Live data from Hacker News

Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

nationalobserver.com

71–80 of 522 posts

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#71
post #38

That's scary. I guess we all ought to go vegetarian, and protest those coal power plants.

I'm already doing this. Waiting for everyone else to turn vegetarian before YOU turn is not a good way of handling this... You are right, more and more people should eat more vegies, and we should be more concious and ecological.

Luckily I live in Europe where some people (of the governement) care about this.

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#72
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily, those aren't mutually exclusive choices. And climate change potentially causes wars as countries are strapped for resources, so acting to fix climate change is a twofer. Also: you are understating the cost of climate change. These estimates are tricky to get right, but the IPCC estimates a ballpark figure of 1-4% of GDP for a 4 degrees C increase in global mean temperature. That puts the cost on the order of…

4 degrees C is an absolute upper bound in the temperature predictions. The kind of thing you'd get if the world attempted to explicitly maximize CO2 output, instead of only pretending to minimize. And then imagine if they did that for the next 80 years. We are not going to climate change tomorrow, but I'd be awfully surprised if we haven't made some very good progress in the next 2 decades. Solar prices have somethin…

Why wait for the free market fairies to magically fix climate change decades from now, when we can tax and mitigate the pollution that's destroying other people's lives and property right now? That's a well understood solution within the scope of already known science, and economics can easily predict what happens when you tax something: use of it goes down.

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#73

I don't like sensationalism as it clouds the mind with short-lived buzzes. Instead of always trying to alarm people of the big invisible terror lurking in the dark, we should educate people on how to handle the situation. What are the scenarios? What can we do ourselves for those scenarios (not to prevent, but to prepare)? Which cities and countries will be lost at what point in time? How do we protect ourselves? Be…

I agree with you, but I don't think it's wrong that there's a general feeling that we're working on this problem, and we're getting better. Look at all these solar panels and electric vehicles we're reading about. We know there's still C02 being pumped out, but at least we're starting to get a handle on it. This shows that actually we're not. We've got a positive second derivative here. The current path leads pretty…

Are you referring to the "competent" housing policies of the Libs that have made BC into the biggest housing bubble in the entire world? I'm not sure the conservatives (ultra-right) or NDP could have done this simply because their bases would not let them (for different reasons).

So because of this competence we're in a sitch such that we can't stop the housing boom for fear of an entire collapse of the BC economy? Please explain how either other party would have done a worse job.

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#74
post #28
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I don't see anything in your list about carbon sequestration. Can you point me to any companies investing in advanced robotics to assist in silicate mineral crushing & spreading, as it's the only sensible, achievable sequestration technique? Thanks. For readers interested in carbon sequestration, please check out the following paper: "Enhanced chemical weathering as a geoengineering strategy to reduce atmospheric…

Carbon sequestration does not produce immediate benefits, like being a cheap way in making bricks (extreme example). It is like the insulin injections to a person that got already type-2 diabetes.

It does not produce immediate benefits, but perhaps a problem that is 100 years in the making might take a global solution on a 100 year time scale.

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#75
I generally get funny looks and the feeling that people are imagining me with a toothbrush mustache and a comb-over when I suggest this:

Wouldn't population control to an extent help slow the rate of emissions? Caps on births or higher taxes on family sizes, etc.

I know political/moral/ethical issues would make it impractical but I don't think any potential solution is worth ignoring.

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#76

Are Canada's CO2 stats material to global warming, or are they being over-dramatized because this is a Canadian publication? The graph in the article shows that Canada has 5x the per capita CO2 extraction of China, but on the other hand China has 40x as many people. (For context, I think global warming is very real and addressing it should be a top priority, but I also believe that sensationalist articles often do mo…

Atmospheric levels of CO2 are not measured per capita.

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#77
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Be constructive, be creative. Ok, solution time. Let's immediately ban everyone who denies that climate change is human made from all positions of power. That implies stripping them of both titles and wealth.

Why bother? The IPCC, which is the official authority on climate change, says that over the next 200 years sea levels will rise by a meter or 2. Damaging, for sure. Trillions of dollars in costs. But not exactly world ending. Thats the scientific consensus. I look at the official statistics that the scientists provide, and I go "meh". If I had the choice between magically stopping climate change forever, and stopping…

> The IPCC, which is the official authority on climate change, says that over the next 200 years sea levels will rise by a meter or 2. Damaging, for sure. Trillions of dollars in costs. But not exactly world ending.

Sea rise is only one of the expected consequences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#78
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vote we kill you first. You breathe out CO2, right? EDIT: Nice silent edit there. Let me just quote what you just deleted from your comment "Since they won't probably give in voluntarily and since many of them are already in power, this further implies a violent uprising."

"I vote we kill you first" If you're going to troll, at least get your science right. Breathing out CO2 adds zero net CO2 to the atmosphere, because it comes from food you ate, which itself came from CO2 in the atmosphere. The oil and gas that an individual uses to survive, on the other hand, is literally deadly. So you are at the verge of having a point: we could lower CO2 usage by killing people. However, a much mo…

I'm not trolling. I am feeding back to this person calling for outright violence their own attitude. It's attitudes like vesak's that will lead us to blood filled streets. Hate breeds hate. And eye for an eye leaving the whole world blind.

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#79
post #18

Are Canada's CO2 stats material to global warming, or are they being over-dramatized because this is a Canadian publication? The graph in the article shows that Canada has 5x the per capita CO2 extraction of China, but on the other hand China has 40x as many people. (For context, I think global warming is very real and addressing it should be a top priority, but I also believe that sensationalist articles often do mo…

> Are Canada's CO2 stats material to global warming, or are they being over-dramatized because this is a Canadian publication? Canada has an extremely important role in the future of CO2 emissions, because it has some of the largest left resources of oil on the planet with its tar sands. And it's a particularly nasty one with an emission footprint far higher than "conventional" oil. Whether or not Canada will leave a…

TO add to this I believe at ~60$/barrel the oil sands become economically feasible. So we're not a big factor today but as soon as the easy fracking fields start to dry up and the oil costs rises a bit we're going to be right back in the game!

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#80
post #43

Can someone explain: - since CO2 has a logarithmic effect on warming - the catastrophic climate prediction models have not proven effective at predicting climate - we should expect moderate increases in warming, which can be beneficial (livable climate, crops etc) - the unquestionable benefits of hydro carbon energy to bring people out of poverty and into modern prosperity (food, healthcare, modern technology) ..what…

    - since CO2 has a logarithmic effect on warming
Where does this affirmation come from ?
Post reply on HN