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Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

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Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#341

Post by mrexroad »

jpadkins wrote: post #325
belter wrote: post #3

We are in the multilayered race between - The risk of the rise of AGI - The risk and madness of Nuclear conflict - The risk of runaway Climate change My money is on Mother Gaia. She will brutally and swiftly discipline her puppies.

1) Is real but will have net positive impact on humanity (of course there will be losers, but like most new technologies humans will have more for less effort) 2) It is real but unlikely to end humanity. Much more likely to create large areas that are unlivable, but a lot of work has gone into avoiding world ending scenarios. 3) Is mostly hype. Doom predictions in the last 20 years on this topic have been very wrong.…

Care to back these up with some facts/data?

> Is mostly hype. Doom predictions in the last 20 years on this topic have been very wrong.

> +1 to 2C increase over 100 years is not world ending

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#342

Post by mrguyorama »

goatlover wrote: post #164
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that we are going to technology our way out of climate change is hilariously naive. That would require us to remove more co2 from the atmopshere each year than we add, which is just a laughable idea to achieve within the required time frame of the next 15 years or so.

What happens in 15 years? It’s not a comet impact. It’s an ongoing problem where technology will help us adapt.

The problem is that we are adding too much CO2 to the air. In fact, we have already added too much CO2 to the air, to the point that we will have noticable bad effects within the next few decades. More importantly, all this stuff has huge inertia, so if we stopped producing CO2 right this second, we would STILL blow past CO2 goals.

If we EVER want to get back to today's climate, you know, "normal", it requires removing gigatons of CO2 from the air. From a pure chemistry energy of reaction standpoint, that will be enormously expensive. There is zero technology that can change the physics fact that combining CO2 with something that will sequester it will take more energy than we ever got out of it.

Petroenergy is explicitly a loan. We have to pay that back

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#343

Post by maxglute »

_djo_ wrote: post #309
maxglute wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>US emissions per capita keep falling while China’s keep skyrocketing. It's sus to ascribe countries as bad emitters because they're developing higher QoL instead of choosing to be stuck as subsistence shitholes with low per capita emissions. The only way for countries to stay at subsistence/developing per capita emissions is to stay susbsistent/developing. Of course some wierd people think that's fine. A fairer desc…

Whether a country is a bad emitter is a factor of its total and per capita emissions. It has no inherent moral meaning, but it has serious implications for how we can slow down climate change. At current rates, China is going to be a larger per capita polluter than the US ever was, because it’s still choosing the quick, cheap, and dirty approach to so much of its industry including those focused only internally. As a…

>At current rates

This presumes current rates holds, when rate is constrained by factors and levels off past certain thresholds of development, and inherent constraints limit PRC demands vs US. With geography/population/density constrains, average PRC household isn't going to average 2300+ sqft of space & 2 car household, so trend of PRC per capita emissions passing US not realistic extrapolation.

>poor central planning

Wasting a few 100 apartment blocks over decades (for corruption/wrong zoning) doesn't meaningfully adds to per capita emissions. It's a rounding error on scale of millions of normal housing upgrading/recycling/replacement cycle over time. Even currenty underutilized housing is mostly reflection of short term supply outstripping demand. PRC still has 300m people to urbanize and net short 100s millions of housing units. Upgrade housing also important in development, moving people from dilapidated huts to modern buildings requires emissions.

> Its per capita emissions rate is already higher than that of the EU average.

Catchup growth = pouring down 100 years worth of concrete + steel, aka generations of infrastructure. In that sense per capita emissions is a concession to developed countries, since real useful index is historic per capita emissions, aka how much energy was expended in totality to enable modern/developed levels of QoL. PRC simply very good at condensing all this grown in a few years, other developing countries will follow, but spread over time, with longer tail.

>can just in the name of development, especially when so many lower carbon options exist.

PRC emitted relative to tech available at time. They upgraded coal to clean coal. They jumped on electrifiction / renewables at scale when it was feasible to deploy at scale. Prior to that the tech didn't exist economically, nor at scale, and hence might as well not exist. They would have jumped on nuclear sooner if western contractors didn't shit bed. TLDR is cleaning energy didn't scale with PRC growth, one doesn't slow compounding growth and development because tech isn't ready because effects of growth > emissions.

>moral judgement

Choosing position that prioritizes emission over development and vice versa is moral choice since it prioritizes effects of climate change to effects of development. My position is development > climate always since second order effects of development (poverty alleviation) > emissions/long term health. My other position is climate change is anthropocene problem, earth doesn't care we die in ice age or fire ball. Anthropocene solutions to anthropocene problem = geopolitical compromises, not what's best for science/enviroment. And only metric world can realistically agree on is per capita metric, in which case lead emitters sets the standard for what's allowable, and if that level pushes everyone over the edge, then that's where we'll "fairly" go, because that's want's ultimately morally acceptable/feasible.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#345

Post by madaxe_again »

iamthirsty wrote: post #323
feoren wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spiders have been a human fear for two million years, but I'm not too worried about them causing our downfall as a species. Just because we're afraid of AI doesn't mean it's actually worth fearing.

Spiders don't, won't and couldn't control almost all aspects of human life. This is a false equivalence.

Couldn’t is a stretch. Microbes can control almost all aspects of human life, as evinced in 2020.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#346

Post by feoren »

_yb2s wrote: post #322
feoren wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spiders have been a human fear for two million years, but I'm not too worried about them causing our downfall as a species. Just because we're afraid of AI doesn't mean it's actually worth fearing.

Yes, even if something is worth fearing, it's not simply because people are afraid of it already. Did something I write make you think I was arguing otherwise? As an aside, I would argue that this deep rooted human fear of AI is related to the general ancient fear of humans being wiped out by other bands of more technologically advanced humans. Which for most of human history has been the single biggest danger by far…

> Did something I write make you think I was arguing otherwise?

At the risk of having boring meta-commentary about comments, I feel like I see people often forgetting that their comments are in the context of a larger conversation and are going to be read as responses to the parent comment that they are, well, responding to. And then they get confused when their comments are interpreted in that context, rather than as completely standalone statements. So let's backtrack:

(A) AGI is a threat to human civilization. (B) Actually, its risk is marketing hype. (You) It's not marketing hype. Our fear is deep-seated.

It's not that weird to interpret the 3rd comment as disagreeing that the fear is just hype. When in fact, you were disagreeing only with the word "marketing". It's "innate" hype, not "marketing" hype. That's a much -- for lack of a better word -- weaker comment, because it is nitpicking about a minor word choice ("it's marketing hype") rather than the sentiment of the comment ("it's just hype"). So now you're asking "why did you assume my comment was interesting, and not just a little nitpick!?"

> One could say we have evolved these instincts to fear them, because they are worth fearing

But now you're back to saying AI is worth fearing, right? Isn't that what you're telling me I was wrong to assume you're saying? This feels like a needlessly difficult conversation.

All that aside, your additions to the conversation are interesting. I actually really like your take on it being a fear of technologically superior tribes. It just doesn't feel like it needs to be quite so adversarial. You established an adversarial attitude with "it's not marketing hype".

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#347

Post by goatlover »

mrguyorama wrote: post #342
goatlover wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens in 15 years? It’s not a comet impact. It’s an ongoing problem where technology will help us adapt.

The problem is that we are adding too much CO2 to the air. In fact, we have already added too much CO2 to the air, to the point that we will have noticable bad effects within the next few decades. More importantly, all this stuff has huge inertia, so if we stopped producing CO2 right this second, we would STILL blow past CO2 goals. If we EVER want to get back to today's climate, you know, "normal", it requires removi…

I understand that, but we may have to adapt to new normal with noticeable bad effects. That's where technology can help. Not sure we can remove that much CO2. Maybe if fusion becomes a thing, it would give use enough cheap energy.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#348

Post by trashtester »

duozerk wrote: post #302
triceratops wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the soil quality over there?

Much of the soil in Russia that will warm is indeed acidic and largely inexploitable, which I suspect is what you were getting at; to their credit though, they picked an area that isn't (IIRC). Not that it changes much.

Most soil can be used for some type of farming with some help from fertilizers. Temperature and access to water is more critical. Higher CO2 also increases crops, in isolation.

We're also talking about a time span of 100-300 years. Keep in mind how much more efficient farming is now compared to even the 1950's.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#349

Post by baq »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #232
belter wrote: post #3

We are in the multilayered race between - The risk of the rise of AGI - The risk and madness of Nuclear conflict - The risk of runaway Climate change My money is on Mother Gaia. She will brutally and swiftly discipline her puppies.

#1 isn't happening anytime soon, nothing we have is on a path in that direction. #2 people always worry about, but it's almost certainly not going to happen - insane dictators or no. Even in much worse scenarios we avoided it. #3 Real, but slow. I think we'll see some coastal communities devastated over the course of the next ~50 years, but the rest of the world will adapt and/or sweep it under the rug as best they c…

droughts are here now and will get worse in the coming decade. the amount of energy required to melt ice sheets (if that's what you're alluding to) is extremely huge and while it is certain they'll melt in a business as usual scenario (and possible if we stopped all emissions now...), it'll take hundreds if not thousands of years to get there.

whereas extreme droughts are here today, now, as we speak.

Re: Fastest rate of natural carbon dioxide rise over the last 50k years

#350

Post by _yb2s »

nullstyle wrote: post #329
_yb2s wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiction is much more than just entertainment... science fiction has been pivotal in both shaping and preparing our society for changes caused by technology. Much of the best science fiction has been so prescient that it's hard for modern audiences to even understand that these things were written before the world was like this. When I share a lot of old sci-fi with my young son, he finds it unremarkable, as they seem…

Out of curiosity, could you recommend any Science Fiction written before the nuclear age that talks about nuclear proliferation? Or to take something from our present world, what Science Fiction stories would you recommend to talk about the effect of drone tech on trade and shipping?

The unintended consequences of new powerful weapons falling into the wrong hands and new trade technology are very old themes in fiction even if the specific technical details are not.
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