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Sucking CO2 out of the air that we put there is not climate engineering. It is just reducing the scale of the ongoing unintentional climate engineering being carried out worldwide by our use of fossil fuels.

Obviously effective carbon capture is preferable to no carbon capture. But I think there's a reasonable concern of a runaway market removing too much carbon, or the reduction of truly sustainable energy production due to the continual reuse of carbon. It's one thing to get back to where we should be while cutting carbon use to a bare minimum, another completely to control atmospheric carbon so humans can burn more oil.

That seems like worrying about drowning when your house is on fire. Let’s put out the fire first. If the fire hoses have bad effects we can figure that out later.

You have a lot of strange beliefs. Can you back any of them to the degree that you demand of others?

Have you considered taking a skeptical approach, and looking at the arguments that you disagree with a prior? I suspect that once you do, you will be more than convinced about, e.g. humans having increased CO2 levels. If you are not convinced of even that basic fact after looking at the evidence, I would suggest that there is not evidence at all that could change your mind. I.e. this is a religious or political conviction rather than an evidence based belief.

The idea that CO2 level rises is not due to human activity is as far out there as saying you've invented a perpetual motion machine. Honestly.

I believe I am taking the skeptical approach. I've read a lot on the subject and most of what I find is appeals to fear and other emotions, for example that climate change is going to destroy the earth. Actually the Earth did quite well during the carboniferous period all things considered.

Maybe human activity is responsible for the increase in CO2. I don't deny that. They are correlated. I accept that. But maybe there is a third variable or combination of variables that is driving CO2 levels? Is that really so unreasonable. It seems awfully anthropocentric and, honestly, arrogant, to assume that human activity is the only thing that affects atmospheric composition. Perhaps you should take your own advice?

> The idea that CO2 level rises is not due to human activity is as far out there as saying you've invented a perpetual motion machine. Honestly.

No it isn't. Also, I never positively stated that it isn't.

> Maybe human activity is responsible for the increase in CO2. I don't deny that. They are correlated. I accept that. But maybe there is a third variable or combination of variables that is driving CO2 levels? Is that really so unreasonable.

Go get some equipment and stand behind a car's tailpipe sometime and you'll clear up any confusion that humans are releasing CO2... That's a really bizarre thing to be hung up on. The standard skeptic line is that the CO2 isn't a big deal, not that we're not releasing loads of it.

Human beings have been releasing CO2 for a lot longer than the Otto cycle has been around. Please spare me the ridiculous straw men. The Earth had far higher CO2 concentrations in the past than it ever has had since we evolved. Clearly human behavior is not the only possible cause of net changes in atmospheric composition.

I think what you're missing here is that climate change activists aren't concerned with "saving the earth" they are REALLY concerned with saving humanity and the current set of flora and fauna on the planet. Yes, Earth has had higher concentrations of CO2, but that was before mammals existed, so, why is that even relevant? I have a hard time believing that you think we'll all be ok if our atmosphere resembles that of the carboniferous period...

Yeah, giant dragonflies roaming the air scare the living crap out of me.

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

The Earth has a long history and much of it was been a pretty awful environment for life (no oxygen would be a bummer for us, a hellscape of lava sounds uncomfortable and so does being under hundreds of feet of ice). That has nothing to do with how we can do the math about how much CO2 we're emitting and how much the concentration of CO2 is increasing.

On a long enough timeline you're right that there is nothing we can do because among other things the Sun is going to explode, but that's a phenomenally stupid reason to suggest we shouldn't manage greenhouse gasses responsibly. Humans live on a very short timeline, but we're producing effects better fit for a geological scale timeline.

The earth will be fine. Life will be fine, though it may not include humanity or many of the species we recognise or use for food and comfort.

> Human beings have been releasing CO2 for a lot longer than the Otto cycle has been around

When there were a lot fewer human beings and each individual released far less CO2. Industrialisation has brought leverage to our use of carbon, and the rate of change has become unprecedented.

> The Earth had far higher CO2 concentrations in the past

...and has also had sea levels a hundred feet or more higher than today. Which would do what to our major cities?

Do we wait for our cities to start being lost and the outside air to feel stuffy all the time before we take this remotely seriously? Or perhaps just wait until there's immediate and catastrophic danger? (ie when it's too late to do anything about)

> human behavior is not the only possible cause of net changes in atmospheric composition

I don't believe anyone would seriously claim that, but that humanity has added to the numerous existing sources. There are now enough humans using enough carbon through vehicles, heat, light, consumer goods and all the other things of development that the ecosystem can't simply squelch the results of human activity any more. We're seeing it in a whole range of areas outside of CO2, like loss of habitats and species etc.

You should find better sources. If they are appealing to fear and emotion, you are not finding any science.

For example, then you wouldn't be saying silly things like you're not sure that CO2 rose is not the direct causal consequence of human activity.

I'm not saying this for my own benefit, I'm saying it for yours. If I encountered a person in real life who said that I would say much harsher things to the persons face than I am now, because I can't see you face to face I want to try to be more reserved in my approbation.

Doubting basic science while not bothering to research the reasons that it's accepted science is exactly like believeing in the invention of perpetual motion machines in that it requires first not doing basic homework then thinking that one is much cleverer than everyone else.

I hate to say it, but your posts are a great example of the generally low quality of discourse on this subject. Veiled threats of verbal beatdowns and ridiculous claims like that climate models that have to be updated monthly are as solid as Newtonian dynamics do not indicate intellectual honesty or rationality.

Just as if somebody said incredibly contrary things about well established computing principles, you are doing yourself a disservice by not doing basic research while denying well accepted technical facts.

This is not being skeptical, it's being lazy.

That said, I'm also being lazy too, because it's very hard to spoon feed basic science to those who don't want to learn it. I guess I was hoping to motivate you to take an interest in researching scientific subjects that you are willing to express uninformed opinions on, but I will accept that I have failed after your last response.

Established computing principles are theorems that are true by construction, the strongest possible form of truth.

Climate models are fancy regression fits to low quality data. We know the raw data is low quality because it requires intense amounts of adjustment before the model makers can use it.

You have correctly assessed your ability at persuasion.

>No it isn't. Also, I never positively stated that it isn't.

Are you going to write a book called "If I Did It" next? You literally just said "No it isn't"

Edit: also, there aren't scientific claims that the Earth is going to be destroyed. Our current biosphere is going to be royally fucked up, and humans are dependent on that because we are adapted to it. Climate change will lead to massive societal problems from just food production changing in output rapdily as arable areas move and fresh water sources change their locations, not to mention weather events like sea rising over coastal cities and 100 year storms showing up every few years.

Even if we agree with your position that this issue is not man made, why wouldn't we try to stop the change? It's objectively bad for human societies

Are you going to write a book called "If I Did It" next? You literally just said "No it isn't"

I believe the "no it isn't" is meant at the comparison, not at the original question.

> But maybe there is a third variable or combination of variables that is driving CO2 levels? Is that really so unreasonable.

I see. It's really inconvenient that all this additional CO2 is just megatons of identical molecules and comes without any discernible label that might tell where it came from......

...except that they actually do! Because photosynthesis favors the lighter C12 atom over C13, all plant material (and hence, all animal material, and all fossil fuel) have slightly lower concentration of C13, compared to other non-biological source of carbon (say, volcanic gas). If the increase in atmospheric CO2 is actually due to fossil fuels, we must witness a drop in the ratio of C13. And that's exactly what we see!

https://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natu...

> Actually the Earth did quite well during the carboniferous period all things considered.

Yes I agree Earth, and indeed life will do well on planet earth for a long time despite climate change.

Humans on the other hand...

For the past half year I've settled out to objectively answer this question for myself. There is a lot of confusion in main-stream media but if you look more closely you'll see that the scientific evidence is paramount. If you want to take a deep dive, I think the best place is the IPCC (Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Cli...). Their estimates have historically usually been a bit conservative, but I think that is also the power of the organisation.

You can read there reports here: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_da...

The thing is, the more research I did, the more I realised the sheer size of the problem and complexity. There is no quick fix, we need multiple solutions and they should be interdisciplinary (we are lacking interdisciplinary solutions). Also the more research I did, the more I realised, at this moment, carbon dioxide pollution is THE biggest current threat to the existence of humanity.

I still think we can solve it, for example renewable are well on their way, and I think that we will also solve the energy-storage problem in the next decade. However we don't have any practical/profitable solutions for carbon storage at scale.

If you have specific questions or you want different sources I'd be happy to help. Also, if you feel like your opinion has changed/or not after research, please enlighten other people in a constructive way. But of course, do your own research :).

At around 600-1000 ppm of CO2, air begins to negatively affect human performance. This fact is not hard to test. I think most people would agree that it would be a good thing not to get to that level so that human can still have natural fresh air.

Thank you for this response. It's the first one with new information in it.

This page is quite nice for some more info:

https://www.co2.earth/

A thing that blew my mind a few months ago...

Next time you feel you need to open windows in your apartment to get some fresh air in, it means indoor co2 is probably somewhere between 800 and 1200.

If you open all the windows to the max, or go outside, co2 ppm will lower to ~400ppm. You can't go any lower than that, and there are no air cleaners that can push it lower. This is the absolute minimum.

When your parents were young, opening windows meant bringing co2 to 350ppm.

When your grand-grand parents were young, and when old-time poets wrote about fresh air, for them it was 200ppm. Neither you or I experienced it, nor possibly ever will (without attaching ourselves to an oxygen tank).

CO2 levels have been at around 280ppm since shortly after the end of the last ice age (around 10k years ago) until we started burning coal seriously, ~1800AD. The last time we had 200ppm was during the ice age. Before writing and definitely before your grand-grand parents were young (vampires excepted).

The fallacy in your view is that the earth's climate will always be changing. In fact, before human activity pushed the earth's climate to a warming trend the earth's climate was very clearly starting to tip over into another strong cooling (ice age) trend.

Even if we manage to right the wrong with the current climate situation before the oceans rise 200 feet we will still, over the millennia, face climate trends we would like to correct for. Climate engineering is in our future regardless.

You should take a look at: https://xkcd.com/1732/

If you still think that humans are not the cause, well…

Using a comic strip as an argument, well...

XKCD has a long history of citing their work, why can't an effective argument be made with visuals? I don't understand why the medium of the argument matters here.

There is no argument made, it's a comic strip.

There is definitely an argument made. It might not be in the form that you're looking for, but the argument is there. The graph clearly points to a high correlation between the industrial revolution and a fast and huge (relative to other changes) rise in temperatures. How is this not an argument?

Yes, very clearly, sure. You don't even know the very basics of scientific methodology, statistics, interpreting data, or critical thinking.

It's actually a graph presented in a great way. Read it

Comic or not - what a great infographic

It's a really simple explanation to refute deniers, not a scientific paper

I really wish XKCD would've gone back 400,000 years instead of only 20,000 for that strip. CO2 and temperature have been higher during the longer time frame, and it would be valuable for someone to explain the bigger picture adequately.

Agreed, even if unpopular.

What puzzles me is the "climate advocates" pressing for such environmental engineering show little interest in changing their own behavior - say, more concerned about grandiose systems for removing CO2 rather than personally eradicating CO2 production from their own lifestyles (and I mean >90% reduction, not mere virtue-signaling). It takes an interest in personally influencing society & economy, putting their money where their mouth is, creating a demand for alternatives and normalizing society's [non-]production levels.

Compelling vastly impactful & ill-understood (and expensive) schemes, which a lot of smart people disagree with, is dangerous when serving largely as a counter to that which even "advocates" are unwilling to do themselves.

Be the change.

Particularly odd when someone like me is doing more to "save the earth" on a personal level than most "advocates".

I'd argue that humans adding CO2 to the atmosphere is "environmental engineering" and designing technology to reverse that is simply cleaning up.

What puzzles me is the "climate advocates" pressing for such environmental engineering show little interest in changing their own behavior

Why does that puzzle you? That's pretty common among humans (e.g. I've had multiple smokers trying to convince me not to start smoking). Changing one's habits is hard, even if one is convinced it should be done.