Computer Models of Civilization Offer Routes to Ending Global Warming | Hacker News Reader

Computer Models of Civilization Offer Routes to Ending Global Warming

npr.org

The way out of climate change will be carbon-capture technology. No developing country is going to stop developing because the west became too decadent. The US isn't going to relinquish their position of power. China and India won't stop. It's simple game theory - no one will risk falling behind by making economic sacrifices.

When we do solve the problem, it'll be through technology, not through asceticism.

Sounds like wishful thinking to me. In the meantime, we are seeing the climate get worse year after year and we know that this is only the beginning. Moreover, there are non-linear effects at play that we can't even model, all of which will make the situation worse, none of which will make it any better. Doesn't seem very wise to bet human survival on technology that doesn't for the most part yet exist, and parts of which do exist don't work at scale with experts divided on future feasibility.

Political interest groups vociferously opposing allocation of funds commensurate with the scale of the problem probably also isn't helping. Heaven forbid we do anything that might help the oil companies.

The thing is that they have brought this onto us. Beginning with Rockefellers 'gaslighting' up to EXXONs fully understanding in the 1980ies, and doing nothing about it.

Why should one trust such entities? Greenwashing? Astroturfing? For all I care they can wash themselves with their own green vomit, because of all the divestement :-)

F-U-C-K T-H-E-M A-L-L!

It doesn't make sense to risk the lives of billions of people just to try and stick it to the oil companies. The conclusion that is implied by this type of sentiment is, "well if we don't give them a life raft then they will be forced to go out of business." The conclusion that if things get bad enough people will stop acting in self interest and start considering the greater good is questionable. The more realistic reality is imo people are going to continue to burn fossil fuels because it benefits them economically to do so. The situation 10 to 20 years from now is probably going to look more similar to today than not. Some countries make progress, but others increase their emissions.

Internal combustion engines are too well understood and wide spread to conceivably ban. Our planet will boil if we don't develop carbon sequestering capability at scale. It doesn't seem fair to me to risk the lives of all those people that will die from climate related problems just because we don't like the oil companies.

Fair? I don't care. No risk? No fun!

edit: TBH I'm SICK of all this apologizing smooth talking.

Time will tell. Either we solve it through technology, or ecology will dissolve us, asceticism or not.

I have far more faith in humanity's ability to invent things than in our ability to consume less.

Yeah while I fully acknowledge that multiple generations would likely suffer from adverse climate change including mine, I really don’t see it as an existential threat to humanity.

We will find a technological solution for this, the question is when and at what cost.

Civilization collapse and and a new dark age is really not in the cards for humanity our technology has progressed too far, we are about as too big to fail as it can get.

The question is how many of us would get to benefit from the fruits of our labor in the long run.

Just remember non-linear effects can go both ways.

Why not bury waste biomass in abandoned coal mine tunnels? Return the carbon to where it came from in the first place. Instead of composting on the surface (which releases CO2), all that industrial agricultural waste - chaff, sawdust, corn stalks,potato peels, used cooking oil, etc - as well as PLASTICS - could all just be buried in existing tunnels, kilometers under the surface, or pumped down into fracking /oil wells along with or instead of the water. In a few decades (centuries?), the stuff will decompose anaerobically, and we'll have fresh "fossil" fuels to start the cycle over again if we like. In the meantime, we remove billions of tons of carbon from the surface. Anyone see any obvious problems with this approach?

While I don't doubt that there are indeed pathways to countering (most of) climate change, it seems like a very weird idea to try and predict more than 40 years into the future when we can't predict basic input parameters like oil demand even three months in advance. (OTOH, scientists are gonna science so you can't expect them not to make predictions of course)

https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/world-oil-sup...

If you look at an actual chart of oil demand, it's not that hard to predict. Predictions good enough for profiting by trading are automatically difficult because of EMH. Predictions good enough for climate forecasting are not automatically difficult because the climate does not trade against you.

Exxon for example made a shockingly accurate prediction of global warming 40 years out in 1982. Critically emissions is cumulative so your annual emissions estimate may be less actuate over time but the difference between say 2x and 3x baseline annual emissions in 39 years only represents a small chunk of the total.

Visualized in this recent xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2500/

A rain drop forms in the sky and begins to fall. What path it takes, no one knows, but that it lands, we can surely assume.

Meaning. Some precise things are hard to predict, even when the outcome is easily knowable. We can't predict where an individual molecule of O2 will be in a minute, but we know that if there is a pressure differential between two rooms, they will begin to equalize.

You don't need a stop watch to count days. Short term fluctuations and long term trends are sometimes really different to predict.

> Then the scientists force their virtual worlds to change course

I think this is where the exercise fails. Yes, if we change course we can do a lot of different things that may work. The problem isn’t that we don’t have any options, it’s that we can’t convince society to change course in the first place. How do we accomplish that step? Because otherwise it seems like we will just keep arguing in circles until it’s too late to do anything.

An entirely legitimate question.

I am once again asking people to read this paper and contemplate the impact on collective action decisions when ~30% of people appear to be willing to be be worse off themselves in order to inflict a loss on others.

Edit: fixed link https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451

Renewables are already cheaper than fossil fuels, we just need to maintain momentum. EVs are headed on a similar path. Some economic activism is going to required to push against the cohort of populists who are specifically stuck on CO2 intensive activities (example activities might be buying and shuttering refineries, fossil infrastructure, etc).

Democracy mostly works, but some exception handling is required in this context.

> Democracy mostly works

I am not encouraged by what some US politicians are doing with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic right now. Why should I be more optimistic about their responses to the global warming situation?

You should not be. Which is why you need to be involved.

You alone will make little difference, but many of you together can change our course.

And, who knows? Maybe you'll be the spark that starts the (non CO2-emitting) flame.

While many US politicians have been pretty poor on climate change, the US federal government, state governments, Army, many large corporations outside the fossil extraction industry and academia have put in a fairly solid performance. It was democracy that built those systems and they've done well against a well funded opponent and a somewhat abstract threat and the tide seems to be turning so maybe there's room for hope.

So it was failure because they weren't studying a different part of the problem? I was hoping the model they were discussing was how to convince the world to actually tackle this issue and less about the specific things we need to do if we did agree. But it doesn't discard their work or findings.

The most effective way to attenuate global warming and a number of other problems would be rapid global population reduction. Obviously this solution is not morally or politically practical.

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