> #3 will be solved by human ingenuity
It already started, billions of dollars in losses, with no real solution in sight.
It already started, billions of dollars in losses, with no real solution in sight.
Regarding the solution, stratospheric aerosol injection would be the most immediate and effective solution to rising temperatures. It's been estimated that current increases in CO2 have a radiative forcing effect of about 2 watts per square meter, compared to the total solar irradiance of 1361 W/m2. If CO2 levels doubled to 800 ppm then it's estimated this would have a radiative forcing effect of 6 W/m2. This scenario would require mitigation strategies like stratospheric aerosol injection to reduce solar irradiance by about 0.4%. In the context of plant growth this reduction in sunlight would be negligible given that photosynthesis is only 1 to 2% efficient. If anything we should see significantly accelerated plant growth by about 10 to 50% due to the CO2 fertilization effect at 800ppm.
About the only thing that gives me hope is SRM, but it's a half-assed solution at best. A world with 800ppm CO2 and a dimmed sun via aerosols is not the Earth that I was born to; it is probably not possible to fully understand the affects.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/...
There is no perfect solution. One of the benefits of stratospheric aerosols is that they only stay suspended for 10 years or so, reducing the risk of long term effects. They are also an exceptionally cheap strategy, on the order of a few billion a year to cool the entire Earth. Compare that with the many trillions needed to just get to carbon neutral, while significantly reducing economic growth and living standards.
The world we were born into will not exist in any scenario. As they saying goes, you never step in the same river twice. CO2 emissions show no sign of decreasing, especially as China, India and Africa continue developing. Furthermore, we are on the cusp of AGI within the next decade or so, which will radically change reality far more than the Earth possibly getting a bit warmer in a 100 years or so. The IPCC does not even predict major cataclysm, and expects only sea level rise of a couple feet in the worst case scenario.
And then what happens? Earnest question.
It is a terrible idea which will almost certainly happen.
We don't know how bad the climate will be at 800 ppm. 300 millions years ago, during the Carboniferous era, there were vast forests and very high CO2 levels, around 1000 to 5000 ppm. If the Earth gets too hot we will simply do stratospheric aerosol injection. If climate change turns out to be overhyped, then we get the CO2 fertilization boost for free, win-win.
Regardless, the real solution is next level energy production from advanced fission, deep geothermal, and ultimately fusion power. With a vast surplus of energy we could do wildly impractical things like filter sea water for gold, and of course extract extremely diffuse gases from the atmosphere. Renewable energies are very low energy density, and more akin to farming from a physics perspective. They make sense in certain situations, but are not reliable for powering an advanced industrial civilization.
I also suspect people's intuitions are out of perspective in terms of time scales. It seems likely AGI will arise within the next 20 years. Climate change is nothing compared to the singularity and rise of superintelligence.
If that’s true, there should be global evidence of this happening already- are you aware of any publications confirming this effect?
You say accelerated growth like it’d be a good thing, but I don’t think we should wish for it or expect that to mitigate any damage… getting to the point of doubled CO2 would probably be extremely bad. If CO2 levels doubled, we’d for sure lose significant amount of our ice sheets, and some coastal cities along with it. Some of that is already happening anyway, but tripling the radiative effect will make it go much faster and much farther. As it stands, any increase in plant growth isn’t in any way making up for the rate we’re cutting down and paving over all the plants, and it’s not clear that 10 to 50% accelerated plant growth would make up for it either… even assuming that accelerated plant growth actually leads to more plants and a greater volume of oxygen cycle, and not just earlier blooms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation#Rates_of_defores...
https://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/what-...
There is. https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization... for instance.
"From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25."
Interesting observation: Trillions of dollars have been spent to date on emission reduction with many incurring a consequent lowering of quality of life. Some would say this is inevitable but better to survive than the alternative. To date (as far as I can tell) there has been no discernible reduction in the rate of increase in CO2 as measured at Mauna Loa station. When will this paramount metric relate to measures taken? Any guesses?
"The beneficial impacts of carbon dioxide on plants may also be limited, said co-author Dr. Philippe Ciais, associate director of the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences, Gif-suv-Yvette, France. “Studies have shown that plants acclimatize, or adjust, to rising carbon dioxide concentration and the fertilization effect diminishes over time."
The beneficial effects of increased CO2 will also be more than counteracted by other problems as the world temperature rises, such as greater heat stress and lower soil moisture.
> Trillions of dollars have been spent to date on emission reduction with many incurring a consequent lowering of quality of life
It's cheaper to avoid the warming in the first place rather than deal with the consequences, so complaining about the cost is a false economy.
> To date (as far as I can tell) there has been no discernible reduction in the rate of increase in CO2 as measured at Mauna Loa station
It's possible that we've reached peak CO2 emissions:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...
...however we need to cut them significantly.
https://ourworldindata.org/renewable-energy
Seems like we're moving directly and rapidly towards a real solution. Perhaps not rapidly enough, but the only way to change that is billions more in "losses"