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Comment by nosianu | Hacker News Reader

It would be far more efficient (since additional energy is used for all the actions around it all) to not bring up carbon from below ground in the first place. As long as Norway brings up new oil those actions are just marketing.

See the article we are talking about here. First you spend energy to bring up carbon. Then you spend more energy to get it back down again. The math does not check out. Not bringing up the carbon in the first place would have been far more beneficial for atmospheric CO2 levels.

Worse, they plan to do more of the oil-digging: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-oil-environment-id... (this is dated Dec 2020)

"Norway wants to lead on climate change. But first it must face its legacy of oil and gas." -- "An expert explains Norway’s climate change paradox." -- https://www.vox.com/22227063/norway-oil-gas-climate-change

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As a Norwegian I agree we should phase out oil sooner. Like you say, not releasing the CO2 to begin with is the best option.

However Norway is not the sole oil producer. If demand is not reduced and other producers compensate for our reduction, then that won't really help the planet at all.

As such it seems reducing demand would be the best way. Not that easy to achieve on a global scale though, it would seem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

Every Norwegian needs this illusion(Or livsløgn as Ibsen would have said) to sustain the idea of belonging to a nation that is up to something good.

Reality is that Norway is increasingly subsidizing it's oil industry in a way that is not sustainable - especially not economically.

Instead of investing in the future Norway is investing in old dying industries - our Corona package contains almost no investments in sustainable technologies even thought the economy is heading for a hard shock the next time the oil price takes a dive.

Reducing demand and reducing supply both help in getting the CO2 emissions down. A good start would be to just stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry.

I feel confident that if Norway stops pumping oil tomorrow, it would be pretty devastating to our economy. I also feel confident that other countries would increase production in response. Is that just an illusion?

I absolutely agree that we should focus a lot more on making new jobs that aren't oil-related, and stop investing in oil like we do. Oil is most definitely not the future, and we should push hard to make a transition starting yesterday.

That's not at odds with what I wrote above though. Reducing climate change is a global game of prisoners dilemma.

I have a friend from Romania who works in your country...very hard and high cost of living... I personally would prefer your "economy" suffers some contraction so he can come home and help here while you guys "modernise" with all that oil money you have saved.... also your "global game of prisoners dilemma" metaphor (is disingenuous?) it ignores the real time reality climate cliff we are about to fall off... currently we need leaders not Stockholm syndrome followers... I mean isn't asking authoritarian regimes (Putin, MBS, Venezuela) to stop pumpinga pipe dream...?

> also your "global game of prisoners dilemma" metaphor (is disingenuous?) it ignores the real time reality climate cliff we are about to fall off

That's part of my point. Making an impact against climate change requires everyone to work together while sacrificing something, like the mutually best outcome for the prisoners.

However not following that path can be very economically beneficial to a country, at least short term.

Thus there's incentive to ignore climate change and not work together, like the example I gave earlier. If someone else will pump the oil that we won't and the oil is getting burned all the same, why should Norway take that hit? That's what the dilemma the prisoner has.

I mean, just look at how hard the delegations worked to get the Paris agreement signed. I mean, good thing they did but it was a fairly wimpy compared to what was and is likely needed.

yes, that's what we all say

"He started it Miss, it's not my fault!"

It might be possible to pull hydrogen from the ground, leaving the carbon in place. https://proton.energy/ claims to be trying.

We need both, less CO2 extracted from fossil fuels and active capture of the CO2 already released.

I was always wondering what is the logic behind that - pump oil from underneath the sea, sell it and buy stock or bonds with the money. Basically trading valuable resources for some paper that may be worth nothing in future.

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