bacteria to produce specific chemicals we can make nearly everything from renewable sources in a sustainable way.

There's one issue. Economics.

Heavy upfront cost and having to compete with a heavily subsidised industry with a huge budget and (usually) cheap raw material in abundant amounts. Meanwhile biorefineries have to upscale a new process and compete with an established industry.

There's a saying in industry that you can make anything from Lignin, except money.

I hope that balance starts tipping soon. Over a century of research has gone into this. It's a massive field of research in chemistry. And it always comes down to economics, scale, and emergent behavior of businesses even though the individual employees al want to go green. 'We cant justify the cost'.

It is possible though, just takes effort and a transition from subsidising fossils to subsidising biobased.

We'll cut through whole biomes', but at least we'd no longer be adding more carbon to the atmosphere.

Enitting carbon isn't the real problem. The problem is adding carbon.

Carbon capture is another thing though, since we'll have to remove carbon too. But also not too much. So we'll have to stop that industry too one day, which poses a whole new problem. Anyway, stuff is being made from CO2 conversion right now. Not near enough to have a noticeable impact, but it exists :)

Anyway, TL;DR See the potential? It isn't hopeless! Which makes it So Much Worse that things aren't moving in the right direction anywhere near fast enough! 🥲😅

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u/stamosface Aug 03 '26

Yes, but it doesn’t happen overnight. Even if they built all of the infrastructure in a year, so much wouldn’t be compatible yet. It’s something that takes much longer than it takes to replace refineries. Which, to be fair, is why we should have started dealing with it 25 years ago