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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

#161

Post by benchaney »

swebs wrote: post #145
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…

>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. Then what happens when the trees are fully grown? Processing them for industry would just reintroduce the carbon back into the environment. Letting them stay in the forest is nice, but you would qu…

>Letting them stay in the forest is nice, but you would quickly run out of room.

No you wouldn't. There is massive deforestation all over the world. If we planted so many trees to offset carbon emissions that we accidentally solved that problem, that would be a huge environmental benefit on its own, and it would hold an enormous amount of carbon.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#162

Post by chosenbreed »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #100
chosenbreed wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The politicians largely reflect the people they govern. I don't think we can expect much better from them as compared to the general population...not to mention of course the vested interests and lobbying capability of corporations. And again corporations have shareholders, employees, etc...

>The politicians largely reflect the people they govern. Yet, people expect the politicians not to simply reflect them. Who or what is at fault then?

I think it is naive to expect someone to be better simply because they hold public office. Politicians are as fallible as anybody else...but I don't think that's a big problem in the long run. In the long run they will reflect the choices of large swathes of people. I think politics/policies are lagging indicators. For examples I give rulings on slavery, voting for women, voting for people of colour, legalisation of same-sex marriage, (bans on smoking in certain places), etc

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#164

Post by vowelless »

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…

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 technology.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#165

Post by moduspol »

codeafin wrote: post #94
okket wrote: post #6

I don't know if the "war against" theme fits here. There is no enemy but ourselves.

The war is between those who wish to act on it, and those who wish to ignore it.

Framing it as binary serves only political ends.

At best, you could frame it as "people willing to act sufficiently to meaningfully combat global warming" and "everyone else," but the former group is far smaller than "those who wish to act on it."

Put plainly: It will take far more dramatic action than most climate alarmists advocate to even have a measurable impact on (let alone solve) global warming. The opposing side isn't just "those who ignore it," it's most people who rationally evaluate policy claiming to be capable of a significant effect.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#166

Post by gandreani »

radicalbyte wrote: post #50
WhompingWindows wrote: post #12

If you look at global power sector emissions from 1998 to 2018, you'll see that while we have dramatically improved upon the energy intensity (energy/capita) and even are making improvements on carbon intensity (carbon/capita), but the sad reality is this: we are still using around 35% coal power in 2018, the same as we did in 1998. And the power sector is the easiest sector to decarbonize, by the way. If you look at…

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…

I was curious about this and wanted to share some quick calculations on how viable this is:

A tree can absorb as much as 48 lbs of CO2 per year [1]. This is pretty vague cause this can vary by tree age and size, but let's use this arbitrary number

In 2014 the United States generated 6,870 million metric tonnes of CO2 [2]. 48 lbs is about 0.021 metric tonnes [3]. So...

    6,870,000,000 / .021 = 327,142,857,142.85
327 trillion trees!! The population in the US on 2014 was roughly 317 million people [4]. This means for each person we would have to plant

  6870 / 317 / .021 = 1,031.99 trees
Just north of 1000 trees. That's 1k additional trees that need to be planted just to offset our CO2. Crazy

    [1] https://projects.ncsu.edu/project/treesofstrength/treefact.htm
    [2] https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions
    [3] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=48+lbs+to+metric+ton
    [4] https://www.census.gov/popclock/embed.php?component=pop_on_date&date=20140101

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#168

Post by coryrc »

vowelless wrote: post #146
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…

It's disappointing to me that planting trees is the best we can come up with. One would hope that we could work on a 10x, technological solution.

It's generating useful material for us and fully biodegradable at the end of its lifecycle, and even self-replicates. What's not to love?

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#169

Post by johnchristopher »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #12

If you look at global power sector emissions from 1998 to 2018, you'll see that while we have dramatically improved upon the energy intensity (energy/capita) and even are making improvements on carbon intensity (carbon/capita), but the sad reality is this: we are still using around 35% coal power in 2018, the same as we did in 1998. And the power sector is the easiest sector to decarbonize, by the way. If you look at…

> We need massive innovation across all our uses of fossil fuel.

I am tempted to say, for the sake of the conversation, that what we need is people in the street.

Your post is about getting better tech. Fine. Following posts are about how taxes will solve the problem because incentives.

It's a lost cause.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#170

Post by [deleted] »

Merad wrote: post #97
Reason077 wrote: post #29

Is there even a "war" against climate change? If there is, it's barely gotten started. For the most part, politicians are at best apathetic and at worst, actively hostile to the idea of "fighting" such a war.

Not in the US. The majority of the country isn't to the point of believing that climate change poses a serious threat, and among non-Democrats attitudes towards climate change are actually regressing: https://news.gallup.com/poll/231530/global-warming-concern-s...

[deleted]
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