I'm the kind of person that annoys all the Germans by driving 95km/h on highways because it cuts fuel emissions nearly in half compared to the recommended speed of 130km/h. We don't even pay for fuel, that's paid by my SO's employer, it's purely because it adds like 10% of time on most trips (those 2-3 minutes are negligible) and allows me to visit family without feeling as bad about individual transport (public transport isn't really an option here for trips further than the next city over, extremely poor connections even by German standards). Or wear extra clothing and put a blanket over my legs while working and see how low we can put the heater. Or not heat the bedroom at all during fall/spring and take a hot water bottle up to get warm under the blanket (must be way more efficient than heating the whole room up). In short, yep I'm with you on not gambling on these estimates. But I'm also for nuance and being realistic lest someone claims that "ökos" / climate weirdos hugely exaggerated again and it's all not so bad. I find it tricky.
I tried to do the same thing. Yes, individual actions have CO2e costs. It's not you, nor me, nor all of HN together that even can do anything impactful. Setting an example at best. (But then simply presenting a united coherent "yes carbon tax, yes ASAP, yes 125 USD/t" to everybody we discuss this with would probably help more.)
That said, irrational alarmism is its own kind of hell.
That said, I was actually just writing about the topic of planting trees :)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25680156
> For what it's worth, if you have unavoidable emissions today that you want to compensate, and want to also fund the people working on CO2 capturing technology, see https://climeworks.shop for a pay-what-you-want option. I don't really believe in planting trees (which is way cheaper per ton of CO2 it claims to absolve you of), and these machines apparently emit "only" 10kg for every 100kg of CO2 captured (90% effective sounds reasonable), and it's accounted for who claimed which share of the machine's captured volume so it sounds directly effective to me. It's just that the scale is peanuts and will remain so until public bodies and companies start to run out of emission reduction options and decide to use it - but at that point we better have this tech geared up.
I do need to sleep still tonight (0230 here) so I won't now type out (on mobile) the reasons I don't think trees are a reliable option. And by tomorrow it won't matter anymore, nobody will read it (I don't like the ephemerality of HN/reddit threads.) So these are my 2ct, hope I could clarify my reasoning as I will go sleep now.
Currently I prefer reforestation (or even better yet restoration of swamplands), because it's partly EU funded, so there's a small multiplier effect, and there's still a lot of land for "low hanging" forests, which help with local climate patterns a bit.
I'm aware of what >>we<< need to do, and I'm already working on the better heating/insulation part. But individual action is nothing compared to advocacy in terms of impact.
EU reforestation, google autocompleted it halfway to eu funding for reforestation :o
"During the current 2014-2020 funding period the programme will contribute approximately €3.4 billion more.
The LIFE programme is divided into two sub-programmes, one for environment (representing 75% of the overall financial envelope) and one for climate action (representing 25% of the envelope)."
https://lifereforest.com/life-programme/
"Some EUR 8.2 billion has been earmarked for the 2015-2020 period (27% for reforestation, 18% to make forests more resilient and 18% for damage prevention)."
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/105/the-e...
One is painful in the lifestyle, one in the wallet, and both are drops in the bucket compared to changes on a civilizational level.
Which isn't to say you or anyone shouldn't pursue your own sense of moral behavior, quite the opposite in fact.
I would even say that using a normal amount of, say, electricity, but offsetting it with carbon capture, has one advantage: using a subnormal amount makes power fractionally cheaper for others.
But by how much? Well... by about the amount of difference any one set of human actions makes.
I'm not cold. I am someone who easily gets cold: I sit still 14 out of 16 hours every day, and I'm also way too selfish to let myself be cold all day every day.
It would neither be sustainable nor a good example for others.
No, I'm warm, sometimes too warm, and the room is currently at 17°C. Still a far cry from climate neutral of course, but a (to me) respectable percentage better than the 21-22°C I used to require as recently as last winter (I just hadn't looked into layering my clothing before, it was surprisingly simple to lower my thermal need by 5°C).
> an individual choosing to [do uncommon things]
Not only does it make me feel better, it also means I have first-hand experience to tell others what they could do and what impact it has had for me. The 2 extra minutes a 20-minute trip takes are mostly peanuts while saving a sizable amount of CO2 as well as money (most people pay for their fuel). I will still drive fast when I am in a rush, but for all regular trips you can choose to do this without leaving much earlier at all.
I think that perspective might help others consider their own choices. If nobody did this, it would be weird and abnormal. Now that they hear my experience, it's less so. I'm still an outlier, but it takes only one more person to set a trend.
This is of course an optimistic view and I'm well aware of that, but the alternative is doom and gloom, saying we realistically won't do anything anyway, why bother. I dunno, just seems nicer to me to try rather than accept failure beforehand. I can only do what I can do, and this is something I can do (walk the walk, then talk the talk).
(Anecdotal addition)
A friend became vegetarian for climate reasons. They drive on the highway at a literal 200km/h (125mph). Knowing that I also eat less meat and do other things towards the climate, upon hearing how fast I drive and what impact a 25% speed reduction already has, I noticed that they at least looked rather thoughtful for a minute. Will they change their habits? That's not up to me and I don't ask after it, but they at least thought about it and it will be a more conscious choice now. They might also be less likely to boast about their driving habit as they previously did, less normalizing such things.
Perhaps also not, what do I know. I just notice that a lot of people around me are making better choices in one area or another. Some use more plastic to better preserve food; it's often a trade-off. I use more clothing to preserve heat. I'm just happy that people are sharing ideas and trying new things.
Sure, it's nothing of what we'll have to sequester, but - as I already mentioned - currently it's quite a low hanging fruit.
I have a configurable display that shows average fuel consumption per 100km, momentary fuel consumption per 100km, kilometers remaining with available fuel, or some other value that I forgot about.
It's always set to the momentary fuel consumption and I have a good idea about how much things like grades (in/declines), wind, acceleration, etc. impact the consumption. The consumption per 100km is not the best measure for acceleration or idling (more useful would be something like "ml used in last 10 seconds"), but it give me some indication. Using the cruise control to accelerate (when safe; e.g. on steep uphill highway on-ramps you need to shift down and put that pedal down to get to a more safe merging speed) it's limited to about 8-9l/100km which is pretty good (many Germans consider such amounts normal for their cruising speed, let alone accelerating).
Basically we see plateaus where large increments of reagent do nothing, then a massive abrupt shift as the buffering potential of the system fails.
It's been disolving a lot of CO2 for us, but at some point, it'll reach an equilibrium and our air concentration of CO2 will go up much faster