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The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

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Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#251

Post by kccqzy »

jeffybefffy519 wrote: post #26

I really think the key to addressing climate change should have started 20 years ago in a lot of primary schools, whereby the curriculum includes subjects that are more tailored to solving problems with capturing or converting C02 (eg sciences) so that these students are thinking about these problems when graduating and starting businesses to solve the challenges (hopefully with gov incentives at same time).

20 years ago was when Al Gore’s influential documentary An Inconvenient Truth first appeared. Almost everyone I knew discussed it, including primary school pupils. Guess what, we do have better tools today than 20 years ago to fight climate change, such as practical and useful electric vehicles to replace CO2-emitting conventional vehicles.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#252

Post by alcover »

grumbelbart wrote: post #57
aperrien wrote: post #7

Are there any attempts to start geo-engineering to fix this? I'm assuming there will be no attempt to stop dumping carbon into the atmosphere, can we at least do something to take it back out? Can we use solar or renewables to possibly do that at scale?

Putting sulfur into the right layers of the atmosphere seems to be the currently best viable options. It's not overly expensive, either. It acts fast and is reversible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...

Thank you. This reading lowers my anxiety. I believe we'll rationally - and in a hurry - come down to this kind of solution. It makes solid sense.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#253

Post by 2III7 »

thesuitonym wrote: post #206
throw310822 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood this. The companies sold you fossil fuel, you burnt it and got benefits out of it: transportation, energy, heating, constructions, fertilizers and food, etc. You want them to pay for the negative consequences of your fossil fuel consumption while you keep all the generated benefits?

The amount of fossil fuels that a working class individual burns are a rounding error compared to what big companies burn. How many private jets are in the air right now? Even if you drive the most energy inefficient truck ever produced, run your home HVAC at max, and buy gasoline just to burn in your back yard, you will never measure up. It's like saying we need to dry the oceans, so you should stop peeing in it.

And who are the customers of big companies driving the demand? Regular people or other companies who also produce for those people.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#254

Post by dylan604 »

goatlover wrote: post #228
mym1990 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are a planet of 8 billion people, interest will vary widely. Expecting everyone to swarm on the same issue at the same time is simply not how humanity has worked in the past. Innovation often happens because many people go different directions, testing what works and what doesn't. Getting AI to play SimCity may be a stepping stone to real life urban planning, or it may be nothing, who knows?

Humanity in the past has acted to eradicate Polio through global vaccinations, fix the Y2K computer bug, allow the Ozone hole to repair by banning CFCs, form a United Nations to prevent WW3 among other things.

We are actively making noise about pulling out of groups like the UN/NATO.

We are actively undoing regulations to reduce pollutants while promoting "clean" coal.

We are actively undoing vaccinations policy.

We does not necessarily equal humanity at this time, but it sure feels like it if you are under the We administration.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#255

Post by mullingitover »

throw310822 wrote: post #229
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does the chain end? I burn diesel in my tractor to harvest corn. Should the feedlot that buys my corn pay for the tractor’s emissions? Should the slaughterhouse that processes the cattle pay? Should the supermarket that stocks the beef pay? Should the family who grills the steak on Sunday pay? Or just the one who eats the largest portion?

You either tax the fuel and pass the cost down to the consumers, or decide as a society to share the cost of the externalities and use general taxation for that.

Why should all of society pay for these externalities? If some people manage to improve their energy supply and don't require dirty fuels, why should they be forced to subsidize those who won't?

Taxing the carbon at the source is simply correctly pricing it, and because it makes it impossible to shift the externalities away from the producer it fixes the accounting problem that falsely makes fossil fuels appear cheap.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#256

Post by throw310822 »

pants2 wrote: post #241
throw310822 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You either tax the fuel and pass the cost down to the consumers, or decide as a society to share the cost of the externalities and use general taxation for that.

Here, in the first scenario it directly punishes consumers for consuming more. In the second, it punishes everyone equally on everyone's consumption, which is unlikely to lead to behavior change. So yes, we should tax fossil fuels much more.

However, the first scenario will pass the increased cost of fuel down to the consumers affecting poorer people disproportionately. Example: some good that is produced with fossil fuels (including food) will become too expensive for low-income people, while richer (and more polluting) people will not feel the difference that much.

If you go for general taxation, you distribute the cost proportionally to income, making rich people pay more. Probably the ideal is a mix of both.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#257

Post by 2III7 »

cons0le wrote: post #150
smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

Imagine if we had laws that required all LLM compute to come from solar, or other sustainable power sources. We could have used the market's thirst for AI as a backchannel way to force creation of new sustainable energy. In contrast to Elon/XAI's illegal methane fuled datacenter in memphis

Imagine if we had people that actually listened to scientists, reduced their carbon footprint and changed their habits.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#258

Post by akramachamarei »

j0ba wrote: post #52

If only there was a clean, nearly limitless source of energy, where the waste for hundreds of years of energy could be stored in less than a square kilometer. If such a thing existed, we could be sure that environmentalists and leftists would have openly embraced it, rather than nip it at the bud 50 years ago. Because they are Good People™. And we should definitely listen to them now because they Follow The Science™.

People may be downvoting you because they think you're not speaking in good faith. But I think this touches on an important issue which is the credibility of politicians when it comes to bringing the science hammer down (in the form of policy). Stuff like the junk science behind those old CA plastic straw policies, the seesawing on Covid prevention and lab-leak denialism, the energy efficient dryers that don't work (this last one is more hearsay to me, and issue of CBA rather than scientific fact perhaps.) I think if politicians can get their shit straight on communicating mature science thoroughly and accurately it could go a long way to getting people to work together.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#259

Post by HPsquared »

hackyhacky wrote: post #219
davidw wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And almost all of them have plenty of other benefits too: Multifamily housing is generally cheaper in high land cost areas. It helps solve the housing shortage. More bikes and transit and fewer cars means cleaner air and fewer traffic deaths. Less fossil fuel usage in general means less pollution. Cities that use land more efficiently tend to be more walkable, pleasant, and don't gobble up things like farmland or for…

> less beef is probably better for your health, too. Won't matter when it's 120 degrees F every day.

My advice is to install air conditioning, and choose a place to live that will be affected as little as possible. Avoid the Maldives or New Orleans, perhaps choose somewhere a little hilly and cool with good connectivity.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#260

Post by keyringlight »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #226
goatlover wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For how long though? Solar and wind are very competitive now, electric cars have been good enough to transition to for over a decade, other industries can be decarbonized with the right incentives and enough investment. It's not like there aren't any ideas for how to farm or produce steel cleanly. And nuclear reactors can be made safer and cheaper now. Seems more like a lack of political will with powerful lobbying i…

For a long time to come. The energy density of fossil fuels is very high (about 50x higher than that of lithium ion batteries), there's a ton of infrastructure for handling and transporting them and a ton of infrastructure for using them. They get turned into plastics and energy, two things which civilization feeds on voraciously. It's not just inertia that keeps them going.

It's an immense uphill struggle if you tried to get people to adjust to where transport is less available, and encourage living or working at closer ranges or conversely long range shipping/travel/vacations seen as more of a luxury. Just thinking about it I'm reminded of the outrage that was fabricated/stirred up over "15 minute cities" in the UK where the idea that you'd be able to get to most things you need day-to-day in a 15 minute walk was warped into a scare of state checkpoints, fines and surveillance. Or the retreat from working from home.

It's a huge adjustment from how the past few decades have established expectations, and it'll take a big force to change quickly, similar to covid even though that was short term in hindsight.

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