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Comment by Dumblydorr | Hacker News Reader

Even if we stopped fossil far faster than the most optimistic estimates, sunshade is still a great idea. There is a ridiculous amount of upside to not burying 250 M people in water by 2100.

Further, have you thought about how we get off fossil for steel, concrete, plastics, hell even natural gas power plants? Climate change is the most important issue right now and even so, we are undeniably a fossil society. We need everything we can muster, and sunshade should be part of our tool kit to help the transition.

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> have you thought about how we get off fossil for steel, concrete, plastics, hell even natural gas power plants?

Lots of people are thinking about these questions! Still early research phase, but the chemistry works out.

Steel -https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611961/this-mit-spinout-c...

Concrete - http://news.mit.edu/2019/carbon-dioxide-emissions-free-cemen...

Plastics - no carbon emitted as long as you don't burn your plastics. Could also capture emissions from a plastic incinerator if you really want to burn trash

Natural gas power plants - replace with solar/wind + batteries?

If we had an order of magnitude more electrical power and no greenhouse emissions from it we could do quite a lot. Desalination is a really big one. Chemical batteries won’t get us there, but pumped storage is an interesting avenue. I personally am a fan of fusion. The numbers check out with first gen power plants costing about 50% more per energy unit than fission/fossil.

I've looked for info on why we don't use plastic for carbon sequestration, and haven't found anything significant. It seems like land-filling plastic, or minimal processing (compaction it melting into a more dense block form) might be better than attempting to recycle it all, once sequestration is taken into account.

Also, I suspect we'd be better off right now if we'd been land-filling plastic, instead of shipping it overseas to be burned, shredded, littered, dumped, or even discharged at sea. Even official estimates claim minimal percentages are actually being recycled, before accounting for fraud.

We might have significant reduced levels of micro-plastic in the ocean, and a greater amount of carbon sequestered, instead of the high cost and seemingly minimal benefit we've seen "recycling" plastic.

We need more and better financial incentives (rebates, taxes, etc.)

Right now, I'd say it's the opposite. We need to stop giving financial incentives to recycle plastic. Going into the landfill ought to be the cheapest disposal methods, in most cases.

To sequester carbon, the plastic would have to come from biomass or direct air capture of CO2. Most of it just comes from fossil carbon.

It’s a neat idea and having the idea in itself is not bad. It’s how I expect that idea to be used based on who has decision making power and how they have been using that power.

I’m not saying stop drilling fossil fuels, because we need it for almost every part of our society. I’m saying we should be pushing harder down the path of not using fossil fuels as an energy source. If suddenly it becomes way more economical to burn fossil fuels then we’ll stop pursuing any alternatives. That’s just how it works. I wish it wasn’t.

Do you also oppose administering Gardasil to prevent HPV infections, on the grounds that youngsters will stop pursuing safe/marital sex?

Do you always make false equivalences between one on one social interactions and the driverless vehicle that is modern business practice?

This is evidence of Horseshoe Theory, really. Shouting about the failures of Capitalism during a crisis is essentially what the far-right does about Progressivism. "I told you so" mentality in dupes who bought the theory but never paid any attention to the practice.

Get down off your high horse and pay attention.

The car is not driverless. You are just backseat.

The greatest risk you run with your current attitude is that you contribute to the "it's a crisis but I have higher priorities" thinking. This is what bends the horseshoe, ideology. If we weren't in a crisis, I'd be more sympathetic.

I don’t like being accused of mental gymnastics by a gold medalist.

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