7 ms·

this is kind of interesting as there's some reverse/upside down ideas that come out of it: 1. the big oil companies and the massive political machine that supp

• briandear 8y ago
  Is anyone actually debating if climate change is happening? The debate is on the degree of human influence.
  • kasey_junk 8y ago
    Now. 5 years ago it was if it is even happening
  • epistasis 8y ago
    Of course they are, including nearly half of US politicians. There are people in this thread that are unsure if humans are even increasing CO2 levels. This is a political debate, not a scientific debate. And the political debates mean stating the most extreme position that's within the realm of plausibility. Or having others say even more extreme things to move the window of plausibility.
    • tnzn 8y ago
      It's hard making some people understand that such debates go beyond the scope of science (or that there's anything beyond the score of science for that matter) :/
  • craftyguy 8y ago
    Even better: there are politicians(0) and 'leaders'(1) in the US who still outright deny that it (climate change) is a thing. One of them is even head of the EPA. lol. 0. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/06/19/trumps-energy-secretary-just-denied-that-man-made-carbon-dioxide-is-the-main-driver-for-climate-change/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20... 1. https://www.factcheck.org/2016/11/trump-on-climate-change/ https://www.factcheck.org/2016/11/trump-on-climate-change/
    • Zanni 8y ago
      Maybe I'm missing something, but can you point to a line in [1] where Trump outright denies climate change is a thing? I see a lot of qualified statements like "climate change is a 'very complex subject'" and "Trump said there is 'some connectivity.'"
      • Floegipoky 8y ago
        https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292191248385?lang=en https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/26589529219124838...
      • wgerard 8y ago
        Sure, but not from fact-check. I'm sure I could also dig up more if I spent more than a minute searching: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/265895292191248385 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/26589529219124838... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/408977616926830592 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/40897761692683059... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/427226424987385856 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/42722642498738585... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/428414113463955457 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/42841411346395545... https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/428418323660165120 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/42841832366016512...
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      • craftyguy 8y ago
  • User23 8y ago
    One can reasonably question if climate changes can be reasonably measured over a 150 year time frame. At a geological scale climate change has been ongoing for about 4 and a half billion years. Saying that the latest .3333x10^(-6)% of that data stream is sufficient to deduce a new trend is pretty amazing if true. On the other hand processes like glaciation and desertification can happen with alarming rapidity. Supposedly the former can occur in less than a year http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1227990/Ice-Age-took-just-SIX-months-arrive--10-years.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1227990/Ice-A.... Those are two kinds of climate change that I consider cause for concern. The dust bowl was a big deal. And then there are things like super volcano eruptions.
    • ezrast 8y ago
      Having more historical data to draw on makes us more confident that the null hypothesis is invalid, not less. If the question is reasonable, then the answer is an immediate, equally reasonable: yes; we've done the measurements; the data is there; the trends are clear.
  • Consultant32452 8y ago
    During the last ice age there is evidence that suggests the Earth's temperature rose 10-15 degrees in less than 10 years. In fact, during the last 110k years represented in the Greenland Ice Sheet Project the climate shifted dramatically multiple times over periods of a few years to maybe a couple of dozen years. During the last 110k years the most stable has been the last 11k years, which is kind of just dumb good luck for us living today. Current anthropomorphic climate change models suggest we might see 2-3 degree changes in 100 years. I believe the science is likely accurate here. I support moving towards renewables and just about anything else generally supported by the climate change crowd. However, I think the panic button has been pushed a little too hard on this issue. I think things like overfishing the ocean and even plastics in the ocean are going to be bigger problems in the short run than human caused climate change. Generally speaking this kind of nuance isn't allowed. The kind of response that says "If water rises a few feet, move a few feet inland, you've got a century of notice. If you have to farm over there instead of over here, then farm over there instead." is sacrilegious. To many, I would be considered a "climate denier."
    • geoka9 8y ago
      I think this is even more alarming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification
    • linkregister 8y ago
      The economic impact on the United States alone will be in the trillions. Relocating all of Manhattan, Toronto, London, Singapore, and other coastal economic centers is non-trivial, but would hopefully be gradual enough to be viable. It would be fantastic if we can avoid this loss of wealth by making a meaningful reduction in the rate of global warming. Other nations are already experiencing famine due to permanent desertification. This has already exacerbated political and military conditions; drought is a major factor in the Syrian and other war zones. To compare this to the range of human history is not meaningful. "They had it worse" isn't helpful for now. What matters is our response to the conditions that we are expected to experience. Around the 120,000 BCE time, there was a "great filter" event that caused the mass death of most of humanity, causing a massive reduction in human genetic diversity. Yes, we may have it "easier," but today's problems are still real and must be dealt with. I think it's useful to frame the climate change process solely in terms of human impact, and specifically economic, political, and security terms to governments. I wouldn't consider you a denier, and it's important to share your perspective. I hope you consider mine.
• afarrell 8y ago
  > the big oil companies and the massive political machine that supports them drops the whole "global warming isn't real" line They dropped that a few years ago https://www.shell.co.uk/sustainability/environment/climate-change-at-shell.html https://www.shell.co.uk/sustainability/environment/climate-c... http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/current-issues/climate-policy/climate-perspectives/our-position http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/current-issues/climate-po... https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/sustainability/climate-change.html https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/sustainability/climat... Although... https://www.citgo.com/NewsViews/CITGOViews/GlobalWarming.jsp https://www.citgo.com/NewsViews/CITGOViews/GlobalWarming.jsp
  • TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    From the Shell link: Gas can help with all three of the UK’s energy objectives – providing affordable, secure and low carbon energy. Gas is none of those things. It’s not cheap, it’s going to run out, and it isn’t low carbon.
    • pdabbadabba 8y ago
      All true. But note that GP didn't say that they've stopped spinning started speaking the complete truth about fossil fuels--only that they have stopped denying its link to global warming.
    • r00fus 8y ago
      You can replace the reason any corporation does things with $profit and it will almost always make sense.
    • linkregister 8y ago
      This is somewhat true, though obviously misleading. Since natural gas's energy efficiency is much higher than that of coal or oil, the amount of carbon dioxide released is the same for a greater amount of energy. Furthermore, it requires less carbon input to retrieve the natural gas.
      • 8y ago
• mig39 8y ago
  CEO of Canada's largest oil company: "Suncor CEO slams climate change deniers, politicians who cater to them" http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/suncor-ceo-slams-climate-change-deniers-conservatives-1.4694549 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/suncor-ceo-slams-clima... Choice quotes: "It is a matter of profound disappointment to me that science and economics have taken on some strange political ownership" "Climate change is science. Hardcore science." "It makes sense to consume things sensibly. Common sense is not a big part of the conversation that normally goes on on this thing." I think the strategy is changing from denial...
• Alex3917 8y ago
  > way more money and attention might end up going here, increasing the chance of its viability. This has no chance of ever being viable. Reducing energy usage is way more efficient than 'mitigating' carbon. And if you wanted to mitigate carbon, it costs $0.03 cents per ton just to reduce deforestation, whereas this costs $94 per ton.
  • zzzeek 8y ago
    Here's a dollar. Who can I pay it to so that 30 tons of forest get saved ? It doesn't matter about the estimated costs of something (feel free to share sources also) if people aren't going to actually do the thing. Even the most extreme and fully impossible reduction of carbon emissions, like banning all cars on Earth (which would also have immense social and economic costs in itself) will not reverse the problem now. All strategies must be employed at once.
    • maxerickson 8y ago
      There are non profits that do things like buy land for conservation. I don't know which ones are efficient and effective so I won't try to name a specific one.
• wpietri 8y ago
  > Once everyone is on the same page that global warming is real, they can't go back on that I'm not sure that's true, at least in the US. The extent to which "post-truth" has become a meaningful phrase since 2016 is disheartening. And of course, the cynical would say that it doesn't matter. If carbon-pollution lobbyists can go from "it isn't real" to "it isn't a problem" then they will have achieved their goal. This is true whether or not these technologies are technically or economically feasible. Getting excited about an imagined giant CO2-fixing industry is the broken windows fallacy on a planetary scale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
• Bluestrike2 8y ago
  The worry is that the discussion will create a false sense of future security, undermining current mitigation efforts. Or worse; that hope for future technological options can be politically weaponized to undermine more immediate actions. There are plenty of entrenched interests that have immense short-term incentives to do just that. Climate engineering will eventually help us mitigate some of the consequences. Some form is pretty much assumed as a given necessity even. But there are major mitigation efforts to be undertaken now. The earlier we mitigate the effects, the less extreme the interventions with climate engineering will need to be in the future. Because no matter how much the price for direct air capture (DAC) falls in the future, it's still going to be massive. The submitted paper estimates a current cost of between $94 and $232 per ton. That's a big drop from a decade ago on a per ton basis, but it's still massive overall. At the low end you're looking at a minimum of ~$1.34 trillion annually if we were able to capture 100% of the 32.5 GtC of emissions accumulated in the atmosphere in 2017 alone. That's also completely ignoring the total ~230 GtC of the same since 1870 as well as emissions absorbed by the land and oceans (which has its own negative effects). Nobody expects to remove all of it, or even all of what we'll continue to emit via DAC. Just keeping the expected increase to under the 2°C degree upper limit agreed to in the Paris Agreement is going to be challenging in itself even with cheaper, more efficient DAC methods. Actually reversing the temperature changes would be the "dream" for climate engineering. Something like that--which would involve every type of carbon dioxide removal methods along with atmospheric and space-based solar radiation management--would be a herculean project on a scale the human race has never before attempted. It'd make the Apollo program look like a five year old with a lemonade stand. And eventually, we'll have to figure out a way to make real progress on that front. Basically, the hope that climate engineering will allow us to fix it later--or better yet, the dream that we can reverse it altogether--is both appealing and potentially dangerous. Why sacrifice today when we'll figure it out tomorrow? Just look at US infrastructure spending for an example of that kind of thinking.
  • guy_c 8y ago
    Not sure how accurate but napkin maths and quick google suggest barrel of oil produces 118 kg of co2. So about 9 barrels to produce a ton. Barrel is $67. So cost of capture might add 15% to 38% to cost of oil.
• dbingham 8y ago
  This approach is also risky. We don't know what climate effects might fall out of very fast, very localized changes in the composition of the atmosphere. What's it going to do to the climate if we suck a bunch of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in one localized place? Could it change air movement patterns? Cause extreme weather events as the atmosphere moves around to remix itself? I don't know if any modeling has been done on this (or if modeling it is even possible), but I'd be very worried about unintended side effects with the large scale, intensive application of this sort of technology.
• ForHackernews 8y ago
  https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fossil-fuels https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fos... 'As you can see, in either scenario, global emissions must peak and begin declining immediately. For a medium chance to avoid 1.5 degrees, the world has to zero out net carbon emissions by 2050 or so — for a good chance of avoiding 2 degrees, by around 2065. After that, emissions have to go negative. Humanity has to start burying a lot more carbon than it throws up into the atmosphere. There are several ways to sequester greenhouse gases, from reforestation to soil enrichment to cow backpacks, but the backbone of the envisioned negative emissions is BECCS, or bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration. BECCS — raising, harvesting, and burning biomass for energy, while capturing and burying the carbon emissions — is unproven at scale. Thus far, most demonstration plants of any size attaching CCS to fossil fuel facilities have been over-budget disasters. What if we can’t rely on it? What if it never pans out? "If we want to avoid depending on unproven technology becoming available," the authors say, "emissions would need to be reduced even more rapidly."'