171–180 of 325 posts
Is there an optimistic argument to be made that we are winning the war on climate change?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are we going to make the ice cube? Where's all the heat from cooling the water going to go? Back in the atmosphere? Maybe we should just make a massive solar array, power a large laser with it, and shoot the beam into space.
There was actually a very clever paper on nano materials which, instead of emitting IR on the blackbody spectrum, emit it in a band the atmosphere is transparent to. Reversing the greenhouse at ground level.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>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. Then what happens when the trees are fully grown? Processing them for industry would just reintroduce the carbon back into the environment. Letting them stay in the forest is nice, but you would qu…
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…
Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases in the US. https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-... Not all of that is personal transportation, but a lot of it is. This is not a blip on the graph. I also agree that large polluters need to change, and that we need state action. I was just pointing out that people who seem to believe climate change is a problem rarely make major lifestyl…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if future generations will think people were even serious about solving the problem. In this respect the war was lost long ago. The vast majority of people who believe climate change will have large negative consequences make no major changes to their lifestyles. As someone who rides bike for transportation largely to save money and stay in shape (I think climate change is a lost cause), the environmental cr…
IMO phasing out automobiles as the primary form of transit is a herculean battle the environmental groups probably don't feel like they have a prayer of winning. I bike & bus to work, but speaking on a grand scale cars prey on our weakness for comfort & convenience, and the cities we live in are designed to accommodate cars, not bicycles. I do get frustrated with some enviro groups though, currently the ones who want…
I agree.
Cars break a feedback loop between how far you travel and how tired you are. Bikes merely modify this feedback loop. As long as the feedback loop exists, energy use is constrained regardless of price. But this is also what makes cars so addictive.
Car dependency seems to have peaked in the US, so I am hoping to see a reduction in the future. Removing parking requirements would be a good start.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think any amount of innovation can have close to the impact of de-tabooing nuclear energy for the next few decades.
Too late. If you start planning nuclear plants now, they'll take 10 years to build. Also, I'm not sure that the an to build nuclear reactors across Africa, South America, and the middle east will be popular; the proliferation risk hasn't gone away.
The war is unwinnable. Global warming can only be reversed if we stop all Co2 and methane emissions, and then start net carbon capture to reduce current co2 levels. Its just not going to happen. No one ever says that out loud. There is noise about reducing carbon emissions - in reality this is a lot of argument about reducing carbon emissions in wealthy countries. We can't even do that. Meanwhile even my greeny-lefty…
The war is unwinnable. Global warming can only be reversed if we stop all Co2 and methane emissions, and then start net carbon capture to reduce current co2 levels. Its just not going to happen. No one ever says that out loud. There is noise about reducing carbon emissions - in reality this is a lot of argument about reducing carbon emissions in wealthy countries. We can't even do that. Meanwhile even my greeny-lefty…
The war is unwinnable. Global warming can only be reversed if we stop all Co2 and methane emissions, and then start net carbon capture to reduce current co2 levels. Its just not going to happen. No one ever says that out loud. There is noise about reducing carbon emissions - in reality this is a lot of argument about reducing carbon emissions in wealthy countries. We can't even do that. Meanwhile even my greeny-lefty…
We do not want to reverse climate change, we want to slow it as much as possible. And there is never a point at which you can meaningfully give up, 5C is better than 6C, 3C is better than 4C. What you’ve posted is just another rationalization for inaction.
The war is unwinnable. Global warming can only be reversed if we stop all Co2 and methane emissions, and then start net carbon capture to reduce current co2 levels. Its just not going to happen. No one ever says that out loud. There is noise about reducing carbon emissions - in reality this is a lot of argument about reducing carbon emissions in wealthy countries. We can't even do that. Meanwhile even my greeny-lefty…