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Comment by mg | Hacker News Reader

I have the feeling that we are looking at climate change wrong.

All the discussion is about reducing CO2 emissions. But we have nothing to show for it. Even the during the Covid lockdowns, CO2 emissions were reduced by only 10%:

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. That means even if we permanently take the extreme measures of the Covid lockdowns, global warming would be in 11 years were it would be in 10 years if we did nothing.

Yes, we should continue to push towards reducing CO2 emissions. A carbon tax would probably be the most effective way to achieve that.

But that will only give us more time to prepare for the inevitable: Living on a planet with higher temperatures and all kinds of problems that arise from it. It will happen.

What technologies can we develop to cope with it?

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Why would you expect the COVID "lockdowns" to meaningfully reduce CO2 emissions? There was no concerted effort to reduce emissions or energy consumption, and in fact the opposite happened.

Demand for shipping, including large shipping containers and many small online-order car deliveries, skyrocketed.

People were working from home instead of large office buildings, which means less efficient use of energy in smaller heating and cooling systems

Energy use in homes (for heating, cooking, cooling, and lighting etc) is responsible for about 11% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Energy use in commercial buildings about 7%.

On the other hand, fossil fuels being directly vented into the atmosphere (from leaks, or burning excess fuel) also contributes 7%.

Agriculture, mostly meat and dairy production, and deforestation driven by producing feed for livestock, is responsible for about 18% of greenhouse emissions.

Reducing emissions is really straightforward, and no mystery. It hardly needs new technology, just better deployment of the technologies we already have.

Coal produces about a quarter of total energy, but nearly HALF of all emissions. We need to stop burning coal YESTERDAY.

We only generate about 10% of total energy using low-carbon sources like nuclear and renewable energy. We need to scale those up.

In addition, we need to replace inefficient energy use with more efficient energy use.

Lighting accounts for roughly 5% of all energy consumption. With incandescent lighting being 5x to 10x less efficient than LEDs, we can save about 1% of global emissions just by switching all the remaining incandescent light bulbs.

You list things we could tackle to reduce CO2 emissions.

And yes, we should. And we will tackle them to some degree.

But that does not change the fact that we will live on a warmer planet in the future.

We can't make the planet cooler by taking these measures. They only slow down the pace at which it heats up.

That's the point of my post. That we should also incentivize the development of new technologies that will help mankind live on the warmer planet.

It will happen, we all know it, and people are most certainly thinking about it. But it shouldn't be opposed to reducing CO2. Even if it is already happening, reducing CO2 will (most likely) also reduce the warming itself, and make the future slightly more bearable.

Moreover, global warming is just the tip of the iceberg, it's the thing that is presented to us in the most direct ways, but other things like mass extinctions of species, oil depravity, overpopulation, forever chemicals etc. Etc. Will be a problem someday also.

So instead of trying to "cope" with every catastrophy that is thrown at us (while making living on earth more and more annoying), maybe we should think about the solutions on a global scale, because there's no way it will happen without that

So there's really nothing one can do. Even living the regular lifestyle of any western country is by itself a contribution to the issue. Stop fooling yourself with technical solutions, as it will only push the issue for later, or be counter productive

Changes can't come without a massive overhaul of our economy and society (probably for the worse)

overpopulation is not a someday problem at all. Either it already was the problem and is the direct cause of global warming or you haven't been paying attention to demographics which show global population peaking in the 2050s because of India and China modernization.

> So there's really nothing one can do

This is a cop-out. There's always something you can do. The problem is that it's often very complex, or requires more experience, or more influence, etc. Meaning that before you can noticeably move the needle, you need to get 10 years of prep work behind you. But the fact that it's difficult or time-consuming is a completely different story than it being "impossible."

Sorry, but I get tired of people throwing up their hands and saying "I can't do anything about this situation" when they really mean "this situation is so difficult that I'd rather go take a nap than deal with it."

There's tons here, too, once we get past the laser focus on removing CO2 and averting global warming. Off the top of my head:

1.) Every major city needs evacuation plans, and evacuation routes, in case of a natural disaster. Because disasters will get more frequent. Right now these are terribly inadequate, as we saw with Hurricane Rita. Solving this starts with FEMA, but probably requires advances in transportation, ability to quickly lay new infrastructure, construction technologies, information & coordination tech.

2.) Low-lying cities will need large seawalls and levees, like what Foster City just built. It cost them a few billion, but it's still cheaper than rebuilding all the buildings after a flood. Imagine scaling this up to every coastal or river city.

3.) We need better strategies to let wildfires burn in the wild yet quickly arrest their progress when they get close to populated areas.

4.) We need cheap insulation, and even cheaper ways to retrofit all the old housing stock in the U.S. with cheap insulation.

5.) We need more efficient and cheaper HVAC systems, ideally ones that don't burn fossil fuels.

6.) We need huge investments in the electric grid to support EVs + beefier HVAC. We also need software systems to manage this smartly, so eg. we can stagger EV charging and not put huge loads on the grid all at once. HVAC also serves as a big battery in a well-insulated home; you can time heat-pump loads for when they'll be most effective and retain that heat within the home during peak load times.

A lot of these will also require extensive public/private cooperation, which is its own sort of problem, and one that's also fairly amenable to software assistance (once the people in charge get tech-savvy enough).

Sucking the carbondioxide out of the atmosphere doesn't seem to be a feasable plan, considering how vast earth's atmosphere is. My growing feeling is that we are long at the point where we need to start putting heavy restrictions in place to avoid desaster. Carbon capture technologies are already in development, but that alone isn't good enough to avert the coming crisis.

I don't disagree but what is the point of single countries putting restrictions in place while developing countries continue to rely on burning carbon? It would handicap the economies of some while others just carry on. As those countries develop they are going to burn more and more carbon. Those developing countries also have massive populations, they will not intentionally handicap their growth while others have already benefited.

> All the discussion is about reducing CO2 emissions. But we have nothing to show for it. Even the during the Covid lockdowns, CO2 emissions were reduced by only 10%

I am not sure that many here know the fact that man-made CO2 emissions are only about 10% of the natural CO2 emissions [0]

> That total dwarfs humanity’s contribution, amounting to ten times as much CO2 as humans produce through activities such as burning fossil fuels.

The problem with man-made CO2 emissions that even though they are small relative to natural CO2 emissions, they change careful CO2 balance in atmosphere and over decades tips the CO2 balance.

Unfortunately, only relying on reducing man-made CO2 makes for a lousy control variable precisely because man-made CO2 is only 10% of total CO2 emissions (kind of a second-order effect). Any effect of reducing it will only show up decades later and we do not know what the new CO2 equilibrium point will be. We need to think out of the box and develop alternative and active climate engineering methods. It will not be easy but we should study, discuss and debate all alternative without exceptions.

[0] https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-carbon-dioxide-does...

EDIT: grammar & some wordings.

All fine but if say 2% is the tipping quantity (I'm pulling numbers out of my arse here) and it happens so that those 10% are the only percents we as humans can influence, shouldn't we push to reduce those 10% and keep an enjoyable planet for our grandchildren? Only a couple hundred years ago the equilibrium was without any human 10& so we have pretty clear numbers here. Decades later is nothing on the scale of the humankind and we claim all the time we are pushing our species forward (remember the saying "one small step for the man..."?) while currently doing things the majority agrees are harming ourselves. It's only that this majority won't agree to even try to do anything about it.

> All fine but if say 2% is the tipping quantity (I'm pulling numbers out of my arse here) and it happens so that those 10% are the only percents we as humans can influence, shouldn't we push to reduce those 10% and keep an enjoyable planet for our grandchildren?

Of course, we should do it and reduce our carbon emissions as much as we can. But in addition to it we should be researching additional ways to control the climate -- reflectivity of the oceans, stratospheric reflecting particulates, methane control, etc. Putting all the eggs in the CO2 control basket might not solve climate for this or next generations.

I mentioned that because reducing CO2 is the only known and proven way to solve climate as for now. Research? Sure. But let's not claim we don't know what to do and use that as a reason to wait until the hypothetical research results are in to do anything.

I think a lot about the problem of increasing heat waves causing heat-related illnesses and death. The amount of consecutive days spent above a wet-bulb temperature of 32 degrees C is expected to increase most for countries in the tropical regions of our world (and subtropics).

Many of the countries in these regions are quite poor. Many have weak electrical grids that may fail in severe heat waves, and many residents are unserved in the first place.

If I could quit my job and work on anything else, I think it would be this problem. I don't know enough to say where efforts should be focused. In some cases, providing AC units and improving the electrical infrastructure may be the answer. Maybe in others, the answer is installing geothermal heat pumps, or some other off-grid solution like solar absorption chillers.

Disagree, we should be prioritizing developing and improving carbon capture capabilities such that we can outmatch and overcome existing emission levels. Most people aren't going to reduce their CO2 emissions if it means a noticeably worse lifestyle.

Accepting that CO2 emissions are unbeatable, so the best we can do is cope, sounds like a loser mindset. Those who believe in the inevitability of increasing CO2 emissions have already accepted defeat. The game is far from over and hope is not lost.

I do think material science break throughs for carbon capture is the most sensical way to solve this. But huge space projects or chalk dust airlifts are cool too.

Recently, my friends and I were discussing same thing about climate change that we are focused on symptoms instead of the main cause.

It is a bit controversial but I think the best way to deal with climate change is to have less kids. I say that as a parent.

It sounds authoritarian and having kids is basic animal instinct. And probably smarter minds have already thought about it and realized that it would be easier to do everything else except ask people to have less kids.

CO2 absorption is the new technology that is more promising than reducing CO2 emissions. Imagine, you could buy a device that can absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and which can subsequently be either converted to a form that is more eco friendly or could be stored in a way that doesn't contribute to global warming, governments and people would invest in that.

Carbon capture is a scam.

Just curious, how are companies such Noya [1] scammers? I would like to know more about the technical due diligence part. Thinking about Theranos story and how easy was to realize the company was an scam.

I agree to the general idea that we need to plant trees and create technologies to solve the problem.

[1] https://www.noya.co/

The amount of money invested in systems that emit carbon is massive. Those companies are happy to bet a few million here or there on the slight possibility that carbon capture might work. So it’s a good little revenue earner if you can create a few nice diagrams.

The main problem is there is simply too much carbon for us to be physically able to pull enough carbon out of the air to make a dent in our emissions.

Carbon capture might be able to help if we land on some breakthrough, but it cannot save us.

Remember that carbon is *heavy* (carbon dioxide is actually almost twice the weight of the fossil fuels that were burned to make it -- though hopefully you can avoid capturing the oxygen)

We currently emit something like 15 billion tons of carbon each year.

That is more than 3x the amount of cement made each year (4.5 billion tons). More than 3x the amount of food that's made each year (about 4 billion tons). About 8x the amount of steel made each year (2 billion tons). About 30x the amount of plastic made each year (about 0.5 billion tons)

Can we build a logistic system capable of processing, transporting, and storing carbon -- a completely useless material -- in quantities that exceed the global food, cement, steel, and plastic production combined?

I doubt they are scammers in the traditional sense. But it's worth thinking about the total carbon cost to 'capture' and 'store' a given amount of carbon.

What I would be surprised to find is that there was a massive differential between the cost (in carbon) for raw materials, manufacturing, distribution/transportation and running (energy + people costs) and the amount of carbon captured.

It's a bit like perpetual motion machines. If you zoom in enough, they can seem to move forever. But if you zoom out they are getting energy from somewhere.

On the small scale they transform money into sequestered carbon. But how much of that money goes (directly or indirectly) into generating carbon?

At this point in the climate emergency, we need more constructive conversations. Simply stating that carbon capture is a scam deflects the conversation from productive avenues. How about: "Carbon capture is an unproven technology, which hasn't stopped companies like X from trying to make a buck doing it. We should be focusing more on Y, because it can help today."

Rainforests might disagree

Sounds like a tree.

We’d need to increase the world’s forests by something like 700 mature trees, per year, per person, for ever.

5.6 trillion trees per year... unless we plant them on the ocean that won't fit

Aren't those devices called trees? They absorb CO2, store CO2 and water eco-friendly, reduce ground temperature, prevent erosion, create natural habitats for animals and can be used as construction materials. Governments: I'll send you my PayPal in a PM.

I think the main problem is that lots of people car about CO2 emissions but feel (and largely are) powerless to do anything about it as so much of globally emissions are from business.

Governments need to support CO2 reduction and force businesses to cut emissions.

On top of that we need CO2 capture, and yes, we are not going to reduce emissions enough so we will need to adapt a changing climate.

yeah a lot of the emissions remedies seem to overlook the realities of geopolitics. "Just force people to do it", what with your gas guzzling jet engine Abrams Tanks? At a base level the militaries of the world aren't giving up carbon and we only have like 2 decades left to do something.

We either need to to remove the carbon, affect the albedo of the earth, or deflect radiation coming to earth. Or all 3.

Deflecting radiation is a large engineering project. Maybe you should try to send a fleet of sun shields to the L1 Lagrange point. Or maybe you should try to pump large amounts of chalk dust into the atmosphere. I'm unsure what would be the better use of time. I've read that even just painting all the roads white buys us a few years.

Of all these possible solutions, the sun shield at the L1 Lagrange point might be necessary for humanity beyond just applications of global warming. It sounds big and ridiculous, but we really should consider it.

People generally seem to miss the point that humanity in its current state is fully dependent on fossil fuel and that will change only very very slowly. So, emissions will be there to stay for a while. Fundamental research into capturing it at scale would be a good endeavor.

Wind proof umbrellas and wireless fans

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