My impression is that this is the latest fallback position intended to stop/delay us from acting (I don't know that the parent commenter intends it that way; this isn't a criticism of them). In rough order:
1) There is no global warming
2) There is global warming, but it's not caused by humans
3) It's caused by humans but there is nothing we can do about it.
4) We can do something about it, but it's too expensive to be worthwhile.
5) It's cost-effective (because the cost of doing nothing is so high), but it's too late to act.
6) ? Any predictions for the next fallback argument?
The mouse wheel of denial.
That sounds like a cheap shot but the sad reality is that there are quite a few people who seriously believe that this is part of the rapture/apocalypse/tribulation revealed in Bible prophecy and that attempts to prevent or even mitigate against it are satanic.
Of course that's completely bonkers but we have to remember that there's a significant contingent invested in the idea that the bible is literally true and the realities of modern life are essentially illusions designed to test people's faith. I don't know exactly how many people believe this, but I'd bet on about 5-15 million people in the USA.
Secondly, Jesus was quite emphatic that no one would know the day & time of his return. He did say there would be warning signs, but also said it would still be a surprise. If someone wants to destroy the world in order to push for the Second Coming, then they're on the verge of being a false prophet as described by Christ. Not to mention: why take the risk when this might not be the time of his return?
I'm personally not a believer now, but I was raised in a very conservative Christian family. These arguments sometimes have an effect on my friends and family still in the church.
People who believe such things generally justify them by that very stewardship clause. According to that take, God gave the planet to humans, so however they use it is fine and accounted for. So either AGW simply isn't real, or if it is, God will take care of it.
7) You gave the power, but to the wrong people.
8) The people in power are going to survive but we aren't.
I worry about climate change and so do most of my friends but I see ZERO action on any of our parts. Example: Nearly all my friends FLEW to GDC this week, many of them that's a HUGE amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere just so we can have fun, network and party. Then we go to BBQ and hamburger restaurants and eat lots of beef which we're told we shouldn't because it's the biggest resource user for the smallest amount of food. Many of them upgrade their $!000 phone every year as well as several other electronic gadgets creating lots of electronic waste.
My point is, even the majority of "believers" won't change their behavior. At most if you're lucky they might start carrying their own bag to the grocery store yet still probably have 15+ pairs of shoes for "fashion" (yet another industry people claim is bad for the environment"
If the believers won't change their behavior what chance is there the non-believers will do anything?
If the only solution is "vote for a world government to geo-engineer the planet" well that's never going to happen.
Is the only rational thing to do, figure out where the new beachfronts will be and start buying property while it's cheap (like Lex Luthor from the first Superman movie)
I did stop eating beef but my tech company cafeteria seems to be huge fans of it and will not stop giving it to us.
If we paid the true cost of carbon, probably we'd fly less, fuel would be re-engineered, and other forms of transport would be developed and expanded.
It's your decision to keep ignoring the problem. Nobody else taking action does not absolve you from your responsibility.
As a bonus, scaling down your consumption means your money goes much further. Early retirement (think thirties), is not impossible. If you're interested in these ideas, I've enjoyed reading [1].
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did...
You deserved it.
Elon has stated in all seriousness that he personally puts global warming at above a 1% chance of being a species-threatening event for us, and that we need to become a multi-planetary species to reduce the odds of extinction.
He doesn't think that wiping out our species is a likely or even very probable. Just high enough that there is no better way that he can spend his time than trying to address and mitigate the problem.
The biggest issue we have with climate change is that we and the biosphere are set up for it to be this way, and adaption is slow. We might have to move many cities and the agriculture, and somehow manage with a biosphere that takes many generations to adapt.
All such possibilities are low. But they aren't 0. Elon's personal judgement is that combined they exceed 1%.
Having said that, it is IMHO possibly the worse place to be in case of a massive increase in the sea level. My house in Den Haag is 10ft below the sea level, maybe 5 miles away from the sea.
That's scary no matter how you put it, despite the best engineering effort from my friends at Rijkswaterstaat.
In contrast, Bangladesh's land area is ~150,000 km2 vs ~30,000 km2 for the Netherlands (figures off the top of my head.) Bangladesh's population is concentrated in places with extraordinarily bad water infrastructure and in the parts of the country most at risk for flooding. Their population is literally ten times larger... and despite having a 'low' growth rate it is growing at about two million additional people PER YEAR. Bangladesh's total GDP is also less than a quarter of a trillion dollars. To add to that, the Bangladeshi government is undoubtedly less skilled at leading massive public works and infrastructure projects to save 160,000,000 people (most of which live in poverty) from having their home flooded.
Put it this way, you have two choices. Choice A: you live in one of the wealthiest countries on earth, world renowned for its water management, and you're packed next to a lot of other wealthy people in a union with a lot of other wealthy countries. Your government says it will spend thirty thousand dollars per year - for every man, woman, child, baby, grandmother, you name it - to save your ass from global warming, and they have a history of winning against the water. Even if your country completely ceases to exist, you are bordered by two very wealthy countries where all your citizens have permission to live and work permanently, with no visas or administrative mess. These countries are big enough, and have faced enough of a population decline, that they'd each survive taking in 8 million or so highly educated, wealthy, English-speaking people with extremely similar culture and beliefs. Hell, we're so closely integrated with Belgium that we just peacefully swapped land! [0]
Or, you live in one of the poorest countries on earth, which has semi-friendly relations with a few other countries scattered around the globe. Your government says it will spend $400 - less than the price of a new smartphone - to try to save you from having your home wiped out by rising sea levels. This government's history of water management reads like a bad joke: their latest lauded efforts are to try to get water from a hundred and sixty kilometers away, and forty percent of the capital's population live in slums that regularly flood with sewage. The neighboring countries are all dealing with population problems of their own: they're also wealthier, and at least somewhat hesitant to take in one hundred and sixty million impoverished people.
I know personally I'm a hell of a lot more scared for Bangladesh.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/28/world/europe/belgium-neth...
Additionally, the rest of the displaced millions are mostly very highly educated, wealthy, English-speaking people who are allowed to live and work anywhere in the EU. Compare this to Bangladesh.
It would be a damn sight better to be living in Switzerland, NL will be sea again once that kicks off.
Not much to do against that kind of rise in water levels.
Carbon chains, or in the simplest case, methane, are expensive to produce, as one might expect. By far it's better to never have burned that fossil fuel than to try to reclaim it from the atmosphere or ocean. Setting a $80/ton CO2 carbon tax (Exxon's internal estimate for new project planning) or even a $40/ton CO2 carbon tax (Shell's internal estimate for new project planning) is an obvious step. When even the fossil fuel companies are using this tax level in their internal estimates, it's just stupid that our government and political leaders aren't pushing for that or double or triple it.
My personal hope is that by 2040 we will have lots of excess electricity from solar and wind because we overprovision them. And we'll overprovision them because they will be the cheapest electricity, and we need enough of them such that at their low point of output they still meet our needs. In that case it seems that we may have cheap intermittent electricity. At that point we can start making hydrogen, then combining it with CO2, to start getting rid of greenhouse gases.
Some people think that we'll be able to take methane (natural gas) and make hydrogen and precipitate out the carbon as graphite. that's probably the easiest form of carbon to dispose of, whereas a liquid like methanol or even diesel is going to pose lots of problems.
It seems that CO2 in the oceans is going to be a bit more easy to remove than atmospheric CO2. So it seems that there are all sorts of chemistries that would be useful for that.
But still, we need a carbon tax to fund such carbon sequestration activities. Without a market mechanism, there's not going to be much investment. We need to both do research, then develop them into large industries really quickly.
Carbon tax, carbon tax, carbon tax. Don't vote for anybody or any party that doesn't advocate for it. This is the biggest single issue for our children and their economy.
What I want to know is there any concrete plan to build something that will remove excess CO2 from the air and ocean that can be built by the government. Build this is going to go over a whole lot better than tax this.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/shell-oil-warn-foss...
Of course, they are heavier into natural gas than their fossil fuel competitors, so a carbon tax impacts them the least, therefore giving them a competitive advantage.
The only reason it's not politically viable is because a minority of Americans have forced one political party to say so. That can change quickly. They think that they're protecting "their side" but even "their side" disagrees with them.
There's no excuse, absolutely no excuse, to be against a carbon tax. It's the most libertarian, market friendly way to deal with carbon emissions.
CaSiO3 + CO2 -> CaCaO3 + SiO2
The thermodynamics are much more favorable than "combustion-in-reverse" (trying to reform hydrocarbons from CO2). The products are stable and the process can deal with point CO2 sources, distributed sources, atmospheric CO2, and ocean acidification -- the whole shebang.
But the natural kinetics of silicate weathering are very slow. Kinetics can be improved by orders of magnitude if you grind the silicate minerals to dust; it's a surface area limited reaction. Kinetics get better yet if you apply the mafic rock dust to e.g. acid sulfate soils used for agriculture in the tropics. Those soils already need a pH boost to avoid crop stunting by soluble aluminum. Doing the adjustment with silicates instead of limestone means a two-for-one benefit (crop productivity plus drawing down CO2). But I think that to see widespread adoption there will have to be some targeted donor aid to poorer countries; ground limestone is cheaper than ground silicates if you don't care about CO2 abatement, and the rich world's farmers don't have a lot of acid sulfate soils in need of treatment within their home countries.
0) Donor government identifies a country where acid soils are already cultivated for agriculture. The recipient country should also be reasonably stable so you don't have to plan around armed conflict. Palm oil production in Malaysia looks like a good candidate. It's important to get buy-in from the (potential) recipient country's government too.
1) Within the chosen country, identify a region that has a lot of acid soil cultivation and that has easily accessible deposits of ultramafic rocks nearby. (Shouldn't be too hard, as such rocks are very common.)
2) Provide electrically powered crushers and/or grinders for size reduction, plus power sources if remote from the grid (ideally solar, maybe diesel generators as are common for mining sites; even if it's fossil powered the net CO2 is deeply negative). There may be some necessary R&D optimizing said crushers for low-maintenance conditions, since ultramafic rocks are among the hardest and toughest.
3) Pay locals to run the crushers and transport discounted-or-free rock dust to farmers in place of limestone. There might be some gaming of the system if e.g. drivers are really just dumping rock dust on the nearest empty land instead of finding farmers to take it, but that's tolerable. The project is already 75% done if you just get the rock crushed to dust in the first place. So key metric is ensuring that the crushers are still operable and are actually being used to crush rocks as intended.
Another idea, after I've written this out: there is less but still some acid soil under cultivation in the richer nations of the world, e.g. parts of Australia. Might want to try it first in the developed world where monitoring, language barriers, and infrastructure are all less challenging.
EDIT: a somewhat less effective but still potentially interesting idea is to put the ground rock in near-shore ocean environments where wave action will help abrade/weather the particles. Probably not as good as acidic warm soil in the tropics, but still a speedup over the natural way.
You know the Netherlands will be literally underwater within this century, don't you?
On the positive side, they have 500 years of experience building dykes and defending their coast line. Their experience will be invaluable to fight off raise of sea level during the current century, inland and around the world.
On the negative, they have huge liabilities that can be triggered even by temporary floods. Refugee crisises during storms, lost of high value agricultural land due to increased salinity of soil, etc. All this will cut down on their budget to support their current dyke infrastructure, precisely at a time when they should be extending and enhancing it agressively.
Rinse and repeat for 50 years, and you are bonded to see an ever growing number of marginal areas that are deemed not worth salvaging and left to be turned in unproductive swamps. I do not see the impoverished and overpopulated remanant of Netherlands surviving for long afterwards.
Best case scenario I imagine is they will be absorbed by Germany, who may at that time have the economic power to keep the dykes in running order. Or they may try to stick to their own guns, in which case it is hard to tell how much land they will be able to hold dry.
Since the disastrous 1953 flood, they've installed humongous valves at the mouths of all estuaries (Delta Works). If sea level increases more than a meter or so, they'll need to modify it.