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Comment by LinuxBender | Hacker News Reader

I've seen a few sites that suggest much of this is based on our orbit [1]. If that is true, then the oceans may be about to dump ludicrous amounts of Co2. Hopefully we can find a way to turn that into fuel.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=milankovitch+cy...

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Nope. Causal effects of insolation fluctuations on greenhouse gases/global average temperature exist, but they're dwarfed by the causal relationships (in both directions) between global avg. temperature and greenhouse gases: https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2568

P.s. this is the most incredible climate study I know of. This is a topological statistical analysis that doesn't rely on any specific climate model to draw its conclusions about the strengths of causal relationships. So there can be no quibbling about the model being wrong. That simply doesn't matter with this awesome application of dynamical systems theory, it needs no model.

While the relationship between orbit and climate is well documented, I'm unaware of any credible science to suggest that "much of this" (taken to mean the current observed warming) is due to this factor.

Wow. Three non sequiturs in three sentences.

There are sites that suggest any number of things. Unspecified "sites" have little bearing on the actual facts.

I'm not sure that Milankovitch Cycles imply the dumping of CO2.

> Hopefully we can find a way to turn that into fuel.

This is the silliest and most thermodynamically backward thing I've read in a year. CO2 is burnt carbon. It's burnt. Burnt stuff ain't fuel; it's burnt.

He's a critical free thinker, so it's ok.

Co2 into fuel [1]

[1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/07/carbon-engineering-and-harva...

So we are turning the CO2 back into (expensive) fuel, which can be burnt again and the CO2 released? But you're in luck, thanks to global warming the thawing permafrost and the warming oceans will release large quantities of methane (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions), which is an excellent fuel, and a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, so burning it would actually be good for the climate. Good luck with capturing it, however...

Are you familiar with photosynthesis?

Yes but photosynthesis doesn’t generate energy but the opposite: it takes in energy from the sun in order to reverse the reaction

It does generate energy, stored in the form of carbohydrates.

It stores the energy it got from other sources, it doesn't generate it itself.

That's a good point, the solar energy is not created. My point is that CO2 can be removed while creating useful energy (in this case, converting a transient source to a durable one). I thought parent was being overly dramatic, even simplistic, in making CO2 sound like some unusable waste product ("burnt carbon. It's burnt. Burnt stuff ain't fuel; it's burnt.").

> My point is that CO2 can be removed while creating useful energy

You have to pick one. CO2 removal or creating energy. If you remove it, it must remain sequestered. If you create fuel from it, the CO2 will not have been removed.

I'm not against the idea of sourcing fuels from atmospheric CO2. It's a good way to get energy-dense fuel without adding new carbon to the atmosphere (assuming a carbon-free source of energy is used to synthesize the fuel). But that process won't remove CO2; it'll just not add more.

Alge based fuels do exactly this.

The problem isn't technology, the technology for genetically modifying alge or bacteria to consume CO2 and produce oil has been around for quite some time.

The problem is our powerstructures and our economic investments. It takes tremendous energy to move such a massive Goliath of a ship.

Our economy which brought us prosperity simply cannot move quickly enough to prevent our demise. Ironic and perhaps poetic really

Wouldn't orbital changes & things like solar output already be accounted for in any serious climate modeling and history?

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