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Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

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Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#281

Post by [deleted] »

delegate wrote: post #249
demonshalo wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By lifestyle I mean supermarkets and restaurants and iPhones and planes ... all the stuff that we're so proud of as a society. Winning, getting ahead, being number one, outcompeting, etc. All those ego-centric values that are the basis of our socio-economic systems - focused on disconnecting the `self` from `other` - are wrong on a fundamental level. By 'spirituality' I mean the deep realisation of the larger conte…

> the ONLY reason you can say this crap is simply because people competed ... and be pretentious and ungrateful about what society have achieved so far. Even though you're grossly exaggerating what I've said in the comment, I'm still going to answer with a rhetorical question: What good is all that shit if the price for that is the suffering and death of our children and eventual end of our species ? This is what the…

[deleted]

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#282

Post by spangry »

huxley wrote: post #270
spangry wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Anyone who has bothered to look at the numbers would likely agree with you. To that end: - Here are my numbers on German solar & wind capacity factors (nuclear generally achieves 90% by comparison): https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f1a6d064890d67fbfc98d66dbd... - Sketchier numbers for India: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14085871 - The view of the Brookings Institute in 2014: http://www.brookings.edu/~/m…

Rocky Mountain Institute criticized Frank's paper and showed that it had many incorrect or outdated assumptions: https://www.forbes.com/sites/amorylovins/2014/08/05/sowing-c... http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-Center/Library/2014-21_Frank-Re...

Thanks for this, I will most definitely have a read (and, if their criticisms are valid and consequent, will shut up about the BI Paper).

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#283

Post by Touche »

tehwalrus wrote: post #273
Touche wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're looking at the world's history with rose-colored glasses. World poverty is at the lowest levels today than it has been in recorded history: https://ourworldindata.org/slides/world-poverty/#/declining-... I think you'd be hard pressed to find a time in history when life was better than it is today. And if you did find one, it would be so long ago than population levels were a fragment of what they are n…

> The question is how can we steer the ship. You mean how we can fix the leaks.

Fix the leaks or find another ship (planet).

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#284

Post by 88e282102ae2e5b »

d_theorist wrote: post #232

I don't understand why more isn't done to implement large-scale carbon capture and storage technologies. There are quite well-understood and proven technologies to do this, but they don't seem to be on anybody's agenda. Trying to bring down CO2 concentration by convincing people to give up cars, food and planes is obviously a losing strategy. If we're serious about preventing climate change we're going to have to act…

Well, it's not really a problem now. Spring came a month early, but who cares? Islands aren't underwater yet, there's plenty of food in first world countries (who would be paying for this) and there's no serious drought. From a politician's point of view, you're proposing to spend billions or trillions to solve a problem that we're still only seeing hints of (with an extremely first-world centric view, of course).

If the technology works, why not wait until the people demand it, instead of telling them they have to feel the pain of paying for it now to solve a problem no one can see?

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#285

Post by qplex »

dagw wrote: post #254
qplex wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because you can use a search engine without owning one. And yes, I would definetly say it's a problem if workers in a factory can not afford the goods the factory produces.

I would definetly say it's a problem if workers in a factory can not afford the goods the factory produces Even if the factory is producing high end sports cars or precision engineered industrial machinery? For that matter I doubt even the CEO of Boeing could afford most of the 'goods' made in his factories.

I get your point.

The CEO of Boeing can probably still afford to take a flight on a plane made by his company, and that probably is true of an average worker of a Boeing factory as well.

So let me rephrase: if people working in a factory can only afford the very basic necessities and the actual goods the factory produces get shipped to the other side of the globe (and waste gets left behind), something is not right.

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#286

Post by jackmott »

demonshalo wrote: post #182
delegate wrote: post #145

The message I"m getting is not that I have to prepare for something or change energy sources , it's that "our lifestyle is killing the planet much faster than we thought". CO2 levels is just one of a myriad of indicators that are off the scale now. By lifestyle I mean supermarkets and restaurants and iPhones and planes ... all the stuff that we're so proud of as a society. Winning, getting ahead, being number one, ou…

> By lifestyle I mean supermarkets and restaurants and iPhones and planes ... all the stuff that we're so proud of as a society. Winning, getting ahead, being number one, outcompeting, etc. All those ego-centric values that are the basis of our socio-economic systems - focused on disconnecting the `self` from `other` - are wrong on a fundamental level. By 'spirituality' I mean the deep realisation of the larger conte…

The benefits of technological and social progress we have managed don't depend on us continuing to pollute and overpopulate the planet. We could have, as a planet, decided not to grow our population back in ~1960 and decided to transition away from fossil fuels back in ~1980 and still managed to have the same, probably more freedom and safety than we have now.

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#287

Post by mirimir »

delegate wrote: post #145

The message I"m getting is not that I have to prepare for something or change energy sources , it's that "our lifestyle is killing the planet much faster than we thought". CO2 levels is just one of a myriad of indicators that are off the scale now. By lifestyle I mean supermarkets and restaurants and iPhones and planes ... all the stuff that we're so proud of as a society. Winning, getting ahead, being number one, ou…

Look, we're not "killing the planet". Humans are organisms like any other. Sure, human populations have spiked from millions to billions in recent millennia, and mean per capita resource utilization has increased dramatically. But that's just what organisms do.

So anyway, the planet will be fine. Human civilization may collapse, given the risk of crop failure and war. But even humanity will survive.

Edit: Many other species won't be so lucky. Maybe there are moral implications there. And certainly there will be practical implications. That will be part of crop failures.

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#288

Post by earthtolazlo »

raaaaraaaa1 wrote: post #208
scrps wrote: post #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.

Population will be reduced naturally as competition for natural resources causes wars.

Not to mention famine. At this point, it seems inevitable that billions of people are going to starve to death before the end of the century.

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#289

Post by TeMPOraL »

adrianN wrote: post #277
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main benefit - IMO - is that it's relatively compact, lightweight, and solid compared to CO2. If there was a cheap and simple way to condense CO2 into a solid, we could stuff that into the ground instead. But CO2 would have to be stored indefinitely - we will probably see the catastrophic effects of what happens when stored CO2 is released in the atmosphere (permafrost, ice and ocean sediments are releasing their…

> If there was a cheap and simple way to condense CO2 into a solid, we could stuff that into the ground instead. Make charcoal from wood?

Sure, but also we need to keep planting and cutting down a shit ton of trees to make that actually capture already released CO₂.

Re: Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

#290

Post by jacquesm »

gnode wrote: post #265
eru wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? We can just keep solving problems. If we really wanted to, we could be carbon neutral in a few years and even pay for carbon sequestration. (Basically, just run the whole global economy on nuclear for example.) Not gonna happen, of course, because it's a huge and expensive undertaking---and there's no(t enough) political will nor even any consensus. But the problem is not our lifestyle per se, nor is competition…

I disagree that it isn't happening. Solar PV capacity is growing rapidly. Vehicles are increasingly powered by electric batteries. These things were all prohibitively expensive for most people in Western countries, but their declining cost has made them more affordable and more used.

Vehicles are increasingly powered by coal plants.

Electric batteries don't power anything, they're best compared to empty buckets.

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