Record surge in atmospheric CO2 seen in 2016 | Hacker News Reader

Record surge in atmospheric CO2 seen in 2016

bbc.com

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>"Today's CO2 concentration of around 400 ppm exceeds the natural variability seen over hundreds of thousands of years,"[0]

That's the part that opens and shut's the "debate" surrounding human-cause climate change. When you have that much data, combined with the fact that we build and use machines that spew carbon there can not be any other explanation for the Co2 levels. Case closed.

[0]: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/carbon-dioxide-co2-...

Except there has been a huge amount of effort of discrediting geological data.

On the most extreme, 10% of the population of the US believes the earth to be on the order of 10k years old, which immediately makes the entire geologic record suspect.

On lesser extremes, there are arguments that for much of the Phanerozoic. CO2 concentrations were much, much higher, and a lot of money was spent pushing the idea that returning to such levels would be benign.

More importantly, we know with a high degree of certainty that human global emissions tip the earth's overall carbon output/downtake balance to net output (by a few dozen gigatons, I believe), which the models say is enough to trigger the increase to 400ppm over the past century or so.

And we know it's humans who made the increase of CO2 from the measurements of the carbon isotopes in the ice cores, which stored the state of the air from the earlier times. Human burning of the fossil fuels changes the isotope ratio exactly: it is certain that just humans, burning the fossil fuels, are those who change the CO2 concentration through the years.

A positive feedback loop through methane was always the nightmare scenario, and now it seems to be happening.

It's probably too late to stop catastrophic warming simply by cutting emissions. We still need to do so, because it can always get worse, but it's time to look seriously at terraforming as well.

Do you mean terraforming Earth or Mars? Handling global warming will probably be easier than terraforming Mars.

easier scientifically != easier politically

just need to drop a few hundred thousand comets and asteroids and mars, and mar's moon, then float a few hundred thousand giant mirrors around it to warm it up a bit, seed it with plants, wait a few thousand years.

no big deal!

Don't forget solving the gravity disparity problem.

dumping the comets and moons onto the surface is to help with that. But I've done some napkin math and it looks like we need ~40 billion commets to bring it halfway to earth mass...welp

Makes terraforming Venus look easy.

If you crash the entire asteroid belt into Mars, its mass will increase by half a percent.

a good start! you can get most of that half of a percent with just the 4 largest asteroids.

maybe we need to sacrifice our own moon.

If we are moving the moon, we might as well just move the earth to a higher orbit further from the sun.

If we had access to this kind of energy, we'd be generating and treating copious amounts of antimatter and using it to power electrical CO2 sequestration devices.

Mars gravity, 38% of Earth's, doesn't seem like all that much of problem. Sure, there are some health risks associated with being in a low gravity environment. But considering humans survive surprisingly well in micro-gravity in space, I'm sure we can adapt to the relatively strong gravity on Mars.

> But considering humans survive surprisingly well in micro-gravity in space

Source for that claim? The number of studies I’ve read (as well as conversations I’ve had with astronauts) about the health impact on astronauts who’ve been on the ISS for extended periods seems to disagree.

Is less gravity the only difference in being on earth and being on the ISS?

Google would've easily found a bunch of supporting articles to what I stated, but here:

https://www.space.com/23017-weightlessness.html

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/a...

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/20/health/your-body-in-space/inde...

https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/bodyinspace

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the_h...

tl;dr version:

> In space, without gravity, bones lose more than 1% of minerals and density per month.

> Astronauts also experience blood volume loss, weakened immune systems and cardiovascular deconditioning since floating takes little effort and the heart doesn't have to work as hard to pump blood through your body

> "It changes their visual acuity," Charles said. "They're not able to see things up close. It's like advanced aging. That sort of thing happens at a sort of an accelerated rate."

Why are you attributing it all to the lack of gravity? Losing muscle mass is one thing, but what about the increased high frequency deionizing radiation that astronauts face?

Because the scientists and medical professionals claim that it's related to the lack of gravity and provide evidence of why that is the case. Do you have a better approach, if so, why not publish based on your more knowledgable expertise?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060322174351.h...

https://www.space.com/5245-long-space-missions-risk-cancer-p...

https://srag.jsc.nasa.gov/SpaceRadiation/Why/Why.cfm

All of those links are on radiation in space. The first two are as it relates to accelerated aging. These were not difficult to find.

Correct, but how does any of them counter what I said? They don’t!

Adapting to and/or fixing Earth's climate is easier than terraforming Mars by an enormous amount. Mars is more inhospitable to life than the center of Antarctica during the winter. Also, it's months away in a spaceship.

There's no scenario in which Mars is a viable alternative for the human race this century.

Earth. It's the same technology set, more or less, but aimed at cooling it down rather than heating up Mars.

I suppose the best option would be carbon capture, if it isn't too expensive, but I rather suspect it would be.

It is not too expensive if we were to use nuclear reactors to power it. (Yes, including hiked commissioning and decommissioning costs.)

Combined with solar and wind for peak of course because why not.

There are currently no other options. Renewables alone are not enough to even power civilization at current level. (They get somewhere shy of 60% in an impossible best case.)

Some sort of carbon capture and storage situation seems more likely at this point, though I haven't yet seen any proposals that I think would get the backing they need to be effective.

Is this what you meant by terraforming, or something else entirely?

How about we grow corn (or other fast growing biomass like kelp) and bury it?

it still decays to things that release that CO2, plus burying things uses a lot of energy. If this a serious proposal you should be thinking grow it, wait for it to dry out and burn it - the fire will not be hot enough to turn all the carbon into CO2, the remainder is elemental carbon (read charcoal) in a form not usable to life. That carbon is also biochar which is actually useful to improve the soil.

This is most easily done in forest, but note that you need regular forest fires, otherwise the fire is hot enough to run all the carbon into CO2 and we didn't gain anything. Thus most of the forest fires you read about are bad - but if we change our policy after the fire and burn those forests often we can make them a net negative CO2.

Alternatively we could also grow forests and, rather than burn them, harvest the wood for constructing furniture, buildings, etc, that will survive long-term. Hopefully, the wood can be recycled when the buildings reach their end of life rather than being burnt or decomposed.

But I suspect we'll need a lot of forests to compensate for the current rate of fossil-fuel use.

As I understand it a push for more bamboo would be great for this. It's relatively quick growing and useful for a lot of various building materials. You could sequester a lot of CO2 in bamboo that would be fairly useful and take a lot less processing than other types of wood.

The trouble is that even bamboo requires marginally arable land which is at premium, fails to grow in cold conditions of most Europe and chunk of US and Russia. The area required to make a dent in CO2 sequestration would be a bunch of countries sized.

Secondary problem would be handling all of that junk. You cannot burn it, have to bury it instead.

That's fair. Though I will say I don't think any single armed approach to sequestration will be anywhere close to reasonable, so exploring any avenue with decent margins, especially if there's any current practical value to it, seems like a smart idea.

What do you mean by "you can't burn it"? It would release some amount of CO2, but as another commenter points out, there would still be a non-zero amount of left over carbon, no?

Well, exploring bad options is a waste of time, luxury we don't have unfortunately.

If you want to go full genetic engineered plants, there are better options out there.

Bamboo is good too, corn captures a lot of carbon as well and dies off quickly, making it good for composting back into the ground. Grown in non-frosting areas you could re-sow year round with plants cultivated for each season.

Decomposing biomass is called compost and you can layer it back down on the soil you grow grass-like plants in. This is what forests and prairies do naturally. Some amount of the biomass is left behind and becomes a silt layer.

Carbon emitted from the decay is not net positive into the air. It would still be net negative so long as you didn’t expend fossil fuels to bury it. In fact, I could burn some of the harvest to fuel burying the rest :)

Plus burning it would release the carbon faster than decay, and decay of CO2 into roots is generally just fixes by growing plants again. So the rate of carbon release would be dramatically faster to but versus decay. And what we want is net sequestering so slow release is good.

It’s literally the process that generated a low CO2 high O2 atmosphere in the first place, I’m just proposing we cultivate it and not harvest.

I believe decaying plant matter generally emits green house gasses. (See for example emissions from biomass collecting behind dams; there were headlines about this in the past year.) So you'd have to bury the biomass to prevent rot and/or gas leaks. That means digging big holes and/or transporting biomass to the holes and/or fabricating/moving material to cover the biomass. All that work uses energy and thus produces GHG. It's probably hard to come out ahead.

The carbon it emits comes from carbon fixation from photosynthesis. So long as some carbon is sequestered in the soil, it’s net negative.

My favorite is crushing and spreading olivine rocks: http://www.innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/oli...

It's a natural process and we just have to mine as many rocks as we dig up oil. We just need to catch up for the last few hundred years where we only dug up oil and no rocks. It still seems like the least expensive option.

It is certainly an option, but likely not enough. Even catalysed, the rock work very slow and require additional power input to maintain at optimal condition.

The other problem is transporting them rt places where they would be most effective - near cities and factories.

And there are many, many such feedback loops, and not all of them linked to methane. For example, as the climate warms there are more and more wildfires, and those emits tons of carbon as well. Another example is the decrease in CO2 absoption by water as its temperature increases. There are tons of them that have not been modelled (if they even have been envisaged / discovered); mostly because they are very hard to estimate when it comes to their impact.

As for your suggestion, I doubt this is even possible; we released millions of year worth of concentrated solar energy in the span of a century (edit: slightly misleading statement, see below). Scrubbing so much carbon from the atmosphere would take huge amounts of energy, and that energy needs to be clean or you're just adding to the issue. And all this needs to be done in a capitalistic system without any direct profit motive - good luck with that.

The most "realistic" examples of geoengineering I have read about usually have downsides that end up killing most of us as well (such as a solar shield at L1 to decrease warming - the impact on plant life and as a result, food, would be pretty bad). Meanwhile we're still pretending less than 2C is possible, and even pretending that 2C is survivable as-is without profound changes to our way of lives.

That being said, they mention that human CO2 emission have plateau-ed; I'm far from sure that this the case as a lot of it comes from self reporting and those numbers are likely heavily under reported (especially - but not only - from China). It should also be mentioned a lot of this could come from El Nino; but then again climate change is expected to impact that cycle and we may get stronger and/or longer El Nino periods - it may be partly consequence as well.

> we released millions of year of concentrated solar energy

This seems like an overestimate of how much energy it would take to do capture and sequestration. The energy density of fossil fuels is nowhere near that high. A gallon of gasoline is ~33kwh of energy, which is about the same amount of energy that falls on a square meter of Earth's surface in about 22 hours.

In terms of barrels of oil, with global consumption at 96 million barrels per day, assuming 12hrs of sunlight a day, I calculated 8600km^2 of Earth's surface, or a square about 93km on a side.

I don't think they're talking about total insolation. They're talking about the total amount of energy which gets stored up by the biosphere and kept in long-term forms of storage like oil and coal. I believe what humanity has used so far does account for millions of years of that.

Indeed. I edited my post accordingly.

Agreed; it's a good way to visualize just how much time was required for the biosphere to produce those fossil fuels but not how much energy would be required to scrub the carbon itself (and I didn't say that, although my statement was a bit misleading - edited).

I still think my point stands - scrubbing it from the atmosphere would involve an amount of energy that is unrealistic without deep, deep changes in our society.

Oil is not the only fossil fuel we use. Moreover, if some result seems too good to be true, there's big chance there's something missing.

The surface of a sphere can't get 12 hours of sunlight a day.

It collects light across a circle with same radius as the planet. A = (pi)r^2. The surface of a sphere is A = 4(pi)r^2. Net result on average you get 6 hours of full sunlight equivalent averaged cross a planet.

In northern latitudes panels tilt to collect more sunlight, but that means you can't completely cover an area with panels without some of them being in the shadow of another panel.

TLDR; you need 2 squares that are each 93km on a side, or one ~131 km on a side assuming 100% efficient panels and energy conversion. At say 20% net efficiency which would be very high that's a square ~300km on a side.

That's a fair analysis. My point was that it's not literally millions of years worth of energy stored, but only a very tiny fraction of that.

Comparing with the area which can't be really used for production as such is also misleading. Try comparing with the actual solar plant installations and it wouldn't look so simple.

All the gold ever mined fits in an olympic pool, but it's also not saying anything about how achievable that picture is. Ignoring the order of magnitude is even more misleading.

You're welcome to be pedantic about the surface area and miss the fact that there are 8 orders of magnitude difference between "a million years of stored energy" and a single day's worth.

It really took 13.8 billion years for the Earth to come to the point we're now. 3 billion years life on Earth uses the energy of Sun, only a small part remained stored in the Earth's crust. Two billion years of cyanobacteria work (using the energy of the Sun!) was needed only to produce enough oxygen in the atmosphere to enable more complex life. The next billion of years the complex life bound the carbon from the CO2 (chemically not small achievement at all) and the complex environment interaction stored it in the earth crust. The humanity used a significant part of that stored energy in just 100 years. But it is really the product of billions of years of living organisms simply living. Their goal was never to be efficient. We efficiently used up already hundred millions of years of that work (and work of the environment which allowed for the carbon to remain in the crust). That is really a "once in billions of years" event for us. We burned a lot of it carelessly fast, a lot of it simply "because it's cheap." We're still "drunk" and deny.

How much of energy is actually produced at the moment in solar plants? How much area do they need? How much is achievable? That's why I'm comparing your (wrong) estimate with the attitude like "I see the golden ring on my finger, I can get it easy, just go in the shop and buy it, now it's 'just' an Olympic pool of gold with which I can 'solve' the problem, see, it's easy." No.

> How much of energy is actually produced at the moment in solar plants? How much area do they need? How much is achievable? That's why I'm comparing your (wrong) estimate with the attitude like "I see the golden ring on my finger, I can get it easy, just go in the shop and buy it, now it's 'just' an Olympic pool of gold with which I can 'solve' the problem, see, it's easy." No.

I think you completely misinterpreted my statement and now you're just being needless angry. Read it again. The original poster seemed to imply that it would take millions of years worth of solar energy to "put back" all the CO2 into hydrocarbons. That's not even close, which is why I pointed out in my latest comment that there is at least 8 orders of magnitude difference there.

> It really took 13.8 billion years for the Earth to come to the point we're now. 3 billion years life on Earth uses the energy of Sun, only a small part remained stored in the Earth's crust. Two billion years of cyanobacteria work (using the energy of the Sun!) was needed only to produce enough oxygen in the atmosphere to enable more complex life. The next billion of years the complex life bound the carbon from the CO2 (chemically not small achievement at all) and the complex environment interaction stored it in the earth crust.

Wow, you got a very long, complicated chain of reasoning, but just let me stop you right there.

You've got a totally wrong model. Nature didn't "store up enough energy" gradually in some grand plan. Nature recycles everything; coal deposits are actually from plants and are total accidents.

Evidence: according to https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/2503/how-mu...

A large amount of the fossil deposits were due to a couple of relatively short periods of geologic history, the most important one that was the carboniferous period where so many plants grew they actually depleted the CO2 from the atmosphere (and as a side effect produced nearly 40% atmospheric oxygen concentration). That wasn't the outcome of a long, slow, one-directional process that kept adding oil and coal to the crust. It happened because there was a gap in the biosphere; nothing in that period existed that could digest plant cellulose. When microbes did eventually evolve to do so, then they were able to recycle the dead plant material on the surface (not buried under hundreds of meters of sedimentation) and lead to a homeostasis closer to what we see today.

Nature recycles everything.

(and yes, in an ironic way, we are finally recyling all those dead plants)

> The original poster seemed to imply that it would take millions of years worth of solar energy to "put back" all the CO2 into hydrocarbons.

Really? Not the way I read his message. I don't know what you've read (and why it is "seemed to imply" and not some quote that would support your claim), I know only this part of his message: "we released millions of year worth of concentrated solar energy in the span of a century." And if you analyze what actually happened on Earth, it is really billions of years of photosynthesis that were needed for this to happen (to produce the conditions that the concentrated carbon remained in the crust).

You write that you've discovered that only for a geologically "short" time the carbon was stored. Yes, indeed. But that geologically short time is compared to the billions of years where the conditions weren't right, both before and after.

And you still ignore what I wrote: without the pure oxygen, which was produced by the cyanobacteria using photosynthesis(!), there would be no geologically short period of the more active storage.

So yes, the fossil fuels are the still result of the almost 3 billion years of photosynthesis. And yes, it is an "accident" in a sense that everything needed to happen exactly as it happened, it wasn't in any way inevitable.

Which should actually make us appreciate even more that we probably used half of all the easily obtainable oil from the crust in just a 100 years.

And yes, we are burning the hydrocarbons from the crust and releasing the CO2 back to the atmosphere, 300 millions of years after the Carboniferous, and it won't be good for us.

Together with the Holocene extinction, humans already immensely changed the nature.

Right now the only long term large scale energy storage is the same process that created fossil fuels in the first place so it's debatable.

Consider, in theory we could use solar power to break the earth into little pieces and move it to a younger star. But, in practice that's simply not going to happen.

So, yes with years to possibly centuries of effort we could trap similar amounts of carbon. But, it currently seems unlikely for that to happen on any reasonable timescale without few economic reasons to do so.

Solar shield at L1 would have a minimal impact on plant life. You don't need to block much sunlight to counteract warming.

>but it's time to look seriously at terraforming as well.

There are so many orders of magnitude differences between the two problems (budget, timescales and difficulty) that I'm not sure if this is sarcasm.

I feel really helpless, one person alone is essentially powerless, only governments and corporations are big enough to make a difference but they don't because they don't "believe" it or have no incentives to do anything. (And no, boycotts are pointless). So essentially we are screwed and the people who will come after us will either have to come up with a technology to get CO2 out of the atmosphere back to 290-300 ppm or will have to live with a much more hostile environment than today.

I'm extremely pessimistic right now.

Recently I've been reading various books about how to avoid and control excessive anxiety.

One piece of advice that I keep seeing is that I should not worry about things outside of my direct control. This idea is also a central component of stoicism.

How then, should one process terrible news like this? One the one hand, the world is not thinking about climate change enough (certainly politicians aren't).

But on the other hand, it seems impossible to maintain good mental health if one spends too much time thinking about these things. Part of me wants to stick my head in the sand and just get on with life (which seems to be what many people do anyway). How can I read news like this yet remain optimistic and positive?

Maybe global warming deniers, rather than being stupid or brainwashed, are just instinctively better at protecting their own mental health?

I'm screwed!

I didn't mean to make you feel like that. My reply was trying to say, I feel the same as you, and I'm curious to know how other people manage to be fully aware of climate change yet remain positive and happy.

Diederich's reply to your comment seems to be a good start!

I know, I just forgot the sarcasm tags. But it really feels awful right now. I think I will shut down my computer for today. Take care.

I'd guess you handle terrible news like this the same way you handle great news, by accepting the situation at present and avoiding allowing desires, fear, emotion, etc to control you.

The problem is that anxiety is warranted in this case. You can’t do anything about solving the problem for everybody, but you can potentially save your own life:

- Work like a madman to get into the 1%.

- Move to a region that is self-sustaining and is little impacted by global warming.

- Buy guns, tools and a farm.

> Buy guns, tools and a farm

Honest question: in the event of some kind of widespread collapse of civilization, there will be hundreds of millions of starving people. For the purpose of this question, I don't think it matters much whether its a 'fast' or 'slow' collapse.

Assuming you have some kind of self sufficient farm and a bunch of guns and other defenses, does it seem likely that you can keep what food you have and what food you can produce in the future from a large number of starving people?

It's not like hordes of people are going to come at your farm like a zombie invasion. The starving people in this scenario will be scattered, scared, and lacking the ability to share information and coordinate themselves.

You could be right...but I encourage you to think that through very carefully. Even in most worst case scenarios of climate change killing most food production, it's a slow process, taking quite a few years.

The people who might eventually come to take by force what someone has as a result of exceptional planning and execution could be the same people who have been politely asking for some extra food for years. And those hungry people have been thinking about it and talking to other hungry people about it for a good long time.

Also: the local government and pseudo-government entities might insist on redistribution. And that redistribution might be entirely legal.

Sure, but honestly I don't plan for the worst case scenario. I could wear a giant airbag around my body when I drive but I don't.

>One piece of advice that I keep seeing is that I should not worry about things outside of my direct control.

this is a typical refrain in totalitarian systems where the common people have no power over their own lives, nevermind things outside their own lives.

idle "worry" is useless. start preparing for the revolution, devolution, or mere evolution that is coming our way.

My grandfather, then a pre-teen, walked a 10 mile trap line each day in Nebraska winters during the great depression with a rifle and collected various small animals that were brought back and eaten so his family would be less hungry. In his mid to late 20s, he received three wounds and a bucket of awards for his actions in Guadalcanal and Burma. His wife to be's family got by by making illegal moonshine and hiding from the feds in Oklahoma.

The most important lesson he taught me was simple, and I've never forgotten it.

Every day you're breathing is a good day.

I understand the limitations of this statement; clinical depression is a real thing, and is, fortunately, largely treatable. And situational depression can be pretty brutal.

You are alive. You are breathing. You don't know how many days you have left in your life. Most likely you have a lot.

More importantly, you have little idea of what those days will bring you.

I've been living in a lot of climate change related fear for decades now. 20 years ago, the science was just getting started, and nobody really understood most of the implications.

The fact is, we are all pretty helpless about most everything. That you're here on Hacker News is an incredible twist of fate, rather than starving in a refugee camp somewhere.

So, assuming you are not clinically depressed, I will say this: live today and rejoice in its wonder.

If you are alive tomorrow, live it, and rejoice again.

If it is our fate to succumb to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter then so be it.

We live in fantastic, interesting times. Enjoy the ride and do the best you can to fractionally move the various needles in good directions.

Live today and don't care what you leave for your children? I think someone famous said something to the effect. It is terribly selfish and even more shortsighted. (And then, the flood.)

Were talking in massive changes in ecosystem in just about 4 generations (less than a century) if things continue as they are.

Great Filter only applies to date not self inflicted. Global climate change and ecosystem destruction do not count.

And the real truth is that you can be an optimist to a fault. Keep that in mind. Dire situations happen and require immediate responses. The main problem here is that humanity is not at the point where we can make these really at all.

> Live today and don't care what you leave for your children?

I understand that you might get that from what I wrote, but I can assure you that is almost exactly the inverse of my own perspective on this matter.

> Were talking in massive changes in ecosystem in just about 4 generations (less than a century) if things continue as they are.

I think there's a chance that my teenage son will, in his lifetime, be facing a biosphere doing its best to kill him. I think there's a chance that extreme weather will be destroying most of the food the human race try to grow within the next 25 years.

The science of this aspect of climate change is still pretty new, but evidence is piling up fast.

> And the real truth is that you can be an optimist to a fault. Keep that in mind.

Very true, and I consider that every single day. The perspective I provided above is about fending off despair, which is far worse than inappropriate optimism.

My mission in life is simply stated. I will work every day on the things that will provide my son and his descendents, if any, and the people he cares about, the highest possible probatility for a happy, productive, long life.

Well, despair can push to action and can be debilitating. It is if we can truly say to yourself and your grand grand kid - whom you will likely meet in person thanks to many medical advances - "I did my poor best".

Way too many people don't even think about this...

>Enjoy the ride and do the best you can

some of us aspire to control the ride so that the ride may continue to operate for others.

> some of us aspire to control the ride so that the ride may continue to operate for others.

Me too:

> and do the best you can to fractionally move the various needles in good directions

If you live in a democracy, "governments" come from voters. So you can do your part by being active in politics and supporting parties or representatives who take serious action against global warming (by the way, especially but not exclusively if you are American, this might mean parties or representatives fall outside of the Overton window: I just cannot see how saving the planet can be compatible with US-style laissez-faire capitalism). Apart from living a carbon-light lifestyle, e.g. ditching the car.

Of course one person cannot do anything about world problems, almost by definition, but if everyone did those things, we wouldn't even have the problem. Governments and corporations wouldn't be able to do much harm without the invaluable assistance of the millions of people that just don't care.

It's overwhelming. Paraphrasing on a lot of great thinkers: focusing on things that are out of your control is a direct path to misery.

Unsolicited advice: every day, every one of us can focus on things that we do have control over. We can help other people, be kind to each other. We can knock on doors for organizations we believe will make a positive impact.

I'm not advocating for wishful thinking – just that it can feel good to focus every day on the things that we can control, and make a difference in our own circles.

> one person alone is essentially powerless

Yes one person alone is powerless in the face of a global problem. We have to work together to solve this thing.

Having said that, there are things one person can do to "do their part".

1. Reduce personal consumption. Household and transportation energy needs, and products account for large portions of GHG emissions. Getting serious about cutting waste can yield near order-of-magnitude improvements in your electricity bill [1], transportation spending [2]. Buying less stuff will do the same, and leave you significantly richer and happier. Hobbies and activities that emphasize personal effort and creating, over passive entertainment and spending will do the same (I'm still working on this part myself)[3]. Even though we don't have carbon taxes, spending is still often a useful proxy for emissions. The less you spend, the less you emit; it's not a perfect rule, but it's a useful guideline.

2. Vote and campaign for representatives who are serious about dealing with climate change.

3. Consider your "circle of control" i.e. the things that are actually within your power to do [4] and take care of those. Don't worry about the rest.

4. Expand your skills. This one sounds weird, but learning more skills is both a) a form of entertainment and b) allows you to substitute skill for consumption. For example, if you get moderately good at cellphone repair or appliance repair, you can keep your and your family's (and maybe even friends') cellphones and appliances going longer without replacement. This applies equally to areas such as home improvement, vehicle repair, gardening, physical fitness, sewing etc. Mastery in new areas is also shown to improve personal happiness.

1. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/03/25/cut-your-power-bil...

2. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/04/22/curing-your-clown-...

3. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/12/05/muscle-over-motor/

4. http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/10/07/how-big-is-your-ci...

Frustrated with lack of government action, I became a vegetarian. Technically, pescatarian – but very rarely, because overfishing, mercury, etc.

We need government action on this, and I don't have illusions that my vegetarianism will make a dent in the problem. But, I believe in taking the actions you can.

I've also become an advocate for permaculture food production. I will talk at length about it to anyone who will listen. [1].

We waste a ton of carbon making food. Even if you just cut down on meat consumption, you'd be reducing your carbon footprint pretty significantly. But it's not just meat vs vegetables. It's also the way we've centered our food production around monocultures. Or how we demand fruit that's out of season in January, that gets shipped and trucked across the globe. (Again, guilty – I have kids and sometimes you just need to convince them to eat anything besides pasta, but that's another story.)

Maybe for you it's not vegetarianism, but something else you can change in your own life. We may not fix the problem with our individual changes alone – but I do believe our individual efforts can create positive momentum towards progress.

1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16441733-restoration-agr...

If nothing else you are voting with your wallet, and perhaps being a role model or peer pressure for others.

I agree with you about government action.

That said, if you work for a company, rally together with your like-minded coworkers to push for change within your organization. Even small companies can have an outsized impact on both mindshare and environmental direction.

I belong to a group broadly devoted to environmentalism where I work, and we push on things from renewables; having less meat and more vegetables at lunch and dinner (we're very lucky to have catered food); and bringing in guest speakers.

I am a computer engineer so I know nothing of nature :)

But, it boggles my mind why so many people don't believe global warming can be man-made. I know you can have disagreements, scientists can be wrong, a lot of things can contribute to things heating up, an so forth. But to be 100% sure that its not man-made, I dont get it. Is it because these deniers grow up in a eco system so large that they dont sense human interference, is it pure denial or ?

Most people don't engage with the science directly. I know I don't. And your beliefs about climate change don't make a difference in daily life one way or another.

Thus what you get is stated beliefs being entirely driven by appeals to authority and tribal affiliation.

As a small experiment for how hard it is: come up with some good arguments to convince me that earth is actually roughly spherical--without resorting to appeals to authority.

Just using observations and little experiments available to the common layman it's doable, but way harder than you think. And now just extrapolate how much harder climate change is to argue about.

It's not that hard. Watch a lunar eclipse. Watch the sun rise, follow an arc, set, and then watch the stars rise, follow their arcs, and then set. Then travel to a few degrees south and see the whole thing again, except the pole around which everything revolves shifts by exactly the amount you moved south.

Yes, that's good evidence. Though I think the flat earthers had some convoluted explanation for it, too.

What's also easy to do in today's world is calling up someone in a different time zone that you trust, and ask them for when their sunset is. (The interactive calling is important, so that it's harder to have a conspiracy delay your messages or fake some news.)

Flat earthers? Who has ever thought the Earth was flat? Even medieval people didn't think that, it's obvious to anyone who ever watched a ship sail over the horizon that the planet is not flat. They used to think the sun revolved around the Earth, which is a lot harder to check with common sense logic.

Oh, I didn't want to imply any one particular society though the earth was flat. Flat earthers are just an example to show that it's not trivial to argue against someone with a weird believe that they are motivated to defend.

AFAICT it's largely a matter of the cultural correlation for evidently many people between "belief in anthropogenic climate change" and "liberalism." I.e., if I were to believe in climate change, I'd be "a liberal," and that is super bad.

Related but different is the extreme right-wing attitude of, "Sure, maybe climate change is a real thing, but who cares, competition for and consumption of natural resources is our God-given right" etc etc. I'd like to say this extreme is rare, but if it's even a few people who happen to be in control of extremely large amounts of pollutants...

I am also confused by these people, but I assume the are the type that have no self-doubt and therefore believe their beliefs to be true.

The problem I face is that I can see it going both ways. I can human pollution to be the cause of climate-change. But I can also see the argument that we don't have the whole picture and this is an over-reaction to the system we have observed and modeled.

I don't know much about the science and am hesitant to accept finding on such a politically hot topic. But if I had to bet I'd say both sides are just polarizing each other.

I can imagine in 100yrs the ocean has not risen and the world climate is the way it is today. But I can also imagine a world with a climate that has become hostile and having a home with "climate control" to keep you alive is necessary and will further increase social disparity in the poor that won't be able to afford such luxuries.

I know this is a lot. But I welcome anyone to provide me some more information on how avoid false claims and to educate myself on this topic.

Its the gift of the republican party and the american media.

Man I remember back in the day when they decided to tell their base that this was all a conspiracy - I watched with naive outrage "How could you lie to your people like that!".

But no. They did it, and everyone else barely cared.

Remember that For decades people couldn't be bothered to recycle, or save water. They still barely care.

And then you have people - rich and able to employ talented people, who will spread FUD for their bottom line.

Don't be hard on your country men. They got lied to by the better liars in the world. They were cut from facts, they were given enterntainment instead of news, and cranks were brought onto the same level as scientists.

They never had a chance.

To jog everyones memmories - scientists would never engage with cranks - it gave them too much credibility.

But then a certain news channel started giving them a platform, and the trappings of credibility, till finally in an attempt to reason with the public, scientists came onto this network to argue the facts.

In classic fashion, it was a trap. There was never an actual debate, it was a circus - a spectacle for viewers to see the ivory tower intellectuals trip up on simple questions.

And the audience, presented with this farce, obviously saw what they were nudged to see.

Now after that much effort has been expended to keep things from you, and to "teach the controversy" it is also linked to identity.

Thats how we've reached where we are today.

But, it boggles my mind why so many people don't believe global warming can be man-made

I used to think the same way, but part of the issue is that most people are not abstract or systems thinkers. They don't perceive abstraction or systems the way many HN readers do or would.

In addition, and related, most people have strong tribal identities that overwhelm their limited intellectual capabilities; Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind is very good on this: https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Relig... and there are others as well.

Climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, and other conspiracy theorists share some key underlying traits.

Most of us, including me, also live in our own bubbles. You're likely in a rationalist and data-driven bubble, so you don't see people to whom you'd have explain an entire rationalist and data-driven worldview.

Keep in mind that there are many viewpoints which are covered under "climate change denial' - some of which are more reasonable than others.

Some people don't believe that humans can have any impact at all on the larger environment

Some people think maybe humans are having an impact, but it is super tiny and dwarfed by other natural phenomenon

Some people think humans are having an impact, but it isn't worth doing anything about

Some people think humans are having an impact, but are suspicious that any economic response will have the intended effect.

A lot of climate change denial isn't actually complete denial that the climate is changing, but rather the poking of holes in the science and claiming that the confidence level of that science has been grossly overstated by the media for political and ideological ends.

Unfortunately, when viewed from a "who benefits" perspective, global warming theory does not look good to your average libertarian small-government cynic:

- Climate change researchers are virtually all academics.

- Academics are strongly incentivised to make the grandest, scariest claims possible because that is what unlocks large streams of grant money.

- The claim they're making in this case is literally "the world is going to end unless you give us lots of research money".

- They have been wrong before, c.f. global cooling.

- Many of the proposed solutions look suspiciously like excuses for vast government power grabs to monitor and micro-manage every aspect of one's life and business. Such people tend to assume the powerful are always looking for convenient excuses to become even more powerful still, and "we must take away your trucks and your meat against your will to save the world" looks like the ultimate power grab.

These concerns are not entirely meritless. A typical example of the genre can be found here:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/04/ocean-acidification-yet-...

I haven't looked into the claims in depth but they sound plausible, in particular, the notion that certain kinds of papers showing negative results don't get published, the notion that entire fields of study that appear to have hundreds of peer reviewed papers can nonetheless fall apart when subjected to rigorous meta-review. We have seen this in other scientific fields like psychology so it is not implausible that it could happen in climate science as well.

Ocean acidification is not the same thing as regular global warming. But you can see why doubt sets in given the alignment of interests involved. For people who have lost their confidence in the academic establishment, climate change is effectively invisible.

The only semi-reasonable viewpoint out of the stuff you listed is #4.

Economic policy on a global scale is obviously going to be hard to get right, so they are right to be skeptical. But to use the "it's hard" as an excuse to do nothing is worse than just being skeptical.

> 2016 saw average concentrations of CO2 hit 403.3 parts per million, up from 400ppm in 2015... "The largest increase was in the previous El Niño, in 1997-1998 and it was 2.7ppm and now it is 3.3ppm, it is also 50% higher than the average of the last ten years."

It sounds a lot less alarmist when you put it this way. We're talking like 0.6 part per million. If you look at the graph in the article, it's basically in-line with the past 60 years.

Yeah, 0.6 ppm may sound like a very small amount, but I thought the problem is that the effect over time / harm as a function of concentration levels is convex; i.e. +0.6ppm today means a huge difference 10 years from now.

> We're talking like 0.6 part per million

You dismiss this increase as if the small percentage of the total atmosphere that CO2 makes up is a relevant statistic. It's not - you're using big numbers not related to make it sound like the situation is smaller than it is.

Are you expecting it to get to 1 part per thousand, or something? That's not the risk area - the risk area is here, at ~400ppm.

> If you look at the graph in the article, it's basically in-line with the past 60 years.

Actually it looks like a steep increase to me from the last 60 years. Also, these are numbers we'd like to be doing down, not increasing even faster.

The situation is dire.

Here's my attempt at visually extrapolating from that graph. If it's a new trend it looks like a very significant change to me.

https://imgur.com/fys3MqG

It might be a good time to reiterate that fracking (in the USA) hockeystick'ed in the last 5 - 10 years. That, naturally, drove down the cost of oil, which naturally helped to not deter (pardon the double negative) oil consumption.

Cheap energy was great for the ailing economy, but it mortgaged Mother Nature's future.

Developing transportation beyond oil is a moral imperative.

How long will it take us?

https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/the-moral-technology-6413ca...

As we approach the third decade of the 21st Century, how is most electricity on the planet generated?

Coal.

As far as I know, that isn't really true. Isn't coal well under 50% now? I suspect that it would be below 40% by this point and dropping. It isn't really reasonable to expect it to disappear too quickly, though.

> Isn't coal well under 50% now? I suspect that it would be below 40% by this point and dropping

Coal has remained around 29% of global primary energy consumption since 2005 [1]. I don't believe it's dropping.

[1] https://www.worldenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/World... Figure 1, page 4

You are saying something completely different. The discussion is not about all energy use but about the generation of electricity.

Pounds of CO2 emitted per million British thermal units (Btu) of energy for various fuels:

Coal (anthracite) 228.6 Coal (bituminous) 205.7 Coal (lignite) 215.4 Coal (subbituminous) 214.3 Diesel fuel and heating oil 161.3 Gasoline (without ethanol) 157.2 Propane 139.0 Natural gas 117.0

natural gas is a win over coal, but not a big one.

There still appears to be net growth in Asia Pacific region: https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/stat... and the interactive chart: http://tools.bp.com/energy-charting-tool#/st/coal/dt/consump...

That region is consuming more than 7x North American consumption and accounts for 73% of overall consumption. Unfortunately, it’s also the area seeing the least drop as a percentage.

In other words, the rest of the world can completely get rid of coal and the total global coal emissions will still be higher than they were before 2003.

The nice thing is that coal is starting to be less economical than other options. Solar and Wind are getting so cheap, and batteries are making their output variance less of an issue.

Nuclear is still, I feel, the best option for the base load the world needs but it seems that option has lost favor politically.

According to "The Shift project Data Portal"[0] coal accounts for 39% in 2014 (which is no doubt lower now considering the rise of solar and wind in the last 3 years). Carbon based fuel types are at 66% according to the same source, however take note that coal produces almost two times the carbon emissions of natural gas, and diesel almost 50% more than natural gas. [1]

Also you need to consider that in G-7 nations mains electricity use is actually declining. And in G-20 it has only gone up by 0.1% in the last year. [2]

And lastly consider than non obvious sources of global warming sources are things like cattle which globally account for nearly 18% (2006 UN Food and Ag Report) which is more than global transportation. [3]

So singling out coal is nowhere near a big win as your comment implies.

[0] http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Gene...

[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=73&t=11

[2] https://www.enerdata.net/publications/reports-presentations/...

[3] https://gizmodo.com/do-cow-farts-actually-contribute-to-glob...

> Also you need to consider that in G-7 nations mains electricity use is actually declining. And in G-20 it has only gone up by 0.1% in the last year. [2]

Unfortunately, slowing the growth of emissions does not actually save us, for two reasons:

1. We are still emitting. A linear growth curve for CO2 is better then a parabolic one, but will kill many of us all the same.

2. Even if we start decreasing our emissions in the coming years, we will almost certainly hit 500 PPM of CO2 by 2060.

3. Which will be ~3C of warming, not accounting for the methane gun hypothesis.

We need to take drastic action to reduce our energy usage - now. Alas, our institutions are unable to do so - by design.

Found the coal shill.

Look. We have a carbon budget problem. When you have a budget problem, you need to make a budget. Nobody with real problems ever solved them by looking at all of your outlays, trimming the biggest one and claiming victory. You have to trim every single one that doesn’t represent a reasonable fraction of the whole.

The opposite of “Singling coal out” is not “give it a free pass”. It needs to be cut. Along with everything else. It is indefensible that it is 40% of the energy mix but 60% of the carbon footprint. Full stop.

> Don't accuse others of astroturfing or shillage. Email us and we'll look into it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I strongly support reducing greenhouse gas emissions, both CO2 (which has very long term effects) and CH4 (which is more powerful greenhouse gas but shorter term effects, CH4 as a higher potential energy state compound decomposes in the atmosphere readily but typically to CO2).

I think coal has no place for future electricity generation investment. But you can't shut down the plants overnight; a more feasible option would be an accelerated phase out over 5 to 10 years. Natural gas also should be phased out but probably over a 10 to 20 year period.

Currently today for large segments in the world solar and/or wind is now cheaper than coal. There are some places where any of solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric are not an option but these are a very small minority. Hopefully molten salt reactors or fusion reactors will fill the void in such places.

Having said that just removing coal from the picture won't mean we'll make the necessary targets to keep warming to within tolerable limits. Coal for electricity production is a sizeable chunk of the problem but by no means the whole picture. Even on the issue of coal there is still cement production and steel production to worry about.

Coal is big enough to worry about it, especially in the developed countries (like the USA):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption (1)

"In 2014, world energy consumption for electricity generation was coal 40.8%, natural gas 21.6%, nuclear 10.6%, hydro 16.4%, 'others' (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, etc.) 6.3% and oil 4.3%."

Also:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/how-much-meat-contribute-to... (2)

"in the United States, fossil fuel-based energy is responsible for about 80% of total greenhouse gas emissions as compared to about 6% from animal agriculture (estimates from the World Resources Institute and Pitesky et al. 2009)."

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=77&t=11 (3)

"CO2 emissions from U.S. electric power sector by source, 2016"

"Coal 68%, Natural gas 30%, Petroleum 1%, Other <1%"

It is true, according to (2), beef is surely contributing more than other meat:

"Eschel et al. 2014 estimated that producing beef requires 28 times more land, 6 times more fertilizer and 11 times more water than producing pork or chicken. As a result, the study estimated that producing beef releases 4 times more greenhouse gases than a calorie-equivalent amount of pork, and 5 times as much as an equivalent amount of poultry."

and animal agriculture in total does have its 14 to 18 percent (2) of total human greenhouse gas emissions (you stated only the bigger number).

Short URL for (2): http://sks.to/meat

> Also you need to consider that in G-7 nations mains electricity use is actually declining.

Declining in relation to what, though? I mean, it's hopeful, and a good start, truly(!), but (admittedly) without knowing much about all this, I can't imagine the G7 'starting point' is less atrocious than the rest of the world. But please correct me if I'm wrong!

Declining electricity mains generation compared to previous years. If you want more details then read the reports I listed in my previous post, collectively they have more than enough information to bring you up to speed.

Are there plant species that might not really thrive in the current environment but will begin to thrive once the CO2 level increases a bit further?

I've thought the same thing. It would make sense but would be great if someone with real knowledge could respond.

All forms of underwater plants will do better with more CO2, especially the ones that also grow above water. Perhaps not including seaweed.

I don't know how much effect that will have, given seaweed is mostly it, but planted aquariums typically need to artificially inject CO2 into the water to get decent growth rates. The exchange rate with air is deeply unfavorable, so there'll be barely any CO2 in the water otherwise.

The exchange rate also worsens as temperature increases. I'm not sure how it'd work out overall.

Anecdata and not what you're asking but relevant.

I saw a talk by David Battisti (Univ Washington professor). He had attended a FAO meeting about climate change and agriculture.

It looks like it is increasingly hard to engineer wheat/rice varieties that can reach peak yield with rising temperatures. The outlook for say, Indian river production, is not good at all.

From what I remember, we are currently in the temperature sweet spot for rice/wheat production.

If someone knows a primary source for this kind of thing, please comment

Yes. I don't remember the search terms to find it, but I did read a paper (~10 years ago) that discussed this. The problem is most of them are plants we would consider weeds.

This depends on where you are - in the desert plants are water limited, and no amount of CO2 will help. When not near the equator plants are also water limited in winter (at the extremes they are also sun limited). In some parts plants are nutrient limited (dumping iron into the oceans causes an algae bloom - which at least short term is CO2 negative - more research needed)

Yes, of course. Adding CO2 is used in greenhouses to increase growth.

Unfortunately adding CO2 only helps if there is enough other nutrients and sunlight. In the nature and forests adding CO2 is not enough. Many plants grow larger even without nutrients, but they are usually weaker in other ways and may be subject to diseases. In the greenhouses they can add nutrients and control for plant diseases and pests.

Changes in weather patterns, heat and water availability will hurt global food production.

Expect more weeds and less forests, less food and more cacti.

IIRC, Russia is hoping climate change will help their tundras be more farmable and oil-exploitable.

How is that solar shade coming along?

Why such focus on CO2 when it is a small proportion of the greenhouse effect? Water vapor is much more significant.

At the risk of being overly anecdotal, I find it interesting to see the evolution of people in my life who are anti clean energy movement.

First they denied climate change. Then they moved to saying changes were happening but it was normal global fluctuations. Now they are telling me that increased carbon will stimulate growth and help feed the world.

I find it amazing. I dont truly know if global warming is a thing as I'm not a scientist studying this. I do know the vast majority of scientists are screaming we are heading for trouble. Even if they are wrong, why would we take the chance. I find people fighting a change to improve carbon and other global warming causes dumbfounding. Even if the scientist are likely wrong, the downside/cost of pursuing green tech is reasonably limited and why would you take the chance on something so profound.

>Even if they are wrong, why would we take the chance

Because the economic consequences of fossil fuel regulation could be massively deadly or at least disruptive as well, that is why people and companies spend millions of dollars lying about it.

The balance of power of nations and corporations would be totally upended.

> The balance of power of nations and corporations would be totally upended.

Most of these "skeptics" (accepting a very loose meaning of the word) are in the US, and given the US's massive geographical resources, of desert, planes and coastline, and its expertise in technology development, I can't see why it as a nation would object, in terms of a zero sum transfer of power between nations. The really dramatic shift would be away from the Middle East, in particular Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran, and I struggle to see why the US should do anything except cheer that.

Exactly. And the very act of stopping most fossil fuel use may result in a very fast increase of warming because of the diminution of global dimming - although how much (and wether or not it's significant) is highly debatable - could be nothing, could be a straight up +1C in a few weeks.

And as you said, stopping the fossil fuel use worldwide would upend our entire modern civilization, result in massive food shortages and an economic crisis, and likely significant conflicts as well. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Some nations however are looking ahead, look at Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Morocco in the past hasn't been a major source of fuel, however they are now creating huge solar farms and planning to export power to Spain (and the rest of Europe). And Saudi Arabia are pumping huge amounts of money in to solar farms and are home to some of the cheapest solar farms in the world, subsidy floor prices are low as 1.79 US cents per kWh according to offers for tender this month. [0]

[0] https://www.thenational.ae/business/energy/world-s-cheapest-...

We’re headed that direction anyway as the tech curves for wind solar and storage mean that fossil fuel energy generation is likely to be more expensive in 15-20 years.

We could have gotten here sooner if we had invested more heavily, sooner in these technologies. As it is we had a few forward thinking states like Germany to thank for where we are, with spot prices of wind and most solar being cheaper than coal, and often cheaper than natural gas.

This totally upends the few existing players that were once thought to have unassailable power. But now that companies that are heavily invested in natural gas are treating coal as their competitor and enemy in the political landscape, things are changing. Those natural gas heavy fossil fuel companies are actually asking for a carbon tax!

As solar and wind become bigger economic forces, we will likely start to see more consolidation and see fewer player with stronger political force to compete with natural gas. The nuclear industry has no power here, they let fossil fuel driven companies control their fate, and they have no industrial savvy to build an industry, and instead spend all their time tilting at windmills of weak political forces, and unable to build and deliver reactors when they do have eager customers.

It will be super interesting to see what happens with Perry’s coal NOPR that’s being evaluated by FERC right now. Has FERC been stacked with enough coal partisans, or will the rest of the energy industry win out?

You perfectly described the 2009 USA Today comic on the Copenhagen Climate Change conference.

Comic for reference: https://i.imgur.com/qbtnwmA.jpg

> I dont truly know if global warming is a thing

There is no question that global warming is happening [1]. Even denialists will concede this. They only question the severity of the problem and whether it's man-made or natural.

High temperature records are broken nearly every year nowadays. The last time we had a record low temperature was 100 years ago (though I can't find the reference at the moment).

[1] http://www.climatesignals.org/data/record-high-temps-vs-reco...

Unfortunately, there are plenty of people out there who think it's not actually happening at all. Look for people talking about 1998 as the warmest year on record, the "global warming pause," the little ice age, cherry-picking temperature measurements, and crying foul over the techniques used to transform raw measurements into a global temperature anomaly number.

Yeah, should have said "even some denialists will concede this."

10-20 years from now they will all be saying "of course we wanted to do something at the time but the lefties wouldn't let us address climate change." Something about nuclear power (probably)

Many lefties support Nuclear.

I'm not saying it'll be an honest argument ;)

Climate change is sadly, totally irrelevant. There are so many other types of pollution that are completely ignored due to the emphasis on CO2. In China there are factory cities with giant lakes of sludge. They expense is to make our semi-conductors, flash memory and other electrical components. There is a tremendous amount of waste from the batteries (although Li-Ion batteries are cleaner to produce than the previous generations; and Musk is building a plant in the US at least).

The true problem is consumerism and planned obsolescence. Phones should last 10 years. They should have standard components like a PC. There should be one kernel that runs on all of them, like a PC. Old laptops should be re-purposed. We need to actually be able to recycle a Pentium 3 instead of shipping all our e-waste to Africa and China where kids pick through them for inefficient amounts of metals.

We need to stop consuming as much stuff. We need to pay higher prices for components that last longer, have a more complete recycling cycle and companies should actually be praised for not meeting sales targets if it means their old stock is simply lasting longer and no longer needs replacement. You shouldn't buy a new laptop if the old one is "two years old and running slow."

I'm not saying CO2 isn't a problem, but the sole focus on it is saddening because it's not the problem itself. It's a symptom of an extremely consumerist society. You cannot replace every gas vehicle with an electric one over the next 20 years. We simply don't have the resources. There are 4 barrels of oil that go into ever set of tiers, not to mention all the plastic and trim. We are getting more wind turbines and solar to better power those cars, yes .. cars that will simply never be built.

We need to reduce cars, have better train systems in every city, live smaller, consume less and make things last. No amount of CO2 emission reduction will solve the actual problem of increasing mass consumption, not until our population starts to curb.

Unfortunately, I don't think we'll see any real changed in the developed world until the next bubble bursts or the next major collapse.

There are so many other types of pollution that are completely ignored due to the emphasis on CO2

This is true. In the UK Gordon Brown was so obsessed with CO2 he enacted policies that actually increased particulate pollution from Diesel engines.

If you look at the effects on carbon dioxide on plant life in isolation from everything else they're right. On the other hand higher temperatures will slow down growth leading to a small net positive or negative depending on which staple crop we're talking about. And on the gripping hand shifting patterns of rainfall are liable to totally screw everything up in a way that could be totally disastrous but which is very hard to predict.

But a reluctance to admit that you're wrong is a big part of human politics. Maybe we can find some way to reframe the issue so that it doesn't seem like a retreat to them?

And if the Amazon dried up considerably, we'd probably be looking at a big net loss.

Or the Gulf Stream shutting down and Europe freezing. Or any of a dozen other things. And the Sahara greening wouldn't make up for it because nobody lives there to farm it.

I've seen people jump between those different arguments in the same conversation. Many deniers/skeptics/whateveryoucallthem tend to go for the strongest claim they think they can get away with, but will retreat to whatever they think might work in a given discussion. In addition to the different arguments you mention, there's also: it's manmade and harmful but not worth the cost of fighting.

Hey! Billionaires of the world - there are now 1400 of you [1]. How much would it cost to, say,

A) buy the entire amazon rainforest, so that it doesn't get chopped down anymore? (Yes, it's not just that easy, needs monitoring and patrol, etc.)

B) Solve nuclear fusion,

C) build massive arrays of solar panels (or fusion reactors) in order to desalinate water and eventually reforest the deserts of africa?

Once I'm a billionaire myself I hope to help with at least one of those three things. Until then, we must ask them nicely to act, rather than just watch their capital asexually reproduce.

[1] https://boingboing.net/2017/10/27/new-gilded-age.html

I upvoted you because I agree with the "spirit" of what you wrote, but something is nagging me: Once free energy (in the form of massive solar panel fields or nuclear fusion) is available, would not it be actually worse?

- True we would (in theory) no more need coal/oil, but that would be useless for most transport means as we would have pollution made by producing batteries as well as with old abandonned leaking electric cars?

- For the Amazon rainforest, I learnt that it is something that came and went several times during the hundred of millenia since it exists. Why do you expect it to have an impact on CO2 rate or the climate? After all if the problem is the Co2 we could attack it directly by transforming it in food for example.

- There is at least an ongoing project in Sahel to create a long wall of trees, but the main problem is that people burn bush/trees for cooking and they raise goats. Goats tear off grass, on contrary to other cattle. Those two reasons explain well the desert progression, in Sahara at least.

Another problem is that the West of Sahara is infested with personal mines.

What I would propose (actually I proposed it in the Global challenges shape prize [0]) is for UNHCR to create artificial towns in those areas. It not only would provide work and wealth to people there but it would change their way of living. This is not a pipe dream, China is already implementing a similar policy.

[0] https://globalchallenges.org/en/our-work/the-new-shape-prize

Oh! That's an interesting idea. I hadn't considered providing additional population / infrastructure, as an economic incentive to "regreen" an area. You would still need some massive efforts around planting / watering the new vegetation though. So these "new towns" would be in addition to newly forested+grass areas?

Yes, not so long ago there were marshes where is now the Chad lake. The megalake Chad was reached by Romans who called it "lake of ippopotamus".

It is a node of watercraft transport between the West Africa, the Golf of Guinea and the Congo to the South.

Actually all the places between CAR and Mali could be much greener. There is even a (quite old) project to make this area a much wetter place:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chad_replenishment_projec...

Rich people: since you have as much money, you should direct it towards solving that problem with all the available channels, including carbon recapture.

how much?

i think that with confidence we can say "less than the amount that they have."

fourteen individuals control more than half the world's wealth. you mentioned 1400.

think about what we could accomplish if we took what was theirs and put it to the improvement of humanity's position

Most comments say we must cut down our emissions, but will YOU do anything different after this article? I'm honestly asking how can I help?

* I'm already a minimalist. Small apartment, no useless crap around (decorations, lots of clothes, printed books...), which require energy to produce & transport

* Can't convince friends to do the same

* Work from home

* No car, using public transport & Uber when needed

* Voting has no effect

So, what exactly can we do this week, besides just saying "Yep", and just go on until it breaks? Genuine question.

You can join an advocacy group such as Citizens' Climate Lobby and build political will for a livable world. CCL has been incredibly successful by, for example, creating the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, which counts among its membership 30 Republican members of Congress. CCL is effective and is volunteer driven, so the chapter in your area needs you.

https://citizensclimatelobby.org/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=9oyguP4nLv0

Not to be controversial but honestly maybe add mindful consumption of food. Start doing the actual math on the entire supply chain from growth to harvest/picking/slaughter, shipping, manufacturing, distribution. Am I suggesting we apply what we know about distributed systems to food? Hell yes. Why do we not have neighborhood hydroponic gardens we all invest in together? The thing is these are start up ideas or political things we need to wait to vote on. We can start today.

You can stop saying, "Voting has no effect". It has a large effect. You can attribute a large chunk of global warming in the past two decades to ~500 votes in Florida. There are huge, quantitative differences between the two main parties in the worlds largest CO2 polluter per capita/2nd largest overall.

To those feeling powerless about this, http://worrydream.com/#!/ClimateChange is one of the most well-researched, well-written, and inspiring pieces written on this exact problem--"what can a technologist do about climate change?".

Thanks Oisin!

I've been searching for this information as well. I'd love to find, a definitive, bullet list of things that I or anyone else could do to cut down emissions - obvious or not. I'd also like to see if there is anything available to remove carbon dioxide (and other gasses) from the atmosphere. Small and distributed devices to be sure - instead of three or four monster devices, how about thousands of smaller devices to obtain similar results? My searches have come up rather empty. I agree - I would love to be part of the solution. What is a/the solution? Bottom line this nonsense for me and everyone else.

> & Uber when needed

Wait, why not just buy a used stick-shift? That's way more 'friendly' than having a new-ish Uber drive all over town.

Not in your list is reducing/stopping the consumption of animal products. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/09/climate/drawd...

I don't think anyone can help individually. Cutting back your consumption is isomorphic to unilateral disarmament, and simply increases the incentives for others to consume the fossil fuels you didn't. What we need is a globally enforced agreement that prices in the effects of emissions so that the incentives are aligned, and cutbacks aren't simply gobbled up by defectors.

(The same logic applies to [most] attempts at technological solutions. The benefit of efficiency technology is not that it solve the problem by itself, but that it makes the actual political solutions cost less utility.)

Alternatively, we could research large scale optimal efficiency carbon sinking, since that could be faster and cheaper than replacing the globe's infrastructure and enforcing a universal, tenuous agreement.

Easy, alongside taxing added value (VAT), we need a way to reliably tax emissions. Distort the market until we have a chance to survive.

When will 'have fewer children' become a socially acceptable answer to this question?

> Voting has no effect

Voting has an enormous effect. Are you saying you think vote counts of elections in your country are faked?

Which party has made environment a priority, with a realistic 4-year plan (not 10-years) that won't upset the masses? eg heavy taxing all pollutants, including factories, gas/diesel and existing cars, with subsidies for clean energy products.

The masses might need to be upset as a cost of ensuring the survival of our species. And climate change will not be resolved in 4 years.

What party has made a platform of denying climate change and enacting policies that will hasten its impact? And which party has taken paltry steps to address it despite massive resistance from their opposition?

...not suggesting this, but since you seem dissatisfied with the other options: direct action? If you're really concerned about uh, serving on the front of the liberation of earth.

So how deep into the consequences are we going to get before the debate over its reality ends?

Until it can be told that it's too late to do anything anyway.

that argument started in early 2000 and continues to grow. it is a dumb argument but you can be sure that is where the rhetoric is heading.

Ah, the point of no return, i.e. the genesis of global warming alarmism.

One of the biggest PR blunders for climate change.

For all those who are pro-climate change, please stop saying "we've reached the point of no return." It doesn't help people change, which is what your goal should be.

Shaming people is all good fun, but it doesn't help your end goal.

I fear that an entire generation of older Americans simply will not accept climate change is real. The question is how much political power they will have in the coming years. We might still be having these debates in a decade. Sadly.

This is how humans work, and the same is said about science. Both advance one grave at a time.

Its not just a generational issue, its also a religious one. A massive barrier to acceptance is admitting that humans have the ability to render earth uninhabitable, something that God either A) wouldn't allow to happen, or worse B) is allowing to happen because its part of the end times.

Why try to fix the problem if we aren't the masters of our own destiny?

I hate how real I think this probably is. Anecdotally there is massive crossover between religious individuals and climate change deniers among people I know.

And only 33% of people in the world are Christian. Other religions might have an even larger fraction of climate change deniers.

I doubt it correlates as well. American Christian 'leaders' (specifically Evangelicals) have strategically married their religion and conservative talking points. It (climate change belief) is not as associated with identity in other cultures.

What should really be happening, at least from a Christian perspective, is that we should be good stewards of the earth.

"God wouldn't allow that to happen" is not a very Christian thing to say.

Job 1:21 - "Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord."

I fear that an entire generation of older

Ageist nonsense. The older generation grew up in a time when they repaired things. The younger generation buy a new phone or laptop every year and chuck the old one in landfill. The old generation made and repaired clothes, young people buy clothes made in sweatshops halfway around the world and wear them for one season then throw them in landfill. Older people ate food grown locally, young people love imported foods like soy and quinoa. Who are the REAL deniers? Look at actions not mere words.

Surveys have shown fairly consistently over the years that (at least in the US) the denial of climate change is larger in the older cohorts.

I'm not sure why those older generations would be so keen to repair their clothes but not their planet, my own theory would be decades of propaganda from the likes of Fox has divorced them from reality and therefore their own self-interest but maybe they just want to torch the world on their way out.

Surveys have shown fairly consistently

Oh yes, younger people will always SAY the right things, social media has taught them that, but then jet off on holiday, or buy the latest phone when their old one was perfectly good... Look at tangible actions, not virtue signalling and you will see the truth of what I say.

>Who are the REAL deniers? Look at actions not mere words.

You're making a good point in a really poor way. Just because the older generation acts more responsibly when it comes to consumption does not change the fact that they are also denying climate change. Those are clearly unrelated.

You're right that actions matter more than words, but that doesn't make your point true.

Apparently climate change is hard to reason about due to our cognitive biases. I know that Kaheman has lost a little luster of late I still buy this:

"Kahneman won the 2002 Nobel prize in economics for his research on the psychological biases that distort rational decision- making. One of these is “loss aversion”, which means that people are far more sensitive to losses than gains. He regards climate change as a perfect trigger: a distant problem that requires sacrifices now to avoid uncertain losses far in the future. This combination is exceptionally hard for us to accept, he told me."[0]

That said, I think that the thing that will make people change their behavior is not so much how bad it gets but the economics. If it's cheaper to use renewables than burning fuels then people will switch. Thinking about one's short-term economic choices ($1 < $2) is mostly simpler than thinking about global issues that are at odds with one's cognitive biases, and one's choices to ignore scientists.

[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329820-200-understa...

> It is urgent that we follow the Paris agreement and switch rapidly away from fossil fuels

I think everyone, even skeptics deep down agree that climate change is real. However, giving billions, if not trillions of dollars to an international climate fund run by who the hell knows is definitely not the correct approach. Businesses and people need short term incentives to switch, not just mandates. Until scientists further develop not only cheaper, but more convenient and efficient energy solutions, fossil fuels will continue to be used.

If surviving as a species isn't enough of an incentive I'm not sure that the government can promise much.

Scientists don't work in a vacuum. They do need resources to do their work. As long as they don't get them and research funding keeps getting slashed, the scientists cannot do much. They are already trying their best with the available resources.

Climate change can only be solved by political means. Hoping someone will make a breakthrough that will make the problem go away is not realistic.

The problem is that the options being presented politically are

a) Support the international movement to fight climate change, or

b) Do nothing

> Until scientists further develop not only cheaper, but more convenient and efficient energy solutions, fossil fuels will continue to be used.

That is utter cowardice. Imagine if WW2 had happened and the USA had stayed out saying "we're not participating until scientists invent ray-guns".

There are conservative, anti-globalist options to fighting climate change.

Carbon taxes encourage the market to develop solutions, and could be done in a revenue-neutral fashion which would mean it's a tax cut for green citizens. Tariff countries with bad climate records and encourage trade with countries that are doing their part to fight climate change. Block expansion of the coal industry. None of these would be contrary to conservative, market-oriented values. None of these require funnelling billions into international climate funds.

But instead, the North American right is keeping their heads firmly planted in the sand.

> That is utter cowardice.

No, that's reality (i.e. economics). I don't think he was saying that he will do anything in his power to stand against solar/wind and promote fossil. Rather that the market will.

Either regulation, which kills innovation, or market efficiency will solve the problem.

So the rich people who care about the environment just need to pump R&D money into renewables. Or dare I say it, NUCLEAR.

> market efficiency will solve the problem.

This won't happen without stronger carbon-pricing. Right now there isn't enough incentive to really push for large-scale innovation. Electric cars are a very small market segment and primarily serve buyers who are buying against their own economic interests for the greater good.

My point exactly. Unless the incentives align the market will do what is most efficient.

Deregulation and standardization of nuclear in the U.S. will go a long way.

Deregulation won't help, and I'm not sure what you mean by standardization?

Nuclear is promising but it is just too costly and complicated to build new plants when solar and wind and plummeting in price. Subsidizing could help.

Solar cost is plateauing.

Safety regulations are insane. As in 5x what is actually reasonable. I.e. deregulation.

And standardization, as in make all the plant designs the same instead of designing them all from scratch.

At this point, I think we just need to get rid of fossil fuel subsidies. If we just made people pay for the actual costs of such fuels, rather than letting them pollute for free, renewables would wipe the floor with them.

What subsidies? For every £1 you spend on petrol in the UK 80p is tax. If we paid the actual cost people would drive gas guzzlers 'cos why not.

> What subsidies?

Getting to dump waste products into the atmosphere for free. That 80p is nowhere near the true cost of that.

Yes, exactly. People don’t pay for the consequences of the pollution they generate. If they did, fossil fuels would be much less popular.

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