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The world is losing the war against climate change

economist.com

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Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#91

Post by vowelless »

I am a little out of the loop and so I have a few questions:

1. At what point in time can we arrest ocean temperature rise purely by reducing emissions?

2. Even if we stopped further rise in temperature, is the current temperature (land and ocean) sustainable, or is a chain reaction already underway that will increasingly lead to more and more turbulent weather?

3. Are there viable ways to extract greenhouses gasses from the atmosphere? Will extraction necessarily lead to lowering of temperature?

4. Are there risk factors in extracting greenhouse gasses? Could we trigger excessive cooling?

5. Alternatively, is the Futurama approach of dropping a massive icecube in the ocean a viable approach?

6. Are there long term benefits of warming?

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#92

Post by justsomedude43 »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #12

If you look at global power sector emissions from 1998 to 2018, you'll see that while we have dramatically improved upon the energy intensity (energy/capita) and even are making improvements on carbon intensity (carbon/capita), but the sad reality is this: we are still using around 35% coal power in 2018, the same as we did in 1998. And the power sector is the easiest sector to decarbonize, by the way. If you look at…

Also, between 1998 and 2018 we gained almost 2 billion people.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#93

Post by ars »

Woberto wrote: post #43
ebikelaw wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is petroleum for chemistry and plastics a GHG source? It seems like the carbon involved stays out of the atmosphere.

"Plastics emit GHG as they degrade": https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/plastics-emit-gre...

That's because plastics are basically hydrocarbon fuel, in solid form.

You can burn them, or manipulate them to make other hydrocarbons, same as you can oil.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#95

Post by heyitsguay »

nonbel wrote: post #69
SamUK96 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War on cancer has been...not completely a fail? Certainly made harder by profiteering, but, y'know. Also, I find "War on poverty" hilarious. Like a country saying it's "making crime illegal".

The war on cancer is a total fail in my book. They surrendered when they started calling it "many diseases", meaning there will never be a "cure for cancer" by definition.

Cancer is many diseases, that all happen to be characterized by uncontrolled cell growth. A "cure for cancer" is like a "cure for fever".

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#96

Post by hodgesrm »

radicalbyte wrote: post #50
WhompingWindows wrote: post #12

If you look at global power sector emissions from 1998 to 2018, you'll see that while we have dramatically improved upon the energy intensity (energy/capita) and even are making improvements on carbon intensity (carbon/capita), but the sad reality is this: we are still using around 35% coal power in 2018, the same as we did in 1998. And the power sector is the easiest sector to decarbonize, by the way. If you look at…

I've been looking into carbon capture recently because it's going to be vital to slowing down the warming (and buying us another 50 years for the transition). What surprised me is that I can cover double my two-car-owning European family's carbon footprint via planting trees in the UK at an annual cost of around $400. It'll cost half that to do the same in a developing country. We need a global carbon tax and we need…

Can you post information about this, especially the math? According to US stats I've seen it requires an acre of growing forest to offset 100 US gallons of gas per year.[0] We have a long commute (which I'm working on cutting) so we need about 8 acres to offset fully.

[0] https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calc...

Edit: added missing units.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#97

Post by Merad »

Reason077 wrote: post #29

Is there even a "war" against climate change? If there is, it's barely gotten started. For the most part, politicians are at best apathetic and at worst, actively hostile to the idea of "fighting" such a war.

Not in the US. The majority of the country isn't to the point of believing that climate change poses a serious threat, and among non-Democrats attitudes towards climate change are actually regressing: https://news.gallup.com/poll/231530/global-warming-concern-s...

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#98

Post by mattygh »

cletus wrote: post #46

So in the last month or so I stumbled across SFIA [1]. This guy has produced 150+ videos about futuristic topics but grounded in science. Everything from how to get into space cheaper to the Fermi Paradox to Black Hole civilizations. Anyway, one thing I like about it is the optimism. This guy is genuinely optimistic about the future. And he has pretty good reason. Like this planet can realistically be home to trillio…

I'm similarly optimistic that outcome is possible, maybe even probable, but I'm not excited for it. When it comes to population and the future, the question is less whether we can survive, the question is what kind of world is consistent with 20Bn people? Or 1 Trillion people?

If you value open space, wild places, other species' existence, bucolic lifestyles, or other non-techno sci fi outcomes, that's a scary thought. Maybe we will all move to space and keep earth as a re-wilded paradise for vacationing and research. Or maybe future generations won't care about any of that and will densely cover the whole planet, snuffing out anything that came before.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#99

Post by WillPostForFood »

candiodari wrote: post #44
eropple wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large part of it is that it is a collective action problem. If you want to talk about "effective action"? You're talking about shutting down coal plants, not going after the man or woman on the street. A person needing a car to get to work is, both in real and proportional terms, causing overwhelmingly less damage to the environment than industrial-scale polluters. If everybody who could switch to a bike instead of…

Perhaps the problem is simply with intent. Shutting down coal power would achieve all climate goals for several decades and we can in fact just kind of do that in most places. Government subsidies are what's keeping coal power plants online in many locations. The problem is that this would impose costs on business owners, or force banks and/or governments to pay out large sums to those business owners (not that large…

It is more telling that nuclear is on the decline. The right doesn’t take the problem seriously, and the left doesn’t take the solution seriously. So of course there is no progress.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#100

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

chosenbreed wrote: post #89
Reason077 wrote: post #29

Is there even a "war" against climate change? If there is, it's barely gotten started. For the most part, politicians are at best apathetic and at worst, actively hostile to the idea of "fighting" such a war.

The politicians largely reflect the people they govern. I don't think we can expect much better from them as compared to the general population...not to mention of course the vested interests and lobbying capability of corporations. And again corporations have shareholders, employees, etc...

>The politicians largely reflect the people they govern.

Yet, people expect the politicians not to simply reflect them. Who or what is at fault then?

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