I don't believe there is anything we can do about the impending climate changes.
In my opinion all we can do is learn, prepare, and adapt.
In my opinion all we can do is learn, prepare, and adapt.
But there is (something we could do).
Climate change is caused by pollution and overconsumption.
We're perfectly capable to change that ... we just don't want to.
If we don't, the nature will force us.
As it does with every species in overshoot.
> all we can do is learn, prepare, and adapt
But we don't know how it will play out. Imagine building a jenga tower. You'll remove a brick from the base and put it on top. The more you build the less stable the structure becomes.
Our society is an extremely complex system.
We don't know when and how, but we know it will collapse. And nobody can even know how it will look, what to expect, and what to prepare for.
Even those bunkers of our tech elites won't do them much good.
The chances of this happening are zero.
And stop using them for things we don't need.
Or have I misunderstood your comment?
Use less fossil fuels != kill a lot of people :) Not in the western countries, which waste them left and right.
Fossil fuels are the cheapest energy source because of they are already established (economy of scale) and are subsidized heavily. In a world were all major economies have shifted to nuclear power, solar power, and wind power, that will no longer be the case. It will be cheaper for developing countries to use green tech.
Also, once the powerful countries have moved off fossil-fuels, we'll hypocritically force poor countries not to use them anyway. Come now, be reasonable.
Yes, we can turn rich countries into poor countries by taking away transport, energy, and protein from the working class, and there's growing support for that approach.
But that approach also destroys most of the hope for technological solutions.
And even if the richest countries did sacrifice everything, would it be enough, if many other countries continued pursuing growth of economies, consumption, and population?
City and economy planning, work from home, basic income, degrowth ...
> energy
Renewable energy, insulation and heat pumps, not air-conditioners.
> protein from the working class
That's propaganda, and now you're getting somewhere. We already get 63% of our protein from plants. If we were to extend that to 100%, we could store our entire 1.5C carbon budget through afforesting and rewilding pastures, which would also help restore biodiversity.
Climate change, resource depletion, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, pollution, overpopulation, soil erosion, and overfishing are all but symptoms of ecological overshoot.
Switching off animal protein would help solve climate change (15-25% impact, co2/methane/n20), deforestation, pollution, soil erosion and overfishing.
So it's one of the most impactful things we should do ... helping to solve 5 things out of 7.
> But that approach also destroys most of the hope for technological solutions.
We don't have any such solutions, that's something that sways the attention from things we already have at our disposal (just wait for this one thing that may or may not come ...).
> And even if the richest countries did sacrifice everything
Rich countries did/are doing most of the damage, the poorest ones are the ones paying most for it. If everyone would act as we do, we would need several more earths.
> if many other countries continued pursuing growth of economies, consumption, and population
Should they stay underdeveloped, or die out just so we could still be living like pigs in clover ?
Protein is not created equally. It is not possible to maintain a healthy diet using sustainable low-energy sources of plant protein in place of meat. Meat is not an optional part of our diet. There have been plenty of studies detailing the dietary impact of vegan diets.
Sustainable eating is cheaper and healthier - Oxford study
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35719615/
Plant-based diets were protective against cancers of the digestive system, with no significant differences between different types of cancer, a meta-analysis based on 3,059,009 subjects
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2023/04/meat-tax-would-boost-health...
Meat tax would boost health and cut healthcare spending: research
https://www.foodingredientsfirst.com/news/over-17000-doctors...
Over 17,000 doctors call on White House to shape nutrition policy on plant-based diets
"It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes." - American Dietetic Association
"A vegetarian or vegan diet can be suitable for everyone, regardless of their age." - NHS UK
"[I]t is possible to follow a well-planned, plant-based, vegan friendly diet that supports healthy living in people of all ages, and during pregnancy and breastfeeding." - British Dietetic Association.
"For adults, protein from two or more plant groups daily is like to be adequate. " - World Health Organisation
> There have been plenty of studies detailing the dietary impact of vegan diets
Meat & dairy industry is spending massive amounts of money of keeping the status quo as long as possible, same as with cigarettes or fossil fuels. A lot of those studies are paid for, be aware.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/03/beef-ind...
Inside big beef’s climate messaging machine: confuse, defend and downplay
https://newrepublic.com/article/171781/meat-culture-war-cric...
Why Right-Wingers Are So Afraid of Men Eating Vegetables
https://www.salon.com/2022/11/11/the-meat-industry-is-borrow...
The meat industry is borrowing tactics from Big Oil to obfuscate the truth about climate change
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23778399/media-ignores-cl...
Why the media too often ignores the connection between climate change and meat
https://www.salon.com/2023/05/13/how-big-oil-is-manipulating...
Significant changes to energy/fuel usage and transport/travel were already hard for people to accept, with vast numbers of jobs/livelihoods so dependent on cars. But trying to take away meat at the same time (let alone all dairy) is just too much to ask, certainly not an election winner.
(So we get to 'conspiracy theories' about the WEF and global policy being dictated undemocratically, with a war on farming that nobody voted for set to cut food production at a time when we're told that the biggest risk from climate change is crop failure and famine...)
Nothing significant have happened yet.
> war on farming that nobody voted for set to cut food production
No one wants to reduce food production. We just need to do more of what is sustainable and avoid doing the things that are not.
> the biggest risk from climate change is crop failure and famine
And with deforestation and soil depletion our farming practices are one of the biggest culprits of that.
> conspiracy theories
Yep, let our politicians solve the problem ... but don't change a thing!
> It is not possible to maintain a healthy diet using sustainable low-energy sources of plant protein in place of meat.
Not true.
> Meat is not an optional part of our diet.
Not true.
> There have been plenty of studies detailing the dietary impact of vegan diets.
There have been. Some paid by meat industry, some peer reviewed and supporting my point.
Could you share some of those studies supporting your point?
There is so much consumption that is absolute crap and could easily be cut out while honestly improving life.
Would emissions really decline by a measurable amount if the changes were limited to that?
If we're going to have any impact on the climate, changes need to be drastic and on a global scale. But at the same time, governments will not accept an end to economic growth, let alone a managed 'degrowth'. They can't even allow an end to population growth as it's such an important factor in economic growth.
If we can't even end the era of hugely destructive wars between nations, what hope is there for the human race coming together on the scale necessary to slow/reverse climate change?
Which has already happened and is irreversible as far as we know
>We're perfectly capable to change that ... we just don't want to.
No, change on the scale that would be needed to mitigate (there is no reversing, only mitigation) would require mass casualties, because it would require deindustrialization.
>But we don't know how it will play out
Yes, but we know what may improve our chances.
> Which has already happened
True.
> and is irreversible as far as we know
Not true.
> change on the scale that would be needed to mitigate (there is no reversing, only mitigation) would require mass casualties, because it would require deindustrialization
A superlative suggestion, sir. With just two minor flaws. One, it's not true. And two, it's not true. Now I realise that, technically speaking, that's only one flaw; but I thought it was such a big one, it was worth mentioning twice.
> Yes, but we know what may improve our chances.
What would that be?
The estimated cost for net zero are only 3-6% of global GDP per year until 2050. Totally doable.
However, there is plenty we can do longer-term.
Step 1: USA via coalition (or alone, it doesn't matter) goes Nuclear (Fission). Global energy consumption is 17.4 Terawatts. About 4 Terawatts of that is us. We therefore need about 4000 nuclear power plants to cover our usage (which, given the economy of scale, would probably cost about 4 Trillion or so). It would take 15 years to build them out, so that's about $280 billion a year. Not particularly expensive, given the overall federal budget is $6 trillion. In addition to domestic construction, we offer generous construction deals to all other countries at-cost with shared IP. Any country can sign up, and the US will use it's hegemony to backup all deals in a "too big to fail" kind of way. Note that we only need about $24 trillion to build out power for the rest of the world, which again isn't a substantial component of anyone's budget (except for developing countries, for which we would just provide the reactors for free/via loan schemes). China will probably do it themselves, so that's like another 5TW capacity we don't need to build.
Step 2: We change out the infrastructure. Massive funding, drowning-in-money level funding for Hydrogen aircraft. Massive funding for electric cars & electric grid improvements. Build out HSR between all cities & build out public transit to sap down air travel / car travel. Cut energy use & de-carbonize.
Step 3: Turn the CO2 in the air back into fossil fuel, or capture it into some other form. We build 17 TWatts of nuclear capacity, so we have plenty of energy. We need only scale up the chemical processes for doing the conversion.
Once completed, we can now "tune" CO2 levels, giving us a lever for global weather control. This will likely be a useful tool for humanity & will let us dynamically control mean surface temperature.
We're going to be forced to make changes -- not just "adapt" but substantially alter society. The longer we wait the worse it will be.
We're already well into the territory where we will in all likelihood not escape a grounding. But we can still choose the spot where we ground and indirectly affect how much work it will be to get the boat afloat again once that happens.
The melting ice will increase sea levels sufficiently to avoid grounding.
Sure, billons will die and it will be the end of our civilisation as we know it, but either we'll adapt to the new life or we won't.
Serpentine rock, which is primarily composed of the mineral serpentine, has been considered in the context of climate change mitigation due to its potential to sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) through a natural process called mineral carbonation. This process involves the reaction of CO2 with certain minerals, like serpentine, to form stable carbonate minerals like magnesite.
The reaction kinetics of carbonation using serpentine rock are generally slow under ambient temperature and pressure conditions, which is one of the main challenges in utilizing serpentine for carbon sequestration. The rate of the natural carbonation process depends on various factors, such as the particle size of the serpentine, temperature, pressure, and availability of CO2.
At ambient conditions, the carbonation of serpentine can take from several months to thousands of years to proceed to completion. The slow reaction kinetics is mainly due to the formation of a passivating silica-rich layer on the surface of serpentine minerals, which hinders the further reaction with CO2.
However, if we ground up serpentine rock into 1cm pieces and sprinkled it on the Caribbean sea between Cuba and Jamaica, we can estimate how many tons we would need to use to carbonize our deficit of 15 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide:
To estimate this, we need to consider the stoichiometry of the carbonation reaction. Serpentine rock primarily contains the mineral serpentine, which has the chemical formula Mg3Si2O5(OH)4. The carbonation reaction involving serpentine can be represented as:
Mg3Si2O5(OH)4 + 3CO2 → 3MgCO3 + 2SiO2 + 2H2O
Here, one mole of serpentine reacts with three moles of CO2 to form three moles of magnesite (MgCO3) as the primary carbon capture product.
Now, let's calculate the molar masses:
Serpentine (Mg3Si2O5(OH)4): (3 × 24.305) + (2 × 28.085) + (5 × 15.999) + (4 × 1.008) = 277.24 g/mol CO2: (12.011) + (2 × 15.999) = 44.01 g/mol
From the balanced equation, three moles of CO2 react with one mole of serpentine. Therefore, the mass ratio of serpentine to CO2 is:
277.24 g/mol (serpentine) / 3 × 44.01 g/mol (CO2) = 2.087
To sequester 15 Gt of CO2, we would need:
15 Gt × 2.087 = 31.305 Gt (gigatons) of serpentine rock
However, this calculation assumes that the carbonation reaction would go to completion, which is unlikely in a real-world scenario, especially with 1 cm pieces of serpentine rock. The reaction kinetics would be extremely slow with such large particles, and the reaction may not proceed effectively in the ocean environment. Grinding the serpentine rock into much finer particles, using catalysts or additives, or applying pressure and temperature could enhance the reaction rate, would perhaps make it go faster.
How does it look then?