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The world is losing the war against climate change

economist.com

181–190 of 325 posts

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#181
post #68

We have nuclear power, but people are bad at evaluating risks, so here we are.

We were told that Fukushima will NEVER happen. So yeah, some people are very bad at evaluating risks.

Well, what happened? Last I heard the outcome is some land lost, no immediate deaths, and about 100 deaths due to cancer over the next 50 years. A tragedy, but not apocalyptic. (And minuscule compared to the deaths and destruction from the earthquake/tsunami itself.)

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#182
Serious question: whatever happened to mechanical solutions like seeding the atmosphere with a chemical that will reflect light? Are those things considered too risky to try? I remember hearing about those solutions some years ago, but they seem to have fallen out of vogue now.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#183
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Someday I'd like to visit the universe you live in. It sounds nice.

IDK, in my universe (at least for this topic) politicians reflecting the people they govern means that any nontrivial short-term sacrifice to even start fighting a war against climate change is an impossibility, the voters will throw them down the moment they'd propose devoting a meaningful amount of resources (with the associated cuts to other areas needing funding) or forcing major lifestyle changes on everyone, not just those who volunteer to live in a more eco-friendly manner.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#184
post #151

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…

Would it help make this more concrete for people if we were to install markers along the coastlines of various cities that say “The ocean will be touching this sign on $date”

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#186
post #151

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…

I agree with these points.

On the other hand, defeatist attitude is not going to help anyone. Reversing the climate change may be the moonshot, but unless we have an objective we cannot convince anyone outside the "greeny-lefty" minority. At a minimum, we should be good examples to our children who are in greater danger of suffering from this than we currently are. I, for one, am teaching my child respect for nature and its resources. If we all did this, world would be a better place nonetheless.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#187
post #121

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…

Exactly, it's stupidly cheap, "so you destroyed the world because you couldn't be bothered to pay 5% extra for clean energy? Thanks Grandpa"

It's not someone's future grandpa resisting a carbon tax, but massive lobbying by the coal and oil industry.

https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=E1210

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=E01

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#188

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…

I was curious about this and wanted to share some quick calculations on how viable this is: A tree can absorb as much as 48 lbs of CO2 per year [1]. This is pretty vague cause this can vary by tree age and size, but let's use this arbitrary number In 2014 the United States generated 6,870 million metric tonnes of CO2 [2]. 48 lbs is about 0.021 metric tonnes [3]. So... 6,870,000,000 / .021 = 327,142,857,142.85 327 tri…

I thought this was pretty interesting. So I looked up how many trees there are per person:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...

The US has 716 per person. Sadly, it looks like China and India are the worst culprits: "Brazil had 301 billion trees (1,494 per person), Canada 318 billion (8,953 per person), and China 139 billion (102 trees per person). Among highly populous countries, India (population, 1.267 billion) had a tree population of only 35 billion, leading to just 28 trees per person."

By comparison, the US won't take that long to get to carbon-neutrality. India and China are going to be a burden on the planet for the next century at least.

Note that you don't need to plant an additional 1000 trees per person, you just need to have 1000 trees per person to cancel out their emissions.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#189
post #151

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…

someone is https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-We-Can-Save-Planet-ebook/dp/B00...

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#190
post #151

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…

honest but silly question: since the only way to deal with the problem is to also implement carbon capture to deal with the existing excess, would the same carbon capture mechanism be also able to cope with the rest of the world continuing to emit carbon at present rates?
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