501–510 of 1001 posts
I believe that as soon as nuclear fusion becomes operational (and perhaps AI could be of great help in this regard in the next 5 years), all the carbon storage methods (efficient and otherwise) studied so far could be immediately put into action. In addition to the immediate reduction in the use of fossil fuels for energy production, the scenario could be completely changed in 10 years, water could be desalinated, de…
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China creates about 30–35% of global emissions. India about 8% but it is climbing fast. What rich countries do is they just export their factories to other countries and say: look we do not pollute.
Exactly, this was the whole point of Trump calling climate change a hoax to benefit China, but somehow this got twisted by the media into not denying climate change being an anti-Trump position. The base then started demanding this from their reps and Trump almost picked up on this himself. It took years to undo that damage and even now we're barely back at a pro-clean air, pro-solar and pro nuclear position...
The issue with any significant steps to curbing the climate or environmental impacts with laws or treaties is always: But the economy. It creates an incentive where someone doesn't follow the laws, burn everything they can to accelerate their economy, and take industry from other countries. My proposal is thus: create a supranational treaty organization with a EPA like authority(or whatever the European equivalent is…
Honestly, if the economy is killing us all, then screw the economy. The way our economic systems are set up is inherently anti-human and only benefits a tiny fraction of the population anyways. It's time for a fundamental rethink.
FWIW my personal assessment is that this acceleration is both real and largely out of our control. Models in the past did not attempt to account for non-anthropogenic carbon emissions, but as we experience further warming, most especially in the Arctic, feedback loops and tipping points mean that this (carbon emissions caused by “natural” processes) are becoming more evident. This is especially sensitive because a la…
> major dieoffs in warm latitudes, even for humans, due to exceeding wet bulb limits my extremely pessimistic position is nothing will happen systemically even after the first few such events, and they'll take tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives. I hope writing this out jinxes it.
Where i live, we had the coldest winter on record in 30 years. I’m going with that.
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I've been mentally tabulating a list of reasons rich (and/or older) people should care about climate change, even if you're only looking out for your own interests: - Your children and younger family members will have to deal with this - Climate change is causing increasingly worse turbulence for airplanes - It will disproportionately affect your favorite vacation spots - Probably something about stock markets and pe…
You should consider it's much easier rich people to deal with the fallout from climate change (or living in a failed/failing state for that matter) than for poor people. Plus they often have interests in the things that are causing the issue(s) in the first place. Additionally, the children argument is probably the most powerful, but they would probably expect their children to be rich too. All in all I'm doubtful th…
A little higher up the economic pole is who stands to lose the most. Those are the people who will see actual quality of life reductions and not be able to afford to return to old norms.
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> We need to stop pursuing strategies that do not work here. We tried top down. Didn't work. We tried bottom up. Didn't work.
i think the only real strategy is that people take a hit to their standard of living but i don't think anyone will sign up for that.
FWIW my personal assessment is that this acceleration is both real and largely out of our control. Models in the past did not attempt to account for non-anthropogenic carbon emissions, but as we experience further warming, most especially in the Arctic, feedback loops and tipping points mean that this (carbon emissions caused by “natural” processes) are becoming more evident. This is especially sensitive because a la…
> direct air capture is the primary escape hatch We MUST MUST MUST stop burning things. Stop it. - We are still mining and burning coal. This is incomprehensible. US, AU, etc Eg: https://www.nacoal.com/our-operations - We are still subsidizing oil to around $1T/year, not counting oil wars. Yes it will take some grid and storage upgrades (US) and continue to embrace renewables. It would be cheaper than the oil subsidy…
For those (like me) who don't know the authors, apparently they are well-published authors in the field of climate science whose work is very highly cited: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=gra... Not a perfect measure of whether this is a reputable article but at least readers should know this isn't from some randos in a basement somewhere.
Ironically, those still unconvinced of the human influence on climate change seem to be the sort that would trust the basement randos more than they would reputable scientists