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Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

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Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#191

Post by layer8 »

Winse wrote: post #184
layer8 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CO2 is actually not so nice for breathing, if you ever monitored a CO2 ppm meter indoors, where the air gets stuffy when too much CO2 from breathing accumulates. With the current trajectory, by the end of the century, opening the window won’t get you what we now consider fresh air anymore, the air will feel stuffy all the time. We already get less fresh air now than 50 years ago, where CO2 base levels were around 300…

I breathe fine in my greenhouse at 800–1,000 ppm all the time...so ...meh

I feel the urge to open a window at those levels. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where that’s the base level.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#192

Post by lupire »

questinthrow wrote: post #180

In my opinion the only solution is a drastic drop in number of human beings. Thankfully we wont have to do much since nature will do it for us when the droughts begin and the crops start failing. Its fun to think of how we will science ourselves out of this as we go over 8 billion people who all desire an ever increasing standard of living. However the only science we will science ourselves with are going to be fully…

Individual demand for consumption is unbounded. You can depopulate out of this problem, unless your depopulation is extremely targeted at the wealthiest, and the definition of "wealthiest" broadens as overall consumption grows.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#193

Post by mlrtime »

unglaublich wrote: post #88

And people keep wondering why climate protesters are not asking things "nicely" anymore, and resort to blocking traffic and defacing paintings. They tried the nice way... they tried for many decades.

And all they do is push people further away from their causes. They are the least equipped people to be dealing with this situation.

They should be spending their time getting PHDs in Engineering or Physics to try and help solve these issues.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#194

Post by questinthrow »

lupire wrote: post #192
questinthrow wrote: post #180

In my opinion the only solution is a drastic drop in number of human beings. Thankfully we wont have to do much since nature will do it for us when the droughts begin and the crops start failing. Its fun to think of how we will science ourselves out of this as we go over 8 billion people who all desire an ever increasing standard of living. However the only science we will science ourselves with are going to be fully…

Individual demand for consumption is unbounded. You can depopulate out of this problem, unless your depopulation is extremely targeted at the wealthiest, and the definition of "wealthiest" broadens as overall consumption grows.

Maybe, but demand can trivially be bounded through violence. Which will happen as we get further into the collapse

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#195

Post by mlrtime »

ejb999 wrote: post #112
jmyeet wrote: post #97

When we have people who cannot house and feed themselves, why do we expect them to care abotu what will happen to the planet in another century? We have a hopelessnes crisis. The propaganda of capitalism has also been widly successful. Many people believe in the myth of meritocracy or that somehow markets will solve all problems or that Jeff Bezos having $200 billion instead of $100 billion while Amazon warehouse emp…

I don't personally care about wealth inequality (or more specifically, I don't care that Jeff Bezos has more money than me - if he suddenly became poor, my standard of living wouldn't change). For me the bigger issue is not that the elite have so much money, its that they have egregious carbon footprints, while telling the little people they need to sacrifice their standard of living to save the planet. Read the othe…

Note: Not defending billionaires...

However if a Billionaire did have the largest carbon footprint, would you still criticize if they bought credits to offset to be net 0? Or some other real practice to become net 0?

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#196

Post by silverquiet »

layer8 wrote: post #155
Winse wrote: post #135

As with most large scale changes...there are winners and losers. New species and extinctions. High CO2 is great for plants in my greenhouse...I suppose that's why it is called a greenhouse gas. Anyone longing for lower CO2 levels in our entire atmosphere is basically an anti-Canadian Agriculture bigot. Seriously though sometimes the cure is much worse than just handling the issues one at a time as we transition to a…

CO2 is actually not so nice for breathing, if you ever monitored a CO2 ppm meter indoors, where the air gets stuffy when too much CO2 from breathing accumulates. With the current trajectory, by the end of the century, opening the window won’t get you what we now consider fresh air anymore, the air will feel stuffy all the time. We already get less fresh air now than 50 years ago, where CO2 base levels were around 300…

It's one of the bonkers things to me that the air my parents breathed as children is measurably different from the air we breathe today. (Sort of like how boomer infants had measurable radionuclides in their teeth due to surface testing of atomic weapons, which helped convince the world to ban the practice.)

I've also heard that the total mass of the carbon we've injected into the atmosphere exceeds all the mass of our built world on the surface, which is sort of awesome to think about, but not in the good sense of the word.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#197

Post by citrin_ru »

CM30 wrote: post #67
rcbdev wrote: post #3

Mere ~30 years after discovering the Greenhouse Effect we managed to split the atom, harnessing heretofore unimaginable amounts of energy. Yet almost 100 years later, here we are - Oil and gas dependent, boasting an energy and climate crisis, all the while fooling regulators with worthless climate certificates, unaccountable off-shore factories and just plain rampant fraud when it comes to CO2 emissions.

Unfortunately, nuclear seems to get a bad rep from a lot of people. I suspect this is because of a mixture of things: 1. The rare instances of it going wrong look catastrophic, while the many times it does better than coal/oil/gas go ignored. Kinda like how people fear plane travel more than driving, despite the former being far safer than the latter. 2. It's more expensive to setup, so there's an economic incentive…

1. and 2. are closely related. High cost at least partially can be attributed to the requirement for nuclear to be in not the safest then at least safer than coal/hydro and many other currently used sources. Pretty much like people demand air travel to be the safest form of transportation. But given that without nuclear we would continue to burn coal/gas which is not risk free either may be the balance should be struck on the other point of the cost-safety spectrum.

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#198

Post by cesarb »

atonse wrote: post #149
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unfortunately, nuclear seems to get a bad rep from a lot of people." Well, there was Chernobyl. Then Fukushima. I'm all for Nuclear. But I think humans have shown repeatedly they can't really handle it. So think the trepidation is justified. But, I am hoping with all the technology advances in last 50 years, maybe Nuclear can be made safe. If we do learn from past.

As far as I know though, Chernobyl and Fukushima had completely different reasons and don't really clump together apart from "both were meltdowns" Chernobyl was entirely a product of design compromises due to cost savings, combined by a totalitarian system suppressing the known impact of those design decisions. It was also a much older design. Fukushima also seemed like a design mistake (I remember reading it that th…

> As far as I know though, Chernobyl and Fukushima had completely different reasons and don't really clump together apart from "both were meltdowns"

A glass-half-empty view of that would be that there isn't a single reason which could be fixed to avoid all future issues. Fukushima AFAIK didn't have the design and operational mistakes which led to the Chernobyl incident, but that wasn't enough to prevent it from having its own incident. Which other causes we might be missing which could lead to new severe incidents in other nuclear power plants?

(And, by the way, the bad part IMO was not "both were meltdowns", but "both were explosions"; if it were just the meltdown, it would stay confined within the power plant, while the explosions are what spread the damage. Yes, they weren't nuclear explosions, but even a non-nuclear explosion in a nuclear power plant is bad.)

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#199

Post by saywhanow »

retendo wrote: post #72
CM30 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, nuclear seems to get a bad rep from a lot of people. I suspect this is because of a mixture of things: 1. The rare instances of it going wrong look catastrophic, while the many times it does better than coal/oil/gas go ignored. Kinda like how people fear plane travel more than driving, despite the former being far safer than the latter. 2. It's more expensive to setup, so there's an economic incentive…

Isn't the number one reason that nuclear gets a bad rep because there is no compelling solution for getting rid of the waste?

The waste problem is solved. As with the rest of the nuclear discussion, it’s mostly hysteria.

Here’s a guy kissing nuclear waste. It’s a bit tongue in cheek on the surface, but he’s PhD and there is quality information in the video.

https://youtu.be/lhHHbgIy9jU?si=wE0FvscMgBpLUZ0g

Re: Xkcd: Greenhouse Effect

#200

Post by Winse »

layer8 wrote: post #191
Winse wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I breathe fine in my greenhouse at 800–1,000 ppm all the time...so ...meh

I feel the urge to open a window at those levels. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where that’s the base level.

you probably won't ever live in world where that's the base level: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/....
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