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The problem with climate change is that it has now solidly left the realm of the scientific to enter politics. Here’s the truth: We cannot do a thing about it

The problem with climate change is that it has now solidly left the realm of the scientific to enter politics. Here’s the truth: We cannot do a thing about it. This is scientific fact, not my opinion. I invite everyone to reproduce my conclusion. Here’s how to do it: Question: How long would it take for a 100 ppm drop in atmospheric CO2 concentration if humanity, along with all of our technology, evaporated from this planet tomorrow? In other words, a Thanos moment. A snap of the fingers and humanity is gone in an instant. Why this question? Because that’s the baseline. This is important: WE CANNOT DO BETTER THAN THIS RATE IF CHANGE. Can we answer that question? Yes! We have 800,000 years of highly accurate atmospheric composition data from ice core sampling. In other words, we have a time machine that tells us exactly how the planet would behave if we were not here. What does the data say? How does it answer my question? 50,000 to 75,000 years for a 100 ppm drop in atmospheric CO2 concentration if we evaporated from this planet. THAT IS THE BASELINE Any proposal for “saving the planet” has to be measured against that. For example: Erase the US from the planet -> Save the planet in 50 years? Nope, ridiculous. Ban all forms if internal combustion engines? Nope. Ridiculous. Switch to 100% renewable energy at a world scale? Nope. Again, ridiculous. All of these are ridiculous because the next question should be: How is this going to perform a THOUSAND TIMES BETTER than the Thanos scenario? The answer, at that point, becomes beyond obvious: These ideas are ridiculous. As for what would work, well, that’s a whole other conversation that starts with reforestation at a monumental scale.

adrianN 7y ago
You can suck carbon out of the atmosphere faster than the geological processes that do it naturally. But that of course doesn't matter if you work on the assumption that it's ridiculous to stop burning fossil fuels. Many people believe that it's possible and actually not hard, just expensive.
- robomartin 7y ago
  No, you cannot. Do the math on how much energy and resources would be required to do what you are suggesting at a global scale. That’s the problem with all of these great sounding ideas, nobody bothers to quantify them —particularly at a planetary scale. EDIT: Just noticed your comment about burning fuels. I need to clarify something. And this is important. I have never --ever-- said (and I've written about this a few times on HN) that migrating away from fossil fuels is a bad idea. It's a great idea. We should do it to the extent possible. I've done my part, I installed a 13 kW solar power system at my home and we are on track to switch to 100% electric vehicles within, say, a year. What is NOT OK is pretending that this is going to "save the planet". Our migration away from fossil fuels will do absolutely nothing of note --zero-- as far as reversing atmospheric CO2 accumulation. This has been studied and published. The conclusion was, to paraphrase, "even if we migrated the entire planet to the MOST OPTIMAL FORMS of renewable energy sources, atmospheric CO2 accumulation would continue to INCREASE EXPONENTIALLY". In other words, even if we did the impossible (total migration to renewable sources at a global is likely impossible). Why? BECAUSE THE BASELINE IS 75,000 YEARS with NO HUMANS ON EARTH. BTW, I am not yelling, using caps for emphasis. We can discuss facts or that which we wish were facts. The difference is that we are never going to improve anything if we insist on ignoring reality. It is OK to say "all of these proposals are nonsense", if, in fact, they are. It would be the same if politicians were proposing to save humanity by reducing the planet's gravitational constant by 10%. Ridiculous, but I bet someone out there could make a fictional case about the idea and collect an audience...just like the flat earth geniuses.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    What we could do is attempt to develop (air conditioned) domes or underground dwellings, hydroponics and water sparing farming. (Incl. GMO, to hell with greens on that.) That would cushion the blow a lot. Catalog and save the species we still can, like corals. Trying to sequester CO2 and CH4 unfortunately won't work well on big scales.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Planting large forests and turning the wood into biochar would probably reduce carbon dioxide to preindustrial levels on a timeline of centuries, not tens of thousands of years. We can also do things like accelerate olivine weathering and seeding the oceans with iron.
    - robomartin 7y ago
      Once again, it's about quantification. All ideas sound great until we grab a calculator and do the math. Thankfully some math has been done with regards to planting trees [1]. The next questions are: How much suitable land is there and how many trees can it sustain? How much water will they require? Will they require chemicals (fertilizers, pest control, etc.)? How much petroleum will they require? Keep in mind that oil is an inescapable part of most processes. An easy example of this would be transportation, tractors, cranes, packaging, etc. Not being negative at all. Just want to make sure we all understand that without quantification anything sounds great. As far as my investigation into this domain has revealed, yes, trees are the ONLY technology we have that stands a chance to do some good without making a larger mess in the process. The problem is that deployment at the planetary scale isn't easy. And there exists a real limit function on just how many trees you can actually plant around the world. Not sure about your claim that trees can solve this problem in centuries. Ideas like seeing the oceans with iron scare the hell out of me. Again, we are talking about planetary scale effects here. The energy and resources required for such a task are monumental. Beyond that, I don't know about you, but I've had plenty of experiences where an experiment was predicted to result in A and I we got Z instead. I cannot imagine doing something like that at a planetary scale. We could literally kill-off half the species in the ocean if we are not careful. The most important thing we need today is to stop our politicians from spewing nonsense. Seriously. These people are dangerous beyond belief. It isn't only about none of their proposals being worth the paper they are not written on, they could actually cause massive harm and hamper real science-based approaches to making things better. In general terms, politicians have turned climate science into a disgusting circus act (or whatever analogy applies best). If you ask me, THAT is the most urgent task ahead for the scientific community: Getting politicians the hell away from this domain. [1] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-could-cancel-out-a-decade-of-co2-emissions-scientists-find https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-cou...
gshdg 7y ago
We may not be able to remove that CO2, but we could stop adding more.
- robomartin 7y ago
  True enough, but that isn’t going to solve anything. The problem, again, is that when you actually look into the reality of such a proposal it crumbles very quickly. Remember, the baseline is in the order of 75,000 years if humanity evaporates from the planet. Do anything LESS than that and it will take longer.

adrianN 7y ago

You can suck carbon out of the atmosphere faster than the geological processes that do it naturally. But that of course doesn't matter if you work on the assumption that it's ridiculous to stop burning fossil fuels. Many people believe that it's possible and actually not hard, just expensive.

robomartin 7y ago
No, you cannot. Do the math on how much energy and resources would be required to do what you are suggesting at a global scale. That’s the problem with all of these great sounding ideas, nobody bothers to quantify them —particularly at a planetary scale. EDIT: Just noticed your comment about burning fuels. I need to clarify something. And this is important. I have never --ever-- said (and I've written about this a few times on HN) that migrating away from fossil fuels is a bad idea. It's a great idea. We should do it to the extent possible. I've done my part, I installed a 13 kW solar power system at my home and we are on track to switch to 100% electric vehicles within, say, a year. What is NOT OK is pretending that this is going to "save the planet". Our migration away from fossil fuels will do absolutely nothing of note --zero-- as far as reversing atmospheric CO2 accumulation. This has been studied and published. The conclusion was, to paraphrase, "even if we migrated the entire planet to the MOST OPTIMAL FORMS of renewable energy sources, atmospheric CO2 accumulation would continue to INCREASE EXPONENTIALLY". In other words, even if we did the impossible (total migration to renewable sources at a global is likely impossible). Why? BECAUSE THE BASELINE IS 75,000 YEARS with NO HUMANS ON EARTH. BTW, I am not yelling, using caps for emphasis. We can discuss facts or that which we wish were facts. The difference is that we are never going to improve anything if we insist on ignoring reality. It is OK to say "all of these proposals are nonsense", if, in fact, they are. It would be the same if politicians were proposing to save humanity by reducing the planet's gravitational constant by 10%. Ridiculous, but I bet someone out there could make a fictional case about the idea and collect an audience...just like the flat earth geniuses.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  What we could do is attempt to develop (air conditioned) domes or underground dwellings, hydroponics and water sparing farming. (Incl. GMO, to hell with greens on that.) That would cushion the blow a lot. Catalog and save the species we still can, like corals. Trying to sequester CO2 and CH4 unfortunately won't work well on big scales.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Planting large forests and turning the wood into biochar would probably reduce carbon dioxide to preindustrial levels on a timeline of centuries, not tens of thousands of years. We can also do things like accelerate olivine weathering and seeding the oceans with iron.
  - robomartin 7y ago
    Once again, it's about quantification. All ideas sound great until we grab a calculator and do the math. Thankfully some math has been done with regards to planting trees [1]. The next questions are: How much suitable land is there and how many trees can it sustain? How much water will they require? Will they require chemicals (fertilizers, pest control, etc.)? How much petroleum will they require? Keep in mind that oil is an inescapable part of most processes. An easy example of this would be transportation, tractors, cranes, packaging, etc. Not being negative at all. Just want to make sure we all understand that without quantification anything sounds great. As far as my investigation into this domain has revealed, yes, trees are the ONLY technology we have that stands a chance to do some good without making a larger mess in the process. The problem is that deployment at the planetary scale isn't easy. And there exists a real limit function on just how many trees you can actually plant around the world. Not sure about your claim that trees can solve this problem in centuries. Ideas like seeing the oceans with iron scare the hell out of me. Again, we are talking about planetary scale effects here. The energy and resources required for such a task are monumental. Beyond that, I don't know about you, but I've had plenty of experiences where an experiment was predicted to result in A and I we got Z instead. I cannot imagine doing something like that at a planetary scale. We could literally kill-off half the species in the ocean if we are not careful. The most important thing we need today is to stop our politicians from spewing nonsense. Seriously. These people are dangerous beyond belief. It isn't only about none of their proposals being worth the paper they are not written on, they could actually cause massive harm and hamper real science-based approaches to making things better. In general terms, politicians have turned climate science into a disgusting circus act (or whatever analogy applies best). If you ask me, THAT is the most urgent task ahead for the scientific community: Getting politicians the hell away from this domain. [1] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-could-cancel-out-a-decade-of-co2-emissions-scientists-find https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-cou...

gshdg 7y ago

We may not be able to remove that CO2, but we could stop adding more.

robomartin 7y ago
True enough, but that isn’t going to solve anything. The problem, again, is that when you actually look into the reality of such a proposal it crumbles very quickly. Remember, the baseline is in the order of 75,000 years if humanity evaporates from the planet. Do anything LESS than that and it will take longer.