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Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

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Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#571

Post by rory »

occz wrote: post #297
baxtr wrote: post #153

The world's population was at around 5.3 bn in 1990 and is now approaching 7.7 bn. This ain't a popular opinion on HN, but I think a key factor to getting climate change under control (whatever that means), is to reduce the growth and to stabilize the population.

Growth is already projected to peak at around 10-11 billion, though. The general trend is for countries going towards replacement rate, or even below, as they become wealthier.

That prediction relies on all regions becoming wealthier, though. Which isn't currently happening.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG?locat... https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG?locat...

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#572

Post by quenix »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #540

Isn't it time to block the sun's radiant energy? What is the real disadvantage to trying to lift a giant solar umbrella that blocks light from hitting the Earth? It may be pricy but we spend billions per climate disaster, if we could use a few falcon heavy launches and reduce incoming energy by 1 or 2%, we could buy ourselves the time to fix our emissions and ramp up carbon capture. The other alternative could be inc…

How about the multitude of life on the planet that relies on photosynthesis?

And our own bodies? We get most of our vitamin D from a biosynthesis pathway that requires UVB exposure. Systematically depriving all of humanity of vitamin D could be disastrous.

And our circadian rhythms? The human circadian rhythm is mediated by two processes, denoted "S" and "C", of which C has evolved to rely on daily exposure to sunlight. The circadian rhythm affects almost all parts of our humanity.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#573

Post by rory »

adrianN wrote: post #222
baxtr wrote: post #153

The world's population was at around 5.3 bn in 1990 and is now approaching 7.7 bn. This ain't a popular opinion on HN, but I think a key factor to getting climate change under control (whatever that means), is to reduce the growth and to stabilize the population.

The best way to do that is probably improving the education of girls in developing countries: https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/health-and-education

This is likely true to some definition of best (which is not exactly most effective).

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#574

Post by newbamboo »

jsonne wrote: post #360

If there is anything covid has taught me its that collective action isn't something we can rely on and is a lot more wishful thinking about the state of humanity rather than a sober look at the reality. Governments need to tax CO2 emissions on the business side and pour the money into carbon capture technology in the private space through investment and perhaps some sort of bounty program (you get $x for each ton you…

Bingo.

It’s great folly to think climate change can be solved by “waking people up” and that whole endeavor probably just makes things worse. It becomes a red/blue issue where nearly half the population take opposing sides, like mindless zombies. A solution, if we are to find one, will not come from the many but from the few, maybe just a single person or invention. Emerging economies pollute, necessarily. That’s the real problem. Surely it feels good to some people to say “I told you so!”, to see oneself on some noble crusade to enlighten the masses about the troubles that are to come. But it’s not at all productive in fact it’s the opposite. Not everyone has the ears to hear. The good side has to accept that sad truth and give up on the political squabbling. Spend energy thinking about solutions that don’t require building consensus with the guys in jack up trucks and the poor third world nations that pollute to survive.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#575

Post by mempko »

jsonne wrote: post #360

If there is anything covid has taught me its that collective action isn't something we can rely on and is a lot more wishful thinking about the state of humanity rather than a sober look at the reality. Governments need to tax CO2 emissions on the business side and pour the money into carbon capture technology in the private space through investment and perhaps some sort of bounty program (you get $x for each ton you…

What did Musk or Bezos build? What did they invent? Nothing. Everything built and invented was by their workers. The success of Amazon and SpaceX/Tesla is a form of collective action. The collective action of employees, and the collective action of government policy which provided the playground that Bezos and Musk play in.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#576

Post by NonContro »

corey_moncure wrote: post #527
jsonne wrote: post #360

If there is anything covid has taught me its that collective action isn't something we can rely on and is a lot more wishful thinking about the state of humanity rather than a sober look at the reality. Governments need to tax CO2 emissions on the business side and pour the money into carbon capture technology in the private space through investment and perhaps some sort of bounty program (you get $x for each ton you…

We already have an ideal carbon capture technology optimized by Nature Inc. through a state of the art evolutionary algorithm running trillions of parallel processes for billions of years. It's called Trees (TM). With Trees (TM) the CO2 emissions problem has a simple two step solution that anyone can accomplish with ease: 1) Stop cutting down Trees 2) Plant more Trees That's it. The end. Problem solved.

That's not really accurate, since the trees will biodegrade at the end of their lifecycle.

We would need to recreate the Azolla Event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event

Or even the Carboniferous period where microbes could not digest lignin and cellulose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous

Which is impossible. We simply need to stop digging fossil fuels out of the ground in order to burn them.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#577

Post by thehappypm »

rich_sasha wrote: post #170

It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production. Some are high-pain, low-gain (switching devices off instead of standby?), some are opposite (cycling instead of driving when possible etc). For that if for no other reason, I’d rather if consumer prices included an explicit CO2 tax. The here can be a rebate for poorer people, or personal allowance, whatever, but there would be a fixed yardstic…

The rebate-for-poor-people thing is really the main issue. the West is already on its way towards reducing CO2 emissions and it's accelerating with new technologies, without austerity forcing the hand. Meanwhile the developing world (the poor people) are growing CO2 dramatically. It's irrelevant where CO2 comes from. That's why this is so damn hard.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#578

Post by epistasis »

fouc wrote: post #344
nosianu wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production Not really. For some reason the actually quite simple problem is needlessly complicated in the discussions. Stop digging up ANY carbon from below ground where it was safely buried. Any carbon above ground is part of the cycle that includes atmospheric CO2. You need huge effort to change how much of it is in CO2 form at any time while still ha…

That's not super helpful to the individual. Take an individual that bikes everywhere. What other changes can he make in his life that would reduce the demand of "digging out carbon"? As it turns out, he's relying on rubber wheels for his bicycle, he's relying on synthetic clothing for comfort, and numerous in his life products are made with plastic. What are the highest impact changes he can make?

Sometimes I think the worst mistake we made with cars was making the refueling process so easy. If people still had to lift buckets of gasoline to fill their tanks, they'd have a much better idea about the massive quantities of fuel that are needed for small amounts of car use.

Rubber, synthetic clothing, plastics, do not get used up and ejected directly into the atmosphere. There is some energy use in manufacture, probably some chemistry that may emit some CO2. But it is absolutely dwarfed by the massive amount of gasoline fuel ejected directly into the atmosphere by driving.

The store in a bike frame is probably the most carbon intensive part of a bike. For every pound of steel, two pounds of CO2 is currently emitted in manufacture (but this will probably go to zero in the future).

For a 20-60 pound bike frame, that's the equivalent of only three gallons of gasoline. Three gallons. Because as a gallon of gasoline combusts, it picks up extra oxygen atoms and ends up being 20 pounds of CO2.

Think of a 20 pound plate for weight lifting, and that's a gallon of gasoline once it's burned.

All the other stuff in life--rubber, clothing, plastics--are almost a rounding error compared to the daily commutes we make in cars in the US.

Lesson: get on that bike as soon as possible, and if you can't, at least get an EV.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#579

Post by acdha »

jcfrei wrote: post #489
headmelted wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. A 200% value-added tax on fossil fuels that rises by 10% every year would provide the capital. EDIT: To clarify, this is not a suggestion to raise capital from the tax as much as it's to raise capital from the use of fossil fuels. It's a suggestion for an increasingly punitive financial cost to force behavioural changes.

That's not going to work. A lot of people (and industries) rely on cars to do their jobs. It's a lot of low-income households who rely most on cars because they live in remote areas due to housing costs and have to commute to city centers to find work. Such a tax would cause a huge backlash in large parts of the population in any country and the government who enacts it would be quickly disbanded. We need subsidies t…

We definitely need public financing — and especially things like HVAC should be table-stakes since it's also an effective jobs program — but we also need those ever-increasing taxes. Most of those people commuting in remote areas use high-emission, low-mileage vehicles for fashion reasons and they can afford to do so because the costs of that lifestyle have been heavily subsidized for decades.

If we instituted a vehicle weight / mileage tax (to fund road repair as EVs cut into the already wildly inadequate gas tax) and send a message that gas prices will never be cheaper in the future, that would change rapidly because there wouldn't be any way to fool yourself into thinking that you could afford that huge SUV which has been keeping you broke for years. It takes a lot to disturb a deeply-entrenched status quo and I think taxes are key, but I would ramp them in slower: set a floor on the cost for a barrel of oil and increase it annually so the writing is on the wall but there's time to make major capital expenditures.

The political backlash is a real problem, especially with the knowledge that the simple solutions like giving people financial assistance for replacing high-emissions vehicles would be met with a well-funded deluge of bad faith attacks (you can just hear the “why are they giving away Teslas to people who didn't earn them!” ads now). I suspect continued subsidies for things like EVs and solar would be possible but I wonder whether there could also be a low-rate loan subsidy program, especially for homeowners and businesses looking to electrify things like heaters, boilers, etc.

Re: Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

#580

Post by LeifCarrotson »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #540

Isn't it time to block the sun's radiant energy? What is the real disadvantage to trying to lift a giant solar umbrella that blocks light from hitting the Earth? It may be pricy but we spend billions per climate disaster, if we could use a few falcon heavy launches and reduce incoming energy by 1 or 2%, we could buy ourselves the time to fix our emissions and ramp up carbon capture. The other alternative could be inc…

Sure, I'll take a crack at the first one, involving 'a few' Falcon Heavy launches. Falcon Heavy can get (very roughly) 16 tonnes to L1. Ignoring critical station-keeping and rigidity issues entirely for the sake of simplicity, and assuming the sail is a single sheet of aluminized mylar at 10 g/m^2, that's 1.6 square kilometers of coverage. To put the planet in shadow would require about 100 million such shades.

More importantly, people who won't do anything about the problem now while it's getting worse will not do anything if we had a temporary fix in place. This should be obvious from human nature, if it's not obvious, you can observe those temporary fixes permanently installed as infrastructure and business operations all over. We don't need more time to think about it, we just need to get started.

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