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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

#251

Post by mnm1 »

rb808 wrote: 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…

Why would you expect the common person to change their habits when government abs industry aren't changing theirs? It won't make a difference what I do personally. I could fly on a jet nonstop for the rest of my life and it will make little difference. Government could pass a law to reduce carbon output tomorrow and it would make a difference. Why should us regular people be uncomfortable when we're fucked anyway because of idiot climate change deniers in power, especially in the US? If we're all going to be fucked anyway, I'm going to enjoy my AC and vacations while it lasts. Maybe leaders should start fucking leading first and people should stop pretending like individuals can even make a worthwhile dent in carbon output without government and industry changing their ways.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#252

Post by tonyedgecombe »

rb808 wrote: 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…

We can't even do that.

We have done it in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/06/uk-carbo...

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#253

Post by marmadukester39 »

cryoshon wrote: post #232
vowelless wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is indeed what it seems like. We need a 10x improvement in this space. That can only happen with carbon capture and ability to regulate CO2 in the atmosphere. Not "planting trees", for God's sake. The whole conversation around emissions and the massive politicization of this is disappointing. Emissions reduction doesn't seem to do much. We need a Manhattan project to produce carbon and weather manipulation techn…

we have the technology already: the cyanobacteria which produced the oxygen that ultimately became the earth's atmosphere. they're even better than trees because they're easier to multiplex and they don't catch on fire. all you need is clean-ish seawater. i even drew up a few designs myself a few months ago. what we lack is the will to put the plans we know will work into action.

I’ve wondered whether this could be tried in a contained/containable area, like the Black Sea, to minimize potential unintended consequences.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#254

Post by teachrdan »

JamesBarney wrote: post #229
teachrdan wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And a lot of oil is in favor of a carbon tax because it shifts more electricity away from coal to oil than from oil to wind/solar.

Perhaps. But oil companies give millions to climate change-denying politicians, and to think tanks that falsely claim that there is no human-driven climate change.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/15/exxon-mo...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jul/01/exxon-mo...

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#255

Post by 21 »

carry_bit wrote: post #237
21 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We've had a working reactor design that doesn't suffer from Fukushima's failure mode for over 20 years. Ironically, public opposition has made nuclear less safe than it would've been.

Fukushima was not supposed to have a failure mode. But it did. How are we to ever believe the "experts" that the new design won't fail in another way, after which we'll hear about an ever safer design.

Alternatively, if they knew that Fukushima wasn't safe, why didn't they shut it down? They kept on saying "yeah, the new design is much safer, but this design is also perfectly fine"

You know how they say, "fool me once, ..."

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#256

Post by DoctorOetker »

SamUK96 wrote: post #80
radicalbyte wrote: post #50

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…

> sleepwalk into oblivion Tell that to the Egyptians, Romans, Easter-Islanders (debated now, actually), and the countless other human civilisations who didn't really appreciate their impending demise before it was too late. Hell, the Romans hired essentially barbarians (so mercenaries, basically) to defend the northern territories against...you guessed it, barbarians. Just because the bulk of the harmful effects that…

The Fermi Paradox slowly turns out to be the Fermi Taboo

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#257

Post by JamesBarney »

nonbel wrote: post #33

"War against" ("War on") seems to mean it is a never-ending boondoggle that, at best, wastes a bunch of resources. Is there any example of these "wars" being a success? The three that come to mind are: War on drugs: fail War on cancer: fail War on poverty: fail Why is the economist trying to link climate change to this?

The war on poverty is arguably effective. The poverty rate is lower than it would be if we stopped all transfers.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#258

Post by snowwrestler »

btilly wrote: post #249
radicalbyte wrote: post #50

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…

The thing that I don't like about carbon offsets is the incentive to cheat. Green consumer buys carbon offset, company selling carbon offset pinky swears to offset carbon, but failing to do what was promised is unlikely to be caught, and is pure profit if they don't do it. And they don't necessarily have to lie to do it. Take your growing trees example. They arrive at the carbon offset by saying that a tree takes X c…

I think this is really well put.

And just so people understand: the anthropogenic forcing of climate change is the net increase of persistent greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, driven by pulling fossil fuels out of the ground and burning them.

So to offset that, it's not enough to just plant some trees. We would need to plant, grow, and maintain enough net new trees, globally to fix the carbon that until recently lived in coal, oil, and gas reserves. Trading trees for fossil fuels means aiming to have more trees globally than the planet ever had for most of human history. (Because for most of human history, fossil fuels were still underground.)

What private company is going to deliver on that? And how could anyone possibly hold them accountable if they don't?

So I share the skepticism of buying offsets. To me they feel like papal indulgences from the most corrupt time periods in the Catholic Church.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#259

Post by philbarr »

btilly wrote: post #249
radicalbyte wrote: post #50

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…

The thing that I don't like about carbon offsets is the incentive to cheat. Green consumer buys carbon offset, company selling carbon offset pinky swears to offset carbon, but failing to do what was promised is unlikely to be caught, and is pure profit if they don't do it. And they don't necessarily have to lie to do it. Take your growing trees example. They arrive at the carbon offset by saying that a tree takes X c…

"Carbon offsetting on the blockchain"...

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#260

Post by lkbm »

chosenbreed wrote: post #54
sykhic wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The uncomfortable reality is that 7 billion people can’t all live like Americans (or Europeans). Extracting the resources necessary for everyone to live like Americans would be very bad for the environment. The effective action is to greatly reduce the number of births worldwide. It seems to me all other options are not effective.

> The effective action is to greatly reduce the number of births worldwide. It seems to me all other options are not effective. Good luck with that ;-)

We have a route to that direction, and have made a lot of progress. It involves ending global poverty, providing economic opportunities for women, and ensuring contraception is available.

If you have high child mortality, limited access to contraception, and few employment opportunities for women, they have a lot of children. You change that, and they choose to have fewer. It happened in Europe. It happened in North America. It happened in South America. It happened in Asia (with some draconian policies to help it along). It's starting to happen in Africa: [0] (Check the map tab to see country-by-country over time).

We can do this without draconian policies. All we have to do is work to end global poverty. People think is hopeless, but twenty-five years ago, those same people would have said there's no way we'd cut it in half by now, and we did[1].

(Obligatory plug for the Against Malaria Foundation[2], which is my charity of choice for fighting global poverty, and at the same time, climate change.)

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality

[2] https://www.againstmalaria.com/ https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/where-to-donate/against-ma...

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