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The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

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Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#291

Post by matthewdgreen »

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…

We contribute to it 1% by the actions we take as individuals, and 99% by the leaders we select.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#292

Post by krashidov »

Animats wrote: post #246

The CO2 graph over decades is painfully clear.[1] From 321ppm in 1970 to 428ppm in mid-2005, measured in Hawaii atop Mauna Loa, far from any major CO2 sources. Everything else is noisy and statistical, but the CO2 measurement increases very steadily. [1] https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

Yes, and the scary thing is that soon the atmospheric carbon PPM will be high enough to start affecting how we think, act, and feel on a day to day basis.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#293

Post by hackingonempty »

timmg wrote: post #65
aleda145 wrote: post #9

Very alarming. I feel like especially the West is regressing on climate change with the rise of the far right ( https://www.politico.eu/article/robert-lambrou-alternative-f... ) I don't know what to do.

> I feel like especially the West is regressing on climate change with the rise of the far right Is it the "far right"? Or is it that technology and fertility have actually lowered the risks substantially? Solar plus batteries, right now, seems to be the cheapest form of new energy. Given that, you would expect most of new energy to be "green". (And if you look at the stats, that seems to be coming true.) Electrifica…

> I think we are clearly on the path to mitigating the worse scenarios.

This evidence based article published in one of the worlds top scientific journals comes to the opposite conclusion.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#294

Post by jacquesm »

tavavex wrote: post #276
short_sells_poo wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The energy density of fossil fuels is very high (about 50x higher than that of lithium ion batteries) That doesn't make sense. Batteries are an energy container, they're not energy itself. How can it be compared to a fuel? The direct counterpart to oil or coal is wind or solar radiation itself, batteries are used to amortize the supply and store an excess for emergency use, but otherwise those types of energy just…

It makes perfect sense to look at energy + container subsystems.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#295

Post by IAmGraydon »

foolfoolz wrote: post #157
aleda145 wrote: post #9

Very alarming. I feel like especially the West is regressing on climate change with the rise of the far right ( https://www.politico.eu/article/robert-lambrou-alternative-f... ) I don't know what to do.

this is like a tiktok rage bait way of thinking. western nations have largely peaked on carbon emissions. china is slowing down and will peak soon. there are a lot of countries that still are growing in emissions, sure, but you are not looking at this scientifically.

China is nowhere near peaking, nor is the world.

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/china https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi... https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

It's true that the West did peak in 2007 (as did South America, India, and Africa), but Asia's emissions are so massive that they more than make up for all of the reductions of the rest of the world. That last link I posted makes clear how big the problem with China is.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#296

Post by matthewdgreen »

throw310822 wrote: post #188
timschmidt wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s not like companies are making a bunch of product just to throw them in the trash Sure they do. You even mention one in the venerable plastic bag. Is it the best bag? No, of course not. Is it a good bag? Absolutely not. Is it the cheapest bag to produce? You betcha. Consumers are often presented the least expensive option with the worst outcomes. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

Why don't you pay for a more expensive bag and bring it to the store?

Many cities have banned plastic bags, and the results have been miraculous for waterways and wetlands. It turns out that shore animals don't benefit as much from "hope a few customers choose the better thing, but otherwise let them take home single-use crap that immediately blows off into natural settings."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/climate/plastic-bag-bans-...

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#297

Post by jacquesm »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #286
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…

> that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions I‘ve travelled quite a bit and I find it hard to convince myself that I as a city dweller contribute any meaningful amount to pollution or waste. I‘ve seen rivers of trash flow directly into the ocean. The rich and wealthy pollute disproportionally in such a way that I don‘t think offloading the responsibility to th…

The simple counterargument is that there many more of us than there are of them, so even if on an individual level we have less effect collectively we have much more.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#298

Post by krashidov »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #163
swiftcoder wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far all of the carbon capture techniques (apart from growing forests and keeping them protected) have been pretty unsuccessful, and/or don't scale well. That leaves us in the realm of solutions that may be very likely to disrupt our ecosystem themselves, like genetically-engineering algae/phytoplankton to improve ocean carbon sequestration

> apart from growing forests and keeping them protected) I’m in a loop. I must be. How are people still basic at this? No. Forests are not “carbon capture” devices. Plant a big forest and “protect” (which means thinning it, unless you are California) and in 100 years most trees have died, rotted, released their carbon. There is so much wrong with the alarmism here, so much hand waving away of scale when it is inconve…

The carbon in our atmosphere is already in the atmosphere and it won't go away. So there really is nothing more you can do other than take it out of the air and store it somewhere for as long as you can. Trees are a good way to store it until we have better technology/can handle climate change better

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#299

Post by matthewdgreen »

timschmidt wrote: post #274
throw310822 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plastic bags are already taxed where I live. Consumers pay that tax, obviously. Other costs imposed on producers of plastic items will just be passed down to consumers.

That's lovely, but it's not what I described. Bottles aren't just taxed. They have a refundable deposit. This ensures they don't end up in a landfill.

Exactly. The point of this sort of tax should not be to collect revenue, it should be to ensure that non-biodegradable bags are being disposed of correctly. To the extent that this is not happening, any bag tax is malfunctioning. Such a tax is either insufficient or poorly-designed. (Our city just banned chain stores from giving out plastic bags under 4 mils thick, and stores now give out paper and sell re-usable bags.)
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