441–450 of 591 posts
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Yes yes the solution here is to physically move hundreds or thousands of years of capital investment, especially forms of capital investment that cannot be moved and are just abandoned/destroyed. That way we can emit a bunch more to rebuild that already-built infrastructure in a different locale!
To be honest, we could use a hard reset like that every once in a while.
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Suburban middle class guy switching from driving an F150 to the Safeway to using an e-bike to get his groceries will not cause anyone to starve, but it will make a measurable dent in CO2 emissions. Do not frame this as an irreconcilable tension between starvation and plenty. The question is whether the average American consumer-bot can be coerced into not squandering the atmosphere at a rate 100x faster than the aver…
The guy is living in the suburbs, which means they aren’t going to the store very often as they probably live far away from it. That means they are getting more than a few bags of groceries, they don’t need an F150 for sure, but they probably aren’t getting to carry this with an e-bike. Better for the suburban guy to become a city guy and walk or bike to the grocery store a few times a week. They get better veggies t…
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The earth is indeed not in thermal equilibrium due to the speed of the recent CO2 increase, so warming would continue if atmospheric CO2 concentration would be held constant . However, atmospheric CO2 concentration would not stay constant after emissions stop. It would go down slowly, mainly because it would continue to dissolve into the oceans. This effect cancels out the above point. Which is why the IPCC says that…
Methane tipping points are already met, especially from tropical wetlands and the polar regions. Add to that the conversion of past carbon sinks to carbon emitters, such as the boreal forests and the Amazon and we are looking at a continued rise of both emissions and temps for a long time.
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When we can burn fossil fuels to impact the atmosphere that cause climate change then we can also pump other gasses that will have a cooling effect. We aren’t doing much at the moment because there aren’t economic incentives to do so, but that can change if we have policy changes.
Climate change is an unintended effect of roughly two centuries of growth and development. It seems much easier to have unintended effects, than to get exactly the effects you want with from a global geoengineering campaign on the first try.
You're still being quite optimistic...
This plays out with a country like Bangladesh or India, under duress, ignoring everyone else and attempting to do it themselves
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The guy is living in the suburbs, which means they aren’t going to the store very often as they probably live far away from it. That means they are getting more than a few bags of groceries, they don’t need an F150 for sure, but they probably aren’t getting to carry this with an e-bike. Better for the suburban guy to become a city guy and walk or bike to the grocery store a few times a week. They get better veggies t…
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Clearly we need to solve this problem, climate change is real, and it's here. However, we can't just stop using oil. It would lead to the death (by starvation) of most of humanity, mostly in the poorer parts of the world. We need a well managed transition away from fossil fuel inputs. One of the first things that should be shifted, as much as is possible, is from Industrial Farming which uses massive chemical inputs,…
Suburban middle class guy switching from driving an F150 to the Safeway to using an e-bike to get his groceries will not cause anyone to starve, but it will make a measurable dent in CO2 emissions. Do not frame this as an irreconcilable tension between starvation and plenty. The question is whether the average American consumer-bot can be coerced into not squandering the atmosphere at a rate 100x faster than the aver…
You want to have an impact on the suburban middle class guy/consumer, start with less jet set Davos/Aspen environmentalists.
Coercion or deception by any means will only make them (and others) dig in deeper.
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Look around. Everyone on earth wants to maintain a standard of living. Governments are toppled over this. And yet it is the largest economy that is objectively slowing its share of contributed emissions. And it’s the largest exhibit that is helping to drive the innovation needed to solve this problem, alongside incredible people from all parts of the globe. I wish we weren’t dealing with this. I wish there had been a…
I'm not disagreeing with your conclusions... >And yet it is the largest economy that is objectively slowing its share of contributed emissions. These largest economy's also contributed the most over their history, which seems reasonable grounds for contributing more and helping other economies come up to that standard of living w/o making the same contributions
While exporting most of that technological development and scientific research to every country too...
Or maybe someone can believe China can make 7nm chips at a fraction of the historical emissions of other countries at 5nm, with no knowledge transfer
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From https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jul/31/why-you-need... : > One 2015 study concluded extremes are likely to approach and exceed 35C in the region around the Arabian Gulf towards the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions are not reined in, posing questions for human habitability there. > In 2020, research found that some coastal subtropical locations have already experienced WBTs of 35C, albeit o…
not evidence of something that would kill hundred of millions of humans. But, more importantly, The oft-cited 35C value comes from a 2010 theoretical study. Simply put: nobody knows the real threshold and nobody put it to test. I'm no denier in any way, but doom prophecies are usually wrong, they are used to scare people into action, but are based on the idea that nothing changes. For example, planting trees is effec…
I agree about tree planting being a sensible precaution to take - preventing sun from reflecting off tarmac and concrete is going to help at least a bit as well as the other benefits.