[HN Gopher] Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be caus...
___________________________________________________________________
Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships may be causing rising sea
temperatures
Author : machdiamonds
Score : 383 points
Date : 2023-08-05 01:26 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| psychphysic wrote:
| Whoopsie daisy.
|
| Cold acidic oceans, or warm sulphur free ones?
| rplst8 wrote:
| The fact that the loss of particulate matter in the atmosphere
| increases warming has been known for at least two decades.
|
| This is not surprising to me. It started years ago when scrubbers
| began to be installed on coal power plants and continued with low
| sulphur diesel requirements that started 15 years ago.
| developer93 wrote:
| Depends on the size of the particle, no? Some sizes can have
| the opposite effect afaik.
| dosenbrot wrote:
| It's off topic, but am I the only one who wanted to press the x
| button in the top left corner to close the window?
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Either the world accepts that nuclear energy along with wind and
| solar is part of the solution to climate change, or we will be
| forced into geoengineering solutions. We may have already reached
| that point.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| We're past the point that nuclear can help.
|
| We broke the planet.
|
| But hey. "Needs more study." and academics are living large,
| unlike the poor billionaires.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| [flagged]
| nequo wrote:
| It came broken in the mail?
| RandomLensman wrote:
| It broke many times throughout its history. There is just
| zero evidence that we cannot adjust, mitigate, prevent
| etc. - otherwise we might as well do nothing because we
| are all doomed anyway.
| nequo wrote:
| I read your comment as meaning that humans are not
| responsible for climate change. But now I think you meant
| that humans may be responsible but they can fix it. Well,
| all I can say is that I hope that they can.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| You say zero evidence. Would you like to review a graph
| of global CO2 emissions over the last 30 years?
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Irrelevant to what humans can do. If anything speaks to
| human geoengineering ability.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Bullshit. It clearly shows humans unwillingness to engage
| with the problem, with no evidence as of yet to support
| the notion that this will change in any meaningful way at
| any arbitrary future date. It certainly does not
| demonstrate any latent ability to curb the problems
| created by elevated greenhouse gas emissions.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| That is just unhappiness with how and when it's tackled
| not that it won't be tackled.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| I mean if you want to proceed from a faith-based position
| that's a personal choice. Personally I'll start believing
| in bigfoot 2 seconds after I see one.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| I have honestly no idea how that relates to my post.
| There are enormous amounts of money flowing into net
| zero, for example. There are people working on fusion,
| there is more thought given to geoengineering - to name
| just a couple of things.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| We've been 20 years away from fusion for 80 years now.
|
| Maybe someday, sure. But saying fusion is going to save
| us is foolish. We can't wait that long
| saltymug76 wrote:
| Don't feed the shill/troll people.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| In order to break the planet a lot more is necessary. We
| created some problems but the planet is far from broken.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| The planet will be fine. People, animals, plants in many
| countries will be fucked though.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| I don't share that pessimistic outlook. Lots of things
| already happening.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| This is defeatist and also not true. We adopt nuclear, invest
| in carbon capture technologies, and employ geoengineering
| strategies as needed until fusion comes online. This is a
| solvable technical problem with significant political
| hurdles.
| teamonkey wrote:
| > adopt nuclear
|
| Not possible in the timescales required.
|
| > carbon capture technologies
|
| Don't exist.
|
| > geoengineering strategies
|
| Unproven and potentially catastrophic.
| adrianN wrote:
| There is no reason to believe that fusion power will be
| cheap.
| czbond wrote:
| Thank you for being optimistic and realistic concurrently.
| We need more people to have such approaches to the topic.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Optimism != realistic.
|
| Optimism is what got us in this mess.
| jaggederest wrote:
| Nuclear is dead, it's better to install 10x as much solar
| and batteries right now. "Carbon capture" is also highly
| dubious. Direct air capture is the only realistic version
| and it'll take a significant portion of world GDP (8% to
| 20%) on an ongoing basis, which we are not spending. I'll
| keep you posted when that changes. Fusion is not coming
| online in our lifetimes.
|
| We're not headed for +8C, but we're never going to see +1C
| or below again in our lifetimes. Maybe in the 2300s they'll
| have it under control.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Dude. Nuclear takes decades to build, and that's IF you can
| even build it. There's zero appetite for it in the US or
| even formerly nuclear happy Europe. We're literally
| decommissioning more reactors than we build.
|
| Carbon capture doesn't work. Even if you did manage to
| capture it from a coal plant, that's not enough. You have
| to suck it from the air, and a scalable technology doesn't
| exist, and even if it did, we'd need massive amounts of
| power to do it, because you're literally up against the
| second law of thermodynamics.
|
| And even if you did have all that stuff today, you'd have
| to deploy it faster than exponential growth!
|
| I'm aorry, but you can't just yell, "SCIENCE!" and expect
| it work. It ain't magic, and the clock has expired. If we
| listened 50 years ago, and started then, yeah, maybe we'd
| be in a fighting chance. It's sure as hell like we didn't
| know that check was coming due. Now acting like we can just
| reverse a century and a half of exponential growth in a
| weekend is naive at best, and "thoughts and prayers" level
| of "fuck you" at worst.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| Better to do something (build nuclear) than do nothing
| (cry on twitter).
| jonathankoren wrote:
| You should do something that actually has a chance to
| work, rather than feel good about doing something that
| that doesn't.
|
| When your house is on fire, you don't start shopping for
| sprinklers saying, "Good news everyone! The sprinkler
| system will be installed in three weeks!", instead of
| calling the fire department
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| [flagged]
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I mean that seems to be naturally happening anyway? All
| major economies are under replacement rate and China for
| example is on a large downward population trajectory.
| mdekkers wrote:
| Global overpopulation is absolutely a part of the
| equation, and everyone is deeply uncomfortable talking
| about it because there are no palatable solutions to that
| specific problem.
|
| Humans, as a species, exhibit all the damaging properties
| of a cancerous growth, and our habitat can no longer
| support us. As George Carlin said: the planet will be
| fine, it's the humans that are fucked!
| epivosism wrote:
| This seems a bit out of date. I think you need to mention
| how you feel about below replacement TFR in most of the
| world to make this position understandable.
| mdekkers wrote:
| Good point. As per wiki:
|
| > As of 2020, the total fertility rate for the world is
| 2.3. The global TFR has declined rapidly since the 1960s,
| and some forecasters like Sanjeev Sanyal argue that the
| effective global fertility rate will fall below global
| replacement rate, estimated to be 2.3, in the 2020s. This
| would stabilize world population sometime during the
| period 2050-2070. The United Nations predicts that global
| fertility will continue to decline for the remainder of
| this century and reach a below-replacement level of 1.8
| by 2100, and that world population will peak during the
| period 2084-2088.
|
| Whilst there is obviously nuance here, even assuming that
| world population peaks well before 2088, that means we
| still have a lot of growth to support until that time,
| and then we have many generations to go before we see a
| decline to a point where this planet can reasonably be
| expected to sustain us. Do you believe, given the pace of
| change we are seeing in this environments' systems,
| viewed in the context of the actual tangible change we
| are implementing to mitigate the negative impacts to us
| as a species, that there is enough time for that?
|
| EDIT: for some perspective, see also the current
| headcount: https://www.worldometers.info/world-
| population/ and expected future headcount:
| https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-
| populat...
| ido wrote:
| We're already heading towards a peak mid-century and then
| a slow decline of global populations based on existing
| trends.
| mdekkers wrote:
| Correct. As per my edit in my other response in this
| thread, we would still be at 10+ billion in 2100. It
| isn't like "oh, hey, don't worry, it's going down guys!"
| We should absolutely worry.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| The solution is well understood: universal education and
| readily available birth control. It's already working in
| the more developed economies.
| mdekkers wrote:
| Absolutely. Now all we need is politicians and their
| constituents around the globe to get on board with this.
|
| Again with the George Carlin quotes though (watch the
| clip "it's a big club") most governments are not _that_
| interested in a deeply educated general population, _or_
| birth control. Where are we going to get all of our
| obedient little workers from?
|
| So not holding my breath :)
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| That this is a solution remains to be seen. Does this
| result in net negative population growth? The evidence
| seems to suggest it does. Will it result in a sharp
| enough decline in total population numbers fast enough to
| mean anything? That seems unlikely.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Humanity has not "broken" the planet; to argue such is the
| epitome of conceit. We are not special nor powerful.
|
| Humanity is just one of many lifeforms the planet had, has,
| and will have over the course of its vast existence
| transcending any human sense of time.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| We can all take comfort in your wise words that a ball of
| rock will still be here even after the planet has become
| literally unlivable for humans across vast swaths of
| previously populated areas, and the planet violent has
| undergone a completely predictable and preventable
| ecological collapse.
|
| Yes. Very wise.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Based on the tweet (is that what we call them?), wouldn't super
| crappy oil burning power stations be a temporary solution?
|
| What a time to be alive.
| adrianN wrote:
| There are lots of nuclear reactors being built world wide
| currently. The problem is that it takes forever to build
| nuclear reactors and we would need twenty times as much nuclear
| as we have right now just to replace coal. An additional twenty
| times as much as we have now to replace oil. And an additional
| fifteen times as much as we have right now to replace gas.
| Nuclear is not particularly cheap either.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Renewables still have a grid level storage issue. Having
| enough nuclear as a backbone would be the best we can do
| right now until battery tech catches up
| adrianN wrote:
| "Right now" is incompatible with nuclear. It takes at least
| a decade to build a nuclear power plant. By that time we
| can have a lot of hydrogen storage and electrolysis.
| gcoakes wrote:
| Are those real numbers? Also, do you mean additive or
| multiplicative (i.e.: 20 + 20 + 15 vs. 20 * 20 * 15).
| adrianN wrote:
| We have about 2500TWh/a of nuclear worldwide. 42000TWh/a
| coal, 48000TWh/a oil, and 38000TWh/a gas. Give or take a
| few thousand TWh.
| sassy_quat wrote:
| [dead]
| Krssst wrote:
| That's why you build non-dispatchable renewables at the same
| time. NREs can help quickly reduce emissions when there's
| wind/sun, and when nuclear reactors are online you can
| finally bury the coal plants that were running during
| windless nights.
| askvictor wrote:
| Where do you get those numbers from? In terms of total energy
| use, perhaps. But oil accounts for about 3% for electricity
| generation, compared to coal's 36%
| [https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-balances-
| overview/w...]. Most oil is used for transport, so dropping
| that would increase electricity demand, though a lot of that
| doesn't need to be dispatchable, and there might be
| efficiencies gained moving to electric. Similarly with gas
| and heating (gas is used for electricity generation a lot
| more than oil though).
|
| Also, the same site shows nuclear as about 10% of the
| electricity generation mix worldwide; unless there's about 5x
| as much coal being used for steel-making and other non-
| electricity purposes, then the numbers would be around 5x
| instead of 20x.
| adrianN wrote:
| I google for world primary energy use. You're right that
| electrification reduces primary energy use. That's of
| course true for coal and gas as well.
| kouru225 wrote:
| As with all things I feel like a little from column A, a little
| from column B
| bell-cot wrote:
| Quip: But when the patient's temp is high enough, everyone in
| the ER knows that you gotta go straight to the ice-water
| bath.
|
| How many square miles of solar reflector could each Starship
| launch carry to a stable-ish region near the Earth-Sun L1
| point?
| adrianN wrote:
| Reflectors act as solar sails and hence need a fuel supply
| to stay put.
| bell-cot wrote:
| They need active guidance systems. Being solar sails -
| with a competent design, they can be trimmed (small
| portions of the sails moved with electric motors to
| adjust the forces from the sun) for station-keeping.
| ido wrote:
| Why not both?
| rgmerk wrote:
| New nuclear energy, at least in the places where most of the HN
| readership is concentrated, has very little to contribute as an
| incremental solution to climate change.
|
| Now that Vogtle 3 & 4 are complete or almost so, there is
| essentially no new nuclear power plants under construction in
| the United States.
|
| Europe? The long-delayed Flamanville 3 and Hinkley Point C1 and
| C2.
|
| Canada? Nothing.
|
| Australia? Nothing.
|
| There won't be any additional new nuclear plants built in any
| of those regions before 2040 (which is only 17 years away)
|
| We will have to almost completely decarbonize our electricity
| grids by 2035-2040 if the world is going to get net zero by
| 2050 (which is probably not enough to avoid the need for
| geoengineering anyway).
| keepamovin wrote:
| People need to stop over emphasizing the control and effect that
| humanity has over the environment. There's cycles in the earth
| that occur over millions of years and thousands of years.
|
| It's almost pathological how much people wanna believe they have
| control and are the cause of some thing. Stop putting humanity at
| the center of the universe. We're not the cause of everything.
| Sometimes we're just the beneficiary of some external effect.
|
| This could be a solar forcing a effect that's interacting with
| other systems.
|
| Or perhaps the evidence in this case is clear that it is 100%
| only influenced by reduction in sulfur emissions from ships. But
| my point is more philosophical one or ideological one rather than
| fact-based necessarily, which is not important because I think
| there's a pathological approach to centering humanity as
| causative factor for everything when there's probably a lot of
| other causes that it's scientific to be open to consider.
| AJRF wrote:
| I'd wager a lot of money we've not seen that last of humanity
| screwing around with the climate in well-intentioned but bad-
| outcome ways.
|
| Is there a name for this phenomenon of harmful actions because by
| an "increase" of understanding of the underlying system?
|
| I imagine there are similar outcomes in many areas, politics,
| economics, code bases. Kind of like requiring helmets (protect
| personal health) for cycling leading to less cyclists (poorer
| health outcomes for a population)
| stainablesteel wrote:
| interesting thread, so the multitudinal effects of gas output
| came back with more nuance than anyone expected.
|
| the oversimplified explanations of "this gas bad" are finally
| worth collapsing because nothing only ever does _just one thing_.
|
| on the bright side, if this cloud seeding business helps keep
| everything cooled, i suppose that's a good takeaway.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| https://nitter.net/hankgreen/status/1687535525169930241 (working
| link for those without account)
|
| It's an interesting observation but I would want to know if
| bunker emissions from ships matched coal emissions from high
| sulfur coal or diesel emissions prior to the around year 2007
| transition from low sulfur diesel to ultra low sulfur diesel had
| as much of an impact. Remember there was a huge concern for acid
| rain in the 1980's and 1990's and cutting atmospheric SO2 pretty
| much eliminated it.
|
| Not discounting that coal is terrible for lots of reasons but
| there's a ton of variability on types of coal. One of the core
| reasons the coal industry pulled out of Appalachia is there were
| lower-sulfur deposits out in Wyoming... Some gov data:
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37752
|
| EDIT: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/emissions-
| of-... Transportation is a small % of emissions compared to
| energy generation. There's been a regional shift though as North
| America moved to sulfur controls earlier for energy generation
| (1990) than Europe, and Asia has begun to climb as these regions
| went into decline.
| 38 wrote:
| Non crap link
|
| http://farside.link/twitter.com/hankgreen/status/16875355251...
| moultano wrote:
| This article suggests it probably isn't the main cause:
| https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shippin...
|
| There was also an underwater volcano that put a lot of water
| vapor in the upper atmosphere that could be a culprit. (On top of
| the ongoing trend of warming of course.)
| https://www.carbonbrief.org/tonga-volcano-eruption-raises-im...
| zith wrote:
| Climate models take this into account [0], contrary to what some
| people here seem to imply. It is also very likely that this is
| part of, but not the major factor of recent warming. [1]
|
| I would like to point out that this is not something we're just
| figuring out "this week" as Hank Green seems to want to frame it.
|
| There's no need to sensationalize. There is no conspiracy here.
| This is well known. It's good to educate people, but it sucks
| that even good educators have to crawl in the click-bait mud to
| reach people.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1444679408573419520
|
| [1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-
| shippin...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| It's well known among scientists.
|
| But global warming is a very major political issue, and those
| who determine what will be done about it - voters and
| politicians - have on average zero clues about it.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| It's reasonable to be skeptical since past climate models (eg
| from 20 years ago) didn't do great over the subsequent period.
| It could be that current ones are much better (but we won't
| know for a while).
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| What has changed in 20 years? Realistically.
|
| When we're the ClimateGate emails? Do you think the industry
| got itself together after that?
| jshen wrote:
| Can you link to these models from 20 years ago?
| conception wrote:
| I don't think this is the case at all -
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-models-have-been-
| impres...
| jjallen wrote:
| yeah unfortunately if some people are click-baity it makes it
| where basically everyone has to be if they want to maximize
| their views/revenue on YouTube.
| indigochill wrote:
| > ...if they want to maximize their views/revenue on YouTube.
|
| Thankfully YouTube is not the only way of educating people.
| shawnz wrote:
| We all have a responsibility to be the strongest possible
| advocates of our own opinions
| adamesque wrote:
| We absolutely do not. We have a responsibility to seek out
| the truth and act in the interest of the common good. Quite
| often this means NOT strongly or blindly advocating our own
| opinions when our knowledge is incomplete or motivated by
| self-interest. Many times our responsibility is to advocate
| someone else's opinion or present multiple options.
|
| I have many many opinions and very few of them would
| benefit from my strongest advocacy.
| shawnz wrote:
| Why would you hold opinions that you don't think would
| benefit from your strongest advocacy? Why believe things
| yourself that you don't think other people should
| believe?
|
| To be clear, I'm not saying that you should strongly
| advocate for other people to strongly believe things that
| you only weakly believe. But you should strongly advocate
| for other people to weakly believe those things.
| Furthermore, I don't think strong advocacy implies
| closing your mind to differing opinions. You can be a
| strong advocate for your current viewpoint while also
| being willing to change your mind.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Why would you hold opinions that you don't think would
| benefit from your strongest advocacy? Why believe things
| yourself that you don't think other people should
| believe?
|
| I am an atheist. As such, I _strongly_ believe that there
| is no "omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent 'creator'."
|
| However, regardless of how strongly I hold that opinion
| (especially as it, in almost every respect, reflects our
| understanding of the universe and how it works), I don't
| do any atheism "advocacy," nor do I proselytize an
| atheistic viewpoint -- despite the fact that I see belief
| systems that include such a creator, all of them not just
| the Abrahamic religions, to be demonstrably false.
|
| Another strongly held opinion of mine is that it's not
| _my_ responsibility to disabuse others of their
| misconceptions in that respect.
|
| Based on your statement, it seems that you would claim
| (incorrectly) that I don't hold my views as to the
| (non-)existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent
| creator, as well as my aversion to attempting to force
| such views down the throats of others. strongly at all.
| Is that the case, or am I misunderstanding your point?
|
| Edit: Fixed typo.
| zagrebian wrote:
| If Hank was less excited about it, the video would not reach
| nearly as many viewers, so from an educational perspective,
| he's succeeding at educating many more people about this topic.
| It matters less when we "figured this out". The educational
| value is in the details.
| gregoriol wrote:
| It's good that he presents it in a way that is interesting to
| many; but it would be better if he was more accurate in
| saying that it is interesting but not something new we just
| found out though
| H8crilA wrote:
| And there absolutely is a need to sensationalize.
|
| This is a big problem and requires serious political will,
| whether to pull off mass cloud seeding, make more sun/nuclear
| energy or reduce the usage of something important like air
| travel or heating.
| akira2501 wrote:
| The same climate models that predict a "missing" volcanic
| eruption?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1808_mystery_eruption
| superb_dev wrote:
| These volcanic eruptions haven't been predicted, we found
| evidence of them in ice cores
| Kikawala wrote:
| Reminds me of something similar in Termination Shock by Neal
| Stephenson.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel)
| another_bear wrote:
| Does he do that thing where 1/2 or 3/4 of the way though he
| resets the story completely leaving you with absolutely no
| emotional attachment to the resolution of the plot?
|
| *Cough*seveneves, fall or dodge....those are the only ones I
| could stand more than a few pages. Sorry I just cannot bear to
| read anymore of his novels. The first few pages of Anathem I
| can hear him building a house in his own anal cavity. We get
| it, Niel, you know some big words. We all do.
| hnuser0000 wrote:
| This lacks scientific models or sources that quantify the
| magnitude of the reduction in ship tracks and the resulting
| impact on sea temperatures. They are not in the science.org
| article[1] he links either.
|
| Usually posts with little evidence and the use of the phrase "may
| be causing" result in flagged posts, but not when it fits a
| certain narrative?
|
| [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/changing-clouds-
| unfo...
| ankit219 wrote:
| See this thread:
| https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1633566568528375811
|
| It still lacks scientific models, though it is too recent a
| phenomenon for us to have an accurate modelling. Even then, in
| the last three years we had La Nina which kept the temperatures
| cold, while this year it's el Nino which is increasing the
| effect.
|
| Leon Simons presented his findings in front of aerosol society.
|
| I also wanted to ask, what is the certain narrative it fits?
| nosefurhairdo wrote:
| Towards the end of that article were links to a few studies.
| Here's the first linked study I found:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05122-0
| hnuser0000 wrote:
| That study says little about fewer ship tracks causing sea
| warming and nothing about the magnitude of any possible sea
| warming.
| nosefurhairdo wrote:
| If you'd made it through the abstract you would have read
| how ship tracks cause cooling.
| dmbche wrote:
| Related article from 2018 if anyone wants to read more
| :https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/01/22/67402/were-about...
| taftster wrote:
| Thank you. I honestly had no context for the discussion, the
| linked tweet didn't really much help. This article helped clear
| up the concept and I appreciate the link.
| delecti wrote:
| The first tweet has a picture (graph) that shows the North
| Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly data over the past
| few decades, and the data for so far in 2023 is significantly
| higher than any previous year. That's the context.
|
| The linked tweet was also the first in a thread which went on
| to establish the rest of what people are discussing. Twitter
| only shows the first tweet if you're not logged in though, so
| you may have reasonably thought it didn't continue beyond
| that.
| Marcan wrote:
| There is also this video from Hank Green discussing this
| topic a little more:
|
| https://youtu.be/dk8pwE3IByg
| calderknight wrote:
| Roko has been talking about this for a while. Definitely super
| interesting.
| victorbstan wrote:
| Sounds like some excuse from shipping companies to avoid cleaning
| up their act.
| uxamanda wrote:
| For anyone interested in a near-future sci-fi look at how sulfur
| as a form of geoengineering might play out, check out out
| Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson[0]. The title[1] refers to
| what happens when you suddenly stop an effort like that...
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel)
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering#Maintenan...
| epivosism wrote:
| Read counts: Snow Crash (3) The Diamond
| Age (1) Anathem (2) Cryptonomicon (3/4)
| Baroque cycle (2/3) Seveneves (2) Reamde (2)
| The rise and fall of D.O.D.O (9/10) Fall or Dodge in
| hell (1/2) Termination shock (1/3)
| jojoo wrote:
| Are the fractions ongoing efforts or did you drop it?
|
| re-reads for me:
|
| Diamond Age (4) (I'm an educator), Cryptonomicon (2), Baroc
| cycle (2)
|
| However i plan to re-read Anathem in paralell with my second
| re-read of Russels A History of Western Philosophy. Really
| looking forward to this one.
| epivosism wrote:
| Unfortunately I can't get as into the later ones, so those
| are me giving up
| siwatanejo wrote:
| I'm still kinda surprised that no novel from Neal have become
| films or TV shows yet.
| zwily wrote:
| There's been talk of a Seveneves movie or mini series for
| years....
| adzm wrote:
| Snow Crash has passed hands a few times as well.
| epivosism wrote:
| The final 1/3 of the book would be an _amazing_ role-
| playing scenario. When you think about it, it 's almost
| designed that way. The underground area, the floaters, the
| various "classes" of people we meet, their interesting
| combinations...
| Vecr wrote:
| I think the final 1/3rd of that book is actually a
| horrible situation to actually be in. "Someone else's
| dream" for sure.
| epivosism wrote:
| Have you played Dungeons and Dragons? It's not supposed
| to be fun as a place to really live, living in a land
| harassed by monsters, demons, no security, etc. It's an
| interesting scenario to explore creativity and conflict
| in difficult situations.
| Vecr wrote:
| Sure, but imagine if a D&D setting was an actual world
| that somehow survived long enough to start implementing
| countermeasures (remember the last 1/3rd of this book is
| set thousands of years in the future, so reasonably
| analogous). If the Player Characters decide they don't
| want to bother with a problem, it would have to be solved
| with other methods, like massive use of defoliants (think
| agent orange) and pesticides, bunker buster bombs (think
| MOP, if deliverable with enough precision), and as a last
| resort, dropping massive thermobaric weapons to destroy
| entire cities, possibly repeatedly, and then setting up
| miles wide demilitarized zones in a circle around the
| incident zone with kill-on-sight orders and automated
| turrets and tracking systems, if feasible with the tech
| available. Obviously a few Player Characters can't handle
| everything, so it would be reasonable common as an
| ordinary person to find out the next city over no longer
| exists and they have just been drafted to man the "human
| side" of the newly created DMZ.
| epivosism wrote:
| You're right, I had assumed some kind of general peace
| for the resettlement of the surface of the planet. Given
| that, there would be some lawlessness, but at least no
| orbital strikes/nukes.
|
| I was more thinking about various types of agents from
| the people living in space, all infiltrating each other,
| traitors to their own types, double agents, weird
| combinations etc. Plus mysterious people nobody can place
| - who turn out to be agents from the submarine/hot air
| balloon groups. And vice versa.
|
| The land is now mostly open and clear, right? So there
| will be new populations, settlements being started down
| on the surface. A resource race, with possibly high-tech
| stuff lying around, relics from the lost civilization!
|
| Player characters could start off as an alleged group of
| "explorers for sites for new cities" put together by a
| newly established base - but actually one is trying to
| divert them away from the hidden holy site of the
| mineshaft people, where he came from, the other is a spy
| from a lost faction of the brain people who are outlawed
| in space now, another is trying to fulfill a 5000 year
| family promise he received from his father, that when he
| could, to go to a certain place and say a certain prayer,
| etc.
|
| There is just huge diversity of backgrounds and tech, and
| a large, unexplored environment potentially full of
| strange treasures!
| peyton wrote:
| It does sound like a relatively small change yielded an outsized
| impact on the climate. This gives me hope for future climate
| solutions.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| It probably shouldn't. Unless those solutions happen to be an
| unintended byproduct of some other global-scale profit making
| activity.
| barbazoo wrote:
| X's threads make even less sense now unless you think everyone
| you want to reach is on X.
|
| Also, just what a dumb name.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| To be fair it was a great name for a windowing system.
| guessmyname wrote:
| I will continue calling them Twitter threads, since the domain
| is still twitter[dot]com.
| klhutchins wrote:
| Yeah, it still needs to be called twitter, even if it makes
| you seem out of the loop.
| akomtu wrote:
| You don't have to call it X.
| erictd wrote:
| I'll call it Xitter.
| dotancohen wrote:
| The X is pronounced with the SH sound.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Or it could be Albanian.
| PradeetPatel wrote:
| I'm a bit out of the loop here, but is the letter "X" a part
| of Elon's company branding? Since that's not the first time
| he used the letter "X" in that manner.
|
| The single letter "X" is brimming with symbolism and
| implications. Without further explanation we may never know
| why the rebranding was necessary.
| dangrossman wrote:
| He made his fortune with x.com. That was the online bank he
| founded then merged with Confinity to become PayPal in
| 2000, and it was the PayPal IPO that allowed him to invest
| in Tesla and SpaceX. He's fond enough of his old company
| name that he bought the domain back years ago, and is now
| repurposing it.
| PradeetPatel wrote:
| Thank you for the thorough explanation! For the longest
| time I thought he was a founder of Tesla and Space.
| atkailash wrote:
| [dead]
| userbinator wrote:
| Unfortunately, "X" in the context of Elon only brings to
| mind his SUV of the same name.
| shagie wrote:
| He's a bit fixated on that letter.
|
| X.com (banking company that eventually became Paypal)
|
| SpaceX
|
| Tesla models S 3 X Y
|
| Baby born in May of 2020: X AE A-12 (
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52557291 https:/
| /www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/202...
| )
| js8 wrote:
| The rebranding was neccessary because Larry & Sergey got
| their ABC and Zuck went Meta. It's just a d**-measuring
| contest.
| robryan wrote:
| Where else would they put it to reach more people?
| aCoreyJ wrote:
| He also made a YouTube video on this
|
| https://youtu.be/dk8pwE3IByg
| wokwokwok wrote:
| Why does it have to reach lots of people? Does it reach lots
| of people?
|
| If you have an opinion about Science, maybe "10 massively
| under reported things about science you need to click on now"
| is more about clickbait and driving people to your YouTube
| channel than actual science? The last tweet in this thread is
| literally a link off to some YouTube thing to earn those
| sweet sweet ad $$$.
|
| Does 20000 likes on Twitter mean people are listening to you?
|
| ... or just self satisfaction from being upvotes by bots?
|
| Since posting on X now _actively excludes_ real people (Ie.
| Anyone not logged in), it seems kind of stupid as a place to
| post science news these days?
|
| Even if it does reach a wider audience, do they care, and
| act, or just <3 and move on?
|
| It's just _easy and lazy_ to post to X.
|
| I find it hard to take people selling their shit on X
| seriously.
|
| It is 100% nothing to do with science.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Somewhere that doesn't require people to sign up.
| skymast wrote:
| [dead]
| nologic01 wrote:
| The enthusiasm with geoengineering among the HN community is
| worrisome. Not sure which computing analogy would drive home the
| complete recklessness of this mentality but the Earth is not
| something you can reboot to the last working state once you
| harebrained patch implodes.
|
| It is true that we have been slowly geoengineering for ages
| (initially unwittingly, recently with eyes wide open) and it is
| also true that our modeling abilities increase but this is quite
| far from making us experts in geoengineering.
|
| For the short term future (decades) the only strategy that seems
| to make sense on the face of epistemic uncertainty is to refrain
| from aggravating the situation while studying ever more deeply
| the system we are now perturbing so much.
|
| Our biggest mental deficiency when handling complexity is that we
| cant think holistically in practical ways. Isolating individual
| factors and applying linear thinking has worked wonders in
| isolated problems but it is not cutting it here.
| gilbetron wrote:
| We already are performing geoengineering on the Earth, as you
| point out. We can't not do geoengineering anymore. Either we
| can continue the geoengineering we have been doing, or change
| the geoengineering to work towards some other goal, but there
| isn't an option where we don't do geoengineering. If you are
| driving a car towards what you think might be a cliff, you
| can't choose not to drive. You can continue driving the way you
| are, you can turn, you can brake, but you can't not drive.
|
| Anything we choose to do will require geoengineering. We can
| continue dumping CO2 into the air, which is geoengineering. We
| can try to make our atmosphere more reflective, which is
| geoengineering. We can try to pull carbon out of the
| atmosphere, which is geoengineering. We can try to completely
| stop putting CO2 in the air, which is geoengineering. We need
| to change the state of Earth, which, pretty much by definition,
| is geoengineering.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > The enthusiasm with geoengineering among the HN community is
| worrisome.
|
| It reflects the gravity of the situation. What I find
| incomprehensible is a reluctance to consider investigating such
| steps when the extremes of climate model forecasts are so
| horrific.
| nostrebored wrote:
| The more radical geoengineering ideas, like deflecting sunlight
| from space, are truly potential extinction level events that
| should be regulated out of existence. This should not be some
| VC funded endeavor.
| concordDance wrote:
| You're really underestimating how much sun blocking would be
| needed to kill off humans.
| krisoft wrote:
| > This should not be some VC funded endeavor.
|
| How would it be VC funded? Where would the return on
| investment hypothetically come from? If you could produce
| localised effects while being able to turn them on or off
| then maybe you could charge for it as a service, but is that
| at all realistic?
| defrost wrote:
| I'm no great fan of geoengineering, _however_ ...
|
| The idea to inflate space foam reflective bubbles to reduce
| incoming sunlight is one of the saner geoengineering
| proposals:
|
| * It can start small and grow to measure incremental effect,
|
| * It's orthogonal to any unintended effects as it happens in
| isolation and isn't deeply coupled to things unknown in the
| same sense as aerosols and atmospheric chemistry is.
|
| * It's reversable as bubbles can be popped and no longer
| exist to reflect and have an effect.
|
| > This should not be some VC funded endeavor.
|
| Yeah, on this we can agree- a high degree of global nation
| state consensus is what's called for with most climate action
| .. like the 1970s UN agreements that got effectively sunk by
| unending Koch et al oil bro's negative media campaigning and
| lobbying.
|
| 'Lone' capitalists do seem to have undue sway in matters that
| impact billions.
| sfvisser wrote:
| I highly doubt many proponents of geoengineering think in terms
| of rebooting or isolating individual factors.
|
| The appeal of geoengineering is you can nudge specific systems
| slowly into another direction. You can start small and observe
| expected effects and unwanted side-effects.
|
| Reduction of sulfer emissions by ships is an interesting
| starting point to learn something.
| wnkrshm wrote:
| Starting small doesn't work if you have a nonlinear system.
| In nonlinear systems, the magnitude of a perturbance isn't
| linearly related to the absorbed effect.
|
| So in the worst case: small input, giant irreversible effect.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Control of nonlinear systems is common, in this case we'd
| be starting small by putting the system back to the state
| it was in when the sulfur were there. Additionally,
| removing an input can have an outsized effect as we saw
| here, so your philosophy seems to require a do nothing
| approach. Is that what you mean?
|
| Of course that's impossible to do since the world itself is
| doing things like erupting volcanos, shifting plates,
| melting glaciers, and redirecting ocean currents.
| Kuinox wrote:
| It is accidental geo-engineering.
| jabbany wrote:
| > Not sure which computing analogy
|
| Probably akin to "testing in production". But, as is in
| computing, it's still done all the time despite the dangers.
| sz3 wrote:
| There is no alternative.
|
| We _have_ "aggravated the situation" (as you put it) beyond
| recovery. Doing nothing will now _surely_ lead to an
| unacceptable outcome. We are going to have to fix it, or resign
| ourselves to a huge shrinking of the habitable region of the
| planet, with the hunger /famine/war that will accompany that.
|
| Obviously we can always make things worse. But when doing
| nothing is unacceptable, we have to start taking risks.
| concordDance wrote:
| > huge shrinking of the habitable region of the planet.
|
| How big? 1%? 10%? 50%?
|
| This matters.
| Turskarama wrote:
| You have absolutely no idea if the "solutions" we try won't
| lead to even worse outcomes.
|
| Up until the point climate change is becoming an existential
| threat, which it isn't yet, we shouldn't go doing anything
| too drastic. There is plenty of evidence that we can still
| avert the worst of it without resorting to geoengineering.
| fastball wrote:
| Why exactly do you place faith in evidence that says "we
| can still avert the worst of it" and are not willing to do
| the same for evidence that says "we can do even better with
| geo-engineering"? Presumably the scale of the problem is
| the same either way, so well-reasoned evidence should be
| able to persuade you of either.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _You have absolutely no idea if the "solutions" we try
| won't lead to even worse outcomes._
|
| This is absolutely untrue.
|
| The mechanisms of how SO2 in the stratosphere cools the
| planet are well understood and empirically observed.
|
| This includes the fact that it breaks down in ~2 years,
| making it self repairing, should something unforeseen
| happen.
| oAlbe wrote:
| > In the early 1990s, anthropogenic sulfur dominated in
| the Northern Hemisphere, where only 16% of annual sulfur
| emissions were natural, yet amounted for less than half
| of the emissions in the Southern Hemisphere.
|
| > Such an increase in sulfate aerosol emissions had a
| variety of effects. At the time, the most visible one was
| acid rain, caused by precipitation from clouds carrying
| high concentrations of sulfate aerosols in the
| troposphere. At its peak, acid rain has eliminated brook
| trout and some other fish species and insect life from
| lakes and streams in geographically sensitive areas, such
| as Adirondack Mountains in the United States. Acid rain
| worsens soil function as some of its microbiota is lost
| and heavy metals like aluminium are mobilized (spread
| more easily) while essential nutrients and minerals such
| as magnesium can leach away because of the same.
| Ultimately, plants unable to tolerate lowered pH are
| killed, with montane forests being some of the worst-
| affected ecosystems due to their regular exposure to
| sulfate-carrying fog at high altitudes.[1]
|
| Sure, let's have ~2 years of that.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_dioxide
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The way to do it is to release the SO2 directly into the
| stratosphere, where it stays for ~2 years, and does not
| affect rain, which happens far below.
| clolege wrote:
| what is this now, a quadruple negative?
|
| It is untrue that they have no idea if the "solutions" we
| try won't lead to worse outcomes
|
| It is true that they have some idea that the "solutions"
| we try won't lead to worse outcomes
|
| It is true that they have some idea that the "solutions"
| we try will lead to better outcomes.
|
| I think the nuance needed here is: what do we mean by
| "better outcomes?" It's reasonable to believe that it
| will help lower temperatures. But is that an "outcome" in
| and of itself?
|
| If we consider the "outcome" to also include the second
| and third order effects, I'd like to understand how
| anyone could be certain that it will be better.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| >There is plenty of evidence that we can still avert the
| worst of it without resorting to geoengineering.
|
| And zero evidence we will...
| PradeetPatel wrote:
| This kind of defeatist attitude doesn't help with the
| situation at all. We can all do our part in reducing our
| daily carbon emissions, raise awareness, and educate
| policymakers and business stakeholders on the importance
| of mitigating climate change!
| BurningFrog wrote:
| It's important to understand that reducing carbon
| emissions doesn't cool the planet. It only makes the
| future warmup slower.
| jacquesm wrote:
| One man's defeatist attitude is another mans realistic
| attitude. Does it help? No, it doesn't. But for the
| defeatist and the realist alike that may no longer
| matter. I'm 'long' on humanity, but I'm not convinced we
| will be able to avert the looming (and for some already
| very present) issues. My feelings are in part because of
| how we dealt with COVID-19, if a pandemic can't get us to
| pull the cart together then nothing can.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| You can call it defeatist, but at this point it's
| factually true. We've made a negative amount of progress
| on this matter. And that's taken 40 years. We have very
| little time left. We have already locked in almost 2
| degrees of warming.
|
| These are all regrettable facts. But that are facts.
|
| 40 years of raising awareness and individual action has
| failed.
| concordDance wrote:
| Consider me a policy maker.
|
| I want to know what the costs[1] of ignoring are likely
| to be so I can be sure it's worth the pain to ban non-
| electric cars in 10 years, ram through nuclear power
| plants while gutting safety regs so we can get them built
| in less than a decade and try and threaten India and
| China into reducing CO2 emissions. What do you tell me?
|
| [1] In $, convert other units like lives into dollars as
| need be and be sure to value lives from different
| cultures at 0.1x as thats the expressed preferences of
| the population based on chatitable giving figures.
| realusername wrote:
| > There is plenty of evidence that we can still avert the
| worst of it without resorting to geoengineering.
|
| We already have once in a lifetime climate event every
| month and the carbon locked-in of the past decade still
| hasn't kicked-in. I'd argue the complete opposite, there's
| a lack of evidence of other options.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Doing nothing is itself a risk. Better to think of it as risk
| in every direction, all we can do is use what we know from
| science to choose our exit from the roundabout.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| This is a good example of the lack of epistemic humility OP
| was taking about.
| sz3 wrote:
| We don't have the time to sit back and let epistemic
| knowledge wash over us. We know more or less what needs to
| happen (less sunlight in, more heat out). All attempts to
| resolve the situation require taking some risk, and it'll
| be impossible to quantify all those risks until we try
| them.
|
| At the risk of stating the obvious: we need to measure
| every weird idea we try, and do our best to isolate the
| variables. Easier said than done. But we broke it, it's our
| problem now.
|
| Talking about humility: an excess of humility leads to
| fatalism. Some is good, but not too much if you want
| anything to happen. We're talking about fixing the
| ecosystem of a planet, of course it's ambitious.
| dougmwne wrote:
| [flagged]
| almostnormal wrote:
| > You sound like someone about to perform a triple bypass
| with a butter knife.
|
| If climate change was a disease it wouldn't have an ICD
| number, no method of diagnostic in standard literature, let
| alone a treatment approved by the competent authority.
|
| The recommended solutions would be to eat more healthy,
| more physical activity, and something to treat the
| symptoms.
|
| There won't be a double-blind study for specific treatments
| of earth, so any kind of idea is equally valid.
| sangnoir wrote:
| A modest proposal: load up all the geoengineering-of-bust
| onto Falcon Heavies and ship them to Mars as a pilot
| project
| psychphysic wrote:
| Or an emergency trach while us sensible folk watch the
| patient die and hand wring?
| johnnyworker wrote:
| That metaphor implies an understanding and overview that
| we simply do not have. Think of it as changing bytes in
| an executable file which will be run in 50 years, based
| on what "seems reasonable" to you staring at a wall of
| hex without even a de-compiler existing, much less you
| being able to use one. The only reason to even dream of
| it is not having to suffer the consequences, period. And
| that's not just because you might not be here in 50
| years, it's because you're just one person in one very,
| very narrow walk of life, as opposed to being billions of
| people.
|
| The carbon emissions of the richest 1% of humanity are
| more than double than that of the poorest half of
| humanity. Oil and coal companies profit, while putting
| out disinformation, as they have been for decades. But
| why step on the toes of the powerful when you can just
| use inject sulfur into the atmosphere?
| raverbashing wrote:
| You can watch the patient choke from the obstruction as
| well, but it won't be pretty neither
| _factor wrote:
| More akin to duck taping the HVAC to avoid an emergency
| amputation.
| jb1991 wrote:
| As someone who uses a butter knife literally every day, I
| am offended by this comment.
| fasterik wrote:
| _> You sound like someone about to perform a triple bypass
| with a butter knife._
|
| This style of comment is lazy and simply trying to shut
| down conversation without actually making an argument. If
| you have an objection to the comment you're responding to,
| then say why you think they're wrong, what your alternative
| point of view is, and why your point of view is the correct
| one.
| sz3 wrote:
| Well, hopefully we have some time to practice first.
| Because we're the only person in the room and the patient
| is bleeding out.
| Roark66 wrote:
| So don't do a bloody tripple bypass with a butter knife.
| Just stop the bleeding. Jeez, this conversation is the
| best illustration of everything that's wrong with
| geoengineering ideas.
|
| Indeed we have practiced quite a bit. Read on the
| catastrophe that was geoengineering attempts resulting in
| what is now happening with the Sea of Azov.
| fastball wrote:
| I don't think hilariously strained analogies are helpful
| in this discussion.
|
| The incredibly multi-variate nature of this problem
| effectively prevents any comparison that is at the scale
| of an individual.
| fredrikholm wrote:
| > Just stop the bleeding.
|
| Is that enough? AFAIK all paths forward to avoid the
| worst outcomes includes becoming net negative ASAP.
|
| That's stopping the addition of 37,000,000,000 tonnes of
| CO2 anually.
|
| For context, a modern CCS captures some thousands of
| tonne, which is a comparatively tiny, tiny number.
|
| Unless magic happens in the next decade, it appears that
| geoengineering is something we can't avoid, sans the
| suffering and death of billions.
|
| I'd love to be wrong here.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| > geoengineering is something we can't avoid
|
| With all its inherent uncertainties geoengineering has
| many chances to make living conditions even worse.
|
| It appears that the best think we can do is to stop doing
| thinks. I concede magic will be needed to make boomers
| accept that.
| concordDance wrote:
| > Just stop the bleeding
|
| Convincing every country in the world that they don't
| need fossil fuels isn't possible.
|
| Blocking some sunlight from reaching the Earth is.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Why being an absolutist? We don't need to convince
| _every_ country. Just the top ones that drive the most
| consumption /pollution.
| fastball wrote:
| Because the top ones won't be convinced if you don't
| convince the others. Tragedy of the commons and all that.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| In that vision we never can't do anything because leaders
| needs to be leaded by others.
|
| People _do_ change their habits, donate, volunteer, make
| concessions and work hard for the good of society in its
| whole.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There are a number of problems that all interlock.
| Democracies with their relatively short election cycles
| will naturally find it hard to deal with problems that
| last much longer than those election cycles and that have
| the bulk of the problems downstream of us. Voters are
| motivated by their personal issues first, local issues
| second and global issues dead last. Countries are going
| to have to collaborate in a very strict manner in order
| to deal with global issues.
|
| Throw all of those in a blender and it's easy to see why
| democracy and global problems are not going lead to an
| actual solution. Individuals are going to make some minor
| difference but not enough to offset the larger trends as
| long as it isn't a solid majority doing this.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| I agree we shouldn't count on our liberal democraties to
| handle that. Individuals will do the job and the majority
| is coming, just wait for the boomers to evade in their
| fantastic plastic graves.
| realusername wrote:
| > So don't do a bloody tripple bypass with a butter
| knife. Just stop the bleeding.
|
| We're way past that point, the choice is quickly became
| to try geoengineering or die and I'm not going to take
| the dying option, no thanks, no matter how immoral you
| think the other one is.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| You are the doctor and the patient at the same time. On
| what body do you want to practice ?
| sz3 wrote:
| I feel like we're stretching the analogy pretty thin
| here.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| We're actually curating it to get closer to the
| situation. Or are you seeing humanity as a kind of god
| that can play with earth without impacting it existence
| on it ?
| BasedAnon wrote:
| (nsfl) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7WW-AsiBoE
| BasedAnon wrote:
| >You are the doctor and the patient at the same time.
|
| Don't forget that, it's important!
| lm28469 wrote:
| The only viable alternative to doing nothing is stopping our
| quest for infinite growth in all sectors.
|
| You're the proverbial boiling frog
| szundi wrote:
| No problem with this, apart from convincing like 5-6
| billion people to cut their standards of living to half.
| Also less people is needed, few children. Sounds like
| impossible now without concentrated media effort and all
| ruling parties probably would lose for decades.
| concordDance wrote:
| Got to convince Nigeria that they shouldn't expect any
| further quality of life increase. Good luck.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| 5-6 billion people are going to have their living
| standards and reproductive opportunities destroyed
| anyway.
|
| If not worse.
|
| But you're really just remaking the point that as a
| species we're incapable of intelligent collective
| management of our resources.
| concordDance wrote:
| Coordination problems are really really really hard. You
| shouldn't be dismissive about them.
| selestify wrote:
| You are right. But good luck convincing those billions to
| voluntarily reduce their living standards. I fear change
| will have to come involuntarily.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| [dead]
| almostnormal wrote:
| >> No problem with this, apart from convincing like 5-6
| billion people to cut their standards of living to half.
|
| > 5-6 billion people are going to have their living
| standards and reproductive opportunities destroyed
| anyway.
|
| The problem might be that those sets of people are not
| the same.
| wahern wrote:
| If all human carbon emissions magically ceased _today_
| anthropomorphic global warming and its concomitant
| environmental changes will _still_ _continue_ to unfold for
| the next few centuries or millennia, at a minimum, before
| settling into a new (albeit shifted) "natural" evolution.
| It will take millions of years for the human carbon
| emissions to be cycled back into the lithosphere.
|
| In this sense, continued emissions only _accelerate_ and
| _compound_ the current process unfolding. Global warming as
| it exists today cannot be stopped passively.
|
| That was the previous poster's point. We can infer that
| their unstated objective is the end of global warming in
| the near future (i.e. in the next few centuries), the
| achievement of which necessarily requires active
| intervention.
|
| I might infer that your unstated objective is not the end
| of global warming, but the end of ongoing human
| interference per se. That's an entirely different
| objective, albeit no less legitimate.
|
| If I'm correct (and I'm confident in my assessment wrt to
| the previous poster), then you two are talking past each
| other.
| tmpX7dMeXU wrote:
| It's almost like this website is full of people that let
| Silicon Valley money trick them into believing they are Gods
| amongst men and that knowing how to write software grants them
| some sort of transferable expertise.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| We'll we now refer to ourselves as hardware running on
| software so it would stand to reason that everything is just
| a few build pipelines away.
|
| I personally think in the future this idea will be severely
| dated but it's in vogue right now.
| Roark66 wrote:
| More people should upvote your post. If there is a rank of how
| easily humanity can destroy itself and make the earth
| uninhabitable for itself geoengineering is probably second only
| to thermonuclear war.
|
| Also I object to the use of the term geo-engineering.
| Engineering supposes we know exactly what the outcomes will be
| following centuries/decades of experience with similar systems.
| Including many failed experiments. Thinking we can geo-engineer
| a predictable change when there is no way to experiment, fail
| and learn safely because we only have one shot at this is
| massively stupid. Anyone that claims "but we've been
| geoengineering for decades with our greenhouse gas emissions
| etc" is simply wrong. No, we haven't been "geoengineering".
| Engineering implies conscious intent. Humanity didn't start
| burning coal to increase co2 content in the atmosphere.
| Confusing these two things are akin to finding a victim of a
| vehicle accident and doing a roadside open heart surgery by a
| random bystander. "Hey, the guy is already sliced open, we've
| already started the surgery so we may as well continue right?"
| No, wrong. That is insane.
|
| The biggest lie today is that we comprehensively know how
| climate works. We don't. We don't even measure the earth's
| temperature properly. We extrapolate huge amounts of data. If
| we _really_ wanted to learn how climate works it would require
| not just arrays of sensors covering the entire planet's
| surface, but also ocean depths and the the entire thickness of
| the atmosphere. No, satellites are not a replacement. Anyone
| that knows the limitations of satellite sensing knows we can
| measure a lot, but reliably measuring temperature, humidity,
| and wind direction across the entire thickness of the
| atmosphere is not something we can do. We can roughly
| approximate some measurements across the entire thickness, in
| theory in good conditions we can narrow it down to certain
| attitudes and on this basis we make conclusions on the entire
| state of the system pulling the missing data from our "models".
| If we discovere the models are wrong? We just tweak them to
| match the historic data. We might know the measures in this
| particular place and time, but we use our "models" to
| "approximate" everything we are unable to measure.
|
| This is one of the major reasons why we cannot reliably predict
| weather for next 3 days, and why our attempts at making climate
| predictions are laughable. We know a certain number of
| principles so we can make some conclusions like more
| co2/h2o/ch4 = more temperature, but even in this we have to
| accept there are processes (positive and negative feedback) we
| have zero idea of.
|
| Furthermore, our planet has shown us huge climatic variability
| in the geological record. Within that variability the most
| dangerous to human life are periods of excessive glaciation
| (ice ages). We're "just" in the warming period after the last
| one. Is humanity taking part in accelerating the warming? Yes,
| is it a licence for stupidity like attempting to "stabilise"
| something that is inherently unstable and periodic(climate)
| risking we overdo it and find ourselves in a "mini ice age"?
| No.
|
| Has it ever stopped us before? No. Anyone interested in results
| of previous "geoengineering" efforts should read up on the
| soviet attempts at it and what catastrophe it wrought on the
| region including the Sea of Azov. People in the entire Black
| Sea region can consider themselves extremely lucky they haven't
| implemented more than few percent of their plans. It is
| generally accepted today had more of Soviet attempts at
| geoengineering been implemented it would've had same horrible
| consequences we see near the Sea of Azov far and wide.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Aren't you confusing it with sea of Aral / Caspian sea?
|
| Black sea indeed had a catastrophe but that one predated
| humans.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Yes, came here to say this as well.
| [deleted]
| concordDance wrote:
| > If there is a rank of how easily humanity can destroy
| itself and make the earth uninhabitable for itself
| geoengineering is probably second only to thermonuclear war.
|
| But emitting some sulfer oxides is not.
|
| Geoengineering is a very broad term, yes there are things
| that are in the category of "geoengineering" that could make
| humans extinct, but none are proposed as a solution to global
| warming.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| We're actually pretty good at predicting the weather for the
| next three days.
|
| The point about climate variability is a stock denialist
| talking point.
|
| In reality climate predictions have been extremely accurate.
| There is absolute no mystery or ambiguity here. We've been
| improving our CO2 models for over a century now, and in
| recent decades the modelling has been extremely good -
| although if anything it's been too optimistic.
|
| https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-
| led-a...
|
| The problem isn't the science, it's the politics. We have a
| planetary culture that puts profit and political ambition -
| naive uninformed personal indulgence and status seeking,
| mixed with sanctioned reality denial - over collective
| intelligence and awareness.
|
| While we have individual intelligence - in varying degrees -
| we still have herd-animal politics and economics. Our
| management systems have barely changed for millennia, the
| same issues and tendencies to self-harm keep recurring, and
| they're completely unsuitable for dealing with the kinds of
| problems we're facing.
|
| Darwin is remorseless. If a species is maladapted to its
| environment, extinction - cultural and eventually physical -
| beckons.
|
| That's where we are now.
| sfvisser wrote:
| > We've been improving our CO2 models for over a century
| now, and in recent decades the modelling has been extremely
| good - although if anything it's been too optimistic.
|
| If the models are too optimistic, that still means they are
| wrong, right? Genuinely confused about this.
|
| "The situation today is more dire than our previous models
| predict and the same models predict an even worse future so
| we need to take them extra seriously" doesn't strike me as
| very reasonable. Not in a super non-linear system with tons
| of complicated feedback loops.
|
| Any pointers to in-depth explanations of how these models
| work and how they are benchmarked? Definitely want to learn
| more.
| concordDance wrote:
| CO2 caused climate change isn't an extinction risk for
| humanity.
| mpweiher wrote:
| We have extensive records on what happens after volcano
| eruptions. So we know what happens. Because it has happened
| many times before.
|
| And yes, if the alternative is an extinction-level event, for
| example a runaway greenhouse effect turning the earth into
| Venus, then stomping on the brakes with _anything whatsoever_
| is a perfectly valid proposal. And doing something comparable
| to a volcano doesn 't come close to "anything whatsoever",
| because, as I said, we have records of how this plays out,
| and it happens all the time anyway.
|
| And if you are saying that this isn't an acceptable way to
| proceed, which is a perfectly valid position, then very
| obviously the alternative _cannot_ be an extinction-level
| event such as a runaway greenhouse effect that will turn
| Earth into Venus.
|
| What you cannot have is have it both ways. Which is where a
| lot of people currently seem to be positioned. As in "we are
| _literally destroying_ the planet AND geo-engineering is
| unacceptable ". Nope. Pick one.
|
| Furthermore, injecting SO2 into the atmosphere is easy enough
| that it is well in reach of pretty much every state actor
| whose population is going to be most severely affected by
| climate change, in particular "wet-bulb events". So the
| question of whether we _want_ this to happen or not really
| isn 't relevant. It almost certainly _will_ happen.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| > the Earth is not something you can reboot to the last working
| state once you harebrained patch implodes.
|
| There are methods of geoengineering that you can _stop doing_
| at any point, at which point they stop having an effect.
|
| The one proposed in this twitter thread, marine cloud
| brightening by spraying seawater in the air, is one of those.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| > Not sure which computing analogy would drive home the
| complete recklessness of this mentality
|
| Geoengineering is an act of desperation. Its like your laptop
| is on fire, so you throw some water on it.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| > Its like your laptop is on fire, so you throw some water on
| it.
|
| Is it a lithium fire? I think this might be a very good
| analogy.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Yes, exactly.
|
| But it _might_ just be a simpler fire.
|
| But if smothering isn't an option, you take the lowest risk
| choice, which is the water.
| bartimus wrote:
| Reducing atmospheric CO2 is geo-engineering just as well.
| Tackling climate change is going to involve climate
| engineering. Some solutions will work. Others will not.
|
| > to refrain from aggravating the situation
|
| Easier said than done. What makes you think this is going to be
| achievable?
|
| Why are you assuming the HN community isn't acknowledging the
| complexity and not taking a holistic approach?
| teamonkey wrote:
| Pumping CO2 into the atmosphere is geoengineering. Reducing
| CO2 emissions is _less_ geoengineering.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| This case was pumping sulfur into the atmosphere, removing
| the sulfur (less geoengineering) made things worse!
| fastball wrote:
| It is more like geo-fly-tipping. Engineering implies we are
| being thoughtful about it (which is more true in the
| reduction case than the dumping case).
| dheera wrote:
| > refrain from aggravating the situation
|
| I used to think this way, but after years of trying I don't
| think getting people to change their life habits is going to
| happen.
|
| At this point I think geoengineering is _necessary_. At the
| very, very least, carbon sequestration at scale is a fairly
| safe form of geoengineering if we can pull it off.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| I think of it like Star Trek: Next Generation. They had this
| recurring character that nudged humanity into accepting their
| role of manipulating time-space.
|
| The lesson being. We as humans aren't simply animals
| occupying a rock floating in space. Us being powerful means
| we have to take responsibility no matter how much it makes
| our internal naturalistic fallacy emotions winge.
| TheRealSteel wrote:
| We don't have any other choice.
| happytiger wrote:
| Linear thinking is how we take action. Leaning back observation
| is how we analyze.
|
| It's cool to analyze but it can paralyze us into observation
| and this situation benefits from the former because the
| consequences of being wrong is so profoundly dire.
|
| Generally agree with you, but why not be conservative when it
| comes to issues like global warming and species extinction and
| avoid catastrophe if it turns out to be as bad as it could be?
|
| That takes linear thinking and action now. We should also
| analyze, but it's logical to take action too.
| concordDance wrote:
| > For the short term future (decades) the only strategy that
| seems to make sense on the face of epistemic uncertainty is to
| refrain from aggravating the situation while studying ever more
| deeply the system we are now perturbing so much.
|
| Sometimes perfect is the enemy of good. If climate change
| really was going to kill a billion people then taking the risk
| with some geoengineering would be better than just letting it
| happen.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I suppose it comes down to a judgement of how reliable the
| models are. In this case the models of what happens after
| applying the "patch".
| nologic01 wrote:
| The degree of confidence in our abstractions of reality is
| usually a visible process: You are able to explain things you
| can measure with increasing accuracy, you can predict and
| verify the unfolding of what-if scenarios etc.
|
| One thing that we should not refrain from is applying 10x,
| 100x, 1000x the brainpower to understand _objectively_ (as
| in: not captured by short-term interests) what sustainable
| biospheres look like and how things can go wrong.
|
| The capacity and orientation of the scientific apparatus
| (universities, research centers etc) is a WIP that has been
| shaped by momentous historical events (WWII in particular)
| and societal choices. I think the sustainability transition
| is of far greater importance but it has not yet had a visible
| impact. There are a few new fields (e.g. industrial ecology)
| but its a slow process.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| How are you going to convince Asia and Africa to stop their
| economic growth? How are you going to convince Americans to
| stop driving Ford F150s? How are you going to convince
| Europeans to stop doing vacations that involves long-distance
| flights to exotic faraway countries?
|
| Geoengineering is the only solution.
| Contusion3532 wrote:
| There is no solution. The industrialized nations used the
| externality of carbon emissions to build their current
| status. These nations are unwilling to subsidize and
| compensate developing nations so that they can develop while
| using clean energy.
|
| Politicians can't tell their constituents the truth -- that
| their lifestyles are destroying the planet and are
| unsustainable. They'll be replaced be politicians that tell
| voters what they want to hear or scapegoat others.
| prox wrote:
| Why does economic growth need to be incompatible with going
| green? I don't think they are natural opposites, mostly
| habitual, and habits and outlooks can change if people really
| want. Now it's the "really want" that's at issue here. Maybe
| this year's weather opens peoples minds.
| nologic01 wrote:
| An out-of-control spacecraft is hurling towards an asteroid.
| Engineers onboard argue the only solution is to invent a
| laser that will blast a tunnel through the asteroid so that
| the spacecraft can continue safely its out-of-control
| trajectory.
|
| Its an insane strategy. Predicated, among others, on the
| impossibility of getting back into the control room and
| charting a non-collision course (which among others will
| ensure we can better handle any _future_ sustainability
| challenges). I would challenge that assumption (but with a
| caveat).
|
| The obstacles you mention are real and in a sense currently
| as complex to model and work through. Its the difference of
| socially engineering the complex system that is human society
| versus biophysically engineering the complex system that is
| the Earth's biosphere.
|
| Social change is intrinsically easier and far more
| comprehensive insurance: There is a lot of precedent of
| purposeful social change and the enormous historical
| diversity of socioeconomic structures points out to very
| flexible systems. The obstacles you mention did not even
| exist a few decades ago. There is nothing deterministic about
| the current state of the world. Its all in our freaking
| brains, a lot of it just inane over-consumption because for a
| while the answer was... why not.
|
| The caveat is that a minimum amount of social change needs to
| be truly _global_. This is something unprecedented. We are
| living through a historically unique moment where the random
| walk of political and socioeconomic evolution folds onto
| itself: its canvas is now a finite manifold. Cherished
| behaviors, power games etc may no longer be part of the
| solution space.
|
| Remains to be seen how our complex system will adapt.
| [deleted]
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think it's important to have realistic ideas about how
| climate change might actually go. For example:
|
| - if all emissions stopped tonight, we'd still be on track for
| temperature rises over the next several decades
|
| - some places would get hotter, others wouldn't. Similarly
| changes in rainfall would not be evenly distributed. It may be
| that Europe's climate doesn't change all that much, for example
| (due to changing ocean currents cooling the North Atlantic)
|
| - some of the facts that drove rhetoric 20 years ago have since
| changed, for example the cost of renewable energy has
| dramatically decreased such that certain kinds of subsidies or
| sacrifices are less necessary (on the other hand, the
| power/km^2 density of solar / wind in some places may still
| imply land uses that people would find unacceptable were they
| to become dominant)
|
| - in the grand scheme of things, geoengineering (like pumping
| SO2 into the troposphere or dispersing silver particles in the
| atmosphere) is cheap and could be performed unilaterally by
| many countries were they to feel sufficiently threatened by
| climate change.
|
| I think one reason to care about this kind of geoengineering is
| that it might just happen. I think it's also useful to consider
| that we're currently doing the 'geoengineering' of pumping more
| and more CO2 into the atmosphere and I think we should be
| careful to avoid treating 'planned' geoengineering
| asymmetrically from the side-effect kind.
| defrost wrote:
| > if all emissions stopped tonight, we'd still be on track
| for temperature rises over the next several decades
|
| Good News Everybody! (hey, every little bit counts) That was
| the thinking in 2007.
|
| https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-
| st...
|
| https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/16/is-it-too-late-to-prevent-
| cl... However, if we stopped emitting
| greenhouse gases today, the rise in global temperatures would
| begin to flatten within a few years.
| Temperatures would then plateau but remain well-elevated for
| many, many centuries. There is a time lag
| between what we do and when we feel it, but that lag is less
| than a decade.
| BasedAnon wrote:
| >Not sure which computing analogy would drive home the complete
| recklessness of this mentality but the Earth is not something
| you can reboot to the last working state once you harebrained
| patch implodes.
|
| here's one: stop writing random bits to the BIOS hoping it will
| fix things
| concordDance wrote:
| That's an awful analogy. The science behind, say, sunshades
| is much stronger than the science behind climate change
| itself!
|
| Eg. The odds of blocking out the sun not cooling the earth
| are much lower than the earth's temperature magically
| stabilising at current levels despite more co2 emissions.
| BasedAnon wrote:
| the hidden assumption is that you are dealing with a closed
| system, you are not. the scientific method has explanatory
| limits
| peteradio wrote:
| Sunshade is like thinking you fixed the bios security issue
| because your test case can no longer boot.
| concordDance wrote:
| Is the implication here that global warming isn't the
| actual problem we're trying to solve?
| peteradio wrote:
| No but you can appear to solve a problem with a myopic
| poorly formed test. Ala we got temps down but wheat
| yields are down but we won't blame the sunshade because
| that solved _the problem_.
| defrost wrote:
| > which computing analogy
|
| Ooops... _bricked it_ :(
| peyton wrote:
| Yeah but I think natural experiments like low-sulfur marine
| fuel adoption can point to areas where we can find reversible
| interim solutions.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| You cant terraform apply I guess!
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| rgmerk wrote:
| Geoengineering is bad. The problem is that the alternatives may
| be even worse.
| atoav wrote:
| It is very uncomplicated in fact:
|
| Most people here on HN are rationally capable of understanding
| the challenges humanity faces right now.
|
| What many aren't capable of is accepting the conclusion that we
| all have to change the way we live and quite possibly even the
| way we organize society in order to mitigate the irreperable
| problems our way of living has already caused.
|
| Deep down they might suspect this is necessary, but it is much
| more comfortable to believe in a solution that is only
| technological and go on as we did. That is why discussions
| around such technological silver bullets are always toxic:
| people _want_ to believe.
| hkt wrote:
| The thing that is galling is that we already have the
| technology to live sustainably if people do change their
| lifestyles.
| matsemann wrote:
| Especially since HNers mostly are the top top top earners in
| the world, having unsustainable lifestyles. No one likes to
| accept it can't be like this forever.
| fasterik wrote:
| This doesn't seem right. Most of the world's new carbon
| emissions are coming from developing countries. On the
| other hand, the HN crowd is much more likely to live in
| dense cities (which are more climate friendly), have access
| to public transportation, drive electric cars, and can
| afford to pay for carbon offsets.
|
| The only thing unsustainable about the first world
| lifestyle is the fact that we don't have the political will
| to invest in real solutions like nuclear power, carbon
| capture and storage, etc.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| CO2 emissions per capita (tons/person/year):
|
| Canada 18.72
|
| United States 15.32
|
| China 7.44
|
| Brazil 2.24
|
| Indonesia 2.02
|
| India 1.89
| fasterik wrote:
| Yes, and when you multiply per capita by population, you
| end up with China and India emitting over double what the
| United States emits.
|
| There is also the delta to take into account.
| Industrialized countries are decarbonizing and switching
| to renewables, while industrializing countries are
| building new coal plants.
| Contusion3532 wrote:
| It's not exactly fair for industrialized nations to have
| taken advantage of the externality of their historic
| carbon emissions, but then prevent developing nations
| from doing the same.
|
| The ethical solution would be for industrialized nations
| to subsidize the development and decarbonization of
| developing nations.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Too bad the atomic energy commission is so tight lipped
| about proliferating reactor designs. The third world
| could have been powered with atomic energy by the 1980s
| if we didnt subscribe to cold war us vs them thinking
| (which our top brass continues to subscribe to even if
| the general populace hasn't given a shit about the cold
| war since before Vietnam).
| detourdog wrote:
| I'm sure Canada is driven by heating load.
| jacquesm wrote:
| What drives it doesn't matter. Some areas may simply not
| be habitable sustainably.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| We do seem to be working hard on making sure Canada is
| nice and temperate, though.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It beats -45 I guess... (that's the lowest I ever saw on
| my outside thermometer on St. Josephs Island).
|
| You make a good point though: what is and what isn't
| habitable will change and as a result there will be
| substantial movement of people, displaced either by
| choice or by need.
| detourdog wrote:
| I understand I was just trying to explain to myself how
| they were #1 in usage. I was surprised. I was also trying
| to define the problem since they were outpacing the USA.
|
| Looks like Niagara falls only produces about 16 billion
| BTUs or 4.9 Million kWs.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Up North there are stacks of firewood everywhere and
| prepping for winter is an exercise in logistics. Also
| still many oil furnaces in active use.
| detourdog wrote:
| Makes me wonder if the offshoring of manufacturing from
| the USA ended up looking like efficiency gains. If we are
| indeed now anchoring manufacturing it will have a much
| smaller energy footprint than the manufacturing we lost.
| Which finally brings us back to the original topic
| delivery of goods.
| lordnacho wrote:
| > Most of the world's new carbon emissions are coming
| from developing countries.
|
| Isn't this because we're paying them to make stuff for
| us? Or is there some accounting of this where its their
| own consumption that causes it?
| fasterik wrote:
| It's because they're industrializing, have higher
| population growth, and are primarily building coal power
| plants to keep up with it.
| omnimus wrote:
| Also why would developing countries have to limit carbon
| emissions more than non developing ones?
| Contusion3532 wrote:
| Exactly. The cumulative emissions of the United States
| dwarf the rest of the countries in the world[1].
|
| The powerhouse that is the United States was built on the
| externality of carbon emissions. Now that the West has
| built their economies of this externality, they're trying
| to prevent developing nations from catching up by
| utilizing the same externality.
|
| [1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/10/The-2...
| matsemann wrote:
| Well, you're saying "new carbon emissions", of course
| those are coming from developing countries. It's not the
| same statement as I said. And of course they should be
| allowed to improve their quality of life.
|
| My point is that an average HNer lives in a country where
| per capita co2 per person is >10x as much as the poorer
| countries. And since the average HNer is a well off
| person with a lavish lifestyle, international travels
| etc., it's probably closer to 100x the amount of a person
| in a developing country.
|
| Either this lifestyle should only belong to us few and
| developing countries should remain developing. Or we need
| to cut back to a sustainable level everyone can share.
| Which is a reality people don't want to face.
|
| > _The only thing unsustainable about the first world
| lifestyle is the fact that we don 't have the political
| will to invest in real solutions like nuclear power,
| carbon capture and storage, etc._
|
| It's not about "political will". Would you pay more for a
| product if it's external effects were priced in? Probably
| not. Hence unsustainable. Our level of consumption is
| only possible because we don't pay the true price,
| someone else is.
| fasterik wrote:
| Carbon emissions per capita is going down in developed
| countries. It's going up in developing countries. Your
| implication was that the current problem is the level of
| consumption in the richest countries. But in reality that
| only accounts for a small portion of the expected carbon
| emissions over the next century.
|
| We don't need to "cut back" to a sustainable level. A
| sustainable level is whatever amount of energy we can
| produce without increasing the amount of carbon in the
| atmosphere. If we built more nuclear, solar, and wind
| power, and invested more in carbon capture and storage,
| we could sustain a much higher level of consumption than
| we currently are, while emitting less carbon.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Carbon emissions per capita is going down in developed
| countries. It's going up in developing countries.
|
| But it's not going to go down far enough in developed
| countries and it is going up _very_ rapidly in developing
| countries, the result of that is predictable, and in the
| meantime we _are_ emitting a large multiple of the per-
| capita greenhouse gases compared to everybody else, who
| simply want to have theirs too.
|
| We _do_ need to 'cut back' to a sustainable level or we
| _will_ be cut back. The amount of carbon in the
| atmosphere is already too high, it won 't come down
| unless we cut back, as a species.
|
| > If we built more nuclear, solar, and wind power, and
| invested more in carbon capture and storage, we could
| sustain a much higher level of consumption than we
| currently are, while emitting less carbon.
|
| That can not be stated with such a degree of confidence,
| and smacks a bit of people saying that driving electric
| cars is good for the environment. It isn't, it's just
| slightly better than driving an ICE.
| matsemann wrote:
| You're kinda proving my point. Instead of facing reality
| as that would mean changes to your lifestyle, you want to
| keep on going as if nothing is happening and just hope
| technology will save us.
| fasterik wrote:
| My argument is that your point isn't based in reality.
| How is changing my lifestyle going to fix the problem
| when most of my power consumption is fueled by
| renewables, while most of the carbon emissions over the
| next 50 years are going to come from India and China?
|
| I'm not saying keep going as if nothing is happening. I'm
| saying the climate crisis is a real emergency, and the
| solution is to build more renewable energy and remove
| carbon from the atmosphere.
| matsemann wrote:
| Because while your "power" consumption is mostly
| renewables (again, you arguing against something slightly
| different than what I write), it's a small part of your
| _total_ consumption. What about all the power China uses
| to build the things we in the west consume? That 's on
| your budget.
| fasterik wrote:
| Oh, I'm all for reducing consumption of useless crap.
| Personally I don't buy many things, most of my spending
| goes toward food and books.
|
| I thought we were talking about energy "consumption", not
| consumption of material goods. However, I'm still not
| sure how much reducing that kind of consumption is going
| to help in the overall picture of the climate crisis.
| It's also not realistic to expect that everybody is just
| going to stop buying things in the next 10 years.
| Symbiote wrote:
| If you've either taken four long flights in the last
| year, or drive an SUV a little more than average, you're
| already above the average carbon footprint for the world,
| without any consideration of eating meat, electricity,
| other fuels, etc.
| CalRobert wrote:
| It's really frustrating that I had to work really hard,
| study the right things, and get lucky to be able to afford
| to live somewhere my direct emissions are minimal. More
| people should be able to afford to live car free in well
| insulated homes.
| llsf wrote:
| THIS! As we will grasp the effective impact of the past
| century of burning fossil fuel, we will first go in denial,
| hoping for a technological miracle.
|
| While there might be a way to produce 84% of the energy
| currently used without involving fossil fuel, it would not
| reasonably be implemented in the next decades.
|
| So, we might have to change the way we live. The sooner we
| adapt, the less painful it would be. If this is not for the
| climate, it would be as we reach peak oil/gas/coal.
| ericd wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there's no chance that people in aggregate
| are going to voluntarily reduce consumption - on the
| contrary, the billions in developing countries are moving
| toward the western lifestyle, and they're not going to accept
| westerners trying to tell them not to. We _have to_ work to
| make this lifestyle sustainable by making clean power,
| cement, steel, synthetic fuel, etc cheaper than the polluting
| alternatives, because hoping that we'll reduce our way out of
| this is wishful thinking. We need to get to negative new
| carbon, not just less carbon.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Ha! You sort of slid a miracle in there like it was a
| checkbox. "We all have to change the way we live and quite
| possibly even the way we organize society ..."
|
| Your solution to this problem involves Universal Agreement
| and Cooperation Among Humanity. _People can 't even agree not
| to murder each other_.
|
| Any solution which requires UAaCOAH might as well have
| unobtanium as its focal point. It's just not going to happen.
| We can't agree on metric versus imperial, on language, on
| such weirdly silly things like an afterlife, on oppressive
| things like what women should be allowed to wear (in the face
| of the collapse of the biosphere, right now, you can find
| interviews with men who have chucked acid onto the faces of
| their wives because their peers taunt them about said wives
| wearing modern and "immodest" clothing: a real top priority
| for civilization). We can't agree on who owns what rock and
| we can't agree on how to govern, and our governance can't
| agree with its populace on little things like not lying to
| them about practically everything.
|
| We are a divisive, fiercely independent species with our own
| thoughts about everything, however trivial, whether or not it
| is good for us.
|
| Forget three nines, ignore a couple of standard deviations,
| getting even four-fifths of humanity to suddenly snap on to
| an agenda which will be personally uncomfortable to them is
| too much to ask. Any plan which requires that level of
| agreement is absolutely doomed unless you've got some kind of
| high-level AGI in your pocket with just one priority: stop
| the oncoming _several_ catastrophes valued over the
| preferences, choices, comfort, even reproductive lives of
| each person on the planet ... and some way of enforcing it.
| Lacking Forbin and his Colossus, we will not unite on much of
| anything besides "we all want to do what we individually
| want."
|
| Once you realize this, it's going to be the small (in terms
| of populace) projects which do not require universal consent
| which might have any shot whatsoever, rather than getting the
| bulk of humanity together, for the first time in history, to
| cooperate.
| RhysU wrote:
| > ...we all have to change the way we live...
|
| It is negligently irrational to believe the entirety of the
| human race can be convinced to do, in perpetuity, what you
| suggest.
|
| The conclusion to accept is the cat's out of the bag. Two
| weeks won't stop the spread. Nuclear weapons will never be
| uninvented. Etc etc etc.
|
| And, like, yawn. This has long been obvious. We'll adapt in
| some manner whatever the horrors. I would bet against a human
| but not against humanity.
| majormajor wrote:
| > What many aren't capable of is accepting the conclusion
| that we all have to change the way we live and quite possibly
| even the way we organize society in order to mitigate the
| irreperable problems our way of living has already caused.
|
| This seems like a euphemism for "a lot of people 'have' to
| die" - when phrased that way it becomes obvious the reason
| that many will search for active measures to take to try to
| prevent that.
| detourdog wrote:
| Plenty of people I know talk the talk but understand that
| they're a special case and need say incandescent flood light
| in the kitchen.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I want everyone to be able to live in a well insulated flat
| powered by renewable energy walking and biking distance from
| their daily needs, and with public transport (and rarely-
| needed EV share) for the rest. Combined with a low meat low
| dairy diet and less disposable consumer junk it seems like we
| could get a long ways with an arguably better quality of
| life. Maybe work half time too.
| concordDance wrote:
| "Stop eating nice food" is a nonstarter, as is "give up
| personal all weather mobility", have these as a policy
| positions and we'll get 3 degrees rises as those would be a
| smaller quality of life decrease for the average American.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I didn't even say stop eating meat. But we certainly
| could do with less, and make what we do eat better
| quality.
| amrocha wrote:
| Meat != nice food
|
| Cars != all weather mobility
|
| And if you really want a car get ready to pay 4x current
| prices because that's what they actually cost without
| subsidies and free externalities
| concordDance wrote:
| While some meat eating being required for nice food is
| subjective, I'm struggling to see what the suggested
| alternative to cars for all weather personal mobility is.
| I want to go to visit my friend Bob who lives 10 miles
| away but the rain is pouring down. What do I do in a
| carless world?
|
| Btw: CO2 emission taxes, road taxes and congestion
| charges are a great idea.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > I want to go to visit my friend Bob who lives 10 miles
| away but the rain is pouring down. What do I do in a
| carless world?
|
| - you wait until it stops raining
|
| - you bring an umbrella
|
| - you bring a change of clothing
|
| - you bike or walk
|
| - you ask Bob to meet you halfway
|
| Kids here in NL do this every day, sometimes across even
| longer distances (when they're high school age and live
| in rural parts of the country).
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| - you visit him after the rain is over
|
| (That comment must be satire)
| CalRobert wrote:
| Trams or buses to your friend Bob's flat or rowhouse
| would be helpful here.
| vel0city wrote:
| Statistically speaking in the US Bob doesn't live in a
| flat or rowhouse.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Yes. The US is bad.
| amrocha wrote:
| Yeah, we should fix that
| vel0city wrote:
| Loads of people don't want to live in flats and row
| houses though.
| CalRobert wrote:
| They don't want it so badly we made it illegal to build
| the things obviously people didn't want built.
| amrocha wrote:
| A lot of people replied to you and stuff, but I don't
| agree with them all so I want to answer you personally.
|
| I live in Tokyo. As I'm replying to you, I'm coming back
| from meeting my friends that live 13 miles away. This
| isn't uncommon. One of my best friends, I see her almost
| every week, lives 15 miles away from me.
|
| Here's what I did: I cycled 5 minutes to the train
| station; I got on the train; I ran into a friend in the
| train, and we chatted the whole way; I got to the
| station, went to our meeting spot, and we hung out for
| hours, drank a bunch, had fun, until last train; then we
| all went back to the station, rode the train for 45
| minutes, and now I'm home.
|
| It wasn't raining today, but I hang out with my friends
| when it's raining too. We don't let that stop us. Take an
| umbrella or a raincoat or just walk for 5 minutes in the
| rain. It's not a big deal.
|
| At the same time, I understand that this can feel very
| foreign to you. Our thoughts are molded by our
| environment. But I'm sure that if you lived in Tokyo you
| would also change your mind.
|
| I don't know how to change your mind, but I can tell you
| that if you gave it a try you would change your mind. l
|
| I'm not saying cars have no place, but they don't need to
| be the be all end all of transportation. There's very
| real negatives to cars, we're just blinded to them as
| long as we live in a car centric society.
| teamonkey wrote:
| The real problem is that your friend lives 10 miles away
| and you don't have adequate public transportation, not
| that life without cars is impossible.
| concordDance wrote:
| Public transportation still requires you to go to the bus
| stop in the rain.
|
| I'm also unsure what the proposed solution to Bob being
| 10 miles away is. Should I only make friends with people
| who work at the same place?
| CalRobert wrote:
| You keep saying 10 miles. Good cities are maybe ten miles
| across tops. Or huge enough for extensive metros.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If rain were a major impediment to functioning Ireland
| and NL should be abandoned. But it isn't. Rain is a minor
| nuisance. As for your friendships: in the past people
| would usually be good friends with people living close to
| them because they lacked transport. I have friends all
| over the world on account of the internet and I'm well
| aware that going to visit them is in many cases out of
| the question. That's much easier to decide when they are
| 100's (or even 1000's) of km away but the principle
| remains.
| CalRobert wrote:
| In fairness Ireland is annoyingly car dependent for
| Europe (and I'm writing this on the Luas!)
| replygirl wrote:
| It's just unreasonable to suggest people not visit their
| friends within the same metro area
| jacquesm wrote:
| If a bit of rain would stop you then that says a lot. I
| bike thousands of km per year and get caught in the rain
| frequently, it doesn't even factor into the decision of
| whether or not I will go because when you bike a longer
| distance in NL the chances of getting rained on approach
| certainty.
| replygirl wrote:
| i don't think a disinterest in cycling for 45 minutes in
| the rain each way says anything negative about me. i have
| a bike and use it when it makes sense. that doesn't make
| sense
| jacquesm wrote:
| No, but it means that you _also_ have a car. Plenty of
| people don 't. And rain usually doesn't stop them from
| doing what they want to do.
| californical wrote:
| The solution is that Bob isn't 10 miles away because the
| town is more dense. And carrying an umbrella to the tram
| or train stop 3 blocks away is easy
| amrocha wrote:
| This isn't right. 10 miles is a fine distance. I met up
| with friends 13 miles away today. As long as there's good
| public transport it's not a big deal.
| teamonkey wrote:
| 10 miles is fine, you can have friends everywhere and you
| can't expect everyone you know to live in the same urban
| sprawl.
|
| Use public transport, take a cab if you need to or use a
| car club (shared vehicles use less resources than owning
| a car), ride a bike, walk the 10 miles. Infrastructure
| helps to reduce personal car use.
| teamonkey wrote:
| > Public transportation still requires you to go to the
| bus stop in the rain.
|
| "But my quality of life!"
| diegoveralli wrote:
| > Public transportation still requires you to go to the
| bus stop in the rain.
|
| I want to say here that this comment sounds extremely
| alien to me, to the point that out of context I would
| have taken it as satirical.
|
| I know you're serious, but there's probably a big portion
| of people to whom discussing the problem of walking in
| the rain to the bus stop sounds completely ridiculous, in
| any context, and as as something we must consider when
| talking about climate change policy, well, even more
| ridiculous.
|
| I've lived in rainy places, and you just wear a raincoat,
| boots, maybe an umbrella (not always), and carry on.
|
| This kind of disproportionate weight assigned to even the
| smallest levels of personal discomfort, when discussing
| these problems, is what most people are denouncing here.
| And this bias might be what pushes people towards techno-
| solutionism that doesn't have a chance of actually
| solving our problems in the time frame that we need.
| corney91 wrote:
| > Public transportation still requires you to go to the
| bus stop in the rain.
|
| An umbrella solves that at minimal cost.
|
| For the record, I don't think all car use is wrong, but
| the example of visiting a friend 10 miles away isn't a
| very good one. Someone shouldn't be expected to buy a car
| and its associated maintenance, tax, and externalities,
| just to visit someone that nearby.
| Symbiote wrote:
| If people aren't willing to the nearest bus/tram/train
| stop while holding an umbrella and/or wearing a raincoat,
| we're all fucked.
| omnimus wrote:
| This is what OP means by changing the way we live.
|
| Sorry but getting rained on a bit is least of our
| troubles. Imagine there are places like Netherlands where
| it rains all the time and people (including very old
| ones) bike around the city...
| replygirl wrote:
| the mode share of cycling has gone down in the
| netherlands over the last 30 years. 12% of average income
| households are car-free; it's 25% overall and 6% for the
| wealthy. this is despite the mode share of cycling in
| amsterdam increasing 50% in the same period. even with a
| cycling network fully connecting the southern half of the
| country, decent connectivity in the north, road design in
| the major cities that is intentionally hostile to intra-
| city car commutes, and an ostensibly pro-cycling commuter
| culture, people don't want to bike more than a couple
| miles if they can afford not to.
|
| if you want to shape the behaviors of the world's people
| as you suggest, you'll need fascism. hard sell when there
| are already two paths to clean energy abundance, two
| paths to sustainable driving, and many paths to damage
| control competing in the public discourse.
| Loic wrote:
| Replying here to your below comment because of the
| "stack" limit. You wrote "I want to go to visit my friend
| Bob who lives 10 miles away but the rain is pouring
| down." as a justification for ownership of a car.
|
| We just went through 2 weeks of heavy rain here in
| Germany. I am only biking (not even an E-Bike) and what I
| did is just looked at the rain radar with a simple app,
| add a bit of buffer time, packed rain clothes in my bike
| bag and just go. I was only once a bit wet because I was
| too lazy to pull out my jacket as I came back home one
| evening.
|
| You will always find a good excuse to keep the apparent
| comfort of a car, but once you start to really bike on a
| regular basis, in my case, I found the bike way nicer,
| you bring movement in your life. It helps my health and
| my mood, which is a nice side effect.
| concordDance wrote:
| I'm a biker, I commute to work via bike and mostly shop
| via bike.
|
| The car is still incredibly useful for rainy days,
| visiting friends or when I really don't feel like
| tackling that hill to shop.
|
| Maybe you enjoy half an hour cycling in rain that's going
| to last 6 hours, but I don't.
| haswell wrote:
| > _Maybe you enjoy half an hour cycling in rain that 's
| going to last 6 hours, but I don't._
|
| At some point, people are going to have to start
| preferring long term survival over short term enjoyment.
|
| I don't love getting rained on, and there are days that
| the last thing I _feel_ like doing is getting on the bike
| or walking somewhere, but feeling like doing something is
| often not the primary reason to do it. And I realize that
| if I can't /won't make the harder decisions, I have no
| business encouraging others to do the same.
|
| Societies collectively need to change habits and shift
| mindsets about the ways we live life. It certainly won't
| be because it all feels good.
|
| I'm not saying there is no place for cars, and clearly
| there are situations where a bike won't work. But that
| does not mean our current car culture is acceptable
| either.
| diziet wrote:
| I want everyone to be able to do that too. I just don't
| want everyone to be forced to do so.
| atoav wrote:
| Are you sure the impact of "everybody on earth lives in a
| well insulated flat" on the earth climate and biodiversity
| is net positive?
| adaml_623 wrote:
| Who's building that well insulated flat and where is the
| insulation coming from?
|
| I sometimes worry that the pyramid of infrastructure and
| labour required to create that flat is not scalable
| detourdog wrote:
| I just did it. Definitely possible. Every project is a
| compromise. The biggest and easiest compromise to make is
| location.
|
| Opportunities are everywhere if one is looking and
| prepared.
|
| I don't understand why so many people choose to believe
| things are impossible.
|
| https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0Y5oqs3qnakFd
| CalRobert wrote:
| How's public transport and bike infra?
| detourdog wrote:
| we have a bike path that crosses town and the next town
| over is working to connect. Once tbat is connect it will
| be 22 mile bike ride to pittsfield.
|
| Public transit exists but luckily there arn't many places
| to go.
|
| If it's not within 3 miles mostly likely you have to
| travel 20 miles. This helps keep the carbon footprint low
| because it is easy to go without.
| detourdog wrote:
| I have the perfect place for you but only currently 5
| available units. It checks everyone of your needs.*
|
| Meets your criteria and has fiber installed. We have at
| least 2 neighbors that will sell you eggs and I would let
| you garden.
|
| *have chosen EV charger the ev share will have to wait for
| full occupency.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Wonderful, but I'm moving to the Netherlands Monday. It
| checks the boxes except for NL's annoying dependence on
| gas. Where is your spot?
| detourdog wrote:
| Netherlands is better but here is my spot but I think we
| are a close second. The food culture is what one gives up
| to live here. Might as well cook for your self.
|
| https://destinationwilliamstown.org/
| fasterik wrote:
| _> That is why discussions around such technological silver
| bullets are always toxic: people want to believe._
|
| On the flip side, some people reject technological solutions
| on principle because for them, it's not about solving
| problems, it's about atoning for the sins of humanity.
|
| What does the alternative future look like where we solve the
| climate crisis by changing the way we live and organize
| society? Personally, I would prefer to continue having
| electricity, heat, running water, sewage treatment, shipping,
| transportation, and the internet. It seems to me that if we
| really wanted to, we could keep these things around while
| putting a substantial portion of GDP into building nuclear
| reactors and removing carbon from the atmosphere. But that's
| not a satisfying answer for people who have made the climate
| crisis into a religious issue.
| geysersam wrote:
| > for them, it's not about solving problems, it's about
| atoning for the sins of humanity.
|
| Never encountered that. Maybe it exists but it's extremely
| rare and irrelevant.
|
| > putting a substantial portion of GDP into building
| nuclear reactors and removing carbon from the atmosphere
|
| Spending lots of money, to produce lots of energy, to solve
| a problem we created by using too much energy...
|
| What people don't get is that environmentalists just want
| to solve the problem in the most cost effective way, and
| that is to stop destroying the environment we live in.
|
| > having electricity, heat, running water, sewage
| treatment, shipping, transportation, and the internet.
|
| Where in the Paris Agreement did you read we shouldn't
| continue having those things?
| dlkf wrote:
| Those things require energy. Incremental efficiency
| improvements will not make a big dent. Either we continue
| to use the same level of energy, or we start giving
| things up. It's simple arithmetic.
| fasterik wrote:
| _> Spending lots of money, to produce lots of energy, to
| solve a problem we created by using too much energy..._
|
| How does this argument make sense? Why is producing
| energy inherently bad if it doesn't put carbon into the
| atmosphere?
|
| _> What people don't get is that environmentalists just
| want to solve the problem in the most cost effective way,
| and that is to stop destroying the environment we live
| in._
|
| The most realistic way to stop destroying the environment
| is to switch to clean energy. That means spending money,
| and building a lot more nuclear reactors than we
| currently have. If the climate is truly an emergency,
| which I believe it is, then it's worth spending the
| money.
| geysersam wrote:
| > Why is producing energy inherently bad if it doesn't
| put carbon into the atmosphere?
|
| Because it costs money.
|
| Just not polluting in the first place is _cheaper_.
|
| Nuclear is probably an important part of the future
| energy mix but now we discussed using nuclear energy to
| _remove carbon from the atmosphere_ and I believe that
| would be a huge waste of resources compared to just not
| putting the carbon in the atmosphere in the first place.
|
| Carbon capture is a scam.
| ericd wrote:
| Why do you think carbon capture is a scam? It's not going
| to replace reduction via reducing new emissions to zero
| like some people seem to think, but we're also going to
| need to pull a lot out of the carbon cycle - net zero
| isn't enough.
|
| We should be pouring a huge amount of money into nuclear
| fission right now, it's the most straightforward way
| toward a zero target, and repetition/scale with large
| series of identical reactors and streamlined regulatory
| oversight will hopefully make it cost competitive with
| fossil fuels.
| geysersam wrote:
| It's a scam because the cost of removing one ton of CO2
| using carbon capture (assuming we're talking about direct
| air capture) is so high that very few would be ready to
| pay the price to remove their emissions. Again, reducing
| how much carbon emissions we produce is way cheaper.
|
| I've got nothing against carbon capture technology in
| principle, but it's not a solution that will let us
| continue releasing carbon into the atmosphere at anywhere
| near the current rate.
| ericd wrote:
| Ah, but there are a bunch of other carbon capture
| solutions, DAC is usually considered among the highest
| cost.
|
| But yeah, not emitting is cheaper in most cases, and
| you're right, we can't just slather carbon capture on our
| current situation and not change anything else.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Bluntly: far fewer people, sustainability built into every
| process, no more oil, very high cost for transportation
| unless it is by ship, personal transport will be very
| costly and you won't do it unless you really have to. Think
| '1850' but with transistors.
| fasterik wrote:
| _> far fewer people_
|
| Also bluntly: how would we do that ethically without
| severely restricting reproductive rights or "cleansing"
| populations?
| titzer wrote:
| What part of birthing billions of children into poverty
| was ethical again?
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's the problem right there: by asking the question
| like that you are essentially saying 'children are for
| the wealthy'. And that's also not how it should be. This
| is a super hard problem to resolve in a fair way that
| works in an international setting because you need
| everybody on board otherwise it will not work. It's the
| tragedy of the commons endgame.
| titzer wrote:
| This is a problem; with the inertia the system is
| carrying where there are no "ethical" choices left.
| That's of course no excuse to pick a horribly fascist and
| evil one. Yet that seems to be the inference in any
| conversation where you point out that fact that we're
| basically fucked. "Oh yeah, well obviously you are a
| genocidal monster. That must mean we're not fucked."
|
| Uh, no. I'm watching this garbage truck smash into the
| wall, same as you. We're all in the same boat.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I don't care about what people call me, I'm just pointing
| out there are too many of us. Historically when there
| were too many people we ended up with wars or famine. I
| don't think this time around it will be an exception to
| that rule, but it's the first time this is happening at
| this scale. In that sense all bets are off, it is also
| possible that given such stakes humanity _can_ find it in
| itself to pull the cart as one but I 'm not too hopeful
| about that.
|
| We could easily be in 'adapt or die' territory somewhere
| in the next century.
| titzer wrote:
| > I don't care about what people call me
|
| I hope it's clear from context that I wasn't directing
| anything at you; we're basically in complete agreement.
| jacquesm wrote:
| We're well into 'uncomfortable truth' territory on this
| subject, so you can expect namecalling and downvoting
| rather than discussion, nothing surprising but people
| don't like to hear that their life style isn't
| sustainable.
|
| The majority of people around me would rather invest in
| holidays and luxury goods than sustainability and aim to
| increase their footprint rather than that they reduce it.
| I'm _just_ as guilty because I too live in a wealthy
| country. And even though I bike when I can and have spent
| a small fortune on making this house less dependent on
| outside energy I make myself no illusions: I 'm still a
| net negative on the environment, far in excess of any
| developing world denizen. All I have to do to have that
| reinforced is to look at our trash can, food bill and
| fuel bill for the times when we do drive. Each of those
| alone is probably well in excess of our 'proper' budget
| that would be sustainable.
|
| And for the life of me without stopping all activity I
| have no idea how I can further reduce it, this is just
| the world I happen to live in. I guess I could _not_ have
| had kids, I guess I could live in a tiny shack. But
| overall everybody in the developed world will increase
| the problem by virtue of being alive. That 's not good
| news, but I don't have anything better.
| ahtihn wrote:
| Struggling for survival is the natural condition of
| living beings on this planet. What's unethical about
| birthing children in poverty exactly?
|
| Rich people consume orders of magnitude more resources
| than poor people so if anything it's unethical for rich
| people to have children.
| callmeal wrote:
| >Also bluntly: how would we do that ethically without
| severely restricting reproductive rights
|
| Exactly. The dismantling of Roe v Wade in the US comes to
| mind as a form of severely restricting reproductive
| rights.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That is a very good question, but it is also the wrong
| question. The better one would be how are we collectively
| going to avoid nature doing it for us?
|
| Because I don't know what the solution is but I do know
| that the alternative is going to be no fun at all. One
| possibility is that we all end up agreeing that we should
| at least try to reduce our numbers. My parents brought me
| up with 'replacement' numbers so that we'd end up with a
| steady population. I'm not so sure if that was wise. And
| I'm aware that there are many predictions out there that
| our numbers will eventually top out (they will, either
| because we do it ourselves, voluntarily or because our
| resources will run out, an exponentially expanding
| population in a fixed environment always ends in
| collapse).
|
| But unless we manage to massively reduce our impact on
| the environment I don't see a way for the increased
| consumption and eventual survival of our societies as we
| know them today. In another comment someone offhandedly
| asked whether we should all want leisure yachts or not.
| The obvious answer to that is 'no'. But we probably also
| shouldn't all want vehicles and the ability to transport
| ourselves to the end of the world on a whim. Hard choices
| are ahead of us, the time for easy answers is long behind
| us.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| We wouldn't.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > But that's not a satisfying answer for people who have
| made the climate crisis into a religious issue.
|
| Complete with language about believers and non-believers
| kaba0 wrote:
| We have enough resources to provide heating and running
| water for every living person on Earth, it is just not
| allocated fairly and smartly (e.g. in my country we flush
| the toilet with very good grade water meant for drinking,
| because historically we don't have separate piping for less
| potable water and we are rich in waters).
|
| But do we really need to be able to order some bullshit
| plastic shit from China for 2 dollars? I think it is only
| fair to give up that for local production, even if that
| costs 10 dollars for the same thing. Similarly, do I have
| to eat argentine beef in Europe? Sure, make it available
| for a hefty price for the rare occasion, but it really
| should not be generally available. Fruit that is local and
| is out of season? Don't import it from Peru, simply wait
| for it to be in season, or buy some product that was made
| locally when it was in season, like jam. Strengthening
| local production would already massively decrease the
| number of ships we need for minimal inconvenience (hell, it
| might just be beneficial for the local economy). Do I even
| have to eat meat each day?
|
| Similary, why don't we ban most kinds of single-use
| plastics? How often do you buy milk that you plan on
| drinking while you walk somewhere? Couldn't it be stored
| inside a container you have to bring back to the shop the
| next time, or buy again if not? Hell, most liquids meant
| for drinking could easily come in a few sizes of these
| reusable bottles. We have goddamn shops that can auto-
| subtract your bought items simply by camera imaging, don't
| tell me we don't have the tech to safely and hygienically
| refill containers, something we had 100 years ago.
|
| As for societal change: do my parents have to live in a
| separate house with way too much space for them, having
| them see their grandchildren only occasionally (making
| parents having to pay for babysitters)? Only so that they
| can later be cared for by some random person? Sure, not
| everyone has parents worth living together with, but this
| tendency that it is somehow a failure to not move out of
| your parents home is imo very harmful to everyone involved
| - parent not having enough self-time, grandparents being
| alone, slowly deteriorating mentally, children not seeing
| grandparents enough (also, parents having to figure out
| parenting from zero).
|
| These are not big sacrifices, but we will do them, one way
| or another. The question is, do we want to do it with self-
| agency, or let nature run its course?
| montroser wrote:
| That all sounds okay at an individual level, but to
| affect the massive change we need, relying on moral self-
| agency is not going to suffice.
|
| So do you want governments to legislate that you must
| live with your parents? Or that you must not eat meat?
| Otherwise it's fine and good that a small share of the
| populace will make these choices on their own, but we
| need an order of magnitude more.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Carbon tax incentivizes many of my points, but it's not
| like my points are the sacred script on what to follow.
| That and some others do require government legislations
| (which are a good thing in most cases, and ideally are
| there to protect and serve the people!), e.g. mandating a
| standard container, others like living with your parents
| would need a social change, but that can also be
| influenced by the government, e.g. much less tax on rent
| in case of multi-generational homes.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Hell, most liquids meant for drinking could easily come
| in a few sizes of these reusable bottles
|
| Oh how I wish I could just bring a reusable bottle to
| some dispenser at the store and refill directly. Milk,
| common juices, soaps, etc. So many bottles going into
| trash/recycling all the time.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| The problem is that absent technology we need to reach 0
| carbon emissions. Not just what it was in 1950 or 1900
| but actually 0. This implies a standard of living far
| worse than you suggest. And even at 0 it will take
| hundreds of years to undo current warming.
|
| It's not going to be politically feasible since 99% of
| people don't want to live that way. Thus we have to
| pursue alternatives.
| kaba0 wrote:
| We are currently accelerating towards a cliff. We may not
| stop the car before the cliff, but the next best thing we
| can do is getting our legs off the pedal.
|
| Maybe technology will help us achieve that last minute
| stop we so need, but we have to start somewhere.
| TatersGonnaT8 wrote:
| Just tax carbon and everyone can decide with their
| wallets just how much they want to eat meat or imported
| Peruvian fruits
| kaba0 wrote:
| Yes, that's definitely one of the most realistic ways
| going forward, though the recyclable bottles part would
| need separate government standards and laws.
| smolder wrote:
| Meanwhile, I encountered an adult the other day who only
| drinks from plastic disposable cups so that they don't
| have to wash dishes.
| tticvs wrote:
| But none of the examples you give move the needle enough
| with regards to climate change.
|
| You're just following what feels like it would be good
| for the environment (and maybe it is good for your local
| environment) but isn't actually impactful at a large
| scale.
|
| You write eloquently, but futilely.
| cutemonster wrote:
| I think it's not meant to be an exhaustive list of things
| to do.
|
| Instead, what if it's a mindset: Doing such things, and
| 1000 others, some of them vastly more important than
| others.
|
| And you can add to the list (instead of just saying "it
| won't work").
|
| E.g. high car gas taxes, so there'll be trains, buses and
| bike lanes instead for everyone.
| paulmd wrote:
| Eating less beef will reduce the market price and make it
| cheaper for everyone else, increasing their consumption
| accordingly.
|
| The whole point of a capitalist economy is to "route
| around inefficiency", in the same way the internet is
| designed to "route around damage". Any single player or
| even a large contingent of players, who act
| inefficiently, are only increasing the alpha available
| for another player to exploit.
|
| "Inefficiency" in this sense is anything that doesn't
| maximize personal benefit - profit or other quality of
| life. Anything that is legal according to the rules of
| the game (or tolerated by society) is going to happen
| whether it's you that does it or someone else.
|
| The only long term solution is that if this is what needs
| to happen, we have to encode that into "the rules" so
| everyone plays by that rule. Personal recycling or
| personal consumption reduction does nothing at a social
| level, and in fact is pushed as a deliberate stalling
| tactic to avoid and stall those political actions which
| could have a real impact.
|
| This is also the problem with bitcoin - any one player
| choosing not to participate in mining only increases the
| reward for the remaining players who will continue to
| participate. If there is only one person on the planet
| willing to mine, she gets all the rewards. So simply
| choosing not to mine does nothing, you're just
| transferring profit to someone else.
|
| Humanity has already built the first AIs, they are
| emergent paperclip-maximizers encoded into the bylaws of
| corporations and market structures. And they will route
| around any attempt to un-maximize paperclip production
| according to whatever levers we continue to give them. If
| you don't want people to eat as much beef, you have to
| build that rule into the system, it'll never happen due
| to personal-level changes in behavior.
| tticvs wrote:
| > Doing such things, and 1000 others, some of them vastly
| more important than others.
|
| That doesn't make any sense why would we make sacrifices
| that are not important.
| walleeee wrote:
| Futility becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy way too
| easily to let it persuade one not to do what one thinks
| is right
| tticvs wrote:
| Harming yourself, advising others to harm themselves, and
| advocating for your government to enforce harm is not
| "right".
|
| Further, even if what you advocate isn't exactly harmful,
| just neutral (ie eating local vegetables instead of
| imported, nevermind that the carbon footprint difference
| is negligible) wasting valuable political capital on
| useless gestures is objectively wrong.
| gjulianm wrote:
| > while putting a substantial portion of GDP into building
| nuclear reactors and removing carbon from the atmosphere.
|
| The first thing takes years and we still don't have
| feasible technology for the second. Not to mention that we
| would still have a lot of emissions from transport,
| manufacture, and meat consumption.
|
| A technological silver bullet would be cool but the reality
| is that we don't have one and there's nothing in the near
| future. But reducing our consumption is something we can
| start doing now.
| fasterik wrote:
| The problem with the term "silver bullet" when used in
| these discussions is that it's used to dismiss any
| proposal for a technological solution. I can flip that
| around and say "a societal silver bullet would be cool
| but the reality is that we aren't going to convince
| people to reduce their consumption." Which I actually
| sort of believe. I think a technological solution has a
| much better chance of succeeding than a social one.
|
| I'm not saying there's a silver bullet, I just think it's
| our decision as a society whether or not we invest in
| these technologies and do the work of developing them to
| the point that they actually have a chance of solving the
| problem. We were able to make rapid progress on nuclear
| in the 1940s and space flight in the 1960s. We have the
| resources, but it doesn't seem like we have the political
| will this time.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| If someone came to you with a problem on a project, and
| you had a hard deadline of the end of the week, and you
| had two ways to go about it - 1) this is gonna be a pain
| in the ass to implement, you'll all be pulling 12 hour
| days but it's straightforward and crystal clear in how
| this directly addresses the problem, and 2) some
| completely unproven solution, that even when fully
| implemented the math/logic doesn't really work out in
| terms of it solving the problem, but there's some small
| hope that it might for some reason, and you'll get to
| wrap up the week on a Thursday no sweat (the honest
| reason), which do you spend the rest of your week
| pursuing?
|
| Now imagine it's not just some meaningless project at
| your job but a matter of life and death for the majority
| of life on Earth, which do you pursue?
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| It's a very bad analogy because we have no know working
| solution. We simply have never achieved zero carbon
| emissions given a modern world of 8 billion people.
| adrianN wrote:
| We have in fact several known working solutions. You
| don't have to implement a solution to know that it works.
| The problem is that they cost money to implement and
| nobody wants to pay.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| We certainly do have a known solution to emissions, it's
| to cut them. The most straightforward way to do that is
| to cut consumption, drop standards of living.
|
| The solution is crystal clear, we have real life working
| examples right now all over the world, for example the
| people living in Bangladesh are at a level of consumption
| that would actually be sustainable for all 8 billion of
| us to embrace.
|
| The solution is clear, it's just that we don't like it,
| so we readily embrace the magical thinking that we can
| have our cake and eat it too.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Growing up biomass is a good way to eliminate carbon from
| the atmosphere. You can build or make product from the
| biomass, or even just throw it into a deep ocean trench.
| adrianN wrote:
| The problem with this is scale and cost. We essentially
| need to unburn all the coal and oil were burnt in the
| last hundred years or so. That gigantic amounts of mass.
| jshen wrote:
| " What does the alternative future look like where we solve
| the climate crisis by changing the way we live and organize
| society? Personally, I would prefer to continue having
| electricity, heat, running water, sewage treatment,
| shipping, transportation, and the internet."
|
| This is either dishonest or ignorant. We can make a huge
| difference by moving faster to solar, eating a lot less
| meat, living in denser settings rather than suburbs, living
| in smaller houses, switching to heat pumps, not driving
| huge trucks and SUVs, avoid so much waste particularly in
| food, driving less, etc.
| febra_ wrote:
| > while putting a substantial portion of GDP into building
| nuclear reactors and removing carbon from the atmosphere.
|
| So, the first one taking decades and the second one being a
| meme """solution""" for the science illiterate?
| titzer wrote:
| It's not about religion, but about empathy and justice.
| Some people actually think that other forms of life on this
| planet have a right to exist, and there's no question at
| all that human life has been catastrophically bad for
| virtually every other form of life on this Earth. You can't
| just apply an energy patch and presto-reverso the carbon
| content in the atmosphere; we've managed to seriously
| disrupt global ecosystems and going nuclear doesn't fix
| that. We're gobbling this planet up, and there's just
| frankly too many of us to keep living at the standard of
| living we are.
|
| > Personally, I would prefer to continue having
| electricity, heat, running water, sewage treatment,
| shipping, transportation, and the internet.
|
| Incredibly tone deaf, frankly, when _most_ past humans had
| none of those things and yet dealt with it, living actual
| full lives. We 've basically forgotten what we are, what we
| came from, and believe we _deserve_ Saturday morning
| cartoons.
| fasterik wrote:
| I'm not saying it's a magic fix, I'm saying it's a really
| hard problem that we can solve if we put the resources
| and brain power into it. But some people apparently think
| that even trying to solve the problem is pointless.
| Needless to say, I disagree.
|
| _> Incredibly tone deaf, frankly, when most past humans
| had none of those things and yet dealt with it, living
| actual full lives. We've basically forgotten what we are,
| what we came from, and believe we deserve Saturday
| morning cartoons._
|
| We came from a history of mostly starving, struggling for
| survival, dying of infections, dying during childbirth,
| being illiterate, and having little shelter or comfort. I
| think this nostalgia for the past is a golden age fallacy
| that needs to die. Technology has vastly improved human
| life and taking it away is essentially a call for
| reducing the standard of living for everybody.
| titzer wrote:
| > We came from a history of mostly starving, struggling
| for survival, dying of infections, dying during
| childbirth, being illiterate, and having little shelter
| or comfort. I think this nostalgia for the past is a
| golden age fallacy that needs to die. Technology has
| vastly improved human life and taking it away is
| essentially a call for reducing the standard of living
| for everybody.
|
| The past wasn't sunbeams and frolicking in meadows, but
| your take on it is totally off base. The fact is that in
| every period of (Western) history, the wealthy have
| always lived incredibly comfortable and enjoyable lives.
| Modern technology isn't the determinant variable. They
| did it by harnessing their respective civilizations--it
| was absolutely not equitable. They rested atop a pyramid
| of other people. And so do you and I! We do not live in
| equitable times globally. To the extent that we've made
| any strides morally, it's only that we've substituted
| technology and industrialization for slavery and
| oppression. But under no configuration is modern life
| sustainable for 8 billion people, energy, living space,
| and raw materials wise, so this situation is going to
| keep drawing down the reservoir until there is a brutal
| correction.
|
| I also think your characterization of all of history
| being "mostly starving, struggling for survival, dying of
| infections, dying during childbirth, being illiterate,
| and having little shelter or comfort" is frankly tripe.
| As if native peoples lives (over hundreds of thousands of
| years, indeed) are such utter trash that they need to be
| rescued from it by technology. "Oh, the poor brown people
| living such primitive lives, how sad. Let's do a mission
| to convert them to consumerism and fill their lives with
| junk, get them some jobs and atomize their tribes." I
| invite you to visit basically any place on Earth that is
| not Europe or North America. It's frankly a white/western
| superiority complex and technology is just a fig leaf
| over it, a fundamental belief that today's way of life is
| the only one worth living and is so obviously superior
| that it cannot be questioned. I mean, those stupid native
| Americans and their huts. Good thing we fixed that,
| right?
| tticvs wrote:
| Without modern, western, industrial technology 50% of all
| people die before reaching adulthood:
| https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-in-the-past
|
| This is reproducible across time, geography and culture.
| It is the basic condition of humanity.
|
| > I invite you to visit basically any place on Earth that
| is not Europe or North America. It's frankly a
| white/western superiority complex and technology is just
| a fig leaf over it, a fundamental belief that today's way
| of life is the only one worth living
|
| I invite you to do the same, and ask the people you'd
| meet if they'd prefer if half their children died in
| their arms or if they'd prefer to live without
| electricity, or antibiotics, or fertilizer, or
| telecommunications, or vaccines, or, or, or....
|
| > But under no configuration is modern life sustainable
| for 8 billion people, energy, living space, and raw
| materials wise, so this situation is going to keep
| drawing down the reservoir until there is a brutal
| correction.
|
| If billions are going to die either way then instead of
| just giving up we should be trying everything in our
| power to improve our technology to increase the carrying
| capacity of the earth and escape another malthusian trap
| as we've done so many times in the past.
|
| Unless of course you want billions to die.
|
| As an aside, I'm very disturbed to realize this screed is
| coming from someone of your stature in the tech
| community.
| titzer wrote:
| > As an aside, I'm very disturbed to realize this screed
| is coming from someone of your stature in the tech
| community.
|
| Oh geesh. As if the lines of code I have written are what
| I put forth to vouch for this. We should divorce the tech
| fantasies from the meatspace realities. My opinions are
| based on the many, many, non-tech days that I've spent
| roaming the Earth[1] and have seen what humans as a whole
| are really up to. I've spent a whole lot of time picking
| up garbage off beaches and roadsides and over the course
| of my short life have already seen the forests and fields
| of my youth get gobbled up by Lowes's and Burger Kings
| and endless, endless sprawl and greed. When I see a
| hundred acres of corn get sold off for 6 million bucks
| and the only thing that is built on it is a gas station,
| it dawns me that it's just another transaction in a long,
| long line of trading what was here before for the now--
| forests, trees, raccoons, foxes, wolves, beatles, ants,
| birds, bees, all...woosh. I guess tomorrow it'll be a
| solar/wind-powered datacenter and we'll all pat ourselves
| on the back. But we're fruits or flowers on the tree of
| life, and we're sawing its branches off.
|
| What I find disturbing, but not really surprising, given
| how virtualized and fake our worlds and imaginations have
| become, just how blinkered the tech sector is, as if
| exponential growth is going to continue forever and
| matter and energy are just going to suddenly take up our
| growthism mindset and help us boost our fever dreams
| of...what...a hundred billion people on Earth? Or of 8
| billion Elon Musks whisking around the planet on private
| jets? I honestly don't know what people expect. The
| exponential curve would naturally become an S curve at
| some point, but unfortunately we aren't aiming for that.
| We've already overshot, and the reservoir we are drawing
| down will eventually run dry, and that's a brutal, brutal
| crash.
|
| And if you take my opinion for advocating _any_ fascist-
| sounding, eugenics-sounding, kill-the-baddies-sounding
| recommendation, then you 're reading something in I
| didn't write. Like if pointing out we're headed for a
| cliff turns into an argument about the two options:
| magically sprout wings or all of us cut our legs off the
| knees. It's a total non-sequitur and binary thinking.
|
| [1] And yeah, it's true that I've been able to roam said
| Earth because of tech that's been invented in the last
| 50-100 years. And yes, I am lucky. And yes we are having
| this conversation because of tech, and yes, I don't feel
| great about the unsustainability of the lifestyle that
| all of us, including me, live.
| tticvs wrote:
| I see your perspective but I think that it is basically
| wrong. Your worldview misses a few key points:
|
| 1. The human growth explosion already happened. We're
| dealing with the end stage of it over the next 50-100
| years. There will never be a world of "a hundred billion
| people on Earth" since it turns out people don't want to
| reproduce that much. We'll hit peak human this century
| which means that we actually do have a shot at giving all
| people a decent lifestyle if we develop our technology
| and have abundant energy. Exponential growth is just not
| required. The Ehrlichian doomsday was never going to
| happen.
|
| 2. The past was actually really bad, even for the
| wealthiest. Disease, starvation, and violence were
| actually rampant. Rewinding the development clock in rich
| areas, or pausing it in developing areas, would be
| equivalent to the largest crimes against humanity ever
| perpetrated.
|
| I find your rejection of this basic fact of history by
| writing things like: "if native peoples lives (over
| hundreds of thousands of years, indeed) are such utter
| trash that they need to be rescued from it by technology"
| or "Incredibly tone deaf, frankly, when most past humans
| had none of those things and yet dealt with it, living
| actual full lives. We've basically forgotten what we are,
| what we came from, and believe we deserve Saturday
| morning cartoons." to be wildly ignorant. These people
| suffered, for millions of years, and still they suffer
| today. Alleviating this suffering is not optional.
| Frankly only someone who grew up in the utterly privilege
| western culture could ever think or write something like
| this.
|
| 3. Humans are not separate from nature. This one is
| counter-intuitive and hard to swallow but the truth is
| all human activity is natural, Lowes and Burger Kings are
| just a natural as forests. Nature is utterly impersonal.
| It has no morality or opinion. Sometimes one species gets
| a lot of adaptions that let it dominate and reshape the
| rest of nature into the way it sees fit. Then other
| species evolve to fill the new niches that are created.
| We make a lot of plastic now, but bacteria are starting
| to evolve to eat it, is plastic bad for nature? It's a
| nonsensical question. Plastic is nature.
|
| It's fine to not like this and prefer some parts of
| nature over others, I certainly do, but no part of it is
| "better" or "worse" it just IS. Any morality you assign
| to it is purely your own opinion. You're right that
| keeping 8 billion humans fed and happy has a big impact
| on the rest of nature. But the only moral dimension that
| impact has is: will it cause more or less human
| suffering?
|
| Sometimes the answer is yes, and we should stop.
| Sometimes is no and we have a moral duty to reconfigure
| nature to our liking. Most of the time the answer is:
| "it's not clear" and then people argue about it and
| sometimes pass laws.
|
| But crucially it's all about humanity.
|
| > And if you take my opinion for advocating any fascist-
| sounding, eugenics-sounding, kill-the-baddies-sounding
| recommendation, then you're reading something in I didn't
| write
|
| But surely you must realize that the malthusian collapse
| that you anticipate will be characterized by
| authoritarian violence. Times of resource scarcity always
| are. So by embracing a defeatist philosophy you
| implicitly endorse it.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Why would I accept that there's this doomsday barreling
| towards us at high speed, and the only way to avoid it is
| economic devastation and serfdom for my grandchildren?
|
| That sounds an awful lot like a long con.
|
| Most rational people have arrived at the very reasonable
| conclusion that the more extreme the danger is, the more
| justified we are in attempting cutting edge countermeasures.
| So when the response we get back is "oh no, you can't do
| that, anything but that!"... the more it sounds like it was a
| grift all along.
|
| This requires no conspiracy, by the way. Large groups of
| people can subconsciously coordinate in these ways without
| even realizing they're doing it. Just takes a bit of
| groupthink and a small dab of neuroticism.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Personally I can't wait for the democracy is white
| supremacy memes coming at us in a couple of months/years.
| concordDance wrote:
| > What many aren't capable of is accepting the conclusion
| that we all have to change the way we live and quite possibly
| even the way we organize society in order to mitigate the
| irreperable problems our way of living has already caused
|
| That's because this has never actually been shown. So many
| people think it has, but almost none have ever seen an actual
| attempt at a QALY calculation for no climate change
| mitigation. If you've actually seen one I'd love you to link
| it!
|
| Mostly it's lots of handwaving, but attempting to quantify
| things is actually important so we can know what measures are
| worthwhile (e.g. if climate change was an existential risk
| this century then threatening with nukes any country emitting
| CO2 would be reasonable).
| the__alchemist wrote:
| The harebrained patch you describe has already been applied,
| and I can't find the reboot button.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This is precisely why we shouldn't dismiss skeptics about the
| cause of climate change as "climate change deniers." Its
| clearly maligning - someone who doesn't deny the climate is
| changing is obviously not a climate change denier.
|
| If we don't understand all the variables we're probably going
| through make things worse. Given how complicated weather and
| climate are and how are models are not perfect, that seems
| inevitable if we embrace geoengineering.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Not a bad thread but misses a critical point.
|
| If the Sulfur emissions policies were known for >5 years and
| discussed for >10 years why aren't they part of mainstream
| climate models?
|
| The best answer I could find was essentially that models use a
| proxy for aerosols and so including the new policy might cause
| "double counting" of this forcing. This 'conservatism' caused
| this effect to be left out of the models.
|
| So the story is basically that current mainstream models
| underestimated warming due to them ignoring this effect. But if
| they are missing this forcing, what other "insignificant"
| forcings are missing? Are they positive or negative? Are there
| other observations that don't match the models?
|
| This has really shaken my faith in the climate science community.
| I'm starting to think ClimateGate wasn't the nothingburger the
| media made it out to be.
| js8 wrote:
| > This has really shaken my faith in the climate science
| community
|
| Are you kidding me?
|
| Activist climate scientists (like James Hansen) have warned for
| decades that IPCC reports are likely too conservative, because
| they represent broad consensus of climatologists.
|
| Yet climate deniers continued to decry IPCC (also for decades)
| as too radical, political organization.
|
| And now that the conservativism of IPCC is finally coming to
| public consciousness, you decide to side with the deniers, as
| if they were right all along?
| brutusborn wrote:
| There's no reason the IPCC can't report on more conservative
| models whilst keeping all relevant effects in accurate
| models. Usually their conservatism is in choosing more
| realistic assumptions. In this case they ignored a realistic
| effect.
|
| I'm not siding with anyone. I'm criticising a particular
| groups models which they have admitted to not contain
| critical effects and thus don't match recent observations. I
| don't deny climate change, I deny that the IPCC models are
| good.
| scaramanga wrote:
| Yes, that's precisely the sort of thing that would elicit
| flak. If they openly say "here is an under-egged model for
| the climate deniers, but here is the real, alarming model"
| which one do you think their climate-denying flack machines
| are going to take aim at?
|
| "No, you think fox news would really do that? cherry pick
| data?!" :)
| brutusborn wrote:
| So just to clarify, you agree that "the models are
| inaccurate" is true, but that is is because of pressure
| from climate deniers and is systematically conservative.
|
| So because of political pressure, the modellers didn't
| include a well known effect and missed predicting the
| highest temperatures on record. A model confirming event
| which could have convinced millions that climate is worth
| worrying about.
|
| But instead the IPCC listened to fox and neutered their
| models? I think that is a lot less likely than "their
| models aren't very accurate, they simplified a part of
| the model which turned out to be very important."
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Where is the conservatism coming to the public consciousness?
| I don't think that is the case as such.
| scaramanga wrote:
| Yes, this is like my relatives who voted Tory because
| immigrants are taking their benefits away. Only to enter old-
| age with the Tories taking their healthcare and their
| benefits away. These are tragic and self-defeating people. It
| doesn't mean they aren't stupid or dangerous to the rest of
| us. Or that they aren't responsible for the consequences of
| their own actions. But that they do stuff which is illogical,
| self-harming, or counter-productive shouldn't be surprising.
| brutusborn wrote:
| If you think criticising a model for not matching
| observations is illogical, then I don't think you have a
| very good understanding of logic.
| [deleted]
| lacrimacida wrote:
| I wouldn't solely hold them to blame but also point to who
| manipulated them in the first place. While they are
| blamable through ignorance they are not the real culprits
| It's known the masses are manipulable to do and think in
| certain ways, and almost always to their disadvantage
| avgcorrection wrote:
| I can't take a normal person seriously who, with apparent
| (imagined) perfect awareness, talks about the masses as a
| blob of stupid individuals who can't think a critical
| thought.
|
| The real reason the masses often act irrationally--
| counter to the _manipulation_ that your brain has
| received--is that they have no power or coordination to
| act as a group themselves. It has got little to do with
| ignorance.
| paulmd wrote:
| The models have underpredicted the temperature rise throughout
| my entire living memory. Even the "pessimistic" scenarios of
| high-temperature-rise have been blasted right through on a
| yearly basis. The model is drastically, dramatically
| understating the natural feedback loops involved and the amount
| of temperature rise that's going to happen.
|
| Feedback loops like methane release are likely also hugely
| understated, as another practical example.
|
| A large amount of this is due to political manipulation and
| pressure. Researchers are afraid of the way the issue has been
| politicized, and generally don't want to go out on a limb for
| fear of personal reputational damage or consequences to the
| field of study as a whole. Even just 15 years ago, in the
| 2000s, conservative-dominated media was _begging_ for someone
| to step over the line so they could cancel them Dixie Chicks
| style and pronounce the entire field of study as discredited.
|
| People spend way too much time on "but what if the models are
| overstating the problem" and they don't, actually they aren't
| even centered on the actual rate of increase, we pre-
| manipulated the model by building in all these stabilizing
| assumptions and even the pessimistic scenarios are actually
| quite optimistic. And then people apply additional optimistic
| "cheater factors" on top of that, and we still can't get to a
| situation in which the climate is not drastically deteriorated
| in a hundred years.
|
| As I said, we have blasted through the most pessimistic
| assumptions on a yearly basis, the models are very clearly _not
| aggressive enough_ about the temperature rises that are going
| to happen this century.
| brutusborn wrote:
| I don't disagree that there could be lots of other
| forcings/tipping points etc, but I hear lots of conjecture
| and don't see the effect as much in actual predictions /
| models. I do disagree that if they are not included in our
| models, then we must be systemically underestimating warming.
|
| Why do you assume the missing effects will make the situation
| worse?
|
| If the model is missing positive forcings, what makes you so
| sure that they have included all the negative forcings?
| paulmd wrote:
| > Why do you assume the missing effects will make the
| situation worse?
|
| > If the model is missing positive forcings, what makes you
| so sure that they have included all the negative forcings?
|
| I don't think they have included all the negative forcings,
| but I think that's irrelevant because the observed evidence
| is that the unincluded positive forcings are significantly
| larger than the unincluded negative forcings.
|
| All that matters is the net balance, and the fact that the
| climate is systematically exceeding the most wildly
| pessimistic predictions our model provides, shows that the
| model is not neutrally-calibrated with the present
| assumptions. There is a significant positive _net balance_
| (including any negative forcing) that our model is
| understating.
|
| At any given time that could be a lot or a little, but,
| right now it seems to be "a lot". And the fact that it's
| been that way for 30 years, says that this isn't a short-
| term thing. And in fact the rate of departure from the
| model is accelerating too - the second derivative and third
| derivates seem to be strongly positive. We are not just
| getting farther away from the model, we are getting farther
| away faster and accelerating as we do it.
|
| Could that all change tomorrow when some other effect kicks
| in and plunges us into a nuclear winter or whatever? No,
| probably not, but that's the kind of hope that conservative
| media has been selling people for 40 years.
|
| When scientists give a neutral "well, anything could happen
| but..." response, all the public hears is "you're saying
| there's a chance". Nope, we're blasting through all the
| guardrails of the model on a yearly basis, we're pretty
| fucked.
|
| And yes, there's also the possibility that we've
| unintentionally been geoengineering something for a while
| and when we stop ships from putting out sulfur (because it
| causes acid rain) that we suddenly jump even higher.
|
| Getting to the "disease, famine, endless wildfires (way too
| many to keep under control), storms with the power to level
| cities and blot out the sun" portion of the Toby Ruins It
| For Everyone video.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc1vrO6iL0U
|
| And yes, it is absolutely too late to stop and the best we
| can do is try to limit the impacts... which will continue
| to worsen until we do (and then for about another 20 years
| after we cease net emissions). Which is why the
| conservative media will jump right from "it's not real/it's
| not human caused/it's not bad enough to do anything about
| it" right to "wow it's too late, let's do nothing". Which
| is the same thing they've wanted us to do all along, ofc...
| brutusborn wrote:
| What's the evidence for "observed evidence is that the
| unincluded positive forcings are significantly larger
| than the unincluded negative forcings"?
| paulmd wrote:
| The fact that we're continually exceeding the most
| pessimistic projections the models can produce on a
| yearly basis, even after repeatedly recalibrating it to
| build in even more pessimistic assumptions, and that
| we're tending to depart more strongly from even the
| pessimistic models.
|
| This implies that the models are broadly understating
| these feedback loops, that they are net-balance in the
| positive-feedback direction, and that they are becoming
| more active in the current climate behavior regime.
| brutusborn wrote:
| That isn't evidence of the previous statement.
|
| If we continually exceed model predictions, it could be
| from underestimating known positive forcings,
| overestimating known negative forcings, or some
| combination of unknown positive/negative forcings.
|
| Essentially I think continuous failed predictions are a
| red flag for any model, especially one as critical to us
| as the global climate models.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Strictly speaking that is not sufficient as it only holds
| for the current part of the climate evolution and not the
| future one. It could be that currently positive forcing
| is underestimated while in the future negative forcing
| is.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| If it is too late to stop might as well aggressively
| geoengineer and see if it pans out, no? We sort of know
| we can cool the planet if we wanted to.
| adrianN wrote:
| Cooling the planet doesn't make the oceans less acidic.
| usaar333 wrote:
| > The models have underpredicted the temperature rise
| throughout my entire living memory.
|
| This doesn't seem historically true. They seem more or less
| on point with some overshooting and some undershooting:
| https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-
| climate-m...
| brutusborn wrote:
| It's a good summary but I don't think the data actually
| support their conclusion that "While some models projected
| less warming than we've experienced and some projected
| more, all showed surface temperature increases between 1970
| and 2016 that were not too far off from what actually
| occurred." +/- 15 % over the last 3 IPCC reports is a lot
| of missing energy. The models are getting better but I
| don't think matching 50 year trends that are essentially
| linear proves that they are accurate for long term
| forecasting.
|
| I'd be interested to see a new comparison for this years
| heatwave. I don't think models would fare as well.
| [deleted]
| jonathankoren wrote:
| What? How are you equating a misinformation plot that at its
| core was promoting the lie that the climate wasn't actually
| warming, but rather _cooling_ with a web celeb alleging that
| models _underestimated_ the amount amount of _warming_?
|
| How are these even in the same galaxy, let alone the same
| thing?
| brutusborn wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're referring to. ClimateGate was about
| the quality of evidence for early global warming studies. It
| claimed that scientists were hiding bad data and evidence
| that their models had problems.
|
| This seems very similar: models missing data and forcing but
| not being criticised when they miss a once in a century
| confirmation event.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| No. The "scandal" was they were hiding evidence of cooling.
| If you don't remember, read the article. Look at who
| promoted it.
|
| Literally no one promoting that bullshit believed that
| models were underreporting the effects and causes climate
| change.
| brutusborn wrote:
| The hiding of cooling was implied in the problems in the
| data/models. It's a moot point really, the scientists did
| some dodgy stuff, whether they were exaggerating warming
| or hiding cooling doesn't make much difference to their
| integrity.
| roneythomas6 wrote:
| How could cooling be implied from climategate leaks, when
| climategate deniers where saying "There is no
| relationship whatsoever between human activities and
| climate change."?
| brutusborn wrote:
| If the leaks show that some models and data were ignored
| that show cooling then you can imply that they were
| hiding cooling.
|
| You can also imply that their warming models and data
| reconstructions were not very accurate. Either way many
| climate scientists have a history of shadiness, just look
| at all the Dr Mann lawsuits pending.
| raggi wrote:
| > If the Sulfur emissions policies were known for >5 years and
| discussed for >10 years why aren't they part of mainstream
| climate models?
|
| Why do you believe that they are not?
| brutusborn wrote:
| https://twitter.com/leonsimons8/status/1666729264270520322?s.
| ..
| raggi wrote:
| https://www.cesm.ucar.edu/community-projects/lens2
| brutusborn wrote:
| It doesn't sound like their sulphate correction was due
| to policy changes.
|
| Do you know how this model went with this years
| predictions?
| raggi wrote:
| I do not, this is not my area of expertise. Cross
| integrations are ongoing, for example the model presented
| in https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/11/11707/2011/acp-
| 11-117... (among others) was cross integrated for CESM2
| by relatively recent contributions:
| https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/15/8669/2022/ (the
| latter incidentally explains some of the challenges)
| MattGaiser wrote:
| ClimateGate alleged a conspiracy. This is a difference of
| assumptions.
| brutusborn wrote:
| I'm saying I used to think climategate was all conspiracy
| theory nonsense. Now I think there was likely an attempt to
| hide unhelpful data.
| roneythomas6 wrote:
| I think you are miss remembering what climategate was.
| Climategate deniers where saying "There is no relationship
| whatsoever between human activities and climate change" and
| they released some out of context emails to support their
| claims. How does finding out sulphur reduction was masking
| actual warming effect make climate science any wrong.
| brutusborn wrote:
| I read many of the emails recently so I don't think I am
| misremembering.
|
| The missing sulphur effect suggests mainstream climate
| models are incomplete, which makes one skeptical of their
| results. In the same way deleted data and other shadiness
| during ClimateGate made people skeptical of the science
| then.
| hotdogscout wrote:
| Climategate was definitely real even if it obviously does
| not disprove or relate to human-driven climate change.
|
| Scientists are sometimes politically motivated and will
| resort to lying to push their point. This romanticization
| of scientists and scientific institutions as inherently
| above lying and fraud is mythological. I see it happening
| on engineering research that has zero political relevance,
| imagine research that does.
| brutusborn wrote:
| The way I see it is the media conflated "ClimateGate
| deniers think global warming is false" with "ClimateGate
| deniers think global warming models aren't scientific."
|
| Any politicised science should be treated with extreme.
| skepticism
| hotdogscout wrote:
| >Any politicised science should be treated with extreme.
| skepticism
|
| Proximal Origin[1] and the deliberate manufactured
| narrative of conflating criticism of it's blatant flaws
| to a conspiracy theory[2,3,4] was diabolical, I
| personally hope Nature's reputation is destroyed because
| of it.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
|
| [2] https://theintercept.com/2023/07/12/covid-documents-
| house-re...
|
| [3] https://theintercept.com/2023/01/19/covid-origin-nih-
| emails/
|
| [4] https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/why-proximal-
| origins-mu...
| brutusborn wrote:
| I find the Covid origin stuff weird because it seems so
| obvious that a lab leak was a possibility. Politicising
| the lab leak hypothesis did a lot of damage to
| institutional trust.
|
| Covid origins, vaccine harms and global warming are just
| the most obvious examples of politicised science causing
| problems. It's basically irreversible once sides have
| chosen their respective beliefs to include in their
| dogma. Take this thread as an example: I comment on
| accuracy of climate models and someone compares me to
| Trump.
| [deleted]
| stephen_g wrote:
| I can't remember who (maybe he's quoted further in the thread
| than I quickly scrolled) but there's a scientist who has been
| talking about this on Twitter for a long time (when I used to use
| it). Pretty scary these things can happen, but he was warning
| basically we are further along with global heating than we
| thought and this pollution was just masking some of the effect in
| the Northern Hemsiphere of CO2 we'd already released. We were
| always going to have to stop sulfur emissions, might have just
| been better perhaps to have a bit more gradual phase out to
| soften the shock...
| metamet wrote:
| > I can't remember who (maybe he's quoted further in the thread
| than I quickly scrolled) but there's a scientist who has been
| talking about this on Twitter for a long time (when I used to
| use it).
|
| Was it Leon Simons? https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8
| matsemann wrote:
| The way Green is presenting this doesn't sit quite right with
| me. From day one of the sea temperature anomalies it's been
| said it's mainly because of these emissions no longer
| happening. But I guess it's the way it has to be presented to
| reach the masses.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Sorry if it's a naive question but if it was actually helping
| the situation, why do we need to stop?
|
| So it seems the sulfur was removed for the obvious season that
| it's not good for respiratory health, but it may be a necessary
| evil for sometime ?
| croes wrote:
| And sulfur leads to acid rain and ozone depletion.
| shinryuu wrote:
| Also contributes to ocean acidification which isn't great.
| developer93 wrote:
| Specifically because it kills sea life which reduces the
| amount of carbon the sea can hold. And for a lot more
| reasons.
| cubefox wrote:
| There are people saying we should not just not stop, but even
| increase sulfur injection:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio.
| ..
|
| The thing is, this is not a one time solution. We would have
| to do it continuously, or else the temperature would quickly
| rise again. And we would have to increase sulphur injection
| if the CO2 level keeps rising. It could be a temporary
| solution though, e.g. until all countries switch to nuclear
| energy eventually and reduce CO2 emissions.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Yeah I just read this, not really sure what the
| alternatives are now? Looks like the situation is spiraling
| out of control so...??
|
| Cover Greenland in a reflective blanket?
|
| Sounds like it is time to panic...and actually do what
| needs to be done.
| [deleted]
| labster wrote:
| The time to panic was 1980. We're well past that point by
| now, and have already committed to at least a whole
| degree of warming, if not more.
|
| > Cover Greenland in a reflective blanket?
|
| Ha! I want to see a study on this now. Greenland already
| has high albedo so it wouldn't be that effective; it
| would protect the ice sheet but also be covered by new
| snow, if any.
| mdekkers wrote:
| The best time to panic was 1980. The next best time is
| right now.
| labster wrote:
| We should definitely not write for The Hitchhikers Guide
| to the Galaxy.
| mdekkers wrote:
| I don't think I should be writing for anything, and I'm
| surprised I'm allowed to here!
| marcosdumay wrote:
| To be fair, if we did mostly stop fossil fuel exploration
| and emissions right now we would get a quick reduction of
| antropogenic warming into some 80% to 90% of the current
| amount in some 4 decades due to some fast-degrading gases
| that are not CO2.
|
| That said, we won't stop fossil fuel exploration and the
| related emissions, so yes, it's temporary.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Fossil fuels are being replaced pretty fast, but it will
| be several decades before the transition is complete.
| concordDance wrote:
| > until all countries switch to nuclear energy eventually
| and reduce CO2 emissions.
|
| I'm confused. CO2 will still be in the atmosphere warming
| the planet once emissions stop. So we'd still need to be
| constantly emitting sulfur.
| cubefox wrote:
| I think CO2 would go down naturally after some time. But
| maybe we actually need to actively remove it, which is
| way harder.
| concordDance wrote:
| > I think CO2 would go down naturally after some time.
|
| How? Where does the carbon go?
| Filligree wrote:
| Eaten by plants, turned into coal. Atmospheric CO2 will
| indeed go down, after... some time.
| ianburrell wrote:
| My understanding is that weathering of rocks is bigger
| but slower than organic carbon cycle. It works on order
| of thousands of years, and is the main long-term balance.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| We ought to stop surface-level sulfur emissions, for human
| health and also because ship engines that produce sulfur
| also produce lots of other nasty shit.
|
| Stratospheric sulfur is much more efficient, per kg, at
| reflecting sunlight, so we could replace the cooling effect
| of surface-level sulfur with stratospheric sulfur, and if
| we choose to, go even further to cool the planet more.
| aCoreyJ wrote:
| There are ways to make clouds and have this effect that
| don't involve sulfur!
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening
| petre wrote:
| You know what happens to soil when it rains salt from the
| clouds, right?
|
| Sulphur at least is more natural, as it's also released
| by volcanoes.
|
| https://extension.psu.edu/sulfur-fertility-management-
| for-gr...
| brewdad wrote:
| Good thing we've never seen a volcanic eruption impact
| global temperatures.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinatubo
| kccqzy wrote:
| Or consider the year without summer:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Just remember a year without a summer means a year
| without most agriculture
| selimthegrim wrote:
| And ozone for that matter
| psychphysic wrote:
| But we just got rid of acid rain? That was going to eat
| us and the Colosseum alive back in the day.
| blackoil wrote:
| We can do it over oceans where the impact should be
| limited.
| peyton wrote:
| Am I understanding that page correctly? Sounds like 3-4
| deg C of cooling for an estimated $5 bn/yr.
| adamisom wrote:
| Yeah, if climate change really was an "emergency",
| mitigation would be extremely cheap. With big side
| effects. Nevertheless if it really were an _emergency_
| ... in real emergencies, triage happens, and downsides
| are taken for granted.
|
| Thankful that there's no real emergency yet, but I
| suspect governments will drag their feet long enough that
| there will eventually be one, and then emergency relief
| will be deployed anyway, but it will cost way way more
| than 5bn.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| We are in an emergency, look at those graphs ?
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Think of climate change like a car driving off a cliff.
| The car is "safely" on solid ground until it isn't. The
| problem is that at some point to avoid the emergency you
| need to hit the brakes or turn, and this particular car
| might not be able to turn or brake very hard without
| catastrophic effects on the occupants. Moving away from
| this metaphor, there is a possibility we cross a tipping
| point in the climate system (and may already have done
| so) that can be "reversed" through emergency
| geoengineering: but it's not clear that the necessary
| level of intervention would be compatible with global
| agriculture and civilization.
| adamisom wrote:
| those who believe we will hit a discontinuous tipping
| point are precisely those who should be advocating for
| geoengineering _now_ , despite its unknowns and
| downsides... yet the voices to do so are curiously absent
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I don't know if they should be advocating for
| geoengineering now, but we should definitely start
| getting used to the idea that we might need it very soon.
| That means a huge acceleration of research to test the
| techniques we have, and make sure they don't have
| unintended consequences (like accidentally destroying the
| ozone layer.)
|
| > yet the voices to do so are curiously absent
|
| It's easy to think this if you're not paying attention:
| the issue is very controversial and many people oppose it
| But a number of scientists signed onto a letter calling
| for additional research into this [1], and Congress and
| the White House OSTP are also pushing to speed up and
| increase research funding [2]. Of course, this kind of
| research could go away in a single election.
|
| [1] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27022023/solar-
| radiation-...
|
| [2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-
| updates/2023/06/30/cong...
| ChatGTP wrote:
| We are in an emergency, look at those graphs ?
|
| Imo governments know this , just not yet sure what to do
| yet.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Governments will drag their feet, but there are hundreds
| of individuals who could float a few $B a year to get
| this started.
|
| Once it's working, I expect they won't be allowed to shut
| it down.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I don't know. My province in Canada is experiencing
| anomalous weather events year after year, and while
| things still look "okay" we seem to be encroaching on
| visible threshold events quite rapidly.
|
| Sure, these events could mysteriously stop. Or stay very
| much the same, acting like a new normal that isn't so
| destructive as to be an emergency. But the trend line is
| there. Fires increasing, biodiversity decreasing, floods
| occurring more dramatically and frequently, 100 year
| events predicted to be 10 year events not in decades but
| _right now_.
|
| If that's not an emergency, what is? If you're thinking
| something like "when the province is stricken with
| drought for 10 years and everyone's starving", I hate to
| tell you but that's well past the emergency date. At that
| point, you're already done and the initial emergency
| happened.
| brabel wrote:
| > If that's not an emergency, what is?
|
| You know it's an emergency when the status quo is
| completely unacceptable and the government takes drastic
| measures (no more cars of any kind on the road, every
| physically able man/woman forced to work on whatever
| solution is chosen to help, that kind of thing - nothing
| close to what we're seeing today) with widespread support
| of the population.
|
| You can't call it an emergency when no one would truly
| support emergency measures of the scale that would be
| enough to affect the climate (no, driving an electric car
| is not even close to helping if this was a true emergency
| - and I drive one myself).
| krisoft wrote:
| > You know it's an emergency when the status quo is
| completely unacceptable and the government takes drastic
| measures
|
| So if we never acknowledge it it is never an emergency?
|
| > every physically able man/woman forced to work on
| whatever solution is chosen to help
|
| Doing what? How will the physical power of the masses
| help us here?
| brabel wrote:
| > So if we never acknowledge it it is never an emergency?
|
| Exactly. Do you think an emergency has some objective
| trigger?? No it does not, it's subjective, the people
| involved in the event are the ones who deem whether it's
| an emergency or not, even if they may be wrong about the
| gravity of the situation (which is why sometimes the
| rescue service may disagree with you whether you're in an
| emergency situation or not and refuse to rescue you, for
| example - that happened to me).
|
| > Doing what?
|
| Think about the Marshall Plan... if we really need to, I
| am sure we can get every man and woman to work on the
| manufacture and use of whatever device can collect CO2
| from the atmosphere or whatever.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Do you think an emergency has some objective trigger??
|
| No. But it feels faulty to define an emergency by the
| reaction of the government. For example if we would have
| multiple years of crop failures, with associated mass
| starvation and unrest but let's say the government sticks
| their fingers in their ears and proclaims "let them eat
| cake". That would not count as an emergency per your
| definition. Do you feel that is right?
|
| In fact when people are arguing if it is an emergency or
| not, they often argue about it because they do expect
| their government to do/don't do things based on which
| side they are arguing. If we would define an emergency
| based on the actions of the government solely this would
| be totally falacious. But it is not. "We are in a climate
| emergency therefore the gov should do X." is a perfectly
| valid thing to believe in. (And so is the opposite of
| course.)
|
| > Think about the Marshall Plan...
|
| Did the Marshall plan employ every able bodied adult? I
| must have missed that part of the history.
|
| > I am sure we can get every man and woman to work on the
| manufacture and use of whatever device can collect CO2
| from the atmosphere or whatever.
|
| I will go with whatever then. We have these things called
| factories. They made manufacturing very efficient. There
| is zero chance that you could employ every man and woman
| meaningfully on a task like this. Simply you would run
| out of raw materials or organisational capacity before
| that happens.
|
| There is a more fitting historical paralel to what you
| are proposing. It is very much akin to Mao's Great Leap
| Forward. He got a lot of people to do a thing, but since
| it wasn't the right thing to do it ended up as a total
| catastrophy.
| concordDance wrote:
| > If that's not an emergency, what is?
|
| When climate change starts causing QALY losses comparable
| to the effects of, say, banning cars.
| tomp wrote:
| Fires are actually decreasing.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/climate-change-hasnt-
| set-th...
|
| https://archive.li/WfDJh
| flangola7 wrote:
| >WSJ
|
| Really? Of course they would say that.
| defrost wrote:
| It's _technically_ true that total area burned _globally_
| has been on a downward trend.
|
| That's a real piece of misdirect by Murdoch press though
| and typical of their editorial stance.
|
| To quote _Multi-decadal trends and variability in burned
| area from the 5th version of the Global Fire Emissions
| Database (GFED5)_ [1] (one of many similar studies)
|
| * Burned area declined by 1.21+-0.66% yr-1 20 , a
| cumulative decrease of 24.2+-13.2% over 20 years.
|
| * The global reduction is primarily driven by decreases
| in fire within savannas, grasslands, and croplands.
|
| * Forest, peat, and deforestation fires did not exhibit
| long-term trends.
|
| So, managed areas are increasingly having fewer fires for
| a variety of reasons and they're a big part of the non
| ice areas across the globe.
|
| Forest fires aren't decreasing, more worrying areas that
| typically don't see frequent fires are now seeing fires
| more often.
|
| The Fox message is that beacuse total global fire area is
| reducing there's no need to worry about massive forest
| fires in places that typically don't see such things.
|
| If ten thousand acres of seasonal grass fires doesn't
| happen does that really offset a thousand acres of old
| growth forest being torched to the ground?
|
| [1] https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2023-182/e
| ssd-202...
| johnnyworker wrote:
| https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/record-breaking-boreal-
| wild...
|
| > From 1 January to 31 July, accumulated carbon emissions
| from wildfires across Canada total 290 megatonnes. This
| is already more than double the previous record for the
| year as a whole and represents over 25% of the global
| total for 2023 to date.
| jjallen wrote:
| We do this until CO2 levels come down. Hopefully 20-30
| years. Regardless this is really a series of crazy
| experiments we are proposing doing on a very complicated
| system.
| croes wrote:
| https://meteor.geol.iastate.edu/gcp/studentpapers/1996/at
| mos...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Unfortunately, CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 300-1000
| years.
|
| https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-
| getting-a-....
| mlcrypto wrote:
| The Earth's greatest temperature was before humans ever
| existed
| nerdponx wrote:
| I would appreciate if humans continued existing, so I am
| interested in not returning to that point in prehistory.
| croes wrote:
| Could there be a connection?
| developer93 wrote:
| And it took way longer than a few decades to get there
| hmm...? Systems had time to adapt, including new animals
| evolving. For example trees species habitable zones
| migrate north or south in response to a changing climate,
| but to do that the northern most edge of the habitable
| zone for that species at the time a tree starts is life
| needs to stay within the southernmost edge until that
| trees dies, otherwise they can't move fast enough. So the
| whole zone can't move further than the width of it
| within, what 500 years? At a wild guess. Depending in the
| average lifetime of the tree species. Other systems
| involve evolution to adapt which takes a lot longer.
| That's an over simplification of course, and I'm not a
| scientist, but those are not timescales we've got.
| labster wrote:
| Go back to the Hadean era, bro.
| havnagiggle wrote:
| /Simpsons meme
| colordrops wrote:
| What's your point?
| jamesssssss833 wrote:
| "Point" seems generous. Looking at their post history
| their either a shill or a troll. That said I've heard
| real people in real life with alleged "real ideas" that
| say that because system warming has happened in the
| planet's distant past we should just accept it as Gosh's
| Will or whatever and accept whatever divine punishment we
| deserve or something. It always gets very fuzzy on how we
| actually continue to have a world with these problems but
| with religious fanatics I expect that Sky Daddy will come
| save them personally so they are unconcerned
| mlcrypto wrote:
| The crazy people are the ones that think they can keep
| the planet's climate constant forever. Never happened,
| never will
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Sulphur emissions cause acid rain.
| scaramanga wrote:
| The history is here:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
|
| Most of the dimming effect was from massively polluting coal
| burning. I'm sure you understand why we had to stop that. CO2
| accumulates in the atmosphere and stays there for thousands
| of years.. This sulfur that causes dimming stays for a year
| or two.
| clhodapp wrote:
| Hank Green, whose tweets originated this topic, addressed
| this on YouTube and less explicitly in the tweets.
|
| His statement was essentially that: right now, were
| effectively seeding clouds with sulfuric acid. The sulfuric
| acid is bad but if the cloud seeding is actually good, we
| could instead seed them by spraying sea water into the air.
| stephen_g wrote:
| It totally could have been the same person but maybe they
| changed their profile image so I just didn't recognise
| them!
| XorNot wrote:
| It also causes acid rain, which while it will never be
| literally "acid" falling from the sky, a general decrease in
| the pH of water entering arable lands, estuaries and other
| areas is not going to be great for any of them (also the
| generalized increase in maintenance cost for concrete, and
| particularly limestone, structures).
| dghughes wrote:
| Water is hydroxic acid /jk
| amateurCoder5 wrote:
| Lol. No, water is a base - hydrogen hydroxide!
| blackoil wrote:
| Ain't water neutral by definition?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| My understanding (IANACS) is sulfur interacts with the
| atmosphere to form SO2 and H2S, which dissolves in water to
| form sulphuric acid both in water vapor (clouds) and in the
| ocean directly to acidity both rain and the ocean. I think it
| also interacts with other green house gases over a longer
| period increasing warming despite cooling up front.
| paulmd wrote:
| because sulfur causes acid rain and respiratory problems and
| infrastructure damage etc. you're putting sulfuric acid into
| the atmosphere, just like carbonating water produces carbonic
| acid that eats your teeth.
|
| It's not fundamentally different from burning coal, and coal
| obviously had to be stopped too, I don't know why it's really
| a question that we need to avoid harmful pollutants even if
| they have a fringe benefit.
| clolege wrote:
| It's an unstable equilibrium.
|
| The more necessary evils we depend on, the more things that
| can fail and further perturb the system.
|
| Stopping now helps nudge us back towards the stable
| equilibrium we had.
| ivarv wrote:
| It could be Guy McPherson ? - https://guymcpherson.com/
| [deleted]
| montalbano wrote:
| A better wording for the title:
|
| _Reduction of sulfur emissions from ships has reduced masking of
| global warming_
|
| The word 'cause' in current title seems wrong.
| HardlyCurious wrote:
| In terms of total global heat content sure. In terms of surface
| ocean temp, I'm not so sure you have a point. It's a pretty
| indirect path for greenhouse gasses to heat the ocean, and they
| can't push the water above the temp of their air.
|
| Less shade however can cause solar heating well above air
| temperatures.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| I don't know that you've considered the effects of more vs
| less ice covering the ocean.
| NhanH wrote:
| Your suggested title is both vaguer and probably more wrong
| too: the thread claimed that cloud literally reflected the
| sunlight, causing less heat to go to the sea surface, there is
| no "masking" involved.
|
| The current title is precise, the tweet chain is about sea
| surface temperature and the cause-effect of sulfur emission on
| the temperature. While it is related to global warming, and
| there might be other causes to sea surface warming as well,
| that is not what was discussed.
| teawrecks wrote:
| Your rewording is inaccurate. There is no masking, it was
| actually reflecting energy away from earth, reducing warming.
| This is important because, turns out, we unintentionally ran an
| ethically dubious climate engineering experiment, the results
| of which can now be used to inform future possible climate
| engineering efforts.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| I've unfortunately come to the conclusion that we are buggered.
|
| Watching politics in the U.K. and the rest of the world I'm
| seeing politicians realise that they can tap into the populist
| idea that anything green is "the elites trying to control and tax
| you".
|
| All they care about us short term election prospects.
| concordDance wrote:
| A lot of "green" policies are holier than thou people trying to
| impose their lifestyle preferences in ways that don't actually
| help. Good examples are the anti-nuclear power movement and the
| nonsense that is plastic "recycling".
| notacoward wrote:
| Also "new urbanism" that's just people who want more
| bike(-only) paths for recreation. Yes, there is such a thing
| as better urban design that reduces car dependency. There are
| real bike commuters. I totally respect and tangibly support
| both, due to environmental and other concerns. But I'm not
| interested in hearing from people who oppose mass transit,
| abuse pedestrians, and regularly _drive_ their bikes (as
| aggressively as they ride) to the rally point for their
| recreational large-group rides. That 's not advocacy for
| anything but oneself.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| A weird but predictable thing to fixate on, just like people
| blame their aunt Peggy for things that were set in motion
| decades prior.
|
| Populism is basically a slur for an impotent and chaotic
| democracy, but the media that planted this idea in your brain
| never take things to their logical conclusion and critique the
| so-called democracies themselves for some reason.
| paganel wrote:
| Meanwhile, in Tonga: "Tonga experiences unusual cold during El
| Nino alert" [1]
|
| > Tonga's Meteorology Department said on Friday that the Pacific
| island country is experiencing unusually cold weather, with cool
| days and cooler nights, and climate is leaning towards El Nino
| conditions.
|
| > According to the Matangi Tonga news website, a low of 9.3
| degrees Celsius, recorded at the end of July in Tongatapu island
| where the capital Nuku'alofa is located, was the lowest on record
| for the island country of this year.
|
| But because it goes against the hysteria of the "world is
| boiling!" this didn't get posted in here, nor was it taken by the
| major Western news sources (I cannot find it on the BBC website,
| for example).
|
| It's the COVID hysteria all over again.
|
| [1]
| https://english.news.cn/20230804/c739b0bc8f684fe9991e5c02610...
| brabel wrote:
| Do you intentionally ignore advice that's constantly posted
| here and elsewhere to NEVER take local events that go against
| the trends as evidence against the trends, or you're just new
| here and on any discussion of this topic and just didn't know
| that?
|
| Even parts of Antartica are currently cooling down, that's very
| well known and even expected according to climate models. But
| no, that's not evidence against global warming.
| paganel wrote:
| > NEVER take local events
|
| No-one was commenting that when the news piece about record
| high temps in the Andes was posted in here recently, I could
| ask myself rethorically why did that happen but we both know
| the answer.
|
| Either way, I'm sure going to copy-paste your suggestion on
| all such future discussions related to "local events" that
| will only help fuel the hysteria. It won't do any help, as
| the recent pandemic has shown that there's no real remedy
| against localized hysteria, but I can try.
| leke wrote:
| If you feel bad about this, perhaps go and find some Just stop
| oil protesters and take out your frustration on them. Perhaps
| drag them around by their hair, or kick them in the heads. It's
| easy, they're sitting on the floor, so it's low hanging fruit.
| visarga wrote:
| <offtopic>Does this Twitter link open for you in Chrome? Lately I
| have had less than 50% success rate opening Twitter. I just see a
| blank page with an X in the middle.</>
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-08-05 23:02 UTC)