211–220 of 244 posts
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We'll be fine. We'll have to make adjustments, but we'll be fine. So will the planet, and so will the vast majority of animals.
“Save the earth?! The planet will be absolutely fine… humans on the other hand..”
Humans aren't likely to die out directly, although scenarios where it all seems a bit pointless and the remaining few million humans stop reproducing are plausible.
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The article was written in 2019 before a number of extraordinarily significant events with major climate policy impacts: - a noticeable and rapid dip in emissions has proven to be viable due to COVID lockdowns - Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced Europe and the US to accelerate plans to diversify energy generation away from natural gas - China’s insanely rapid growth in green energy production domestically It seems…
2023 is 37.4, which is a fair increase on 2019. More importantly the chart that matters is total CO2 in atmosphere. You can't even see 2020 on here. That was a one off 5% decrease. Imagine if you had $1,000,0000 in your bank account and were spending $100,000 per year, except one year you spent $95,000. That's 2020. This methane news is on top of CO2 as it has its own added impact. Proper optimism that we can do it f…
It's even worse, because there's positive feedback loops we've probably unlocked (mainly artic and tropical methane).
So it's more like every year you put $100K on a credit card with high interest rate with continually compounding interest.*
Even if we stopped spending tomorrow, the debt will continue to grow exponentially.
*And the card is owned by a mob boss that will blow your brains out when your debt exceeds your bank balance.
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This is what people don’t get about places like Florida. The people in Florida are in fact aware that it storms and floods, thats why the house is built on stilts with metal storm shutters.
Sure, but it’s expensive and it’s still devastated by storms etc. Like these building techniques works so well that insurers have left the Florida market because it’s unprofitable to rebuild everyone every couple years, so the state outlawed charging rates that account for the actual expense of it, and now people can’t get home insurance policies anymore. Like literally it’s already too expensive to keep doing it wit…
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I wrote about why saying it's their fault and not ours is not admitting our own fault is... bullshit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41015413 > that middle class is going to want to enjoy the spoils of materialistic consumerism (the true root cause of human-induced climate change) just as much as our grandparents did, our parents did, and we do. The last 3 words is key there. WE also don't want to give up those…
You manage to make it look like no one can make a sane choice for themselves. Other countries can only do what we want (because WE want cheap products WE make them do bad stuff), and we can only do what they want (if they offer something that is cheaper then we automatically must buy it and not care about any damage or side-effects). It's a paradox isn't it? In reality it is government's choice, to go for short term…
On average, the "sane" choice is to go for the cheapest option, or turn a blind eye to the child labor, etc.
Sure, some people want to live ethically and minimize their emissions, but there's not enough of them.
> In reality it is government's choice, to go for short term riches and maintaining power or act more ethically and think long term.
Yeah, Macron tried to tax fuel more and there were widespread protests by "average French citizen", and he got metaphorically beaten up in the last election. The EU incumbents watered down green projects because of fear of losing to the rightwing populists. It's the sane choice for them to make, because I'd rather be governed by the somewhat sane center-right than lying manipulative populist hard-right, but the sane choice meant stepping away from the path of an ecological future. The summary is, if you try to be ethical, you get voted out of office, god bless democracy! /s
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Okay, so having gone down this path I can tell you it is impossible. To reduce the output of the sun by 2% at L1 would require 20 MM tons of metal. In order to launch that much tonnage we would have needed to start launching mass 500 years ago. And that assumes no loss of material over time, which would mean even more launches. It is not feasible.
Thank you for adding some numbers regarding the feasibility of launching the required materials into space. Do you have any thoughts/numbers about how "mining/construction" in-situ in space might affect those outcomes? E.g. Might we soon be able to "recycle" old in-orbit objects (trash/old_sats) into a slowly growing space mirror? Or several smaller ones over (richer/more_affected) areas?
I situ mining might make this more feasible, but that has all of its own complications. None of which I would feel confident in saying are feasible.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/433_Eros https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba
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In Massachusetts, Lost and Unaccounted for Gas (LAUG) is estimated per mile of pipe, rather than evaluated by regulators or even industry. It is a simple multiplication problem with little bearing on reality. Consumers bear the cost of LAUG while the utilities are guaranteed a 10% profit on their infrastructure expenses. This, along with subsidies for leak prone pipe replacement, leads to needless investment in outmo…
Meanwhile in California, PG&E underfunded maintenance, perhaps because regulators squeezed too hard? Eventually we had things like the San Bruno gas explosion and wildfires so bad that PG&E went bankrupt. Finding the optimal amount of regulation seems difficult. It seems like too blunt an instrument. Incentives are no substitute for technical people who want to do what's right.
It just got worse as they passed more and more of it into investor pockets.
Let's say I have free time on my hands. How could I maximally remove methane from the atmosphere?
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I've heard people argue that its both too aggressive and too conservative. I'm in the too conservative camp, we need to figure things out sooner than 100 years and the risk of a feedback loop is high with methane. Its fine to assert that a single number doesn't capture the nuances of the situation. But we have to keep in mind that 1) the heat trapped by the methane stays trapped even after it has decayed 2) methane c…
1) Over days sure, but not on the relevant timescales. 2) In terms of impact on climate the difference from 1990 to 2024 is mostly from CO2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#/media/Fil... 3) It’s nonlinear, increasing methane concentrations also benefit methane scavenging bacteria which should increase the rate of breakdown as concentrations increase. OH only lasts around 1 second in the atmosphere s…
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That’s significantly moving the goal post. Yes, it’s a given that biodiversity will take a hit for a pretty long time due to human activity but frankly, so what? I personally care more about avoiding millions dying of starvation but you do you. I understand that said millions being mostly in Nigeria and India make some in the west care less about them that cute animals, but still.
This attitude towards other life sucks ass.
One day, maybe not so long in future as many may think, our descendants will judge us as primitive barbaric savages. And they will be mostly right.