[HN Gopher] Big oil helped shape Stanford's latest climate-resea...
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Big oil helped shape Stanford's latest climate-research focus
Author : mooreds
Score : 174 points
Date : 2023-05-05 14:14 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.chronicle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.chronicle.com)
| bell-cot wrote:
| Ever-growing armies of ever-better-paid administrators aren't
| going to magically pay for themselves. And a university won't be
| atop America's merciless academic pecking order for long if it's
| burdened with scruples about funding sources.
| warent wrote:
| This comment is vague but it sounds like you're downplaying the
| seriousness of funding sources.
|
| This isn't a paranoid conspiracy or dramatic judgement.
| Companies really do pay for particular research results that
| benefit them. This has been going on at least since gasoline
| had lead in it.
| burnished wrote:
| I think you misread them
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| the bigger issue you overlooked is the constant growth of
| bureaucratic overhead sucking up the watershed of resources
| and leaving only a trickle for the people actually putting
| together the curriculum, teaching and researching.
|
| The administrators are useful to a point but they vastly
| overstate their importance and erode everything they touch
| overtime like a malignant cancer in a lot of organizations.
| sharemywin wrote:
| "lot of organizations" your being generous.
| [deleted]
| htag wrote:
| I think you might be misunderstanding the amount of distrust
| placed in the root comment. He's claiming the more
| prestigious a University is, the more likely they are to take
| unethical funding because increased funding leads to more
| prestige. It's an attack on the integrity of modern science
| as practiced by academia, not on a subset of studies.
| runarberg wrote:
| I kind of think the status of US schools is not very well
| known, or at least not consistently known:
|
| To summarize the situation. US education institutes are
| laying off hundreds of teachers, cancelling courses,
| cutting services, etc. across the board. If a teacher is
| hired, it is most likely for part-time, on lower wages,
| with fewer benefits. If a teacher is guaranteed tenure
| after x many years, chances are they will be laid off, and
| their programs cancelled before this happens. At the
| primary level, schools are being aggressively merged, and
| sometimes even closed, to save money for the school
| district.
|
| At the same time administrators in said schools are
| ballooning, more administrators are being hired, and their
| pay keeps going up (while other staff pay is stagnant). If
| there is money being allocated to the schools, it most
| likely goes into administration, not education.
| Administration has also become a political gig.
| Administrators move between school systems, get higher and
| higher positions, fill out their resumes, and gain prestige
| (all the while being payed more and more). What they
| actually do, is anybodies guess, most of the time they are
| simply in the way of teacher making actual changes which
| would benefit students. A typical scenario is a new higher
| administrator comes in, wants to look important and decides
| to create more administrator position and hire a security
| contractor to impose a security theater on campus.
|
| I guess this this what your grand-parent was talking about.
| And how it comes to no-ones surprise when funding for this
| ballooning administration costs come from the same industry
| which is killing us all and our climate.
| geodel wrote:
| > US education institutes are laying off hundreds of
| teachers, cancelling courses, cutting services, etc
|
| This also does not make much sense when one sees this
| humongous growth in new courses, departments, degrees and
| academic positions in first place over last few decades.
| So many universities did not become 5 star resorts by
| just keeping strictly educational services.
| runarberg wrote:
| I'm sure there is data to be found, and I'm actually
| curious about it my self. I don't know where to begin
| looking for it though. But I'm open to be proven wrong.
|
| To be clear, I'm talking about the education system as a
| whole, not just prestige universities, but also community
| collages as well high schools and primary schools.
| Prestige universities like Stanford will always find
| funding to do what they want (e.g. from fossil fuel
| companies) this includes ballooning administrators
| playing the CV game, as well as keeping existing courses
| open while even opening new courses. Community collages
| and poorer school districts cannot afford to do all, and
| --it is my experience--they are way more likely to pick
| funding their administrators at the cost of education.
| geodel wrote:
| I get your point. The way I see this growth of admins is
| side effect of _giving what people wanted_ which is
| "world-class amenities, world class education, more
| nutrition options, more security, more healthcare, more
| activities, more courses, more entertainment options,
| more electives, more everything" . Individually every
| single item looks eminently reasonable and in aggregate
| it can give reasonable cover to universities to have
| admins to support all of this.
| runarberg wrote:
| I don't know if you have any experience in this, but in
| community collages in my area students and faculty alike
| are raising protests and threatening strikes because they
| are precisely not getting what they want, which is for
| their courses to stay open and for their teachers to
| remain on staff. It is my guess that the only people
| getting what they want with the ballooning admins are the
| bosses (i.e. admins them selves; and stakeholders in the
| educational industry who get to sell their stuff to
| schools, e.g. security firms).
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| An adjunct would teach more courses at a lower pay than a
| tenured faculty member.
| bell-cot wrote:
| What's the equivalent of "/s" for bitter cynicism?
| thfuran wrote:
| You don't have to write anything, you just down a shot of
| the cheapest whiskey you can find.
| lisasays wrote:
| As cynical as we can count on these people to be - they're also
| smart enough to recognize that continually whoring themselves
| out to the highest bidder can, apart from undermining
| Stanford's integrity (which they obviously don't care about),
| also be detrimental to their bottom line in the longer run.
|
| In fact this seems to be the only way they eventually learn:
|
| _In response, more than 800 people affiliated with the
| university have signed a letter calling for a funding ban, and
| some alumni say they won't donate to their alma mater until it
| happens._
|
| https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/30/from-the-community-we-r...
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I find the notion donating to your alma mater kind of odd.
| You don't donate money to the local McDonald's that made a
| burger for you do you? I mean, you could but that's not
| something that's regularly done.
|
| The service was provided and paid for and now there's some
| expectation to give more money after the fact?
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| In reality people also build relationships and emotional
| attachments. It's also somewhat more mission driven, via
| research, medical centers, etc.
|
| Those are reasons, whether they're good or not depends on
| perspective.
| ericd wrote:
| I don't know how representative this is, but when I talked
| to one of my school's donation people, it sounded like most
| people don't donate to the unrestricted fund, which the
| school can do whatever with it's usually
| earmarked/restricted for a specific use, like a building, a
| specific department, whatever. The school _really really_
| wants unrestricted funds.
|
| Personally, I donate to my old dorm's social/making stuff
| fund, the students get way more out of those dollars a lot
| further than I do, and I always appreciated that we had
| that budget.
| ebiester wrote:
| The mission of the university, from the university's
| perspective, is to advance the world's fundamental
| knowledge first and teach students second. (Some may see
| this as 1a and 1b, mind you, and smaller liberal arts
| colleges and colleges that do not award doctoral degrees
| will reduce the fundamental knowledge mission.)
|
| The students, in large part, pay for the educational piece
| (alongside funding) but significant funding is needed for
| advancing the world's knowledge.
| rayiner wrote:
| Opposing nuclear was the first catastrophic mistake
| environmentalists made, causing them to be a net negative overall
| in terms of climate change. Opposing carbon capture will be the
| next (and possibly last) one.
|
| If you think climate change is a serious problem, then you need
| to put aside your moral beliefs and think like an engineer about
| solutions. There is no math that allows you to
| conserve/renewables your way to 2C while accommodating the
| expected growth in living standards in India, China, and Africa.
| And any strategy that doesn't allow people in the developing
| world to dramatically increase their standard of living is a non-
| starter that will create billions of enemies for the
| environmental movement. India recently committed to go carbon
| neutral by 2070:
| https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/developing-countries-....
| That's too late, and they won't meet that anyway. The developed
| world needs to go carbon negative as fast as possible.
| pengod wrote:
| "Carbon capture research" has been an excuse to divert funding
| away from renewables for 20+ years. It's hardly made a dent in
| emissions and it's unlikely to change any time soon.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Let me play devils advocate though. Right now nuclear provides
| 10% of the world's power. Now since it was first deployed in
| the 70's there have been at least 3 major accidents I can think
| of: Fukushima, Chernobyl, and 3 mile island. So that's one
| every 15 years, roughly.
|
| The naive math behind that suggests that if we were to increase
| the number of power plants by a factor of 10 to supply all the
| world's power, we should expect the rate of accidents to
| increase proportionally. So that's a Fukushima somewhere in the
| world every 1.5 years or 18 months. And a bad one of those
| accidents could spread radiation across an entire continent.
|
| Changes the risk/reward calculation, doesn't it?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| 3 Mile Island: No one died, nothing of any significance
| happened. Clickbait from an era before clickbait was a thing.
|
| Chernobyl: Irresponsible operation of obsolete, inherently-
| hazardous Soviet-era design. Not something that can ever
| happen again if some relatively-simple lessons are followed.
|
| Fukushima: Irresponsible maintenance of plant operating well
| beyond its intended lifespan, which was irresponsibly
| constructed in a tsunami-prone seismic zone. This type of
| accident can and probably will happen again, precisely
| _because_ of moratoriums on new plant construction.
|
| One risk you didn't list but probably should have is reckless
| military attacks waged against installations such as
| Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine. It's hard to safeguard a nuclear
| plant against a barbarian invasion. It may make sense to
| operate such plants under UN auspices, or otherwise guarantee
| their safety through multinational treaties with real
| enforcement behind them.
| thehappypm wrote:
| If Japan can't do it, responsibly, why should we expect any
| other country to?
| machina_ex_deus wrote:
| Now do the same calculation for passenger aviation.
|
| That's not how disasters work. They aren't independent
| variables, when they happen, you learn and change the way
| things work to prevent them from happening again.
| majormajor wrote:
| The odds definitely aren't that straightforward.
|
| Experiments and development in the 1950s. First commercial
| plant in 58.
|
| Further growth in 60s and 70s. Including deadly accidents
| like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 in 1961 - protests
| grew in 60s and 70s too.
|
| Three Mile Island 1979.
|
| Chernobyl 1986.
|
| Fukushima 2011.
|
| That 25-year gap between Chernobyl and Fukushima - and the
| extraordinary circumstances causing Fukushima vs the previous
| incidents - suggests that safety improved A LOT over the
| 60-odd years between 1958 and now.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| True, it has. But, the failure rate is not zero. And more
| plants mean they will happen more often. I'm just pointing
| out that it's rational to worry about a small probability
| high consequence disaster.
|
| Nuclear fission is a reaction with a positive feedback
| loop, making it naturally unstable, and requires some
| mechanism to create a negative feedback of greater
| magnitude to make it stable. And that requires some kind of
| active machinery to function properly. If that machinery
| fails, then the feedback loop becomes positive again.
| Machines can always fail, so I doubt that fission can ever
| be made completely safe.
| [deleted]
| inpdx wrote:
| Carbon capture is cleaning up dog shit in the kitchen with a
| toothpick instead of training it to go outside.
| philipkglass wrote:
| The dog has been dirtying the kitchen floor for long enough
| already that we're also going to need that toothpick.
|
| Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR6 fact sheet on
| carbon dioxide removal:
|
| "Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) refers to technologies,
| practices, and approaches that remove and durably store
| carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. CDR is required to
| achieve global and national targets of net zero CO2 and
| greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. CDR cannot substitute for
| immediate and deep emissions reductions, but it is part of
| all modelled scenarios that limit global warming to 2deg or
| lower by 2100."
|
| https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/outreach/IPCC_A.
| ..
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| [flagged]
| Jalad wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1732/
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| Nice, starting the timeline when the end of the Ice Age
| starts, and half the globe is under Glaciers, CO2 levels
| are super low, as are temperatures and sea levels are low
| too.
|
| SMH.
| jackmott wrote:
| [dead]
| lost_tourist wrote:
| When someone says they're "green" but hard-core antinuclear I
| just stop listening after that. They have done almost zero
| research on the topic and have 99% likely just decided because
| someone told them it was bad. Nuclear is our only viable path
| if we plan on keeping a dependable power grid. Battery tech is
| not currently up to par with what we need to make wind and
| solar 100% solutions. We need at least a 10X increase in
| storage density and longevity for that. They should absolutely
| be part of the mix though as they're cheaper than nuclear per
| kW
| thehappypm wrote:
| I think nuclear, today, is a hardcore bad idea. Nuclear is
| showing no tangible signs of getting cheaper, and renewable
| and battery prices continue to fall.
| ebiester wrote:
| I don't know of any environmentalists against the research.
| Most I've talked with are skeptical that this is viable given
| current technology and believe that we need to act as if this
| doesn't exist, but that's different than opposing the research.
|
| If there is some sort of breakthrough, then that's fantastic!
|
| I think there are other geoengineering techniques that
| environmentalists are against such as seeding with sulphur
| dioxide or trying to create a shade preventing sun rays from
| reaching earth, but the argument against carbon capture is only
| that it doesn't yet exist.
| mjhay wrote:
| Guess what industry was big into funding anti-nuclear groups?
| runarberg wrote:
| There was a recent pro-nuclear article posted here on HN
| which was authored by a fossil fuel lobbyist
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35658318). I know you
| are fishing for the opposite response, but it seems very
| likely at this point that the fossil fuel industry is funding
| pro-nuclear propaganda.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| I wouldn't put it past them that they want to increase the
| wedge between nuclear and renewables as much as possible.
| For them it's easy to be pro nuclear, as it's expensive and
| slow to build thanks to heavy regulatilon. While we argue
| nuclear vs. solar and wind, they can sit back and keep
| profiting from fossile fuels.
|
| Edit: just read the article a bit. It's just as I thought.
| "Only nuclear can save us" bullshit, whereas a genuine
| writer would have written "Only a combination of green
| energy sources can save us". FF industry doing their
| thing..
| SecretDreams wrote:
| Listen man, it's simple. White people get nice qol, everyone
| else does not. That + wind energy is how we solve global
| warming.
|
| Big /s.
|
| I 100% agree with you.
| mattwest wrote:
| This is the most reasonable take. For some reason people in the
| West tend to ignore that 80% of the world is on the lower part
| of the exponential slope of progress, income, and demand for
| fossil fuel derived goods - and they are running up that slope
| at breakneck speed as a result of technological innovation.
|
| Is the other 20% going to look down from our place of wealth
| and abundance - built on fossil fuels and countless
| externalities - and tell them that they have to achieve wealth
| and abundance through other means? It's ridiculous.
|
| Sorry Sub-Saharan African, we have found that meat consumption
| is bad and therefore you can't do what we did, even though
| increased demand is a natural tendency as incomes rise.
|
| All that cheap and dirty energy we used to make our
| infrastructure and grow GDP? You can't do it that way either.
| We made a big oopsie and have decided you have to do it through
| renewables and sustainable practices only.
|
| By the way, are you interested in financing for this solar
| array? It's ok if you don't have the cash on hand, we'll just
| hold your highest quality farm-land as collateral.
|
| We have to find ways to sequester. And we have to find ways to
| live in a warmer climate. It's the most probable outcome.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| And who exactly are going to be paying for these ruinously
| expensive nuclear power stations for the poorer countries? Is
| it you and rayiner? Or perhaps you want your government to
| fund it through increased taxes on you?
|
| I'm sure you wouldn't want the poor countries to pay for it
| themselves.
| rayiner wrote:
| The point is that if everyone in the developed world had
| built more nuclear in the 1960s like France did, we
| wouldn't be in such a dire situation now.
|
| France's CO2 emissions per capita are right around the
| world average. That means the rest of the developed world
| had done the same way as France half a century ago, we
| would have room to bring the whole developing world up to
| the same level as France while still being at the same
| overall CO2 output as today. And we wouldn't have had all
| that extra CO2 for 60 years, giving us much more runway for
| the developed world to go to net zero while the developing
| world continues to develop.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| Whenever this line of reasoning is brought up, i ask one
| question - what is the cost of climate change? Who will
| bear that cost and who will deal with the effects?
|
| A poor country deriving energy from a nuclear power plant
| means that carbon isn't being emitted for energy production
| over the lifetime of that nuclear plant.
|
| Despite all the hype, no renewable technology has been able
| to supply a growing electrical demand anywhere in the
| world. Every example is small, isolated or limited in time.
| Renewables will eventually get there but there are
| countless other things we must solve before that day comes.
|
| Meanwhile, the argument of cost is trotted out without ever
| considering the full impacts of climate change on the flip
| side.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Complete failure to answer the question of who is paying
| for the nuclear power plant.
| mattwest wrote:
| Both mine and rayiner's commentary wasn't focused only on
| nuclear, but rather the harebrained and unrealistic
| doomscape narrative coming out of the West. When did it
| become so unpopular to point out what is most likely to
| happen? Because if we're placing bets, I'm gonna put my
| money on the developing nations not giving a flying F about
| emissions. Therefore, we need to think like realists and
| instead of idealists.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| So you want your government to subsidize nuclear energy
| in other countries?
| lost_tourist wrote:
| IF we don't choose to build the expensive ones we'll never
| learn how to make cheaper ones, it is the cycle of every
| technology. Nuke development in the West has been stymied
| for generations by pearl clutchers.
| linhns wrote:
| > ruinously expensive You just disqualified yourself from
| any argument there. Nuclear power is the cheapest and most
| efficient form that we have ever found. Yes, the upfront
| cost may be huge but loans can help with that
| olddustytrail wrote:
| You really have no idea of costs. Nuclear is by far the
| most expensive. Well, ok, gas became equally expensive
| with the Ukraine war but it had to quadruple in price to
| get there.
| thehappypm wrote:
| If you ignore all the costs, yes, the costs are low.
| 7speter wrote:
| I don't know if all you wrote about is going to be a problem
| in the way you see it. The developing world has
| jumped/skipped some of the development the west/rich nations
| experienced and just adapted the latest technology.
|
| A good example of this is communication technology. In
| wealthy nations, there was all of this wired infrastructure
| put in place since the advent of the telegraph. In developing
| nations, they just skipped all of that and most people have
| cellphones. Maybe not iphones or even smartphones, but the
| banks they used developed robust texting protocols, from what
| I've read and heard about, where people could do banking
| transactions from something like those old nokia dumbphones.
|
| A lot of these developing countries rely on China, maybe to
| the wests collective chagrin, and China has invested heavily
| in rail infrastructure in a lot of these countries, and,
| Chinese auto manufacturers are already producing tons of
| electric vehicles. Guess whose car companies are building
| auto factories in a lot of the developing world? And though
| they may not meet the safety and quality standards of wealthy
| countries, people in developing countries are just happy to
| get places quicker than by foot. I may not have listed
| everything that emits greenhouse gases and a suitable
| replacement but normalizing mass transit (I forgot to mention
| the electric buses I've read these developing countries are
| either ordering from china or building at home in Chinese
| factories), but these two... industries make up a significant
| chunk of problematic emissions.
|
| What I think we may see in the west is active resistance to
| adapting new energy and normalizing greener behavior because
| of things like American exceptionalism. Also, these
| technologies are expensive to buy for many people even in the
| west (right, not most people here on hackernews), and its
| going to be prohibitively expensive for people in old housing
| stock to upgrade their property and municipalities to upgrade
| infrastructure. Tax rebates on $35,000 electric cars and heat
| pumps aren't going to mean much to people relying on older
| family members for a roof over their head and can't find
| jobs, especially if this whole ai thing takes off. There's
| also significant and continual pushback from an people who
| seem determined to trash electric cars and such, and thats
| exacerbated by corporations acting bad faith to maximize
| profit (high efficiency appliances that barely make it
| through their standard warranty terms and subscription based
| car features come to mind.
|
| So yeah, I think the developing world might be fine but its
| the wealthy nations who are going to screw themselves (and
| because of the US' voracious consumption if everything), and
| maybe the rest of the world regardless of what steps the
| developing world takes.
| [deleted]
| the88doctor wrote:
| "Helped shape" != "Dictated". It makes perfect sense to have
| industry members be a part of discussions about regulations and
| problems related to their industry. Industry members shouldn't be
| able to dictate the outcomes of those discussions, but they
| should certainly be able to participate in them.
| marricks wrote:
| I don't think is one of those cases where it's helpful to have
| everyone "have a seat at the table."
|
| The oil industry would make more money than anyone else at that
| table and have outsized influence.
|
| They also have a history of misleading the public and outright
| lying about climate change.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| I think Big Oil is less Big Oil than it really is Big Energy.
|
| Big Energy has the massive capital to deploy for green energy
| solutions that are viable and will provide a renewable path
| forward off of more polluting or non-renewable sources. Big
| Energy's product of choice is mainly petroleum derived currently.
| Due to sourcing and limitations though, this is a mostly finite
| resource that they would love to replace for more profit.
|
| Profit will drive them to new sources. When you see Big Energy
| actually moving to these new sources at the mega-industrial scale
| and not PoCs, prototypes, but deploying tens of billions of
| dollars, is when the true revolution will happen.
|
| If they are funding Stanford and other parts of Academia, then
| that is a good thing.
| boringg wrote:
| Stanford really taking a reputational hit these days. That's some
| shady business that.
| foobiekr wrote:
| Maybe Stanford was never really what their very active
| reputation management facility was pushing the last few
| facades? The school basically rode the Silicon Valley wave.
| phkahler wrote:
| Nah. Funding research to show your business isn't a problem is
| shady. Funding research to solve the problem could be a good
| thing, depending what the find.
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| Trusting the results is basically impossible now though. Even
| if they're solution focused, you don't know if they were
| adjusted in scale.
| civilized wrote:
| I'm not sure how mad to be about this. Honestly, at the moment I
| kinda think it's a good thing on balance.
|
| I believe climate change is a huge, urgent concern. And I think
| it would be hugely helpful to have carbon removal technology in
| our risk mitigation portfolio. If fossil fuel companies, out of
| self-interest, want to support a legitimate research institution
| doing that, I'm not sure I should complain.
|
| If Stanford starts spouting propaganda that we can procrastinate
| on getting off of fossil fuels because their carbon removal
| technology will solve everything, I will definitely condemn them
| mercilessly. I assume the fossil fuel companies are already
| spouting such propaganda or funding someone to do so, since
| they've been spouting anti-climate risk mitigation propaganda for
| decades, and I am already condemning them mercilessly for that
| anyway.
|
| I actually think carbon removal could spur renewables development
| because in theory it's a flexible sink for spare power. Set up a
| CO2 removal station in the desert, power it with a few square
| miles of solar panels, and run it when the sun shines. We could
| get a lot of demand for solar panels out of this, and that will
| encourage the further development of commercial scaling up. And
| the more renewables scale up, the more I think fossil fuels will
| be squeezed out of existence because they won't be able to
| compete on price.
|
| EDIT: I am open to the possibility that this is completely
| unrealistic and is just another distraction from the fossil fuel
| industry. But the arguments need to be made on technical grounds
| by knowledgeable people. Here is an interview by an expert making
| that argument: https://www.protocol.com/climate/carbon-dioxide-
| removal-cost...
|
| > Yet ambition and momentum may not be enough to reach that
| milestone, according to Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer
| with MIT's Energy Initiative. He's been studying carbon capture
| for over 30 years (even writing a book about it in 2018) and is
| more skeptical given the capital costs to build CDR plants and
| the enormous amount of energy they need to run. He sat down with
| Protocol to talk about why he thinks $100 per ton is "pure
| fantasy."
|
| By the way, I really liked this quote, and I wish all the "we
| just need to"-ers would read it:
|
| > When people think things are too easy, they won't address the
| hard decisions, even though those hard decisions may end up with
| a better solution. At this point, I don't know if liming the
| ocean is a great idea or not, but it has a lot of potential, and
| we have to look at things like that if we want to get to net
| zero. And people say capturing carbon dioxide from the air for
| $100 per ton will get us to net zero. But if it's a fantasy, it's
| not going to get us there.
| myrmidon wrote:
| I'm highly sceptical regarding ALL CO2 removal schemes that
| don't operate directly at a CO2 source, because I see
| absolutely NO WAY how they could ever be made cost effective:
|
| CO2 concentration in air is less than 1g/m^3, meaning that you
| would have to pump like 10000 m^3 of air through your apparatus
| just to remove the CO2 from a single car travelling ~100km.
|
| And this assumes 100% extraction efficiency which is not
| realistic at all.
|
| So any climate plan that relies on large-scale CO2 removal from
| atmospheric air is probably a complete SCAM.
|
| Also compare the cost difference between reducing emissions at
| the source by electrifying a vehicle with the effort required
| of extracting the CO2 from the air-- it is COMPLETELY obvious
| to me that even spending a dollar on CO2 removal is absolute
| LUNACY until all the cheap and easy options of reducing
| emissions have been exhausted.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| > So any climate plan that relies on large-scale CO2 removal
| from atmospheric air is probably a complete SCAM.
|
| The "scam" language is interesting to me.
|
| I often run into people who seem to think that advocates of
| carbon capture technology are somehow being intellectually
| dishonest and are not serious about climate change.
|
| In fact I think there are a lot of people who are interested
| in carbon capture tech who just keep an open mind about it.
| Not all scientific advances are obvious early on.
|
| I think we should avoid assuming that people who are
| promoting carbon capture research are speaking in bad faith.
| There are lots of people who genuinely believe the tech may
| mature to a point it is useful to the fight against climate
| change.
|
| Just because the fossil fuel industry promotes it doesnt mean
| that everyone who promotes it is a shill for the fossil fuel
| industry.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Trees don't pump the air through their leaves, they let CO2
| diffuse and blow in the wind.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Sure, but the amount of CO2 absorbed by a tree is measured
| in grams per day, which isn't really enough to even
| realistically offset the devices own carbon footprint, let
| alone start tackling other co2 sources.
| zamfi wrote:
| Look, I think direct air capture (DAC) is as much "not the
| solution" as the next guy, but this kind of black-and-white
| thinking has no place in climate change mitigation.
|
| Right now, DAC costs about $250-500/ton. The average
| passenger vehicle in the US emits 4.6 tons of CO2/year. You
| say it's not cost-effective but you could literally charge
| every passenger vehicle user in the US $1-2000/year and use
| it for capture and eliminate the single largest source. That
| is the same order of magnitude as vehicle registration fees
| (though of course you'd want to make such a tax progressive,
| etc.), at least in California.
|
| More importantly, DAC provides a major price signal for the
| cost of carbon emissions: if it costs $250/ton to get CO2 out
| of the atmosphere, it starts to make more sense to charge
| emitters $250/ton in advance to remove it -- and if we
| implemented such a system, the market would likely respond
| very quickly with rapid reductions in carbon emissions. Oil
| and gas companies think it's the solution? Great, they can
| pay $250/ton for it.
|
| Instead we're selling everyone individual shame about what
| are really societal decisions, telling them not to drive as
| much, be too cold/hot at home, and eat less beef -- while
| letting producers largely off the hook. That's the real
| lunacy here.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| > this kind of black-and-white thinking has no place in
| climate change mitigation.
|
| This is not black-and-white thinking. He is pointing out
| that infeasible miracle cures are not the solution.
|
| We need to focus on realistic possibilities, not Elon-Musk
| jesustech.
| zamfi wrote:
| No one thinks infeasible miracle cures are the solution,
| so he's doing much more than "pointing that out": he's
| making an argument about the infeasibility of carbon
| capture.
|
| In particular, he's saying it's impossible to capture
| enough carbon at scale in a cost-effective manner, so
| therefore we should not even be looking at this option
| until we've exhausted the alternatives. But he's wrong:
| it's not impossible, it's merely expensive, and anyway we
| should be _pursuing all possible remedies in parallel_ ,
| not dismissing something as infeasible because someone's
| armchair analysis makes it look like a scam to them.
|
| What we need are people trying both likely and unlikely
| solutions, not knee-jerk gatekeeping from randoms on the
| internet.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > you could literally charge every passenger vehicle user
| in the US $1-2000/year
|
| Politically (and practically) infeasible. Most likely it
| would be done as a fuel tax, but it would need to be in the
| ballpark of $3/gallon which would be suicide for the
| politicans who impose it and unaffordable to many of the
| people who would be paying for it. A tax that can't be paid
| can't fund anything.
| zamfi wrote:
| Of course a literal tax is politically infeasible, not
| least because we're not at all serious about actually
| internalizing the currently-external cost of carbon.
|
| But it's a mistake to consider a tax as _something we can
| 't afford_ because we are already incurring this tax bill
| by emitting the carbon in the first place. Whether we pay
| now to reduce the carbon or later to reduce the carbon
| and mitigate impacts, we will all be paying.
|
| And I agree: imposing this tax today as a flat "usage"
| tax would be political suicide, but we have many levers
| that are far more equitable -- tax-and-dividend programs
| in particular have a lot of history.
| [deleted]
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "It would be hugely helpful to have carbon removal technology
| in our climate change portfolio"
|
| Planting trees and establishing more forests is a already
| working technology with lots of other nice side effects, while
| I see the "artificial carbon removal" tech often just used as a
| excuse to not do anything now at all and wait for the magic
| game changer.
|
| "Set up a CO2 removal station in the desert, power it with a
| few square miles of solar panels, and run it when the sun
| shines."
|
| And I totally like anything related to this, but as long as we
| build new coal plants, building this would be just symbolic.
|
| So first I would use the desert solar power for actually
| powering the grid, removing the need for coal.
| civilized wrote:
| Regarding the trees, I hope they research that claim!
|
| Regarding the concept that it's a distraction, I think that's
| folk behavioral psychology with an unhealthy dash of
| moralism. It needs to be substantiated with evidence before I
| take it seriously. We are talking about a real carbon
| mitigation research avenue that could have real benefits.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| You mean you want quotes of people, who say climate change
| is not so bad, because we (will) have co2 removal tech?
| civilized wrote:
| I want evidence that there are people who wave away
| climate change because of proposed future CO2 removal
| tech, who would _not_ wave away climate change if we
| stopped all research on CO2 removal tech.
|
| I'm not trying to impose an impossible standard here. If
| you can show examples of something like this happening in
| contexts other than climate change, I'm open to that.
| What I don't accept is mere folk behavioral psychology
| speculation driving what an entire civilization does to
| mitigate a massive risk.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| You really have not heard those people? Lucky you.
| Anecdotically there are plenty of them, and official
| sources (like politicians) are of course more careful in
| their wording, but the sentiment is exactly this.
|
| "No real need to change the gasoline cars, as we will
| have CO2 removal."
|
| I can probably dig up some ugly quotes, if you like. But
| those are not really my circles so I have nothing at
| hand.
|
| (I should probably add, that I am from germany and loud
| cars and the making of them are important here. But I
| heard the same from US politicians)
|
| "What I don't accept is mere folk behavioral psychology
| speculation driving what an entire civilization does to
| mitigate a massive risk. "
|
| Well, how exactly could technical CO2 removal ever work?
|
| We burn stuff for energy and then need even more energy
| to recapture the side products?
|
| How would this be powered?
|
| By the sun?
|
| Solar panels still needs to be manufactured and deployed.
|
| So if we would have all energy generation by regenerative
| sources AND we have overcapacity - then we could also
| extract some of the old released CO2, true, but have you
| done some calculations, how much area you would need, to
| power a significant amount of CO2 removal?
|
| Lot's of it.
|
| Forests on the other hand grow and expand by themself,
| once established and undisturbed, that's the beauty of
| them. They also help stabilizing local climate. And the
| real problem of climate change for lots of people will be
| desertification. So more Forests reduce CO2 AND provide
| actual better living conditions for the people affected.
| A lone symbolic CO2 removal on the other hand is really
| limited in its usefulness, while the coal plants are
| burning happily.
| civilized wrote:
| All I'm saying is that the technical debate between these
| different methodologies is what matters. If we agree on
| that, I have no dispute with you. I don't know what
| carbon capture method is best or how big of an impact
| carbon capture can have. I would like to see the
| research, which is what the article is about.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "I would like to see the research, which is what the
| article is about."
|
| The article is about how big oil changed Standford's
| research focus. And their interest is simply to leave
| everything as it is and stall any further oil
| limitations, so they can profit, like they used to,
| without having to fundamentally change.
|
| But yes, they are totally free to fund research that is
| in their interest and if they happen to find a magic
| solution acceptable to society, I am thrilled. I am just
| very sceptical that this is what will happen. I rather
| suspect it will be symbolism used by willing populistic
| politicians, to block uncomforthable legislation or stall
| it completely.
|
| I just see no technical ground for this to really work,
| other than wishful thinking. And if the latter is the
| base, then it won't work, no matter how millions you
| spend on it.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Different areas have different power availability from
| different sources at different times of the year. We have
| limited capacity to move and store that energy.
|
| If the price of re-extracting released carbon is baked
| into into burning fossil fuels, then carbon capture will
| only be viable in places where energy is cheap, such as
| places with good conditions for solar, wind or hydro.
|
| The economic viability of carbon capture is thus entirely
| dependent on the quality of the regulatory framework
| around carbon emissions. If we don't have that, then any
| advances in carbon capture technology won't matter. If we
| do have that, then giving the carbon capture industry a
| bit of a headstart with research will make the necessary
| overall emissions targets we need easier to reach.
|
| So while carbon capture is indeed touted as an excuse to
| avoid those regulations by opportunistic politicians,
| those politicians would find some other excuse to oppose
| those regulations. So don't let them lead you think that
| carbon capture isn't an important part of the solution
| that is being developed by people who care deeply and
| climate change.
|
| We've waited far to long already and simply can't afford
| to ignore any part of the solution that can help reduce
| total emissions faster.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "We've waited far to long already and simply can't afford
| to ignore any part of the solution that can help reduce
| total emissions faster. "
|
| Totally agree. No dogmatic framework is helpful, that
| opposes solutions out of principle. I hope I am not doing
| that.
|
| It is just, that ressources are limited.
|
| Any solar, wind or water plant, that connects to the grid
| is helping. Likely also every nuclear reactor.
|
| But the carbon capture solution I see not really helping,
| as long as coal plants are being build and are proposed
| by the exact kind of people, who said before that it is
| all not so bad and economy growth is always more
| important.
|
| " So don't let them lead you think that carbon capture
| isn't an important part of the solution that is being
| developed by people who care deeply and climate change."
|
| With what I know, I sadly really don't see it as part of
| the solution, but part of the distraction, part of the
| problem.
|
| In germany the car lobby recently achieved, that the ban
| on new ICE cars in 2035 was in effect negated, because
| cars with E-Fuels should obviously excempt. Except that
| cars that can run with E-Fuels can also run with normal
| fuels and E-Fuels make no sense economically, so they
| already demanded for massive state subventioning of the
| concept. Spend lots of energy to generate a bit of fuel
| to continue the big roar of their loud engines. So all
| just fake. And those are the exact same people who lobby
| for the concept of carbon capture. Lot's of politicial
| "activism" to effectivly change nothing, except on paper.
|
| So to repeat myself, I am not against carbon sequestering
| by principle.
|
| I just think focussing on it _now_ is just distracting
| from the real solutions needed now.
|
| Once we stopped the last coal plant - then we can talk
| about spending surplus energy to capture existing CO2.
| Not before. And it is still a long way to get there.
| myrmidon wrote:
| Planting trees is not really viable to deal with CO2
| emissions on any significant scale.
|
| Assuming a tree absorbs around 20kg of CO2/year, you'd need
| to plant 250 trees per year (!!) for every single passenger
| vehicle (~5tons of CO2/year).
|
| And the problem does not stop there-- these numbers only work
| for the first 20 or so years of tree growth, and afterwards
| you have to seal you trees (under high pressure to turn them
| into hydrocarbons? :P) or plant even more trees to compensate
| for older trees decomposing (releasing CO2).
| peteradio wrote:
| Kind of sounds amazing if we could pull it off (of course
| we can't) but imagine a world where there is just too much
| wood (woodworkers be salivating) and there are massive
| jungles everywhere we could fit one.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "imagine a world where there is just too much wood
| (woodworkers be salivating) and there are massive jungles
| everywhere we could fit one."
|
| That's how the world looked like, before humans chopped
| or burned them down and let cattle, goats and sheep
| prevented new forests from growing again.
|
| Reforesting at least parts of that back, would capture
| significant amounts of CO2. No matter that a old tree
| composes at some point, because at the same time another
| tree growing where the old one stood, will compensate
| that.
| peteradio wrote:
| What regions of the world are we talking about? Northern
| Africa? South America?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| All of them?
|
| Except the iciest colds in the north and most arid
| deserts, forests used to be the norm.
|
| edit: of course not every land was covered by forests,
| prairie also existed natural, but forests were a lot more
| common, than they are today.
| peteradio wrote:
| I guess I was unaware, I'd thought forests in North
| America were more or less at par with the last few
| millennia.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| It has been demonstrated repeatedly that the source of funding
| does implicitly bias research results.
|
| But the bigger effect is the appearance of working on the
| solution is often used to prevent real mitigation efforts that
| are here and now, such as higher costs for CO2 emissions,
| reforming the carbon trading scheme, and investing in moving to
| more use of green electricity.
|
| We spend on the order of $900B a year on the military. Imagine
| if $100B a year, every year, was spent instead on beefing up
| the power grid, investing in efficient long-haul power
| distribution, investing even more in solar/wind/nukes. With
| less need to strong arm the world to ensure access to oil, it
| could pay for itself in less military intervention. Obviously,
| there are many political reasons why even $1 reduction in the
| military budget is difficult to accomplish, but that is only an
| indication of how much the government is beholden to the
| military/industrial complex.
| rayiner wrote:
| We don't need to strong arm the world to access oil, we are a
| net exporter of oil. There's lots of bad things to say about
| our foreign policy, but the idea that it's about oil should
| have died with the Iraq War (where we spent trillions of
| dollars but didn't get any oil).
| phonescreen_man wrote:
| You think the US bush and Bush senior administration would
| of given a thought about Iraq if it wasn't an oil producing
| resource?
| rayiner wrote:
| I didn't back in 2003 when I was in the anti-war
| minority. But seeing how many of those same people just
| became democrats in the last 20 years, and are now
| talking about how we need to stay in Afghanistan or
| intervene in Ukraine, I was wrong. We never got any oil
| from Iraq because it was never about the oil. It was
| about remaking the world in America's image. We were in
| Iraq for the same reason ISIS was in Syria. We are trying
| to establish our version of the Caliphate, except with
| liberal democracy and capitalism instead of Islam.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| That is a very recent phenomenon. From 1958 until 2019 the
| US imported more than it exported, including during the
| Iraq War (both of them).
|
| https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-
| facts/imports-...
|
| That could flip at any moment based on the price of
| imported oil vs the cost of domestic production. The US is
| still very much "investing" in the military to ensure a
| stable source of energy (as well as other national
| interests).
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The article is interesting but technically weak. If we focus on
| the process of generating a stream of pure CO2 from the
| atmosphere (where CO2 is at ~420 parts per million at present),
| things become a bit more clear.
|
| Note first that the global biosphere is capturing CO2 into
| organic molecules at about 15 times the rate that fossil fuel
| consumption dumps geologically stable carbon deposits into the
| atmosphere. However, almost all of this biological carbon is
| respired back into the atmosphere by microbes, fungi, insects and
| animals who use the material as a food source. The reason
| atmospheric CO2 is rising is that the biosphere doesn't have the
| capacity to absorb the added CO2. Keep in mind that plant growth
| is a quite slow process compared to industrial activity.
|
| So let's say we generate a stream of pure CO2 from the atmosphere
| - but how? If we got the electricity to do this (for pumping air
| over CO2 filters etc.) from fossil fuels, it's a futile cycle.
| The energy source has to be fossil-free for this to make sense as
| a CO2 extraction process.
|
| Now, the oil industry has mostly been using their CO2 streams for
| enhanced oilfield recovery, i.e. they pump the CO2 down into the
| wells and it comes back out carrying the dregs of the oil with
| it. When processed into fuel, the injected CO2 goes back into the
| atmosphere.
|
| Another use of a pure CO2 stream is to jack greenhouse CO2 up to
| ~1000 ppm, which has a significant effect on plant growth rates
| under controlled nutrient conditions. Most of the CO2 is released
| back into the atmosphere as well.
|
| In terms of storing the CO2 in some stable form, this is rather
| energy-intensive. The two options that make the most sense are
| carbon fiber materials and diamond, the latter being harder to
| make (but very cool and sci-fi, enter the Diamond Age). Other
| options like making limestone (CaCO3) are tricky (where do you
| get all the calcium from). These are the only long-term removal
| options that make sense.
|
| Claims that pumping CO2 down wells is a good idea for long-term
| storage are fraudulent. Claims that coal can be burned and used
| for electricity while capturing all the CO2 by the above process
| are fraudulent. The DOE public-private programs like FutureGen
| that promoted this were fraudulent, to the tune of billions of
| dollars of fraud.
|
| The other option for captured CO2 is to use it make methane and
| jet fuel, for long-distance air travel, rocketry, maybe global
| shipping. Here we have zero effect on atmospheric CO2 content as
| what comes out goes back in. This is comparable to biosphere
| activity, i.e. it's steady-state. Costs for this process might be
| 10X that for current fossil fuel production, but it's the long-
| term fuel solution. Given the high costs, electric vehicles form
| most local transportation will be far more efficient.
|
| I think that covers all the technological bases, anyway.
| mjhay wrote:
| Is anyone else not seeing the article text? (Firefox fwiw)
| contemporary343 wrote:
| There is a potentially valid criticism here since this is
| ultimately about _what_ the school (with its tremendous
| resources) is choosing to focus its efforts on. Stanford 's
| previous global climate and energy project was famously funded by
| oil companies (though I suspect this was mostly a PR thing for
| them in previous decades), so this is not surprising. But should
| their priorities be those of the school?
|
| Also some interesting things happening behind the scenes where
| they are clearly keeping faculty from certain 'troublesome'
| departments out of the process.. but that's not really unusual in
| the university context.
|
| On the flip side, I think folks are also over-estimating the
| importance of corporate sources of funding here. The real reason
| for this focus is on government funding and resources on this
| topic that the school will want to tap into.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| reading tea-leaves -- there is a behind-the-scenes split on how
| to proceed, on several fronts. The EU and India proposed
| directly to include IPCC language about "transitioning to 100%
| non-fossil fuel" and the USA + friends cancelled that in
| committee. While lots of ordinary educated people support
| energy change, you can see from the rhetoric and the stalling
| that what that "change" is, is not agreed upon. Stanford
| University, with regular funding from the Oil and Gas giants,
| are in a position to effect the spin and secrecy around these
| very public changes.
|
| For example in 2023, the long-term investment and planning to
| replace Soviet-era oil and gas infrastructure in the Baltics
| with USA led oil and gas infrastructure in the Baltics is not
| publicly discussed; plans for control of shipping channels in
| the Arctic Circle area are not publicly discussed in the USA;
| changes to the USA grid to accomodate plural energy sources are
| not publicly discussed. An oil and gas-funded institute at
| Stanford is in a position to affect all of those. Multiple
| former US State Department executive leaders are active at
| Stanford right now.
| perihelions wrote:
| https://archive.ph/m5Ebq
| Lammy wrote:
| Fun fact: Josiah Stanford was the first person to establish
| commercial petroleum production in California:
| http://www.sjvgeology.org/old_stuff/tunnels.html
| godelski wrote:
| Can we stop the anti-sequestration movement? Let's just think
| about it for a second. How do we get to net zero if we account
| for lifetime emissions of energy sources? Even solar has lifetime
| emissions. You have to remove it from the atmosphere. (We'll
| ignore processes that can't be decarbonized, but that just adds
| to the problem)
|
| So what do we know? We know that forests are hard to plant and
| that their early lifecycle is a carbon source. Still, we should
| plant trees. Ignoring this, US citizens alone would need to plant
| 500 trees per year to offset their current footprints[0]. That's
| 165 billion trees a year, and a densely packed forest has 4-6
| sqft per tree. The US has just over a trillion square feet. You
| do the math. (even dramatic reductions in footprints don't solve
| this problem)
|
| Okay, so trees aren't enough. Luckily we know land management is
| one of the best carbon sink techniques available. But we run into
| a similar problem, just with more efficiency than above. So what
| is the result? We have to use a variety of techniques, both
| natural and artificial, to scrub carbon from the air. Not to
| reach net negative (which should really be our goal), but just to
| even reach net zero! Yes, big oil is going to fund this. Why?
| Because when carbon taxes come in, they can keep their plants up
| by scrubbing a percentage of their carbon to match that tax.
| (They also want PR and this is cheap PR) If they somehow could
| scrub all the carbon (they won't), then what do we care? The goal
| is about carbon emissions, not source of energy. I just don't see
| them surviving, but of course they're going to try to hold on as
| long as they can instead of adapting and surviving. Their loss.
|
| [0] https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/reduce-
| co2-...
| stainablesteel wrote:
| imo, as a global priority, reducing carbon seems like it should
| be a much lower priority compared to how hard its pushed.
|
| incoming nuclear fusion would alleviate a ton of our carbon
| issues
|
| if we use info from this wonderfully fleshed out cost-benefit
| analysis by bjorn lomborg i bet we could get the best of value
| out of our current fossil fuels while not impoverishing our
| children and grandchildren:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/1vklbRo.png
| godelski wrote:
| > reducing carbon seems like it should be a much lower
| priority compared to how hard its pushed
|
| I'm not sure what you mean. The last 50 years (and even 5)
| have been far more bark than bite.
|
| > incoming nuclear fusion would alleviate a ton of our carbon
| issues
|
| A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I worked on
| nuclear in a previous career and still have friends there,
| including fusion (including the big labs). Being bullish,
| fusion net gain is still 10 years away. It'll take decades to
| add to the energy portfolio after that. The case for fusion
| is worse than the case for fission. We should work on both,
| but we can't hold out for future technologies (we can say the
| same about storage). We needed to act decades ago, pushing it
| off by a few more decades is not going to solve the issue, it
| is repeating the same mistakes.
|
| > fleshed out cost-benefit analysis
|
| I wouldn't trust any of these. Zero of them. You need to have
| a pretty good understanding of these systems (highly complex)
| to even understand if the analyses are good. Every single one
| has a bias and is highly politicized. The more politicized a
| topic is, the higher level of expertise you need to
| understand who is telling the truth (politicization adds
| large amounts of noise).
|
| > Bjorn Lomborg
|
| Who is a political scientist. He isn't a climate scientist,
| nor even a scientist. Here's a rather well known scientist,
| Stefan Rahmstorf (studies physics of oceans) discussing
| Bjorn[0]. You can check Bjorn's scholar page[1] to even
| verify that he's not doing actual science bust just writing
| opinions with no supporting evidence. Please stop supporting
| hacks.
|
| [0] https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/08/bj
| orn...
|
| [1]
| https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=HUMF5c0AAAAJ
| stainablesteel wrote:
| fusion being decades away isn't a problem, we have time.
|
| the only things in that cost benefit analysis are
| politicized are what people are currently pushing en masse,
| what he points out doesn't offer any benefit from a cost
| perspective. plus you contradict yourself, you say it needs
| a complex understanding but you dismiss it before analyzing
| it yourself, he's got books and scientific publications on
| this, go check for yourself.
|
| all of his strongest suggestions are about preserving
| biodiversity, curing disease, technological improvements,
| trade restrictions, and contraception. Where are you
| getting the politicized part?
|
| and he has a background in political science and is doing
| macroeconomic research, he's not claiming to have a cure
| for temperature increases because he works off the IPCC's
| data, which is the known standard for climate science. he's
| giving simple _policy_ (oh look political science, its
| almost like this is a multifaceted conversation, are you
| trying to shut it down like people did with "the science"
| over covid?) implementations that can have massive net
| benefits.
|
| he's not a "hack" (insults are at the bottom of the
| hierarchy of disagreement, if you want a reason to dismiss
| someone's opinions its that they do this). he's gone on
| tons of podcasts having open discussions about these
| things, if Stefan Rahmstorf can hold an actual discussion
| with him I'd love to see it.
|
| your link doesn't work. But if all Stefan has it petty
| insults like calling him a "hack" then I'd guess he's not
| open to any kind of discussion, which is a red flag.
| runarberg wrote:
| If we don't reduce carbon emissions--heck if we don't stop
| carbon emissions--there will be no future for our children
| and grandchildren to either prosper or impoverish in. Not
| reducing carbon means we are all going to die. The earth will
| heat 4-5 degrees. Human societies will not function as we
| know them today, governments will break down, wars will be
| fought, famines will linger. However much money fossil fuel
| gives us today will have no effect on that future, as we will
| all be dead.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| the 4-5C model is a fraudulent model that's been pushed for
| political agendas, it mistakes the temperature changes that
| happen as distance from the equator increases.
|
| Realistically, the world is going to see a 1.5-1.9C
| increase by 2100. These are the IPCC's current projections,
| which is the most well known standard.
|
| everything you say is the dogma of alarmists, its not that
| i don't think you care about this, I'm certain that you do,
| but you're working off incorrect information and its doing
| more harm than good.
|
| some of the worst implications will be a biodiversity loss
| in places near the equator, and there is basically not much
| we can do to stop it. although hopefully i'm wrong as
| there's a lot of ecological folk trying to remediate future
| problems in this area.
|
| the worst thing we can do to ourselves as a society is
| panic and turn all of our attention towards climate-based
| dogma. europe did this and russia found it as a reason to
| attack ukraine. in reality, we have multiple priorities
| that need to be sorted. climate is on there but its not the
| only one. its important to keep people wealthy enough to
| care about the climate, because otherwise they burn fuel
| sources that are worse for it, ie wood and coal. and we
| also need global societies to develop
| scientifically/economically so we can achieve nuclear
| fusion faster for the very goal that you're concerned
| about.
|
| to summarize a solid policy-based strategy, and complex-web
| of problems concept to solve our climate problem is that:
|
| increase in global trade -> leads to -> increase in
| economic prosperity -> leads to -> increase in scientific
| development -> leads to -> faster development of fusion
|
| now the economic prosperity part isn't simple because there
| are foreign governments that are showing themselves to be
| hostile towards western institutions and operations, taking
| advantage of their own development to act maliciously. this
| isn't great as it makes us divert resources away from these
| important problems. but if we only focus on the climate the
| west will be eaten up by someone who doesn't care about it
| at all.
| runarberg wrote:
| > the worst thing we can do to ourselves as a society is
| panic and turn all of our attention towards climate-based
| dogma.
|
| We've tried doing nothing for a decade and see where that
| has brought us. I say the strategy of remaining calm has
| failed, I say it is past time for us to panic and scream
| as if we are all going to die, because we are.
|
| I know I am a climate doomer, why wouldn't I be? I've
| been complaining about climate change since I was a
| teenager, waiting for the governments to stop it, only to
| realize they value corporate profits over, you know, our
| climate, and worse, my life. We are all doomed, and we
| are all going to die now.
|
| Realistically we are only going to see 1.5deg if we take
| immediate action now! This means close all fossil fuel
| plants, close all highways, shut down airports, close all
| cement factories, stop producing chemical fertilizers,
| etc. Realistically 4-5deg is a business as usual, that is
| we enact no climate policies other than existing ones,
| where governments promise and then fail to deliver.
| Realistically 4-5deg is the most plausible option.
| Realistically a realistic climate action could bring us
| down to 2-3deg. However given how governments have acted
| so far, I see no reason but to panic and scream, we are
| all going to die in a 4-5deg inferno.
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