CO2 in the atmosphere just exceeded 415ppm for the first time in human history
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I found a job in solar, then eventually started my own clean energy software company. Every day I wake up with the incredible feeling that I'm getting paid to fight climate change. If feels good, and I'd like to encourage you to consider joining the industry, too.
It turns out there's a huge need for software and other tech skills (data science, sysadmin, etc.) needed for the energy transition. With the deployment of so much "intermittent" generation like solar and wind, we need fuck tons of software and communications infrastructure to run a new "flexible" grid. For example, the California ISO is using neural networks to formulate the day-ahead markets, and recently started letting aggregated demand response providers (e.g. companies who manage smart thermostats) bid into the market as distributed generators.
So if you're thinking what can you to help fight climate change, the best thing you can do is get a job in the climate change fighting industry. Start googling around for jobs with climate change keywords ("solar", "wind", "clean energy", etc.). Start showing up to clean energy events (if you live in the bay area, check out my bayareaenergyevents.com). There's so many people in this space who came from other sectors, and it's incredibly easy to move up or start your own company doing some specific thing you think is needed for the fight. Also, feel free to reach out to me or read my previous comments on this topic.
"They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"
When you install a battery in a building in order to manage load more effectively, how do you know when you should charge and discharge the battery? There's a ton of complexities going all the way from not hurting the battery by cycling it too much, to tariff complexities for optimizing the maximum dollar impact to the customer. Then throw on top of that new incentive programs that start to pay out for things like demand response, frequency control, and load shifting for the overall grid. The term in the storage space is called "value stacking", and it's a very hard problem that requires a ton of data and calculations.
Sounds like a great gig for data scientist!
From their post:
> The only inputs to make the fuel are CO2 and water (both from the air) and electricity. The only outputs are fuel and oxygen.
---
> instead [we] use a process that uses only electricity (no natural gas, etc) and does it at room temperature.
---
> we absorb CO2 and water vapor from the air into an aqueous electrolyte.
---
> We then react the CO2 in the water with a copper catalyst to directly make alcohols like ethanol, butanol, propanol, etc
> we have a carbon nanotube membrane that replaces it, extracting the alcohols from water in a single step at room temperature
I think the question boils down to: How to remove CO2 from air through "aqueous electrolyte", then convert it to alcohols with "copper catalyst"?
Converting CO2 to hydrocarbons is a fundamentally an endothermic reaction (e.g. it needs energy to happen), so given the limits on process and thermodynamic efficiencies, it will always take more energy to convert CO2 back into gasoline than the energy you got from burning the fuel in the first place. So it seems like what they are proposing is throwing 1x of one type of energy (electricity) at undoing the effects of less than 1x of another type of energy (fossil fuels used in transportation).
Maybe that would be a good idea if we had excess clean electricity generation and couldn't effectively decarbonize transportation, but neither of those are true.
First, we currently need all the clean electricity generation we can get our hands on, and aren't anywhere close to fully decarbonizing the grid to the point where we have excess capacity for stuff like this. Spending 1 megawatt-hour on this for less than 1 megawatt-hour of impact when it could be use to straight up replace 1 megawatt-hour of fossil generation is, I think, a waste of resources right now.
Second, electrification of transportation is starting to happen exponentially, so many of the things you were looking to offset in the short term will probably just cease to exist over the next 10-20 years. The exception is air travel, where the energy density and having propellants are super important, but then you're competing with the price of producing biofuels as a carbon neutral alternative. I suspect that biofuel production will be cheaper, simply because the energy required to grow the algae or convert the cellulose is less than the co2 reversal they are proposing here, but I could be wrong about that for process reasons other than thermodynamics (e.g. capital expenses, etc.). However, focusing on decarbonizing air travel is sooo far down the list of priorities right now. There's so much more lower hanging fruit we should be investing in.
Overall, I think spending energy sucking co2 out of the air and converting it into fuel isn't a good idea right now. Maybe in the medium term if it can compete with biofuels, and definitely in the long term after we've decarbonized as much as possible and still need to remove co2 from the atmosphere. But when I see investment dollars get thrown at this instead contributing towards deploying 1:1 replacements of fossil fuels, I feel a bit sad. Mostly because I know it will be used by propagandists for delaying decarbonization efforts (e.g. "See? We have tech than can undo all these fossil fuels we're emitting! So we're all good and don't need to electrify transportation.").
Ironically many of these interests could realise the new opportunities of growth in the energy space instead of focusing on potential impact to current business lines.
And there’s a path dependence too, first movers to accept the pending disruption can be at a considerable advantage.
The current system is based on unlimited and exponential growth, everything else is considered a failure. An unlimited growth in a finite environment isn't possible, it's called instability.
The second problem is that many people convince themselves that "Science" will save us, that we'll terraform Mars or that shifting to electric cars will be enough, but that's too little, too late. Even if we'd hit our ecological goals, and we're not, we'd be far from fixing the problem. We don't need to slow down, we need a complete paradigm shift. It's like when you move form a basic 40sq meter flat to a fancy 250sq meter house, going back is very hard.
but our environment is the universe, and the universe is infinite in resources...
Get a human permanently and self-sufficiently out of LEO and i'll agree a limited part of the solar system is our environment.
For the foreseeable future our environment is earth and not a lot else.
We have a very real thing happening right now on earth with extreme consequences: major species extinction, air pollution, water pollution, soon to be ecological refugees, &c. But the answer is mining asteroid and having a moon base.
Why would we care about asteroid gold and the few (<100) people that might go to the moon and live an extremely strenuous life. It's not like we'll all go to the moon, crack open a cold one and watch the moon superbowl.
If you change your sense of scale from a few years to a few hundred, yeah, I think it’s likely humanity will be watching the moon superbowl, in fact it’s probably the most dull and conservative view of the future someone could have.
Not to mention they're still vaporware... Brochures are easy.
In 30 years Miami might be under the waters, and we'd still be extremely lucky if we have a 200 sq ft base on the moon.
(On which a man haven't even set foot for the last 48 years).
scientific progress.
Do we even have the raw resources on earth / the tech to move everyone to a new planet and terraform it before we're all toast ?
Even if we do what's your moral standpoint on the fact that humanity destroyed 3+ billion years of evolution on earth in a few hundred years ?
Who in their right mind think that terraforming a planet is easier than just stopping destroying our home planet ?
Even if we do move to a new planet, in what kind of conditions will we live, I doubt we'd have even 10% f the comfort we have today. So why not scale down here, on earth, in the first place ?
didn't the earth go thru numerous planet-wide extinction events? and those were much much faster than a few hundred years.
In which case it will be little consolation that amoebas or even cockroaches and squirrels might survive...
But sure in the big scheme of things it's not changing much, it's more of a personal / moral position.
A good analogy is the Eiffel tower, you can remove a bolt, 10 bolts, 100 bolts, it'll still hold fine, remove one too many and it'll collapse. The metal will still be there (earth) but it won't be the Eiffel tower anymore (Life).
> The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background rates.
a moon base would cost upwards of 20 billion USD.
the increase in the US military budget for FY2018 is 58 billion USD, bringing it to a total of 639 billion USD. that's just for FY2018. there is currently no world war.
> Do we even have the raw resources on earth / the tech to move everyone to a new planet and terraform it before we're all toast ?
no one mentioned anything about terraforming or moving people in this thread. i made a comment regarding finite resources, which aren't finite if you just look at the sky instead of the ground.
It doesn;t have much to do with the original topic, but I think you're way underestimating it.
Our immediate environment aside from Earth is the vastness of the solar system, in planets totally unsuitable to support us, and with extreme costs to even get us to the nearest one, and with vast expanses of space and radiation to go through to get to the next.
We got humans to the closest rock for a few years, on a huge cost and effort, and with big risks (and some casualties), based on the competition of 2 superpowers. Since then, not only we haven't established any "base", but we haven't even been there for 48+ years (almost half a century)...
And even if by a very slim chance (which people who view technological progress as some kind of boundless Paolo Coelio fairy tale take for granted) we manage to do something in those planets, the next step (some earth like habitable planet elsewhere) is extremely more challenging, and speed of light limits would apply (of course people who view technological progress as some kind of boundless Paolo Coelio fairy tale bypass them with exotic contraptions that have us riding wormholes and what have you...).
And that's if war and climate mayhem doesn't have us concentrate all our efforts here...
Some food for though: don't concentrate on the pedantic details, but the high level arguments:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/the_myth...
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high...
The thing is, you and I are no more qualified to speculate on the future than someone from 100 years ago would be qualified to speculate on the Internet. However I can say one thing: if we even make a fraction of the progress in the next 100 years compared to the progress in the last, I don’t think we have anything to worry about when it comes to energy or transportation.
I'd say we are.
We don't expect the speed of light to change for example. Whereas people in the 1800s didn't have any such hard limit (e.g. based on Newtonian theory).
We also have the benefit of hindsight, and can see the rate of technical development (and e.g. that the low hanging fruit were on the late 19th century, increasing on early 20th century, and dropping down after the later half of the 20th century.
>However I can say one thing: if we even make a fraction of the progress in the next 100 years compared to the progress in the last, I don’t think we have anything to worry about when it comes to energy or transportation.
Compared to the progress in the last 100 years, or the last 50 years? Because already the progress in the last 50 years is laughable compared to the progress up until 1970 or so.
E.g. we had electricity, nuclear energy, combustion engine, radio, tv, film, digital imaging, lasers, microwaves, satellites, internet, computers, airplanes, transistors, rockets, radars, and tons of other fundamentals already available by 1960s -- not so much huge progress later on aside from evolutionary stuff.
(Well, we did have the slinky)
shouldn't the internet be considered the greatest achievement yet?
When was the last time a new technology reached commercial success?
Besides we're not talking about mere products here, but core technologies, e.g. inventions. The steam engine, the combustion engine, electricity, the telephone, laser, microwave, satellites, and so on, weren't mere "applications of other technologies" and even less so a mere incremental bump in the way modern internet vs 60s/70s internet is.
Even the moon which is the closest stable near earth resource is at least a couple of decades away from any practical use.
Chances are that the climate of earth will become more unstable before any kind of space based economy can really be taken seriously.
Per capita energy usage is about 6 MWh / year and our population has been doubling every 53 years. Assuming that continues, in 10000 years we'll be using 4e69 Wh / year. If we figure out 100% conversion of mass to energy, that's 1e56 kg of fuel, which is a lot more than all the matter in the visible universe.
You can play with these numbers a little, but even reducing the energy usage per person by a million only gives us another 1000 years. Soon we'll be growing so fast that every year we'll use all the resources within one light-year.
The problem is sustainable growth. The path we're on isn't sustainable, unless we hit some scientific and political miracles in the next years. Sustainable growth is unfortunately slower than unsustainable one, so it loses out in competitive environment. Still, I don't think we should focus on attacking growth in general - just the type we have now. Done right, economic growth may yet save us.
Also we already consume more than we should, if we go back that would impact the GDP.
It's not "indefinitely". It's just "long enough that we can bootstrap a space economy and expand into the Solar System", or alternatively "long enough so that we can fix the environmental damage, get rid of poverty and most diseases, and slowly S-curve the economy into some acceptable state". Or some combination of that.
Moreover, not all growth is tied to physical space and resource use. We're also not using the space and resources we have efficiently. There's plenty of room on Earth for us to grow, but it might start looking more like improving things than expanding them.
> if we go back that would impact the GDP.
Switching to a sustainable level of growth will require that - slowing down the growth itself, and even a temporary shrinking of the economy.
In reality it seems most of the things we find valuable do involve energy consumption. We are so far from completely decoupling it that you might as well consider money and energy to be the same thing. The more you spend and the richer you are the more damage you are causing the environment.
It seems politicians (of the environmental kind) who tell you we can grow and save the planet are almost certainly lying.
Put another way: if we could suddenly switch transportation to electric and replace all our power generation with renewables with some surplus power on top, why would anyone want to limit energy consumption? That would be equivalent to saying, let's reverse civilization, bring back more poverty and suffering, because it was all cool and games 300 years ago.
> We are so far from completely decoupling it that you might as well consider money and energy to be the same thing.
With market setting prices according to supply and demand and business model shenanigans, and with lots of externalities everywhere unaccounted for, I'd say prices on everything are pretty well decoupled from energy use. It would be a better world if they weren't.
Not only in the sense of 'pollution' as such, but just completely changing ecosystems.
We could have a perpetual motion machine with zero emissions, and we'd still have to handle 7 billion people chucking straws in the ocean or whatever.
If we actually had an unlimited energy source we'd probably turn half of the planet into skyscrapers with farms in them or something.
That's the thing with energy, and why I'm arguing that aiming for reduction in energy production would be self-destructive for our civilization: with enough surplus energy, you can do near anything. We could remove from the air and the seas all the pollution we emitted so far. We could keep turning air into combustible hydrocarbons all day long and enjoy high-density hydrocarbon fuels that are carbon neutral. There's lots of things that could help which we aren't currently doing, because they don't make economical sense. With more cheap energy, they would.
I'm more wary about the idea that we can solve all problems if we just have more energy.
What we're doing, and show no signs of slowing down on, is fundamentally restructuring how the planet works. We're building housing, industry, solar farms, roads, railroads, you name it - everywhere we can afford to, and having more energy makes that even easier.
You can suck CO2 out of the atmosphere; you can attempt to clean plastic from the oceans (I suspect that this would be difficult without side effects even with limitless energy; how do you avoid disturbing life on the seabed?).
But can you create natural wilderness? Can you provide habitats for wildlife? We don't even know what that means. Can we produce cities for humans rather than endless car-based hellscapes?
I vividly remember discussing this with my fellow students almost a decade ago now. The idea that we are going to turn the planet into a farm because we can.
I don't want to live on a farm. I want to live on a natural Earth that we live in symbiosis with, not an extremely efficient well-tuned machine.
That's good; but unfortunately, people do fixate on "growth" and "energy use" as sources of problems, when they're not. To better evaluate what we can and should do, we need to keep in mind where exactly the problems come from.
> I'm more wary about the idea that we can solve all problems if we just have more energy.
I'm not saying we will or would, but we definitely could solve most of them. Energy is a necessary but not sufficient component of almost everything we do, and "more energy" is a necessary component of some ways of fixing climate that we currently aren't deploying - like e.g. synthesizing hydrocarbons instead of digging them up from the ground.
> But can you create natural wilderness? Can you provide habitats for wildlife?
Yes, we can. The best way to do it is to transplant some existing wilderness. The habitat will build itself, that's exactly what life is good at.
> Can we produce cities for humans rather than endless car-based hellscapes?
In theory, we can. In practice, this is where technology ends, and economy and politics start.
> I don't want to live on a farm. I want to live on a natural Earth that we live in symbiosis with, not an extremely efficient well-tuned machine.
Same, but that's because Earth already is a pretty decent machine, full of self-regulating feedback loops. It works well without supervision, and it's kind of dumb of us to break the feedback loops only to then have to maintain them "by hand", because they're crucial to our survival. We should be able to let it mostly be, enjoy it, and focus on doing other cool stuff. I still believe nature is there for us to exploit, but we're doing it the dumb way instead of the smart way.
Fusion reactor 8 light minutes away does not burn out for a good long while, long enough that we can consider it indefinite for the current climate debate.
So we have an energy source that we can use to rearrange the stuff that IS finite, ie the big rock with water on it.
What we don't want is for the rock to end up in a state where we can't live on it comfortably.
Now, as for growth, we could reach a state where people have roughly the replacement number of kids. In fact, it looks like that will happen. Then we just have to make sure the average amount of consumption doesn't take us over some limit.
Note that GDP is also a pretty imperfect measure. It was conceived in an era where having more stuff generally meant a better life, because some of that stuff was useful things like medicine, insulation, and so on. Nowadays a lot of things go into GDP that is perhaps not measuring what you really want.
Why won't it? The main issue is where we get our energy from. There are working methods that are CO2 neutral. I'm firmly in the "only science will save us" camp.
> It's like when you move form a basic 40sq meter flat to a fancy 250sq meter house, going back is very hard.
I believe this is view harmful to the cause because it will only result in pushback, and rightfully so. Only excess wealth creates the spare capacity to care for the environment.
The problem is that many people (who express that conviction) treat "Science" just like the God in the famous anecdote: http://epistle.us/inspiration/godwillsaveme.html
It is important to understand the limits of science. It won't save you universally from everything, no matter what you do. Your own action (or inaction, in case of waste) determines what can be done.
No, that's just the most currently newsworthy of literally hundreds of causes of the global ecological collapse. Ecologists have been mapping many of these causes for decades. The overarching cause of all the component causelets (eg. emissions, habitat destruction, soil & water degradation, etc) has been the expansion of a crude global civilisation based on selective ignorance of science. We pretend to respect science when it produces stuff we like ("technology"), but ignore the inconvenient understandings revealed by science as it relates to the complex living systems that sustain us.
https://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_populati...
“Growth” as the politicians and the lobbyists push it is simply not sustainable.
But both “the left” and “the right” have their agendas not to let you discuss or act on that.
"Bacteria grow by doubling. One bacterium divides to become two, the two divide to become 4, the 4 become 8, 16 and so on. Suppose we had bacteria that doubled in number this way every minute. Suppose we put one of these bacteria into an empty bottle at 11:00 in the morning, and then observe that the bottle is full at 12:00 noon. There's our case of just ordinary steady growth: it has a doubling time of one minute, it’s in the finite environment of one bottle.
I want to ask you three questions. Number one: at what time was the bottle half full? Well, would you believe 11:59, one minute before 12:00? Because they double in number every minute.
And the second question: if you were an average bacterium in that bottle, at what time would you first realise you were running of space? Well, let’s just look at the last minutes in the bottle. At 12:00 noon, it’s full; one minute before, it’s half full; 2 minutes before, it’s a quarter full; then an 1?8th; then a 1?16th. Let me ask you, at 5 minutes before 12:00, when the bottle is only 3% full and is 97% open space just yearning for development, how many of you would realise there’s a problem?"
Note that the before that point in the talk he explains that for any "steady growth" you can find the period in which what you observe doubles, i.e. any "steady growth" has its "doubling time."
The problem is that just saying that, allows policy makers and public to sit back and wait for the problem to be saved - without funding the science to do, or take other necessary policy steps.
In a sense you can argue that science has saved us - we have solar and wind, nuclear and excellent battery tech.
So why aren't we "saved"?
Those mitigations won't necessarily include carbon reduction - they'll be increased levee construction, abandonment of low-lying cities and building codes adjusted so that '1 in a century' storms are encountered every couple of years.
What we are trying to do at this point, ius avoid such grim consequences, now and the market can't help us unless we promote panic, which isn't a great strategy.
I wanted to put this in contrast to the "stop growth and consume less" mindset, which I believe will be massively insufficient in solving climate change. When we switch to alternative means of energy, at least in the beginning they will be more expensive than fossil, and you need to be able to afford this. Asia must be able to afford this! And they will not give up cars and go back to riding bicycles, this is a pipe dream.
Tech will certainly play a role, but I'm convinced that without a cultural, political and economical change we're doomed. Saying "tech will save us" make people believe that they have no part to play, no responsibility.
We know what to do, the fact is that we're not acting fast enough.
"At the heart of capitalism is a vast and scarcely examined assumption: you are entitled to as great a share of the world’s resources as your money can buy. You can purchase as much land, as much atmospheric space, as many minerals, as much meat and fish as you can afford, regardless of who might be deprived. If you can pay for them, you can own entire mountain ranges and fertile plains. You can burn as much fuel as you like. Every pound or dollar secures a certain right over the world’s natural wealth."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/15/capita...
the pie will keep getting bigger. more resources. more energy. more people. more goods. more kinds of goods. more movement of goods.
thats a direct consequence of your point in that we structurally assume an infinite number of fish, amount of land...and more importantly that the oceans and sky are so vast and unknowable that we throw as much into them as we want without anything ever coming back.
maybe we're living out the last aftershock of the end of the age of exploration. and we're so completely unprepared to manage any kind of economic contraction the only response is fear. growth is the seductive poison thats killing us.
[0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/sites/default/files/styles/g...
If you mean "science" as in existing science and technology, then, sure, technological approaches are part of the solution.
Often, though, in these discussions, "science" is used to mean some sort of magical advancement that is just around the corner that will solve all our problems. That would be nice, but probably isn't the case. We'll probably see incremental advances in things like solar panels but we're up against some hard limits of physics. Reducing consumption and making efficiency savings are significantly easier.
> Only excess wealth creates the spare capacity to care for the environment.
I think this is view is harmful. First, it looks very clear that mitigating climate change is cheaper than dealing the consequences, so this "excess wealth" is mythical.
Second, we shouldn't be treating our environment as a luxury. We need to make sure the planet is liveable first, then see what other toys we can afford.
> Why won't it?
Because science doesn't run the world, politicians do.
Even limited 'growth' has not actually happened. It's a fiction. The physical reality is that complex sustainable evolved systems have been broken down to feed simpler crude unsustainable techological ones. There's no 'growth' to be seen - just an increase in planetary entropy. This is somewhat masked on a short-term & local scale because of the remarkable resilience of the evolved systems. But as those systems collapse, which now seems inevitable, the fictional nature of 'economic growth' will become very evident indeed.
Life on earth is only possible because we're receiving a constant flow of energy from the sun.
Surely, we should not expect exponential growth, but it doesn't mean we could not have unlimited growth.
How so? It's not an argument per se - it's just a description of the physical reality that what economists falsely describe as 'growth' is actually a transfer of matter and energy from complex evolved sustainable systems (ie. what some people call 'nature', which I find to be misleading) to simple cultural-technological unsustainable systems. This transfer process damages the former to build the latter, increasing entropy (because our early-stage human tech is less ordered than evolved systems are). It is not 'growth' in any meaningful sense of the term at all, whether limited or unlimited.
Apparently, the main measure of economic growth is the gross domestic product - "the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced", which is based on spending and consumption. Planetary entropy, as you say.
As someone else commented in this thread, what we need is a significant global shift in mentality and culture, our value systems and vision of what it means to be a grown-up civilization, not as an ever-hungry consumer, but an intelligent layer of nature.
Agreed, though whether we have time for this to happen seems doubtful. It would require a dramatic slowdown of faux-growth to enable natural systems to recover, while we spend the time needed (probably centuries) to develop tech with sustainability approaching that of evolved systems. There's no a priori technical reason why this should not be possible, but political realities make it hard to imagine. Maybe another 'intelligent' species can make this happen in a few millennia.
This is a sentiment that rubs me the wrong way. I totally agree that we, at a global scale, need to drastically reduce our carbon footprint. And these reductions will have changes to our society. But many of the suggestions of those currently engaged in the cultural revolution are either focusing on small problems (like not buying food in plastic containers) or have complicated unintended consequences (like buying locally grown foods).
Shipping stuff on large boats is incredibly efficient per kg/km. It's not unlikely that I emit more Co2 driving my car to/from the grocery store than the emissions from shipping all the things I purchase to the store itself.
We should focus on things like stopping the burning of fossil fule for electricity generation and carbon natural land based transportation long before we almost religiously ban plastic straws.
I don't think the best way forward to actually solving this problem is engaging in some almost Protestant self hatred and punishment, trying to make the transition as impactful on our lives as possible.
Container ships are a problem because they usually run on ridiculously dirty fuel, which ends up polluting the ocean. But they're also extremely energy-efficient on a mass/distance basis. A saner world would have them use cleaner fuel[0].
Cars are a problem because at the scale they're used, they're both significant contributor to global warming and inefficient, energy-wise. Electrifying land transportation would fix the inefficiency and significantly reduce the carbon footprint. Powering the new electric fleet with green energy[1] would finally kill the emission issues.
Plastic straws, plastic packaging and other consumer disposables are a problem[2] because the plastic ends up in oceans, where it gets broken by UV into microplastics which then end up back in the food chain. Beyond that, it's mostly a sad thing to see. Energy and emissions-wise, plastic disposables are much smaller problem than other uses of fossil fuels, and sometimes they're likely better than the reusable alternatives proposed. But it's still so fucking sad to see so much garbage existing only as vehicle for marketing.
IMO people need to stop bundling these problems together. Even though they're all related, energy security != global warming != poisons in food chain != ethical considerations about animals. Those are all separate problems, with separate sets of solutions, and quite honestly, different prioritization.
--
[0] - My utopia would have nuclear-powered cargo ships as permanent global infrastructure, essentially treated as virtual conveyor belts.
[1] - Renewables or nuclear.
[2] - And we aren't even sure yet how big a problem this is. AFAIK this topic is covered mostly out of quite reasonable abundance of caution - we've noticed plastics showing up where they aren't supposed to. Even though there isn't any clear danger identified yet, history teaches us that human-released chemicals showing up in unexpected places generally don't lead to happy outcomes.
One reason that they burn dirty fuel is because we have that fuel, and the way our economy works, it's going to be burned somewhere. Making large ships with engines that can burn that fuel was intended to be a way of having the air pollution be produced away from inhabited land.
Having the ships work with cleaner fuel means the dirty fuel will be burned somewhere else, without further changes.
But I agree with your main point -- "sustainability" attracts so much momentum that people try to frame everything under that umbrella. E.g. suffering of animals raised for food production is a problem, but even less related to the things you mention. Still often seen as part of the same agenda as reducing our CO2 output.
Anyway, if there were sufficient political will to do things, taxes would solve this shit overnight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_oil
>> "Small molecules like those in propane, naphtha, gasoline for cars, and jet fuel have relatively low boiling points, and they are removed at the start of the fractional distillation process. Heavier petroleum products like diesel fuel and lubricating oil are much less volatile and distill out more slowly, while bunker oil is literally the bottom of the barrel; in oil distilling, the only things denser than bunker fuel are carbon black feedstock and bituminous residue (asphalt), which is used for paving roads and sealing roofs. "
I'm asking because I only have a passing familiarity with how oil production works.
>> "It can't be cracked economically?"
This trash oil is produced anyway. There's no way to not make it and still make the less dirty kinds since it's what's left at the end of the process.
I see two possible solutions:
1: Invent commercial fusion reactors and burn it there. I don't know if this would produce less CO2.
2: Find something else to do with the trash oil that's less polluting. Markets are pretty good at finding uses for things, so there may just not be anything else.
Gasoline was a waste product until internal combustion engines came along. Trash oil probably occupied a similar status as waste until someone figured out it worked in ships. If trash oil were no longer economical to burn on ships, they would probably dump it in international waters instead unless some better use was incentivized.
The US and probably other countries pay farmers to destroy some crops to keep it profitable enough to make farming a viable industry. Farmers would sell all their crops without government intervention, driving profits below a sustainable level. They wouldn't just trash it otherwise.
Cargo ship owners are probably the only people who want the leftover oil. The shipping industry burns the oil industry's trash to make their ships go. Make using it uneconomical, and it gets dumped. That's what happens with byproducts no one wants to buy.
It might be a good idea to get people into contact with the smaller problems you mentioned because they are less political and less scary, still somewhat connected and people feel they can make a change. That's more than you get when people shy away instead.
Also, one point of activism is to get people into contact with an issue or a viewpoint so they can get used to the idea slowly, and when the time for changes comes it is familiar and unsurprising. So it's not about changing things right now but to pave the way for change in the future. (Maybe this is obvious, but for me it was a slightly different take of it.)
Not obvious at all. In fact, it's the first time I've encountered this idea. Thanks a lot for writing this. It makes me view some of the activist actions in a different light.
Even if we move to 100% electric cars powered by renewables tomorrow, that’s 43% of CO2 output. After decades, we are not even at the point where we can do that much, by the way. Grid-scale battery storage is an essential part of the equation, and we are not there yet.
We are still at the beginning stages of even thinking about the other 57%. Electrifying the national freight rail grid would be massively expensive. (Keeping overheard catenary well maintained is so expensive that Maryland’s commuter rail is moving to diesel locomotives for Baltimore to DC service, even though the corridor was electrified more than a century ago.) There are no commercially available electric trucks yet.
That stuff can’t wait for later. To limit temperature increases to 2C, we need to immediately cut global CO2 by three times as much as the US’s total CO2 output. Meanwhile, in the last couple of decades, China has added more than a US worth of CO2 output. If India develops similarly, we’ll add another US and a half. Europe and the US going to zero output won’t cancel out those increases. Even the communist party’s goal in China only calls for 20% electric cars by 2025.
The reliable models we have show that if we don’t cut emissions dramatically and immediately, we will need to go to negative emissions in the short term. That’s another generational problem. Carbon recapture is in its infancy. Look how long it took to perfect solar.
I'm not sure about how that chart is constructed, but for me it's obvious that we need to lower the carbon intensity of electricity production right now. That would "eliminate" 32% of the chart, and I guess also have a dent in the other pies.
I don't see how stopping consuming or fundamentally changing society is a better or even faster way to achieving our goals.
I think it's absurd to talk about trying to radically change society before you stop burning fossil fules for electricity.
Cutting emissions dramatically and immediately is by deploying nuclear, and by electrifying your rail lines.
All of this depends on number of people constantly growing, and more of them buying more stuff and doing more stuff.
It's arguably not so much "science will save us" as "economics will save us". That's almost a religion in the US. Also, some distrust science on religious basis. And some even believe that it's all part of the coming apocalypse. Which is God's will.
Thankfully I hope this will decline. Interesting tidbit I learned today: Mitch McConnell has finally admitted humans are causing climate change. Now the only (herculean) problem is getting him to tackle it properly. https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/mcconnell-says...
The concern is not necessarily that it's a hoax, but that hasty data will be used to push for specific policies, benefiting some, making money for others, and so on.
It's also very easy to turn into some semi-fascist "state of emergency" governance, if you have something all-encompassing as the climate to base your legitimacy on.
Of course it would be a good thing to get rid of air pollution, replace energy sources to cleaner ones, and even more so, cut down on consumerism and industrial production of all kinds of crap (that's the hardest part, and one that every corporate interest will be against, but without "reduce", alternative energy and recycle are just environment theater).
The amount of CO2 is not controversial. What's controversial is what we should change.
There are tons of people who fully believe in climate change but vehemently disagree on what we should do about it.
There are also those who don't think it's a reason to worry so much or panic.
All of those people get reworked by the controversy hungry Media and converted into climate change deniers, and the result is the political world we live in right now.
If we could disentangle all those things it would help a lot. But instead we get believers and deniers, i.e. basically religion.
There are also those who believe that exaggerating the problem is the best way to get people to do something. In my opinion that has backfired majorly.
Meticulously planned political & media interference campaigns run by fossil fuel companies and related think tanks. They understood the implications of climate change by the late 1970's and knew the writing was on the wall. They executed plans to delay political action for as long as possible in exactly the same way corporations had done with regard to tobacco regulation since the 1950s. These conspiracies against science and the public interest were remarkably successful. In some cases (eg. Heartland Institute) the very same organisations were involved in both campaigns.
And nuclear does have its problems. I used to be against it, but right now the risk and problems are just not an issue compared to the consequences of carbon emissions.
- an expensive solution to a non-existing problem, for the profit of a few
- a plot to undermine Western countries (or the US in particular), reducing its competitiveness
- a geopolitical attack on oil-producing countries
I am no expert, and I think neither are you, so we are just making some small talk here, but: I think we don't have the tech to go all in on renewable. Solar is cool and all, but where do we store the energy? Batteries don't scale at a global level (for now). I mean look at Germany: they tried. They got off nuclear and now they emit more CO2 than when they started because they had to revert back to coal.
I see no easy solution to this. Not for now. And for sure it's not something like "let's just switch to wind and solar and we are good".
There is enough data showing, that about 80% reneweables in the mix are possible without larger storage facilites, if the gaps are covered by gas power plants which can change their output power quick enough to react on the demand. Neither coal nor nuclear can do this.
That Germany is missing its emission targets has two reasons. One is, that coal is not ramped down aggressively enough, which has mostly economical reasons, coal is to profitable for the power companies, but recent forced closures of some coal plants shifted a bit here. And the other elephant in the room is the raising fuel consumption for transportation. Going electric for cars would have a large impact there.
Let me ask you this, if solar is capable of replacing fossil fuels, why did Germany sign a multi-decade/mult-billion-euro deal to buy Russian gas?
Besides, gas is a cheap, fast way to replace coal with drastically reduced carbon emissions.
Germany is part of the European power grid, so there are times, when power is imported to compensate for local over- and underproduction. As Germany is in the middle of Europe, far more power is conducted across of Germany. You cannot count French nuclear power as in import, if the same amount of power is exported to Austria at the same time (a very common situation). Germany is a net power exporter.
Gas is important in two way: first of all, it is way cleaner than coal, so it is the best short term replacement for coal. Germany almost has enough (currently mostly idle) gas power plants to completely replace coal short term. As long as there are no mass storage facilities, gas is needed as the gap filler for the times when neither wind and solar can power the grid. As the production capacity grows, these gaps are going to get increasingly smaller. It remains to be seen what is the best long-term solution, either to grow large storage facilities to get to 100% reneweables or allow like 10% gas in the mix.
And there aren't.
>gas is needed as the gap filler for the times when neither wind and solar can power the grid.
This is the entire point!! Wind and solar can't replace fossil fuels. So what Germany did was replace non-CO2 emitting nuclear power with CO2 emitting power generation (natural gas and coal). I guess fighting global warning is less important than satisfying irrational German paranoia against nuclear.
>As the production capacity grows, these gaps are going to get increasingly smaller.
The sun will start shining at night?
The sun will start shining at night?
That sentence did a huge disservice to your post. Of course the sun doesn't shine at night. But no one wants to replace all energy production by solar alone. Wind is the companion of solar, both are roughly the same size in Germany. Wind is what delivers the power at night (where electricity consumption is lowest) and solar adds the power for the additional requirements during daytime.
Replacing both with domestic non-fossil solutions is near-impossible in the medium term unless nuclear forms a big part of the baseload - heating on those winter nights where the sun doesn't shine but electric heat exchangers work full tilt, and generation for those electric cars charging throughout the winter night.
They aren't. We agreed that wind/solar is not capable of serving as the base power generation of a modern economy. Lack of city-scale battery technology, and the variability of solar and wind precludes this use case.
So what Germany did was remove a non-CO2 emitting power source and replaced it with a mix of solar/wind AND CO2-emitting power generation (via existing coal plants, new gas plants, and importation of coal-based power when they need it).
If the name of the game is to cut CO2 emissions as much as possible, you're at net negative. It necessarily means that had you not closed down nuclear power plants, you would have cut MORE CO2 emissions than you do now. That's just a statement of fact.
And this is my problem with anti-nuke policies. Implicitly the anti-nuke activists are saying that cutting CO2 emissions isn't as important as preventing expansion of nuclear power or even keeping existing plants running. Consider this and cry for our civilization: had the developed world doubled-down on nuclear power in the 60-70s to the same level as France, we would have prevented trillions of tons of CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere. That could have bought us a few extra decades. I am convinced that history will see antinuclear view as more destructive than right-wing global warming denialism (which on balance does not actually do anything).
>Of course the sun doesn't shine at night. But no one wants to replace all energy production by solar alone. Wind is the companion of solar, both are roughly the same size in Germany. Wind is what delivers the power at night. Meaning that you have to overprovision your infrastructure to supplement periods of low output.
Again, this is a disingenuous point. The problem with wind and solar is not only variability but also the fact that peak generation does not match peak consumption. If peak wind generation is at 3am, it doesn't do our society any good because we need power at 6pm. Worse than that, solar and wind generation profile changes with weather and seasons.
So no, it's not simple as saying: Solar peaks during the day, and Wind peaks during the night and therefore they complement each other ... because they don't.
I just read a calculation how automatic milking machines will turn a tidy profit on milk into a loss with energy costs per kwh just 10 cents higher. Milking by hand will be _more_ profitable with that small a difference.
So it's controversial because doing something about climate change involves massive changes to our way of life. Not simply switching your SUV for a Tesla, we're talking up to and including economic collapse and deindustrialization.
--
[0]: https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/oil-power-and-war/
A 1GW conventional nuclear plant is refueled by a single 18-wheeler truck, every year and a half.
A 1GW fast reactor or thorium reactor would require only one ton of fuel, about the size of a beachball, once a year. A lump of fuel smaller than a golfball would provide all the energy you need for your entire life, transportation included.
Fossil fuels still have the best energy density for cars and airplanes, but for large ships or anything stationary, nuclear is far superior. And not just for electricity; several GenIV designs run hot enough for process heat.
This is a strong assumption. How can we have evidence for that? We do not understand climate enough to make such an assertion.
This is the answer to your question. Enough people see that strong assertions for man-made climate change are not necessarily backed up. Hence the controversy.
> but furthermore I don't see why we shouldn't transition to renewable energy asap anyway
Because that comes with it's own problems? For instance, around here there are a lot of wind wheels, these machines create problems. It's not just "energy for free". For example one problem is they kill a massive amount of insects.
There are also people advocating for nuclear energy, improved ways of providing nuclear energy. Maybe they are right?
> Even if climate change would be a hoax (which it is not), then why would it be a bad thing to make changes to prevent it from happening anyway?
This is a good question I asked myself many times as well. I don't know.
One part of the answer could be priorities. We can't do everything at once. SO what comes first?
What if (Man Made) climate change was simply a set of natural processes and feedback loops? Wouldn’t alternative energy be better? Absolutely. It’s quieter, more efficient, and cleaner, especially nuclear energy. But a lot of the malthusian politics and negativity would have to go. Perhaps you could have a bigger house and not feel guilty about it? Maybe you won’t shame a neighbor for having another kid? Perhaps millions of people in the developing world can live a better life without being told they should stop to save the planet.
Because solar and wind (+ battery) cannot replace coal and gas.
So people in the industry that depends on fossil fuels know this, they know the only answer to getting co2 out of the atmosphere is to not use fossil fuels at all, which is an extremely hard/expensive thing to do. Moonshot level project, globally. Some just worry about their own riches, others rightly worry it would cause global disaster (it could if we did it wrong!)
I think it is controversial because the cost of this transition is not priced into the modern human lifestyle. So either the lifestyle changes or it gets a lot more expensive. And it challenges the business model of fossil fuel companies and the global power balance of oil producing countries. It can't get much more disruptive than this transition.
You are thinking in terms of what is good for human society. But the world is run by capital, and now that mass disinformation is relatively cheap to accomplish, it is even easier do discredit science if you have a descent amount of money to spend.
It's because it's very hard to prove causation. We have lots of evidence of correlation, and the scientific consensus, but that's not 100% proof to many people.
Our attention is a finite resource too. When some issue is in the news daily and obsessed about by a whole bunch of interest groups, from European-style liberals who have new taxes in mind (Macron) to the radical left who want us to live a frugal, Eastern-Bloc lifestyle, while we all see no real effects by this CO2 monster on our daily lives, it's bound to meet some resistance.
> I don't see why we shouldn't transition to renewable energy asap anyway.
Germany is transitioning to renewables quickly and has put a huge burden on households with high electricity prices (€0.30 per KWh average, even affecting EV adoption after some sensationalist "EV more expensive than Diesel fuel" themed articles) while the industry gets it cheap. Is this reasonable?
> Why would it be a bad thing to get rid of air pollution?
This is a great idea, but it has nothing to do with CO2 (= not air pollution in the usual sense, we all exhale it). I wish we could invest 1/10 of the efforts currently underway against CO2 in just getting rid of pollution in cities - from heating (with "renewable" wood), cars, industry, ships, airplanes (where's the CO2 tax and why do these things happen? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6993173/Actress-Emm...).
Furthermore, it's difficult to foresee which problems will arise from replacing fossil fuel energy with renewables like wind or solar.
The causes of anthropogenic climate change are extremely well documented and easily measureable, and "reduce the amount of carbon put into the air and recapture carbon already in the air if possible" isn't very complicated, just expensive.
An honest question: If I were to go about convincing myself of anthropogenic climate change and possibly that these changes would lead to a horrible future for humankind, where should I look? What should I read? Which videos to watch?
The mainstream media portrays the science as settled, i.e., anthropogenic climate change is real and horrible consequences will follow, even though it isn't difficult to find disagreeing opinions - both from people on the fringes and from Nobel-winning scientists. I hear convincing arguments from both sides.
I should mention that I am extremely sceptical of anything the state does, so I am biased against any solution involving the state. I fear that the fight against anthropogenic climate change is just another tool to increase state power, like the war on drugs or the war on poverty.
Most of the arguments that I see concern the low effectiveness of renewable energy sources and the pollution caused by the batteries (either during their creation or when trying to get rid of them).
What I do not see is why we should not transition to modern thorium-based nuclear power plants.
If we look at carbon footprint, single use paper bags have the lowest footprint.
https://stanfordmag.org/contents/paper-plastic-or-reusable
So if we prioritized limiting carbon footprint, we would encourage single use plastic bags. However, we are not, we are discouraging them.
If environmentalists had signed on to encourage carbon free energy, they would have pushed for reducing the roadblocks to nuclear power even at the cost of making them more unsafe. That is not what happened. Instead, environmental groups were one of the biggest opponents to nuclear power.
If you really believe climate change is the biggest problem facing humans, you will need to do things and encourage things that may be dangerous or harmful but that can help slow down climate change.
Because those come at significant cost, and if there's nothing to worry about then why spend tens of trillions of dollars to stop it?
I mean you might as well use Pascal's wager to argue for religion if you're only looking at potential benefits and ignoring costs.
Extremely shortsighted thinking. If we're talking about cost, this should be the argument: tens of trillions < the future of humanity.
Furthermore, CO2 levels are one aspect of a larger problem, "pollution", and I'm not entirely convinced it's necessarily the worst part of it.
What's controversial (at least, if we're talking reasonable discussion) is not that climate change is happening, nor that human activities cause at least a good portion of it, but whether we understand all the factors involved well enough to predict with high confidence that spending trillions of dollars on drastic measures to reduce or eliminate CO2 emissions will stop it from happening. If we don't have high confidence that spending the trillions of dollars will do that (and I don't, nor do I see how anyone could given that climate models are overpredicting warming and our ability to predict economic consequences is even worse than our ability to predict future climate), then we shouldn't be spending the trillions of dollars--or at least, not on measures aimed directly at drastically reducing or eliminating CO2 emissions.
That's not to say, however, that there aren't other things we could be doing, that might help with climate change as a side effect. One is switching to non-fossil-fuel energy sources (see below). Another is making our infrastructure more robust, which helps civilization to withstand change in general. Still another is bringing more people out of poverty, since the richer people are, the more easily they can adapt to change.
> I don't see why we shouldn't transition to renewable energy asap anyway
A better term than "renewable" would be "non-fossil-fuel", since that would include nuclear (which is not considered "renewable" by most definitions). I agree that switching to non-fossil-fuel energy is something we should be doing anyway, both for scarcity reasons and for national security reasons: much of the money we spend on foreign oil ends up funding terrorism. I wish more people would realize that we don't need to agree on climate change alarmism in order to work on switching energy sources.
In particular, by tying climate change denial to political identity, and casting climate research as immoral for its lying, it created a passionate base of climate change denalists to call into every radio show, to swarm message boards, and to harass those who speak publicly about climate change.
If you can listen to podcasts, the best summary of this is from the Drilled podcast, in my opinion:
And even when the motivation is not so sinister as that, people who care about the topic have a particular world view, and they don't spend the time to figure out how their world-view differs from those who aren't as concerned. What motivates one group is not one motivates another. If climate activists are serious about fixing the problem, then they need to abandon the branding aspect and find language that appeals to those not in their target market. Otherwise it's all just a lot of value-signalling.
Claiming that environmentalists aren't phrasing things correctly for the right to care about the environment is pretty much the definition of tone policing. Republicans could easily take up the fight against climate change on their own terms, but the very very few Republicans that have tried have been shunned by the rest of the party.
Rather, let's blame the true villain here, the political ideology that places itself as more important than truth or science, the political ideology that says "if I'm wrong and you can't convince me with science then it's your fault for not trying hard enough." What sort of epistemically closure is acceptable?
People are motivated by different things. Telling them the things that motivate you, and then calling them names when they aren't motivated by the same line of thought, is a very unproductive way to win them over.
You can tell people the "what" till your face turns blue, but if you are unable to hook into a "why" that resonates with them, they will do precisely nothing.
My point is that if you truly believe that this is a matter of life and death, you need to be out in the world pounding the pavement just the same as all the street preachers that themselves truly believe what they have to say is a matter of life and death.
In a similar vein, if the arguments most street preachers give falls completely flat for you, consider the reverse and why what you are saying is falling flat to the people you are evangelizing to. To be effective, preaching has to be for the audience, and not for the preacher. And that is exactly what this sort of advocacy is, preaching.
CO2 is not a pollutant, and no one knows what will happen with increasing levels.
Here's something to consider: during the Early Eocene period (roughly 50 million years ago) temperatures were 9C-14C higher than now and CO2 levels were 1000-2000 parts per million [1].
And yet according to science, Earth was covered in forests from pole to pole, mammals flourished, and the oceans were "teeming with fish and other sea life". [2]
That's something you won't hear much about, because it doesn't fit the agenda.
1: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/global-warming/early-eocene-period
I thought the big deal was that we liked it how it was.
It is a huge experiment on a planetary scale and staying on the safe side here is simple the rational approach.
The irrational approach is to hope it will somehow turn out great, despite the already grim looking damage predictions.
And the simply evil approach is working against scientific evidence and rational arguments for personal gain. People like these are like cancer, destroying civilization from within for personal growth.
For the Eocene, also according to science, we see fossil evidence of crocodiles at the poles. That likely makes most of the temperate to equatorial zones uninhabitable for humans, whilst being lovely for the "snakes found in the tropics that would require much higher average temperatures to sustain them".
I notice you don't mention that "All the members of the new mammal orders were small, under 10 kg", and "Eocene mammals were only 60% of the size of the primitive Palaeocene mammals that preceded them. They were also smaller than the mammals that followed them".
So whilst it was lovely for species evolved to those conditions, and life as a whole, for large species such as those of the size of say humanity, it seems to have been exceptionally hostile.
I don't know if that statement is technically true but it's certainly misleading. Perhaps "all the members of the new mammal orders" were under 10kg, but not all mammals during the early Eocene were under 10kg.
Cambaytherium and Coryphodon, for example, lived during the early Eocene and were roughly pig sized and cow sized, respectively.[1,2]
In other words, that carefully phrased statement, if true, is a great example of the unscientific spin I was talking about.
> fossil evidence of crocodiles at the poles. That likely makes most of the temperate to equatorial zones uninhabitable for humans
We also see fossil evidence of large mammals in India. In the early Eocene temperatures differed less between the tropics and the poles and between winter and summer.
1: https://www.thoughtco.com/coryphodon-peaked-tooth-1093184
I'm suggesting nothing of the kind, but directly quoting from the wikipedia page you linked. Please stop putting words in my mouth.
I will note that the Wiki page on Coryphodon says: "These changes in size are thought to be linked to global climate change, with the size minimum in the Coryphodon lineage occurring shortly after Paleocene-Eocene boundary". Which appears to indicate clear evolutionary pressure to evolve smaller.
The pressure on mammals appears to have been consistently toward smaller size, seen in newly evolved species and the evolution of existing species. We already know that heat penalises larger mammals harder than the small, so that does not seem inconsistent.
That was your statement, not Wikipedia. What was that based on if not the incorrect implication about the size of mammals?
Nonetheless, I've already edited my post to make it clear that I was talking about the implications of the statement from Wikipedia.
> The pressure on mammals appears to have been consistently toward smaller size
If "the size minimum in the Coryphodon lineage occurr[ed] shortly after Paleocene-Eocene boundary" then the decrease occurred before the early Eocene, not during. The temperature actually continued to increase for several million years after the Paleocene-Eocene boundary.[1]
That pressure might have been due to the rapid changes at the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, not temperature itself, and after the thermal maximum, size increased again even with the higher temperatures.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...
The decrease in size probably had more to do with the chaos wrought by whatever unknown event caused the thermal maximum than with the temperature itself.
To make this all more relevant: I'm not saying that climate change won't be disruptive. It will. I'm just saying we can adapt and endure. And I think we should plan for that, because we clearly aren't going to stop it.
It also "had one of the smallest brain/body ratios of any mammal, living or extinct" so that may not be the best example of how this kind of environment might be fit for humans.
this is basically, to a first order approximation, wrong. sea level rise, even in a nasty BAU/RCP8.5 scenario is really a next-century problem. we're talking tens of centimeters.
meanwhile, vast swaths of the euphrates, indo-gangetic, nile and yellow river deltas will suffer droughts and both successive and concurrent crop failures.
the flood of refugees from drought/famine/war into every city around the world will vastly exceed the flood of water at their shoreline (this century).
We emitted 5/6th of what's ok to stay below 1.5°C, and 2°C is not that much more, and we're not stopping. (500 Gt vs 600 Gt)
At the current emission rate (12 Gt/yr) we have 10 years left to stop completely. A few decades won't cut it.
Almost all scenarious of the IPCC now include negative emissions to be able to reach the targets.
The technology does not exist, would need to be implemented on a massive scale (eg plant all the available area minus agriculture and a selected few sanctuaries with trees and make biochar out of them) and the investment in eg artificial photosynthesis is not there, probably because there is little money in it. (The process is different from that for biofuels.) We might not make it in time. Don't rely on this.
(The total available stored carbon seems to be on the order of 3000 Gt.)
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/summary-for-policymakers/ (Figure SPM.10)
Climate is complicated, there are many complicated feedback loops going on. As just one example warming temperatures promotes plant growth especially algae which captures CO2 interning back to the ocean floor. Of course some of that algae is not good for us (red tide).
I am not worried about life on earth, it will adapt and survive, it has seen worse, I doubt we would turn into Venus, but its a slight possibility.
The issue is what happens to human society, it will most likely adapt too, but at what cost? Rising sea levels, food supply having to adapt, these things could caused great suffering to many, then again maybe not. I don't want my kids to suffer or their kids.
The point is we don't exactly know how it will play out so why push it? Lets get off fossil fuels as fast as we can, we know its the right thing to do for many reasons, one of which is to stop returning so much CO2 back into the atmosphere.
If climate change causes the areas we currently inhabit to become unhospitable, we risk adding the danger of economic disasters and wars threatening our survival.
Human life was, amongst other things, possible because of one of the biggest climate disasters ever to occur on earth, the big oxygenation event [0], so we could even see climate change as something positive but clearly that doesn't buy us anything today.
In such an environment, mankind might survive, but our current farming set-up won't. It might only kill 7 billion people our of 7.5, no big deal. (When looked at from a few million years in the future.)
> CO2 levels were 1000-2000
Indoor CO2 levels are usually double the outdoor levels. H Humans become dumb/sluggish at concentrations over 1500ppm, and nauseous at over 2000. Life will thrive, human life won't.
Sure, life will find a way. But the high rate of change will be disruptive.
Here's something to consider: The transition won't be pleasant.
On the scale of centuries, in this extremely rapid warming event we are making happen, a majority of life on Earth will die, including most humans. Evolution is slow, global warming is fast.
In the very long run, yes, palm trees (or their evolutionary successors) will flourish in Antarctica.
In the short run, meaning a length of time that exceeds human written history, we will live in an inhospitable ecological desert, and billions will die.
That's something YOU won't hear about, because it doesn't fit the agenda of the people that are lying to you for profit.
Looking at the major trends of the last several decades. People moving to brand new sunbelt suburbs where they drive everywhere in SUVs. Buying disposable clothes, electronics, etc., made in China and shipped over the ocean. Even the token attempts at being environmentally conscious are ridiculous. I go to Whole Foods here in Maryland and everything is grown in f—king California. It’s a joke.
Nobody is willing to make the lifestyle changes it would take to have a real impact on climate change. And it’s not unique to the US. Canada and Australia have similar carbon footprints per capita, suggesting it’s more a combination of material wealth and low density. Blaming corporations instead of the people for all that is asinine.
And what are our best and brightest from Stanford, etc., doing? Figuring out carbon recapture? No, working at Google figuring out how to more effectively advertise disposable consumer goods that are shipped over from China, used a few times, and shipped back to China for disposal.
Could we have a conversation offline? I'd like to learn more about your situation and what has brought you to this reply. Feel free to send me an email and we can schedule a time to talk.
> Blaming the “companies” and “lobbyists” is such a cop-out. The companies are just giving people what they want. If people demanded a shift to a climate friendly lifestyle tomorrow, Exxon would have no choice but to follow suit.
As we've seen with Russian propaganda efforts, the firehose of falsehoods can be extremely effective at keeping people in the dark or convincing them of something not in their best interest. People demanding a shift requires education around the topic, and Exxon literally prevented research on the topic from coming out for decades.
> Looking at the major trends of the last several decades. People moving to brand new sunbelt suburbs where they drive everywhere in SUVs. Buying disposable clothes, electronics, etc., made in China and shipped over the ocean. Even the token attempts at being environmentally conscious are ridiculous. I go to Whole Foods here in Maryland and everything is grown in f—king California. It’s a joke.
I'm very confused what point you're trying to make here. That systems or not optimizing for environmental impact? Of course they aren't. They are optimizing based on the incentives they are following. People move to suburbs and drive SUVs to feel safer and more wealthy. People move to the sunbelt because the winter sucks. People buy disposable clothes and stuff is shipped from China because it's cheaper to do so. It's really expensive to grow produce in Maryland, so you ship it from California.
> Nobody is willing to make the lifestyle changes it would take to have a real impact on climate change. And it’s not unique to the US. Canada and Australia have similar carbon footprints per capita, suggesting it’s more a combination of material wealth and low density. Blaming corporations instead of the people for all that is asinine.
You're right, asking someone to give up their lifestyle sucks. However, you're equating changing lifestyle with fighting climate change. That's where we disagree. The goal of fighting climate change isn't to get people to change their lifestyles, it's to stop sequestered carbon from entering the carbon cycle. One way to do that is to ask people to stop being so excessive (e.g. changing lifestyle), but nowadays we have so many more options.
Most climate change solutions nowadays start with the assumption that we shouldn't ask people to change lifestyles, and just deploy carbon-free infrastructure that is a drop-in replacement for existing carbon-intense infrastructure. Solar, Wind, EVs, batteries, biofuels, etc. all never ask you to stop buying disposable shirts from China. All they do is replace the power that powers the factory and the fuel that is used to ship it to you with sources that don't add carbon the carbon cycle. So that when you are living your life in your disposable shirt and eating your California avocados, you're not contributing to climate change anymore.
> And what are our best and brightest from Stanford, etc., doing? Figuring out carbon recapture? No, working at Google figuring out how to more effectively advertise disposable consumer goods that are shipped over from China, used a few times, and shipped back to China for disposal.
We'll I'm just the best and brightest from UT-Austin, so not Stanford, but I did make the career switch from traditional tech to cleantech. And every time one of these threads come up I try to post that you, too, can make the switch from Google to cleantech. However, every time that happens, there are pessimists like yourself who shit all over my call for help. That's okay though, the capitalist in me kind of sees this as an opportunity. The fewer competitors I have in my particular niche, the more money I make. So I guess I should be partially thanking you for slowing down the climate change tech enlightenment :)
Where do you plan to find that in your non-lifestyle change world? Solar? That's 8000sqft of installed solar with the highest efficiency panels. That needs to be coupled with hundreds of kwh storage. Total cost : hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Good luck on that.
That being said, there is a lot of space where nobody lives in the US. There are some 28000 square meters per person in the US. Dedicating about 3% of that to solar panels doesn't seem impossible.
Some energy saving is also possible without changing the average lifestyle too much. Insulating homes helps quite a bit. Electric cars are more efficient that gas cars.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?page=us_energy_home
[2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10%5E20+joules+%2F+(3....
[3] https://www.quora.com/How-much-solar-energy-can-be-tapped-in...
At current prices, that much PV capacity would cost around 25 trillion dollars. That price doesn't include any storage capacity.
The climate is changing far too rapidly for us to hope for science fiction solutions. We need a major reduction in emissions now, which means both a vast increase in renewable production and a vast reduction in overall consumption.
Nuclear.
We have the research now, but people aren't changing their behavior.
> I'm very confused what point you're trying to make here. That systems or not optimizing for environmental impact? Of course they aren't. They are optimizing based on the incentives they are following. People move to suburbs and drive SUVs to feel safer and more wealthy. People move to the sunbelt because the winter sucks. People buy disposable clothes and stuff is shipped from China because it's cheaper to do so. It's really expensive to grow produce in Maryland, so you ship it from California.
And that is what causes climate change. Exxon is just giving people what they want. The blame rests with people who want a lifestyle that's incompatible with avoiding climate change, not the companies that simply are feeding consumer demand.
> All they do is replace the power that powers the factory and the fuel that is used to ship it to you with sources that don't add carbon the carbon cycle. So that when you are living your life in your disposable shirt and eating your California avocados, you're not contributing to climate change anymore.
We don't have time to develop all that technology: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-the-ipcc-1-5c-repor.... According to new, revised estimates, having a 50/50 chance of limiting tempeature increaes to 1.5C leaves us with 14 years of carbon emissions at current levels. After which point the world economy has to hit zero carbon emissions. Meanwhile, carbon emissions are still going up: https://www.climatechangenews.com/files/2017/03/238eb46742db.... From 2000-2015, China added an amount of CO2 output that exceeds the entire US output. China continues to grow, while India is approaching where China was before 2000 and may have a similarly explosive growth in CO2 emissions in the next two decades.
Not only is there no solution that allows us to keep living the way we are living while averting climate change. There never was. Even if we had listened to the hippies and cut U.S. emissions by half starting in the 1960s, China's growth alone would have completely wiped out that savings multiple times over.
They are. Clean energy mandates are being passed in many states; climate change and the Green New Deal is a front and center topic in the Democratic presidential primary race; the Paris Climate Agreement passed on a global scale; China is electrifying transportation and building as much solar, wind, and nuclear as fast a possible; India is phasing out coal as fast a possible; and on and on.
A person as an individual isn't changing their behavior to a large extent, but people in aggregate are.
> And that is what causes climate change.
No, it's not. Again, climate change is caused by injecting sequestered carbon into the carbon cycle. Previously, it just so happened that the act of driving your SUV around did exactly that. However, more and more that's not true. As we electrify transportation and clean the grid, the act of driving around becomes less and less what causes climate change.
> We don't have time to develop all that technology
We already have the technology, it's just a matter of deploying it. Every auto manufacturer is releasing major electric models by next year. Clean energy generation in the U.S. is set to surpass coal generation this year. China is electrifying transportation and switching to clean energy (including nuclear) as fast as possible. India is building more solar than ever and accelerating that deployment.
As I'm sure you've seen, my favorite climate change joke is, "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"
Climate change is my generation's great challenge. If we lose, we die. So, many of us are fighting with everything we have. Some are trying to get people to change behavior, some are trying to make drop-in replacements. But none of us are giving up. It sounds like you've already given up.
FYI, HN is limiting reply depth, so I doubt I can reply more. Please email me back if you can.
Well, Purdue Pharma is also only giving people what they want. In and of itself, that doesn't mean much.
Exxon is doing significantly more than just giving people what they want [1], as do many (most?) of the big dinosaurs of the established industries that currently make the world go round. Do we need to go into the vast efforts at influencing the public that such entities expend in order to maintain their domination and wealth? You have vastly more expertise on this subject, so I wouldn't be able to tell you anything new.
The world does need to advance, but advance to where? Thermodynamically, it must slow down or it will overheat and crash into the ceiling.
> Not only is there no solution that allows us to keep living the way we are living while averting climate change. There never was. Even if we had listened to the hippies and cut U.S. emissions by half starting in the 1960s, China's growth alone would have completely wiped out that savings multiple times over.
You don't know that, and it's a false dilemma anyway. People change their lifestyles all the time in response to their economic environment and incentives, as they have been doing throughout history.
I tend to listen more to the experts when they say something is possible. When they tell me in no uncertain terms that a very important problem has no solution, I listen more to the kids.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/23/climate/exxon-global-warm...
Doerr and Khosla probably soured SV on cleantech
rayiner has simply correctly pointed out that the markets follow consumer preference and that those preferences place low value on renewable energy & sustainability.
No one is calling man-made climate change into question.
I am not responsible for the planet and saving it. So please don't try to guilt me into taking responsibility for "saving" the planet. I've already done my part by not having children. It is up to parents and people who care enough about the species to save the planet and humanity. I'll be dead in a decade and not really bothered by this impending doom.
Planets, Nations and species die every day, given the vastness of the universe. It's admirable to try to save something, but the willingness to do so must come from within, free from external collective pressure mixed with shaming and guilt.
I don't think that LG markets it's Android phones as being disposable. I do think that they should, and I think that if they won't do it voluntarily that consumers should be made aware of the fact that these purchases are for disposable "products" through any other available means. If that requires regulation, so be it. No consumers stood up and demanded planned obsolescence from these corporations.
LG's easy for me to pick on, since their phones are essentially disposable pieces of junk, and I've been burned by them three times, but you could drop in most electronic manufacturers here. If they're selling disposable electronics then they should market them that way. The fact that we all accept that they're disposable is a separate problem from the demand, IMHO.
I also don't think that anyone ever thought that when they spend hundreds of dollars on a smartphone or a laptop or whatever that they wouldn't actually own it or have the right to service it on their terms. And yet, here we are.
You can't go from individual decisions and then infer group desires. The inferential step isn't sound. It's like saying fishermen must want to make fish extinct because they persistently overfish in the absence of fishing quotas.
IMO human society simply isn't mature enough to deal with this problem. I don't think there will be serious action until it's an emergency for enough wealthy people - and I don't think that's the system working, I think it's swerving at the last moment. There will continue to be a lot of collateral damage before the emergency is pressing enough.
I think it's an hypocrisy issue primarily. The people shouting for us to make a change won't make it first.
If even a majority of the people that say we should lower our carbon foot print bought only food and clothing produced without dirty electricity sources, didn't fly in private planes and only drove Prius/hybrid/electric cars, etc... (for starters)
Then maybe, just maybe they could convince everyone else it's even _possible_ to do what they expect everyone else to do to save the planet.
Climate change is a collective problem and will _only_ be resolved by collective regulations and incentives. This is not a problem we can all just “chip in” on and have it magically go away.
Consider how things would be if Hollywood lead the way with all the celebrities (percentage wise easily top percent polluters in the US) giving up their gas guzzling vehicles, private planes, excessive travel, etc... Much of the public would follow their example automatically, even many politicians.
It sounds like you are advocating for "I don't have to do it if everyone isn't".
Hypocrisy from leadership (whoever they are) robs people of motivation and compassion towards both the subject and the message. (ie, climate change)
There are many examples in history where individuals stood up for a belief and lead the way to change.
Saying we should do something, meaning all of us collectively, and saying individuals should do something are two different assertions, though the verbiage is sometimes precisely the same. A person can very logically, and without hypocrisy, state that everyone should cut their CO2 output drastically to save the planet (which would be effective and help, and would also require major changes in infrastructure, law, and government) without taking drastic steps of their own (which would not be effective and would not help in any perceptible way).
Collective action problem.
> There are many examples in history where individuals stood up for a belief and lead the way to change.
This isn't a hypothetical. It's a worthwhile exercise to consider whether the hippies who have actually been taking drastic steps to lower their environmental footprint since the sixties have moved the needle at all, in terms of actual environmental degradation, public perception, or in terms of politics. Also consider whether they might have been more effective by working and spending money and effort engaging in mainstream politics and living like the rest of us.
> Hypocrisy from leadership (whoever they are) robs people of motivation and compassion towards both the subject and the message. (ie, climate change)
This might actually be true. An electorate that points at Al Gore and says "that guy uses a lot of CO2 so clearly this whole climate change thing is bullshit" is too stupid to live and will come to a bad end. I live in hope that at least a plurality of us will eventually be a lot smarter than that.
If the people calling for changes in society related to climate change are of this ilk/type/caliber, then there is no way anything will ever change ethically.
Though, it could be done through propaganda, deceit and force. In other words, tyranny.
Or, end the hypocrisy and lead by example. Everything else is hand waving and rhetoric or worse.
You've proven yourself incapable of identifying hypocrisy, in part because of your strange denial of the existence of collective action problems, but you're also flattering yourself if you think hypocrisy is anything other than a universal human trait.
This is all silly. If you're in a debate, debate the issues, don't attack the character of your opponent. If you're a citizen evaluating or advocating for or against a policy position, debate the pros and cons of the policy. What you are so fixated on is a weird non-issue.
Hypocrisy is a character issue and I think I have hypocrisy's definition correct. If you are honest/moral/ethical, can you be a hypocrite? I don't think so, hypocrisy at it's core is dishonest. Therefore if you practice hypocrisy, you are a liar. Seems like a logical conclusion.
It's not. It's game theory; it's simple mathematics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
The effect of any one person being "non-hypocritical" is minuscule. Effects will only significant en masse, and defectors must be punished, because it's profitable to defect. That means some mechanism to keep people in line must be used - and in our world that normally means the state. So agitation for political change is the correct approach.
Moral systems are another way of enforcing group will against individuals that would otherwise find it profitable/ to defect. Shaming works more efficiently in locally connected societies, though, and it's hard to scale it up to this kind of global problem.
Did celebrities back then continue to blatantly litter while telling everyone else to stop littering?
That is what they are doing with climate change. Do as I say, not as I do.
This is a myth that is perpetuated by free-market libertarians and is completely disconnected from reality.
First of all, a very large number of people are demanding exactly that and large corporations have no interest in it. Consumers also cannot make the transition or demand a transition unless there are viable alternatives -- which requires research and if the private sector won't fund that research then viable alternatives won't show up. It's much easier, less risky, and cheaper for the private sector to try to kill a new industry (where they aren't entrenched) than it is for them to compete in it.
In addition, a lot of emissions are unrelated to the type of product being provided. Consumers might not have a green option (and thus cannot "vote with their wallet"), and even if they have a green option they might not care enough. According to the EPA[1] more than 75% of emissions are caused by transportation, industrial processes, and energy production. Reducing industrial emissions created during the manufacturing process of goods would have a much more significant impact than consumers changing what brand of soap they use.
We have laws to protect people from vendors selling tainted or poisoned food. By the logic of a free-market libertarian we should allow the sale of such food because consumers would choose not to purchase it and "market effects" would kill the business. But we all know that the reason those regulations were introduced is because before they were introduced people were dying because of unsafe food being sold.
> Nobody is willing to make the lifestyle changes it would take to have a real impact on climate change. Blaming corporations instead of the people for all that is asinine.
That's bullshit. See [1], individual consumers are one of the smallest contributors to climate change. The main contributors are industry. If emissions were taxed and there were tax breaks for operating in a green manner (such as the carbon tax which was repealed by our coal-loving Liberal government) then companies would have a financial incentive to do research into less polluting processes.
> And what are our best and brightest from Stanford, etc., doing? Figuring out carbon recapture?
Governments (in Australia at least) are cutting funding for climate change (at the behest of their political donors that, as above, have a vested interest against climate-change research). The intended effect of this is that there ends up being so much brain-drain away from public-sector research into climate change. Which is exactly what's happening. I agree that this is a very bad thing, but it makes no sense to blame PhD students (people with no money and no power) that couldn't get grants because the government is actively working against the public.
[1]: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
There are already viable alternatives. Buy less stuff, travel less, turn down your heating/AC, eat less meat and dairy. When people say "viable alternatives", they really mean "free lunch" - they want to maintain exactly the same lifestyle as they do now, just without the carbon emissions. That's completely untenable, no matter what technologies emerge over the next few decades. Even with the most optimistic forecasts of the pace of technological development, we'll have to make some radical changes to our lifestyle to prevent a climate disaster.
That's bullshit. See [1], individual consumers are one of the smallest contributors to climate change. The main contributors are industry.
Without consumers, there is no industry. Airline companies don't burn kerosene for the hell of it, they burn it because people keep buying plane tickets and keep shipping things by air freight. If we stop buying plane tickets and air freighted goods, they go out of business and so they stop burning kerosene.
The blame game over climate change is just blatant buck-passing. It's not my fault, it's the big corporations. It's not my fault, it's the government. It's not my fault, it's the people who vote for the other party. As long as there's someone else to point the finger at, you're absolved of responsibility. How many tons of carbon emissions does your lifestyle cause? What can you do right now to reduce that number? We'll only see meaningful change if a lot more people start asking those questions and acting upon the answers rather than waiting for someone else to act.
I'm going to repeat this again -- the vast majority of emissions are from industrial processes. Optimising the industrial processes to reduce emissions (as opposed to reduce costs) will result in emissions improvements.
Yes, in theory if the entire planet reduced its meat intake by 50% this would be a massive improvement -- but so would killing 50% of people. If your proposed solution to the problem is not viable from the outset you aren't proposing a solution, you're just deflecting blame.
Also -- contrary to popular belief, personal transport like cars (or commercial planes) are far from the largest emitters.
> Airline companies don't burn kerosene for the hell of it, they burn it because people keep buying plane tickets and keep shipping things by air freight. If we stop buying plane tickets and air freighted goods, they go out of business and so they stop burning kerosene.
Planes are actually more fuel-efficient than cars per-head. And planes are far from the largest polluters in "transportation" -- that would be trucks (especially older trucks that are under-maintained).
> The blame game over climate change is just blatant buck-passing.
You are buck-passing by arguing that it's the sole responsibility of the public to solve this crisis. Not corporations which knew about the effects of climate-change in the 60s and tried to hide it from the public and government. Not governments which are placating their donors by passing (or abolishing) milk-toast regulations to fix the problem.
I do my best to reduce my carbon emissions but that is not going to make any palpable difference.
If we wanted to go to war, then it would be the government's responsibility to organise the war effort. But if we want to stop humanity from going into war due to resource shortage all of a sudden it's about "personal responsibility".
If big oil companies had just pumped oil and responded to the market then I might agree with you. But that’s not at all what happened.
It is the purpose of advertising and propaganda to tell people how to want. It's misleading at best to say "people want new cars" without considering the decades of advertising selling the dream of new cars as a form of success and high social status, as an aspirational desire, as a reward for hard work, as a kind of personal freedom and ability to go anywhere on your terms, and then sell that as desirable, etc. There's a reason Hollywood SciFi films have Audi cars as product placement, and it isn't because "people want to see a future with up-market German cars" and Hollywood is responding to that demand.
Propaganda is extremely effective.
> Nobody is willing to make the lifestyle changes it would take to have a real impact on climate change. And it’s not unique to the US. Canada and Australia have similar carbon footprints per capita, suggesting it’s more a combination of material wealth and low density. Blaming corporations instead of the people for all that is asinine.
People move where it is cheap to live comfortably. Every level of US government subsidizes the shit out of suburbs and car commuting. If the true costs of people’s lifestyle were factored into the price, behavior would change in a hurry.
Individual consumers don’t have the information or analysis time necessary to factor in systemic effects of every choice.
> And what are our best and brightest from Stanford, etc., doing? Figuring out carbon recapture?
Some of them are. But doing research takes funding. If we want the smartest to take careers as researchers instead of looking to sell out and retire young, we should (a) tax/regulate the financial industry down to near break-even and enforce laws against fraud and other financial crimes, (b) tax capital gains as income, add additional income tax brackets for those making millions per year, tax large inheritances into the ground, consider adding a wealth tax, and crack down on tax evasion, (c) enact sweeping campaign finance reform, (d) pump more public money into basic research, (e) stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and shift those subsidies toward renewable energy, (f) while we are at it, clean up the broken health insurance system.
Well yeah. That's true for a lot of the world; California is the leading exporter - and sometimes the only significant exporter - of a rather absurd number of varieties of fruits and vegetables. California's Central Valley has the right intersection of climate (plenty of sunshine, and snow is rare to the point of statistical irrelevance), good soil, adequate water (occasional droughts notwithstanding), and size (enough room for a lot of farmland) to be an agricultural powerhouse.
Why have we ended up here? Do you think it’s because the general population demanded cheap crap?
It’s the other way around.
Cheap crap is more profitable, hence a lot of its manufacturing have been off-shored decades ago to those willing to do it cheaper.
This cheap often unneeded crap is marketed as a dream and sold to an irrational population incapable of escaping evolution.
I keep saying this “collection” of what we call money is like a hoarding disorder.
Why keep collecting when I have enough that it cannot spent during several lifetimes?
Add to that, all science point to it destroying this very earth.
Looks like no one is escaping evolution.
Humans can't stop global warming. Then what can we do? What should we do?
A true tragedy of the commons.
Please, try to at least be honest enough to openly admit you don't care about climate change out of convenience for yourself.
yes, it's true, I can't see myself going back to a pre-industrial quality of life for the sake of climate change, and be honest, neither can you. The resources used to produce the computer you typed your comment on probably equates to 50 years of resource consumption of someone from 1500AD. Not to mention your phone, car, earphones, public transport, roads, electricity, air conditioning, heating, Netflix, Youtube, datacenters, air travel, grocery shopping, insane supply chain that made your $50 Levis possible etc. etc.
Add in billions of people who are aspiring to your level of affluence + billions more who will be born who will fight tooth and nail to experience the luxury of Netlix and chill and you see we are fucked. There is no way out of this and no amount of tree hugging will make things better. Joe average wants his SUV, cheap jeans and Happy Meal. Fuck you if you get in his way.
It's a whirlpool of catastrophe and you can't get out of it even if you tried.
Technology will save us or the species is finished.
>political action is possible
Your "Save the Whales" badge is part of the problem (literally, plastic + metal pin produced in a third world country). Your political banners and TV adverts are part of the problem. All by products of fossil fuels.
For all the people down voting, I suggest considering this voice as a weapon in the fight against climate change. It might be salty but there's virtue in it.
hahahahahaha ooooh boy, that is some grade A wishful thinking.
Here's a thought... try to convince the average Joe to not turn on his air conditioning on a hot day "for the environment".
see how that goes.
We are a selfish species that deserves to go extinct. Have you ever considered that?
If "we" are not a selfish species, say 99% are really good, and would shut off the AC, say no to meat, wish to ban plastics etc...
The 1%, can and would destroy and burn the planet. Remember, BP oil spill in the Gulf? Thats just one. On a global scale, the few hundreds of millions, and of those dozens, are burning the planet, despite the billions who do not.
The destructive capacity of the few far outwidth the constructive capacity of the many.
The problem is not the air condition or the electricity needed to run the air conditioner.
The problem is the electricity was generated by burning a fossil fuel and that causes massive amounts of CO2 pollution.
So the solution is quite simple.
Just tax, and tax hard any electricity producer that is creating CO2 pollution.
What will happen is for a short time Joe's electricity bill will go up and he will put his air con on low.
But in the longer term market forces will quickly find ways to make electricity without producing CO2 just so that they can sell cheaper electricity to Joe and have him once again cranking up his air con to full.
Right now there is no real cost to creating CO2 pollution so of course there is no incentive to stop producing CO2.
Totally agree. The Earth will handle that.
It seems we need to do everything we can individually, we need governments to step forward, AND we need companies/academics to innovate numerous times.
I hope so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation#Effects_o...
I hope that technology will save us, but if not then we are finished.
If tech can't save us from ourselves then the only sane thing left to do is to wring every last bit of enjoyment from our fossil dependent lives before it all disappears forever. Eat a burger, drive a Cadillac, leave your lights on, enjoy your imported beer and set off your imported fireworks because expecting Johhny average to put off his iPhone upgrade is down right delusional.
We're all going to hell together, yee haw.
individual actions ALONE will not fix the problem, but they might be necessary to encourage broader societal change. Apparently it only takes 3.5% of the population to take an active stance on something to cause a change (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=YJSehRlU34w). Don't feel discouraged to adjust your lifestyle just because the effect is "negligible".
If there are ever enough bleeding heart, average, first world, wealthy (by global standards), vegan converts who will "encourage broader societal change" then I will eat my hat.
I'll eat a whole shop full of hats.
A billion dirt poor Bangladeshis would kill you and your whole family for the luxury of having a hotdog and a flip phone. They don't give a shit about you and your vegan burger, or that you switched you whole house to LED lights because they're 82% more efficient.
That's why we're fucked.
To curtail global climate change you would first need to forgo all modern luxuries and then wipe all third world countries from the map.
good luck with that.
p.s. this kind of charts give me hope https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-03/impossibl... It might be too little too late, but at least we can say we tried.
This is self-flagellation and sorry, but it does nothing and has no impact on the bigger picture.
You don't need to suffer to change your lifestyle. I reduced meat consumption by 50-75% and do not miss it. If I feel like eating meat I do - and I attribute the success of it to the fact that it was not a complete change like becoming a vegetarian. You can fail at being a vegetarian. I can't have a I gave in and not I don't even have to try anymore and go back to my old lifestyle-moment. I might not have consumed as little meat as I initially wanted but as much as possible without suffering from it.
No, it's quite the opposite. Flying is a terrible experience anyway, traffic jams are awful, working less is the best thing in the world, less meet is good for you.
It's like saying exercise is self-flagellation. It's not.
But again, you sound just like me a couple of years ago. We might have more in common than you imagine.
You're doing just enough to soothe your conscience without actually depriving yourself.
The problem is, that's not nearly enough to make any difference. Not even close.
To actually make a difference you and every single first-world citizen would need to forgo
- all imported goods
- all electronics
- all plastics
- all red meat
- all heating and cooling
- all private transportation
- ration electricity
- most industrial goods
- ration food (a lot of GHG are produced by agriculture)
And third world countries would need to all agree to stop economic progress and revert to pre-industrial conditions.
We will all drown in rising flood waters before any of that will ever happen.
It's a technological solution or bust.
The only other "solution" is that climate change will reduce human population back to a few hundred thousand and we start all over again.
(To be clear: I don't think that the worst results of climate change ("reduce human population back to a few hundred thousand and we start all over again") are assured, even if we're currently not even close to doing enough; but I think the odds are plenty high, and thus, plenty alarming.)
As someone who has been long dancing with the despair you're dancing with right now, allow me to gently suggest something to you.
> feel-good eco activism
> You're doing just enough to soothe your conscience without actually depriving yourself.
Let's assume that these are accurate. Then, let's assume for a moment that a person who comes to sufficiently understand the size and magnitude of the problems we're facing can go one of three ways.
1. The person has the fortitude and wherewithal to make the necessary changes, and does embrace a completely different, radical personal way of life. A small percentage of people do this.
2. The person embraces the realities, sufficient to motivate them to various changes in action and perspective, but still all together insufficient compared to the total scope of the problem.
3. Fall into despair.
This is a simplification, of course. It's quite possible for a person to items 1 or 2 and also 3.
My point: our greatest enemy here is despair.
It's better to go part of the way, #2 above, and avoid despair than it is to do nothing. It's far better to do #2 above than it is to fall into despair.
I urge you to give all people, yourself included, permission to push through various stages of acceptance and action.
Operations like Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Breakthrough Energy Ventures are doing far more to realistically put a stop to climate change than anyone else is at this point.
I'd like to encourage you to take a look and see what you can find about career opportunities in the clean energy sector. You may be surprised at how many software and tech jobs there are (it's a fast growing space).
On the climate related side, the graph of CO2 levels for the last 10,000 years is very consistent, around 260ppm, up till recently. We should have just as concerned (or were) when it crossed 300ppm, 400ppm, etc.
On a more political note, while some/most climate change deniers at this point are likely ignoring evidence - having graphs with non-zero axis can be called out as a bit misleading which makes the increase relatively larger than it actually is; visually it's at ~230% of it's normal level when it's actually 'only' 157% compared to baseline. Graph manipulation has been used to in the past to spread false information about global warming/climate change so I think it's especially important to make everything above board. It only takes a few people spreading the graph around with the axis cropped out and then everyone will cry 'fake news'.
I don't really understand the level of credulity here on associations between CO2 and mental impairment.
And yet it says, "The report details the economic damage expected should governments fail to enact policies to reduce emissions. The United States, it said, could lose roughly 1.2 percent of gross domestic product for every 1.8 degrees of warming."
So an extreme rise in temperature of 3.6 degrees could reduce US GDP by 2.4%? That's about 18 months of average growth. That doesn't seem like a crisis to me - what am I missing?
I find the tone of these articles very counterproductive. The article hyperventilates over the number, but fails to treat it as a scientific result - one that's open to question by anyone.
Case in point: like most articles on this topic this one totally ignores the fact that the Mauna Loa station lies just 4 miles from an active volcano. Active volcanos spew CO2 into the atmosphere naturally.
Given these simple facts, how can this observatory's data be trusted? That's an obvious question every single person reading the article should have.
Nevertheless, you have to dig for the answer. Here's an explanation:
> ... The observatory is located on the northern slope of the mountain, 4 miles away from and 2,600 feet lower than the summit, which is 13,675 feet above sea level.
> ...
> Most of the time, the observatory experiences “baseline” conditions and measures clean air which has been over the Pacific Ocean for days or weeks. We know this because the CO2 analyzer usually gives a very steady reading which varies by less than 3/10 of a part per million (ppm) from hour to hour. These are the conditions we use to calculate the monthly averages that go into the famous 50-year graph of atmospheric CO2 concentration.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/mauna-loa-...
But even this article is vague about how interference from volcanoes is scrubbed.
The politicization of the issue of human-induced climate change has wrecked our ability to discuss this as the scientific phenomenon that it s. This leads to the very antithesis of science: facts that can never be questioned.
https://skepticalscience.com/co2-measurements-uncertainty.ht...
Again, it's a very obvious question that's simply brushed aside by most sources. I'd be interested in finding just one that talks in any meaningful way about the algorithm used to correct the data from Mauna Loa specifically.
While I laud scientific and writing efforts to be less sensational and more truthful, it seems our primate minds are incapable of rationality on a society-wide scale.
I personally take responsibility to use less energy and combat climate change. But in my experience, critically analyzing the alarmism, doomsday propaganda, science and economics which question the narrative can quickly hit you with personal attacks and awful demonization.
Fossil fuels are the wrong target for a quick win (which we need).
Caveat: I eat meat once a week now.
It's pretty simple - it either happens (along with renewables etc.) or we face the consequences. It either happens willingly or forcefully. And as a matter of fact, veganism/flexitarianism are on the rise, so it is happening. Some people just get it and act.
CO2 is not the only GHG.
EDIT: See https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...
Entomophagy is also an option -- eat grasshoppers. Insect protein is high quality, low fat, and very abundant. It's lower on the food chain than mammalian protein, easily grown, and can be prepared into tasty dishes (more common in Africa and Asia than in the U.S. and Europe).
The reason fossil fuels are so bad is that we are releasing carbon that has been sequestered for thousands and millions of years. We need to stop increasing the max supply in the atmosphere and slow recapture what is there so we can reduce the ppm and start lowering the greenhouse effects we have created.
We knew about climate change for decades. Scientists keep producing report after report after report. Every one grimmer then the preceding. Yet the global GHG emissions just keep going up. Governments and politicians have failed to act. I am tired of waiting for systemic change. I am tired of waiting for technological breakthrough.
While we should keep fighting for systemic change, I begin to believe individual action is paramount and a prerequisite for any broader change to take place. The time for signing petitions is over. It's time to act. There are no low-hanging fruits here. There will be no silver bullet. There will be lots and lots of tweaks across the board.
People don't like being told what to do. I get that. But I am not a politician telling you what to do. I am your peer crying for help. Please do something. Please don't say "most people" wan't sacrifice this or that. I am not talking to most people. I am addressing you, the HN crowd.
So what an honorable member of the HN community can do
- Stop flying to conferences. Go to a local meetup. It's fun. And cheaper. If you really need to get out of town, take a train. Don't think about it as not flying for the rest of your life. Rather, can we declare a moratorium on conferences for like three years? Let's hope by then Prometheus will give us carbon-neutral jet fuel https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19842240
- Shift your investments from fossil to green. If you can't find enough worthy greens, shift it to anything else. Some say it won't impact your returns http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/the-mythical-per... Move your deposits and savings to a more sustainable bank. This might be one of the most underappreciated yet simple and powerful tools https://fairfinanceguide.org
- Work less. Work part time, and part of that part time remotely. Reduce your commute. If your boss won't let you, find a job that will. In the current job market you can negotiate almost anything, and remote work must be the easiest thing to negotiate. http://cepr.net/documents/publications/climate-change-worksh... A firm lets its employees work four days a week while being paid for five. Everyone is happy, lower electricity bills, fewer cars on the road https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/world/asia/four-day-workw...
- I noticed that this one is quite controversial but I'll mention it anyway. Reduce your meat consumption as much as you can. It's fine to not go fully vegan, but make meat a special treat, something you are looking forward to, not an everyday snack. They say these new vega burgers are not too bad. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/30/dining/climat...
Apparently it takes 3.5% of the population to take an active stance to cause a change (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=YJSehRlU34w). I don't know how true it is or if it applies in all circumstances. But I want to believe it's true. That's what makes me tick.
For a lot of older people alive today they will never see the consequences of their actions so the selfish option is to carry on.
I am not saying I am better, but is not anonymous "others" or our "GDP-based system", it is 7 billion people who don't care much.
My friend recently complained that our planned flights this summer (Germany-Scotland) are too expensive at the moment. He wants them for €150 and from an economic perspective he is right because you can have them for this little.
Flying needs to be far more expensive.
You are mentioning an important problem but I firmly believe that cheap flights are not a future-proof, sustainable solution as long as kerosene is the fuel.
Trains on the other hand could be a wonderful approach. Political incentives have stifled train infrastructure in the past. Trains in Germany are already a joke but its insane how this concept is just non-existent in the US due to the reign of cars and flights.
But I guess its more important to spend $600bn on a massively overinflated military or in case of Germany to politically support Big Car.
Western countries are not the major culprit at the moment. EU has decreased their CO2 emissions by 20% during the last 30 years. USA has maintained them. China and India, increased them by 300% and China alone now emits more CO2 than USA, EU and Canada combined.
This is not to say that Western countries can just cross their arms and do nothing, but, they are not the ones that are going to change the picture and all this discourse about global warming has been turned in an anti-West political weapon that never addresses the real issues and never has the courage to point their finger at the countries that are the biggest problem at the moment.
This way, I fear no real change will happen until it's too late.
Disagree. How many products in your house/apartment are 'made in china'?
The West has simply outsourced its pollution.
Better would be all meat altogether, but by far the lowest hanging fruit is to stop beef production and farming.
My current diet, I do not wish to state. However, I was a vegetarian in some phases of my life. If motivated enough, I could be a vegetarian for life. However, it would be a folly if I were to start believing that everyone can make sacrifices of this kind. For some people, giving up on things they like to eat is very hard. For some, giving up on using their car is hard. People can do different things to help and not everyone needs to do every single thing. An extreme approach is not practical and it's next to impossible to "sell" such an idea.
I believe this is a misconception. We didn't decrease our emissions, we outsourced them. A lot of the China pollution is due to exports for western consumption. Just look at the trade "disbalance" between China and USA.
China is developing into a first-world nation with over a billion people. That's a lot of manufacturing and infrastructure development for purely domestic purposes. Building cities, streets, highways, railways, automobiles, that's a huge amount of metal and cement production.
If you want to blame the USA and other China-product-consuming countries for China's emissions, it's more for sending so much money in their direction on goods to fund all this large-scale development.
India is set to explode, and there are already reports of manufacturing migrating there because China is becoming expensive as they get their act together.
When the dust settles I imagine China and India will be the dominant emitters with their massive populations. Every time these countries move their quality of life needle the slightest bit upwards across their population it makes a big impact.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
What's important is the actual reduction in emissions, and the jurisdiction with control over the largest quantity is most capable of reducing the total.
Looking at per-capita numbers and trying to hold everyone in the world to the same standard has never been the way the world works, and if we tried to establish such a system, we'd never make any progress on this issue.
(If we wanted to hold everyone to the same standard, we could divert income from the rich and make them poor, because consumption pretty much increases linearly with income, except at the top decile where consumption increases massively. But attacking the richest isn't gonna save us either, because planet earth doesn't give a crap about the income levels of whoever's putting CO2 into the atmosphere. All that matters is how much of it we put in there.)
Anyone in the West who's trying to shift the blame to China is deluding themselves. We need to fix our politics so we can move with the same determination as China on this specific issue, not the other way around.
Remember civil rights took decades of hard, thankless work before MLK Jr. stepped on the scene. Or labor rights (Saturdays) or women’s suffrage or any major leap forward. Sometimes you have to strike the match a few times before it lights.
A starting point for GND activism is the Sunrise Movement: https://www.sunrisemovement.org/
I agree individual action alone is not enough. But it might be a necessary stepping stone to start transforming the economy.
For example, flying to conferences. It is considered to be normal, and people who would refuse to fly (as a conscientious objector to climate change) would be considered "weird". But it is really just a cultural norm here. We readily accept vegetarians, for example, and we accommodate for that. In a similar way, we could accept that some people object to flying (or it could even be the default).
Exactly, shifting cultural norm is more important than an actual emissions saving from skipping a flight.
Edit: I am not thinking of the direct CO2 emissions caused by breathing. It’s all the habitat destruction done for each of us and by each of us, the pollution in various forms and so on. Can we really compensate for this by becoming more efficient? Can we become so efficient to handle a few more billion people? Where is the limit?
B: Even if everyone cut their birth rate instantly it would be 100 years before there would be much change. (Think about how long people live and the birthrate is never going to actually be zero.)
So even if that was the problem, which it's not, it's not solvable by any method that has to do with reducing the number of humans.
Only a new energy source can solve this, which makes population increase a completely pointless thing to discuss.
- Travel less, particularly long haul and travel more sustainable, share a train, avoid air travel
- Buy less, particularly clothes and consumer electronics that you don't really need. Make things last longer, own less. Boycott manufacturers who make deliberately disposable/single use products.
- Make your home more efficient, that means insulation if you're in a cold place and ventalation, use of shade if you're in a hot place. Replace fossil fuel heating with renewable electric where possible
- Waste less food, eat less meat particularly red, buy things that don't have lots of waste attached (like short shelf lives, lots of packaging), and buy food that hasn't traveled far to get to you
Any more suggestions?
I just can't bring myself to throw out clothes with holes in them and wear them on the weekends because I don't want them to go to waste.
I patch my jeans and my gloves. It might not look very good, but it increases their life by at least 50%. I've also replaced zippers on jackets because they wore out.
When it comes to pants I find the pockets always rip first which is really annoying. I haven't tried to fix them yet but I have been keeping them for when I work out how to put new pockets on.
Better yet, many custom outfits can be specd and ordered online for a modest fee if you are like many who don't seem to fit americian vanity, nor asian sizing.
People need to rank their daily activities and make changes in their daily lives where the impact is biggest.
Most people fly once a year at most.
In the US I'm thinking that daily transportation and daily use of energy in electricity/heating/air con are at the top of the list.
IIRC (from https://www.withouthotair.com/ ) one round trip over Atlantic is around the same carbon emmissions as a daily commute with the car. So things are not that simple.
That's why I also think it needs to be cultural norm. There is small minority of people who air travel a lot. If we could somehow manage to change the norm so they would travel less (for example, stayed much longer in the same place), it would be great.
My point remains: Air travel is not at the top of the list for the majority of people so let's not always mention it as an important action.
It would probably be more productive to tell people to drop all fossil fuels energy at home, and for their car if they can.
Almost nothing is at the top of the list. As I mentioned there are not low hanging fruits. Everything is important. Also, not flying might be exactly something doing on individual level, while "drop all fossil fuels energy at home" requires infrastructure change. Also not-flying is a more publicly visible action which might inspire others to follow.
There are real, important things at the top of the list.
Changing electricity supplier, driving less, buying the most efficient car possible or an electric one (if you can charge it with non-fossil fuel sources), etc. should occupy the headlines more that "air travel is bad (TM)"
I disagree. It is important to realize its impact, so that we can organize the society so that it is not needed. The people who don't travel often still need to hold the minority accountable.
If the airline industry continues growing at current rates by 2050 it will consume the whole CO2 budget if we want to stay below 2°C.
In reality we now need to change everything and pretty quickly.
As I said, people tend to overstate the actual impact of aviation.
There are much higher priority things to do.
(Before some idiots comment 'b-b-but what about China and India?" we can put pressure on them too: carrot and stick with help to invest in green energy and trade sanctions if they continue polluting)
I am completely with your mindset here. However, I think it is rather trivial to explain why we are not in full on panic mode.
Short-term profit and power games are more relevant to sociopathic and psychopathic individuals such as Mitch McConnell, Bolsonaro and tens of thousands of others in leadership positions. Marketing, political campaigns and propaganda smearing do the rest.
In Germany, the conservative party (CDU) as well as the "social" democrats (SPD) are in power and absolutely refuse to phase out coal as quickly as they did nuclear because of a few thousand coal jobs. The target is 2038 - as long as it fits their bill. Neither is willing to do the right thing because short term it might lose them voters.
Yes you heard that right - they will lose voters. Demographics in Germany shows us, that Germany is old and continues to age. Nothing but immigration will stop this.
Young people who care are simply overpowered at the ballot. This can sometimes feel schizophrenic as the vocal voices online are part of the group that votes less...
People will still produce CO2 in various ways. So reduce CO2 footprint per person by, say, 50% while increasing population by 50% will bring us no benefits with regard to CO2.
On the matter of population growth, the data is actually giving me a lot of hope: in most developed countries, the population is stable or even declining. China has a reproduction rate much lower than the equilibrium one of 2, causing a lot of problems on its own, still the population is growing a bit more as the average lifespan keeps increasing. But there is a clear maximum in sight.
The elephant in the room rather is: what if the average Chineese citizen would emit as much carbon and the average American one? Without any population growth, if that happened, it would be game over. So the immediate call to action has to be to reduce carbon emissions. In any country.
I'm only saying that we should think about population growth in addition to other measures. Also, it's not about limiting population growth but actually reducing the number of people living on this planet as quickly as possible. In the long term, I can't see a more effective way to save resources.
> what if the average Chineese citizen would emit as much carbon and the average American one?
Then global carbon dioxide emissions would rise by ~10%. It wouldn't make much of a difference, as serious negative effects from climate change seem to be unavoidable. But this doesn't mean "game over". Mankind is a lot more resilient than you seem to think. That's why there's still a need for long-term thinking (centuries, not decades).
The population is continuing to grow because life expectancy is increasing.
Even if we had a major virus that killed 20% of the population once, we would still rapidly replace them and keep growing if we don’t learn to fit back into a sustainable lifestyle.
> what's required is a collective action
Wound't that collective action include not flying? And what form do you imagine it will take - a government order that forbids flying and makes airlines illegal?
I would say refusing to join your team on a trip to that fancy conference of the year takes some courage. Surely not as much courage as violating segregation laws but still.
They have not failed to act. Rather there is no action they can take. Not a single one of your suggestions, even all together, will make any meaningful difference.
> I am tired of waiting for systemic change. I am tired of waiting for technological breakthrough.
You're going to have to keep waiting because that is the only solution. There's simply is no other solution.
As proof for what I say, think about the ozone hole and freon. There was a problem, but in that case there actually was a solution. And the solution was implemented even though it was hard.
If there was a solution here, i.e. a new energy source, it would be implemented. And no, wind and solar as they exist today are not that solution although they are incremental help, and they are being installed incrementally, which makes sense.
Instead we see that EU countries aren't even hitting the miserable EU target of 2.4% of GDP to be spent on R&D let alone the 3% 2020 target, and other nations fare even worse.
The irony of that is not lost on me, but I suspect it is lost on them.
But honestly, I don't think the environmental movement has that much power to block the research.
I suspect it's just that while people like the idea of scientific and technological progress, they don't like having to pay for it.
To block implementation, not research. Why do you think nuclear power is so expensive?
- No investments
- I work remotely; no commute.
- I hardly ever buy meat.
Yet none of this matters. If everyone in my country followed suit, it still wouldn't amount to more than noise in the statistics. Individual action like this is pretty much futile. You just need to catch a glimpse of what are the largest sources of CO2 (and equivalent) emissions.
This is provably false. The effect of not commuting and avoiding animal products is measurable and very relevant.
Not to dismiss the important of collective action against industrial pollution.
Then I guess I just saved the planet, everyone thank me. I'll leave the proof to you.
But seriously, the article you link to is directly stating rising CO2 levels as one of the causes as CO2 is good for plants.
China and India are poised to manufacture and use millions of EV's and we are about to see a flood of very low price electric vehicles from these countries.
An electric truck maker is opening a plant in Ohio. Fracked natural gas, which is the "cleanest" fossil fuel, is replacing "dirty" coal in electric power plants. Residential solar is booming as prices drop and house batteries become a realistic way to store the power. In Massachusetts, for a few extra dollars a month you can now opt to purchase "green" electricity.
Research into better batteries, better solar panels, and more efficient hybrid vehicles and EV's is proceeding apace.
All of these technologies are bound to reduce greenhouse gas production not just in the developed countries but also in the places where it really counts--the billions of people of China, India, and Africa.
People are composting and gardening at record levels in the U.S. Interest in composting and recycling is now widespread.
If we accept that we have produced too much CO2 and need to scale back on burning stuff and allow the atmosphere and ecosystem to return to a status quo ante then some legislative efforts to institute and continue tax incentives to spur technology seems like the right thing to do.
not really. If you look up emissions charts, they just keep going up.
Specifically, a carbon tax set at The cost of recapture that then goes toward recapture (within the US, audited).
So for example, if this were applied to gasoline, it would just over double the cost but give zero-emissions. This is something engineers like us could easily afford in our personal lives. Worst case scenario, I imagine all things we buy would double in price.
However, as billions (if not trillions) get spent on such a technology it would hopefully get more efficient.
So perhaps a rollout schedule of: 2020 - 1% of recapture cost 2021 - 2% of recapture cost 2022 - 4% of recapture cost 2025 - 10% of recapture cost (and so on)
Basic food items for survival could have their capture cost subsidized by the government, so as not to harm those on the brink of poverty.
The brilliancy of this simple economic solution is that if meat produces way too much carbon, the cost will start to reflect that, and people will gradually move to more efficient foods or have an incentive to find a way to make more carbon-neutral ways to make meat.
This is a clue on why just carbon tax won't do. An extra tax would hit the people who're most economically stressed while the top 10% will continue living their lives as is. Any tax on carbon should be accompanied with a negative tax or UBI for the low income earners. Moreover, since 50% of emissions are done by the top 10% income earners [1], there should ideally be a higher income tax which should direct go into funding R&D of carbon capture systems.
[1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/extreme-carbon-inequality
Doesn't sound like a fair price to pay to me (and a lot of others).
coal (30%)
gas (24%)
oil (33%)
hydro (7%)
nuclear (4%)
other renewables (2%)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...
Never heard of Solar leaving a large chunk of a country uninhabitable for millennia though.
Sure, there's China with its insatiable appetite for energy, but few years back they too shuttered 105 coal plant projects, and this is something that's likely to continue purely because of how the economics are playing out nowadays.
Nuclear power is slow to build safely, and if we had started to build all that power decades ago of the sake of avoiding climate change you are already in the bizzaro timeline where the regime cared about climate change decades ago.
Of course it did. Lots of CO2 emissions were avoided. It helped much more than all wind and solar combined.
Of course regimes didn't care, and their refusal to build new nuclear power plants proves they still don't care.
Also, there’s a lot of fear out there that renewable energy means less jobs, especially across the entire coal mining supply chain. There’s a fear that transitioning to a renewable energy economy means a transition from dumb jobs to smart jobs.
Also, I shouldn’t single out Christianity. I just happen to know it well because it was a big part of my childhood. A lot of other religions also have a general disregard for science.
Not all evangelicals are so adamantly anti-reason, but I'd be very confident in saying most are. Evangelical Christianity in the US is lazy and cruel. The Bible is used to justify their worst impulses, while they ignore all the parts about loving your enemies, etc. It's not a demanding religion. It's easy. Their god doesn't care about charity or peace that take effort and compassion, but only that you are on His team.
It boggles my mind that these people have taken over the definition of Christianity in such an influential country. I imagine my feelings about evangelicals are roughly the same as how mainstream muslims feel about Islamic State.
A school of theological thought that is gaining traction in protestant circles is that "new earth" spoken about in the bible is in fact this earth (fixed). Fixing this earth then has important religious significance.
This is in stark contrast to those extremist sects who wish for nuclear war to bring on the apocalypse.
Regent College (BC, Canada) have a good lecture on the subject:
https://www.reframecourse.com/episodes/episode-6
(The whole series is very good in my opinion)
Thank you for making this outrageous assumption explicit. It drives me crazy when people leave it as an unstated assumption.
I don't know what the calibration mechanism is, nor the specificity.
It's around $100 on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Netatmo-Weather-Station-for-Smartphon...
Am I simplifying things excessively here?
Does anyone know / have experience whether this actually works?
If they do, great. Otherwise, prepare your children for a world where their children may be less intelligent due to higher concentrations of Co2. Water will be expensive. People will wear masks everywhere and only rich people can afford houses with completely pure air.
I truly hope it doesn’t come to this, but my fear is that when pollution gets to a certain point, those in charge will basically say “fuck it” and let things run their course.
If you're stressed about the environment you shouldn't be having children
Every child is also a chance.
It's not just about burning coal or going green, we are also using resources which are not replenishable. Even if all cars become electric and we switch to nuclear power and start eating bugs, we'll keep producing plastic, chemical substances and so on.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/climate/airplane-pollutio...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/sep/09/car...
You may not be trolling but you are being skeptical. Specifically, the way you worded your question ("unbiased observatory") makes it sound like the scientists who put it there did so not for scientific reasons, but for some... agenda?
Personally, since I'm not an expert on environmental sciences, I have no trouble believing the observatory is there for perfectly sound scientific reasons.
> Why Mauna Loa? Early attempts to measure CO2 in the USA and Scandinavia found that the readings varied a lot due to the influence of growing plants and the exhaust from motors. Mauna Loa is ideal because it is so remote from big population centres. Also, on tropical islands at night, the prevailing winds blow from the land out to sea, which effect brings clean, well-mixed Central Pacific air from high in the atmosphere to the observatory. This removes any interference coming from the vegetation lower down on the island.
> But how about gas from the volcano? It is true that volcanoes blow out CO2 from time to time and that this can interfere with the readings. Most of the time, though, the prevailing winds blow the volcanic gasses away from the observatory. But when the winds do sometimes blow from active vents towards the observatory, the influence from the volcano is obvious on the normally consistent records and any dubious readings can be easily spotted and edited out.
let's get ready
I've noticed on most of the climate change posts on HN that they 1. fall off the front page very quickly (due to systemic flagging?) and 2. every single comment that's pro-fighting-climate-change has a "skeptical" reply that hits all the denier FUD talking points. For example, your comment has a reply saying both sides exaggerate, thus muddying the point you're trying to make. Classic whataboutism talking point.
What I don't understand is if HN mods see this going on and can tell if the person is a shill or an actual climate denier. Statistically, replies in these threads should skew heavily towards pro-fighting-climate-change, but even in this post, it seems like every other reply is denier talking points. It is really starting to make me think that HN doesn't care about stopping shills.
And these topics fall off the front page because they get a lot of replies; Hacker News is designed that way. I think it's meant to have a calming effect.
Would you mind having a conversation offline? I'm interested in learning more about your point of view outside of these HN threads. Feel free to email me at the email in my profile.
People on HN are rational and thus see through most of the “pro-fighting-climate-change” posts, which address easy non-solutions.
To keep the temperature increase to 2C, we have to immediately cut CO2 emissions by 19GT. That takes the world back to 1990. And if you don’t want India and China to be mired in extreme poverty like they were in 1990, you really have to take the developed world to zero. Under other models, we have to go to zero carbon emissions tomorrow world wide. You cannot “fight climate change” while buying vegetables shipped across state lines and coffee shipped from overseas. You can’t go on international vacations and post pictures on Facebook. You can’t live in trendy places like Austin that require year-around heating and cooling. You can’t participate in the mass consumer economy at all—25% of your carbon footprint is non-food stuff you buy. (Just the consumer stuff your average American buys amounts to 5-10x the total carbon output of your average Bangladeshi.) You can’t work in advertising—in a zero carbon output economy the consumerism that feeds advertising companies can’t exist.
There is also the major problem of "climate change angles" on things that don't actually help avoid climate change. Take high-speed rail, for example. To offset the carbon realized by building California's HSR, the system would have to have over 10 million riders per year, more than the entire Amtrak northeast corridor: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2011/11/how-green-hig.... (It is ludicrous to expect that a rail link between two enormously car-dependent metro areas, that goes through extremely low-density areas in-between, would somehow have the ridership of the densest corridor in the country, connecting some of the cities with the most well-developed intra-city and commuter rail systems.)
Then there is stuff like LEED construction: https://www.imt.org/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go-the-embodie.... Companies are patting themselves on the back, tearing down old buildings and putting up new, LEED-certified buildings. Except that it will take 25-75 years to offset the upfront carbon footprint of new construction versus reusing existing construction, for longer than current climate-change timelines allow.
Unless you’re espousing these solutions, and present credible ways of achieving them, you’re not “fighting climate change.”
In Seattle, you can sit on a chilly day on the porch of a popular restaurant and overhear people lamenting climate change while they sit under a row of 8 large blasting fracked gas heaters.
People don't want to go out of their way to think and change. It's a difficult PR problem due to human nature.
I'm trying to build advanced nuclear fission reactors to fight climate change but unfortunately burning oil is more popular in the polls.
Not to mention that they're paying other human beings to prepare meals for them. The thinking around environmentalism is really fucked sometimes.
Which may well be true! But then it seems unfair to single out eating in a restaurant - given that the other humans already exist whether you buy the meal or not, it doesn't seem especially bad in the scheme of things you could be paying someone to do.
But speaking of consumption, the best thing most people can do for the environment is to reduce consumption. And the easiest way to know whether you've achieved that is to just spend less money on everything you buy. Buy a used car instead of new. Take a road trip instead of traveling via plane. Make more food yourself. Eat more grains and less leafy greens. Eat more chicken and less beef. Etc.
The logical endpoint of "humans inevitably cause catastrophic destruction" doesn't have to be "kill all humans" though. It could be, "make sure we're worth it". Can we build a society so amazing, so transcendent, that it was worth the destruction of our ancestral ecosystems? If so, then let's get cracking. If not, well then yes, maybe then we really ought to be thinking about suicide.
This is the exact same argument as "well if you advocate for higher taxes, why don't you voluntarily donate more money to the government?" It's a dumb argument in that context and still a dumb argument in this one.
The key part of shared sacrifice is that it's shared.
The next step to realize is that, in the US, our “shared CO2 budget” is zero, possibly negative, in light of continued development in China, India, and Africa. Imagine how much CO2 emissions could be reduced if everyone in the US became vegan tomorrow. Now, realize that Chinese development in last year alone went up by enough to offset the entirety of that hypothetical savings.
Why “should I make my lifestyle worse” when development in India, China, and Africa is going to increase global CO2 output by multiples of the entire output of the US and EU combined?
This is a global problem, and it requires global action to have any hope.
For what it's worth, I think the risk of Chinese and Indian pollution is overstated. At least the Chinese government accepts that climate change is a real threat (unlike the current US administration) and is moving (too slowly, but still) in the right policy direction.
Agree about wealth transfer to developing nations, and honestly I'd also love to see IP transfer. Developing nations have the right to the same life-saving and life-improving technologies the West enjoys, but they also have the opportunity to leap-frog and skip the high-carbon-footprint parts, the way they did with phones (skipping landlines and going straight to cellular). We should at least strongly encourage them to do that leapfrogging - though preferably by subsidizing it instead of threatening war.
The next couple generations are in for a rough, rough ride.
Your point about IP transfer is a good one.
China currently has so many coal plants under construction that their output exceed’s the US coal industry’s entire output. China’s goal is to have 20% EVs in the consumer vehicles market by 2025. That means China will put 100 million new ICE vehicles on the road over the next 5 years, and will continue to put tens of millions of additional ICE vehicles on the road each year after that. China is building whole new cities. Construction releases enormous amounts of CO2. Construction releases so much CO2 that a fancy new LEED building takes decades to pay off its construction footprint with energy savings. From 2000 to 2015, China added over 6 gigatons of CO2 output. That’s more than the entire US. In 2017, China added 120 megatons of CO2 output while the US cut 40 megatons.
Because you are already producing 10x [1] the amount of CO2 that a person in India is.
[1] https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc...
People pretend there's some magic bullet here, but there just isn't. No coordinated action on climate change is possible, no one wants to move on this to the detriment of themselves or their own citizens. The only realistic fix is a technological one, we need cheap, clean power, carbon capture or some combination thereof. Anything short of that and we're still burning this thing to the ground, no matter what any one individual or even collective country does.
Seeing strong environmentalist people choose natural gas kitchens and heating in a region that's 98% carbon-free from hydro, wind, and nuclear is a shame. They then also fail to push politicians on pricing the externalities of natural gas because they are personally invested in it being "clean burning" (which it is, but it's still super high carbon).
Collective action begins with personal understanding. If you skip this step, you get lots of large efforts to ban straws and plastic bags or to sue energy service companies while failing to pass carbon legislation. How is it the fossil energy service company's fault that people use fossil fuel all day to commute across town?
1. Fighting climate change isn't all-or-nothing
2. You do not need to not eat in-state-vegetables to be practical about climate change. This is a dishonest conversation tactic when vegetables are the tiniest fraction of a percentage of carbon generation.
3. There's nothing wrong with generating carbon, as long as there is a plan to offset it.
So for points 2/3, a carbon-tax that was high enough to pay companies to recapture carbon (and went exclusively toward recapturing carbon) would totally address that. You could ride your hummer all day long, and you'd be paying for the carbon to be recaptured at the end of the day.
It may well be all-or-nothing if you believe in the tipping point theory. And even if that doesn't happen, there is no scenario where we do a "little bit" and get a decent result.
> 2. You do not need to not eat in-state-vegetables to be practical about climate change. This is a dishonest conversation tactic when vegetables are the tiniest fraction of a percentage of carbon generation.
Shipping vegetables across the country would be a much larger share of CO2 emissions if we were anywhere close to where we need to be on the other stuff. In a world where China added more than 6 gigatons of CO2 emissions since 2000, developed economies must go carbon neutral or carbon negative. (And even that won't keep us to 2C unless we manage to keep India and Africa from following a similar trajectory to China--i.e. ensure that those people remain in desperate poverty.) And in a carbon-neutral economy, there is no room for organic vegetables shipped from California to Maryland.
> recapture carbon (and went exclusively toward recapturing carbon)
That would be great if the technology existed.
1. Climate change is an unsolvable problem, requiring coordination on a massive scale by billions of actors who have been shown to defect whenever given the chance. Any plan we are likely to implement is unlikely to succeed. Humans overall are adaptive, adrobust to change, and when the changes caused by climate change happen, we may suffer a bit, but it will not be immense suffering.
2. Climate change isn't real.
Often when I've tried to argue position 1, which I actually believe, my friends are extremely frustrated and essentially think I'm trying to argue for position 2. Left-leaning folks are too idealistic to understand that position 1 is an entirely internally-consistent position.
My guess is that you're actually arguing for inaction, that you're opposed to regulation, and that you're taking your stand with all the people with position 2. If so... why are you surprised to be forced to defend their wrongheadedness?
Arguing position 1 amounts to taking an interest in and investing in efforts that will allow the world to progress along its current trajectory without CO2-emitting power sources.
"... why are you surprised to be forced to defend their wrongheadedness?" - I'm not... I just avoid having conversations with folks that would jump to this conclusion without hearing my point of view.
[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/08... [2]http://energy.mit.edu/news/mit-releases-interdisciplinary-st...
We already have one: nuclear.
Saying that we should adapt to climate change, instead of taking actions trying to stop it that are doomed to failure.
Humans have already adapted in the past to bigger changes. We can do it again.
Consider this... if you don't think The West should be fighting a massive trade-war against India/China around climate change, if your solution to a GLOBAL problem is a NATIONAL solution, then you're just spinning wheels. Trump's tariffs are ironically the greenest policy choice he could possibly be making and he's not exactly getting praise for it.
EDIT: Thus, I think the most likely "solution" to climate change is for humans to adapt or die. The most likely scenario in which we adapt best is the one in which our economies and technology grow the fastest, such that massive-scale geo-engineering becomes possible, so I support those economic growth policies instead, because they don't suffer from prisoner's dilemma defection. This happens to look exactly like climate change denial to leftists.
EDIT EDIT: I don’t care about karma but my post will be “dead” soon, along with many other people who dared to share the same position (and the chilling effect on people who choose not to even speak up). So I ask how I can communicate my position more constructively? Maybe my opinion is just wrong, but I’d like to be convinced by someone who is willing to dialogue with a potential ally.
I'm not saying this is morally wrong I'm just saying we should acknowledge it.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19897600 and marked it off-topic.
Its not a tiny fraction!
Compared to what?
If we'll destroy biology completely we still have a small chance a new type of existence can emerge - silicon based intelligent form, what we call AI right now. It probably can survive without oxygen, even without planet. But it's a big MAYBE yet.
We need a major shift in our ways of producing/consuming and on our quest for progress at all cost. We're heading for major issues, even in the short term. Humanity is committing suicide and taking Life with her.
https://reliefweb.int/report/world/climate-migrants-might-re...
https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/el...