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The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

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Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#341

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

krashidov wrote: post #298
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

No. Pick a timeline that is influential, short or long. If it’s long, trees don’t capture carbon. Not in any scenario of population growth, which inevitably leads to some edgelord reductionist “maybe we should all die then for what we’re doing to Gia!” trite.

This “climate is a 100 years” thing while using ice core samples to make your case is not in support of science. It is in support of politicians.

The latter I’m personally getting sick of. And the people that can separate them, harm the former.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#342

Post by iamnothere »

DonnyV wrote: post #155
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…

The 2 biggest contributors to climate change are ... - US Military - Cargo Ships You fix those 2 things and like 60% of pollution goes away.

It’s funny that this is always ignored or downvoted when consumers are a relatively small part of the problem. Surely shaming people harder will fix the problem, this time.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#343

Post by aydyn »

jacquesm wrote: post #312
aydyn wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're the one looking at it in a vacuum. Engineering is all about looking at it in context and the main context where density of energy is important is in vehicles of all shapes and sizes. That's where the rubber quite literally meets the road. You can then theorize about what the 'weight' of the electrical energy is but it is pointless: the weight of container dwarfs the weight of the energy carriers (effectively t…

This discussion is not solely focused on EVs.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#344

Post by acuozzo »

tim333 wrote: post #322

Playing devil's advocate, if you look at the temperature graphs up to now, ignoring the future projections, the temperature has regularly fluctuated to hotter than we have it now (~2C more) and then fallen back (6 less). There must be some stabilizing factors that cause it to do that. Maybe that'll kick in again?

At -4C Boston was under literally 1 mile high of ice compared to the current skyline.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#345

Post by jacquesm »

aydyn wrote: post #343
jacquesm wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're the one looking at it in a vacuum. Engineering is all about looking at it in context and the main context where density of energy is important is in vehicles of all shapes and sizes. That's where the rubber quite literally meets the road. You can then theorize about what the 'weight' of the electrical energy is but it is pointless: the weight of container dwarfs the weight of the energy carriers (effectively t…

This discussion is not solely focused on EVs.

The moment someone mentions energy density you can bet they are talking about vehicles and not about stationary stuff.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#346

Post by getnormality »

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 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.

Which decisions though? The decisions to hold back nuclear, NIMBY solar, or keep cheap Chinese EVs out of the hands of consumers have a much bigger impact than whether you leave the lights on. Freezing in place with our existing fossil fuel system and fearfully minimizing our consumption will at best only slightly slow our decline.

IMHO, we must rise above fearful, superstitious individual moralism and boldly apply ambitious zero carbon energy science, engineering and policy, including fission (to keep things going in dark winters) and possibly even geoengineering (pending extensive research and small-scale pilots).

We cannot afford continued reflexive, neurotic rejection of any deviation from the status quo as we approach these tipping points. Continuing exactly as we are is not safe, nor can we return to preindustrial society. We need to build zero carbon supply for the needs of civilization. Including the stuff that people are uncomfortable with out of ignorance.

We need a plan. Neurotic criticism of every realistic plan is not a plan.

We cannot afford a continued overhang of 1970s Boomer environmentalist sentimentalism. Scientific engineering of the future is needed, not ideological nostalgia for an idyllic past we can no longer return to.

AI may not do much good directly, but it has the salutary effect of making rich tech companies care about electrical supply and distribution, accelerating the learning curve towards cheap supply.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#347

Post by upboundspiral »

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...

I'm sure that are no adverse effects.

This reads like someone with the means to eat good food eating junk food and then putting themselves on weight loss drugs to counteract the effects. I'm sure temporarily it might work but I don't believe that the shocks that produce meaninful cooling effects are without consequence - in fact, I suspect they double the consequences by adding yet another factor to the destabilization.

I could be wrong, and it could a short term solution to stop the bleeding, but I have a deep suspicion of adding more things to the atmosphere given our history with the CO2 in question, tetrafluoroethane, etc.

Lookin at the wikipedia it does sound a lot like "chemtrails". They describe airplanes as being able to disseminate these aerosols and these days when I look up at the sky there is always a straight line of "cloud" forming behind airplanes.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#348

Post by schiffern »

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.

What's most alarming IMO is that we're probably (still) systematically underestimating the effects of climate change.[0]

The idea that this current apocalyptic prediction is expected to be better than reality is... not comforting.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46980353

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#349

Post by greekrich92 »

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…

This is all rational thinking if you don't know or care to know the actual scale of global warming

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#350

Post by lumost »

Zambyte wrote: post #339
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That puts recycling on the "I'm helping to spread awareness by temporarily adding a note to my Twitter bio" tier of action. It's better than nothing, but it's only a little better.

Doing a little better than nothing becomes a big deal when everyone is doing it.

Does it really? Or does it become a panacea to make people feel like they’ve done something when they haven’t?

Perhaps if these non-solutions didn’t exist to appease our fears then there would be more pressure for real solutions.

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