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The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

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Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#301

Post by pants2 »

throw310822 wrote: post #256
pants2 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ideally in the first scenario where we have well-functioning government, necessities like food and low-income housing would be well subsidized. Other things like random junk from Temu and large gas-guzzling trucks will be less accessible to poorer people by design.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#302

Post by derektank »

_alternator_ wrote: post #278
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.

So… it’s like you completely understand the issue :) And obviously, you tax the fuel at the source, right when it comes out of the ground. Higher prices get passed down, changing behavior because the products externalities are priced correctly from the start.

To be clear, the source would still be the consumer. Hydrocarbons can be used for non-CO2 emitting purposes such as chemical feedstock for pharmaceuticals, solvents, etc. We should only be levying a tax upon uses that emit CO2 into the atmosphere, i.e. burning them in your ICE vehicle. It’s not the fracking company that’s emitting the CO2 (unless they’re gas flaring or similarly emitting carbon during extraction but this is a rounding error on total emissions).

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#304

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

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…

It's important to remember that in REALISTIC worse case emissions projections, by 2050 - we will have CO2 higher than levels seen in the last 10 million years - but there was a 500 million year period where CO2 levels were an order of magnitude higher than that - and there's NO WAY we're getting there without destroying civilization first, so there's no chance on current trajectories that we turn the planet into Venus.

The super danger zone is ~1000 PPM CO2 - where ocean chemistry changes. In worst case scenarios in 50-60 years, we could get there - but there's a lot of reason to believe we won't, and we DEFINITELY aren't getting there by 2050.

The graph the main source shows is cherry-picked. Look at this: https://co2coalition.org/facts/for-most-of-earths-history-it...

Saying we're on a "hothouse" trajectory plays into the Apocalypse / Earth Becomes Venus trope, which is so ridiculous for our lifetime even under the absolute worst case realistic scenarios.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#305

Post by danny_codes »

throw310822 wrote: post #185
mullingitover wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…

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?

I want the emitter to be taxed however much it would cost the market to put the carbon back.

Obviously in such a system there wouldn’t be any fossil fuel companies so it’s a moot point.

But this isn’t purely economic. Fossil fuel companies are paying top dollar to ensure we destroy the climate. Just look at all the batshit propaganda around climate change. People genuinely believe it’s not a problem. It’s wild how effective the fossil fuel industry has been in convincing people the sky isn’t falling

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#306

Post by danny_codes »

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.

Seems China is cooking atm. If solar power and battery tech continues at this speed and their nuclear ambitions pan out, fossil fuels will be economically non-competitive (if they aren’t already). China EV momentum is incredible.

So still some hope I think! And it’s possible the populist “dumb dumb bricks” crew will decline in popularity when the inevitable lack of tangible improvements continues. Though since we are dealing with dumb dumb it may take a while

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#307

Post by aydyn »

jacquesm wrote: post #294
tavavex wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It doesn't make sense to look at that in a vacuum. Energy transport over wire via electricity is much "denser" than transport via liquid or gas.

"It depends" is the correct answer, but the equation is shifting quickly towards solar + electricity.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#308

Post by throwaway5752 »

vaylian wrote: post #4

This is one of the key sentences: > Policymakers and the public, however, remain largely unaware of the risks posed by such a practically irreversible transition Most people still underestimate what it means for the earth system to change from the current stable state into another state, which might need many years to become stable again. And that new stable state might be a lot less favourable for us humans.

"need many years to become stable again"

People are selfish. "Life will be much harder, and the problem will never be fixable within the rest of your life or your childrens' lives"

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#310

Post by peterbecich »

mapmeld wrote: post #162
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?

I don't think carbon capture / sequestration is going to do enough, but if we continue slipping into this trajectory I think there will be more support for changing reflectivity (spraying sea water, or putting particles in the stratosphere).

Stratospheric aerosols: the dangers of this seem overblown. It is milder than a volcanic eruption. It seems like a reasonable thing governments should be attempting.
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