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The protocol designed to heal the ozone layer may also have fended off warming

technologyreview.com

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Re: The protocol designed to heal the ozone layer may also have fended off warming

#21

Post by c_o_n_v_e_x »

willcipriano wrote: post #17
YawningAngel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditching fossil fuels substantially isn't hard, it's just expensive. If we'd been willing to take the economic hit (and able to co-ordinate doing so as a species) we could have kept emissions well below the current atmospheric level within the bounds of current technology. It would just have meant building a lot of nuclear power plants and using shitty batteries for a lot of stuff

> Ditching fossil fuels substantially isn't hard, it's just expensive. I can't think of anything that is both expensive and easy to do. If something is very easy, why would it ever be expensive?

Scale. It's easy to dig a small hole with a shovel. It's another thing to dig a Grand Canyon.

Ditching fossil fuels on an individual level is easy. Ditching fossil fuels on a civilization scale is difficult and expensive.

Re: The protocol designed to heal the ozone layer may also have fended off warming

#22

Post by actually_a_dog »

gerdesj wrote: post #8
anyfoo wrote: post #4

Good, so we have shown that we can make a difference. That means the defeatist argument ("we can't, so what's the point") does not hold, and we can proceed to actually do something. Patting ourselves on the shoulder that something has been done in the past will not help.

Quite. Plant trees and conserve peat bogs.

I'm never going to say "don't plant trees," but, in the short term, there's some possibility that reforestation might actually increase warming by decreasing surface albedo. See https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2927/examining-the-viability-o...

Even if that isn't the case, planting trees is still a long term move, and it's going to take at least several hundred billion trees to make a difference. It's not something where you can say "just plant trees, and everything will be alright."

Re: The protocol designed to heal the ozone layer may also have fended off warming

#23

Post by YawningAngel »

willcipriano wrote: post #17
YawningAngel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditching fossil fuels substantially isn't hard, it's just expensive. If we'd been willing to take the economic hit (and able to co-ordinate doing so as a species) we could have kept emissions well below the current atmospheric level within the bounds of current technology. It would just have meant building a lot of nuclear power plants and using shitty batteries for a lot of stuff

> Ditching fossil fuels substantially isn't hard, it's just expensive. I can't think of anything that is both expensive and easy to do. If something is very easy, why would it ever be expensive?

I didn't word this very well. What I mean is that there are/were no huge engineering challenges involved. We can't build a space elevator at any price, we can massively reduce our emissions by 'merely' spending a truly unfathomable amount of money

Re: The protocol designed to heal the ozone layer may also have fended off warming

#24

Post by frosted-flakes »

kreelman wrote: post #16
j_walter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cash for clunkers anyone? How much waste did that create...turn in a 20 year old Civic and get a bunch of money to buy a brand new vehicle that probably gets worse MPG.

Perhaps what you say is part of the problem, though usually MPG improves with newer vehichle versions? Change it over to "Cheap EV for clunkers", the government could/should cover most of the financials and it's a win for the car owner and the environment. I think it could be argued that it's the government's job to fund things like this. Vision is all that's required!

A lot of older cars had excellent MPG figures but actually polluted more than current cars, especially diesels. Also, cars have largely gotten bigger and heavier, which hurts efficiency.

Re: The protocol designed to heal the ozone layer may also have fended off warming

#25

Post by pedrocr »

YawningAngel wrote: post #23
willcipriano wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ditching fossil fuels substantially isn't hard, it's just expensive. I can't think of anything that is both expensive and easy to do. If something is very easy, why would it ever be expensive?

I didn't word this very well. What I mean is that there are/were no huge engineering challenges involved. We can't build a space elevator at any price, we can massively reduce our emissions by 'merely' spending a truly unfathomable amount of money

Do you have a source on it being such a large amount of money? My impression is that just like water rights we've priced the externality so low that a lot of things weren't done even though they were cheap. Here's a 2007 analysis putting the cost at less than 1% GDP:

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/o...

Re: The protocol designed to heal the ozone layer may also have fended off warming

#26

Post by DoingIsLearning »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #24
kreelman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps what you say is part of the problem, though usually MPG improves with newer vehichle versions? Change it over to "Cheap EV for clunkers", the government could/should cover most of the financials and it's a win for the car owner and the environment. I think it could be argued that it's the government's job to fund things like this. Vision is all that's required!

A lot of older cars had excellent MPG figures but actually polluted more than current cars, especially diesels. Also, cars have largely gotten bigger and heavier, which hurts efficiency.

> Also, cars have largely gotten bigger and heavier

... In the US/Canada. This is for the most part a self-contained cultural problem.

SUVs/trucks numbers are a small percentage of the vehicles on the road elsewhere in the world, mostly because there is no space for them in the road/city infrastructure in most other places.

Re: The protocol designed to heal the ozone layer may also have fended off warming

#28

Post by godshatter »

coryrc wrote: post #19
godshatter wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but ditching your 20-year old beater of a car for a new electric one is not viable for a large percentage of the population at the moment, even in the richest countries. Maybe when 20-year old beater EVs are a thing the tide will turn. I agree about nuclear, though. We should have been doubling down on them years ago, if only as a stop-gap until the renewable power storage problem has been solved. Although I'm…

If only there were alternatives to personal cars to go from place to place. Oh well.

Not where I live.

Re: The protocol designed to heal the ozone layer may also have fended off warming

#29

Post by munk-a »

c_o_n_v_e_x wrote: post #21
willcipriano wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ditching fossil fuels substantially isn't hard, it's just expensive. I can't think of anything that is both expensive and easy to do. If something is very easy, why would it ever be expensive?

Scale. It's easy to dig a small hole with a shovel. It's another thing to dig a Grand Canyon. Ditching fossil fuels on an individual level is easy. Ditching fossil fuels on a civilization scale is difficult and expensive.

What makes ditching fossil fuels on a civilization scale difficult is that ditching fossil fuels on an individual level is only easy for a portion of the population - a portion very much over represented on HN. If it were easy for all individuals to ditch fossil fuels (sorta the level of easy it is for all individuals to use paper instead of plastic straws) we'd pass some laws and ordinances and get it done in the blink of the eye. There would be push back sure - there are always reactionaries for everything - but the problem with EVs (and the problem that increased battery production scale might solve for us soon) is that it's expensive to switch to an EV and if America has spent more than a hundred years struggling to try and actually keep a roof[1] over everyone's head - getting a car in their pocket isn't going to be any easier.

1. I know it might feel the opposite at first glance when you think of how much EVs cost compared to a house in SF - but bear in mind that houses can be built extremely inexpensively.

Re: The protocol designed to heal the ozone layer may also have fended off warming

#30

Post by frosted-flakes »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #26
frosted-flakes wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of older cars had excellent MPG figures but actually polluted more than current cars, especially diesels. Also, cars have largely gotten bigger and heavier, which hurts efficiency.

> Also, cars have largely gotten bigger and heavier ... In the US/Canada. This is for the most part a self-contained cultural problem. SUVs/trucks numbers are a small percentage of the vehicles on the road elsewhere in the world, mostly because there is no space for them in the road/city infrastructure in most other places.

Size is only one factor of weight. Safety improvements have also increased weight, even if the car stayed roughly the same size.
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