Discussion is pointless . -All- of it. Germany has reduced emissions by what, 20% ? It costs its world industrial leadership . No AI to power by electricity . And Germany has 3% of world CO2 output . Meanwhile , China emissions exploding almost exponentially , as they produce all the good and bad things for you .
The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change
131–140 of 176 posts
Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And there won’t be a way to roll back those changes It's possible to sequester CO2, and here are a couple ways. 1. Use permaculture or regenerative agriculture to aggressively increase SOM (soil organic matter) / carbon content of the soil. Typical degraded farmland is around 1.5% SOM. For every 0.1% increase per acre, roughly 1 ton of carbon is sequestered. Setting an ambitious increase to 10% would take decades b…
Not saying you’re wrong, but sequestering CO2 probably isn’t enough. Ecosystems are connected systems and can be resilient in the long term, but a domino can fall that has a huge, negative impact on everything downstream. For example, coral reefs provide protection and a vibrant home for a lot of sea life. But when the water gets a couple degrees too warm, it can essentially die, and when it does, the rest of the eco…
> Not saying you’re wrong, but sequestering CO2 probably isn’t enough.
My comment was in response to someone suggesting or implying that nothing can be done, not that the 2 points I made were enough.
I agree with you, especially about the ocean. The oceans have absorbed an enormous amount of CO2, increasing ocean acidity and killing ecosystems not even including the heat they've absorbed, also killing ecosystems. Meanwhile commercial fisherman (aqua farmers) are literally bombing coral as a fishing "method." We need an international effort at changing the people who do farming because the people we have are the worst we can get and they do an enormous amount of harm at basically all levels. Besides the ecological harm, they're just so bad at their jobs that despite selling one of only 3 products humans can't live without, they still can't stay in business without bailouts so routine they don't even consciously recognize them as such.
We need a lot less naysaying and a lot more concrete plans led by people who have successfully done it. I've already done the 2 things I mentioned (soil carbon, biochar) on the scale that is available to me. Additionally our rooftop solar covers maybe 1/3 of the roof and produces 2-3x our annual usage in an all-electric house. We're freegan. My used EV burns no fossil fuel. We compost aggressively including toilet material and make biochar which we co-compost. We have a xeriscape garden and use an amount of water most people would probably consider impossibly low. This is all with a mindset of continuous improvement, always assuming that more gains are yet to be discovered and put into practice. Anyone can adopt this mindset. If anyone thinks the above is way too much for you, I started it all just by switching the incandescent light bulbs in my house to LEDs. That was the first step, and then I took another, and then another. That's all. And we're saving a ludicrous amount of money but that's not the only reason we're doing it, and wasn't the original motivation.
Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
In 1992 Al Gore’s book said 60% of the population of Florida will have to relocate due to flooding. He didn’t mean in 100 years.
The actual quote is a little more circumspect than you portray it to be. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/free-expression/al-gores-long-an... > The then-senator claimed that “according to some predictions”—no specifics were offered—“in the next few decades,” “up to 60 percent of the present population of Florida may have to be relocated.” It's possible to be right on the substance and wrong on the timing. See https://en.w…
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Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Economist is torn, because on the one hand they try to appear clever, but on the other hand they generally support unrestrained capitalism. It’s not possible to do both at the same time.
Clearly you don’t read the economist
I've read it since 1995 and I vividly remember them enthusiastically stanning Bjorn Lomborg's denialism. That's when I learned that the Economist is actually the world's first manifestation of a phenomenon now associated with ChatGPT: immaculately-phrased ideological assertions that are presented as common sense that all good, clever, right-thinking people already know.
Like ChatGPT, the findings are delivered with polish and confidence, and like ChatGPT, you would not like what's in the sausage, were you to understand its provenance.
It's devastatingly effective on a certain kind of man.
Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change
#135Discussion is pointless . -All- of it. Germany has reduced emissions by what, 20% ? It costs its world industrial leadership . No AI to power by electricity . And Germany has 3% of world CO2 output . Meanwhile , China emissions exploding almost exponentially , as they produce all the good and bad things for you .
China's emissions peaked in 2025 and have been declining since. They have rolled out massive amounts of renewables, unlike the US.
Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change
#136Birth rates are in decline. The global population is estimated to peak in the 2080s. I suspect that could be later than reality as the endless doom (like this article) inspires more and more people to not have kids. Then as the population declines precipitously, nature takes back over and begins resolving the problem itself.
Good luck with that.
Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Political participation -- voting, organising for the groups you support, actively engaging in meetings and public forums, building social groups of like-minded individuals. It is hugely effective. The worst doomerism is the idea that politics is ineffective. It is incredibly effective, and only the people that participate in it have any effect on it. There are more types of politics that national and international.…
Downvote me all you want, naysayers. If politics didn't work, then the people you don't like wouldn't be in power.
If you didn't use so many negatives in your sentence, then I may not have misunderstood what you didn't not intend to say.
Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Political participation -- voting, organising for the groups you support, actively engaging in meetings and public forums, building social groups of like-minded individuals. It is hugely effective. The worst doomerism is the idea that politics is ineffective. It is incredibly effective, and only the people that participate in it have any effect on it. There are more types of politics that national and international.…
Three quarters of the world live in autocracies, and another 19% outside liberal democracies. That will require adapted tactics. I'm not very qualified to speak on how to convince people in leadership positions there. How do you convince Erdogan, Modi, Putin, Trump, Xi, the North Korean dynasty and others?
On the topic of climate change, off the top of my head, these countries don't have a per capita carbon footprint as large as the US, and the significant ones are I suppose India and China, and China seems open to dialogue on the topic, and is even leading in renewable energy.
Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Economist is torn, because on the one hand they try to appear clever, but on the other hand they generally support unrestrained capitalism. It’s not possible to do both at the same time.
Clearly you don’t read the economist
I first read The Economist in the 1980s. Name a counterexample and I’ll show you how you’ve allowed yourself to be duped.
Re: The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change
#140[flagged]