Ozone: The Earth's protective shield is repairing

During the eighties, when I was young, the river Rhine in the Netherlands was a very polluted river where fish had all but disappeared. Trees in forests were dying because of acid rain. The ozone layer was shrinking and exposing people to lethal levels of UV. Those were scary problems. Now the Rhine has salmon swimming in it. Trees seem to have mostly recovered and the ozone layer is also recovering.

People argued that these problems couldn't be fixed, that they would be too expensive to fix, etc. But now there is good progress. That gives me hope about other problems on this planet.

My view of addressing climate change because of global warming is that it is going to require a bit more effort but that it is fundamentally just as doable. Better still, we are actually doing it. The question is are we doing it fast enough and are going about it as efficient as we could. People sure seem to waste a lot of time defending the status quo, arguing for inaction, or questioning whether there even is a problem to solve.

The core problem as I see it is addressing our energy needs and kicking off a second industrial revolution in the process. That's exactly what is happening right now. For me that prospect is the main goal. Saving our planet is a nice side effect though.

If we solve the technical problem of producing as much clean energy as we could possibly need, we could all have air-conditioning in our houses, terrace heaters in our gardens in the winter, irrigate our deserts with desalinated water from the sea, supply our industries with clean carbo hydrates produced straight from the air, etc. These things are all very energy intensive.

Demand for energy is outstripping our ability to conserve it. Therefore solving clean plentiful energy is key. It's the only thing that will get us results.

That's fair. The question of what to do about it is purely political - let's take our best estimates of what the effects of climate change are going to be, our best estimates of the cost and ways to reduce the bad effects, and come up with an approach.

I think you're understating the amount of real science that is available for the effects of continued GHG emissions on our climate. Agreed that the effect it will ultimately have on our civilization is truly speculation because that depends on our response over the next 50-100 years.

Your comment made me think of people who say we need to move to Mars because of climate change... there's no shortage of dumb arguments on both sides of the debate. But to be clear, based on what I know, I would still advocate an aggressive move towards decarbonization.

It's not that there isn't real science available it's just that it's not very conclusive besides some obvious trends.

So I am not so sure the current focus on reducing co2 emissions is as rational and useful as many seem to think.

Furthermore, the real question no one asks themselves is what is the goal of this and what is the price (not just economically) you are ready to pay.

I don't see any way to stop co2 right now without putting a ban on residential and industrial heating and electricity and transportation and you don't do that without putting the economy to a halt. You would literally have to eradicate CO2 emission for those categories to get close to anything substantial.

https://www.wri.org/resources/charts-graphs/us-greenhouse-ga...

Cause if this problem is really as dire as some claim then removing the current Paris agreement isn't even close to going to cut it. Especially since more and more people get into the middle class and they want part of the spoils too.

Furthermore it's not just that we would financially become much much poorer the result would be a giant fluctuating food supply and most poor countries are not going to agree that it's ok we can have what we have and they are not allowed to do anything.

So if you are really serious are you ready to hinder them if necessary by force to grow their own economies and secure their own people?

Cause that's the kind of actions you should be ready to take if you are truly worried about CO2 emissions and want to do something about them right now.

I am not too worried about CO2 emissions in fact for some things it's going to be good (14% increase so far in vegetation). That doesn't mean that I am not aware that rising sea levels might have an effect on local areas but I would rather approach that like the Dutch than involve the whole world.

I am also completely agreeing we should decarbonize but the problem right now is that the environmental organizations and the current political climate works against that because of it's opposition to nuclear which is the only real alternative energy to fossil fuels we have which is both reliable, scalable, cheap (at scale), safe and provides 0% CO2 emissions.

They would rather continue to primarily support wind and solar even though it means increased use of coal and oil because of the unreliable nature of wind and solar.

In the current political climate whatever is currently done is doing more harm than good both to the environment, the climate and to the poorest nations. Wind and solar are both linear solutions to exponential problems.

If you truly want to reduce carbon emissions then dedicate all your time to nuclear, fusion, fission, thorium figure out how we can contain plasma in a magnetic field in big enough scale.

I am not too worried although I am aware of the dangers, but if you really are worried you should probably drop everything you have visit the nearest energy lab and offer your help cause there are no feasible political solutions just waiting to be implemented least of all the paris agreement.

P.S. I upvoted you, not because I agree with you 100% but because you aren't just jumping to conclusions. Good style more people could learn from.