The Uninhabitable Earth

> It's the overwhelming number of people who want to say they're green, but still own two cars, never take public transport, eat meat daily, live in big houses, and buy buy buy.

The car and the "buy, buy, buy" are the only real problems. Cut those two out and the big houses and meat aren't a big deal (or are at least workeable).

Probably the biggest thing you could do to help the environment is not buy any kind of mobile device and to run your computer into the ground.

Re. reversing desertification:

Came across this technique - imprinting - recently - seems interesting:

Imprinting soils – Creating Instant Edge for Large Scale Revegetation of Barren Lands:

1) https://permaculturenews.org/2012/09/19/imprinting-soils-cre... Excerpt:

[ Imprinting is a method for instantly adding what permaculturists call the ‘edge effect’ to soils, utilising a heavy and dimpled/wedged roller to ‘imprint’ soils with patterned depressions. The bottom of these depressions then become collection points for all the crucial elements needed for seed germination and soil building: seeds themselves, water, organic matter (including plant debris and animal manure) and wind-blown silt and clay particles. ]

Check the before and after photos in the article.

2) http://imprinting.org/

Bio of Dr. Robert Dixon, who started this:

3) http://imprinting.org/biography.htm

Just thinking out loud here, but if the arctic somehow contains more carbon and methane than all we've released into the atmosphere (can someone explain why that is???) then can't we:

1) Coat the entire arctic with a more reflective compound, so it will not be as likely to melt under the same summer temperatures... the expense of this would be far less than the fallout later. This may interfere with some life in the arctic that depends on surface ice somehow. But considering the rest of the planet will have to adapt in the alternative scenario, I'd say this life would have to adapt. I doubt it has much effect on the rest of the world.

2) Do one of those sci-fi thingies where a compound is discovered which instantly causes a chain reaction to crystallize e.g. water at much higher temperatures than the current melting point. Salt can lower the melting point of water. Isn't there anything that can raise it? But obviously we wouldn't have enough of that compound to just inject into the ice. I've seen spontaneous crystallization of water into ice at room temperature when you hit a bottle. Maybe something like this can be done on a more permanent basis.

3) Release reflective material into the atmosphere (like in nuclear winter) to counteract the greenhouse gas effect and hope this doesn't somehow cause deadly pollution in some other way. After all, the Earth can only radiate energy into space, convection with the vacuum of space doesn't really transfer heat away much at all. But we can reflect the sun's radiation to the Earth, and limit the heating up that way.

4) Instead of reflective material, you can fly satellites into space where they cast a shadow on the Earth (assuming the sun is far enough, I haven't done the calculations, it might be possible that small satellites or gas clouds can cast a shadow on the Earth just like the moon's umbra will in August 19th this year). And in that case we can try to reflect a lot of the energy that way. Of course, they would have to be SUPER reflective and have a high surface area, or they'd heat up within a decade rendering them useless.

It's silly to think we're unable to change. Nearly all of the CO2 emissions were done in just a generation. Post-world war 2 industrialization, automation and globalization caused the vast majority of CO2. There are still people alive today who lived through WO2. Why are we talking like this is an insurmountable problem, that the momentum is just too big? It literally took /one/ average human life span to get where we are. It could take less than one to go back to pre-industrial levels. And it's not just a matter of better technology, it's mostly a matter of social adaptation. If we're dead set on infinite growth (in terms of consumption, GDP, population) we're going to have a problem with or without climate change. The fix is: a smaller population, less consumption, and less production. But that's contrary to /everything/ capitalism stands for. The problem is thus not so much technology, but rather the socio-economic paradigm we're in. How to change this without going all "you dumb communist beta cuck snowflake"? I don't know. But here are some ideas:

- Incentivize less spending by "anti-ads" (could be interesting to add as an ad blocker), basically ads that signal that you /don't/ need what's advertised. Interesting AI problem that can piggyback off of all the stuff that's being done in the ad space itself

- Implement economic incentives for CO2 scrubbing, by carbon-tax, subsidies or secondary effects (e.g. useful non-fuel biproducts, or things like greener living spaces / habitable deserts)

- Stop subsidizing fossil fuels, agriculture, etc. Will it hike up the prices? Sure, but that's kinda the idea.

- Look at the big picture first. Driving your car less, LED bulbs, sure…they kinda work. It's somewhat of a moot point with cargoships that almost burn raw oil, equivalent to the CO2 output of a small city. This is an optimization problem: try to do the big things first.

- Slow down. We define the pace at which society moves. Do you /really really really/ need that stuff in 24hours door-to-door? Do you /really really/ need to commute 8 hours each day? These are human choices. The natural world is kinda reluctant about our endeavors. There's no reason why everything must be done /yesterday/ … helps with mental health issues too.

- Incentivize a culture where "moon-shot" ideas are given a chance. There are many ways we can make a big dent, but often costing billions to build. We have no problem building 250 million dollar warplanes (and buy hundreds of them), no problems building half a billion dollar coal plants. Really, no problem with billion dollar sports matches. In fact, we seem to applaud these things. But when talking about rooftop solar, heliostat installations, CO2 scrubbing, planting trees it's all "cost cost cost". We need to rethink that.

And be kind to all living things. We're in for a tough ride either way. Just try to show some compassion and help those who need it more than you do.

Or that's what I try to tell myself when I'm utterly depressed about it https://joelkuiper.eu/change

Thats a hell of a stretch. When have scientists predicted the end of the world? There was the population explosion fear, that third world countries wouldn't slow down their birth rates. There was the ozone layer, but scientists were completely right about that and it had large impacts on affected populations. Increased cancer rates, loss of animal and plant life. There was a brief worry that the atomic bomb might light the atmosphere on fire, but they realized that was wrong pretty immediately.

At worst there was one prediction that was wrong, and that was only because it was based on sociology and psychology. That's not the same as global warming.