Breaching a “carbon threshold” could lead to mass extinction
news.mit.edu
news.mit.edu
Rothman looked through these geologic records and observed that over the last 540 million years, the ocean’s store of carbon changed abruptly, then recovered, dozens of times in a fashion similar to the abrupt nature of a neuron spike. This “excitation” of the carbon cycle occurred most dramatically near the time of four of the five great mass extinctions in Earth’s history.
I'm not an expert but the term "near" in geological times is not so "near" in life span times, I think the article is not so objective...
However, that we're creating a problem is obvious.
Not everyone is going to like the environmental jihad that is being suggested, and that’s a big problem.
The thing about democracy is that not everyone has to like everything - just the majority.
I don't like that I'm going to have to change my lifestyle, in order to prevent appalling environmental damage, but I understand that I will have to.
The "big problem" is the kind of people who describe pragmatic evidence-based policies designed to avoid collapse of civilisation as "an environmental jihad"
Given the choice between the state taking away coal or mass extinction, I'm choosing the former.
That is a particularly apt analogy for climate change, because as richer countries belch CO2 into a shared resource (the atmosphere), smaller, poorer countries pay the price with the literal destruction of their entire country (see Kiribati).
seems about right
How many war crimes and genocides have been perpetrated in the shadow of these polite collective agreements? In times of relative plenty and peace? How many governments are currently defying this norm? Over the last 100 years, did more humans personally intervene to stop genocide, say "someone should do something", or look the other way?
> I don't see what exactly unnerves you. Is it the realisation that it is indeed easier because you suspected it would be difficult? Is it unnerving because you are not used to thinking of it as a solution?
I'll admit, I'm a little flabbergasted at this. The context of the sub-thread is the concern that it'll take the force of tyranny to move humanity to "make a stand and change habits." I find it more unnerving (than tyranny) that the kinds of organizational units sufficiently motivated by climate-threats to become emissions-tyrants will find it much easier to kill other people than repress their own.
Let alone the fact that around 40% of the current population is sustained by synthetic fertilizers. The Haber-Bosch process represents 1% of the world's energy consumption.
I was thinking with the cheapened cost of space flight in the next couple of decades, couldn't we lift a huge solar reflector sail in between our planet's poles and the sun? Just block 1% of the heat energy or so, would that be possible?
I get laughed at when I say this, but I'd dump billions into DARPA for researching this. Since its DARPA, you can call it defense spending to appease the elephants. I'd charge them with finding a way to "scoop" the CO2 out of the atmosphere. Somehow splitting it into carbon and oxygen. I envision thousands of solar powered flyers destroying CO2 some day.
We are extinguishing the prospect of the only intelligent life we know of in the universe by not caring for the environment, although one could argue that only a small fraction are sufficiently intelligent.
The oligarchs of the world have more than enough money to fix all the climate issues, but since they derive their wealth from exploiting the climate, there is no hope for a fix from them.
Not sure we deserve that.
Got to remember that huge, huge numbers of the population fully expect there to be some sort of Armageddon. That the earth might be on a run-away path to destruction is a good thing to them, as it brings them closer to their rapture.
That's not the problem. The problem is that the meritocrats and the technocrats have failed to grasp the real problem. The real problem is that at the end of the day the dynamics of living systems are determined by Darwinian evolution, and Darwinian evolution has no foresight. It optimizes for solutions that reproduce well (relative to competitors) in the short term. So, for example, genes that build brains that have an instinctive revulsion against things like abortion and birth control will reproduce better than genes that build brains that think it's perfectly OK to choose not to have kids. As a result, the world becomes populated by the former sort of brain, along with all of the ancillary effects that building such brains has, such as having a resistance to certain kinds of objective facts, like the long-term consequences of overpopulation.
The fact of the matter is that there is only one environmental problem here on earth, and that is an overabundance of humans. But saying that is taboo, even here on HN. I try to make this point here on occasion and every single time I do I am downvoted into oblivion, not because I'm wrong, but because the world is full of brains with an instinctive revulsion towards the idea that there are, or even could be, too many of us, because the genes that build that kind of brain reproduce better than the genes that build brains that think it's perfectly OK, even necessary, to have fewer people.
This is a very hard problem to solve. It's not at all clear that it even has a solution. It could even be the answer to Fermi's paradox. I hope not, but it's starting to look like a real possibility.
Not having children at all and intentionally extinguishing humans is also a possibly optimal, albeit more radical, solution.
Empirical proof can be seen in the ever-increasing proportion of large families.
Natural selection is hard at work picking the exact opposite of what anti-natalists want.
No, I'm not. I'm only assuming that in matters of instinctive revulsion, nature puts her thumb heavily on the scales.
> A 2005 twin study examined the attitudes regarding 28 different political issues such as capitalism, unions, X-rated movies, abortion, school prayer, divorce, property taxes, and the draft. [...] Genetic factors accounted for 53% of the variance of an overall score.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientat... - linking to Wikipedia because it has some links)
Still depends in which circles, but I have an impression it's getting better. Might be the bubble effect though, unsure, but before a couple of years I didn't hear it as much and there definitely weren't small local organizations dedicated to saying it and pushing it on the political agenda. On the other hand, it might be a problem which solves itself (higher lifestyle, less children) but I'm not to sure when or if that is really going to happen.
Yes, that's possible. Economic prosperity does reduce birth rates, and that gives me hope. But it's a race between that and the carbon emissions that will happen on our current trajectory towards that prosperity. Right now it looks to me like the carbon is going to win.
The population thing is already on a trajectory toward leveling. The main cause of population growth now isn't birth rate, but rather increased lifespans of those born two or three generations ago. If we convert to a renewable energy base before population levels off, we win.
The thing about politicians that can be bought, is that someone else can buy them, too. If they're not ideologically committed to the cause, if it's just political, then they'll turn on the cause in the name of either ideological goals or simple practicality.
There's a hard limit to how much harm a politician is willing to do to their own country in order to placate special interests with nothing to offer but money.
"Problem" is a human concept. Your logic is circular. To solve the problem we must eliminate humans yet with no humans there is no one to define the state of the system as a "problem".
You're attributing human like judgement to an ecosystem that would theoretically exist post-humans.
If you're saying that some humans deserve to exist yet others do not, then yeah I think people will rightfully react negatively against that.
How does your argument deal with the fact as nations becomes more developed, birthrates plummet? If it were not for immigration, populations would already have started declining in the western world. And even with it included, almost all rich countries are facing an aging population.
Yet despite that, the richest countries produce far more greenhouse gases, not just per capita but often on an absolute scale, than countries with tremendously higher population and fertility. E.g., Canada produces more than 2x more CO2 than Nigeria despite being 5x less populous.
Fewer humans != more pollution. Even in rich countries, a single wealthy businessman with a private plane, or luxury cruise ship, pollutes far more than an average worker with a petrol-powered car.
I can certainly envisage a scenario where with increased automation and lack of environmental consciousness, you could somehow reduce the population of Earth tenfold, yet keep on polluting the same. Why bother with efficient engines when petrol is cheap? Would you rather have a million people each with an automated personal helicopter, a pleasure barge and a gas-guzzling SUV, or ten million people using public transport and bicycles?
That's not going into the details how you would go about reducing the human population. You even made the argument yourself, those who refuse to go along with the anti-nativity plan would eventually outbreed those who do. So unless you want to carry out global campaigns of forced mass sterilization, the best solution is still focusing on making our current technology more environmentally friendly.
The truth is that overpopulation is a huge issue, but it is politically incorrect to bring this up. Given that our economy is really a Ponzi scheme, nobody wants to touch this topic. Everybody talks about declining fertility rates like a huge catastrophe, when in fact, that's some really good news.
I think not. While the number of humans certainly contributes to the total amount of pollution, it is not, in my opinion, the "only environmental problem".
I did not say it is the only environmental problem, but I am saying it is among the big ones. It is completely illogical to say that it is not. If you agree with the fact that consumption leads to pollution, then you agree with my premise whether you like it or not, it's simply a logical conclusion.
> Do you think that reducing them in India, Nigeria and other developing countries is the most effective and feasible way of combating CO2 emissions?
Again, kind of strawmanning here. I never said it is the most efficient way to tackle it, but we need to realise that if our population keeps going up, the problem will become more and more exacerbated.
It's really not an issue. Negative externalities associated with the environment is a huge issue, and population decline will become a big issue in about 80 years.
Really? As an extreme example, are you saying that if our planet only had only 1 million people, we'd have the exact same problem? This holds for 1 billion or 3 billion instead of the almost 8 billion we're going to get to soon.
Population decline will become an issue _economically_. Environmentally, it's great.
Our planet could in principle support hundreds of billions as long as you're not married to the idea of preserving biodiversity.
If we actually talk about the real world, without unrealistic hypotheticals, and without circular arguments, then you can't possibly be right. Every extra human born pollutes and has an environmental impact. We are very far away from bringing that to zero and, unless we do, population growth is an environmental problem.
Not exactly. I'm saying that problems are always caused when negative externalities are not accounted for, therefore the problem of not accounting for negative externalities is literally to account for negative externalities.
The population size is a complete red herring to this basic fact. The fact that a low population entails that we can ignore certain externalities is completely uninteresting.
> Every extra human born pollutes and has an environmental impact. We are very far away from bringing that to zero and, unless we do, population growth is an environmental problem.
It will never be zero. So what? Population growth for affluent nations is already negative. Growth rate falls as a nation enjoys better health care and more opportunities, which is why global population will start falling in about 80 years. Population growth clearly has a form of autoregulation.
What's not autoregulating are negative externalities of common goods, by definition. That's why population growth is not a problem and negative externalities are.
I would say reducing per-capita CO2 emissions is probably one of the easier problems to solve, especially considering the already huge differences between developed countries. But that alone is not going to save the planet, not by a long shot.
There was an HN article recently that this (unfortunately) may be relatively short lived. Birthrates plummet particularly as women have better education and better access to contraception. However, as birthrates plummet, that also means there is new selective pressure that favors the genetics of people who want to have large families or are in some other way averse to birth control. That selective pressure didn't exist until the past 50 years or so.
Because it is wrong, or rather: Only correct if you say humans cannot change. The core problem is resource usage. Now, fewer people use fewer resources. So far, you are correct. But what also uses fewer resources is a different lifestyle. People in the west, and especially in the USA, use far more resources in their life than people living in other parts of the world. So, we only have an "overabundance of humans" if we don't change that. And that is more a matter of society than evolution.
No, it isn't. The core problem is exponential growth. The population today is double what it was just 50 years ago, so you could cut resource usage in half and all that would accomplish is taking us back to the problem as it stood in 1970 or so.
It's true that this is a social issue, but even there the problem is very difficult. The entire world economy is built on the premise of eternal exponential growth in something with economic value. That is fundamentally unsustainable. At some point we will have to transition to at leasy polynomial growth, if not an actual steady-state solution. No one is even talking about that AFAICT.
We could turn the Galaxy green† and still not have enough room. We could fill it with Ringworlds, with Dyson Spheres, and still not have enough room.
The core problem is exponential growth.
† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millennial_Project:_Coloni...
That is far from clear. But whether or not this particular data point is defensible, it misses the larger point. (And you are not alone in this. This missing-of-the-point is my point.)
There are really two separate problems here, a short-term one and a long-term one. And by "short term" I mean like the next 100 years or so.
The short term problem is that our rate of carbon emissions control the third or fourth derivative of the economic impacts of climate change. We could drop our carbon emissions to zero tomorrow and still not avoid many of the negative impacts of climate change because we're still at >400PPM and will be for a very long time no matter what we do in the coming years.
The long term problem is that our entire global economic system is predicated on the assumption of eternal exponential growth in something, and that is not sustainable in the long run under any circumstances. At some point we're going to have to transition to at least polynomial growth, more likely an actual steady-state. AFAICT no one is even thinking about that.
But nitpicking:
> It optimizes for solutions that reproduce well (relative to competitors) in the short term.
That's only true up to a point. Natural selection works on ecosystems too, and ecosystems that are highly unstable and prone to self-destruct (which we might expect is highly correlated with short-term optimization) will eventually be selected out. So, sustainability is literally the only thing that can win in the end, if it can survive the instability of short-term optimizations.
> Natural selection works on ecosystems too
No, it doesn't. Ecosystems don't reproduce. Natural selection works on genes (and memes). See Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene."
One of the key points:
(iii) ecosystem diversity and productivity increases over macroevolutionary time as a whole, and after each major extinction event.
That implies that major extinction events do in fact affect ecosystems profoundly, and the ones that emerge successfully have more productivity and diversity.
Not even your cherry-picked quote supports your claim. "Ecosystem diversity and productivity increases" is not even remotely the same thing as "ecosystems reproduce."
All exponential growth curves in the real world are S-shaped, they always level-off. An intelligent species can choose when and how this leveling-off occurs for themselves, but not whether. I think that since we have not yet made this choice, we are not yet considered intelligent by the citizens of the galaxy, and so the Fermi Paradox: we are in quarantine.
- - - -
Unrelated, there is a school of applied ecology called Permaculture. Toby Hemenway (RIP) has a talk he gave about how we might transition to a steady-state civilization. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6b7zJ-hx_c I haven't watched this one yet, but it's 'the sequel to Toby's popular talk, "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and The Planet, but not Civilization."', which I have watched and found very inspiring.
Eugenics for the win...
(When you get down to it, almost everyone is a meritocrat, and almost everyone has a self-serving definition of “merit”.)
That breaks down when you have inherited wealth.
There's a reason I said “...at least, that's what the proponents of capitalism have always said.” I'm not actually endorsing the viewpoint as correct.
Well, if you want to implement that, you'd have to abandon democracy and follow the Chinese model of a one-party state. You cannot force people to vote for scientists, rather than demagogues. Technocrats would have to be appointed rather than elected.
I firmly believe the last human will eat the last cockroach.
Also, ocean warming can trigger anoxic events which release hydrogen sulfide which can suffocate entire coastlines and also attack the ozone layer affecting life everywhere. The worst case feedback loops are nightmarish.
And it would also be nice to avoid the not-even-worst case where civilization is reduced to some isolated enclaves clinging on with their bare lives.
No they don’t. Money isn’t something you can turn into zero carbon infrastructure at the snap of a finger.
We have a very large global population and carbon keeps it alive, and materially satisfied. Shut it off too fast, and people get dead and grumpy. Shut it off too slow, and our civilization collapses.
We’re all part of the system, and the system is the problem. I think the best thing oligarchs could do is buy politicians to change the system to incentivize replacing carbon in a way that doesn’t make people dead or grumpy. Grumpy people vote out politicians with long term views for those who offer short term solutions.
Mostly oligarchs invest their money in companies. So, they own shares. They could sell the shares to someone, and then they have money.
So, suppose you had a net worth of $10 billion in shares. You now have the same in liquid wealth.
How do you stop climate change? You seem to think it is easy to do with money, pieces of paper and ones and zeros in a bank account.
What do they buy, off the shelf, that solves the problem, easy as that?
You could perhaps buy rights in an oil field and then refuse to mine it. That would help.
You could fund research into solar cells or invest into the market. Though investing money isn't what makes a venture successful: customers actually have to buy the resulting product.
So how do you use your $10 billion to make people stop buying carbon? You seem to think it would be very, very easy. So tell us what practical step they could take, on their own without popular support. Simply by being an oligarch.
Ten billion isn't that much money compared to the problem, but you can do some smart things with it.
I just wanted to show OP that the scale of the problem isn't something oligarchs can "easily" solve.
And let me assure you they have lobbyists.
Meanwhile, you have $10 billion to spend, once. It isn't an annual flow of money.
More renewable investment is helpful! But I fail to see how oligarchs could solve the problem as simply as you suggest simply by investing in renewables and lobbying.
What extremes would todays generation consider to fix the problem?
I'm curious to see how your sample size for that statement is anything other than 0.
>The oligarchs of the world have more than enough money to fix all the climate issues, but since they derive their wealth from exploiting the climate, there is no hope for a fix from them.
There's a huge disconnect here. The wealthy of the world do not have massive piles of cash sitting around with which they can use to change all of society to value the environment. The majority of their wealth is in assets...companies, properties, relationships etc. The value exists in those assets because of a huge underlying social structure that supports that value. You allude to it when you say "since they derive their wealth from X." That wealth is mobilized only through structures that permeate and are supported by most of human society.
It's easy to point our fingers at wealthy people and blame them for not fixing the world, but the reality is that they are merely figureheads for the global trends of our collective decisions. You want the top of a pyramid to touch another point in the sky, because it is clearly the tallest and has reach, but you want it to do so without moving the entire supporting pyramid base. It's not going to happen. The change has to be grass roots, only then will the wealth of the world represent different collective decisions.
The only alternative to grass roots change is authoritarianism...by forcing society to change through state sponsored violence. But at least here in America, you will find that that will not work out so well for you.
[Edit]Other key insights from J.Poole's study addressing climate change thru food[1]
>Eating vegetable products - even the highest emitting products, will still have a better impact on the environment than selecting only low emitting meat products
>Food responsible for 31% of global GHG
>High impact beef producing 5000% more emissions than low impact beef
>Agriculture sits at heart of all environmental problems
>Population size highly correlated with global c02
1. https://www.drcarney.com/blog/health-issues/diet-linked-to-h...
2. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b0b53649-5e93-4415-bf07-6b...
Let's not use this as a grandstand for pushing political agendas. There are much larger contributors that can be addressed. It just dilutes the entire climate change message by pushing a vegan agenda.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
The energy, of course, has to come from somewhere. Typically it comes from coal or gasoline.
Animals are fed from crops, which sequester carbon from the air. Carbon atoms make up about 15-20% of most animal's mass. A 1000 lb cow would have sequestered 200 lbs of carbon out of the atmosphere. Some of which will be re released when eaten, but not it's not as simple as just saying "look how much energy goes into feeding a cow". Because most of that energy comes from crops - cows don't eat gasoline.
> butcher and transport the meat/dairy in refrigerated vehicles, store/prepare/cook the meat, etc.
All of which had to be done for plant products as well.
In reality is that going vegan isn't going to have a significant impact on the environment. About 10% of the US's carbon emissions are from any kind of agriculture, and animal products are a fraction of that 10%.
Most animals are fed from industrially grown crops. Those crops require tons of oil to grow and contribute to deforestation.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/05/vast-ani...
But another popular food source for animals is beet pulp pellets. Now these are pure waste by products of sugar production. So even if you don't feed animals it's not going to reduce the impact of this.
1.https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/Land-use-graphics...
2. Https://aerofarms.com
You omitted the fact that livestock is often raised in land unsuitable for cultivation. Not all pasture can be converted to farms. Most pasture is in grasslands. Closing these pastures would not free up land for reforestation. Taking up habitable land is also not surprising. Everyone needs to eat, so it makes sense to put farms close to population centers. Doing otherwise would result in higher transportation costs (and more carbon emissions). Living space also isn't a constraint in most developed countries. Their populations are shrinking and urbanizing. Why are you so intent on finding problems for veganism or vegetarianism to solve?
Vertical farming is promising, but it requires energy. It's tough to compete against traditional farming where energy is free from the sun. Using solar power is obviously not efficient - crops outdoors are already solar powered. Maybe feasible with more nuclear power, but that's not popular these days.
I personally don't advocate for completely eliminating meat from our diets, but it's pretty naive to outright deny the environmental impact (including greenhouse gas emission) of meat production.
[1] Tons of original research here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...
Perhaps, but not the article you linked to. Your link doesn't deviate from the 3% of total GHG emissions figure. Actually it provides the lower figure of 2.6%. The Wikipedia article claims this figure is criticized, but doesn't provide any alternative ones.
Moreover, greenhouse gas emissions aren't end all be all. Animal agriculture fucks up the environment. It's a source of drug-resistant diseases.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/04/animal...
Unless you have certain medical issue, the cost of not eating meat is just a minor inconvenience.
>much of the world disagrees
Much of the world didn't ever try it.
being vegan is cool, and i support anyone who does it, but calling it the "single best thing" is not honest IMO.
On a basic level, that starts with voting for people who have the competence and political cachet to implement such policies.
The biggest danger of the climate change is that some nation or company gets a bright idea how to fix it and then seriously fucks the climate up. If you think few degrees too warm is bad, consider how bad having a mile thick ice cap all over Europe and North America would be if we manage to swing the system the other way.
http://www.innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/oli...
Weathering is exactly how the earth brought itself back into equilibrium over millions of years after the mass extinction events. We just have to advance that process dramatically, and specifically target beaches and critical places in the ocean where ocean acidification would devastate ecosystems.
Edit: Also this is an affordable plan. It costs about $12 per metric ton of carbon removed compared to other carbon sequestration technologies which usually cost $100+/ton.
If we want to offset a huge chunk of human emissions we still need billionaire or government backing.
Same folks as Vesta, I think: https://climitigation.org/olivine-can-reverse-climate-change...
Some general information: https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/07/olivine-weathering-...
Another research group, I think: https://olivoa.eu/
To change opinion on climate you’re talking 30-705 swings. Even those who believe in it don’t take it that seriously for the most part. Support for a meaningful level of carbon taxation is quite low.
I think it’s beyond the level of billionaires to sway. They could buy politicians, who are easier to influence. But politicians can’t move far ahead of the people.
Yes, I’m aware the petroleum industry and Fox News have a very effective disinformation campaign. But that’s moving in a short term direction people are already inclined to support.
Look at Japan and Germany, two countries largely uninfluenced by American media propaganda and renowned for sensible planning: they’re both tearing down nuclear plants and increasing their carbon emissions.
The world population at large doesn’t take climate change seriously, and it’s damned hard to swing public opinion as much as we would need.
This may be outdated. The article also mentioned some 80% of the japanese population is opposed to nuclear.
There are obviously valid concerns, but....my point is the public fears one and takes little heed of CO2.
Maybe there is selection bias, where only borderline (at least) psychopaths seeking individual profit and power become billionaires.
Also, I think the steel-man of the conservative position isn't that AGW doesn't exist (it clearly does), but that economic damage from over-reaction is actually a bigger threat and cost than adaptation will be. They just focus on fuzzing over the science since that is much easier to sell than what they really believe, which I think is actually more like "We just don't care much about animals, and what we're doing is about comparable to effect to what our species did when we invented the automobile and air travel and paved the earth. This is progress, deal with it."
Edit: Bring on the downvotes, but it won't change the science.